Love Bomb

by Jenny McLachlan

And I nearly did. I hauled it up the beach, along the prom and put it by Mum’s feet in the van. Unfortunately, when we were halfway home, I said the policeman’s Christmas-tree air freshener smelt of sick (it didn’t) so Mum opened her door and rolled my rock out into the gutter.

  ‘Stop the van!’ I screamed at the policeman, but Mum refused to let him. All the way home I sobbed, ‘I want my rock … I want my rock!’

  Did I mention I was thirteen?

  The minute we got home, I leapt out of the van and walked back the way we had come. Eventually, I found my rock and carried it home. It took me three hours. I lugged the rock up to my bedroom and kept it there until I went to university.

  After the trip to the beach with the policeman, Nanna made us go on days out with quite a few boyfriends – actually, to be fair, there were only three – but only one of them stuck around: your Gramps. The day I left for university, he carried my rock down the stairs and packed it carefully between my boxes in the back of his van. When we were on the motorway, he said, ‘Look in the glove box. I’ve made you a present.’

  I pulled out a cassette. Gramps had made me a compilation of music. On the insert, in tiny capital letters, he’d written the names of all the songs he’d chosen. He’d used three different coloured biros, red, green and black. ‘They’re all female singers, like you,’ he said as I put the cassette into the stereo.

  A lorry thundered past just as the opening track started. First I heard a guitar, crackly and distant, and then a woman’s voice.

  ‘That’s Bettye Swann,’ said Gramps. ‘She’s my favourite.’ Each word she sang felt like breath whispered on my neck. Then Gramps started tapping the steering wheel really hard because the track was a bit soppy and he was embarrassed.

  Hearing that Bettye Swann song led to my obsession with all things connected to the Sixties, including my band, the Swanettes. The Swanettes led me to the pub where I met your dad. If you think about it, if Gramps had never made me that tape, Dad and I would never have made you (sorry, traumatic thought, but true).

  Did you know that Gramps used to be a policeman? I bet his eyebrows are like woolly mammoths by now.

  Love you always,

  Mumface xx

  I read the letter three times then I put it back in its purple envelope. Gramps’s eyebrows would be like woolly mammoths if Nanna didn’t trim them once a week during Antiques Roadshow.

  Pulling myself out of bed, I trudge downstairs. I have that tired feeling all through my body that comes from crying too much.

  I get myself some Minibix and eat my cereal staring at the messages Dad and I have written all over the fridge: ‘pUt chip5 iN oven’, ‘luv YA bumface’, ‘betty5 the bomb’. We lost all the ‘s’ magnets a long time ago.

  Before I go to bed, I sweep a clear circle in the centre of the fridge door and write: ‘5orry dAd’.

  ‘Sadder,’ says Toby. I lower my voice and slow down. ‘Bit sadder.’

  I’m in Toby’s garage being taught how to ‘sing miserable’. The garage is bigger than the entire downstairs of my house and has a carpet, lights and heating. It isn’t even joined to his house, but is in a separate bit of the garden. The other half of Vanilla Chinchilla, Dexter and Frank, are ‘taking five’ while Toby and I sit on an old sofa and go through the song we’re singing for the Autumn Celebration. Toby’s written it and it’s called ‘Shut Up!’

  ‘Basically, Betty,’ he says, ‘I want it to sound grungy so you need to sound flatter when you sing.’ We’re facing each other and our knees are touching. Dexter is teaching Frank how to drum roll and the constant drumming combined with the knee contact is making my mind buzz. I try the opening verse again. Toby watches me with narrowed eyes. ‘Better,’ he says, ‘but it could still sound cooler.’

  This time, I drain all the emotion out of my voice. I sound so dull I almost laugh, but Toby nods and I know I’m getting it right. When I finish, he leans back and studies me for a moment and then he smiles and says, ‘Perfect.’

  We run through ‘Shut Up!’ several times and it’s starting to sound OK. Even though Toby’s younger than Dexter and Frank, it’s clear Vanilla Chinchilla is his band. He’s constantly telling us to speed up, slow down, get louder, or quieter. Usually, he’s right. We call it a day when Dexter’s mum rings and says she’s waiting for him outside.

  As Dexter and Frank pack up the drum kit, I stick around, wondering what to do. After all, wasn’t there a promise of a bit of ‘hanging out’? I’d love to go and explore Toby’s house. I caught a glimpse of it on my way in and it’s huge, all black and white like a building from Shakespeare’s time, with three pointy roofs.

  ‘Betty, Betty, Betty,’ sings Toby from the sofa as he strums away on his guitar. He grins and beckons me over. ‘Betty, Betty, Betty,’ he repeats as I sit down opposite him, ‘feelin’ sweaty, sweaty, sweaty in the Serengeti eatin’ hot spaghetti!’

  Not quite the love song I was hoping for, but I could sit and watch him play the guitar for hours.

  ‘See you later,’ calls Frank from the door. Toby stops playing and puts his guitar on the floor. There is this delicious moment, when it’s finally just the two of us, and Toby is staring at me and I’m thinking, is this it …? Are we going to kiss? Am I finally going to get to use my apple skills? OK, I admit it, I tried Kat’s apple suggestion. It was both funny and nutritious, but not very helpful kissing practice. Toby smiles and I start to blush. I just can’t help it and this makes him smile even more.

  ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Can you come to Brighton next Saturday?’

  I look at him to check he’s serious. ‘Sure,’ I say, like it’s the kind of thing boys are always asking me to do. Inside, my mind is running through all the possibilities of what this might mean and words like ‘date’ and ‘girlfriend’ keep popping up.

  ‘You can meet my friends from my old school.’ Promising … very promising. ‘They’ll like you. You’re cool …’ Then he reaches towards me, cups my chin in one hand and says, ‘Very cool.’ My cheeks are burning so much he probably needs to run his hand under cold water for ten minutes.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say in a slightly squeaky way because my cheeks are pressed together.

  ‘No worries.’ Toby lightly slaps my blushing cheek and jumps up off the sofa. ‘Right, I’m kinda busy now, so …’

  ‘Oh, OK.’ I start to gather my things together, pulling on my hat. Obviously there’s been a change of plan. Toby waits by the garage door for me, one hand on the light switch. ‘See you later, alligator,’ I say, for some terrible reason.

  ‘Sure thing, B-Cakes.’ Suddenly we’re standing very close. I look up at him and he grins, revealing his perfect white teeth, but he doesn’t move. I duck down under his arm and squeeze past him, brushing against his warm chest. He follows me out, locking the door. Then, after a final wave, we head off in separate directions, our feet crunching on the gravel.

  I wander home, my mind buzzing with questions, and without really realising it I take a detour and I head towards Bill’s. It’s starting to get dark, but people haven’t shut their curtains yet. I peer into each house in turn – I love doing this – studying the lit-up rooms. Tonight I keep spotting mums. One’s bending over a sink, her arms plunged in bubbly water. Another is flopped on a sofa with a cup of tea resting on her tummy, and then I see one on her hands and knees picking up toys. I think they’re mums because there’s mess all around them.

  I find Bill in his garage, which is different to Toby’s because it is actually a garage, with old bikes and tools, a light bulb hanging from the ceiling and lots of cobwebs. Really this is Bill’s garage, his mum gave up on it years ago, and the back wall is taken up with the rack he built to store his windsurfing kit.

  ‘Hello,’ he says, glancing up from the board he’s mending. I sit on a stool and watch as he presses pink putty into a hole and starts to sand it down. It’s relaxing, a bit like watching Kat put on her make-up. The garage is warm. There’s an electric heater next to me with three bars glowin
g hot and orange. Bill blows dust from the top of the board. ‘So what’s up?’ he asks, wiping the board clean with a cloth.

  ‘Nothing,’ I say. Eric’s left some Lego men sitting on the table. There’s Batman carrying a chicken leg and Yoda from Star Wars. For some reason, Yoda’s wearing a lady’s skirt. I pick him up and walk him towards Batman.

  ‘Know not if I have a boyfriend, do I, Batman,’ I say, in my best Yoda voice.

  Bill shakes his head and picks up Batman. ‘Yoda,’ he says, his voice a deep growl, ‘your impression is shocking. You sound Welsh.’

  ‘If Toby-Wan Kenobi asks me to go to Brighton on Saturday,’ carries on Yoda, undeterred, ‘a date it is?’

  ‘Perhaps, Yoda.’ Bill makes Batman fly up to Yoda’s face. Batman starts to hit Yoda with the chicken leg. ‘Do you want to go to Brighton with this Toby?’

  ‘Exciting it will be.’

  ‘I will be walking among you in Brighton on Saturday,’ snarls Batman, ‘watching Bea and Ollie jive at the Churchill Shopping Centre … and fighting evil.’

  ‘What?’ I say, abandoning Yoda.

  ‘Check your phone,’ says Bill. ‘You’re invited too.’

  ‘That is so weird,’ I say, pulling out my phone. Sure enough, there’s Bea’s text saying we should all go to Brighton together. ‘What are you doing hanging out with my friends?’ I say. ‘I guess Bea’s trying to get us together so that me and Kat can make up.’

  ‘There’s no wind forecast for Saturday so I said I’d go.’ He shrugs, not seeing what the big deal is. He’s met up with my friends before, but I’ve always been there. ‘Obviously, I thought you’d be coming too.’

  ‘I’ve already said I’ll go to Brighton with Toby. Maybe we can all meet up?’ I try to imagine it in my head.

  ‘OK,’ says Bill.

  I help him pack up because I don’t really want to leave the warmth of the garage and go home. What if Poo is sitting on my sofa with a cup of tea on her stomach? ‘How’s your love thingy going?’ I ask Bill as we lift his board back on to the rack.

  ‘Not so well,’ he says.

  ‘You know it’ll be fine. You get perfect marks in everything.’

  ‘Not everything,’ he says. He opens the garage door and a gust of wind swooshes through the gap, bringing in a pile of dead leaves.

  ‘Give me a line of poetry for the road,’ I say. ‘I liked the starry skies one.’

  He looks at me and thinks for a moment. ‘Here’s one from a play,’ he says. ‘Love is like a child that longs for every thing that he can come by.’

  I duck down under the half-open door and repeat it a couple of times in my head. ‘So, who said it, and what does it mean?’

  ‘William, or, as I prefer to call him, Bill Shakespeare said it, and it means that if you’re in love, you’re happy with any tiny bit of attention you get from the person you love … just like children think everything is amazing.’ I must look confused because he adds, ‘Remember Eric when I gave him that cardboard box? It was just an old box, but he turned it into a prison for his Moshi Monsters and played with it for hours.’

  ‘I think I get it,’ I say, remembering the times I hovered outside Toby’s classroom waiting for him to come out and maybe, just maybe, say a few words to me. Then I grin. ‘I don’t want to scare you or anything, Bill, but I think Kat might be longing for a bit of you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Seriously. She said you were cutesome.’

  Bill rolls his eyes. ‘She did not,’ he says. Then, for the second time today, a boy shuts me out of his garage.

  I think about love all the way home. More specifically, I think about whether I’m in love with Toby Gray all the way home.

  As soon as I get in, I head upstairs because I’ve got a plan. I’m going to analyse the evidence and work out exactly what’s going on with me and Toby. I open up my Dennis the Menace book and find a blank page. Dennis is going to become my Big Book of Love. First I write down Bill’s quote – Love is like a child that longs for every thing that he can come by – then I draw a love grid.

  Yes, I am definitely in love with Toby. No, I’m in something with Toby, but it might not be love.

  His touch makes me feel funny in my tummy … and my arms, legs, fingers, hair follicles, eyeballs and generally everywhere. The funny feeling in my tummy isn’t entirely good. Sometimes it’s a bit like the time that big dog barked in my face in the park (e.g. scary).

  I know where he is the second he walks into a room, like he’s the North Pole and I’m a big magnet. Sometimes, he makes me stop being Bettyish. For example, this morning, I wanted to wear my Hello Kitty crocheted hat, which essentially gives me a kitten’s head, but I didn’t because last time I wore it he said I looked like a giant baby.

  I love being near him, just like Eric loves mud, rain, stones, buttons and empty boxes. I’m not sure he walks in beauty like the night. It’s more like he walks in hottiness like a panther.

  So that didn’t help.

  I can’t ring Kat, and Bill’s already given me his Shakespeare advice so that leaves Bea … or Dead Mum. Bea doesn’t answer her phone so I have to go with Dead Mum. I know which letter I want to read: The one where I fall in love.

  I don’t want to open the letter if there’s a chance Dad could walk in. I haven’t told him about the letters and I’m enjoying having a secret from him. I decide that the safest place is in the bath.

  Ten minutes later, I’m up to my nose in wolfberry bubbles (gift from Poo to my dad – I use half the bottle) and the door is locked. After carefully wiping my hands on a towel, I open The one where I fall in love and pull out two crisp sheets of paper. Three papery petals fall into the bath. I sink down into the bubbles, keeping my hands up high, and start to read.

  Dear Plumface,

  Being in love can be very confusing, especially the first time you experience it. It’s a bit like the London Underground.

  The first time I fell in love was with Rich and I was eleven years old. Every breaktime for a week, Rich gave me a Curly Wurly. Just in case Curly Wurlies don’t exist any more and you’re thinking I was getting an exotic love bite, don’t worry, a Curly Wurly is a twisty bar of toffee covered in chocolate. If I’m honest, back then they were just about the cheapest chocolate you could buy, but it was still enough to make me hold Rich’s clammy hand under the desk and to scratch ‘I lve Rich Musher’ on the lid of my Ghostbusters pencil tin.

  With the benefit of hindsight, I wasn’t actually in love with Rich, I just really liked Curly Wurlies. I am so glad I didn’t marry him, Betty. Imagine it, Lorna Musher.

  The first time I really fell in love, I was fifteen and it was with Carlo Ferrari. Lorna Ferrari … now that’s more like it! Carlo moved to our school from Wales. The moment he walked into my classroom, I fell for him big time. He had these huge brown eyes that made my internal organs dissolve and just looking at his fingers made me blush because I wanted them to touch me so badly. Not in a rude way, just in a holding hands, pushing-a-strand-of-my-hair-behind-my-ear type of way. Best of all, he was brave.

  There was this girl in our class called Eleanor who had spots. Every single day, when she walked into our tutor room, Jamie Watts called her Pizza-Face. The rest of us just watched this happening because we were so relieved he wasn’t calling us Pizza-Face. On Carlo’s first day, he heard Jamie doing his Pizza-Face routine and he walked right up to him, stared into his eyes, pointed a finger at him and said, ‘Shut it, boy!’ (Remember he came from Wales.) Jamie never called Eleanor names again.

  When Carlo became one of my best friends, I still loved him. When he started going out with Eleanor a year later, I still loved him. When I went to university, I still loved him. I never told anyone that I was in love with Carlo Ferrari … until now.

  These petals are from a rose he gave me. A while after he stood up to Jamie, we were walking home from school when he disappeared into someone’s garden and then reappeared holding the most beautiful pink rose I had ever seen.
He handed it to me and there was this amazing moment when the world stood still and I knew I was seconds away from discovering what it felt like to hold Carlo’s wonderful hand. Then I said, ‘Thanks,’ and shoved the rose in my bag like he’d just given me a 10p Curly Wurly. I was so in love with Carlo I couldn’t believe he would like me … even when he gave me a rose. A rose, Betty! The international symbol for ‘I Love You’. Two weeks later, he started going out with Eleanor.

  I was way funnier than Eleanor. I would have been a great girlfriend for Carlo.

  But who is this waiting round the corner …? It’s Nick Plum: painter-decorator, lover of soul music and the bravest man on the planet … oh, and your dad, of course. Now that was love alright, but it’s a whole different story.

  I’m not sure who you’ll fall in love with or when it will happen. Right now you are in love with me and your dad so you’re in safe hands.

  Reading over this letter it all seems to make sense, but at the time, when Rich said he wouldn’t give me any more Curly Wurlies unless I kissed him, and when I saw Carlo and Eleanor holding hands, I felt totally lost. If you feel lost when you fall in love, stay where you are, don’t panic and think. Just like you would if you were lost on the London Underground. I’m sure you’ll find your way home.

  Love you always,

  Mumface xxx

  I put the letter on the edge of the sink and try to scoop the rose petals out of the water, but they disintegrate into nothing. My bath’s gone cold so I turn on the hot tap with my toe and sink under the churning water. Thanks for that, Mum: stay where you are, don’t panic and think. Worst advice ever. But then again, what did I expect? I chose The one where I fall in love because I hoped she’d somehow help me understand what’s going on with Toby. But how could she have predicted that I’d fall in love with a supernaturally hot boy who would invite me to Brighton and then throw me out of his garage?

  It looks like I’m going to have to work this one out on my own.