4. Charlie
4
CHARLIE
I manage to make it four whole days without telling Mum I’ve been sacked.
But on Monday night, as Merlin and I are slumped on the sofa watching Taskmaster, my phone rings and the word ‘Home’ flashes on the screen.
‘Shit,’ I mutter. I briefly consider letting it ring out. I know I won’t be able to lie to Mum, and I know she’ll freak out when I tell her the truth. I also know I haven’t yet prepared a satisfyingly watertight case for my defence. Mainly because there isn’t one: I was a total dick, and subsequently got fired. Simple as that. But on balance, I decide I don’t want to worry her by not answering.
‘I’d better take this,’ I say, standing up. Merlin grunts and his head falls forward onto his chest in what might be either a nod of acknowledgement or a sudden loss of consciousness. He took an edible with his dinner half an hour ago, and his blinks have been lasting a good five seconds each ever since.
I step out of the living room into the corridor. Jasper gives me a cursory glance from inside his Plexiglass vivarium next to the TV. Jasper is the main reason I can afford to live in this flat. When I moved in, six months ago, Merlin told me he’d been searching for a flatmate for ages but everyone that came to look round was ‘freaked out by the snake’. As a result, he had to drop the rent about ￡100 below the average boxy-flat-off-Peckham-High-Street rates, and I was still the only taker.
To be honest, I don’t actually mind Jasper – though I do tend to steer clear of his tank on the occasions I bring a girl home, as I suspect he might be something of a mood-killer. But mainly he’s a good lad – keeps himself to himself. Granted, it was a bit disconcerting the first time I opened the freezer to be greeted by a transparent box full of dead mice, but I’ve got used to it now.
I stand in the hallway, take a deep breath and put the phone to my ear. ‘Hey, Mum!’
‘Hello, love! How are you?’
‘Yeah, not too bad. You?’
‘Oh, can’t complain. I’m not taking you away from your dinner, am I?’
‘No, no, don’t worry, I’ve already eaten. We’re just watching Taskmaster.’
‘You and Gandalf?’
I laugh. ‘Merlin, Mum.’
‘That’s it, Merlin. What on earth were the poor boy’s parents thinking?’
‘I’m not sure.’ I lower my voice to a whisper, just in case Merlin has miraculously regained consciousness in the next room. ‘I’m guessing they’re hippies.’
‘Ah. Right. That makes sense.’
Poor old Merlin. He couldn’t really have ended up as anything other than a perma-stoned, snake-owning oddball with a name like that. You can’t exactly become a doctor or an investment banker or a pillar of the local community when you’re named after a wizard.
‘And how’s work, love?’ Mum asks.
And . . . there it is. I kick at the loose threads in the corner of the hallway carpet. ‘Work’s . . .’ It strikes me at that moment that I’ve spent most of my adult life so far trying to be the one thing my mum doesn’t have to worry about. As far back as I can remember, she’s had more than enough on her plate – ill health, money issues, work troubles and, to top it all off, a shitty ex-husband who upped and left us a decade ago. Growing up, I wanted to be the one solid thing in her life, the one person she could rely on, who wouldn’t let her down or cause her undue stress. I still want that. But it seems like all I ever do is add to her worries.
‘I kind of . . . left that job, Mum.’
There’s a pause. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean I’m not working there any more.’
Her sigh crackles down the phone and guilt thumps hard in my chest. When she speaks again, her voice is wrinkled with concern. ‘Oh, Charlie . . . What happened, love?’
‘It was actually kind of funny . . .’ I rattle off the pretentious-old-wank story, and to her credit, Mum does laugh.
‘I can’t believe you didn’t know what Michael Barkley looks like, Charlie. He’s an advisor on The Apprentice!’
‘Yeah, well, I don’t watch The Apprentice.’
She sighs again. ‘So, what are you going to do now?’
‘Dunno. Maybe I’ll move back in with you.’
She laughs at that, but to be honest, I’m only half joking.
It took her months to persuade me to move out, to convince me she’d be OK on her own without me. Even though her health is much better these days, I still feel I need to look after her. A hangover from my father leaving, I guess. But she was insistent: ‘You need to spread your wings, love,’ she said. ‘I’ve got plenty of friends nearby, and you don’t want to be living with your old mum at your age.’ I only agreed when I came across Merlin’s flat-share ad – Peckham is close enough to Mum in Clapham that I can check in on her pretty regularly.
‘Don’t worry, Mum, I’ll get another job,’ I tell her. ‘I’ll be on LinkedIn all this week, I promise.’ I make a mental note to actually sign up to LinkedIn at some point, before adding, ‘And, hey, Pret on Peckham High Street is always hiring!’
She sighs again. ‘Charlie . . . You’ve got a good degree –’
I cut her off with a dubious grunt. Not sure a 2:2 in geography from Loughborough technically counts as a ‘good degree’.
‘You’ve got a degree,’ she says. ‘Don’t you think it’s time to start thinking about a career, rather than a job?’
This time it’s me that sighs. ‘I don’t know what I want to do yet, Mum. I’m still figuring that out.’ Which is true. I have no ‘career plan’ to speak of. I only picked geography because the course tutors were the friendliest on the open day. Most of my mates already have such a clear-eyed purpose about who they want to be and what they want to be doing in five, ten, fifty years. I have literally no clue. I’m not really good at anything.
‘Is there not anyone from Grassmere you could ask?’ Mum suggests. ‘They were all pretty well connected, weren’t they?’
The mere mention of my old school – an ultra-posh boarding hell-hole full of the offspring of Tory MPs – makes me wince. ‘You know I’m not really in touch with anyone from there, Mum.’
‘Well . . .’ She pauses, and it’s a pause just long enough for me to know exactly what’s coming next. ‘What would you think about me asking your dad to arrange something?’
My skin prickles with irritation. ‘Mum, no.’
‘Charlie. Just let me ask.’
‘Why? I’m not interested in working in TV.’
‘You just said you didn’t know what you were interested in!’
‘Well, I know it’s not TV.’
‘Why not?’
Why not? For the simple reason that I don’t want to do anything even vaguely connected to my arsehole of a father. Since the day he walked out on us, I’ve been actively trying to avoid anything that might make me turn out like him. But now probably isn’t the time to start getting into all that, so I just grunt non-committally.
‘You do watch TV, don’t you?’ Mum persists. ‘Not The Apprentice, clearly. But other stuff.’
‘Yeah. I also eat food and drink coffee, so by your logic I’d be perfect at Pret too.’
‘Very funny,’ she says. ‘Why don’t you at least just let me call your dad?’
‘I haven’t seen Nick in nearly a year,’ I point out. Haven’t called him ‘Dad’ in longer. Haven’t called him ‘Dad’ since he left us. ‘I don’t even get why you’re still in touch with him all the time,’ I add.
‘I’m not in touch with him all the time.’ She sighs. ‘Only when I need to be.’ Which, roughly translated, means: whenever I screw up. ‘I’m not his biggest fan, as you well know,’ Mum continues, ‘but we’ve got to a stage now where we can just be . . . OK with each other. Act like adults.’
That’s a stage I’ve definitely never got to. I just don’t get why she isn’t still angry with him. He torched both our lives when he walked out all those years ago. But I guess she’s got past it. Not forgiven him, but . . . moved on. Something I can’t seem to do.
‘I could just ask him if he has any ideas for how to help,’ she suggests.
‘I don’t need his help, Mum.’ I hate how whiny I sound. I always get like this when we start talking about him. It’s one of the many reasons I don’t like discussing him in the first place.
‘Charlie, please,’ Mum says quietly. ‘Just do this for me. Let me ask him if he has any ideas or knows of any opportunities. I’d feel so much better if you were at the bottom of a ladder that might actually lead to something, rather than –’
‘Working at Pret?’ I cut in sulkily.
‘Rather than treading water, trying to pick a ladder,’ she shoots back. ‘Even if you don’t want to work in TV, you never know who you might meet at your dad’s office, or what it might lead to. I can help you out with rent for the next month or so. All I’m asking is for you to give it a try. If you’re stuck, Charlie, sometimes the best thing to do is to take a leap and see where you land.’
‘Mum, I –’
‘Please, love. Please.’
Something in her voice breaks me. I realise just from that one word how much it will mean to her if I say yes. I want to be the one thing in her life she doesn’t have to worry about. And right now, I am very far from that. I hate my dad, but I love my mum more.
‘OK,’ I say.
A few hours later, Merlin has sloped off to bed and it’s just Jasper and me in the living room, watching Men in Black II on Dave. My phone pings with a message from Mum.
Your dad’s found you
something. An internship.
You can start tomorrow!