Chapter 25
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
WEDNESDAY
Six o’clock in the morning, my phone went off in a string of rapid-fire messages.
And just like that, I was wide awake. Me and Simon were meant to be regrouping.
This would be him telling me about a new urgent and genius plan I needed to not fuck up.
A chance to prove to him I was a decent human being.
There had to be hope – he’d said he liked the tortoises, hadn’t he?
It wasn’t Simon messaging me.
Gran
Are you bringing my shopping today?
You’ll have to come before twelve.
I’ve got plans for the afternoon.
Don’t forget the milk.
I groaned, rolling onto my back. In the early morning light the ceiling looked dull-grey instead of white.
Dingey. The opposite of Simon’s place. Simon, who’d now had an entire afternoon and evening and uninterrupted night to really consider the motivations behind the pictures of us I’d been taking.
My single bedframe creaked ominously. Getting comfortable on the gravelbed of a mattress was difficult at the best of times.
Matt was right. Anyone else would have replaced it when they moved in.
There wasn’t even space for someone to sleep over.
Simon would laugh, assuming he hadn’t automatically filed a restraining order.
Oh god. No way I was getting back to sleep now.
Gym. I needed to go to the gym.
Everything would level out again if I made my lungs scream hard enough and my muscles burn, and it wouldn’t matter that five minutes in Simon’s place felt more like coming home than anywhere I’d ever lived.
It wouldn’t matter that he acted like I could be any version of myself I wanted to, like he thought I was fine just how I was.
It wouldn’t even matter that I’d blown it.
On autopilot, I changed into a mothy t-shirt and shorts and my running shoes.
Creeping downstairs, I let myself out the back door and through the gate at the bottom of the narrow garden, to the alley where the bins used to get picked up from.
The alley joined onto another cut-through the next street along, and then another, and another, stretching away in the opposite direction to the main road, winding towards the gym on the tiny industrial estate tucked down a residential cul-de-sac.
Jogging along the already warm asphalt, I ignored the itch in my calves telling me to go faster.
Part of me wanted to keep running until all this drama was a speck in the distance I never had to come back to.
But I couldn’t choose never seeing Simon again.
Which was what had got me into this mess in the first place.
At the gym, I did circuits until my t-shirt turned sodden and see-through and clung to my back. I ruined myself on every single machine, and hit the rack until I was in danger of breaking my own toes dropping dumbbells. And Simon still hadn’t messaged by the time I ducked under the shower.
I didn’t bother going home.
The Tesco’s near Gran was nicer than the one near mine. Right on the bus route too. I picked up everything on the list she’d drib-drabbed me over the week in one basket, and extra bread and milk to take home for the house.
“What time do you call this?” Gran’s irritation telegraphed its way through the nose-sized gap she peered through. The hinges creaked, the security chain clattering against the door as she opened up. “You’re cutting it very fine. I’ve got other things to do, you know.”
“Sorry Gran.”
She stomped back a pace to let me in. The balcony doors were open and a fan hummed back and forth circles across the space.
Her knickknacks crowded onto every surface.
An ugly little porcelain dog sat up begging on the window sill.
I’d fantasised about hurling it onto the road in rush hour a hundred and one times.
“I brought the shopping.”
Only Gran would see letting me use my day off to pick up her shopping and come round to put it all away in her cupboards, as her doing me a favour.
Scratch that. It was a massive favour. Anything to distract me from trying to message Simon a garbled excuse for my backlog of stalker pictures. I’d deleted drafts of a dozen grovelled justifications last night.
“Speak up! Big lad like you mumbling all the time... Ridiculous.”
I raised my voice above the drone of the TV, trying to round in front of her to talk, but her eyes were down, set into her usual frown.
“I said I brought the shopping.” The bags twisted, spinning tight around my fingers, strangling the blood right out of them.
After she broke her hip, I helped her move out of the bungalow up in Newcastle and come down to London.
Not her choice, she always reminded me. This flat.
She’d have been fine in her own home. Except she’d still have wanted me to do her shopping for her every week, even if it would be a fourteen hour round trip.
“Bet you spent too much and all. Put it away then. Go on. And I want the change.”
She padded after me to the kitchen to oversee the cans stacked into the cupboard, low enough on the shelves she could reach without dragging over a chair to stand on. She’d be alright when the apocalypse hit. All set for kitting out a nuclear bunker for one.
Her receipt added up to more than the tenner she’d given me, but I dug about for a handful of change anyway, setting it down by the kettle.
She flicked it on, her wrinkled lips pursed tight. “You didn’t go to that man on the checkout, did you pet?”
I stopped unpacking.
Milk went in the door of the fridge, and a new box of tea on the counter. Next to the nearly full one. I didn’t move to put anything anywhere.
She was talking about the bright young guy with a rainbow pin badge on his work shirt who was kind to everyone, and sometimes painted his nails. Normally, I’d let it go, like a coward. Tell myself old people couldn’t be expected to understand.
But that wasn’t true. Simon’s Great Uncle Morris would have been her age, maybe even older, if he’d still been alive. Age didn’t give her an excuse.
“Why wouldn’t I?” My heart thudded in my ears.
When I was a kid she’d told me I must be confused because I wasn’t like the ones mincing about on the telly.
I’d grow out of it. Find a nice girl. And maybe I would fall for a woman, once I got over Simon.
But it still wouldn’t be someone Gran would like.
How could anybody be? All she cared about were groceries and the countless ways me and Mam had ruined her life.
For half a second she floundered, like I’d broken the rules by making her spell out exactly what she meant. She hardened, tutting at me.
“I’m not having this conversation. You were such a good boy when you were little. I don’t know where I went wrong. All you want to do is pick arguments over nothing. Thought you were supposed to be clever with all your schooling.” She scoffed, and the ugly scrape of it dug in claws.
“Waste of bloody money,” she mumbled. “Not that bright after all, are you? Could have told you that for free just looking at you.”
Knuckle-dragging meathead at your service.
“Thought you’d turn out like your Grandad, but he’d be turning in his grave the way you carry on.”
Her scrawny frame was all angles and edges. Always had been, right from when I turned up in her house, needing more than a roof over my head and failing to find it.
Her house. It had always been her house.
I swallowed hard.
“I’m nothing like him.”
“There’s something we agree on. And now you’re pratting about getting up to who knows what with—”
She stopped, hissing a breath through her teeth like she’d scalded herself.
The water in the kettle thrashed against the sides, filling up the silence until it clicked off and the bubbling died down.
She smiled serenely. “Kettle’s boiled, pet. One lump or two?”
She always asked. Never once remembered I didn’t like my tea sweet at all.
“What am I getting up to, Gran?” Did she know about the video? Is that what this was?
Irritation flashed in her eyes. “Why can’t you get on without all these theatrics? You were always trying to make trouble. It’s your Mam’s fault. She indulged you. We indulged her.”
I stared.
“Indulged her? You wouldn’t even let her use BSL!”
“Fat lot of good that ever did her. James should have put his foot down harder, instead of letting her move out on her own. Ridiculous. Getting involved with all those people. She would have been better off staying with us. I would have looked after her.” The cutlery drawer rattled as she yanked it open.
“And what did we get instead? The stupid girl got herself knocked up, and left all her bloody mess for us to look after. As if we hadn’t done enough for her already. And then you—”
Behind her, the counter tops wobbled. Except, it wasn’t them at all. It was me.
I was the mess. That’s what she meant. The inconvenience she never wanted.
Blood whooshed in my ears. She clattered a teaspoon frantically against the edge of her mug, stirring and stirring and stirring, and she didn’t take it back.
“How – how can you speak about your own daughter like that?”
Gran gave me a pitying look, like I was too stupid to figure it out. “She was a trial, luv. Wouldn’t be taught.”
“She didn’t need to learn anything from you.” Fists balled tight enough my knuckles burnt, I made myself breathe. In and out. Counting slow until the numbers didn’t mean anything. My mother was not a trial.
“If you’re quite finished, tea’s up. Did you want a biscuit?”
She dusted off her hands against her skirt, neatening the folds as she turned to me with a smile. “You look tired, pet. That jumped-up boss of yours is running you ragged again, isn’t he? You should sit down. Put your feet up. Stop letting people use you, luv.”
Stark unease trickled coldly down the back of my neck. This is where she hid her nastiness, right in the parts that looked like care. Even Simon wouldn’t be able to reputation manage me out of it if I threw a little old lady out the window.
“You know what, Gran? You’re absolutely right.”