It’s About Love

What did he say? I feel my face turning away from them and I go over the last word I wrote with my pen. He already knows her. Leia puts her pen down. “He’s the strong silent type.” And the fact that they clearly know each other and are talking about me is making my skin crawl.

Simeon holds out his hand.

“Good to meet you, Luke. I’m the platonic ex.” What?

“What?”

I look up at Simeon. His skin is perfect. Platonic ex?

“Yeah, me and Leia go way back.” He smiles his Marks & Spencer smile.

I feel completely awkward, like I’m the new cast member on some teen sitcom that’s been running for years and my eyes are darting round the room, checking if people are watching. Nobody is. Leia turns in her seat. “Ignore him, Skywalker. He likes to cause trouble.”

Take his hand. Let him know.

I shake Simeon’s hand, trying not to squeeze too tight and be that pathetic guy who has to demonstrate his masculinity, but firm enough to let him know I’m choosing not to.

Our hands part and Simeon leans forward, trying to read my writing. My arm instinctively curls round my paper, covering it up. Simeon smirks. “All right Scorsese, I wasn’t trying to steal your ideas.” Him and Leia are smiling and I know it’s uncalled for, but I just want to punch him in the face. He wouldn’t be able to stop me and it would pop the awkward bubble he’s got me in. One punch and he’d be out.

“Anyway, we still up for the Electric later?”

Leia says, “Yeah,” then looks at me. “You up for it? They’re showing Ghostbusters One and Two. Classics.”

And it’s horrible. All of it, the staring, the nickname, his face, the fact that they’re cinema buddies, her smiling.

“No,” I say. “I’m busy.”

Leia’s face straightens, but she doesn’t seem that bothered.

Then people start packing up for the end of the lesson and I’m so glad I get to leave, I think I actually smile.

I buy a jacket potato from the refectory and take it all the way down the hill to the graveyard to get away. I sit on a bench dedicated to a man called Harold who used to clean the graves. A couple of crows are fighting over what looks like a chicken bone in front of a dirty white marble stone slumped at an angle.

I’m telling myself I have no real reason to be angry, that I knew a lot of people would already know each other and be all confident and that. But him? Her ex? Mr Squeaky Clean ‘I’m a young Brad Pitt’ Simeon?

Forget her. Keep to yourself. You’re not like this lot.

I dig a crater into the tuna with my white plastic fork. She said he likes to cause trouble. Maybe he was just saying it to wind her up, test me out.

She didn’t deny it though, did she?

She didn’t. How long did they go out for? Why are they still friends? Is that the kind of boy she likes?

I’m digging into yellow potato now. If he’s her type, then …

Digging with my fork.

They’re just a bunch of rich kids, they’re not like you, forget them.

But she seemed cool. Still digging.

Did she stare?

The fork hits the bottom of the box.

Did she stare?

I’m still pressing.

The fork snaps.

Yes. She stared.

(#ulink_8bac9dbf-8c43-594c-b713-990712acec62)

I get off my second bus early and walk round to Dad’s place.

I use the key he cut for me and, as I climb the dark stairs, I remember the afternoon I helped him move in. A year and a half ago. I remember watching his big body almost get wedged between the walls as he climbed up to the small attic studio flat. It’d been coming for a while; Marc getting sent down was just the rock that tipped the scales.

I come here sometimes when Dad’s at work. Mostly I just watch a film and then leave. The whole place is the size of our living room.

The only window is the skylight and in the afternoon it shines a rectangular spotlight on to the floor where the white lino of the kitchen corner meets the mud-brown carpet. It’s like a rubbish fairytale:

The Giant Who Lived in the Box Attic.

The sofa bed’s still folded out and the sheets are strewn. There’s an extra-large pizza box on the floor by the TV and empty lager cans on the draining board. I open the skylight to try and let out the man smell and start to tidy up. I stuff all the rubbish into a bin bag. I scrub the two plates and mug that have clearly been there for a few days. I fold the thin mattress of the bed back into a sofa and I use the dustpan and brush to sweep the carpet underneath. It feels like setting up a board game.

When I’m done, I sit on the sofa and look round the room. I always imagine this place is mine. My own flat, away from everyone. Just a toilet, sink, fridge, sofa, TV and enough DVDs to get lost in.

Simeon. The platonic ex. Forget them.

On the tiny chest of drawers in the corner to my left there’s a photograph of all four of us at Frankie & Benny’s. Dad got the waiter to take it. Him and Mum are in the middle, with Marc and me on the outsides. I take it from the drawers and hold it in my lap.

It’s Marc’s fifteenth birthday, so I’m eleven, fresh-faced, smooth skin, my hair longer and parted at the side. I remember Mum burning her mouth on her calzone and sucking an ice cube, Dad doing the ice-cream sundae challenge and winning a T-shirt.

I touch my face in the picture, feeling the smooth hard glass. Then it catches the light and I see my reflection. My face now, superimposed over our family. Breathe.

The afternoon quiet of the room. Just me on a fold-up sofa, in a shady attic, holding the past in my lap. Somewhere now, in a house probably twenty times bigger than this place, Leia is getting ready to go to the cinema with her platonic ex and his perfect skin.

I leave the photo on the sofa and lower down into press-up position, but on my clenched fists, like Marc used to do them. My weight presses down through my knuckles into the floor as I start and the pain is good. One, two. I turn my head to the side and my eyes run along the spines of the DVDs against the skirting board. Three.

Guilt is the worst. Four. Burn me with angry, choke me with sad, anything but guilt. Five, six. Guilt lives in your skin, like lead. Seven. Sitting there, heavy. Eight. And poisonous. Nine. Telling you not to forget. Ten. Eleven. Twelve.

I see Ghostbusters, the white letters against black, and I stop. I can feel the muscles across my back pulled taut as I stay there, suspended, my knuckles raw from the friction and the pressure, and I see Leia, giggling as she hands the usher her ticket, Simeon smiling next to her as he wraps his tanned arm round her shoulders. I stare at the DVD.

“Come on, sleepy.” Dad’s voice wakes me up. I feel the pain in my neck as I sit up from resting on the sharp arm of the sofa bed. The light is on and through the skylight I can see a rectangle of black sky.

“Your mum was worried. Since when do you come on a Monday?”