12 Months PART B

Chapter 3

‘How soon is now?’ - The Smiths.

My Nan and Grandad had been unable to attend the ceremony - the ‘cup final’ style ticket allocation only allowing two guest tickets - so we agreed to visit them after the proceedings. The afternoon consisted of drinking lots of tea while my Mother re-enacted every moment of the graduation. Her enthusiasm wasn’t matched by that of my Grandparents. They seemed more intent on dwelling on the fact they’d known all along Rebecca and I were never going to last. This infuriated me for three reasons. Firstly, our relationship had lasted. I considered four years to be pretty good by anyone’s standard. Secondly, they’d only met the girl once, which was hardly a firm basis for their conclusion. Lastly, if they’d been so cock sure we were doomed to failure, why didn’t they mention it sooner? I mean it’s all very well in hindsight, shaking your head knowingly and tutting. Mum could see my agitation and tried to change the subject. It didn’t work.

Five cups of tea and a couple of trips to the toilet later and it was time to head home. The farewell was reassuringly familiar. An awkward kiss from Nan followed by a firm, manly handshake from Grandad.

‘See ya kid,’ he whispered, slipping twenty quid into my hand. ‘Take care of yourself.’ Not only was I grateful for the money but was also aware he’d remembered to omit the normally obligatory ‘and give our love to Rebecca.’ I now realised it would have been hypocritical in any case. It appeared they’d hated her guts.

Mum, Dad and I got into the car to make our way back to the South coast. I wound down the window to give the traditional final wave to Nan and Grandad who were now stood on the grassy bank in front on their bungalow. The smell of sugar beet I remembered as a kid wafted into the car. Mum asked me wind the window back up. I pretended I didn’t hear. I was the only person who liked the smell, but then it reminded me of years gone by when my grandparents were more active and youthful. Playing football in the park, jumpers for goalposts, play fighting on the rec, sledging in the winter. I used to stay with them in the summer holidays and was allowed up well past my bedtime, playing cards for pennies. The drinking of alcohol was also tolerated. (I was particularly keen on sherry at that age I seem to recall). Everything took place on the firm understanding that word of our crazy rock and roll evenings never got back to my parents. I obliged of course.

Looking at them standing on the bank I realised that this, for me was a proper farewell. Quiet and understated, it was in stark contrast to the bollocks I’d had to put up with from Rebecca and her ‘lah-di-dah’ family. Hugs and kisses by the bucket load and the patronising waves from the doorstep of the Harvey residence was never my cup of tea. I could have lived with it every once in a while but we were subjected to this ingratiating treatment all the time, even if we were only popping to Bournemouth to do a spot of shopping. ‘Bye darlings, bye’ her mother would shout, melodramatically waving. She knew full well we’d be back within a couple of hours for some lunch. Leaving and returning from holiday was even worse. I always needed a holiday just to get over the exhaustion of the farewell. Then when we returned there used to be cards and banners lining our entrance route. ‘WELCOME HOME BECCI’ (my name never seemed to figure) would be strung across the porch with ribbons and balloons in the hallway, not the mention the bombardment of more hugs and kisses. It was all more than slightly embarrassing really. Well it was for me anyway. The Harveys seemed to lap it for all it was worth. I’d have been OK with it if I’d thought it was genuine, but it wasn’t. It was bollocks. They’d have big rows, occasionally involving physical fighting, always involving ample amounts of crying before making up again within a couple of hours. This involved more hugging and kissing (and usually more crying) before the next onslaught of theatrical crap. I’d never had, or indeed ever wanted anything like that when I got home to my parents from holiday. Dad would always ask me the same questions.

‘Did you have a good time?’ … ‘Did you have good weather?’ … ‘Did you get my fags and booze?’ The answers were always pretty predictable too.

‘Yes’, ‘Not bad,’ and, ‘Have I ever forgotten yet?’ (Although I realise the last one is technically a question answering another question, you get the general idea). Apart from one year, on a crackly line from Greece when I’d misinterpreted my Dad’s request for ‘Bells’ as ‘Bols’, the annual question and answer round worked very well. The bottle of Crème de Menthe in question still stands unopened in my parents’ drinks cabinet to this day.

As we turned the corner at the bottom of the hill I lowered my hand from the window. The conversation on the way home was subdued until, having discussed the ironing Mum had to do when she got back and Saturday’s football results, the conversation took an ugly turn for the worse.

‘Brenda asked how you were,’ she stated.

‘Did you tell her I was OK?’ Dad chuckled, knowing very well Mum had been talking to me. She just glared at him, you know, like women do.

‘I bet she did, the nosey cow,’ I whinged. I had never been keen on Mum’s next-door neighbour.

‘Don’t be like that.’ Mum snapped, her glare now aimed in my direction.

‘So what did you tell her? Everything is fine except Rebecca has gone and I’m living on my own?’ I broke into patronising laughter ‘Oh yeah, oh, ho, I bet she loved that.’

‘No, I said nothing of the sort.’ Mum was on the defensive. ‘I just told her you were fine and the house was coming together.’

‘Oh,’ I replied. It seemed a strange thing to say. I’d been living there 12 months. I would have hoped it was coming together by now.

‘You must have said more than just that. You were out there for over half an hour.’ Dad planted his tongue firmly in his cheek in case anyone was in any doubt he was trying to stir things up. He looked at me in the rear view mirror. ‘I had to make out there was someone on the telephone for your Mum just to get her to come inside.’

‘Well,’ said Mum folding her arms, ‘she was telling me about Stacey.’

‘What about Stacey?’

‘She’s split up with Alex.’

Suddenly things were relatively interesting. Stacey, Brenda’s daughter, had been – quite literally - the girl next door. She was three years younger than me and we’d had various comings together in the past. She’d sent me an anonymous valentine’s card some years ago. When she eventually owned up to sending it, I told her I didn’t think it was very funny, assuming the whole thing was a joke. She, to my delight, being a very attractive girl, confessed it hadn’t been a joke. It never, however, got very much further than snogging in the bedroom. This was mainly because our ‘helping Stacey with her homework’ ploy soon became transparent and her Mum put a stop to it. The problem in her mother’s eyes was the age gap. I was 18, she was only 15 and although neither of us saw it as a problem, everybody else did. In hindsight I have no idea why we didn’t tell her parents to stick it up their arse. There were various brief liaisons afterwards but they had been unprompted and infrequent. We’d each had various relationships with other people and our ‘single spells’ had never coincided, until now.

Stacey was now twenty-one and from the glimpses I’d caught of her whilst visiting Mum and Dad, she was just as attractive as she’d always been. The age gap was now immaterial. Mum’s off-the-cuff remark made me wonder what would happen if we become reacquainted. I felt gentle stirrings of excitement in the pit of my stomach.

Chapter 4

By the time I’d dropped my parents off and got home it was getting late. The air was crisp and still. As I turned the key in the door and stepped inside, I shuddered, realising my lounge was no warmer than outside. I could see my breath. The flashing lights from the answer machine attempted to create a more welcoming atmosphere, the walls reflecting the intermittent green and red glow. I wasn’t fooled. Closing the door behind me, I turned to flick the heating on. The sound of cracking plastic came from underfoot as I did so. I picked up whatever it was I had trodden on, along with a couple of items of post and made my way to the answer machine.

BEEEEP! ‘Hi sweetie, it’s only me. Just wanted you to know I’ve been thinking of you all day today and hoping all went well with your graduation. I’m so proud of you. Oh, and I hope you like the tape . . . give me a ring when you get it.’

As I looked down at my hand I realised the tape was the plastic thing I’d trodden on. I was mildly excited for a second or two. There were a few indie tracks around she knew I liked. I switched the light on. An elastic band attached a scrap of paper to the tape which simply read, ‘I love you, yours always, Rebecca.’ I removed the note to reveal the song title. I dropped the tape and stepped back as if it had been electrically charged. It was My heart will go on by Celine Dion. Had this girl learnt nothing from our years together? It went straight in the bin. I decided not to ring her back, took the phone off the hook and went to bed.

I stared long and hard at the ceiling. What the hell was I doing? Not so long ago the demise of my relationship with Rebecca had consumed me with guilt and worry. Tonight, for some reason, I felt ready to move on. This immediately produced new pangs of guilt. Was I ready to move on? Wasn’t it normal to have a period of isolation or soul-searching? Even though I was officially the ‘dumper’, I wasn’t a bastard. Look at the pain, anguish and guilt I was contending with. But I was sick of it. I had to stop feeling sorry for myself. It was time to move on.

A week later I decided, for better or worse, to make a call to Stacey rather than Rebecca. The phone rang a couple of times. I bottled out and replaced the handset. I gave it a couple of minutes, mulled over what the hell I was going to say and then tried again. Brenda answered. Not a good start. Before I had time to gather my thoughts however, there was a rustling of the handset as Brenda passed Stacey the phone.

‘Hello?’

‘Stacey, it’s Connor.’

‘Oh hi! I was hoping you’d ring.’

This sounded promising. I embarked however on my usual trick of analysing every word in meticulous detail. ‘Hoping’ I would ring eh? Hmmm, intriguing. The inevitable small talk ensued. The longer the conversation went on, the more pressured I felt to suggest we met up. I needn’t have worried.

‘We should go out some time, have a proper catch-up.’

‘Yeah, that’d be nice.’ I wasn’t convinced she actually meant it, like those people you sometimes meet on holiday and swear you’ll ‘have to stay in touch’. You never do. No, she was probably just humouring me or being kind. Best I play this cool just on the off chance though. Nice and cool.

‘Well, you know, just give me a ring if you’re free some time.’ My tone was unnaturally flippant. ‘I’m sure you’re very busy.’ I banged the palm of my hand against my forehead. Busy? How the hell should I know whether she was busy? I was, as is traditional in these situations, making excuses before I even started. On the rare occasions I’ve plucked up the courage, my dreadful attempts to ask someone out are immediately followed by a string of reasons why it’s probably not such a good idea. On the basis they’re probably going to feel embarrassed and want to find an excuse anyway, by giving them a list of suggestions, any prolonged awkwardness as they fumble for one of their own is wholly eradicated.

‘What are you doing tonight?’ she asked.

Hang on. This isn’t supposed to happen. Maybe things are better than I thought. Still, play it nice and cool, gently does it.

‘Errm, nothing really. Why are you errm, free? Errm, not sort of doing …’

Note to self. Must brush up on my chatting up technique.

When talking to women for the first time, my confidence is so bad, it makes me wonder how I’ve ever had a girlfriend. My half-arsed attempts to chat someone up, only then to offer a list of excuses as to why they’re not interested, is hardly endearing. The (rare) alternative, as with Rachel, is that the initiative is taken by the other person. This only succeeds in putting me on the back foot, increasing my nervousness. I ‘m fucked either way.

‘We could go out for a drink if you like?’ she said. Again, the rulebook appeared to have been thrown out of the window.

‘Yeah, yeah, that’s fine. Um, what time shall I pick you up?’

‘Make it about 7.30. I’ve got to have a bath.’ A subliminal image flashed in my mind for a second.

‘OK, I’ll see you then.’

I attempted to tidy the house. My football socks and festering shirt from Sunday night finally made their way from the floor into the laundry basket. Tidying never has been my strong point. All I ever seem to do is move items from one place to another resulting in a mess in another part of the house. The more I looked around, the more I realised the enormity of the task ahead. I might only have been single for a short while but I had easily mastered the bachelor pad look. Having said that you only really need one lazy bastard to create it. I must admit I had been genuinely surprised at the short length of time it had taken for mould to appear in the dregs of coffee. What was I bothering for, anyway? Firstly, the chances of Stacey wanting to come in for a coffee were very remote. Equally unlikely was the chance of me plucking up the courage to ask her back for a nightcap to start with. Compounding both these remote chances made for very long odds indeed.

I looked at my watch. Time was getting on. I drove down the road towards where I once lived, my parents’ house now home to just my Mum, Dad and Nan. I had visions of one of them spotting me from the window. I panicked at the thought I might have to get out of the car to ring Stacey’s doorbell only to find my Mum coming out of the house with a casserole dish filled with left over lamb hot pot for me to take home. Stacey, God love her, probably due to past experience, had however, cottoned onto the fact this operation needed to be completed in one swift manoeuvre and had made her way down the front path even before I’d come to a complete stop. Eyes belonging to Stacey’s younger sister popped up over the sill of an upstairs window. Realising I’d spotted her she crouched back down but I could still see the top of her head bobbing about. Stacey got into the car. I checked my mirrors and drove off. There was no sign of parental activity.

The smell of expensive perfume, Stacey’s bright red lipstick and the low cut cream top she was wearing, thoroughly confused me, so much so I took a wrong turning to the pub. My lapse of concentration didn’t seem to be a problem however. We had plenty to talk about and eventually came to another pub on the outskirts of town. I hadn’t been in this particular bar for a while but the atmosphere was as relaxed as ever and there was plenty of room between the tables which is always a bonus. I’m always paranoid about people on the next table listening in on conversations. I’m really not that interesting. I’m sure people have much better things to do than listen to me wittering on about utter crap. No, my paranoia stems from the fact I can’t help ear wigging on other people’s natterings and then ripping the piss. If I am doing it to them I am positive there must be someone else doing it to me.

The only change since my last visit was the addition of a games’ table. Here, you could help yourself to a crappy board game to play whilst having a pint. Curiously enough loads of people were playing snakes and ladders and draughts and stuff. Stacey made some comment about how sad it was to come out and play board games so I guessed a quick dabble at Connect 4 was probably not on the evening’s agenda. Instead, I did the decent thing and got the drinks in (Stacey was on the Vodka as usual) and we continued where we’d left off. We reminisced about the past, our school days and she talked for a while about her disastrous relationship with Alex. Mum was right. It was all over. She knew nothing of my current situation of course as Mum hadn’t said a word to Brenda. I was holding all the cards.

‘So you’ve split up with Rebecca I hear.’

I spat my Kronenbourg back in the glass. ‘Excuse me?’ I wiped up the bits that had missed the glass with a nearby napkin. ‘How, how do you know that?’ She began to laugh. Whether her laughter was because of how she knew or because I’d nearly choked on my drink I was yet to find out.

‘Well, I was in the kitchen with Mum early one morning, getting ready for work and she was making Dad’s sandwiches and I heard this announcement …’

‘On the radio,’ we both said in unison.

‘We couldn’t believe it.’ she said, her level of laughter increasing as she continued with her story. ‘We thought it couldn’t have been you, but they mentioned your full name …we pissed ourselves laughing.’

Great! It appeared I’d been the source of everybody’s amusement. How many more people had heard that early morning plea? Just as I thought the evening was taking a turn for the worse, Stacey calmed down.

‘There is something good to come out of all this you know,’ she said.

‘And what’s that?’ I asked sheepishly.

She lowered her head and looked at me as though she was peering over a pair of imaginary glasses.

‘We are both single,’ she whispered.

I tried to think of a response whilst working out what, if anything, she was implying from this statement.

‘And that’s … good thing?’

‘Well I think so, don’t you?’ she said. I raised my eyebrows and nodded, urging her to continue. ‘I mean, we’re not tied to anybody any more. We get on well together … well, we always used to. Why don’t we just have a laugh? It could be just the two of us, messing about, doing what we want. Nothing serious. What do you say?’ I must admit she sounded very positive about the whole thing and it seemed perfectly acceptable to me. The last thing I wanted was another relationship. This way I could hang out and go places with a beautiful woman, no strings attached.

By the time we’d left the pub we’d organised a trip to a football match as well as a cinema visit at the weekend. I liked the principle of what we were doing. It was almost like a demon banishing exercise for both of us. Stacey was really excited about going to the football. Her ex-boyfriend Alex had never taken her. His argument was that girls shouldn’t watch football because they didn’t appreciate it. I was just as pleased to be going to a match with a girl. Rebecca hated football with a passion and because she didn’t want to watch it, nobody else was allowed to watch it either. The arguments we had on the subject were always lost, the bottom line being that her Mum thought football was a ‘silly game’, so that was that. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d got away with watching Match of the Day during our four years together and when I demanded to watch the World Cup draw, she’d locked herself in the bedroom, sobbing uncontrollably, refusing to come out. It was the draw for Christ’s sakes. Not one ball was due to be kicked.

As for my trip with Stacey to the cinema, we agreed to see Titanic. Strange choice you might think, but it turned out we’d both refused to watch such a load of unadulterated mainstream claptrap with our respective partners. Now we’d gone our separate ways there was a warped sense of rebellion about seeing it together.

So my weekend was sorted. I was to pick Stacey up from work at lunchtime on Saturday in time for the footy and then on Sunday we were off to the cinema. Just for the record, she did come back to mine for a coffee. Once again she took the initiative and invited herself back to see my house. We had a coffee, she commented on how tidy the place was (I think she was being sarcastic), and watched a bit of TV. After riffling through my CD rack and bookcase she helped herself to a couple of books and asked to be dropped home. Apart from reading far too much into the fact she hadn’t wanted to borrow any of my music, the evening had been a roaring success. Much more so than I had ever imagined. The only thing I had to do now was keep myself occupied the following Friday night, before seeing Stacey on Saturday. Once again, my answer machine’s green flashing light had the errm, … answers.

‘Connor, it’s Bob. Sorry we didn’t have much time to talk at the graduation. It was all a bit hectic really wasn’t it? Look, me and the lads are going to a club opening tomorrow night down the town. Nothing too hectic, just a few jars and then watching the footy on Saturday. Just thought you could do with a bit of a session to catch up on the goss. Give us a call if you can make it, cheers.’