Niven Govinden - Graffiti My Soul

Mum turns off the TV and switches on the light so that we’re no longer in darkness. She hasn’t combed her hair since she got up, but she doesn’t look ill, tiredness overtaking the drunk state; if you were peering through the window, you’d see a lazybones with a bad case of bed head, nothing more. Once we get the lights on, her moving off the sofa to do it, me taking her cue and putting the kettle on, I know we’re getting somewhere, movement being the enemy of all wallowing. Get a drunk to start acting useful and you divert all kinds of catastrophe, so long as it’s restricted to light-switching and TV control, rather than boiling pasta or giving you a lift to the shops.

The first thing I do is pour the rest of the wine down the sink. It’s not even the decent stuff, just a nasty bottle of no-brand Chardonnay bought at the Co-op down the road. It was Mum who taught me about wine, that’s how come I can be such a snob about it, and why I get so hurt when, not for the first time, it sinks in how quickly she must have bought that bottle. Probably picked it up without even looking at it. (Which explained a previous time a couple of years back when I got home to find her mopping up the remains of a bottle of non-alcoholic that she’d thrown against the wall on realising that she was living the haste/speed conundrum.)

So I get busy with the teabags and listen as Mum tells me how she made a pass at Keith in her car outside our house at ten thirty-five p.m. How he reciprocated and came indoors. How it was over by eleven. How they never even made it up to the bedroom.

Because I have some kinda respect, I’m silent, but I’m heaving so hard my guts have spilled from my throat and loop round my neck like those big thick hippy rope necklaces the girls are wearing these days. I’d look almost fashion forward, until you realised that I’ve just scopped my insides out on hearing my Mum talking about shagging on the sofa I’ve just sat on.

‘Why are you telling me this? D’you want me to become more fucked up than I am already?’

‘I thought we had a close enough relationship for me to be able to tell you these sorts of things. You’re not a kid any more.’

‘But I’m still your kid! It’s not the sort of stuff I want to be talking about. Haven’t you got a girlfriend you can spill your guts to?’

‘Yeah, Billie.’

‘Yeah, OK. I get the picture.’

‘Also, in a gloriously sick twist, your father called just after eleven. God, he’s got a sixth sense that man. Keith had just that second left and he was on the phone.’

‘What’s he doing calling after eleven?’

‘Trying to get hold of you. You don’t return his calls, do you, Mister I-don’t-have-a-father? You’re always out. He thought he’d get you at that time of night.’

‘Great. Now he’s calling all-hours. Thanks for the message.’

‘You don’t get it, do you? As soon as I heard his voice, I crumbled, told him what had just happened. That’s why we’re having this conversation now, so that you hear it from my mouth, not his. So you don’t get a distorted, agenda-filled account of what happened.’

‘I’d rather you both kept it to yourself, to be honest. I’m sure I don’t need to hear this.’

‘D’you think I want to be telling you these things? Private things? But I’ve been going crazy turning it over in my head all day. Had to call in sick because I couldn’t face having to pretend everything was OK, and then half the day’s gone, and you’re home, and you talk about wanting to help, so…’

‘I get it. Calm down.’

‘I am calm, Veerapen. Stop talking at me with that tone. I might be feeling vulnerable, but I don’t need to be patronised, thank you very much.’

‘Sorry. Does this mean that you’re going to stop seeing Mike and start seeing Keith? I thought you said Mike was all right.’

‘Don’t you listen to anything? The reason that I’m in this state is because I know I’ve made a mistake. Mike’s a great man, a really kind man. I never had any intention of hurting him. But everything with him has been moving so quickly, the Keith thing caught me on the hop.’

‘What kind of explanation is that?’

‘I was…’

‘It’s fine.’

‘I was…’

‘Really, you don’t have to go any further.’

‘Horny.’

‘Fuck! Mum! Just don’t say any more. Just stop speaking! Don’t say another word. Jesus!’

Tea does fuck-all when you’re wasted the way she is. I should have just cleared up the mess, packed her off to bed and gone for a run. Spared myself this cringe-fest. My shoulders are drawn high around my neck in defence. I feel like someone’s force-feeding me corrugated cardboard, I’m cringing so much. Jesus, fuck! What other child has to put up with this? Give me their address and I’ll go and give them a ten-gun salute. Fuck!

‘I’m feeling jittery about where it’s going with Mike. The seriousness of it all scares me. Makes me happy, but frightens me to death. Nothing’s going to happen with Keith. I was just curious.’

‘How, curious?’

‘Don’t ask, if you don’t want to hear the answer.’

‘It can’t get any worse. Hang on a sec.’

First I go to the upstairs toilet, where I really do heave. My guts are back inside my body and perform an all-out routine. I’d just had a banana and a Ribena on the way home, so it wasn’t pretty. Then, when I’ve cleaned myself up, and stuck my head out the window for some deep breathing, the moment Casey’s exercises were made for, I show my face in the kitchen and let her tell me how she just wanted to make sure that Mike was the right guy, because once they became official she wouldn’t be able to wonder.

‘I’m sorry about saying the F-word,’ I go.

‘I think we’ve gone past that, don’t you? Though if you think this is a red light for you to start swearing freely round the house, you’ve got another thing coming.’

‘So we do have some boundaries, then?’

‘Of course we have boundaries! You’re doing it again! Changing the subject. Will you just stop, please? Let me finish what I want to say and then you can talk all you like.’

‘I’ve heard so much my head is spinning. I don’t think I can hear any more. What else can you tell me? That you needed to shag some random guy because you were getting cold feet? That you wouldn’t ever want to hurt Billie, but it just happened? That you don’t how you’ll be able to look her in the face? That you were just practising with Keith to get things right with Mike?’

This is when she put the mug down and stopped talking to the wall. Turned to face me. Amazed.

‘How the hell would you know a thing like that?’

‘Because I’m the Son of God, Mum. Didn’t you ever realise? I know everything.’

‘Did you do it?’ goes Moon, first thing Monday break.

Punking #2 was another Friday night special. She’s had a whole weekend to think about how she’s gonna approach me, and this is the best she can do.

‘Do what?’

‘You know what. Daniel’s dad.’

‘What about Daniel’s dad, is he sick? Is that why he’s not in school today?’

She’s just come in from outdoors and is still wearing her scarf, the scarlet and cream woolly monster that’s pencil thin and about five hundred metres long. She’s fastened it together with the brooch I bought her, an amber tiger studded with fake stones that I picked up when we went to Camden Market with Gwyn.

‘What gives you the right to do things like that to people?’

‘Isn’t that a question you should be asking Daniel?’

We’re at my locker, the site of countless mock snog-fests, when we used to pretend to wind people up over our ‘are they, aren’t they’ relationship. But it was all bogus. Like one of those sham marriages that Dad’s relatives used to do to stay in the country. The only people we were winding up were ourselves. The rest of it, what people thought of us, was just window dressing. The same people are still walking past us as did three months ago. We were fooling ourselves to think that they were agog with our antics, open-mouthed at our outrageousness. They couldn’t give a shit. It’s the only thing that hadn’t changed. Thing is, who came to that conclusion first, her or me?