Rockoholic

To our local newspaper, my grandad’s death was “a shocking accident that brought Bristol city centre to a standstill.” To my mum, it was humiliation beyond words and a week’s worth of whispers from her colleagues at the bank. To me, it was a sadness that could fill a dry sea.

And now it’s the funeral and everything’s wrong. My grandad didn’t want people wearing black. He wanted his mourners to come in saris, or wet suits, or grass skirts and hula gear. He wanted a big lavish send-off, too, with female bodybuilders carrying his gold coffin and, to round off the day, cannons firing his ashes into the sky.

“And I don’t want it called a funeral, either, Jody. Invite people to my Body Barbecue. That sounds much more fun.”

My mum is all gray skirt-suits and polished shoes, and anything Grandad ever did embarrassed the hell out of her. The announcement in the paper just read, “Funeral of Charles Nathaniel McGee. Donations to Cancer Research UK, no flowers, please.” Everything had to be funereal. F-unreal. That’s how I’ve felt all day.

And now we’re at the snooty Torrance Lodge for the wake, and Mum and my sister are mingling with Scottish relatives we haven’t seen for decades and trying desperately to find reasons for not being in touch. Several soap-smelling old women have delighted in telling me how I’ve grown up since the last time they saw me, which was probably before I was conceived, and now I’m hiding on the staircase, clutching my sketch pad, out of the way. I’ll let Halley take the brunt of it. She loves the attention. They all think she’s the superstar in the family, anyway, with all her sports medals andOlympic hopes and Duke of Edinburgh awards for community service. I’ve had enough of it. And as my grandad used to tell me . . .

“If you can’t find anything useful to say, get the hell out of the way.”

He’d once played drums in a band and had nipple rings and smoked weed and camped out in the mud at the Glastonbury Festival. He used to moon-bathe naked on the roof of his house, and he’d gone bungee jumping and skinny-dipped at the Great Barrier Reef. He loved Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and used to dance around the living room with the mannequin he’d nicked from a skip outside Debenhams department store. He’d wanted heavy metal music and sushi and chocolate fountains at his wake. Not Sarah Effin’ McLachlan and cheap frozen quiche.

I huddle into the banister, iPod earbuds in, hood up, looking like a poster child for teen angst. I close my eyes and imagine Jackson is singing to me, like I do when I’m trying to get to sleep at night. I imagine he’s lying next to me, his breath on my face as he sings, that he’s stroking my hair. When I open my eyes, Mum’s throwing me one of her disapproving “Why don’t you join in?” glares from the private party room where everyone is chowing down on cheese and ice cream. In the bar next door, five kids, apparently my third cousins, roll balls up and down the snooker table.

I just go back to sketching Jackson.

Feet approach. Nike high-tops with blue swooshes. Black skinny jeans. Wallet chain. White graffiti T-shirt. And one of my grandad’s bluest waistcoats. I pluck the earphones out, and shove the sketch pad into my bag.

“All right, Precious?” says Mac, settling a glass of Coke down next to me on the stairs. “Sorry, I got sidetracked by this old bloke telling me about his prostate. Here you go, Presh.”

“S’OK, I had Jackson,” I say. He rolls his eyes. Mac’s more into show tunes and Lady Gaga than rock, but he knows The Regulators are the sound track to my life, so he keeps a few of their songs on his iPod, just for me. I don’t have my own iPod, and any cheapo MP3 players I buy usually get knackered or dropped down drains, so I borrow Mac’s. I wind the earbuds around it and hand it back to him.

“Hang on to it for a bit,” he says. “There’s barely room for my arse in these jeans.”

“Why d’you wear them, then?”

“Because, because, because, because, because . . .”
he sings. It really bugs me sometimes how he can’t give straight answers. I wonder if that’s a gay thing.

“I’ve sexed up your Coke,” he says. “Thought you could do with a perk.”

I shake my head. “I’m not drinking today.”

“Why? Because of Jackson Gatlin?” he whines sarcastically. Mac doesn’t appreciate my obsession with Jackson. He calls him my “fictional fix.” Because he’s my hero. Because I choose to support Jackson’s newfound teetotalism. Because I spend nearly all my wages on Regulators T-shirts, CDs, and limited-edition DVD box sets of all their South American concerts. Because they’re my band, my sanctuary. Because, because, because, because, because . . .

“You need something to get you through the day,” he says. “Might freshen you up a bit.”

“I don’t want it. I want my grandad.” I take the moon rock from my hoodie pocket. I rub it, as though the grandad genie is going to plume out of it. But all I see is him in my head on that last day, sitting in his wheelchair.

“Don’t Dream It, Be It,” he says. Then he’s gone. Down and down and down. The tray of drinks falls to the pavement. Our foot soles thump down the street. My screams. My fault.

I feel the rush of tears coming, like water surging up a broken pipe, but Mac sees it, too, and kneels down before me, placing one black-fingernailed hand on my knee.

“OK, maybe alcohol’s not the best idea,” he says in his serious voice. “It’s OK, come here.” I don’t like Mac’s serious voice. He sounds like a doctor or something. A doctor with spiky black hair with a shock of magpie blue flashed through one side. It smells like lemons, and hugging him is like hugging a warm summer tree.