Scratch (33 page)

This time I reached for her hand and held it tight. ‘Paula, look at me. I love that you care enough about Ingo that you don’t want to hurt him. All that says to me is you’re the person I always knew you were. Okay?’

‘Okay, thank you, I mean that. Feck, I’m nearly crying here!’ She sniffed and shook her head. ‘Why is this all so complicated?’

‘Because I was a wanker twelve years ago.’

‘Oh yeah. Thanks for reminding me.’ She laughed.

‘You’re very welcome.’

‘I mean it about keeping hold of your friends, Jim. They’re important. Feck, they’ll save your sanity, sometimes.’

I nodded. ‘I’ll give it some thought, promise.’

‘You should. Right, another change of subject is warranted, I feel.’

‘You might be right,’ I agreed. ‘How do you feel about kids?’

Chapter 21

‘… and then she asked if I wanted her to do it again! Can you believe that?’

‘I’m not sure Ronni would be too happy about you telling me all this,’ I said.

‘Are you kidding?’ Terry said. ‘You should read her MySpace page. She doesn’t mention me by name but that is not a shy lassie, believe me.’

‘You both delight and disgust me, Terence,’ I said. ‘Pass us the ashtray.’

Terry had celebrated his promotion by splashing out on a second-hand Xbox from Cash Converters, and we were happily trying to kill anything that appeared onscreen with a variety of comically powerful weapons.

‘How’s Paula?’ Terry asked, thrusting a laser-spike through the head of a surprised alien shopkeeper. ‘Ronni wants us to go out as a foursome sometime.’

‘Are you sure that’s all she wants us to do as a foursome?’ I blocked a solar bolt with my hypershield and ducked behind a handy pile of corpses to reload my styx-shooter.

‘Hey, that’s my lady-love you’re talking about. She says she’d never do anything like that unless it was with people she didn’t already know.’

‘That’s comforting.’

‘That was a joke, by the way.’ Terry snuck up behind a comet-dog vendor and garrotted him with an electro-monoblade. He got bonus points for taking the head all the way off. ‘Three’s as far as she’s willing to go. Yes!’

Terry had double-backed behind me and pumped four fission-caps into my kidneys with his sawn-off meta-rifle. Game over. ‘Die,
ya
bastard!’

I put the controller onto the coffee table and lit another cigarette. ‘You do realise we’re supposed to be on the same team?’

‘That’s boring. So what do you say, should we go out with the girls next weekend?’

‘I’m working. Besides, Paula’s still not ready to be a couple in public. She’d probably freak if she knew you’d told Ronni about us.’

‘You can’t be a couple in public, and you can’t be a couple in private either. I’m struggling to see what you’re getting from this relationship.’

‘I’m getting a future, mate.’

‘So you keep saying. I’d be more worried about the present if I were you.’

‘Which is why you’re not me. I know you’re loving this thing with Ronni, but with me and Paula it’s a bit deeper than just having some fun with the fundamentals. This is the long haul, rest of my life, no more girls apart from Paula ever.’

Terry looked at me. ‘Can you hear yourself? Don’t you think you should wait till you’re allowed to touch her before you start talking like that?’

‘That’s the weird thing. I’ve never even come close to thinking like this with anyone else; I ran a mile if they even tried to talk about moving in together.’

‘You seem to be forgetting she already said she wanted to spend her life with a guy once before, and it wasn’t you.’

‘This is different. Ingo was a mistake, she knows that now. Look how far she and I go back, and we still feel this way about each other. That means something. It’s …’

‘Don’t you dare say the ‘f’ word.’

‘What,
fate
?’

‘Actually I meant
fabulous
, reminds me of how you spent two years thinking I was gay, but
fate
is worse, if anything. Next thing you’ll be planning a family.’

I didn’t say anything.

‘Don’t tell me,’ Terry said.

‘No, not really,’ I said. ‘We may have discussed a few names.’

‘Jesus, Jim. Be careful.’

‘With any other girl you’d be right, but this is Paula Fraser, the one who got away, only she came back. Apparently happy endings can happen, even to the likes of me.’

Terry leaned forward on the couch. ‘Okay, Jim. I want you to listen carefully. You know how in movies there’s always a point where one of the characters says something you just
know
is going to come back and bite them on the arse later? Well, that’s exactly what you just did.’

‘Bollocks. This is real life, Terry.’

‘Exactly! That’s even more guaranteed to go balls-up than a film.’

‘But if this was a movie I’d be the hero. The hero always gets the girl at the end.’ Made sense to me.

‘What if you’re
not
the hero in this particular story? Ever think about that?’

‘So who’s the hero if it’s not me?’

‘I don’t know, you fucking egomaniac,’ Terry said, exasperated. ‘Maybe it’s me; maybe I get the happy ending with Ronni. Or maybe it’s Paula, and you’re only a supporting character on her journey. Hell, it could be Patrick fucking Barry, for all we know.’

‘Why would anyone make a film about Patrick? He’s a boring prick.’

‘They wouldn’t, I’m just saying—’

‘Unless he’s a serial killer. I could believe that,’ I said.

‘Jim, focus. No-one’s in a film, it was a bad analogy. Just be aware not everything’s a done deal, okay? Don’t set yourself up for a massive fall, that’s all I’m saying.’

‘Your concern is touching, truly,’ I said, as sappily as I could. ‘But I know what I’m doing.’

‘I hope so.’ His duty apparently done, Terry lifted his controller again. ‘Another game?’

‘But of course,’ I said. ‘Please don’t kill me this time.’

‘Can’t promise anything, it’s a cut-throat galaxy out there.’ The mayhem recommenced. ‘Patrick could be a serial killer, couldn’t he?’ Terry said, as he gleefully flailed the flesh from the back of an innocent Gordian plumber with his static-mace.

‘Too right. He’s got the beady eye, that’s a dead giveaway.’ I was valiantly trying to match Terry’s ferocity but couldn’t quite muster up the required blood lust. Plus, I was struggling to get my hydro-needle
dartbow
to work at full capacity.

***

‘Have you ever seen Paula again?’ Mum asked a couple of days later as she footered in the kitchen preparing sandwiches for lunch.

‘Not for a while, no,’ I said, drying the few dishes on the draining board. Despite what Joe/Simon thought, I’d quickly realised I could still blatantly lie to my parents with relative equanimity. They’re always the easiest people to fib to, probably because you start doing it at such a young age. ‘She pops in to the pub to see Sammy now and then.’

‘How’s Ingo’s grandad doing?’

‘I’m not sure. Still much the same, I think.’

‘No sign of him coming over yet?’

‘Not as far as I know, but I haven’t really heard either way.’

‘I hope he makes it over soon. Paula must be awful lonely without him.’

This was not a good area of conversation. ‘Where’s Dad?’

‘No idea, he’d gone out by the time I was ready this morning. Probably over at B&Q fondling the fixtures. I swear he’d rather look at shelving units than page 3 girls.’

‘Mum!’ Being an only child, I was secure in the knowledge that my parents had sex once in the seventies and then, duty done, put the whole thing out of their minds to better allow them to concentrate on annoying me for the rest of their lives.

‘Oh shush,’ Mum said, with a sly smile I didn’t want to think about. ‘Anyway, it must be strange for you to see Paula again after all these years. I know how fond you were of her.’

‘Eh, yeah, it’s a bit odd sometimes I suppose.’

‘Especially with her being married. Is it hard for you?’

Something felt weird, and I was confused until I realised it was simply the fact I was apparently having a conversation with one of my parents about
emotions
, something I couldn’t recall happening before. I managed not to freak out by reminding myself I was obliged to lie.

‘It is, yeah,’ I said. Banking some sympathy couldn’t hurt; it was rent day soon. ‘It kind of brings it all back, you know?’

Mum gave an understanding nod. ‘You’ll find someone soon, Jim; try not to let it get you down. I know you’ve had some … problems holding onto girlfriends in the past, but there’s someone out there for all of us. You mustn’t give up hope.’

Problems? What fucking problems?
‘Yeah, cheers,’ I said.

‘I know you’re getting older, and I remember how difficult it was for your dad when he started losing his hair, and we’d been married for years by that point. He’s always saying how grateful he is that he met me when he did. He’s convinced I wouldn’t have looked twice at him if he’d been going baldy, the silly bugger.’

‘Yeah, okay. Thanks, Mum.’

‘I have to be honest,’ she went on, ‘he did have a fine head of hair on him when we met. Dark brown and a wee bit wavy, you know, like yours used to be.’

‘Okay Mum, I get the point.’ If this was her trying to cheer me up I was glad she didn’t do it very often.

‘It probably
was
the first thing I noticed about him, his hair. He used to use
Brylcreem
to slick it back, like Elvis.’ She looked at the ceiling.

‘That’s great.’

‘Ooh, I’m getting a wee shiver thinking about it.’

‘Mum!’

‘Sorry, sorry,’ she said, her gaze dropping back to Earth, pausing a moment to stare at my scalp before finally meeting my eyes once more. ‘He was a good looking man in his twenties, that’s all I’m saying. And so were you.’ Jesus, was she doing this deliberately? ‘And you still are!’ she added quickly, though not quick enough for it to do much for my ego.

‘I appreciate that, ta.’

‘Just remember, Jim. What’s for you won’t go by you.’

I couldn’t believe she’d just used my least favourite cliché ever on me, but was too demoralised about my hair to say anything. ‘Cheers. I’m going out now.’

‘Where are you off to?’

‘I’m meeting Terry for lunch.’

‘Again? I think you see more of him now that you did when you worked together.’

‘It’s important to keep a hold of your friends,’ I said.

Mum looked at me proudly. ‘That’s very wise, Jim. Say hello to Terry for me. Has he met himself a nice boy yet?’

‘Oh right, about that …’

***

‘Hi, Terry,’ I said, sitting down.