Jenny Colgan - Looking for Andrew McCarthy

‘But it’s C!’ said Arthur. ‘Your favourite round: Cosmopolitans.’

‘I know . But I’d better go.’

She shouldered her bag, downed the dregs of her Bloody Mary and headed out of the door, face set against the rain.

‘This isn’t fair,’ she thought to herself, walking down the darkened suburban street in search of a taxi, as the wind blew gusts of rain across her face. Anyone passing her would have thought they were looking at a very upset four-year-old. Her lower lip stuck out tremulously. A bus crashed along the road, spraying her skirt with water, and ploughed on. Ellie stopped in the middle of the street.

‘I’m not happy, okay!’ she yelled at the open sky. ‘I don’t know why, but I’m NOT! And I don’t know who I’m talking to, because my generation doesn’t even believe in GOD anymore!’

‘How are you today, my favourite Hedgepig?’

She gave herself up for a hug inside the gloomy house. An old terrace, it was musty and undecorated, and her father had a thing about putting on the central heating and very rarely did, preferring to stomp about in several layers of faintly grubby pyjamas.

‘Hey Dad. Little bit grumpy. What’s the matter with you?’

‘I think I had a bad sausage.’

‘I told you before: you eat too many sausages.’ She poked him in the belly. ‘Why don’t you have something healthy?’

She went into the bathroom and dug out the bottle of milk of magnesia; as predicted it was on the top shelf.

‘They make healthy sausages?’

‘Not exactly.’ Ellie checked the grill was off – he’d already had a minor fire – made him take the medicine and made them both a cup of tea.

‘How could you not find this? It was right on the shelf.’

Her dad squirmed and tried to look as if he hadn’t done it on purpose so she’d come over and see him. Ellie told him about the party fiasco, and her general sense of being miserable.

‘Well, you’d better do something about it then. Haven’t you been saying since the day after you got your job that you really want to switch jobs? Why don’t you do that?’

‘Not this month. Not until they forget about the customer services rep and the bottle of quink.’

‘Explain exactly what it is you do again, Hedgepig?’

‘Business Development Manager. Oh, never mind. God, they should have a Bring your Parents to Work Day.’

‘My theory is, right, if you can’t sum it up in a sentence, it’s not a proper job. Like, “I nick thieves”.’

‘Dad, that’s a movie pitch, not a career.’

‘“I fix hearts” – cardiologist, see?’

‘Yeah, yeah, I’ve cottoned on. Nobody has simple jobs any more.’

‘That’s true,’ mused her dad. ‘Nobody does. What is it Julia does again?’

‘She’s a systems analyst consultant.’

‘That’s exactly what I mean. That doesn’t even make sense.’

‘There’s too many people in the world. They have to make up stuff for us to do.’

‘Ah. That would explain computers.’

Ellie thought for a second.

‘God, you know, I think it does.’

‘Okay then, if you’re looking for something new to do, why don’t you paint the front room?’

‘Da ad! And eat this tomato. It’s better than nothing.’

‘Shan’t. Why don’t you …’

‘… get myself a nice young man? Because there are none, Dad.’

‘In the whole of London, there isn’t one single nice man?’

‘Nope.’ And I have personally checked most of them, she silently added to herself.

‘I know lots of nice coppers I could introduce you to.’

‘Yes, but on the whole my motto is the less Freudian the better.’

‘Nothing wrong with a nice copper.’

‘Nothing wrong with a nice bit of tomato either. Eat!’

He took it reluctantly. This was a constant battle between them. Deep down, he liked his daughter’s chiding at him. It showed she cared. In the same way, Ellie liked his bothering her constantly about all the bad aspects of her life. As an only child and an only parent, they’d done the best they could. Which wasn’t, Ellie reflected, looking at the congealed-egg washing up, that great when you started to think about it. She squirted the remnants of a dusty bottle of Original Fairy into the sink.

‘Dad,’ said Ellie, plunging her hands into the lukewarm water. ‘Am I a Thatcherbaby?’

He shrugged. ‘Well, I suppose so. Do you remember Callaghan?’

‘No.’

‘That’s why people your age are always blaming me for voting in Thatcher.’

‘Why did you vote in Thatcher?’

‘Well, because it seemed right, you know? At the time. It seemed the right thing to do: work hard, don’t give all your money to the government, get a nice house, get a nice car.’

‘And?’

‘And then you get comfortable and then you get bored and then your wife runs off to Plockton with an accountant called Archie.’

Her dad shifted in his seat and looked uncomfortable.

‘Oh,’ said Ellie. They rarely discussed her mother and she hated upsetting him. ‘Um. Dad. You really should put these pans into soak.’

‘… and there are too many cars on the road so you can’t get anywhere and everything they’re making is absolute crap so you’ll buy another one in a month’s time and the hole in the ozone layer is about to start poisoning South America but, you know, we’re used to it now so we just can’t stop.’

‘Oh,’ said Ellie again. ‘Ehm. Bummer.’

He nodded and looked at her. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘Thatcherbaby or not, I still think you’re beautiful.’

‘How come I can wash all this rotten egg and it didn’t make me want to puke, but now you do?’

They smiled at each other.

Ellie left him to Match of the Day and wandered up to her old room, which was exactly as she’d left it eleven years ago for college. She picked up her Strawberry Shortcake doll, inhaled deeply and looked around the room.

It looked pretty much as the flat had done for her party: covered in peeling old thin magazine posters of the Brat Pack: in particular, her favourite, Andrew McCarthy.

‘Oh Andrew,’ she said, as she had done for so many years in her teens.

‘What are we going to do?’

As usual, Andrew stayed entirely schtum. Ellie had never given up, despite the range and variety of questions he’d completely ignored over the last decade-and-a-half, including:

‘Should I let Stuart Mannering put his hand up my blouse?’

(The answer should have been no, and she knew that, but she let him do it anyway.)

‘Should I finish my homework or go out and hang around the boys doing wheelies on their BMXs at the bottom of the street?’

(Ditto.)

‘Will I ever meet a nice boy?’

(Most likely not a pubescent one.)

‘Will I ever get over Miles Sampson not being in love with me?

(Yes. Well, pretty much. As long as nobody is playing Lloyd Cole and the Commotions albums.)

‘How do I get the substitute Social Studies teacher to notice me?’

(Stop trying; it’s working and he might get sent to prison.)

‘Am I gay because I really, really like my gym teacher?’

(No, it’s a teenage occupational hazard.)

‘If I wish really hard, will I grow up to get a huge pink apartment like Demi Moore’s in St Elmo’s Fire ?’

(Yes, if you become a coke whore.)

‘Now everyone at school has seen The Breakfast Club sixty-four times, will school become more like The Breakfast Club with everyone breaking down social barriers and revealing their inner selves?’

(Definitely not, although Stuart Mannering will reveal his entire outer self in biology and get two month’s detention.)