Chapter 14
The following day, still blissed out from what felt like a holiday in heavenly Wandsworth, I’m tucked up in bed, reading the copy of Flowers in the Attic that we’ve been passing around our class (but hidden inside a copy of The Hobbit so nobody can see I’m a dirty bitch), when Dad comes in and nervously drops himself at the end of it.
‘Did you have a nice birthday?’
‘Yeah, with my friends.’ I don’t look up, keep drawing hard Biro lines in my book. I’m not going to let him know it was absolutely great – that would absolve the guilt too easily. I could get an extra birthday present out of this surely.
‘You know, it wasn’t our fault; it’s not what we wanted,’ he tells me. ‘Hey, look at me, you know I love you so much, don’t you?’
I look at him, just quickly though, nod and carry on scribbling. I mumble, ‘And you love Mum too, right?’
He looks strained and hesitates. ‘Of course I love your mum … ’
‘What’s going on?’ I ask. ‘I’m fifteen. You can tell me the truth now, Dad.’
By truth I obviously mean, Please say things are exceptional between the both of you, that you’re madly in love and have never been better, Dad. Not the actual truth.
Dad takes a breath, holds it in his throat, looks at me like can she take it? ‘Your mum and I are breaking up.’
WHAT? I mean, I knew they weren’t milk and honey, but, guys, seriously, this is extreme. They can’t break up. That happens on TV, not in real life. They’re a team. By having us they made a promise. My mind jumps straight to worst case scenario mode – I see something tragic like a plane crash:
It’s more than just turbulence on the jumbo jet of us. Violet and Sonny are reaching for their oxygen masks. I should help them, they’re my siblings, but how can I when I can’t help myself? When our luggage is flying everywhere? As we nosedive towards concrete. My crazy parents, panicked pilots, battling it out over which one should steer us to safety.
‘Me and your mum will still remain best friends’ – cos you really sound like it – ‘and nothing will change.’
Even I know that’s fucking impossible. I begin to cry.
‘Aw,’ he comforts. ‘Bellie, don’t cry. It will be OK.’ But this makes me cry more.
‘Maybe don’t tell your brother and sister just yet?’ he back-tracks. He can see that this news is going down like a wet weekend and is regretting it. ‘They’re too young to understand.’
Oh. So they were wearing oxygen masks after all then?
I want to say, But Dad, I’m too young to understand.
I thought I wanted them to tell me the truth but actually knowledge is not power: knowledge is shit.
Later on, now it’s all out in the open, Mum says like it’s nothing, ‘Your dad’s moving his stuff out; he’s staying with Brian for a bit until he gets his own place.’
Brian? But Brian’s single. And a DJ. That means Dad will be out there on the town again.
‘OK,’ I reply, in that way you sometimes do when you’re a kid. It’s a receipt. I hear you. Now stop. And OWN PLACE? What does that mean? Chill! He doesn’t need to move out! It feels so detached and separate. Like will wild dogs eat him out there on his own? Will he find a new family? Start again – without us? Then again, maybe his ‘own place’ would be nicer than 251 and I can live with him instead and finally I can try ham and pineapple pizza without Mum saying it should be banned.
Dad’s moving out. But he can’t be; he’s my dad. We’re meant to see each other on the landing. Argue about who didn’t push the toothpaste up from the bottom. Accuse one another of leaving the lights on: ‘It looks like Piccadilly Circus in here!’ I’m meant to hear his whistle.
I nosily peer into Dad’s half-empty bedroom and see all the good stuff has already gone. Tears bubble up in my eyes. I have the urge to go into my bedroom and listen to the Lighthouse Family, but thank God I manage to muster up a grain of mental resilience to resist before things get that bad.
Here I am, a teenager, desperate for any excuse to strop about, something to blame for my mood swings, to blast all my angsty fury at, an epic life story to make me have the right to write a masterpiece memoir like Tracy Beaker’s. And now it is here and I wish it would go away.
At school, I don’t want anybody to know. I don’t want anybody to ask me about it. But at home, I use it to my advantage. If they’re going to break up, then I’m not going to waste my time revising for my exams, am I? (Pretty stupid, really – joke’s on me.) If they’re going to split up then I’m not going to tell them when I get to my friend’s house safely, am I? If they aren’t going to take care of us – well, neither am I. At a party I let a friend’s mum make me a glass of sangria and I learn to like it. It’s delicious as far as alcohol goes, with big juicy rounds of orange – a drink and a snack. And I make a whole batch in a washed-out water bottle to take to a house party at yet another really nice house and throw it all up over the white walls. I sick up some kind of knobbly cat food out of The Twins’ mum’s people carrier’s backseat window, and all along her pebble stone drive like some necessary purge. I stink of orange rind and shame. It’s now my go to turn – and boy have I turned. Never this bad before where the room is spinning and every word is sliding and every lightbulb is a disco ball. I am carried upstairs, undressed by my friends and rolled into a bed like a burrito. I really regret wearing a thong.
I hope I didn’t get so drunk that I told anybody I loved Lowe?
I start to despise my parents; they’ve told The Kids that Dad’s moving in with Brian for a bit because he has a ‘migraine’. HA! Unbelievable. Are they actually buying this shit? Get a cold flannel and an Anadin Extra like everyone else’s goddam guardians. (Anything but please don’t leave, Dad; please stay at home with us and be our constant.) It annoys the hell out of me seeing my brother and sister go about life as though nothing has changed, as though life is a perfect, shiny, spinning wheel of Babybel cheese when actually, sorry, everything has changed, and they are still in blissful, innocent, ignorant childhood, and I am here in the dark stuff, alone. And nobody even likes Babybel.
I slam out towards the high road on a cloudy day where the air is close and thick. I listen to my Discman really loudly, holding it upright like I’m a cocktail waitress otherwise the CD skips. I decide this summer will be the greatest summer of my life if I can basically locate the skill to ignore anything real that’s going on.
We spend it stretched out on The Twins’ trampoline, the elasticated mesh now punctured by cigarette-hot rocks. I sit next to Lowe, always. Just having him next to me is enough to make the day go fast, and yet I want it to go on forever. We sit in the park in giant crop circles in the press of the sun until it slinks away and we remain, like statues, under the eye of the swollen moon. The apple-green grass turns rat-grey.
He says, ‘I love the way you do stuff.’
‘Do stuff? What stuff?’
He now wishes he never opened his mouth because he has to explain. ‘I dunno what it is but how you move your hands’ – I look down my little trotters and think, strange but OK – ‘how you tell a story, how you move the hair out of your face, how you give directions to a stranger or whatever.’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever given directions to a stranger, not accurate ones anyway.’
‘You know what I mean.’ He nudges me shyly. ‘I even like the way you put your … headphones in your ear …’ he confesses. ‘It … I dunno the word … stop laughing.’ He tuts. ‘Oh, I’m just gonna shut up now.’
‘No, go on … sorry.’ I have got to stop cracking jokes as a reflex; I straighten my face. ‘Please say what you were going to say … ’
‘No. You’re annoying. That’s all you’re getting.’ He shakes his head, laughing, looking out to the trees. ‘I said it. I like the way you do stuff. That’s it.’
‘That’s sweet of you.’ I admit, ‘I like the way you do stuff too.’
I could write a book about how much I like the way he does stuff. Like that time I got to watch him eat a chicken balti bake. I mean, divine, the stuff dreams are made of. Or that time I thought he winked at me but he was just getting some grit out of his eye. Still, there is an unspoken promise between us, an unsaid vow that says – you are mine and I am yours. And everybody knows that now, so nobody dares cross the line. But we are too afraid to make it real on the trampoline with our friends watching.
Just. Kiss. Me.
But he has to get home.
Towards the end of the summer, when the seasons are calling closing time on the party of the holidays, a small group of us are out. The Twins scuttle back for their home tutor but I’m not ready for the warm months to be done just yet. I don’t ever want to go home to the inevitable. For the cold to bite at the mushy cracks of my crooked house on Palace Road, where I live as a loose thread on the hem of a skirt. Waiting for the walls to crumble in, for winter to freeze us.
‘Why don’t you want to go home? What are you avoiding?’ Lowe asks me.
‘Avoiding?’
Nobody had ever used the word ‘avoid’ to me in this psychological context before. It comes out.
‘My mum and dad are breaking up.’ I haven’t even told Aoife.
He says nothing. So, obviously, I fill the silence.
‘My dad’s moved out. His football bag gone, his CDs gone, his inhaler gone, his books gone. My dad is gone. I fucking hate my parents. I hate that house. I hate my life. I don’t know how to fix it. Everything’s going wrong and can you say something now?’
‘That’s shit,’ he replies. Lowe never talks about his parents. His ‘deeply in love’ parents. Maybe he doesn’t want to rub salt in my already quite salty wound? Maybe he’s just the ultimate love-child of the most in-love humans on the planet; he wouldn’t understand this feeling of heartbreak; he’s got nothing to say on the matter.
I try to look like I could use a hug by making my shoulders look baggy. Slouching, like I need propping up. Instead, he tears a tag off his shoe, eyes on the ground. He’s either the most empathetic person in the world or I’ve accidently hit a nerve. He clears his throat. ‘You’ve just got to get through it bit by bit.’
I nod. Great advice. Cheers.
‘You don’t understand,’ I moan. ‘I wish I was like … an orphan.’
Lowe laughs.
‘It’s true.’
‘Don’t say that; you’ve got amazing parents, Ella.’
‘Selfish parents.’
‘They really love you and they obviously did a good job … ’ He pushes my hair behind my ear. Nobody had ever done that to me before either. ‘Because they made you.’
And I seep into the grass.
His phone rings.
‘Shit, my dad.’
I jump up as though his dad is standing over us. Lowe steps away from me to take the call. Yep. Yep. K. Will do. K.
The call is over in less than thirty seconds.
His mood has shifted. Sometimes he doesn’t look like a kid. Sometimes he looks like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders.
‘OK?’ I ask.
He braves a smile. ‘Yeah.’
‘I’d better be going home anyway,’ I admit. ‘It’s late.’
The path ahead through the common looks like the artwork for a new horror film. Jagged and murky, the branches of trees droop like hanging animal bodies. A dirty mist.
‘Here, stand on the pegs,’ Lowe says, reaching for his bike, angling it at me. ‘The pegs, at the back.’
‘I know what they are,’ I hesitate with jest. ‘I just don’t want to … stand on them.’
‘You’ll be fine,’ he says. ‘I’ll take you to the station.’
‘ … Really? Erm … OK?’
It’s the bike or be kidnapped. With my hands on Lowe’s shoulders, the soles of my shoes find the grip of the bars either side of the back wheel.
‘K, hold on tight now.’
‘Don’t go fast,’ I warn.
‘I’m not going to.’
He pulls his hood up over his head, zips it right to his mouth. He’s obviously an expert at putting whatever is on his mind back into its little box.
‘You good?’
‘As good as I can be standing on a bike.’
‘You’re funny.’ He laughs. ‘OK, you can loosen your grip just a tiny bit, so I can, you know, breathe?’
‘Oh my God, sorry.’
And suddenly I’m just on the back of Lowe Archer’s bike, a bike he barely even has to pedal because he’s just one of those people the earth moves for.
In my pocket, I rummage for the same crumpled up train ticket I’ve used for pretty much the entire summer, to flash at an inspector on the unlucky days the barriers are closed. Far too much of my life is spent shivering at empty train stations, waiting, with no money, no snacks, no battery on my Discman and no phone credit. We arrive. The gloomy slices of light seem to beat down like some depressing film noir. I feel sick, alone. We both look up at the Teletext timetable screens – no sign of a train going to mine any time soon.
‘You don’t have to wait with me.’ I release him from the obligation. ‘One will come soon.’
Lowe slinks back on his bike, arms stretched out, his hands clench, lock onto the handlebar which he swerves, rocking playfully from side to side.
‘I’ll take you home.’ He offers so quietly it could definitely be an auditory hallucination.
‘HA!’ I push him gently. ‘Yeah, alright, that’s like … ages for you. You literally live right here.’
‘I know.’ He’s hardly even looking at me, but on his wheels, a tree behind him shakes like it’s laughing at us.
‘You really don’t have to do that.’
‘I know I don’t have to but … ’ He readjusts his cap. ‘ … I want to.’
And my arms are wrapped around his chest, my palms spread over his beating heart; my cheeks are smiling so hard. He needs no direction. He knows the way to mine.
We don’t talk, just ribbon the empty pavement under the arrows of stars. I have the nerve to close my eyes, to feel the mild summer breeze on my face as we blow down the hill, to feel him. Miles away from Dad’s Vespa, I’m like a cool girl on the back of some stud’s motorbike, riding the desert. In this moment, well, I’m like any ridiculous trope of a damsel in distress on horseback, galloped away from danger by some handsome knight in a shining tracksuit. And don’t tell a soul, but I love every single second of it.
When my chariot arrives at 251 Palace Road, my moth-eaten castle, this princess feels the rising soar of love charging through her belly; I’m so elated by the whole thing that I don’t feel embarrassed at all by our falling-down house – it’s not like he’s going to come inside! He lets me off the limousine of his bike; I feel like a movie star stepping on the red carpet. It takes a second to find gravity. Lowe signs off with one of his adorable skids, his face dewy with perspiration and pride. He is still smiling, breathless. He takes out his Ventolin and shakes it before inhaling. Thank God for that little blue plastic thing breathing air into his lungs. My GOSH he is so cute. So hot. And so kind. You know what? He is my guy – that’s what he is. He’s my guy.
Probably because I’m living in some annoying romance scene in my head, I go over and kiss him on the cheek. Lowe glows, presses his head into his neck. ‘Well … that was nice,’ he says. I could be paid a million pounds in this moment not to smile, and I wouldn’t be able to resist.
‘Thank you.’ I beam. ‘And for listening to me moaning too.’
‘You didn’t moan.’ He shrugs, smiles sweetly.
‘A little bit?’
‘OK, maybe just a little bit of moaning.’ He measures with his thumb and forefinger a sugar cube of space.
‘K, night.’
‘K, night.’ It’s meant to be a smooth exit, but then he has to watch me fuck about with the latch of the stupid rickety gate.
Then my knight breezes away into the night, wheels around and his bike reared like a horse.
I know what you’re thinking – cycling you home? OK, you’ve bagged this, girlfriend. Oh, he loves you alright. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a bloody carriage. I’m thinking the exact same thing, to be honest. I’ll be strutting into school with a swishy high pony-tail, boasting to everyone that I have a boyfriend. For REAL this time. And not just any boyfriend – Lowe Archer.