“All right, thanks.”
“Noah’s come to visit you, Millie!” she said, brightly.
“Yes, I know, I can see that!” his gran said, rolling her eyes at Noah.
“I’ve brought your dinner. Do you want some, Noah?”
“Yes, please.”
Noah gratefully received his steaming plate of beef stew and mash, which he balanced on his lap. It was funny food, the sort they used to eat in the Olden Days, but certainly a damn sight better than anything he would be given at home.
“Be careful, I think they poison it,” Gran said as soon as Matron had left.
“It tastes nice.”
“Peanut, we both know that’s bollocks, don’t we?”
“Yes, Gran.” He grinned. He loved it when a bit of pre-dementia Gran shone through. How she used to be. How she should be. Classic, vintage Gran.
“Put the music back on. See if you can find a bit of Starship. Track ten, I think.”
Noah pressed the buttons on the CD player and flicked through the tracks of his gran’s “Greatest Hits of the 80s” album. They both happily ate their food to a soundtrack of soft rock, New Romantics and synth pop, as Gran regaled him with tales of her youth, when she was “queen of the dance floor” and “knew how to throw some shapes”. A pity, Noah considered, that I didn’t inherit any of those genes. But he did inherit something, and it was a far, far better gift: up on the wall were framed prints of Angela Lansbury (from Murder, She Wrote) and Joan Hickson (the best Miss Marple), looking down quizzically (they were both in character) at their two biggest fans. Yes, that love of detective stories was Gran’s gift to him, and much better that than knowing how to … jive, or whatever the cool kids called it these days.
“I’ve been invited to a party, Gran!” he said, putting down his plate.
“Peanut, five words. Keep. It. In. Your. Pants.”
Noah chuckled. Gran was obsessed with him not having sex under any circumstances. If only she knew how very far away he was from anything of that nature. “No, it’s not anything like that. I mean, it’s a normal party, not a sex orgy.”
“Keep it in your pants.”
“I’m gonna keep it in my pants!” God only knew he was, like it or not.
“Who invited you?”
“A girl,” he said, adding before she could get a word in edgeways, “and I’m totally not going to get it out of my pants, so don’t even… But yeah. A girl. Called Sophie. And it’s fine, because she’s moving house anyway, so nothing would happen, even if I wanted it to.”
“Where’s she going?”
“Milton Keynes.”
Gran wrinkled her nose. “Shithole,” she said. “What about Harry?”
“What about Ha—” He stopped himself. What about Harry? How could he have been so thoughtless? He and Harry had rules! They had agreements!
The Rules (as agreed by Noah and Harry in Year Nine on a joyous November afternoon when they both had excuse notes for PE)
(1)Mates before dates. (But we both acknowledge dates are highly unlikely.)
(2)Haribo is an acceptable birthday or Christmas gift.
(3)There is no shame in still watching SpongeBob, but it doesn’t need to be mentioned in public and will never be used to blackmail or threaten the other.
(4)We both will always hate the following: football, rugby, tofu and, following the disastrous residential trip in Year Eight, France.
(5)We both do solemnly swear that we shall never leave the other one behind, and if one of us gets:
(A)rich
(B)bow chicka wah wah
(C)put in prison
the other will do everything possible to make sure the good/bad fortune can be shared by (a) splitting the wealth equally, (b) helping the other to find appropriate romantic entanglements or (c) mounting a defence in court and shouting things like “Objection!” at the judge and channelling Miss Marple to find exciting evidence that proves innocence beyond all doubt.
He couldn’t believe it. He had fallen foul of sections (1) and possibly (5b); how was that possible?! The Rules were sacred. He couldn’t break them. Through everything, through all the crap (and there had been endless crap), one person had always been there for him: Harry.
He eyeballed his gran. “Obviously, Harry is coming too. Of course he is!” Noah bluffed.
Gran gave a little smile. “You better go tell him that, then, hadn’t you?”
Damn it to hell, how did she know? The woman was impossible to bullshit! Noah gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “’Kay. Take care, Gran.”
“If you see George, tell him I’m waiting!”
“Will do!” he played along, because it was easier.
“And what must you remember?”
“Erm…”
“Keep it in your pants.”
“Yeah.”
“Say it!”
“I’ve got to keep it in my pants.”
“Good Peanut.”
He’d sent Sophie a text that read “OK IF HARRY COMES TO PARTY TOO?” all in capitals because it was VERY IMPORTANT and quite URGENT. She had replied pleasingly promptly with “Of course!” and put a little “x” at the end, to which he’d replied with his own “X”. This was practically sex, but he’d kept it in his pants, so it was totally fine. Also, the good thing about sending kisses by text (rather than doing it in real life) was that it was fully hygienic and you didn’t have to practise first, so everyone was a winner. Feeling quite the modern, successful man, he lay on his bed with his mobile to his ear. “Haz? Guess what?”
“Did you get off with her?”
“What? No!”
“Anything?”
“No. Not really. Look, Harry, this line of questioning is—”
“Not really?!”
Noah sighed. Harry clearly wanted to know every little detail, even if things like this, the fine details of a romantic liaison, should really be kept on the down-low. He wasn’t a kiss-and-tell sort of boy, after all. “I told her I liked palindromic numbers and she told me she was moving to Milton Keynes.”
“Are the two connected?”
“I don’t think so. But listen,” he said, keen to move on from this, “you and I, we’re off to a party!”
“What? How?”
“Sophie invited me. And I told her, very clearly and in accordance with The Rules, that I would only come if you came too.”
“We like to come together.”
“We do, yes… Oh, I see, yes, ha ha!” Noah said, forcing an awkward chuckle.
“I do prefer it when we both come,” Harry continued.
“Right, OK. Yes. That’s another … good double entendre.”
“Although do you remember my aunt’s wedding, and only I came?”
OK, for whatever reason, this was clearly a thing. “I do remember the wedding. I wasn’t well and didn’t feel like coming that day. But then there was your parent’s barbecue, when I came first and then you came later because you were at swimming?”
Harry guffawed, clearly delighted. “Well, I can’t think of any more coming jokes, but that all sounds sweeeeet! You sure, though? I don’t wanna be a melon.”
“It’s lemon, you twit, and you wouldn’t be. It’s not that type of thing.” Or at least, he wasn’t sure if it was that type of thing… Maybe it was. Maybe it would be. Either way, if anything did end up happening, Harry would be at the party too and so he would have an equal chance of bow chicka wah wah–style activities with a person of his choice. It was only fair. “Why were you so weird this afternoon, anyway?”
“Noah, I was trying to defuse the very obvious tension. You’re like a tightly coiled spring that just … explodes everywhere.”
For some reason, Harry talking about him exploding everywhere made his stomach feel tingly.
“You explode everywhere,” Harry repeated.
“I heard.”
“What are you thinking about right now?”
“Shut up,” he grimaced, adjusting himse
lf as a boy-type situation suddenly popped up, for reasons that Noah couldn’t quite fathom.
Harry laughed. “What’s the dress code, then?”
“It’s a party, Harry. At a house. A party house … party. At a house. You’ve been to a party at a house before, right?”
“Only the ones with jelly and pass the parcel.”
“Right, well … it’s hip casual cool, I guess,” he said, patiently.
“Hip casual cool?”
Noah could practically hear Harry smirking. “I believe that’s the modern term, yes,” he sniffed.
“’Kay, well, best get my beauty sleep, then…”
“All right. Laters.”
“What did you say?”
“Laters.”
Harry blew out a breath. “You’ve changed.”
Noah snorted, shook his head and hung up. He lay back and listened to the beautiful silence of the house for a moment. It wasn’t normal to end a conversation with your best mate and have a boy-type situation come up. He would just have to put it down to out-of-control hormones and … a conversation that was sort of about Sophie. Yes. He’d had a conversation with his mate – about a girl – and that’s why he’d ended up like this.
“Noah! I’m home!” his mum called up from the hall, suddenly banging through the front door. With reflexes a fighter pilot would be proud of, he deftly covered himself with his duvet in one swift movement, just in case she were to barge in and see him in this somewhat overexcited state.
“Must be asleep,” he heard her whisper.
He decided to say nothing. His bedroom light was off; she might assume he’d gone to bed, and then he wouldn’t have to talk to her or—
He froze in terror when he heard it.
The most terrible sound in the world.
From downstairs.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The unmistakable low tones of a male voice. Followed by his mother’s coquettish laughter. More low tones. More giggles, then:
“Sssh! Sssh! You might wake him!” (His mother.)
Various low tones. (The Mystery Man.)
Suppressed giggles. (His mother.)
Noah sat on the edge of his bed. Frozen. Wide-eyed. Who was this man she had brought home?
He tiptoed across to his bedroom door and pressed his ear against it in the hope of hearing better, but they were talking too quietly. This piqued his suspicion. She wasn’t being all quiet because she was afraid of waking him. She was unremittingly selfish and wouldn’t care about his need for reinvigorating rest.
No.
She was being quiet because she had something to hide.
He gently pressed the door handle down and slowly pulled the door towards him, millimetre by millimetre, so as to avoid it creaking and alerting the living room occupants to his presence.
But now they were no longer talking.
Now there was a different noise.
And it was something like:
Slurp … sluurrrp … sllllurrrrp…
He was no expert, but he knew what that sound was.
It was the sound of passionate, pre-sex-style kissing.
On every level, this was unacceptable. There were reasons too numerous to mention, but the top of Noah’s list was something like:
Reasons why Mum can’t have sex with anyone
(1)“Mum” and “sex” are two words that should never be in close proximity to each other because ewwww! And eeugggh!
(2)WHAT ABOUT DAD?! She’s acting like he doesn’t exist any more! They’re not even divorced! What if Dad still loves us, but for some reason can’t let us know? Suppose he really had been kidnapped? Or is being held hostage? How could she betray him like this?
(3)I can’t just come home with a random middle-aged bloke and say he’s my new dad, so she can’t bring home a random middle-aged bloke and say it’s her new “fella”. (“Fella” definitely being the sort of irritating word she would use.)
Appalling. His mother was downstairs, canoodling and tongue wrestling with a mysterious man! He gagged as his stomach lurched up some of the beef stew from earlier. What if they started shagging right here, right now?
He froze. How could he have been so stupid? Miss Marple would have worked this out by now and gathered everyone in the drawing room. Jessica Fletcher would have tricked the perpetrator into an admission. The clues had been there all along!
Yes … it all began to make sense… When his mother had come home earlier she had checked her hair in the mirror … because she’d had her roots done… She’d had them done to impress a man… In the socket in the hall he’d noticed the plug-in air freshener… “Essence of Passion Flower”… It had been an odd addition, but he hadn’t thought too much of it until now! It was some sort of love gas, designed to enhance the mood and encourage the shagging.
Oh God, she was going to bring him upstairs!
She was going to bring him upstairs and they would engage in intercourse right here with Noah just a paper-thin wall away and he would hear every single grunt and every single groan of pleasure and it was HIS OWN MOTHER and it was just all too HORRIBLE…
“AAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHH!” he screamed, with his hands over his ears.
There was a short scuffle from downstairs. “Damn, he’s awake,” he heard his mother say, followed by some indeterminable words and the front door quickly opening and closing. There was five seconds of silence, and then,
“Noah?”
Shit! Now what? “…Yeah?”
“What the hell’s the matter?”
“Er … I was having a nightmare about my French oral.”
“…Fine.”
Then silence. Noah turned his head and squinted, like that somehow gave him superhero hearing. But it kinda worked. She was forty, and like most decrepit people, she hadn’t turned her mobile’s keyboard clicks off. She was texting. Texting whomever she’d just been kissing. Probably telling him it was a false alarm, to come back, to have sexual relations.
No.
No bloody way!
He quickly wrapped his dressing gown around himself and charged downstairs. He was damn well going to explode.
He was going to explode all over his mother.
(No, not that. That sounded like a Freudian nightmare.)
“WHO IS IT?!” he shouted at her as she looked up, mid-text.
“Who’s what?” she said, innocently.
What was the point in denying it? He’d bloody heard her! “Whoever you were kissing. It was disgusting.”
“No idea what you’re talking about.”
He wasn’t going to let her deny it. “I know what I heard.”
She looked him in the eye, sizing the situation up. “Sit down, Noah,” she said, making her mind up.
He hated it when she pulled the “I’m a proper adult” card, because whilst it might technically be true, a woman who once spent a hundred pounds in a single month phoning premium-rate tarot card lines was no adult in his eyes.
He plopped himself down on the sofa whilst his mother stood by the window and took an extraordinarily long time to light a cigarette. “OK, fine, Noah,” she said, finally exhaling smoke into the room, “I have met someone. A man. How do you feel about that?”
Noah shrugged, trying to play it cool whilst his heart pumped furious blood around his head. How could she do this? What about him? She had already failed in almost all her maternal duties – he would suffer more now because she would only be focused on some horrific man. And what about his dad? What would he think about all this? In his absence, he should at least have someone representing his views, and Noah was more than happy to take on that responsibility.
“I feel like it’s appalling,” he said, eyeballing her. “I feel like you’re shirking your responsibilities as a married woman. I feel like you’ve lied and cheated and dodged the truth and behaved in the most despicable manner known to man!”
“Well, I don’t expect you to like it,” she said. “You’ve been used to the run of the place. Pa
rading around the house like a peacock.”
Noah looked at her, aghast. Where was all this utter rubbish coming from?
“Mu—”
“I’m speaking!” she interrupted. “Now, I’m not saying this is going to go anywhere, I’m not saying this will be for ever, or he’ll be moving in, or anything really. I’m just saying it’s happened and we’ll have to see.”
Noah glared at her. So she was already thinking about him moving in, then? She was right about one thing: Noah did have the run of the place, and the thought of sharing that with another person was utterly intolerable. The natural order of things would be upset. He didn’t want another toothbrush in the little pot in the bathroom. An extra person wanting to use the loo in the mornings. Awkward and silent “family” outings to the Harvester, pretending everything was cool whilst miserably eating warm cucumber, molested by small children’s fingers, from the unlimited salad cart.
“And what about Dad?” he asked.
“What about him?”
“You’re still married to him!” he said, desperate for some acknowledgement that Dad was still actually in the picture. How could she act like he didn’t matter?
“Noah, we haven’t seen him for, what, six years now, is it? He could be dead for all we know. I’m sorry to sound harsh, but it’s true.”
Noah flicked his eyes down and back again, but tried to keep a poker face. That was the first time he’d heard the word “dead” said in relation to his dad. He’d thought it, sure, but for someone else to actually say it aloud… A cold shiver shocked up his spine. Dad couldn’t be dead. He would know if he was dead, he was sure of it. It would feel different. Empty. “Well, what if he isn’t dead?”
His mum shrugged. “We’ll never know. I can’t base the rest of my life and entire future happiness on the possibility he might be alive and that, if he is, he’s changed from being a completely thoughtless bastard into a model husband. Can I?”
“But—”
“I have no desire to talk about your father, Noah.”
“But—”
“Leave it! Jesus!” she shouted.
He knew better than to push it. And perhaps, on this one point, his mother was right. If his father really cared about them, he would be here. “Who is it, then?” he said, unable to look at her.
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