Lifesaving for Beginners (13 page)

Faith barges into Mr Pilkington’s office without knocking like you’re supposed to.
She looks at me and shakes her head.
She looks disappointed.
The burning, stinging sensation is back behind my eyes and nose, and this time, tears run down my face.
They feel hot.
I make fists of my hands again and push them against my eyes but I can’t stop now.
I can’t stop.

She stands beside my chair and rubs her hand up and down my arm, as if Mr Pilkington isn’t even here and I’m not in dead trouble.

She says, ‘Hey?
You OK?’

She says, ‘What happened?’

She says, ‘Stop crying now,’ and her voice is sharper than before.
She sounds like Mam when I say a bad word.
She always gave out to me when I said a bad word.
‘You’ve some mouth on ya, boyo.’
That’s what she used to say.

I stop crying.
I wipe my nose with the sleeve of my jumper.
Faith says you shouldn’t do that because the snots harden and they’re a divil to get out.
Divil is one of Mam’s words.
A divil is something that isn’t easy.

Faith doesn’t say anything about the snots and the sleeve of the jumper.
Instead, she looks at Mr Pilkington.
He covers his belly with his jacket.
He smiles at Faith but he’s looking at her like he’s checking the buttons on her shirt are closed or something.
He gestures her to a chair and then sits on the corner of his desk, right in front of her.
She moves her chair back and curls her feet up underneath her, even though you’re supposed to sit up straight when you’re in the office.
Mr Pilkington doesn’t tell her not to.
Instead, he folds his arms and crosses his legs and tells her all about me hitting Damo.
When he bends towards her, I can smell his breath: cold coffee and Polo mints.
I think Faith can too because she leans farther back in her chair.

When he stops talking, Faith says nothing.
Instead, she looks at me like she’s trying to remember my name.

Mr Pilkington says, ‘So, you agree, this is a very serious matter?’

Faith looks at him again.
‘It’s out of character.’

‘But serious, nonetheless.’

‘He’s never done anything like this before.’

‘Well, there was the incident last week.
With George Pullman.
Remember?’

I didn’t think Faith knew about that.
But she nods again when he says it, as if she knows all about it.

She nods.
‘I’ll speak to him.’

Mr Pilkington frowns.
‘You said you’d speak to him last week.’

Faith never said anything to me last week.
Not about George Pullman anyway.
She said she wanted to talk to me and took me to Eddie Rocket’s, because the tuna melts happen to be my favourite sandwiches in the world.
She gave me fifty pence to put in the jukebox.
I played ‘Oliver’s Army’, which is one of Faith’s favourite Elvis Costello songs.
And when I asked her what she wanted to talk to me about, she said it was my lifesaving class.
How great I was doing.
And how Coach thinks I’ll definitely pass my exams.
Maybe even come top of the class.

I think it’s true.
I might pass all my exams.
Maybe even come top of the class.
And it’s not because I’m big-headed or a know-it-all or anything like that.
It’s just that I train really, really hard.
Even when Faith brings me to the pool just for fun, I make sure I do my laps and my different strokes.
Sometimes I can swim nearly two lengths under the water.
In one go, I mean.

Faith and Mr Pilkington are still talking.
I look out of the window.
I feel really tired all of a sudden.
Mam always made lasagne on Wednesday.
She took a half day from the café, just so she could go home and make lasagne.
It’s her favourite dinner, lasagne.
She said Wednesday was a nothing kind of a day.
Right slap bang in the middle of the week with nothing going for it anymore, since they stopped showing
Coronation Street
.
She loves
Coronation Street
.
Becky is her favourite.
Becky and Steve.
She’ll be pretty upset when she finds out they’ve split up.

Mr Pilkington says, ‘Mrs Sullivan will have to be told, of course.’

Faith says, ‘I’ll pay for any damage done.
Any dental expenses.’

‘I’m not sure if that’s going to placate Mrs Sullivan.’

‘She’s a family friend.
She’ll understand.’

‘Hmmm.’
Mr Pilkington doesn’t seem convinced.

‘And Milo will apologise, won’t you, Milo?’
Faith looks at me but only briefly.
I don’t have time to say anything.
‘He’ll apologise to Damo.
Damien.
And Miss Williams, of course.
He won’t do it again, will you, Milo?’
Again, the flash of her face towards me, then back to Mr Pilkington, lots of smiling, and then she stands up and pulls at my elbow until I am standing up too.
‘I think it’s best if I take him home now.’

Mr Pilkington says, ‘Well .
.
.’
He looks at his watch.
I put my hand in my pocket and cross my fingers.
I won’t have to go to Mrs Appleby’s class.
I can’t believe it.

Faith says, ‘Thank you for being so understanding.
I really appreciate it.’
Now she’s giving him one of those smiles she gives Rob when she wants him to do something, like take out the rubbish or dance with her.

Mr Pilkington goes the colour of the tomatoes Miss Williams is growing in a pot on the windowsill of the classroom.
He opens his mouth but no words come out and Faith turns, grabs me again and steers us out through the door.

She waits until we’re in the car.
‘Jesus, Milo, what the fuck are you at?’
She bangs her fist against the steering wheel.
I reckon it hurt because she doesn’t do it a second time.

‘You never used to say the F-word in front of me.’

Faith looks at me.
‘I know.
I’m sorry, Milo.
I’m making a bloody dog’s dinner of this.’

‘Well, it’s not easy bringing up a nine-year-old boy, going to college, being in a band and looking after the café.’
I’m glad I said that because she sort of smiles.
It’s a pale kind of smile, like when you don’t mix enough Ribena in the water.
‘Where did you hear that?’

‘You said it to Dad.
On the phone.’

She says nothing for a moment.
Then she nods.
‘I didn’t mean for you to hear that stuff.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, I’m sorry, Milo.’

‘’Sall right.’

‘I was just .
.
.
I was upset.’

‘Because Mam’s not your real mam?’

‘I suppose.’

‘I heard you talking.
To Dad.
And that man in the office.
Jonathon.
I’m not stupid, you know.’

‘I know you’re not stupid.
I just .
.
.
I should have told you all this myself, I’ve been .
.
.
Christ!’

‘I’m sorry.
I couldn’t help overhearing.
I wasn’t spying.’

‘No, it’s not .
.
.
I’m sorry, Milo.
Shit.
I’m sorry.
I’m crap at this.’

‘You’re not that bad.’

‘Then why do you keep hitting people?’

‘I don’t.’

‘George Pullman last week.
And now Damo.’

‘That’s only two people.’

‘But Damo.
He’s your best mate.
You never fight, you two.
What were you fighting about?’

I look away.
Out of the window.
The school looks empty when it’s not home-time.
‘Can I tell you later?’
If she goes to band practice later, I’ll be in bed when she gets back – Mrs Barber always makes me go to bed dead early – and I’ll pretend to be asleep and she’ll forget to ask me in the morning.

She mightn’t go though.
She hasn’t been to band practice for ages.

Faith nods and turns the key in the ignition.
It doesn’t always start first time round.
It’s Dad’s old car, the one he taught her to drive in.
He says he’ll teach me to drive too, when I’m seventeen, but it’ll be pretty tricky, seeing as he lives in Scotland with Celia and I live in Brighton with Faith.

Damo is right, I suppose.
About Faith not being my sister anymore.
I don’t even think she’s my half-sister.
Not really.
I wish she was still my sister.
She says she’s crap but she’s not.
Not really.
It’s just hard to be good at things when you’re sad a lot of the time.

Faith lets me sit in the front so I don’t think she’s too mad with me.
She even lets me put the car in gear and take the handbrake off.
She yells, ‘Clutch!’
and I put the car in second, then third, then fourth, but we never get to fifth.
The traffic is too slow for that.

The great thing about having my bedroom all to myself again is the space.
For example, I can use both bedside lockers now, if I want to.
For books, say.
I could put books on top of the bedside locker that was on Thomas’s side.
There’s nothing on it at the moment.
But the point is that there could be things on it.
If I wanted to put things on it.
If, say, I ran out of room on my bedside locker.
There’s the extra space now.

It’s Thursday night.
I hate Thursday nights.
They remind me of Thomas.
I hardly think about him at all and then Thursday night comes round again and he advances like floodwater.
I suppose you could say that Thursday night was sort of like ‘our night’.
I know, I hate couples who have their own special night of the week but it’s not like we ever told anyone.
We’d just say, ‘Sorry, I’ve made other plans,’ to anyone who asked us to do anything on a Thursday night.
It was never usually a problem for me because Minnie knew about our Thursday-night arrangement and Ed usually worked late in the café on Thursday nights.
But Thomas was often invited to book launches and film premieres and what have you but if it happened to be on a Thursday night, he’d say, ‘Sorry, I’ve made other plans,’ and that would be that.
We never discussed it, this Thursday-night thing.
It just sort of happened that way, I suppose.
Not long after he moved into the apartment, as far as I remember.

In fact it was a Thursday.
The day that Thomas moved in.
But really, he’d been moving in for a long time.
Long before he ever brought up the subject of his moving in.
He did it by stealth.
He was so good that I hardly noticed myself until it was mostly too late.

It started off with a toothbrush.
I let this pass, being a bit of a stickler for oral hygiene.
Soon, other items appeared.
A disposable razor, a book of blades, a travel pack of shaving cream, aftershave and shower gel.
Citrus-smelling.
I opened the little bottles when he was out and inhaled them.
Lemons.
That bittersweet smell.

Clothes began to appear in the wardrobe.
I found his gym bag in the utility room.
Shoes under the bed.
When he arrived one night with a towel – a small, frayed scrap of material that would have difficulty covering one cheek of his arse – I began to experience disquiet.

‘You don’t mind, do you?’
he asked, stuffing the towel into the drawer in the bathroom that is home to sanitary towels and tampons and painkillers and a hot water bottle and a couple of copies of
Now
magazine.
It is – unofficially, at least – my time-of-the-month drawer.
I have never put a towel into this drawer.

‘Well, I .
.
.’

‘It’s just that your towels are so soft.’

‘Towels are supposed to be soft,’ I told him, grazing my fingers against the thing masquerading as Thomas’s towel.

‘Yes, but they’re a bit too soft.
It’s taking me ages to dry myself.’

I said, ‘If, by drying, you mean peeling the top layer of skin off yourself, then this towel is perfect.’

Thomas smiled.
‘I love it when you’re stern.’

I said, ‘And that drawer is not for towels.’
If you were to go ahead and describe my tone, you could do worse than call it ‘prim’.

And then he said, ‘Let’s go to bed,’ as if there were nothing prim about my tone.

‘But it’s only –’ I looked at my watch ‘– nine o’clock.’

‘Great,’ he said.
‘That gives us two hours.
Plenty of time for a spot of
Grey’s Anatomy
.
Bagsy being the patient this time.’

‘Subtle,’ I told him.
But I forgot about the discoloured dishcloth of a towel and followed him into the bedroom.

When I am writing, I have to be asleep by eleven so I can get up at six, shower, dress and drink a lot of coffee and be at my desk by seven.

The next morning, he got up at the same time as me, went for a jog, came back, dropped his clothes on the bathroom floor and used up all the hot water in the shower.
Then he strolled into the kitchen wearing nothing round his waist but the tiny, frayed towel that barely covered one cheek, even though his bottom was of the two-eggs-in-a-hanky type.

Thomas opened the fridge.
‘There’s never any food in here.’
By food, he meant potatoes and steak and turnips.

I say nothing.

‘I could go shopping.’
There was something about the way he said it that made me stop doing what I was doing – making more coffee – and look up.

‘I’ve got everything I need.’

He stuck his head back inside the fridge.
‘You’ve got two eggs, three low-fat natural yoghurts, a lettuce that is two days past its sell-by date and an empty bag of mini Kit Kats.’
He closed the fridge door.
‘I’ll go shopping,’ he said again.

‘No!’
I said.
It came out a bit panicky.
‘I mean, there’s no need; it’ll just go to waste.’

‘No, it won’t.
I’ll eat it.’

‘But you don’t live here.’

‘I’ve been here every night for the last week.’

When I thought about it, I was shocked to discover that it was true.

He said, ‘I’m starved and I’m tired of eating out.’

‘Then why don’t you go home and boil up a pot of those spuds you’re always talking about?’

‘The Golden Wonders?’
he asked, a smile spreading like fertiliser across his face.

‘Yes.’

‘They’re not ideally suited for boiling.
You’d be better off baking or roasting those ones, Kat.’

‘Then you could go home and bake them.
Or roast them,’ I said.
‘How about that?’

‘Or,’ he said, closing the fridge door and moving to the kitchen table.
‘I could move in.’

Silence fell like fog.
Thomas pulled out a chair and sat down.
It creaked under the weight of him.
After a while, he said, ‘It makes sense, Kat.
I’m here most of the time already.’

‘You said nothing would change,’ I said, eventually.
‘You promised.’
I sounded petulant, like a child being pulled from a playground.

Thomas looked confused.
He said, ‘What do you mean?’

‘On St Stephen’s Day that time.
When you said that thing .
.
.’

‘When I told you that you loved me?’

‘You said nothing would change.’

‘That was ages ago.
And anyway, nothing is changing, Kat.
I just want to move on a bit.’
He reached for my hand across the table.
‘At least think about it, will you?’

After a while, I nodded my head.
I said I would.
I said I’d think about it.

Now it’s Thursday again.
I keep meaning to make a Thursday arrangement with Minnie.
Take her to see a play or something.
She’s cracked about the theatre.
But then I forget and – BAM!
– it’s Thursday again.
I don’t know where the weeks go, I really don’t.

I take three books from the pile on my bedside locker and put them on Thomas’s bedside locker.
There.
That’s much better.

It’s really great having all the extra space again.

It makes such a difference.