Unconventional

by Maggie Harcourt

  “I’ve been trying to work out what’s different,” says Aidan – and I realize he’s talking to me.

  “Different?” I peel my gaze away from my father.

  “About you.” Aidan smiles…and then it’s obvious why. He can barely keep a straight face. “And I just realized – you haven’t got your clipboard with you. No wonder I didn’t recognize you at first.”

  “Gosh, you’re funny.” I very much hope my tone of voice tells him just how much I don’t believe this.

  “So I’m told.”

  “And you listened to whoever told you that, did you?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Oh, never mind.”

  My relatively good mood has soured. I don’t know why he’s annoyed me so much; it’s probably not even him. All right, I know it’s not him – not all of it, anyway. But his snide little clipboard comment earlier, combined with Sam calling me out, and that tone of voice: over-friendly, over-familiar… I’m over it.

  “Sam?”

  “Yup?”

  “I’m going to…I’m really tired, okay? Tell my dad I’ve gone up to bed and I’ll see him at breakfast?”

  “Wait, what? Seriously? It’s only… Oh.” She looks at her watch again. “Wow. That hour went fast.”

  Aidan is still standing there, right in front of me, but I don’t care if I’m being rude. I just don’t have anything left. Anyway, technically he started it with the clipboard jibe.

  I walk away without saying goodbye, leaving the two of them staring after me.

  Closing the door to my room feels like shutting an airlock. Outside, there’s the convention. There’s all the people and the fussing about lanyards and schedules and lost dogs and the endless running around – the stuff I’m normally fine with (lost dogs aside, maybe). Outside, there’s Dad and Bea. Everything changing, saving the date. College. Outside, there’s the Lexi I seem to have been today; someone I don’t really recognize, the one who snaps at her friends. And they are my friends – my real, proper, can’t-live-without-them friends.

  It’s not that we spend a lot of time together, a few weekends a year, maybe. But those weekends are intense. They say a convention weekend is the equivalent of six weeks, real time – especially if you’re one of the staff. It’s how Sam can be my best friend even though we live a couple of hundred miles apart; how I can know everything about who she really is, and how she knows everything about me – more than anyone from college, even.

  I did try, at college. One lunchtime, we were all sitting around because it was raining and no one could face going outside, and Oscar, who sits next to me in history, asked what it was about conventions I loved so much.

  “How much do you know about them? Conventions, I mean?” I asked. He shrugged, and after a bit of nudging he admitted that he thought they were just places where people went to dress up for the weekend. And that it was all a bit “weird”.

  “There’s nothing ‘weird’ about conventions,” I said, laughing, and because I just happened to have some of my planning notes in my bag that day by chance (this is a lie – I always have my planning notes in my bag, in my pocket or under my pillow), I showed him some of the panels we had planned for the next one.

  “But what about all those people who dress up as comic-book characters?”

  “Not everyone dresses up – but they can if they want to. It’s…celebrating stuff. It’s cool.”

  “Cool. Right.” He pulled a face, and I rolled my eyes.

  “Okay, so you don’t like anything? There aren’t any books or films or songs you love – nothing?”

  “I love Aston Villa. Doesn’t mean I want to run around pretending to be one of the squad at weekends though, does it?”

  “So what’s that shirt you were wearing last week, then?”

  “That’s different. That’s, like…a replica home shirt.”

  “Uh-huh. Sure. Different.” I grinned at him, but he got my point – and since then, everyone at college just files conventions under the list of things people do in their spare time. Oscar plays FIFA; I “do” conventions. And that’s as far as their interest goes.

  But Sam…Sam’s the one who understands it, for good or bad. Understands me. And if she reckons I’m off, she’s probably right.

  I close the interconnecting door between our rooms. We normally leave it open, but tonight I want to be left alone. I push open the door to the bathroom and flick on the light. In the mirror, my reflection manages to look both grey and a sort of unhealthy beigey-yellow. Appealing – but nothing a soak in the bath and a good night’s sleep can’t solve, hopefully.

  With the bath running, I pick through the mess of things I’ve dumped on my bed and find my phone, flicking through the contacts until I reach M.

  “Hello?” The voice on the other end is crackly, and sounds further away than it really is.

  “Mum. It’s me.”

  “Lexi! I wasn’t expecting to hear from you this weekend. It’s a convention weekend, isn’t it?” She immediately flips into panic mode. “What’s happened? Is it your father? Is everything all right?”

  I laugh. Five years they’ve been divorced – but she can’t help herself. “Dad’s fine, Mum. Everything’s fine.”

  “Oh. Good. Of course. I’m sorry, Lexi – you don’t usually call when you’re working, and I thought…”

  “Sorry. I needed to talk.”

  “Is something the matter?”

  In the background, I hear another voice; a burst of music like a door has opened and closed, and Mum whispering something in rapid French to the other person in the room with her.

  “How’s Leonie?” I ask.

  I can actually hear Mum light up, the way she always does when I mention her. “She’s fine. She sends her love – and she’s asking when you’re going to come out and see us. You could come for the summer? You always have a room here, any time you want.”

  “I know. This summer though…”

  Mum sighs. “They’ve set a date for the wedding. I know. He called me last night. I suppose I should feel honoured he managed to squeeze me in between whatever panels or parties you had running.” She always knows what I want to talk about, even if I haven’t quite worked it out myself when I pick up the phone. “He wasn’t sure how you’d taken it.”

  “Oh, you know…”

  “Lexi. Don’t try and pretend with me.”

  “It’s fine. Bea’s okay – honestly. You’d like her…” I hope she didn’t notice the tiny, tiny, quarter-of-a-heartbeat pause in between “Bea” and “okay”. I didn’t mean to put one there, but I just ran out of breath all of a sudden.

  “You’ll have to forgive me if I’m not completely convinced by that ‘fine’.”

  “No, I am, really. It’s just been a long day…” I pause. She waits for me to say more.

  Oh, what the hell.

  “It’s taking a bit of getting used to, that’s all. You know Dad.”

  “I do.” She pauses again, and I can’t decide whether what I hear is a sigh, or the wind in the background at her end. “And what about college? How’s that going? You’re not getting behind, are you? It’s an important year…” A creaking sound tells me she’s now out on the back terrace of the farmhouse in Brittany she and Leonie bought two years ago. The night they moved in she sent me a photo of the two of them, huddled together on an old wicker sofa with a wine glass each. I don’t think I’d ever seen her so happy before. “Be honest, Lexi.”

  “College is good. Really. There’s just so much to do right now – start of the season and everything. A lot of work.” I scuff the carpet at the end of my hotel bed with my toe. Like hell I’m going to be honest. We’d be here till next April if I was…

  “School – sorry, college – work, or father-work?”

  I laugh at the dip in her voice when she says “father”. “Both.”

  “Listen to me. Your father has his own life. He’s made his own decisions and choices – for better or
worse. I know. I was there for most of them. What you need to do is make him understand that you have to do the same, and you need the time to live your life too. There’s more to it than conventions, you know.”

  “I heard that somewhere. Not sure I believe it.” I laugh.

  “You sound just like your father. Just because he regularly does the im-bloody-possible, he thinks everyone else can do it too.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  “Because it is.”

  It is fine. Ish. It could definitely be worse. But I could very much do without all the extra wedding stuff in my head right at the start of the season. I know, I know, that it would kill Dad to think I feel this way, but…

  “Sam said I was being a nightmare today.” I feel better as soon as I say it, like I’m confessing.

  “Were you?”

  “I don’t know. Probably.”

  “Lexi,” she sighs. “Like it or not, you are very like your father. And that means you do have some of his…less appealing traits. Don’t treat people the way he does.”

  “He’s much better now…”

  “Oh, stop defending him, darling. I lived with it for much longer than you have. As long as I could.”

  “I know…”

  “I didn’t leave him because I didn’t love him. I left because…”

  “Because you couldn’t cope with him any longer.”

  “Exactly. I needed to come first in my life, Lexi – not second in somebody else’s.”

  I don’t have an answer to that, so I twirl my hair round my finger and peer through the bathroom door. There’s a grand total of about three centimetres of water in the bottom of my bath. At this rate, I’ll be able to go for a paddle before I go to bed.

  “Are you still there?” she asks.

  “I’m still here.”

  “Think about what I said, Lexi.”

  “First in your life, yes.”

  “That’s not what I meant and you know it. I meant that your father has always had a tendency to put things – his career, his business and, yes, his conventions – above people. Don’t make the same mistake. College, your friends, your future – they matter too. They matter more.” She says it so gently that if I really wanted to, I could almost pretend she isn’t saying the same thing Sam did earlier.

  Almost.

  “I’m not sure that makes me feel any better, Mum. Besides, these guys are my friends.”

  “Who says I was trying to make you feel better? I’m just telling you what you need to hear.”

  “I’m not sure that was what I needed to hear right now.”

  “Did you eat?”

  Mum may have removed herself from the world of conventions, but she still remembers.

  “I had some very small pizzas?”

  “Get something from room service. Tell your father I told you to, when he complains about the bill.”

  “I’m not really that hungry. I’m just tired. I think I’m going to go straight to—”

  “Nonsense. Have something to eat – I don’t care what. You’ll feel better for it.”

  “Yes, Mum,” I say, wondering whether she can hear me rolling my eyes.

  “Lexi, I may be in another country but I am still your mother.”

  (As it turns out, she can.)

  “Love you, Mum.”

  “I love you too, Lexi. Look after yourself.”

  I hang up and, mess or not, I throw my phone onto my bed – and myself after it.

  “See? This is what I’m talking about. Just look at that.”

  My father has skewered a sausage with his fork and is holding it aloft, peering at it. The whole breakfast table is trying to ignore him.

  “You can always tell a hotel by the sausages they serve at breakfast. A good venue has to pass the sausage test.”

  Next to me, Sam snorts into her glass of orange juice. I kick her under the table. She nudges me and winks.

  “Sausage test.”

  “Zip it, you.” I turn my attention back to my bacon. I don’t particularly feel like eating it – breakfast isn’t really my thing – but on convention time, who knows when the next meal’s coming…or what variation on dried potato it will be? Sam keeps sniggering; it’s never too early for innuendo where Sam’s concerned, but the way I see it, innuendo – like breakfast – is best dealt with from the other side of at least three cups of tea. I give my rubbery bacon one more poke with my fork. It bounces.

  Yeah, no thanks.

  “You going to eat that? Swap you a hash brown if you like?” Bede doesn’t even take his eyes off my plate from across the table.

  “Oi. My eyes are up here, dude…”

  “I’m not interested in your eyes. I’m interested in your breakfast meats.”

  It’s all too much for Sam, who turns a lovely shade of purple and dissolves into hysterics, resting her forehead against the edge of the table.

  “Give us it.” Bede leans forward and shuffles my abandoned bacon onto his plate, while a couple of seats along Nadiya pulls a face. Being the most sensible of us, she’s got a massive plateful of fruit and cereal with yoghurt, and is stuffing croissants into her bag when she thinks nobody’s looking.

  The 7.30 breakfast meeting is one of Dad’s convention rules; as unbreakable as…an unbreakable thing. The theory is that they’re meant to be some kind of team bonding exercise – you know, everyone breaking bread together and sharing a meal as a group. In practice, they’re where Dad runs through the list of everything that went wrong yesterday, everything that could go wrong today and grumbles at us for both of the above. Pre-emptively, in the case of today’s list. It’s how he shows he cares. Or something…

  There are a lot of dog jokes around today’s table. Or our end of it, at least. The other end is all paperwork and technical specs and serious faces and what I’m fairly sure is a printout of a wiring diagram. Which my dad appears to be holding upside down.

  “Get your own!” Nadiya smacks Bede’s hand as it creeps towards one of her croissants. “These are mine. Mine. All mine.” There’s the very faintest hint of mania in her voice – in all our voices, probably. I don’t think anyone except me went to bed before midnight, and when I got down to open up the ops room an hour ago, both Nadiya and Bede were already sitting on the floor of the corridor outside, waiting for me.

  I shush them both, elbow Sam in the ribs (she’s stopped laughing, but I have a nasty feeling she’s actually trying to go back to sleep – Sam can sleep anywhere; last year, she disappeared during one of the evening parties and I eventually found her asleep under the sink counter of the VIP toilets) and pull the clipboard out from under my chair.

  Everybody groans.

  “Oh, piss off.”

  “All hail, my Lady Clipboard,” Sam hisses and before I know it, she’s right back to the hysterics. Bede looks at her blankly.

  “What’s this?”

  “Nothing,” I snap – but not before Nadiya leans ever so slightly sideways and whispers “Tell you later…” to him.

  “Not you as well?” I try to look wounded. “How do you know about that?”

  “Oh, I hear everything. That, and Sam couldn’t keep a secret if her life depended on it.”

  Sam takes enough exception to this to stop laughing. “Hey. Hey, hey, hey,” she says, resting her elbow on the table and wagging a finger at Nadiya. “That’s not fair and you know it. I mean, I never told anyone about you and Charlie at last year’s Easter con ball now, did—”

  She’s cut off by Nadiya’s shriek, and it takes her a second to work out what she just did. “Oh. Oh shit. I just did that, didn’t I? Sorry.”

  “Sam!” Nadiya throws a croissant at her. It bounces off Sam’s shoulder and straight back at Bede – who snatches it off the table. Nadiya holds out her hand. “Mine, thank you?”

  Bede looks at Nadiya. He looks at the croissant. He looks at Nadiya again…

  And then, before she can stop him, he licks the cr
oissant from tip to tip – before holding it out to her. “Want it back?”

  “You’re revolting. On every level – including a few that science hasn’t even discovered yet.”

  Bede grins and takes a bite out of his hard-won pastry.

  It’s going to be one of those days…

  I’ve managed to get the only seat in the whole breakfast room with a clear line of sight right through the lobby to the registration desk, so I can see that there’s already a queue loitering in front of it by the time we finish eating. Lucky me. This also means I have a perfect view of the guy we notso-fondly refer to as “the Brother” when he saunters over and starts picking through the piles of bookmarks, chapter samples and postcards on the freebie table, like the swag-hunting vulture he is. I lean back in my chair, and hiss at my dad behind Sam’s head. Down at the far end of the table, he can barely hear me but I can see him doing that pulling-his-eyebrows-together thing that means he knows I need him.

  “What…?” he mouths.

  I shake my head, hold up a hand…and give him the signal we’ve developed over the course of several years. It’s clear and concise and can only mean one thing – and he recognizes it immediately.

  The Brother has arrived to check out the competition: us.

  I don’t need to be able to hear my dad to know what he says next.

  He pushes his chair away from the table, smoothes his hair back and pulls his T-shirt straight; shuffling all his papers together into a pile, he looks at us all. “Everyone set? Any problems, I’m on the walkie.”

  There’s a murmur from round the table as everybody starts picking up their stuff and Nadiya tries to shoulder her handbag as normal. It’s so full that she can’t actually put her arm down over it properly, so she sort of rests her hand somewhere behind her ear as though she’s scratching an itch at the back of her neck. This is apparently the funniest thing Bede has ever seen.

  “Lexi?” Dad is pointedly waiting for me. “You’re with me. Let’s go say good morning.”