Doing It (26 page)

It took a while for it to sink in that it really was over between him and Jackie. She’d come back to him, she always did. He sulked for a couple of days – it was a bit much just chucking him after what he’d been through, after all. When she showed no signs of contrition, he tried to speak to her and was rebuffed like a pair of dirty underpants.

Ben and Jon were both being fantastic – that was the only good thing that came out of the whole episode; he hadn’t realised what good friends they were. He asked their advice about what to do about it, and was pissed off that they both thought he should leave it. After further pressing, they suggested begging forgiveness and declarations of love, so he tried bombarding her with emails, but after the first one, when she replied she was going to delete any others, he got no replies. He tried ringing her. She never answered her mobile and after a couple of poisonously hissing replies from her outraged mother, he gave that up too. He had no stomach for further humiliation.

It began to sink in. She didn’t want him any more. And it wasn’t just her. The whole school had turned against him. Suddenly the magic was gone. It was like going blind. Even complete strangers seemed to know that he’d become a tosser. Girls in shops showed no interest in him whatsoever. He’d become so used to them smiling and laughing and fluttering and chatting up to him, he’d just accepted it as something that happened. Now, they served him without a smile and moved on to the next customer as if, he, Dino, was just anyone.

It was shit; but there’s more than one sort of heartache, and out of all his troubles the thing that was causing him the most pain wasn’t Jackie. It was what was happening with his parents. Their relationship was like some vast giant asleep under the land. What he had thought of as hills and valleys, slopes and plains turned out to be the muscle and bones of the sleeping giant. Now it was stirring and all the little buildings and roads he’d built over the years were crumbling like ash. He’d had no idea how much he relied on them. Like his skeleton, he’d taken them for granted.

Despite what his mum had said about trust, it was obvious that neither of them believed his story about being set up. He gave it up after a few days and started to pretend that he had done it. It was so much easier. Anyway, if it was a choice between being a shoplifter or a mug, he’d rather be a shoplifter. He had hoped that after his arrest, his parents would postpone or even call off his dad moving out, but he came home from school just a few days later to find his mum poring over the local paper for flats. She even had the gall to ask Dino to help her. He stormed out of the room in a rage. After that, he was barely able to even stay in the same room as either of them. He was enraged with his mum for pulling his world to pieces, with his dad for letting her and with himself for being affected by it.

Things couldn’t go on as they were. Dino was going out of the room almost as soon as they came into it. His mum tried to have a word with him, but he just sat there in stony silence. Eventually she lost her temper with him spectacularly, screaming and throwing mugs at the wall and pounding the table with her fists. Dino was amazed – he’d had virtually no insights into his mother’s state of mind apart from that sordid glimpse through the window all those weeks ago. Afterwards, she was desperate with apologies – she had no idea she had that in her herself, let alone that she could show it to Dino. He coolly listened to her apology and left her to it. The incident convinced him that she was rotten to the core.

The following Wednesday afternoon, when Dino had a couple of free periods at the end of the day, he came back to find his dad had come home early. He made his son a cup of tea and a sandwich, put them on the table in front of him and said, ‘Let’s talk.’

His dad used to make him sandwiches quite often a few years before, when his mum was re-training. He loaded the ham in and covered it with mustard, mayo and lettuce – Dino had forgotten how much he liked them.

‘Yum,’ he said.

‘If I’d made more sandwiches and done less work, maybe it wouldn’t be me who’s moving out,’ said his dad. He smiled wryly and folded his arms on the table.

‘So what are we talking about?’ asked Dino through a full mouth.

‘Things. Me and you. Me and your mum. You and your mum. All that.’

‘She’s put you up to this,’ accused Dino.

‘We still decide things together. I took the afternoon off.’

Even though this was exactly what he wanted, Dino was embarrassed. ‘Is it going to take long, I’ve got homework?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Go on then.’ Dino busied himself with his sandwich.

‘OK. Well, for starts, I don’t want us to split up, as you know …’

‘Then why are you going along with it?’ demanded Dino, quick as a spike.

‘Listen …’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘Listen! She’s stopped loving me …’

‘Do you love her?’

‘You’re not listening.’

‘But do you love her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, that’s not fair, is it?’

‘Dino, will you listen?’

Dino took a breath and picked up his sandwich. ‘All right, then.’

‘Right. Where was I? The marriage is over, it’s as simple as that. She doesn’t love me, I can’t make her love me. She has the right to put an end to it. But I do think, I do think …’ He raised his voice over Dino who was about to interrupt. ‘… I do think it’s the wrong time – wrong for all of us …’

‘But me in particular.’

‘You included,’ said Mike carefully. ‘I think she should wait, give it another chance. But, she …’ He was about to say, won’t wait, but that was too easy. ‘… she, she feels she can’t do it. The thing is, Dino, when I said that stuff about making sandwiches, it was a sort of joke, but not entirely. Your mum has done most of the childcare, the mothering. I did my bit, loads of it, actually. But she’s been Mum, and she still is Mum and if things fall to bits, Mum stays and Dad goes. If I’d done the childcare it would be the other way round, but I didn’t …’

‘I’ll bet,’ sneered Dino.

‘It’s the kids come first. She’s been the main carer.’ He shrugged.

‘So you get the shitty end of the stick.’

‘I get the shitty end of the stick,’ agreed his dad. ‘She gets the house and kids and a great lump of my income, and I move away into some little flat, yes.’

‘It’s not fair. It’s … pathetic. It’s weak, isn’t it?’

‘Maybe. Or maybe it’s being strong. It’s certainly unfair, but I do know that kids come first.’ His dad shrugged and smiled sourly. ‘I don’t say I like it. I don’t say I agree with the way your mum’s doing it. But since she is, this is what I’m stuck with.’

Dino couldn’t believe it. ‘But that’s just crap! She has no right.’

Mike shrugged. ‘You’ll have to ask her about that.’

Dino waited. His dad sighed.

‘She thinks it’ll be better all round to get it out of the way and sorted, since this is what’s going to happen anyway,’ he said.

‘So you’re just going along with it.’

‘There’s not much choice.’

‘You could refuse to go.’

‘Dino, this has been going on a long time now. Years.’ Mike paused again, not sure what to say. Secretly, he didn’t just think his wife was wrong; he thought she was being a cow. She could have waited one more year. Mat was only nine, he had years to go at home, but he was a robust kid and Mike thought he’d be OK. But he knew his oldest boy; Dino was a lot more vulnerable than he realised. Kath said she’d been dying for years in this marriage, but another one wouldn’t do that much damage.

‘Men!’ she’d exclaimed. ‘You always want more!’

‘We’ll have to see what happens,’ he told Dino. ‘Maybe when she’s on her own in here with you guys she’ll realise it’s not what she wants, I don’t know. But the way things are at the moment, someone has to go and it ain’t going to be her.’ Mike glanced at his son. ‘You can come with me if you like.’

‘Can I?’

‘You’re seventeen. You can make up your own mind. I’d love to have you. I don’t know if it’s the best thing for you, though.’

‘Why not?’

‘Staying here would mean the least change. It’s your choice. I’d like you to come – I’d feel better. But for your own sake I’d stay here if I were you.’

Dino swore he’d think about it, but he knew the answer already. This was a nice big house, it was comfy. He wasn’t going anywhere.

At the end of it, Dino still wasn’t sure whether his dad was being strong, weak or merely simple, but at least he seemed to know what he was doing. Like his dad, he’d have to put up with it, but he didn’t have to like it. He was going to stay, but he’d do his best to make his mum’s life a misery for forcing this on him in the meantime. He felt clearer about things, anyway.

About a week later, something else happened that cheered him up. There she was smiling her head off at the bottom of the stairs as he came down in the morning. She waved a letter at him.

‘Come in and read this,’ she said excitedly.

It seemed they’d been on to Miss Selfridge. His mum had gone down there armed with school reports and an account of what had happened at home in the months leading up to his arrest. The manager had been sympathetic, but cool. It was out of his hands, he’d said – leniency was up to the police. Kath ploughed on. What was the point of prosecuting her son for a stupid prank, which he maybe didn’t even commit, when there were so many other people who almost made a living shoplifting? Didn’t the circumstances seem rather odd to him – just walking out like that? She could promise him it would never happen again, Dino had had the scare of his life, he was a changed boy.

The manager had listened politely and distantly, and said he’d think about it. She’d held out no hope – but here it was. He was prepared to drop charges, so long as Dino would do some charity work. It was a deal.

Dino leaped out of his chair and threw his arms around his mother. Sorted! It was going to be all right. No court, no prosecution, no having to watch those awful knickers brought out in public and waved before the courthouse. Bliss!

‘I thought they had a policy of prosecution,’ he said breathlessly when he’d calmed down.

‘They do. But you see, you’re a good boy, it does pay off. One slip like that – he must have seen the sense in what I said.’

That was one ordeal less, at least. On his way to school, Dino felt good for the first time in weeks. Life was picking up. No court case, the talk with his dad that night. He was feeling a bit more like himself.

The place to tell her was definitely at school. It was cowardly, but common sense. Ben was confident that she could eat him for breakfast any time, any place, but the opportunity to cram him down her gullet surrounded by one and a half thousand kids would be severely curtailed.

It wasn’t going to be easy. Goodbyes hurt, and Ben was a soft heart. All he needed was ten minutes on his own with her – surely that would be long enough to get the word ‘no’ out of his mouth? For months now they had managed –
she
had managed – to get them on their own for at least that most days in the week, but Ali had such an instinct for getting things on her own terms, it was like a form of telepathy. Somehow, on this particular Monday morning, she was permanently busy.

‘Sorry, Ben. I have a crisis in Year Eight.’

‘When, then?’

‘Don’t be greedy. I don’t know. Not now.’

Monday swept by. Next day, Tuesday, he had a date at her place in the evening. Ben quailed: it’d be like asking a hyena for a bone in its own den. He had to get her in school.

Tuesday morning he never saw her. Tuesday afternoon came and went. It was getting scarier and scarier. Words like hyena, dragon, hydra, beast, monster kept coming up into his mind as the evening drew near. It was unfair, he knew that. She had loads of nice qualities. There’d been months of loveliness, but now it was over. He made one last-ditch attempt to see her – a suggested meeting in a deserted classroom after school, something she always jumped at. It would be dangerous – after school, no one about; and, of course, her plans would be different from his. But it was better than doing it in her flat.

He collared her in between maths and a free lesson. Somehow he wasn’t surprised when, with an unfailing instinct she managed to be busy then too.

‘Crisis in Year Nine.’

‘You’re working up, it was Year Eight yesterday.’

‘I have a parent to see. See you at my place. Here’s the key, I may be a bit late.’

She thrust a key into his hand and rushed off. Ben stared at the little piece of metal in his palm.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No.’ The word seemed to have emptied itself of all meaning.

After school, he went for a walk in the pastures near her place to try and clear his head. Was it better to be there before her, or after her? Should he cut and run and tell her later by telephone? Leave a letter? Tempting! But impossible. It was just too cowardly. So what was wrong with cowardice? He who fights and runs away …

‘No,’ said Ben, and tried to imagine the word conjuring elementals, demons and dragons out of the fields, from behind the houses, like the hero in a computer game. The no-dragon against the yes-beast. Maybe it would even work.

‘Give me strength,’ muttered Ben to himself as a tessellated, green and red-winged serpent loosened its coils over the housing. The dragon benevolently spread its great wings. Ben set off for the flat.

She was already in.

‘Where have you been?’ she demanded as she opened the door to the sound of his key rattling in the lock.

‘… went for a walk …’

‘Christ. What a day! I thought you might have had the kettle on or something. Kids with their teeth falling out. Kids suddenly going to see their families in Pakistan for three months halfway through rehearsals. Great! Kids torturing one another with sparklers. I hate kids!’

Ben stared at her sadly.

‘Go on then, put the kettle on, I need a cup of tea. Do you want a drink? There’s beer in the fridge. Christ! What an awful day. I hope you’re all right, the last thing I need is more bloody trouble.’ She eyed him sideways and went to fling herself on the sofa like a huge, carnivorous beetle. Ben staggered into the kitchen to make tea.