Gnome
It was the Easter break of my first year at university, and I was back at my parents’ house in Henley.
I had just switched on my desk lamp to start my day of revision when Dad came barging into my bedroom, insisting that I go with him to ‘get some things’.
This would usually be something Mum would do with him, but she had randomly gone to visit Aunt Ruth that morning.
I followed him around the store as he dithered from aisle to aisle, inspecting a tool here and a wallpaper sample there.
‘Er, Dad,’ I said. ‘What are you looking for?’
I waited for Dad to start the engine, but instead, he placed Howard on the dashboard and admired him.
‘He’s a smart old chap, isn’t he?’ he said. I looked at the overpriced gnome who was staring through us and felt instantly frustrated.
‘We came here to buy a gnome? Dad, I have so much revision to do!’
Dad cleared his throat. ‘Um . . . No, we didn’t come here to buy a gnome.’ He put his hands on the steering wheel and took them off again. ‘Your mother and I are . . . not together, no longer.’
‘Yeah, I know. She’s at Aunt Ruth’s and I’m here at Homebase with you.’
‘No!’ He let out a breath to calm himself down. The next part he said coldly, as if stating facts of war. ‘We’re not going to be together. We’re not going to be married anymore. We’re going to separate. Divorcing, almost certainly.’
I laughed. It was a strange reaction I am aware, but if you had known my parents back then, then you would have known how stupid this sounded to me.
Their relationship was a well-oiled machine.
They had their places at the kitchen table.
They had their friends Karen and Mark to have Malbecs with.
They had a holiday house in the Lake District and a Christmas Day routine.
Sure, they weren’t all over each other like other couples, and there had been a lot of arguing recently, but I never thought they would ever be so scandalous as to divorce.
‘Dad, do you even know what you’re saying? ’
‘Yes, Amy, I know what I’m saying.’ He breathed out again. ‘I, er . . . I’m leaving her . . . for . . . er . . . someone . . . er . . . Jean-Ivy . . . Jean-Ivy Brown.’
‘Jean . . . Ivy . . . Brown?’ I repeated back. It was the most ridiculous name I had ever heard.
There was a knock and we both jumped. A lemon-shaped head man was standing at Dad’s window with his face up to the pane. Dad moved to open the door. ‘Dad, don’t. Dad . . .’ He opened the door.
‘Hello. How can I help you?’ he asked the lemon-shaped head man.
‘Nice car, mate.’
Dad seemed very happy with himself suddenly. ‘Thanks, mate, it’s a Bentley Continental GT.’
‘I can see that, mate. Good goin’.’ The man stuck his thumb up before walking away.
Dad stuck up his thumb back and it looked strange.
He then shut the door, and we were back in our world of silence.
I noticed Howard’s drawn-on smile; it was a tilted, simple, black line, and it made my eyes sting. I sniffed back my tears.
‘Shall we go home then?’ Dad mumbled. Dealing with emotions had never been in the Elman family guidebook. The engine turned on and Shelagh Fogarty’s voice filled the car. I took Howard off the dashboard and held on to him for the drive back.
The morning after gnome day, Jean-Ivy Brown was in our kitchen offering me a cup of tea. She navigated her way around our cupboards without any question as to where things were. She told me (whilst pouring coffee into one of my mum’s mugs) that she was one of dad’s patients.
‘One minute he’s looking at your fanny, the next you’re sharing a bottle of Gavi with the man,’ she said, like it was something out of her control.
She told me that she was a punk singer in the seventies and asked if I had heard of her.
I had not. It explained the leather trousers and the skull-themed jewellery.
She bragged about her one-hit record in 1978, ‘Choke! Choke! Choke!’ I didn’t know it at the time, but I was going to hear ‘Choke! Choke! Choke!’ being performed at every possible occasion – Grandad’s funeral was a particular favourite gig of mine.
Before I knew it there was a gold-themed wedding, and Jean-Ivy Brown became my stepmum. It was the kind of wedding where every guest put on their best act. It would have been the day from hell if Josh hadn’t been there.
He had been my boyfriend for over a year by then.
I had come back to university after that Easter holiday, feeling bamboozled by my parents’ break-up.
Josh noticed how down I was at our pub quiz and became a shoulder to cry on.
One day, when I was crying on his shoulder, we began making out.
It went from there. I don’t want to say that the death of my parents’ marriage was what brought my love life to life, but it kind of was.
Josh wore a deep blue suit at the wedding, and I felt so proud he was mine.
He held my hand when the vows were being read.
And when Dad said something about Jean-Ivy being the first woman he had ever truly loved, I squeezed Josh’s hand so hard that he let out a loud yelp.
A few guests turned around to see what all the commotion was.
I couldn’t stop giggling, and for a moment, it made me forget that I was in the process of getting a stepmum.
At the wedding reception, my new stepbrother, Woodstock, who is as eccentric as his mother, gave a speech in a gold bow tie.
He told everyone that this was the best day of his life, which was funny because it was one of my worst. He said that his mum deserved to be in love, and that he was ecstatic to have a new dad and sister.
His actual words were, ‘The twinkly stars have finally aligned to bring our families together as one big bang.’ I was so furious I could have cried right there on the top table.
How could he say that this mess was fate?
Mum had rang me that morning, crying on the bathroom floor.
Okay, it was the bathroom floor of a luxury cruise liner heading towards Lisbon.
But still, she was a broken woman. Was that part of fate’s plan, too?
When the room stopped applauding Woodstock, Josh took me outside to the hotel garden. He opened his blazer and took out a bottle of champagne. We drank it by the swimming pool and then jumped in with our wedding clothes on. We splashed and we kissed.
‘Would you ever get married?’ I asked, as our heads bobbed just above the water.
‘Probably,’ he said.
‘Would you have it in a place like this?’
‘I don’t know. Don’t care. It’s about you.’
‘Me?’ My heart thumped under the water. ‘You would marry me?’
‘Of course, Lab Rat,’ he said, splashing me.
‘Lab Rat? What kind of name is that!’ I splashed back.
‘Ha! It’s your name, because you’re cute and smart.’
‘I’m not a lab rat!’ I jumped and pushed down on his shoulders, dunking him underwater for a second.
We didn’t go back to the reception. We missed the cutting of the cake and the first dance, which I feel bad about, because Dad always talks about it as if I were there.