Adorkable (36 page)

Alex’s smile dimmed and he shook his head. ‘She’s got about three months, though she reckons she’s determined to see her first grandchild.’

Life sucked sometimes. It wasn’t enough that parts of it could be really good, like winning-the-lottery good – something equally bad had to happen just to keep you in your place. ‘I’m so, so sorry. It’s not fair, is it?’

‘Really isn’t,’ Alex agreed, and he looked at Bethan and she looked at him, then she turned her head to me and I saw tears trickling down her face.

‘I know it’s all horrible but the baby is a good thing,’ I told her. ‘You have to focus on that.’

‘Oh, Jeane, I can’t come home for Christmas,’ she blurted out. ‘I just can’t. It’s Alex’s last Christmas with his mum and we’re having to get married really, really quickly and there’s so much stuff to arrange and as it is I’m working twelve-hour shifts. Please don’t hate me!’

‘I don’t. I never, ever would,’ I assured her. ‘There’s nothing you could do that would make me hate you.’

‘Even when I tell you that we tried to get you on a flight to
Chicago, even if it meant having to stop over in Canada, but everything’s booked up?’ Bethan sobbed. ‘Will you spend Christmas with Dad? Please! I can’t bear the thought of you spending Christmas on your own.’

‘Jesus! I’d rather spend Christmas on my own than with Roy and Sandra! They’d probably book Garfunkel’s for Christmas lunch,’ I shrieked, and it wasn’t even a joke but Bethan giggled and sobbed at the same time.

‘Jeane, I feel bloody awful about this, but the wedding’s probably going to be in January and—’

‘So I’ll see you in January and, just so you know, any vile bridesmaid’s dress you pick out for me in puce-coloured satin, I’ll probably love. Just don’t make me wear anything …
tasteful
.’ I gave a mock shudder and Bethan and Alex both laughed. ‘You’re not to worry about me because I can crash Ben’s family’s Christmas dinner or my friend Tabitha always has an open house for anyone who’s at a loose end. Honestly, I’ll be fine.’

‘I hate myself for this.’

‘Bethan, it’s very boring when you’re being all self-effacing so please don’t,’ I drawled, and I could feel all the disappointment and the bitterness welling up inside me and I had to swallow it down like bile because I’d been counting the days until Bethan rocked up in the Arrivals hall at Heathrow and I could hug her very, very hard and have her all to myself for a whole week. She was never going to be all mine again. I’d come way down on the list after Alex and the new baby. ‘Stop crying, it can’t be good for the sprog. It will come out with a really mopey disposition.’

‘Oh
, shut up,’ Bethan sniffed but she got the tears under control and we chatted for a few minutes about the awesome Christmas present she was going to buy me and how they shouldn’t have a stodgy boring fruitcake at their wedding because no one actually liked it, before they had to go.

As I finally started to trawl through YouTube for puppies or anything that would make me smile, I knew that I’d been right to leave everything behind in pursuit of my dreams. Adorkable made me part of something and without Adorkable I had nothing.

And
then on the morning of Christmas Eve, after I’d made Mum and Dad approximately two hundred and thirty-two cups of tea as part of my penance and the week after I’d been to Cambridge – and, though I didn’t want to tempt fate, the professor who’d done my final interview had shook my hand and told me that he looked forward to seeing me in September – I was given an early Christmas present.

The Wi-Fi was reinstalled (I didn’t have the heart to tell them that I’d hacked into the router whenever I’d wanted to go online), my PS3 was ceremonially reinstated and so were iPod, TV and car keys.

I had my freedom back. I also had three hours to finish buying Christmas presents before I met up with the gang for lunch. ‘If you’re taking the car then please only have one drink,’ Dad said as the entire family trooped into the hall to wave me off.

‘Taking
the bus. There’ll be nowhere to park,’ I said.

‘And don’t forget to buy tinfoil,’ Mum reminded me, and we were back to normal. There had been about a fortnight of only speaking when I was spoken to, but as the Cambridge interview got nearer, Mum and Dad had needed to speak to me frequently about mock interview questions and did I know who was interviewing me and should I buy some of his books to be properly prepared and so it went on.

But now Mum pecked me on the cheek and Dad smiled when he saw Alice and Melly clinging to my jeans. ‘Have you got our list?’ Melly asked me yet again. ‘Percy Pig, not Peppa Pig. That’s very important, Michael.’

‘Be home in time to watch
The Muppet Christmas Carol
. We’re making special Muppet cupcakes,’ Alice added. Mum shuddered as she contemplated the havoc they’d wreak in the kitchen. I was still grinning as I walked to the bus stop.

Because I wasn’t a girl and because I’d done most of my gift-buying when I was ‘allowed’ online, I was done in three hours. An hour of that was spent in Claire’s Accessories being elbowed, kneed and punched by tween girls who’d all inhaled too much glitter. Laden down with bags, I turned up at the gastropub owned by Ant’s dad.

I was trying to fight my way through the crowd at the bar when Heidi suddenly appeared and threw her arms around my neck. ‘Michael! I’m so glad you could make it,’ she said, and then she kissed me. Like, on the lips, because she’d obviously decided that the ‘Thanks, but no thanks’ speech I’d given her at the Duckie gig had just been me playing hard to get. ‘Oh! Look at all your bags. You got a little something for me in there?’

I
managed to shake her off before she strangled me. ‘Depends on whether I got you for Secret Santa, doesn’t it?’ She pouted and I could tell she was about to slip her arm through mine, but I did a nifty sidestep and turn, spotted our table and left Heidi teetering after me in her nosebleed-high heels.

‘I saved you a seat,’ she called, but there was an empty chair next to Scarlett so I threw myself on to it and shared an eye roll with her and Barney.

During the weeks of the ‘Go directly to school and do not pass Go’ regime, which I still think was an overreaction because it wasn’t like anyone died and Mum has been boring all her friends about my ninety-nine-per-cent-confirmed internship in Palo Alto, I only got to hang out with my friends at lunchtime. But mostly, I’d hung out with Barney and Scarlett.

I mean, they already knew about me and Jeane so they hadn’t driven me to the edge of despair by bombarding me with questions and asking me to confirm the rumours that Jeane was pregnant/had emigrated/been expelled. Even though Scarlett had been dying to know what had really happened and would look at me with a really perplexed expression on her face, then frown and squint, but as soon as she opened her mouth, Barney would glare or nudge her and once he’d even thrown a Cheesy Wotsit at her when she’d uttered the words, ‘So, you and Jeane …’

But when it became obvious that Jeane wasn’t coming back to school and that I was beyond fed up with people wanting to talk about her and that things hadn’t just ended badly, it had actually been the worst break-up in the whole history of breakups, Barney and Scarlett had been there for me in a low-key,
low-maintenance kind of way. Scarlett wasn’t half so whiny and hair-flicky now that she was with Barney, and Barney, well, I think I’d definitely call him a mate. He was funny and we talked about computers and
Star Wars
while Scarlett painted her nails. I think Jeane and I had brought out the worst in them, but together they were way, way more than the sum of their parts.

Now, they both smiled and Scarlett launched into a long story about her cousin walking out of her part-time job in Claire’s Accessories because the high-pitched screaming had perforated her eardrum and Barney wanted computer advice, while Heidi kept pouting at me from the other end of the table and clamping her elbows to her tits to give herself a cleavage.

Eventually everyone was assembled, food and drink were ordered, crackers were pulled and we started on Secret Santa. I’d got Mads, which had been a major bummer because we were only meant to spend a fiver and Mads didn’t do budget. ‘I might only be able to afford Topshop, but in my dreams I’m wearing Chanel,’ she was fond of saying.

I’d had to go to Cath Kidston to pick up Mum’s present and had bought Mads a pair of hairslides with little Scottie dogs on them. They were cute. All girls liked cute. Fact. Well, girls that weren’t hell-bent on imposing their own warped notion of cute on the rest of the world anyway.

I realised my mistake as soon as Mads opened the present. Mads didn’t really do cute either, unless cute came with the Chanel logo on it. Mad’s anticipatory smile faded, then returned, twice as wide but half as bright.

‘How
sweet,’ she exclaimed, in much the same way as she’d said, ‘How gross’ when she’d tried Dan’s Bloody Mary. ‘Very sweet.’ She looked around the table with narrowed eyes. ‘OK, so who was my Secret Santa?’

I timidly raised my hand. ‘If you don’t like them, I’ll give them to one of the brats and you can have cash instead.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Mads said, holding the hairslides to her heart as if I was about to snatch them back. ‘I
do
like them. They’re very, um, quirky.’

‘Yeah, they are,’ Dan said. He smiled slyly. ‘The kind of thing that if, say, you were porking Jeane Smith, which apparently you’re not, you’d give her as a Christmas present.’

‘Arsehole,’ I said, because he was. ‘Please credit me with some taste. I’m not boffing her. Never was.’

‘Not any more anyway,’ he muttered, and I clenched my fists but didn’t react because if I started hurling swears and getting angry then Dan would get the reaction he wanted and everyone would think I had something to hide, so I waited a moment and gave myself enough time to come up with a crushing response. ‘Maybe it’s because you’re not getting any that you’re so obsessed with my sex life.’

‘Hey! Nothing wrong with my sex life.’

‘Does bashing one out every hour count as a sex life?’ Ant drawled and we all groaned. I thought the subject was now closed. I was wrong.

‘Come on, Michael, just admit that you were seeing her,’ Mads said. ‘And that you
did
go to New York with her and that you were absolutely definitely one hundred and ten per cent snogging her at the Duckie aftershow party at Halloween
because my cousin’s best friend’s older sister hangs out with the Duckie crew and she said that she saw you and Jeane there and that there were pictures of you making devil’s horns with Molly and Jane on the band’s Flickr.’

‘I’m not admitting anything because it’s not true,’ I insisted.

Dan actually clapped his hands together in glee because he had a mental age of ten. ‘Ha! Two negatives make a positive!’

‘No, they don’t, and anyway—’

‘But is she preggo? How can it even be possible that someone would want to have sex with her? Urgh, does not compute. But is that why she’s left school?’ Heidi asked sulkily. ‘Because she’s totes totes
totes
been expelled. For real. That’s what I heard.’

‘She’s
not
pregnant,’ Scarlett said sharply. ‘She’s left school because, because she’s … What is she doing, Barns?’

‘Preparing for total dork domination,’ Barney said. ‘TV show, website, book, public speaking engagements and jumble sales.’

‘Barney’s helping to build her website.’ Scarlett announced proudly. ‘At the moment he’s working on this animation of Jeane as a superhero. It’s really cool. Even though Jeane would make a rubbish superhero. She’d be far too bossy in a crisis situation.’

‘I don’t even believe it,’ Heidi snapped. ‘She got expelled because she never does any work and she argues with the teachers and there’s no way that Michael would ever have sex with her because she dresses like a total pikey and she’s
fat.
’

I could have cried tears of sheer joy when I saw two waiters coming towards us. There was a flurry of black pepper and
Parmesan, then the conversation moved on to other things. The other things were who was seeing who, who was breaking up, how we were going to fill the gaping chasm in our lives now that
The X Factor
had ended, and what everyone was getting for Christmas and how much it cost. Weren’t there other things, important things, we could have been discussing? It didn’t necessarily have to be about workable solutions to ending world hunger but something more challenging than how ‘blates rigged that show is, I can’t believe a single word that comes out of Louis Walsh’s mouth’.

‘Buck up, mate,’ Barney whispered, and I realised I was slumped in my chair with a scowl on my face. All that dorkside crap must have slowly permeated my skull, like dripping water carves fissures into rock, because I was sitting here thinking about how dull my best friends were and how they all dressed the same and thought the same and all the girls pretended that they didn’t want pudding for five agonising minutes until they decided that it was all right to have pudding as long as everyone else did and it was so predictable and boring that I wanted to shout at them, so it was probably just as well that my phone rang.

It would be my mother calling to see if I’d remembered tinfoil but really calling to check that I wasn’t drunk or in a foreign country.

‘I’ve had one lager,’ I said, answering my phone without even checking to see who was calling. ‘And, yes, I will remember to get tinfoil.’

There was no reply, just this muffled snorting, and I realised it probably wasn’t my mum because the person calling was
crying and when my mum cried, which wasn’t very often, it was mostly silent crying.