My granddad is 84 years old, and until recently he never really seemed it. His arthritis is getting quite bad now, which is making it harder for him to move around and do things like he used to. He still enjoys pottering around in his shed, though, and I still love to go and sit out there with him and help out with his tomato plants or whatever he has on the go. I think he uses his shed as an escape from my gran, but even though she nags him and thinks he’s a bit silly sometimes, I can still tell that they love each other. I absolutely adore the story of how my gran and granddad met, but I’m not allowed to talk about it because my gran gets cross – I’ve always said I’ll put it in a book one day, though. My gran was in her early twenties, working as a cashier in a bank. She was this glamorous, kind-of-snooty type, but she was model-gorgeous, so of course she was engaged. My granddad was a painter, working in the bank for a few weeks while the place had a makeover. He instantly took a shine to my gran, but she wouldn’t give him the time of day because she thought he was just some scruffy, dirty painter, whose hands were always covered in too much paint, and who was far too cheeky for his own good. But even though she was never anything but cold to him, my granddad saw something he liked and persisted in asking my gran out, until one day she gave in and said yes, just to shut him up, and in little more than a fortnight she left her fiancé for him. They actually got married for a really unromantic reason four months after they met – a tax rebate – but I guess they were just meant to be, because here they are, still married more than 50 years later.
‘You having this at your wedding, kid?’ he asks. ‘Or are you going for something a bit more modern like Frozen?’
‘My granddad knows what Frozen is,’ I laugh.
‘Oh, little Angel makes me watch it with her 20 times a day, so I know all the words,’ he laughs.
Angel is my cousin Hannah’s little girl. I was actually there when everyone found out Hannah was pregnant because it was at Belle’s wedding, and when my auntie found a pregnancy test in the bin, she assumed it must have been mine – an assumption based on nothing but my hemline, I’d imagine. So you can just imagine my Auntie June’s face when it turned out to be her fifteen-year-old daughter who was up the duff. Hannah is 19 now, and she’s taken to being a mum really well, I think. Angel seems like a sweet kid, but, like I said, I don’t really spend too much time with my extended family, unless we’re at family events.
‘Speak of the literal devil,’ I say as the Edwards family arrive for the evening do.
My granddad chuckles.
‘Hello,’ June says, puffing air from her cheeks. ‘Sorry we’re late. Someone was acting up.’
She turns and shoots her son, Josh, a filthy look. My fourteen-year-old cousin has no fucks to give, though.
‘Have you been a naughty boy?’ my gran asks him, but Josh doesn’t hear her voice. I can see his wireless, in-ear headphones poking out of his ears from under his long-ish, messy hair, but no one else has realised he’s listening to music yet.
‘If you’re not Fifa, he’s not interested,’ my Uncle Steve jokes, taking the seat next to me. ‘Looking good, Mia.’
‘Thanks, Uncle Steve,’ I reply.
‘Do you have an eating disorder?’ my auntie enquires as she sits down.
‘Only when it comes to your cooking,’ I joke. June isn’t impressed.
‘I’m off to the bar,’ Josh says, wandering off, staring at his phone every step of the way.
My Auntie June doesn’t like me. I know, that sounds like something a whiney teenager would say, but she doesn’t. My Uncle Steve does like me, and so do my cousins, which I think makes my auntie dislike me all the more. She thinks I’m a bad influence, because her kids think I’m cool.
‘I actually don’t know what I’m going to do with him,’ June says as she wrestles her cardigan off.
‘What’s he done now?’ my mum asks.
‘So…’ my auntie starts, lowering her voice a little, but not so much that she can’t be heard over the music, which has been consistently awful since the first dance finished. ‘Cotton Eyed Joe’ by Rednex is currently playing. ‘He’s always got his phone in his hand, he’s never off it. So, the other night, he’s playing some shooty game online – oh, what’s it called, Stephen? Lots of swearing and violence. They were on a pier, by a big wheel…’
‘GTA Online,’ I tell her. ‘Man, that’s a sweet game. I play when I’m not working, or when I’m putting off working,’ I laugh.
‘Mia, you’re a woman in your thirties,’ my auntie reminds me.
‘Well, at least we know you’re not losing your memory,’ I tell her. She might not remember the name of the game, but she knows how old her niece is. I imagine that’s what she was trying to make clear by stating my age, and not implying that I’m too old/female for video games.
‘Anyway…’ she says, getting back to her story. ‘I took him some crumpets up to his room – he doesn’t even say thank you, he’s too busy calling someone a mother-effer through his earpiece – so I do what any responsible parent would do and take his phone downstairs to check.’
‘Does she do that with yours?’ I joke to my uncle, giving him a nudge with my elbow.
‘Only sometimes,’ he replies solemnly.
‘So, I find this picture of him and he’s only smoking a marijuana cigarette!’ she squeaks, the disgust catching in her throat.
‘Where on earth did he get that? He’s only 14,’ my mum says, horrified.
I know my auntie is dull and way too uptight with her kids, but that is actually terrible. I can’t believe my baby cousin is doing drugs. I really never would’ve thought he’d be the type. He might be your typical, video-game-playing, adult-ignoring, horrible teenager now, but he’s always been such a sweet kid. I can’t believe it.
‘Oh, it wasn’t real,’ my auntie explains. ‘It was toilet roll. I asked him why he took such a photo and he said it was “just a joke for Snapchat” – it had some kind of number code on it, maybe a hidden message.’
I swallow my cocktail the wrong way, spluttering as I laugh to myself.
‘Was it 420?’ I ask.
‘Yes,’ she says quickly. ‘What does that mean?’
‘420 blaze it,’ I laugh. ‘No? Its just a joke, he’s just trying to be funny.’
‘I don’t think it’s funny,’ my auntie says seriously. ‘I suppose you do?’
‘I mean, I get the joke,’ I tell her. ‘He’s just being a silly kid, don’t worry. You can’t get high rolling up an Andrex.’
My auntie shakes her head.
‘Look, I hate to say this,’ she starts, and I just know that, if she’s saying it, she’s happy to say it. ‘But I seem to remember a certain someone letting him watch a Quentin Tarantino movie when he was just ten years old…’
‘Oh my God, you’re never going to let that go, are you?’ I say. ‘So I let the kid watch Pulp Fiction – I don’t even think anyone smokes a joint in that film. It’s mostly cocaine they’re doing. If he starts snorting lines of talcum powder in the bathroom, then you can blame me.’
No