Lauren Laverne - Candy and the Broken Biscuits

“Hey,” I say.

“All right?” he mumbles, not waiting long enough for an answer, then presses on towards the door, with his head bowed even lower than it already was.

“Descaling,” Glad tells me, as if this explains everything, then she turns back to Calum. “Good boy, Calum. I’ll tell your granda what a help you are, he’s so proud of you!” She gives his arm a small pat of approval. Somewhere deep inside his fluorescent hoodie, Calum smiles wonkily at her and nods at me, before hopping into the car, reigniting the music and screaming off into the distance.

“Do you remember Calum from school?” Glad asks.

I squint and nod in a non-committal kind of way that tries to avoid saying, “Yeah, I heard he was a headcase!”

Glad smiles, apparently oblivious. “He used to be a bit of a wildcat but he’s a good boy these days.”

Glad fixes me with a beady glare, which makes her look not unlike Yoda from Star Wars. She taps one of the urns with the top of her walking stick. “Right you. Let’s fire this lot up and you can tell me all about it.”

So this is Glad. We go inside and she settles into her favourite chair in the corner of the optimistically named ‘Sun Room’ in East Bishopspool Pensioners’ Day Centre, clutching a proper cup of tea with saucer (very important).

“Well?” She Yoda-glares at me again over the faint steam and hiss of her cup.

“Mum’s marrying Ray.”

A pause. “I see.”

“What do you mean, you see? It’s a disaster! I feel like I’m in a badly updated fairytale. It’s Cinderella, but instead of a wicked stepmother I get David Brent as a stepdad. And she barely knows the guy! It’ll never work Glad, you know what Mum’s like as well as I do! She’s not…She’s never going to…to settle down. She’s not that kind of person!”

“Well, l would have thought not. But…people change. Maybe she knows herself better than we do, lassie.”

“She’s doesn’t! That’s just it. She’s not herself at all! She’s gone temporarily insane, or he’s hypnotised her, or…or…I can’t do it, Glad. I can’t! It’s only ever been the two of us. I don’t want her bringing a stranger in. A nuclear family! With a dad who pronounces nuclear ‘nuc-u-lur’ and thinks he understands me because he likes Coldplay!”

Glad sips her tea, does a whisky-grimace and chews over my news. She’s fond of a mull, is Glad. So while she’s thinking, let me fill you in on how a Little Old Lady ended up being the only person in the world (apart from Hol) who actually understands me.

You might not have noticed this about my mum, so let me spell it out. She is unusual. By which I mean NOT NORMAL. I mean, I love her and everything, but she’s unreliable. Take my name. Depending on what mood she’s in when you ask her, Mum either claims I’m named after Candy Darling from the Velvet Underground song Walk on the Wild Side or the Jesus and Mary Chain’s Some Candy Talking. Which means I’m either named after a vulnerable transvestite or a song that everybody thinks is about drugs. Brilliant. She forgets things (I don’t think I have ever got a permission slip to school on time). She doesn’t really know how to work our oven, even though we’ve had it since I was two. She makes bad choices (from shoes to boyfriends – neither ever fits – she walks home barefoot a lot to cry about being single). If the job of Me had been left entirely to Mum I would be a mess. OK, more of a mess.

Luckily, for the last thirteen years we have lived next door to Glad, the closest thing I’ve ever had to a nan. (The real Granny Caine lives on the Costa Brava. All we get from her is a card at Christmas with a new photo of her and my grandad and their shiny mahogany tans).

Glad is the opposite to Mum in every way. A piano teacher by trade, she has been as steady as the metronome on her upright ever since I can remember. Always next door. Most days after school she would pick me up and, back at hers, I’d plonk-plink-plonk my way through Twinkle Twinkle Little Star before being rewarded with a strawberry milkshake. That was how I first found music.

Playing gave me a sort of filled-up feeling, heavy and satisfied. And no matter how all-over-the-place things were at home, Glad was there in her front room, sheet music open at something I could dive into. Over the years my fingers got quicker and lighter until I felt they could almost play anything and then, eventually, I could just sort of think the music out of my head and into the keys and it wasn’t anything to do with my body at all.

So I live in the world, but I also live somewhere Glad calls Candyland – a place I slip in and out of all the time. I’m very susceptible to the power of a tune. A song floats by out of a car window and suddenly I’m lost in my imaginings. And my biggest imaginings of all are that I will one day make music of my own. The songs in my head will be out in the world.

How could Glad not be my mate, when she introduced me to all that? Anyway she’s finished thinking and is about to deliver her verdict. “Sabotage is out I suppose?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You heard me, lassie. If you’re THAT unhappy maybe you could sabotage the wedding?”

“What, in the ‘if any persons here present can think of any lawful impediment blah blah speak now or forever hold your peace’ bit I get up and say something? Like what? ‘He’s an idiot, Your Holiness! He calls having a chat dialoguing ! His favourite film is Ghost. ’ Glad. Seriously, what do you mean by these dark mutterings? I know you’re part-witch but can you let a mere mortal in on the secret?”

She cracks a smile – I can always get one out of her, even when she’s trying to be a grown-up. “I’m saying, Candy, I think your mother deserves some happiness. If it’s with Ray then so be it. He’s not of her usual stamp, I’ll grant you, but do what you’ve always done…And?”

“…and you’ll get what you’ve always got. I know.” Glad has been drumming this particular pearl of wisdom into me since I was as tall as her piano stool.

“I don’t believe you when you say Ray is wrong for your mum, Candy. He’s been a good influence on her, admit it.” She sips her tea, observing me over the top of the cup.

I try to think about the last time Mum did anything preposterous. “She made me miss our school trip, to go on the road with a Kiss tribute band!” I huff, remembering the mortifying week I spent touring the seaside resorts of Britain with Smooch.

Glad makes a face. “That was down to that awful Brian laddie.”

Oh yeah. Brian. Mum’s boyfriend before Ray. He was Smooch’s drummer. Mum was desperate for me to sample “the magic of life on the road”. The reality of watching her boyfriend dress up as a cat and play metal every night almost put me off music for life. Almost. “What about the Guinea Pig thing?” I ask, in the style of a lawyer making a spirited case for the prosecution.

A few weeks ago Mum bought twenty-five of the things from a pet-shop because “they looked sad”.

Glad smiles, casting a glance at the cage in the corner where her own two dozy furballs (Winston and Adolf) are snoozing contentedly. “He was away that weekend – remember?”

She’s right, dammit! He was on a course called Becoming Your Own Biggest Fan.

Glad smiles kindly. “I think what you’re finding hardest about all this is what it means about who you are. You’re just starting to work out who you want to be and now you’re going to belong to somebody you never asked for. It’s tough, but can I let you in on a secret?”

Like I have a choice. I do an if-you-must eyebrow at her.

“None of us get to pick. That’s how family works. And there are much, much worse fathers to have than Ray.”