Lauren Laverne - Candy and the Broken Biscuits

“Celebrating what?”

Still humming that appalling Vanilla Ice song, Mum is dishing up slightly burned eggs and bacon with her back to me. She picks up two plates and plonks them down with a flourish on the table. As she lifts her hand away I notice a flash. There – gleaming and glistening on her fourth finger. Left hand. Ice Ice Baby. Oh no.

I feel the shock register on my face before it hits my chest. My eyes widen, my jaw drops open. Mum swoops down into the chair next to me and leans over to give me a huge squeeze of a hug. Beaming her beautiful, perfect-lipstick smile she clasps my hand in hers. Ray is saying something.

“…have decided to take our relationship to the next level…”

They’re getting married.

“…truly make a lifetime commitment…be a family…create something non-traditional but special…”

Oh. My. God.

Ray is still talking but I’m not taking in the words. I pull my hand from Mum’s grasp and drop it into my lap where it lies uselessly by the other one. For a moment I imagine them growing, superhero-style, to ten times their size, lifting Ray up and throwing him out of the kitchen window.

“Candy? Isn’t it wonderful news?”

It’s Mum.

“We’re so excited, darling! I know this will be a big change for you, for all of us, but it’s going to be wonderful! Like Ray says. We can be a family.” She’s holding my hand again, and Ray hers. For a second we look exactly as she wants us to.

“Mum, I’m fifteen! What’s he going to do – adopt me? Walk me to school? Dress up as Santa at Christmas?”

Mum’s smile falters. “I don’t mean that, Candy.” She looks at Ray. “Ray loves me. And you. He wants to be…part of your life. Maybe like a dad, maybe more like a friend. Is that so terrible?”

I can’t believe this. There were always Rays. Rays, Daves, Larrys, lans, Johns, Toms, Harrys and (total) Dicks. They might have stayed for a while but they were always THEM. We were US. And this is Our House. Suddenly I feel like a visitor.

Ray clears his throat.

“Candy, science has demonstrated that human beings only use twenty per cent of their brains. Did you know that?”

I sulk harder, wishing he’d only use twenty per cent of his mouth.

“Before I met your mother, I was using only a fraction of my emotional capacity. But Maggie makes me the best me I can be. In terms of happiness, I am at saturation levels.”

He pauses, allowing us to absorb the full impact of his wisdom. I look straight at my mum. She can’t seriously want to marry this guy.

“I don’t…I don’t know what to say, Mum.”

“Candy darling, Ray loves me and I love him! Don’t you want me to be happy? Don’t you think I deserve that?” She starts breathing a bit hard and I know she is trying to stop herself crying. I look at the clock – eight fifty. Clients in ten minutes. She doesn’t have time to re-do her makeup, so we can’t have an argument now.

“It’s all right, Maggie.” Ray puts his arm around her and leans in, touching his head to hers. Puke. “Candy’s entitled to her feelings.” He turns back to me, every inch the reasonable dad at the family meeting, dealing with the inexplicably moody child. I obviously must have missed the meeting where anybody asked whether I actually wanted to be in this family.

“Well we’d better get going. Start of a new day. Come on love.”

He gestures to Mum, who is still too busy concentrating on not getting upset to actually say anything.

Mum has this thing called “poise”. She developed it years ago, working as a model. It’s the knack of walking into any room as if it’s her surprise birthday party, no matter what kind of day she’s having. Another gift of hers I have not inherited, along with unbreakable nails and consistently obedient hair.

Shaking her shoulders out slightly, Mum adopts her delighted-you-could-make-it expression. She doesn’t even know she’s doing it. She places her twinkling left hand on my shoulder and leans in close.

“Candy. Darling, I love you. Both. Please, please try to be happy for us. If you can’t just yet then give it some time to sink in? It’s a big change, I know.” She stands up and they leave together. Be happy for us. The new us. One without me.

I don’t remember much about the next ten minutes. All Iknow is, by nine o’clock that morning I am sitting on the step of the East Bishopspool Pensioners’ Day Centre under an empty blue sky. Believe it or not an OAP club down at the old docks is the only place I can think of going this morning. Yes, I’m that cool. There’s nobody around but I turn the collars of my school blazer up anyway to make it look less like I’m wearing my uniform, in case anyone spots me. Do people still call the police about truanting? They might call the taste police, in which case I’m stuffed. Guilty of possession of aubergine polyester.

Hurry up, Glad.

I’ve never skived off school before. The world looks weird, like it’s the wrong colour or something. I’m freezing and starving. Why couldn’t we have had all this upset after breakfast?

Where is Glad, anyway? She’s always here first. You know what old people are like for timekeeping – fifteen minutes early for everything. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep I look out of my bedroom window at the seafront about 6am and there are old guys out there. Why are they up so early? It’s not like they’ve got work or a train to catch.

The sudden crunch of enormous wheels approaching accompanied by a rapid crescendo of ear-bleedingly loud hip hop pulls me back into the present. Hurtling down the deserted road towards me is a tank-sized 4X4. Its windows are completely blacked out, indistinguishable from its gleaming inky frame. The music inside pulses louder, the throbbing track turned up just loud enough to make it indecipherable.

It’s pulling up. Someone inside kills the music. The black door zzziipps open with that exhalation sound spaceships make in films. I scramble upright. Have I stumbled into the middle of the weirdest drug deal ever? ( I’ll meet you at the OAP club at 9. ) Somebody is getting out of the car.

The tinted windows and glossy black door make it impossible to see anything apart from their feet.

Plop!

A little sausagey leg with a white plimsoll squashed on to the end lands on the ground, quickly joined by another one – apparently their owner is short enough to have to actually jump out of the car.

Scccrrriick! A familiar walking stick joins the sausage-legs. Little metal coats of arms are screwed into its length, indicating that whoever it is might need a bit of help, but still gets out and about on her travels, thanks very much.

Glad.

“Thanks for the lift, Calum!” she trills, sounding (as always) like a little Scottish cockatiel. The door swings open and a large square white plastic handbag appears, attached to an elderly lady of similar dimensions. “Candy! What on earth are you doing here, lassie? In the name o’ God! You’re freezing! Aren’t you supposed to be at school? Something’s happened – what is it now? An argument with your mother again? You’re as bad as each other, that’s the trouble. That’s it, Calum, just down there, I’ll get the door open…”

Without pausing for or expecting any kind of response, Glad reaches into the cavernous depths of her white bag and produces a huge prison-warden-style bunch of keys. As she immediately selects the right one from the bunch I recognise the driver of the car for the first time. Calum Stainforth. I sort of remember him from school. We all do. I mean, he was one of the wildest pupils in his year. Legend has it that he was eventually expelled for releasing not one but two dogs slap bang into the middle of his English Lit GCSE exam. Nobody knows how he got them in there, but the resultant chaos was so intense that Miss Aitken who was invigilating, had to have a fortnight off and some tablets from the doctor for her nerves. Since then Calum has been trying to make a name for himself as the baddest bad boy MC in Bishopspool. It is somewhat at odds with this precise moment. Calum has removed a fully-stocked tea trolley replete with cups, saucers, teaspoons and two urns from the back of the 4X4. He pushes it along in as manly a fashion as possible, towards the Day Centre. Two saucery-eyes peer out from deep within his hoodie. They meet mine and he stops dead.