Losing It (25 page)

After learning the facts about his life, Dad came to see his past existence as what he called a living lie. The real Charlie wasn’t the department store drudge who holidayed in garden centres, he told me. The real Charlie had been smothered by fear and suspicion and it was high time he found him again – and much as he loved Mum and me, he wasn’t going to do that in Laurel Gardens. He was leaving the next morning, he told me, crushing any idea I might be having that this was only a pipe dream. He was sure that sooner or later we would understand. Mum, he was convinced, already did. He kissed me goodnight and closed the door, leaving me to my thoughts and maybe one or two tears. He was gone before Mum or I had got up. I was woken by the familiar splutter and fart of the campervan driving off and knew that though we would surely see him again, as a member of our family, Dad was gone for good.

The campervan? I forgot to mention that in another, enormous departure from reality, Dad had accepted GD’s offer of the rusting heap of nuts and bolts he’d complained about for so long, for which GD had no further use, he said, not now that Nana was gone. And that is how Dad went, setting off on his strange quest in the unlikeliest of transport. I think of him all the time, driving relentlessly onward in that psychedelically painted microbus, looking for the man he might have been. He had wanted his leaving to be as painless as possible. He didn’t want to hurt Mum and perhaps he had already seen a future for her with Roger. It was obvious to anyone that Mum liked Roger – I don’t think I heard her laugh until he showed up. And I know Roger liked my
mum, but I never knew how much until he turned up on our doorstep soon after Dad had left, dressed like Russell Crowe in
Gladiator
, with a bunch of flowers in one hand and a Roman short sword in the other. Within weeks, Roger had moved in. It’s on the cards that once Mum and Dad get a divorce, Roger will become my stepdad and Clive my stepbrother. I really don’t know how Poon Tang will fit into all this.

Mum has a real Russell Crowe now, or as real as she’ll get without having the real real thing, so to speak. She doesn’t have Russell Crowe the shop window mannequin any more. That Russell disappeared some weeks back and she’s been rather evasive about what’s happened to him. Possibly he came a cropper in one of Mum and Roger’s disturbingly noisy sex games and was decapitated by Roger’s sword, but I sometimes wonder if there is any truth in the rumour I’ve heard that Nana wasn’t cremated, but buried quietly in a lovely woodland site and that something else was put on top of the pyre. That way GD would have found a fitting way of marking her passing without the risk of some terrible mishap or unwanted trouble with the authorities. It’s a thought.

Roger’s not been living here long but already there have been changes. For one thing, he’s sold the house next door, having first found a new site for his business, which now sits on an industrial estate five miles away. The last thing he wants, he tells Mum, is to live next door to a bleedin’ scrapyard. He keeps up Dad’s garden, but it’s much less formal than before and we make good use of it, especially when my friends come round for barbecues, like the one we’re enjoying this evening.

Lauren’s here and her pregnancy is really showing now and the father, dressed in an apron decorated with enormous cartoon breasts as he prods and turns the sausages, couldn’t be prouder. He couldn’t be much happier, either. Magic Mick has been so pleased with the improvements Diesel’s made in the running of the shop that he’s made him a partner in the business, effective
as soon as he leaves school and Diesel has big plans for the place. Lauren has heard all about the road trip we’re still planning to mark the end of school next year and has said that Diesel must go with us, or she’ll never hear the last it. She’s actually a good sort, is Lauren.

Faruk is eating a hamburger, which is dribbling ketchup down his shirt, and talking to Roger about his new venture. His latest interest is motor racing and it might just be something he’s good at. We only discovered how good a driver he is when he helped us rescue Nana from the hospital. Just lately, he’s been trying to persuade Abdullah to start up their own Team Casablanca, racing a certain Ford Escort and though it sounds like just one more of Faruk’s pipe dreams, who knows, with Allah on their side, they might just do it.

Now everyone’s talking of nothing else but the road trip. We don’t know where we’ll be going, not exactly, but we do know we’re going to have a high old time getting there, as GD would say. He’s here too, sitting in Dad’s old deckchair and probably thinking about Nana. What he’ll do in the future, I don’t know. It’s hard to imagine him being happy again now that Nana has gone, but he has his own weird philosophies and though he’s not religious in the conventional sense, I think he sees Nana as having gone to some better place. I think, or better still, I believe, that he’ll be okay.

And what about me, I hope you’re thinking. Have I changed?

Oh, come on! You mean to say you haven’t noticed a new confidence in my attitude, a decisiveness in my actions and a cocky swagger in my walk? Really?

Well, let me fill you in on what’s been going down.

The above-listed qualities are all born on the night that Teresa Davenport invites me back to her room on our last night in Whitby, saying she has something to show me. You’ve got to be ahead of me here, because what she shows me – and oh, so expertly – is what I’ve been wanting a woman to show me for
longer than I can remember and show me she surely does. She takes off my clothes, piece by piece and then she takes me in hand, so to speak.

And then it happens and it is actually, amazingly, better than I had ever imagined – and I’ve done a lot of imagining. She can be quite dominating, I’m thinking, as I lie on my back and stare up in wonder at her small yet beautifully formed breasts bouncing quickly up and down while she fucks me – she’s actually fucking me, I’m having SEX! – but she’s dominating in – a – really – really – nice – way. And I’m trying to think of anything, anything at all, which will stop – me – from – coming – too – soon – as – I – want – this – to – last – for – ever.

Teresa continues to bounce up and down.

I start thinking of all the stupid, fun stuff the Four Horsemen have done together, about Prom night, when Diesel got Lauren pregnant, about The Party to End All Parties, about weirdly Gothic Whitby and the road trip which might now actually happen and I’m thinking of how Teresa looked at me just now, when she pulled off my Spiderman pants and dropped them onto the floor and how she didn’t appear to think that I had a small cock at all, an idea borne out by the low moan she made as she sank herself down upon me. She didn’t actually stop what she was doing and say, ‘Oh My God, that is HUGE’, which I must admit, I would have rather liked, but just got on with what we were about to do like she hadn’t even noticed how big or how small it was.

It’s enough to make me wonder if I hadn’t got this thing out of proportion. Could it be that I’m not spectacularly big or minis-culely small but boringly average? And is that something I should worry about too? And another thing I’m wondering is how I could possibly have wasted so much time chasing the wrong girl when any idiot could have seen immediately that Teresa Davenport is much smarter, far prettier and so much sexier than Rosalind Chandler. Teresa must be much better in
bed too. Because surely, I’m thinking, as Teresa groans and squeezes me and tells me I’m giving her just what she wants – and I can’t take it one second longer and we climax together, noisily, warmly, wetly on our very first time – it can’t get any better than this? Can it?

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