Chapter 44 #3
“I was busy,” I protested. “I was busy stepping up and being the change I want to see and whatever.”
“It was a compostable inside a recyclable. The definition of adding insult to injury.”
“You can punish me later.”
“Don’t get my hopes up. You’re bound to be exhausted this evening.”
“Then you can punish me, like, slowly and tenderly.”
His eyes shone their softest grey. “It’s a date.”
Leaning in, he kissed me in that Olivery way I never got tired of. Like there was nothing in the world more important than me, and him, and us. Except then my arse slipped off the amp and I went straight down into the mud, dragging him on top of me.
And, honestly, it didn’t make much of a difference.
We just kept on kissing. Because, sometimes, it didn’t matter how old you were, or how many grown-up things there were to think about; you just needed to be with the person you loved.
* * *
Eventually, both of us slightly the worse for wear, we went to join our friends.
“Fucking hell, you two,” said Jaz. “What have you been up—actually, don’t answer that. I’m too traumatised already.”
“It was very romantic,” I insisted.
Jaz clapped her hands over her ears. “Fuckofffuckofffuckofffff.”
“She’s great, isn’t she?” said Priya. “James, I’m expecting Baby J to be able to swear at least as well as this by the time he’s nine.”
James Royce-Royce, who was looking after Baby J while James Royce-Royce was running his Gourmet Street Food Experience, looked sceptical. “Not sure James would like that.”
“He would”—Priya smirked—“if you told him most kids only start dropping f-bombs at eleven.”
There was a ripple of slightly nervous laughter. We’d mostly got to the stage where James Royce-Royce’s compulsive need to treat babies like Top Trumps was an in-joke, but we were still working on it.
Sophie was lounging on a picnic blanket wearing dark glasses, a white sundress, and shoes that were way too expensive for the ground, the weather, or the whole overall vibe.
“If you’ve got a thing for terrible children, please consider taking the twins off our hands. I’ve become quite bored of them.”
Ben looked glum. “I really don’t think we can just give them away. There’s probably laws about it.”
“Who’s the barrister?” asked Sophie, raising an eyebrow. “I’m sure I can find a loophole somewhere.”
Bridge, who had for some reason decided that because it was a music festival, she had to go full Woodstock, with a caftan and flowers in her hair, took Autumn to sit next to Sophie on the picnic blanket.
“Auntie Sophie pretends to be mean,” she said to Autumn in the universal talking-to-babies voice, “but deep down she’s made of chocolate and marshmallows, isn’t she? Is-n’t-she?”
“She’s fucking not.” Unlike his wife, Tom had chosen to dress like a sensible person.
“He’s right,” agreed Oliver. “Sophie has always been pure evil and will always be pure evil.”
From across the way, Brian and Amanda were wandering back from the Royce-Royce Experience with supplies for the group. “Don’t tell James,” Brian called out from slightly too far away, “but these pasties are fucking brilliant.”
“Actually,” said James Royce-Royce, watching his son plundering sausage rolls from Amanda’s bag, “could we keep the fucks down a bit in front of the kids? Baby J’s mirroring a lot.”
“Fuck,” said Amanda. “Sorry.”
“Fuck,” said Baby J.
“Ruff,” said Spud.
“Hey.” Priya put up her hands. “I’m an artist. I have to be allowed my free expression.”
“You’re a visual artist,” Oliver pointed out. “I don’t think swearing in front of children translates much into sculpture.”
She shrugged. “Art’s mysterious.”
Realising I hadn’t eaten all day, I pounced on one of the slow-roast pork sandwiches and stuffed it slightly embarrassingly into my face. “Is everybody having a good time?” I managed to ask between bites.
“The twins aren’t here,” said Sophie, “so yes.”
“Also,” chimed in Brian, “you got a fu—a blooming Bolt Thrower tribute band. I don’t know how you managed to dig them up.”
Honestly, neither did I. I’d mostly just taken anybody who looked available. “I’m mysterious too,” I explained. “Also I think they were cheap.”
“Undervalued,” Brian corrected me.
I looked at Jaz across the group. She’d tucked a carefully wrapped pork pie into one pocket but otherwise wasn’t eating anything.
“So,” I said very gently, because this was going to some very her-mum-related places, and that was still a fine line to walk, “Odile”—still felt weird—“is going to be up really soon and, well, if you wanted to come watch from the wings, I think she’d like it and—”
Jaz gave a shudder I thought was exaggerated. “She won’t drag me onstage or make me sing with her or anything, will she?”
I could say, with absolute certainty, that she wouldn’t. “No, she’s way too kind and way too vain.”
Having made sure somebody was looking after Spud, Jaz wandered over to join me and Oliver.
“I’m sorry your mum couldn’t stick around for this,” I whispered to Jaz as we approached the stage and the closing strains of the Real Original Skenfrith Male Voice Choir’s rendition of “Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau” began to die away.
I’d been shooting for compassionate. I worried I’d hit crass. But Jaz seemed fairly chill. “For the best. She’d have loved the music, but the crowd’s too much.”
Jaz, Oliver, and I mounted the stage and lurked in the wings, out of sight of everybody but the techs and the backup singers.
I could see Judy on the other side, her dogs lying at her feet, probably because they were exhausted after the walk from Pucklethroop-on-the-Wold.
In front of us, my mum—my actual mum, looking younger, more alive, and, in ways I didn’t like to think too much about, more herself than I could ever remember seeing her—strode out in front of the festival crowd, who cheered the way only ten thousand genuinely excited and moderately well-catered-for people can cheer.
“Hello, CRAPPstonbury!” she called out, with the effortless confidence of a legend of the rock ’n’ roll. “My name is Odile O’Donnell. I was going to say it’s good to be back, but really”—she put her hand over her heart—“I never went away. I am here. I am here for you. And I am never leaving.”
In that moment I’d have bet good money that every single human being in that crowd felt like she was saying those words to just them, directly and personally.
But to me they hit different. Because I’d lived them.
And I knew they were true in every part of me.
And I wanted more than anything else to pass them on to the people I cared for.
I laid one hand on Jaz’s shoulder, and Oliver slid his arm around my waist.
And the music started.