Chapter 21
Will and I got the chance to hang out sooner than expected. The rest of us had just about finished the main décor in the café, so called it a night once Joel declared he was so famished he was about to keel over. I was strapping Ernest into his doggy seatbelt when my phone pinged.
Have you casually dropped into the conversation how much I love jazz?
I don’t, BTW. But would happily tolerate it for Jordan.
I haven’t mentioned your name all evening.
Don’t trust myself not to blush. On a practical note, it’s pretty late for Bonnie on a school night, and too short notice to rope in a babysitter.
If I need to bring her home before he’s finished you could stay so he’s still got someone to give him a cheer?
I can always bring Bonnie home, if she doesn’t mind. It’s important you don’t miss Jordan’s big night.
Don’t let her know or she’ll fake being tired just so you can be the one to read her another bedtime story.
He sent three more messages:
Thank you.
I don’t want to keep going on about it, but I can’t tell you how much this means.
I’m so nervous for Jordan I may have thrown up.
I was such a goner for this man, even the thought of him vomiting didn’t put me off.
The Crafty Poacher was a traditional English pub in the centre of Bigley.
It had a wooden floor and white walls, dark tables scattered with beer mats and a dartboard in one corner.
There was a Christmas tree covered in multicoloured lights, tinsel shimmering across the ceiling and the bar, and a life-sized plastic snowman that looked almost as old as the pub.
About half the tables were full, but Will had secured a booth a not-too-embarrassing distance from the performance area.
‘Hey, everyone.’ I gave a pale-faced, hunched-shouldered Will what I hoped was a reassuring smile, quickly turning my attention to the girls so I didn’t give away how my stomach flipped over at the relief in his eyes when he met my gaze.
‘Ugh. Did Jordan guilt-trip you into his evening of torture, too?’ Edith said. ‘I mean, having a dire hobby is one thing. Forcing your family and friends to suffer through it is plain rude.’
She had her nose buried in a book the whole time she spoke. It was entitled Smartphone Equals Smart Teen. After she’d finished speaking, Edith picked up a pen and wrote something on a notepad, eyes still on the book.
‘Is this homework?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘This is genuinely relevant to my actual life. Dad said if I can come up with a convincing presentation, he’ll let me have a proper phone.’
‘Okay.’
Will had taken my advice. It required every ounce of strength not to look at him, but there was no hiding my soppy grin. I took a seat next to her, shrugging out of my cream coat, suddenly very aware of how warm the pub was.
‘Are you going to cover the pros and the cons, so he knows it’s a reasoned argument?’
‘Yes. I am going to talk about how unrestrained phone use may rot my brain, as opposed to zero phone use trashing my emotional health because I’m a social pariah with no chance of keeping up with my peers, on top of hindering my career opportunities, due to my grossly underdeveloped technological prowess. ’
‘I heard that delaying the age a young person gets a phone supports a fantastic imagination and superior communication skills.’
‘Yeah, as long as I don’t need to communicate with an email, or WhatsApp, or use an online form. I’m super-duper. Superior-duperior.’
‘I’d love to see your presentation when it’s done. I mean, if you think a second opinion would be helpful.’
She gave a curt nod before adding another note.
Her younger sister was stretched out along the dark-red vinyl bench. Both arms were folded across her chest, eyes closed as if in a death pose behind her elephant mask. She was wearing her grey onesie again, with wellington boots, purple sparkly wings and an elf hat.
‘How are you doing, Bonnie?’
‘Preparing to die of boringness,’ she said, in a deep monotone.
‘Right.’ I swallowed back my laughter. ‘You aren’t looking forward to hearing Jordan’s group?’
She wriggled to a sitting position, imminent death forgotten.
‘When we went to Donovan’s summer concert, Jordan played a song that went on for-e-ver and it didn’t even have any words or even a tune, just all fiddle-dee-dee and plinkety-plonk.
’ She said this in a high-pitched sing-song as she wiggled her fingers on an imaginary piano.
‘It was the stupidest music in the universe and this is even worse because I don’t know who Jess is and I don’t care if she caught it! ’
‘Ugh. You’re such a child!’ Edith groaned. ‘It’s quartet, not caught it. It means four people. Like quarters means four pieces.’
Bonnie frowned. ‘But it’s Jordan and Lyle and Zavian, so how is that even four?’
Edith finally looked up from the book. ‘Good point. Dad, who’s the fourth freak?’
Will remained silent until his daughter rolled her eyes, swapped a sarcastic retort for a sugary tone and asked again, ‘Who else is in the quartet?’
‘Until two hours ago I had no idea they were anything more than a few lads messing about in Zavian’s garage. Your guess is as good as mine.’
It didn’t take long to find out. By the time Will had brought back four drinks and bags of Quavers for the girls, the boys had emerged from a side door and were checking their instruments.
Jordan took a seat at an upright piano, and Will pointed out Lyle with a double bass and Zavian hunched behind a small drum kit.
A minute or so later, the door opened again and a teenage girl stepped out, carrying a trumpet.
Edith gasped, turning to me with round eyes. ‘That’s Catrin Clements,’ she whispered, fervently. ‘One of the most absolute popular kids. Her best friend organised the thing in the summer where the police came and arrested loads of people. At the park, by the lake.’
‘Um, I was working a lot in the summer, so missed that.’
‘There were university students there and everything. Sean Archer was so off his face, he thought he could walk on water and nearly drowned. Someone tried to catch a badger.’
‘Sounds like an eventful evening.’
Edith peered at me. ‘It was a whole night.’
‘Wow.’
‘Yes, wow!’ Edith said, getting increasingly animated.
‘Because Catrin Clements does not speak to people like Jordan. Let alone join their jazz quartet. Everything I ever knew about life, the universe and Bigley Academy has just been demolished.’ She narrowed her eyes, aiming her glare at Will, who didn’t notice due to every tremulous cell in his body being focussed on his son.
‘I wouldn’t get blindsided by these social atomic bombs if I had a phone. ’
‘Hey,’ Lyle, a stocky boy with a ginger ponytail and monobrow putting his pubescent moustache to shame, said, his voice breaking painfully.
He was wearing blue velvet trousers, a ruffled shirt covered in candy canes and flashing antler ears.
Maybe that was how the cool kids dressed these days, but I highly doubted it. ‘Good evening and welcome.’
‘Use the microphone,’ Zavian said, his voice strained.
I was worried for the pair of them. Zavian was tiny, with light-brown skin and a round face partly hidden beneath a pork-pie hat decorated with tinsel. He had a piano-key tie worn outside his Christmas jumper, and his hands were shaking as they gripped the drumsticks.
‘Um, what?’ Lyle glanced around. The main microphone was in front of Catrin, who was staring up at the ceiling, one hand on her hip and a bored expression as if more used to playing arenas. She wore a bright red cocktail dress and elf boots with bells on.
Lyle tried shuffling a couple of steps towards her, then stopped a metre or so away as if her coolness had created an anti-nerd forcefield.
I put a hand on Will’s arm to still him from frantically ripping a beer mat to shreds, whispering, ‘At least try to appear as if you aren’t expecting them to get jeered off stage.’
Jordan slipped out from behind the piano and stood next to Catrin, taking the microphone with a nonchalant nod.
Compared to the others, he appeared conservatively dressed in jeans and a navy-blue shirt covered in snowflakes under a dark red jacket with the sleeves rolled up past his wrists.
He’d mussed up his hair in a way that just about worked.
‘That’s my jacket,’ Will said, managing the faintest of smiles. ‘And my shirt.’
‘Good evening, ladies and gents.’ Jordan’s voice boomed across the pub.
‘We’re CC and the Bigley Boys. Brace yourselves, because we are about to kick off Christmas with a cacophony of cool.
You might think you don’t love jazz.’ He jerked his chin towards his sister, who clunked her forehead onto the table with a groan.
‘That’s because you haven’t heard Bigley Boy jazz. Prepare to have your minds blown.’
He then gave a wink that was so casually, confidently charming, I almost choked on my lime and soda.
It was a bold claim, but an hour later the Bigley Boys had absolutely lived up to Jordan’s promise.
They played Christmas hits – not the standard swing covers, but more recent songs, including Leona Lewis’s ‘One More Sleep’ and Wham’s ‘Last Christmas’, only with a rockin’, finger-clickin’, toe-tappin’ twist that had the whole pub swaying and singing along.
Catrin provided lead vocals, occasionally backed up with an unexpectedly deep rumble from Zavian and interspersed with her phenomenal trumpet playing and jingling the bells on her shoes.
However, for their final tune, she squeezed in beside Jordan on the piano stool and the room fell into a reverent hush as they sang a duet of ‘Silent Night’.
When the applause gave way to demands for an encore, they went straight into a clearly planned rendition of ‘Fairytale of New York’, inviting the whole room to once again sing along.
We didn’t need much persuading.
Edith, Bonnie and a dozen other people got up, linked arms and danced.
The second the band had taken their final bow, Will raced over to Jordan, flinging his arms around him as he laughed and whooped and told his son how proud he was, before moving on to hug the other boys, checking himself when it came to Catrin and offering a handshake instead.
When Jordan asked if they could stay at the pub longer, it was impossible to say no, so I scooped up a sleepy six-year-old and took her and a flabbergasted Edith home.
Will found me an hour later, about to make myself a hot drink, having managed a super-short story with Bonnie but then ending up listening to Edith externally process this whole new side to her brother before I could finally cajole her up to bed.
Jordan headed straight up the stairs, the elation clear in his bouncing footsteps.
Will leant against the worktop, hands braced either side of him while I boiled the kettle.
‘That was undoubtably one of the best nights of my life.’
I grinned. Mine, too.
‘Edith said she wishes Timo and Elon could have been there. They might stop hassling him, then.’
‘The black eye?’ He accepted a mug of tea with a nod of thanks.
‘Elon was going out with Catrin until a couple of weeks after she joined the Bigley Boys.’
‘Wow.’ Will whistled. ‘The school thug is feeling threatened by the piano geek.’
‘And so he should be. Did you see the way Catrin hugged him after that encore? The good guy might get the girl this time.’
‘I love it when that happens.’ Will gave me a lopsided smile, eyes dancing. He slid a foot or so closer, until his hip bumped into mine.
‘Hey. Step away from the single lady,’ I protested. ‘We agreed the rules.’
‘If I remember correctly, the rules permitted friendly hugs.’ Will’s voice dropped as he grew serious. ‘I can’t remember the last time I felt this unworried about my children. I am dangerously high on joy, pride and hope and could really use a congratulatory, friendly hug.’
Slowly, tentatively, as sparks of electricity, chemistry and what felt dangerously close to love zipped and zapped between us, I turned towards Will and we slipped our arms around each other.
Our drinks went cold as we stood there, my face nestled on his shoulder, his head tilted so his chin could rest against the top of my head.
On the surface, we stuck to the rules.
There was not an atom in my being that believed it was a friendly hug.
I was driving home when my phone rang.
‘Alexis?’
‘Hey, Lacey, how are you?’
‘Oh, you know. Living the dream.’
I double-checked the time – almost ten-thirty. Her speech was slurry.
‘Have you been out drinking tonight?’
‘Hah. Fifty per cent correct.’
My fingers tensed around the steering wheel.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Eh? Why would you ask that? Does something have to be going on for me to call my sister? Am I not allowed to simply be phoning for a loving, sisterly chat?’
‘I would love that.’ I took a deep breath.
Lacey said nothing.
‘How are the kids?’ I asked, if only to check whether she’d passed out on me.
‘Yeah. You know. The three-man tornado of pre-Christmas pressure continues to run rampage.’
‘I do know,’ I said, softening my voice so she could hear how much I meant it.
‘I was so impressed with myself, getting started on wrapping presents. Until Harley found the stash. I was tempted to bin the lot to serve him right.’
‘I bet if you wrap them up again, he’ll have forgotten by Christmas Day.’
‘That’s what Bronte said.’
‘So, all things considered, how are you?’ I asked, hoping for a more genuine answer this time. One that might explain Bronte’s worries and the phone calls.
‘I’m sitting alone in the dark, hammered out of my tree on a Thursday evening, wondering whether I can still blame that nasty caravan for every lousy choice I’ve made since.’
‘Hey.’ I couldn’t have been gentler if coaxing a mouse out of its hole. It had been a long time since I’d heard my sister so vulnerable. ‘You made some mistakes. But that only made the right choices even braver. You left Tad, and Scott.’
‘He threw me down the stairs.’
‘Still. How many women take years to break away from an abusive marriage? I’m proud of you for that, Lacey.
For raising Bronte, who is damn awesome.
And how you fight for Lennon, wade through the swamp of all that underfunding to make sure he has what he needs.
Put up with Mum and Dad. You’re a warrior. ’
‘I’m not though.’ Lacey began sobbing. ‘I’m weak, and a coward and I’ve ruined everything.’
She hung up.
I tried calling her back and messaged as soon as I got home.
She replied the following morning.
Sorry if I said anything weird last night. Next time I win a bottle at the school Christmas fair I’ll swap it for hand lotion. Don’t worry, though. I’m fine, kids are fine, Mum has just helped herself to a whole chocolate log, so she’s more than fine. See you soon. L x
She left my reply to that unread. The thing with my big sister was the more she protested she was fine, the less I believed her.
What I didn’t know, thanks to our dysfunctional family, was what to do about it.