The music was loud. It was reverberating through the bricks of the house, making the windows rattle in their frames. Unless they were deaf or away on holiday, complaints from the neighbours were surely imminent.
‘They’ve gone away with my parents for the weekend,’ said Alex, whose house it was. He gave a cheeky shrug as though to say, what else is a seventeen-year-old boy meant to do in these circumstances except have a party. It would be practically unconstitutional not to.
We’d arrived late, and the party was already at the sticky-kitchen-floor stage by the time we eventually joined what alarmingly appeared to be my entire year group, crammed into one modest three-bedroom semi. I’d followed in Jamie’s wake as he cut a swathe through the heaving throng of gyrating bodies as we headed for the kitchen, aware of the many admiring glances arrowing our way. Despite my new skinny jeans and black top, I knew perfectly well that none of them were directed at me.
There’s a unique realisation that comes to you when you know you’re dating someone out of your league. I was batting. I knew it. My friends knew it. But curiously, Jamie continued to act as if it was the other way around entirely. My dad – if he knew we were still seeing each other – was the only other person on the planet likely to agree with him. Either Jamie’s home held no mirrors, or he truly didn’t understand the effect he had on pretty much every female who crossed his path.
Every school has one. That rock-star student with the brooding bad-boy good looks. The boy whose name is written inside hearts on the pencil cases of girls he’s never even spoken to. Two years older than me, I was far beyond Jamie’s radar range; I was just another girl who’d admired him from a distance. Until the day a carelessly tied shoelace changed all that.
As falls go, it had been pretty spectacular. People had been throwing themselves at Jamie McDonald for years, but I was the only one who’d done it literally. He’d caught hold of me as I careened past him on the Music Block staircase, my legs pinwheeling like crazy as I tried to gain purchase. If he hadn’t caught me as he did, bones would surely have been broken. As it was, the only body part that risked breakage was my seriously infatuated fourteen-year-old heart.
To this day, Jamie claims to have been oblivious to the major crush I’d developed on him from the minute he’d steadied me on to my feet and stooped to pick up my scattered books, which had ended up all over the corridor.
‘A musician,’ he’d said with a smile, handing me back a book of piano concertos.
I’d blushed scarlet and mumbled something inarticulate, but from that day on, whenever we’d passed in the corridor, he’d always acknowledge me, jokingly calling me by the name of a different composer each time: Hi Mozart; Hey Beethoven; How you doing, Handel. Those random ‘hellos’ had earned me an elevated status among practically all the girls in my year. Of course, that all happened years before he ever asked me out, dropped out of school two weeks into the sixth form to work in a garage, and in consequence acquired a rebel status that was totally undeserved and yet somehow seemed only to add to his allure.
Jamie headed straight for the sink, which was already overflowing with empty cider bottles and beer cans. I hoped Alex had a good clean-up crew on standby, or he was likely to be grounded for the rest of his teenage years. I stood to one side as Jamie scrubbed away the fresh oil stains from his hands and forearms and pretended not to notice that half the girls in the kitchen were openly staring as he rolled up his shirt sleeves to reveal his not inconsiderable biceps.
‘Sorry,’ he murmured after several minutes of enthusiastic scrubbing, sliding his citrus-smelling arms around my waist. ‘Now I can finally do this without getting you dirty.’ I would happily have run the risk of the smudgy fingerprints, especially as I knew how he’d got them.
I hadn’t even noticed the stranded woman motorist on the side of the road. To be honest, I was far too preoccupied with what my parents had casually mentioned right after Have a good time and before Be sure you’re home by midnight. It had left me in a decidedly reluctant-to-party mood.
Jamie had commented that I seemed distracted when we’d met at our usual street corner venue, just far enough away from my home that we wouldn’t be spotted. I knew it must still sting that I wouldn’t let him call for me, but there are only so many ways to dress up ‘My dad doesn’t think you’re good enough for me’ without causing offence.
Sensing my need for quiet, Jamie had taken my hand in his and pulled me against his side, giving us the appearance of conjoined twins as we walked through the darkened streets, slipping in and out of pockets of developing mist. I hadn’t seen what he had as he drew us both to an abrupt halt. I squinted in the darkness, and could just about make out the shape of a car tilted at an odd angle on the other side of the road, almost lost in swirling clouds of mist coming off the common beside it. A woman suddenly emerged into a pool of light thrown by a solitary street lamp. She had something in her hand that she appeared to be swearing at.
‘Hang on a second, babe. Let me just check that woman is okay.’
He released my hand and jogged lithely across the road to her, calling out as he did. Even so, I heard her instinctive gasp as he emerged from the shadows. Girls often gasped when they saw Jamie, although admittedly most of them didn’t sound quite as fearful as this woman did.
‘Are you okay? Do you need some help?’
‘I’ve been trying to phone a garage, but I can’t get any signal.’
Jamie dropped down to a crouch and examined the back of the woman’s car.
‘Flat tyre?’
‘No thanks, I’ve already got one,’ the woman fired back with the timing of a stand-up comedienne. She jumped slightly on hearing my footsteps, but relaxed visibly as I emerged from the darkness and stood beside Jamie, resting one hand on his shoulder.
‘You can borrow one of our phones,’ Jamie offered. ‘Or I’m happy to change the tyre if you’ve got a spare and a jack.’
The woman hesitated for a moment. ‘He’s a really good mechanic. He knows what he’s doing,’ I said loyally, which earned me one of Jamie’s heart-melting smiles that totally excused the small exaggeration. Well, he was on his way to being a qualified mechanic.
It wasn’t quite pit-stop speed, but Jamie did make changing the tyre look remarkably easy. In a slick manoeuvre that comes when you’re comfortable with tipping, the woman tried to get Jamie to accept a crisp twenty-pound note for his labour. He wouldn’t even consider it.
‘Make sure you get the puncture fixed,’ he told the unknown woman as she slipped back into the driver’s seat. She looked up at us with an expression of gratitude on her face. ‘Thank you both for stopping to help me. Plenty of people wouldn’t. If there’s ever anything I can do for you, just let me know.’ She pressed a small rectangular card into my hand. I glanced down at it in the dim sodium lighting as she pulled away.
‘What did she give you?’
‘A business card, I think,’ I said, stuffing it into the back pocket of my jeans with only half a glance. I think it was for some place called ‘Crazy Daisy’.
*
With two plastic cups of cider in hand, Jamie led me away from the main crowd of party-goers in the lounge and kitchen and into the hallway. The front door was wide open, which could well explain the extraordinary number of people I didn’t recognise at the party. I wondered how many of the gatecrashers Alex actually knew. Despite the cool air gusting into the hallway, the heat from that many bodies was making the house uncommonly warm. We climbed the staircase, stopping by mutual consent halfway up the flight and sitting down. Jamie put a welcome arm around my shoulder and drew me against him.
‘So what’s up?’
‘What makes you think anything is?’
Jamie’s eyebrows rose into his hairline, giving him a momentary villainous look. It didn’t mar his attractiveness. I’d yet to find anything that did. There was a scar bisecting his right eyebrow where the hair refused to grow. The school rumour mill claimed it was from a knife fight. He’d laughed hard enough to bring tears to his eyes when I’d told him that. ‘It was from a fight… between me and a swing that I walked into when I was three years old,’ he’d told me. It had taught me an early lesson that, with Jamie, what you saw wasn’t always what you got. He continually surprised me, and the worried look on his face was doing exactly that right now.
‘It’s not… it’s not about you and me, is it?’ It was the first time I’d ever heard a note of vulnerability in his voice, and it made me want to either cry or cover his face with kisses. Possibly both. ‘You’re not about to say something that’s going to break my heart, are you?’
I’m sure I must have looked every bit as astounded as I suddenly felt. Did I have Jamie’s heart to break? If I did, how come he’d never said anything about it until now?
‘No. No, of course I’m not,’ I said, dropping my head on to his shoulder as though it never wanted to be anywhere else.
‘Phew,’ he said, and I swear I could feel the relief as though it was a tremor, shuddering through him.
‘Why would you even think that was what was wrong?’
Very tenderly, he turned to me and tilted my face so that our noses were practically tip to tip. It was hard to concentrate when his lips were that close to mine.
‘Because I’m always afraid that one day you’re going to get tired of having to hide me from everyone, or the grief you’d get from your family if they knew about me.’
This is what happens when you’re a coward. This is what happens when you don’t stand up for the people you – I stopped short of the word love – the people you care about. This is what happens when you’re not brave. For a moment I envied my grandmother the courage to stand up for the person she was, and the person she loved. Which brought me right back to the source of my anxiety this evening.
‘Oh God, Jamie. It’s not you at all. It’s Gran.’
How could you not love a boy who didn’t dismiss your elderly grandmother as inconsequential? Who understood perfectly how precious that woman was to you? Who reached for your free hand, as Jamie now did for mine, and squeezed it warmly?
‘What’s happened now?’
‘It’s all going down tomorrow. The shit is about to hit the fan. Big time.’
‘Oh.’ It was a small word that encompassed a huge looming catastrophe.
‘Mum and Dad think Gran’s depressed and needs cheering up, so they’re going to surprise her tomorrow by taking her out for Sunday lunch. Only I think they’re the ones who are in for a surprise.’
‘Do you think she’ll tell them what she told you?’
I shook my head from side to side. ‘I don’t think she will. I know she will.’
There was a long moment of silence.
‘Awks,’ said Jamie, totally without irony.
‘Awks indeed.’
*
I had my headphones on. They were the expensive noise-cancelling type, a gift from my parents for my last birthday, and yet I still heard the slamming of the front door and the raised voices in the hallway below. Tentatively, I pulled one of the pads away from my head, the history notes spread across my bed temporarily forgotten.
‘Gerald, calm down.’
Something banged and then fell over, which was followed by a string of earthy expletives, half of which I wasn’t aware my father even knew. Mum did not sound impressed.
‘I really don’t see how charging around and barging into things is going to help.’
I couldn’t make out the exact words of my father’s response, but I got the general gist of it. Oh, Gran. What have you done? I glanced back at my homework, which for the first time ever actually looked more appealing than slacking off. But I was only delaying the inevitable. With a sigh I pulled off my headphones and headed downstairs.
My parents had moved from the hallway to the kitchen, but I could still hear them. I had a feeling that even our neighbours could tune in without too much difficulty. Mum was doing her best to placate Dad, which was a good idea, for his face and neck had turned the shade of pink it only did when he’d forgotten to apply sunscreen.
I padded into the kitchen, pulling the door to a close behind me. Dad’s head shot up and for a moment concern for my gran was overshadowed by that for my parent. Dad looked completely lost and that really wasn’t an expression I could ever remember seeing on his face before. He also looked angry – that one I had seen a couple of times, but never to this degree.
‘Mandy,’ he said, making my name sound more like an accusation than a greeting.
‘I thought I heard a noise,’ I said innocently, hoping to defuse the atmosphere with some gentle humour. From the flare of his nostrils, I suspected I was several weeks too early for that as far as Dad was concerned. From behind him I could see my mother shaking her head in warning. There was no need to ask how lunch with Gran had gone. The answer was obvious.
‘Why didn’t you tell us about your grandmother?’
My tongue was lodged somewhere at the back of my mouth, and seemed to have forgotten how to work. Not that it would have mattered either way. I could sense an unstoppable tirade was about to crash over us like a tsunami.
‘Are you angry with me, or Gran?’ I asked.
‘Neither,’ he said bitterly. ‘It’s those bloody idiots at Sunnymede I’m angry with.’
I must have looked as confused as I felt, for Mum added quietly, ‘Your dad thinks Gran isn’t very well.’
‘What’s the point of paying for a fancy home full of medical experts when they don’t even recognise a clear-cut case of dementia when it’s staring them in the face?’ he thundered.
I glanced over at my mother, who was looking troubled as she poured hot water on to teabags. It was the British cure-all for any emergency, but somehow I didn’t think PG Tips’ finest was going to fix this situation.
‘Gran isn’t sick or suffering from dementia,’ I defended loyally.
‘Well, she’s certainly not firing on all her cylinders at the moment. I take it she told you about this ridiculous notion of hers?’
‘Gran told me how she felt about Josie, if that’s what you mean.’
My father made the kind of noise I imagine a pressure cooker might do, right before it explodes all over your kitchen.
‘Your grandmother has clearly lost her marbles.’
‘Is that a new medical term for being gay?’ I asked, unable to disguise the thread of anger in my voice.
My mother’s eyes were flaring now. Do not make it worse, they were practically shrieking. But someone had to defend Gran, and I was the only one here to do that.
‘Your grandmother is not gay,’ Dad declared. Each word was sharply enunciated, as though severed with a knife. ‘For God’s sake, she was married to my father for almost fifty years. Does that sound like gay to you, because it certainly doesn’t to me?’
‘I don’t think Gran realised the kind of feelings she was capable of having until she met Josie,’ I said, trying to reach the reasonable part of him that was currently buried beneath an avalanche of distress. ‘She’s not saying this to upset you, Dad.’
‘Well, I am upset. My mother is clearly not in her right mind, and this so-called friend of hers must have been – what’s that phrase? – grooming her.’
I laughed then, which was a mistake, but what Dad was saying was so preposterous I couldn’t take it seriously. The thought of sweet, frail Josie grooming anything other than a small Pekingese was utter nonsense.
‘If my father knew about this, he’d be spinning in his grave,’ Dad said brokenly, running a hand through his hair. ‘This whole thing is just ludicrous.’
*
‘You should have told me.’
The knock on my bedroom door had been light. The distant sounds of the lounge TV and my father’s accompanying snores told me Mum had been biding her time to have a private word.
I sat up, and with feigned nonchalance pushed my mobile beneath the pile of colourful cushions at the end of my bed. I’d been messaging Jamie, keeping him up to date on how things had gone – badly – and telling him how much I wished he was here with me right now – also badly.
‘It wasn’t my news to tell, Mum,’ I said sadly.
She sank down on to the edge of my double bed. ‘I could have done with a timely heads-up though, sweetheart.’
‘Was it very bad?’
Mum shut her eyes, as though the memory was still too painful to view again. ‘It wasn’t good,’ she admitted. ‘Although I’m sure the other diners in The Plough found it quite interesting.’ She sighed. ‘If I’d known what was coming, I’d probably have chosen somewhere less public.’
Okay. That one was down to me. ‘Sorry, Mum.’
My mother shook her head sadly. ‘It’s really shaken your dad up, you know. He’s very upset.’
‘I bet Gran is too. Knowing Dad, I don’t suppose he handled it very sensitively.’
‘Your dad didn’t handle it at all. He believes your gran is delusional. Weirdly, he’d rather accept she has Alzheimer’s than consider she’s fallen in love with someone.’
‘Would it have made a difference if that someone had been a man rather than a woman?’
She considered my question with a thoughtful expression. ‘It might have been easier, but he’d still have seen it as a betrayal of his father. He still misses your grandad very much, you know.’
‘I do too. We all do. But that doesn’t change what’s happening now, does it? I just want Gran to be happy. Surely Dad should want that too?’
‘He does, or he will do once the dust settles and he calms down.’
From beneath the pile of cushions, my phone pinged with an incoming message. We both turned towards the sound and I could feel a guilty flush warming my cheeks.
‘Do you believe Gran is senile or has been brainwashed by Josie, Mum?’
Surprisingly, my mother actually laughed at that one. ‘I can’t imagine anyone less likely to be manipulated into doing something she doesn’t want to do than your grandmother,’ Mum said, reaching over and smoothing back a straying lock of hair from my face. ‘That’s where you get it from.’
I smiled, but even as I did a thought occurred to me, so startling that it wiped everything else from my head.
‘Did you know about Gran? Before today, I mean?’
There was a tiny twitch at the corner of her eye that told me the answer before she spoke. ‘I may have suspected something,’ she admitted, as though giving incriminating evidence in a witness box.
‘But you never said anything to Dad?’
‘What do you think?’ she asked with a wry smile, getting to her feet. She was halfway across my bedroom floor when she paused and looked back over her shoulder, her eyes travelling to the stack of multicoloured cushions at the foot of my bed. ‘Don’t stay up too late talking to your boyfriend,’ she advised.
My mouth was still in a perfect circle of surprise long after she’d left my room.