Kiss My Name

by Calvin Wade

  “Good of the Spanish authorities to fly you back to Southport!”

  “Oh no, it turns out the girl I saved was the daughter of a Russian billionaire, so he arranged for me to be flown back in one of his private jets and then a limousine drove me over from Manchester Airport to here.”

  Sometimes if you tell a lie with a straight face, even if the lie is so ridiculous it could not possibly be true, people are unsure whether to believe you or not. The nurse decided to seek the truth from a more reliable source.

  “Is that really what happened to your Dad?”

  Will decided to play along at first.

  “Yes.”

  “Honestly, swear on your Dad’s life?”

  Children are cajoled into truth by threatening their family with death if they lie.

  “No, not really a kite hit him in the face!”

  “Ouch. That kite?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, Mr.Strong may I suggest you take up a new hobby! Kite flying obviously doesn’t agree with you.”

  “I agree. I think Will here will be getting tiddlywinks next Christmas!”

  “Good idea or get him a Playstation, then you can play on it too!”

  “Even better!”

  “Right, Mr.Strong, that is you all done. That dressing will just keep the wound clean until you are stitched up. The Doctor will be through to the cubicle shortly.”

  “Do you think it’ll need many stitches?”

  “Quite a few I’d have thought, it’s a deep cut. You’re just lucky Mr.Strong that it didn’t catch you a couple of inches higher, you’d have been in real trouble then. Anyway, Doctor’ll be here shortly, start saving for that Playstation!”

  The nurse winked at Will who smiled back at him. He pulled the curtain closed behind him after he left.

  “Dad.”

  “Yes, Will.”

  “Can I have a Playstation?”

  “We’ll see.”

  “For my birthday, maybe?”

  “If you’re good.”

  “OK.... Dad?”

  “Yes, Will.”

  “Why do we have different surnames?”

  Will, I’ve told you this before. It’s because your Mum and I have never been able to afford to get married. It doesn’t mean we love each other any less. It just means window cleaning doesn’t make you a very rich person. Not financially anyway. Rich in lots of other ways.”

  Will wasn’t interested in the other ways we were rich, he wanted the surname question answering to his satisfaction.

  “Yeh, but Mum is Nicola Moyes, you are Simon Strong, Chloe is Chloe Strong but I am Will McLaren. Why is my name different?”

  “You have a unique name because you are unique.”

  “What does ‘unique’ mean?”

  “The only one of its kind.”

  “Is Chloe not unique then?”

  “Of course she is!”

  “Then why is she Chloe Strong then? That’s the same as you.”

  I sighed. Casualty didn’t seem to be the appropriate place to be having this discussion, nor did I seem to be the appropriate person.

  “Will, maybe this is something your Mum needs to explain to you. You’re nearly ten, I think now would be a good time for her to tell you.”

  “Why can’t you explain it to me?”

  “I might get it wrong and if I do, your Mum might shout at me!”

  “Does it have something to do with the birds and the bees?”

  “Yes, Will, it does.”

  “I know about the birds and the bees.”

  “You do?”

  “I do. I know everything.”

  “When did your Mum tell you about the birds and the bees then? She didn’t tell me that she was telling you.”

  “Mum didn’t tell me. Harry Moulton did.”

  If you were going to select a thirteen year old child to tell your own child about the birds and the bees, Harry Moulton would not be first pick. He was, what’s known in the trade as a cocky know-all.

  “I should have guessed! What did he tell you, Will? Do you know how babies are made?”

  “Sort of, I think.”

  “OK, hit me with it.”

  “By a man and a lady, who love each other, having sex.”

  That sounded like a promising start.

  “And what’s sex? Kissing?”

  “No, Dad, sex is when a man puts his thingie into the lady’s furry line.”

  “What’s a furry line?”

  Will became a little coy and embarrassed.

  “Dad! You know! The furry line is what ladies have here,” he pointed between his legs, “men have a willy but women don’t. They just have a line. Ladies ones go furry.”

  “OK.”

  “Do you not know this, Dad?”

  “I did, but I forget. So how does the baby get made then?”

  “Men have tiny, tiny little babies in their thingy and when it goes into the line, there’s water in there and all the little babies jump into the water and start swimming.”

  “How do they know how to swim?”

  “They just know.”

  “Do they not have to wear tiny armbands?”

  “No, don’t be silly, they just know how to swim, like dogs do. They probably do doggy paddle.”

  “Right. So where do they doggy paddle to?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if they just swim in the water, how does that make a big baby?”

  “They don’t just swim, they swim to an egg. Ladies keep an egg, like a bird’s egg, inside the line and the first baby that gets to the egg swims into it and then that baby grows bigger in the egg. The egg has a tube in it to feed the baby, so if the Mum eats chocolate, the baby eats chocolate too.”

  “And when it’s ready does the baby come out of its Mummy’s tummy?”

  “No! Of course not! The baby keeps growing in the egg until it gets too big for the egg and then it hatches and when it hatches, it swims back along the water and out the line.”

  “Thanks for reminding me, Will. What happens to all the other little babies, the ones that don’t grow?”

  “Hmmm, I’m not sure. Maybe they just stay swimming in the swimming pool.”

  “Got yer.”

  “So why am I Will McLaren then and you are Simon Strong? Are you not really my Dad?”

  I knew one day Will would ask me that question. I had always dreaded it being asked. I had given a lot of thought to how I would answer, but, put on the spot, I just played it safe.

  “Will, when we get home, have a little chat with your Mum about everything to do with the birds and the bees. Harry Moulton has done a very good job, but I don’t think he has managed to get everything right and your Mum will be much better than I would at explaining properly. Whatever your Mum tells you though, Will, I will always, always be your Dad, OK?”

  “OK. I wouldn’t want another Dad. No other Dad would be as good as you.”

  I started to well up a little.

  “Thanks, Will. Anyway, I just told you, didn’t I? We may have different surnames, but I am your Dad and always will be.”

  WILL –August 2006

  Simon Strong is my Dad. When I was nine, my Mum broke my heart by telling me that my biological father had been a boy at school that she had briefly dated. The boy, Jason McLaren had apparently had some involvement in my life whilst I was a baby, but had gone to Loughborough University and Mum had lost touch with him after he graduated. She heard on the grapevine that he had married a girl that he had met in his final undergraduate year. Apparently, my biological father’s parents still live in the Chorley area, but Mum says they were not keen on me being brought into this world and have long since wiped their hands of me. Funny to think though that I may be buying some frozen chips at Tesco and my grandparents might walk past and I wouldn’t even know! I’m not bothered. They are obviously unpleasant people, so at least I don’t have to devote any of my time to visiting them.

  The f
act that my name was Will McLaren rather than ‘Strong’ or ‘Moyes’ had aroused suspicions about who my father was, even before Mum sat me down and told me. Once I knew my background though, rather than it putting distance between Simon and me, it brought us closer than ever. The first thing I did when I found out he wasn’t my Dad, was run to him and cry in his arms, whilst giving him an almighty hug. This was a man who had chosen to bring me up, teach me right from wrong, cheer me on from the side of every sports field I was on and help finance my upbringing, not because of a genetic obligation, but purely because he loved me and my mother. There is not a better man alive and it annoyed me that I had the surname of a man I don’t even remember meeting, rather than that of a man who shared my life.

  My Mum and Dad had been childhood friends and started dating soon after Jason McLaren abandoned my Mum. When I was three, my Mum moved out of my Grandad’s house and moved in with my Dad. They didn’t have a deposit for their mortgage, so took out a 100% mortgage deal. As soon as we all moved in, Mum tells me that Dad and I would spend every dry moment in the garden! It was during one dry summer evening, when I was three or four, that Dad brought out a bat, ball, wickets and bails and my love for cricket was born. Dad spotted I had a natural eye for the ball, so when I was six he took me to the junior cricket coaching at Chorley Cricket Club. By the following summer I was playing for the Under10s! By thirteen, I was playing for the Under13s, Under 15s, Under17s, Chorley District and the Chorley Men’s 3rd Team! Dad went to every game, every season. He would often complete the score book or keep the score board up to date. If I batted or bowled poorly, he wouldn’t be afraid to criticise my action or shot selection, but I always knew it was because he was desperate for me to do well. When I batted well or took a few wickets, he almost glowed with pride. Dad had been a schoolboy cricketer himself and once I started playing for the 3rd Team, he bought himself a new set of whites, a new bat, pads and box and brought himself out of retirement. He just wanted the opportunity to bat with me, which didn’t happen too often, as I batted four or five and he tended to bat eleven, but on the rare occasion we did, he absolutely loved it. I made him take a few quick singles too, in an attempt to get him to shed a few pounds! It was during one of our car journeys to a cricketing away day, in Simon’s battered Toyota, that I decided it was time to re-ignite a previously discussed desire to change my surname.

  Dad was giving me some pre-match instructions, as per usual!

  “Today, Will, if you get to bat, remember what I told you on Tuesday night, the first two balls are about survival.”

  “Dad, I’m a better cricketer than you!”

  “I know you are, but I know my limitations and I know how to maximise my potential. I was never bowled out slog sweeping second ball of my innings like you were on Tuesday night.”

  “It was a daft shot, a moment of madness!”

  “Just don’t do it again!”

  “I’ve already told you, Dad, I won’t! What’s my target today then?”

  Every game Dad would set me a target for the amount of runs he expected me to score as a minimum and the number of wickets he wanted me to take. If I achieved his target, there would be some kind of reward, such as a can and a chocolate bar or ice cream from Fredericks on the way home.

  “Ten runs and one wicket.”

  “Only ten runs, I’ll do that easily!”

  “You won’t if you slog sweep second ball!”

  “Dad, I won’t!”

  “Good.”

  “Dad, do you think you and Mum will ever get married?”

  “Whoa, where did that come from? I thought we were talking about cricket.”

  “Don’t change the subject, Dad!”

  “You just did.”

  “Do you think you will get married, one day?”

  “I hope we will one day. Right now, Will, we already owe a small fortune, so adding to the debt by having an extravagant wedding just doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Could you not just go to a registry office?”

  “We could, but I think if we are going to bother, we might as well do it in style.”

  “How much do weddings cost then? Fancy ones?”

  “I’ve never really looked into it, Will, but I’m guessing you wouldn’t get any change from ten grand.”

  “Ten grand! When will you and Mum ever get a spare ten grand?”

  “We might win the lottery.”

  “You won’t though.”

  “Will, why are you so keen for us to get married? Your Mum and I are very happy together. We don’t need a marriage license to secure our relationship, it’s already very secure.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then why mention it?”

  “I just wondered.”

  “Will, don’t give me that! I know you too well, you didn’t just happen to mention it, there was a reason for mentioning it. What was it?”

  “The ‘surname’ thing.”

  “That old chestnut!”

  “If Mum became a ‘Strong’ then I’d be the only one out of you, Mum, Chloe and me that wasn’t a ‘Strong’. I’d have more chance of getting Mum to change my name, if Mum’s name was Strong too.”

  “Have you asked your Mum?”

  “She just brushes me off. She says I can change it by deed poll to whatever I want when I’m sixteen. She says if I want to be ‘Will Strong’ or ‘Elvis Presley’ or ‘Engelbert Humpadrunk’, then I can be.”

  “Engelbert Humperdinck.”

  “Dad, was there any reason to correct me? It’s not as if I’m going to change my name to ‘Engelbert whatsisnamey’ anyway! The point is, I don’t want to change my name when I’m sixteen. I want to change it now, to Will Strong.”

  “Do you know what that involves?”

  “No.”

  “Neither do I, Will, but presumably it would involve your biological father agreeing to it and for me to be seen as your legal guardian in some way.”

  “Would that be a problem?”

  “No idea. God knows where Jason McLaren is these days. As for me being your legal guardian and you changing your name, nothing would give me greater pleasure, but...”

  “But if it is going to cost a lot of money, you won’t be able to do it because you’re skint.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Is everything in your life dictated to by money?”

  “Most things. My health isn’t and my love for you and your Mum isn’t. Pretty much everything else is though.”

  “That’s crap.”

  Crap was probably the only swear word that my Mum and Dad permitted me to use.

  “I know it is, but that’s adult life for you. They don’t say ‘schooldays are the happiest days of your life’ because they are particularly fantastic or fun, they say it because it gets even worse once you have a mortgage, loans, credit cards, bills to pay, mouths to feed and no ambition left.”

  “Sounds great, Dad! Thanks for selling adult life to me in such a positive way.”

  “Pleasure, son.”

  “At least you can get drunk to forget about it all.”

  “True but then you wake up with a hangover and even less money.”

  “So what do you reckon then?”

  “About what?”

  “My surname. I don’t want it, I want yours, Dad. I want us to be a proper family. Can you not make that happen?”

  “We are already a proper family. It’s very trendy to have a family with three different surnames. It’s all the rage, very twenty first century.”

  “Well, I’d rather we just had one.”

  “Will, let me look into it and if I can, I will, I promise.”

  “Thanks Dad and I promise you that I won’t slog sweep my second ball.”

  “Good lad.”

  “I might slog sweep the first one though!”

  SIMON – May 2010

  I’ve never read any Shakespeare but I wish I had as I’ve had his advice on money mentioned to me a million times since I’ve be
en skint. In a nutshell, if you hadn’t borrowed the money in the first place, you wouldn’t be in the mess you are in now. There are plenty of people and institutions who deserve their share of the blame about the financial mess we got into. For starters, there’s the government, who were happy to make credit easily available so relatively poor people like me would keep on spending borrowed money, giving the false impression that everything was tickety boo. Then there are the credit companies themselves, who kept sending us letters in the post every day congratulating us on being pre-approved for an extra few grand, all we had to do was sign and return a simple form. Ultimately though, when the blame is dished out, most of it has to be taken by Nicky and especially me, for living in cloud cuckoo land for years and not realising our spending was getting out of control.

  The problem with life is that none of us are guaranteed a tomorrow. In theory, if you knew for certain you were going to live until you were eighty or ninety, you would squirrel some cash away for the future. With what happened to Nicky’s Mum though and what happened to my brother, Nicky and I went through about ten years of living each day as if it were our last. We bought the kids great toys, ate out as a family every weekend in Wacky Warehouses and the likes, visited shedloads of kids amusement parks and even holidayed abroad. I had never done all that as a kid because my parents couldn’t afford it. We couldn’t afford it either but we did it anyway. The world went mad for a while and we were amongst the maddest. We enjoyed it whilst it lasted, but it sure as hell did some damage to our credit card balances.

  Originally, we ignored the sound of alarm bells ringing. If one credit card was nearing its balance limit, it didn’t matter so much as we’d soon have another one, then six months later another and a year after that another one for good luck. For some reason, it never occurred to us to stop spending so much. Nicky was working as a ‘Nursery Nurse’ and I was still doing the window cleaning with my Dad, so despite living a lifestyle beyond what our wages warranted, we didn’t contemplate the future consequences. We just kept spending until we finally got to a stage that the credit card companies cried ‘enough’. By the time we were finally turned down for a new credit card we had accumulated £30 000 worth of debt and needed to pay around £7500 a year just to keep it from going any higher. We both had our hands in shit creek trying to move us along but found we were just going around in circles.