Chapter 18 #2
“Spider-Man!” I hug him like a boa constrictor and kiss the top of his head about twenty times. “Merry Christmas, pard. God, I’ve missed you. How are you?”
“Yeah,” he replies. “Look, do you want to see what Auntie Livvie got me for Christmas?”
“Absolutely.” I look over at Jody, who’s smiling wide and holding her arms open ready to embrace me.
“Merry Christmas, Finn,” she says, hugging me and kissing me on the cheek.
“This is Aiden and Trekkie,” I say, as they both step around to my side of the car.
Pi holds out a gift bag containing a bottle of Bailey’s. He was keen to leave a good impression, and I’d told him it was Jody’s favourite. “Nice to meet you. This is for you.”
“Oh my god, Bailey’s. Love a Bailey’s, I do.” She glances at me, waits to make eye contact, and then raises a brow in Pi’s direction.
By that one look, I know what she’s asking. “Are you two a thing?” I subtly shake my head.
“Uncle Aiden,” Logan says, taking Pi aback with a surprise cuddle. “Where’s Auntie Bum Bum?”
“Megan,” I mouth to Pi. “She’s in Kent.”
Jody motions for us to come inside out of the mizzle.
Trekkie runs ahead, sniffing everything, but my ex waves away Pi’s pre-apologies.
“I love dogs. Love to get one when I’m not working full time.
” She turns to me, her lips pursed into a cryptic smile and one eyebrow raised.
I know that look. I have a lot of experience with that look.
If I’m being honest, I fear that look. “So, you and Auntie Bum Bum are still dating?”
I kick my shoes off the second I cross the threshold. “We are.” I don’t offer any further details, no matter how obvious the desperation on her face is.
“Aiden, can I get you a drink? Bailey’s?” Jody says, while still looking at me.
“Oh, no thanks, I’m driving.” He clamps his lips together and holds his hands behind his back like a bobby on the beat.
“Tea?” she says.
“Sure, thank you.”
“Will you help me with the tea, Aiden?” she says sweetly.
I see the panic in his eyes, but what can I do?
I don’t want to leave him alone with Jody of all people.
That woman should be working for MI6 the way she can extract information from anybody.
But if I protest too much, she’ll know something’s going on between us, so I shoo him away, Trekkie at his heels, and head to the living room with Logan to find out what Jody’s sister bought my kid for Chrimbo.
I just have to pray Pi can hold his tongue.
A full proper electric organ, that’s what Auntie Livvie’s given Logan.
It’s a vintage secondhand job from Marketplace, but it has a stand, and a seat, and a whole heap of preprogrammed tunes.
I turn the keys off and pretend I’m playing track one, “House of the Rising Sun,” and for thirty seconds Logan’s mind is blown by my apparent skills.
Until he tries to destroy my set by banging on the lower keys, which obviously affects nothing.
“Dad! I thought you were really playing!”
In response, I grab him, tickle him, and then cuddle him.
Jody walks in a moment later, a cup of tea—presumably hers—in one hand, and a beaker filled with blackcurrant squash for Logan in the other. She’s also wearing the smuggest, most self-satisfied grin known to man, and I just know she’s broken him already. Damn.
Pi follows behind her, holding full mugs for me and him. He looks like a scolded puppy.
“Please don’t tell Megs,” I whisper, getting to my feet.
“I’m not going to do that, babes. This is better than Corrie,” she says. She leans in close under the guise of handing me a drink. “I really, really like him. I hope this works out for both of you.”
Either Pi doesn’t hear her, or he pretends not to. She takes the other mug of tea from him and sips it.
“Aiden, do you know how to play the keyboard?” Jody asks, changing the subject.
“Uh, yeah, I do, actually.”
Almost everyone in the room is stunned into silence.
Everyone except Logan, who loudly demands, “Show me!”
“Sure, okay.” Pi spares me a look, but it’s not a scared or guilty look. It’s different. Actually, he’s smiling. He takes a seat at the electric organ and fiddles with some settings, testing the keys now and then. “What should I play?”
“‘Your Idol!’” Logan yells.
“Oh, hell, I mean . . . heck. I don’t think I know that one.” Pi starts humming the tune to himself, presses a few buttons, and hums a bit more. Then he plays a few notes. It’s not exactly like the song, but it’s recognisable, and Logan is already screaming.
“Yoooooo! Bruh!”
We’re all laughing.
“Do you like Adele?” Pi asks. I’m not sure if he’s talking to me or Jody, but she answers.
“Ungh.” She clutches her chest. “I love Adele.”
His fingers dance over the keys as he plays the plinky plonky opening of “Someone Like You.” Goosebumps erupt all over my skin.
“Oh my god. Amazing,” Jody says, looking as though she’s about to weep. She sings the first few lines.
By the time Pi reaches the chorus, we’re all singing along, and Logan is in my lap with his arms around my shoulders.
“When did you learn to do that?” I say.
He shrugs. “Did piano lessons at school, and then when I was older I taught myself to play keyboard.” His face gets serious at the end, and I know there’s a story he’s stopping himself from sharing.
Possibly because my child is here, or my ex, or maybe it’s just something he’ll never feel comfortable sharing with me.
The thought leaves a peculiar, hollow ache in my chest.
“Okay, this one’s for Eggo,” he says, interrupting the sudden weird vibe. “I mean, Finn. I mean, Dad?” Pi shrugs and then faces the keyboard again and begins playing the dee-dee-lee dee-dee-lee-dee opening of “Thousand Miles” by Vanessa Carlton.
I jump to my feet, practically shoving Logan onto the carpet. “Fruit of my loins, fetch me my microphone immediately!”
Logan runs off into his bedroom and returns a second later with a shitty lightsaber that he won from collecting arcade tokens one year at a caravan park in Devon. Pi spots the toy and his eyes light up, but he keeps playing, and Jody and I belt our entire hearts out.
You won’t get a better Cornish pasty than from my stepdad Stu’s bakery on Newquay high street, so I take Pi and Logan there for lunch. I get traditional, while both Pi and Logan opt for cheese and onion. I also pick up some Chelsea buns for pudding.
“We call them scrolls,” my Australian friend says, pointing to the Chelsea buns.
An old guy in the pasty shop dressed in a Cornwall rugby top overhears Pi’s accent and recognises him straight away.
It takes him only three seconds longer to recognise me.
We chat about the rugby season and his old boys’ club while the bloke behind the counter—not my stepdad but I do vaguely recollect his face—bags up our scran.
Thankfully, old boy doesn’t ask for a selfie.
Pi and I could do without the wider world knowing we’re “on holiday” together in my hometown.
We park in the hotel and take our lunch down to the beach, eating straight from the paper bags as we walk along the winter-damp sand. It’s December, so naturally the only folk out here are dog walkers and a handful of absolute nutters surfing the Fistral waves.
I watch Pi closely for his reaction. This, of course, is the food of my people, and there’s an unfamiliar sense of dread lurking in the pit of my stomach. If he doesn’t like it, I think it might extinguish a tiny light inside me. And with Pi being Pi, there’s an overwhelming chance he won’t.
He takes a tentative bite, but gets mainly crimp crust, and I want to correct him, show him how they were designed to be held by the edge so that the miners wouldn’t get crud all over their food, but I stop myself. His next few bites are of the fleshy centre.
He turns to look at me, swallowing and smiling. “Bloody ripper.”
I hide my smile and push down a few other strange feelings that have bubbled up in my chest.
“I want to dip my toes in the sea,” Pi says, after we’ve finished our Chelsea buns and tucked the empty paper bags into my jacket pocket.
“Listen, I’m usually the first idiot to jump at the chance of doing something so astronomically stupid, but it’s two degrees, and that’s the Atlantic ocean, pard.
Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t voluntarily offer up your appendages to frostbite, it’s not as though you need your feet intact and unfrostbitten for your career or anything, but as the oldest person here, I feel like I should warn you at the very least .
. . that water is gonna be fucking freezing. ”
Logan gasps and stares at me with his mouth open. “You said the F word.”
“My apologies, young tacker, but such is the severity of the situation, these things cannot be avoided.” I ruffle his hair.
“I don’t care, I’m doing it,” Pi says, running towards the tide line. He pulls off his trainers and socks and rolls up the hems of his jeans. His hairy ankles and feet poke out the bottom. He’s still tanned, even in the bleak British mid-winter.
“I want to do it too,” Logan says, plonking his butt on the sand to remove his boots.
“Fine, whatever.” I help him up before the damp soaks through to his underpants. “Do not tell Mum about this, okay?”
We place our shoes and socks on some nearby rocks as Trekkie pelts headfirst into the ocean and comes tearing out again, spraying us with cold salty droplets. The bitter chill of late December is already biting at my soles, but we waddle over to the shore.
Logan Naruto runs in and out of the tide line, but Pi stands resolutely still as the water washes over his feet, rushing around his heels.
“F—” He sucks in a huge breath and stops himself from screaming out obscenities.
I deftly sidestep the swell and keep most of the freezing water from touching my poor, vealy flesh.
“Holy shit, you weren’t wrong,” he says, bursting into laughter.