I stagger up into my room, overcome by a weary mix of misery and powerlessness. I kick off my trainers and flop down on to the bed. The clock-radio blinks 15:55. I blink back. Once, twice and then fall headfirst into a black-hole sleep, the deepest I have ever known.
When I wake again it is almost midnight and the house is enveloped in velvety darkness. A glass of juice and a sandwich sit outside my bedroom door. I pick them up and tiptoe down from my little attic room to the floor below. The door is ajar. I call Mum’s room ‘The Museum’ because everything in it is about a hundred years old. It being hers, none of it in any way goes together. Ancient floral quilts clash with old leopard-print lampshades. Twinkling Indian saris frame the window and a costume shop array of frocks are slung willy-nilly over a battered Chinese screen. In the middle of it all is Mum asleep on her bed in a pool of lamplight. Dark hair framing her beautiful face, long eyelashes flickering mid-dream, the gentle rise and fall of Brides magazine on her chest. If she hadn’t been snoring it would have been just like an advert.
I sit on the third stair and eat my sandwich, drink my OJ and watch her sleeping. I can feel the fact of her engagement (sounds so weird – she’s thirty-five!) sitting in my chest like a stone, heavy and cold – a boulder thrown into a lake, the surface of which has now become calm. I think about her almost-crying this morning “Don’t I deserve some happiness?” Like she’d never had any until now. Was life really so unbearable when all we had was each other?
After eating, I walk into the room to turn off her light. She doesn’t look too much like me. Her eyes are brown and mine are green. I suppose our cheekbones are the same. Sticky-outy – but hers make her look like a film star, whereas mine make me look like an alien. Her hair is smooth and unfurls itself like a shampoo ad when she takes it down. Mine seems to defy gravity and if it has been in a ponytail it stays there when you take the elastic out. Wondering if anything about me will ever make sense, I flick off the bedside lamp and sneak out, leaving Mum snuffling away contentedly in the darkness.
4 The Beast and the Godbrother
A feeling of numb calm stays with me for the next few days, punctuated by sickening moments when I remember that the world as I know it is about to end. In science I draw Ray’s face on the textbook illustration of the meteor that caused the Big Bang hurtling towards earth. The dinosaurs were lucky – they didn’t know what was coming to take them out. Then I start daydreaming about my real father (who Hol and I have christened BioDad). Maybe he’s a film star! Mum’s always telling stories about the flash company she was in down in London. “He could be Johnny Depp or Clive Owen,” I suggest to Hol at lunchtime, “maybe even Daniel Craig! James Bond could be my dad!”
“Dude, BioDad is so not James Bond. Judging by the way you’re turning out, he’s more likely to be some freaky brainiac who’s in the jungle looking for a cure for cancer or locked in a laboratory building robots that can, like, think for themselves and do wees and stuff.”
“Why would anybody invent a robot that can do wees?” I ask incredulously.
“I’m just saying…who knows why these scientists do what they do. Anyway, don’t blame me. He’s your dad,” she huffs, taking a cross bite of her chicken wrap. We settle into a glum silence but I can’t stop thinking about it. Maybe he won’t be amazing, maybe he’ll be even more of a loser than Ray. Impossible, I tell myself. Then I think maybe he’ll think I’m a loser! That thought’s much harder to shake.
Bizarrely, the very moment I am paralysed by misery, Holly has been gripped by a renewed sense of purpose, like an anti-authority Girl Guide. Within an hour of stealing Sarah Andrews’ librarian’s pass, she has photocopied a hundred of our flier advertising for band members proclaiming “WANTED FOR GLOBAL TAKEOVER BY THE AMAZING BROKEN BISCUITS: WORLD’S ACEST DRUMMER/BEATBOXER. ALSO, ANY GUITAURIST WITH OWN INSTRIMENT. WORLD DOMINASION GARUNTEED. CALL OR TEXT NOW 07977…”
She proudly unfurls a copy on top of my uneaten lunch in the canteen, seasoning my inedible curry, rice and chips with her atrocious spelling. Holly’s convinced advertising like this will find us some bandmates but I’m too miserable to work out whether I agree.
“Dude, chillax,” Hol says, placing a conciliatory arm around my shoulders, “Operation Awesome is totally the key to Operation Who’s-the-Daddy! Think about it – we get rich, famous and wildly successful, then we get the press to do the hard work for us! Put out an appeal? Or hire a private investigator or something…” she tails off and I rub my eyes, managing a weak smile.
“Sure Hol. Whatever you say.” Even though I’m shattered, I haven’t slept in days. It’s like I’ve exchanged the traditional states of awake and asleep for one, long stretch somewhere in between. At home I say as little as possible while Mum fizzes away like an asprin, chattering about her wedding plans. At night I lie awake, staring at the fake stars on my ceiling.
Mum and Ray have decided on a June wedding. Three days into their engagement, the whole house is already overrun with catalogues, magazines and books called things like Wedding Planning for Dummies. Still in my pyjamas and barely awake, I sit at the kitchen table and plonk my cereal down on the top magazine in the stack before me. Milk sloshes on to the satsuma-tanned face on Celebrity Brides Revealed! I’m not sure I’d be as chuffed if I looked that much like an Oompa-Loompa on The Happiest Day of My Life™. Mum breezes into the room with all the upbeat industriousness of Snow White mid Whistle While You Work.
“Morning, Can!” she trills, unloading the dishwasher with the clatter of a one-man-band. “There’s so much to do! Nineteen weeks is such a short lead-time these days. I’ve got some fabric swatches coming over today and I was thinking maybe I could make the favours? Something crafty and cool?”
What is she on about? This has been Mum’s tactic the whole week. Keep asking questions, don’t wait for any answers and pretend everything is hunky-dory. I stop listening to the actual words and get lost in the music of her voice until I realise she is saying my name repeatedly. “Is it, Can? Candy? Candy! You haven’t forgotten. Have you?”
“Hmm?”
“It’s Glad’s birthday! The party? This afternoon at the Day Centre. You’re playing something?”
“Mmm hmm.” I had totally forgotten but am too tired to even feel bad.
“So you’ve got it sorted, yes? What are you going to play?”
“Debussy.” I think I say it because I’m halfway through a yawn that already sounds like his name.
“Right, then. Have a lovely day. I’ll see you at Glad’s. And so will Ray.”
I smile weakly. “Bye, Mum.”. She pulls on her old fur coat and click-clacks out the door into the weekend. Four inch heels and snow outside. If she’s not careful she’ll be going up the aisle on crutches.
I look at the clock: it’s almost nine. Hol is out of the picture today – her parents make her play in the church band on Saturday and Sunday mornings, so she’ll probably be mid-Kumbaya. I flip through my mental address book of social engagements, fabulous friends and must-dos. Blank. Blank. Blank. Debussy it is. I pad through to the front room and go to the shelf with my sheet music on it, although I could play Glad’s favourite piece in my sleep. It’s an easy choice, Clair de Lune.
I trudge upstairs, back to my room. It’s dark: the curtains are still half-drawn but the pale winter sun can barely make it through the clouds this morning anyway. Thick flurries of snow billow pointlessly towards the ground. It never lies round here – there’s far too much salt in the air. I switch on the lamp on my dressing-table and that’s when I see it. Lying on the bed is a large black oblong decorated by an enormous shining scarlet ribbon. A guitar case. A guitar. Like an idiot I look around, as if somebody is going to leap