by Nick Hornby
A couple of nights after that, Alicia came round for dinner, and it was OK. More than OK, really. She was nice to my mum, and my mum was nice to her, and they made jokes about how useless I was, and I didn’t mind, because I was glad that everyone was happy.
But then Alicia asked my mum about what it was like having a baby at sixteen, and I tried to change the subject.
“You don’t want to hear about all that,” I said to Alicia.
“Why don’t I?”
“Boring,” I said.
“Oh, it wasn’t boring, I can tell you,” said my mum, and Alicia laughed.
“No, but it’s boring now,” I said. “Because it’s over.”
It was a stupid thing to say, and I regretted it the moment it came out of my mouth.
“Oh well,” said my mum. “That’s the whole of history, written off, then. Bor-ing.”
“Yeah, well, it is,” I said. I didn’t mean that, really, because there are lots of bits of history that aren’t boring, like World War Two. But I didn’t want to back down.
“And also,” said my mum, “it’s not over. You’re still here and I’m still here and there are sixteen years between us and it’ll be like that forever. It’s not over.”
And I sat there wondering whether it was not over in ways she couldn’t even begin to guess.
CHAPTER 4
It’s not that things started to go wrong between me and Alicia. It just stopped being as good. I can’t really explain why, not properly. I just woke up one morning and didn’t feel the same way. I didn’t like not feeling the same way, because it was a good feeling, and I felt flat without it, but it had gone, and there was nothing I could do to bring it back. I even tried to pretend it was still there, but the trying just seemed to make it worse.
Where did it go? It was like there had been a lot of food on a plate in front of us, and we ate it all really quickly, and then there was nothing left. Maybe that’s how couples stay together: they’re not greedy. They know that what they have in front of them has to last a long time, so they kind of pick at it. I hope it’s not like that, though. I hope that when people are happy together, it feels as though someone keeps piling seconds and thirds on their plates. That night, the night after I hadn’t seen her, it felt as though we’d be together for the rest of our lives, and even that wouldn’t be long enough. And then two or three weeks later, we were bored with each other. I was bored, anyway. We never did anything but watch TV in her room and have sex, and once we’d had sex, we never had much to say to each other. We’d get dressed, put the TV back on, and then I’d kiss her good night and then go through the same routine the next night.
Mum noticed even before I did, I think. I started skating again, and I tried to make out that wanting to skate was just normal and natural, and thinking about it, it probably was. If we hadn’t gone off each other, if we hadn’t split up, then somehow we would have found some kind of routine, I suppose. In the end I’d have gone back to skating and playing skating games on the Xbox and all that. It always felt like a holiday, the time with Alicia, and the holiday would come to an end, and we’d still be girlfriend and boyfriend but we’d have a life as well. As it turned out, when the holiday ended, we ended too. It was a holiday romance, ha ha.
Anyway, I came in from skating one afternoon and Mum said, “Have you got time for something to eat before you go over to Alicia’s?” And I said, “Yeah, OK.” And then I said, “Actually, I’m not going over to Alicia’s tonight.” And Mum said, “Oh. Because you didn’t go last night either, did you?” And I said, “Didn’t I? I can’t remember.” Which was a bit pathetic, really. For some reason, I didn’t want her to know that things with Alicia were different. She’d have been pleased, and I didn’t want that.
“Still going strong?” she said.
“Oh, yeah. Pretty strong. I mean, notas strong, because we wanted to get some schoolwork done and stuff like that. But, yeah. Strong.”
“So, strong, then,” she said. “Not, you know. Weak.”
“Not weak, no. Not…”
“What?”
“Weak.”
“So you were just going to say the same thing twice?”
“How do you mean?”
“You were just going to say ‘Not weak. Not weak.’”
“I suppose so, yeah. Stupid, really.”
I don’t know how my mum puts up with me sometimes. I mean, it must all have been completely obvious to her, but she had to sit and listen to me swear that black was white, or that cold was hot, anyway. It wouldn’t have made any difference to anything, telling her the truth. But later, when I needed her help, I remembered all the times I’d been a muppet.
I think I went over to Alicia’s the night after that conversation, because if I didn’t go three days in a row, then Mum would really have known that something was up. And then I didn’t go for a couple of evenings again, and then it was the weekend, and on the Saturday morning she texted me to ask me to lunch. Her brother was around, and they were having this family reunion thing, and Alicia said I was a part of the family.
I’d never met anyone quite like Alicia’s mum and dad before I started going out with Alicia, and at first I thought they were dead cool—I can even remember wishing that my mum and dad were like them. Alicia’s dad is like fifty or something, and he listens to hip-hop. He doesn’t like it much, I don’t think, but he feels he should give it a chance, and he doesn’t mind the language and the violence. He’s got grey hair that he gets Alicia’s mum to shave back—I think he has a number 2—and he wears a stud. He teaches literature at a college, and she teaches drama when she’s not being a councillor. Or she teaches people to teach drama, something like that. She has to go into lots of different schools and talk to teachers. They’re all right, I suppose, Robert and Andrea, and they were really friendly at first. It’s just that they think I’m stupid. They never say as much, and they try and treat me as if I’m not. But I can tell they do. I wouldn’t mind, but I’m smarter than Alicia. I’m not showing off or being cocky; I just know I am. When we went to see films, she didn’t understand them, and she never got what anyone was laughing at inThe Simpsons, and I had to help her with her maths. Her mum and dad helped her with her English. They still thought she was going to go to college to do something or other, and all the model stuff was just her going through a rebellious phase. As far as they were concerned, she was a genius, and I was this nice dim kid she was hanging out with. They acted as if I was Ryan Briggs or someone really scummy like that, but they weren’t going to officially disapprove of me because that wouldn’t be cool.
At that family lunch, when I was invited because I was part of the family, I was just sitting there minding my own business when her dad asked me what I was going to do after my GCSEs.
“Not everybody is academic, Robert,” said Alicia’s mum quickly.
You see how it worked? She was trying to protect me, but what she was trying to protect me from was a question about whether I had any future at all. I mean, everyone does something after their GCSEs, don’t they? Even if you sit at home watching daytime TV for the rest of your life, it’s a future of sorts. But that was their attitude with me—don’t mention the future, because I didn’t have one. And then we all had to pretend that not having a future was OK. That’s what Alicia’s mum should have said. “Not everybody has a future, Robert.”
“I know not everybody is academic. I was just asking him what he wanted to do,” said Robert.
“He’s going to do art and design at college,” said Alicia.
“Oh,” said her dad. “Good. Excellent.”
“You’re good at art, are you, Sam?” her mum said.
“I’m all right. I’m just worried about if we have to do essays and stuff at college.”
“You’re not so good at English?”
“Not at writing it, no. Or speaking it. I’m fine at all the rest.”
That was supposed to be a joke.
“It’s just a matter of c
onfidence,” said her mum. “You haven’t had the same advantages as a lot of people.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I have my own bedroom, a mum who’s in work and who likes reading and who gets on my case if I haven’t done my homework…To be honest, I don’t really know how many more advantages I could use. Even my dad not being around was a good thing, because he’s not into education at all. I mean, he wouldn’t actually stop me trying to study, but…Actually, maybe that’s not true. It was always a thing between him and Mum. She was desperate to go to college, and he’s a plumber, and he’s always made decent money, and there was this thing going on between them, because Mum reckoned he felt inferior and tried to cover it up by telling her what a waste of time it was getting qualifications. I don’t know. As far as people like Alicia’s parents are concerned, you’re a bad person if you don’t read and study, and as far as people like my dad are concerned, you’re a bad person if you do. It’s all mad, isn’t it? It’s not reading and whatever that makes you good or bad. It’s whether you rape people, or get addicted to crack and go out mugging. I don’t know why they all get themselves into such a stew.
“I think Sam was joking, Mum,” said Alicia. “He’s good at speaking.” I didn’t find that very helpful either. They’d heard me speak. They could make their own minds up. It wasn’t like we were talking about my skating skills, something they’d never seen. If they needed to be told that I could talk, then obviously I was in trouble.
“No, he is good, I know,” said her mum. “But sometimes, if you don’t…If you haven’t…”
Alicia started to laugh. “Go on, Mum. Try and finish the sentence in a way that doesn’t piss Sam off.”
“Oh, he knows what I mean,” she said. And I did, but that’s not the same as saying I liked it.
I liked Rich, her brother, though. I didn’t think I would, because he plays the violin, and any kid who plays the violin is usually King of the Nerds. He doesn’t look like a nerd, though. He wears glasses, but they’re quite cool, and he likes a laugh. I suppose what I’m saying, if I think about it, is that he likes me. Liked me, anyway. I’m not so sure about now. And that makes a difference, doesn’t it? I mean, he wasn’t pathetic about it. He didn’t like me because he had no other friends in the world. He liked me because I was OK, and I think because he didn’t know too many people who weren’t from the Nerd Kingdom, what with the violin and music school and everything.
Afterwards, Alicia and Rich and I went to Alicia’s room, and she put a CD on, and she and I sat on the bed and Rich sat on the floor.
“Welcome to the family,” said Rich.
“Don’t say it like that,” said Alicia. “I’ll never see him again.”
“They’re not that bad,” I said, but they were, really. And to be honest, it wasn’t just Alicia’s parents who were getting on my nerves either. When I left the house that afternoon, I wondered whether I’d ever go back.
Afterwards, I went down to The Bowl for a little while and messed about on my board. Whoever invented skating is a genius, in my opinion. London gets in the way of every other sport. There are tiny little patches of green where you can play football, or golf, or whatever, and the concrete is trying to eat them away. So you play these games in spite of the city and, really, it would be better if you lived just about anywhere else, out in the countryside, or the suburbs, or someplace like Australia. But skating you dobecause of the city. We need as much concrete and as many stairs and ramps and benches and pavements as you’ve got. And when the world’s been completely paved over, we’ll be the only athletes left, and there will be statues of Tony Hawk all over the world, and the Olympics will just be a million different skating competitions, and then people might actually watch. I will, anyway. I went to the wheelchair ramp that runs from the back door of the flats round the corner and messed about—nothing too flash, just a few fakie flips and heelflips. And I thought about Alicia, and her family, and started rehearsing what I was going to say to her about us not seeing so much of each other, or maybe not seeing each other at all.
It was weird, really. If you’d have told me at that party that I was going to go out with Alicia, and we were going to start sleeping together, and I’d get sick of her…Well, I wouldn’t have understood. It wouldn’t have made any sense to me. Before you have sex for the first time, you can’t imagine where it’s ever going to come from, and you certainly can’t imagine dumping the person who’s providing it. Why would you do that? A beautiful girl wants to sleep with you and you’rebored ? How does that work?
All I can say is that, believe it or not, sex is like anything else good: once you have it, you stop being quite so bothered about it. It’s there, and it’s great and everything, but it doesn’t mean you’re happy to let everything else go out of the window. If having sex regularly meant listening to Alicia’s dad being snobby, and giving up skating, and never seeing mates, then I wasn’t sure how much I wanted it. I wanted a girlfriend who’d sleep with me, but I wanted a life as well. I didn’t know—still don’t know—whether people managed that. Mum and Dad didn’t. Alicia was my first serious girlfriend, and it wasn’t happening for us either. What it seemed like was that I’d been so desperate to sleep with someone that I’d swapped too much for it. OK, I’d said to Alicia. If you’ll let me have sex, I’ll give you skating, mates, schoolwork and my mum (because I was sort of missing her, in a funny sort of way). Oh, and if your mum and dad want to talk to me like I’m some no-hoper crackhead, that’s fine by me too. Just…get your clothes off. And I was beginning to realize that I’d paid over the odds.
When I got home, Mum was sitting at the kitchen table with the bloke from Pizza Express. I recognized him straightaway, but I couldn’t work out what he was doing there. I also couldn’t work out why he let go of Mum’s hand when I walked in.
“Sam, you remember Mark?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said.
“He’s come round to…” But then she couldn’t think of any reason why he’d come round, so she gave up. “He’s come round for a cup of tea.”
“Right,” I said. I think I must have said it in a way that meant, you know, And? Because Mum kept talking.
“Mark and I used to work together,” Mum said. “And after we bumped into each other at Pizza Express, he called me at the office.”
Right, I thought. Why? I suppose I knew why, really.
“Where have you been, Sam?” said Mark, all friendly. And I was like, Oh, here we go. Uncle Mark.
“Just out skating.”
“Skating? Is there an ice rink near here?” Mum caught my eye and we both laughed, because she knows I hate it when people get my skating muddled up with the other sort. (“Why don’t you just say you’re a skateboarder? Or you’ve been out skateboarding?” she always says. “What would happen to you? Would you get arrested by the Cool Police?” And I always tell her that “skateboarding” sounds wrong to me, so she reckons that I deserve what I get.)
“What’s funny?” said Mark, like someone who knows it’s going to be a great joke if only someone would explain it to him.
“It’s not that sort of skating. It’s skating with a board.”
“Skateboarding?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.” He looked disappointed. It wasn’t such a great joke after all.
“Has your kid got a skateboard?”
“No, not yet. He’s only eight.”
“Eight’s old enough,” I said.
“Maybe you could teach him,” said Mark. I made a noise, something like “Ergh,” which was supposed to mean “Yeah, right,” except without sounding rude.
“Where is he today?” I said.
“Tom? He’s with his mum. He doesn’t live with me, but I see him most days.”
“We were thinking of getting something to eat,” Mum said. “A takeaway curry or something. Interested?”
“Yeah, OK.”
“No Alicia this evening?”
“Oh-ho,” said Mark. “Who’s
Alicia, then?”
He could go either way, this bloke, I thought. That “Oh-ho” didn’t sound good to me. It sounded like he wanted to be my mate when he didn’t even know me.
“Alicia’s The Girlfriend,” said Mum.
“Serious?” Mark asked.
“Not really,” I said. And Mum said, at exactly the same time, “Extremely.” And we looked at each other again, and this time Mark laughed but we didn’t.
“I thought you said things were still going strong?” said Mum.
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “They’re still going strong. They’re just not as serious as they were.” And then I got sick of not telling the truth, so I said, “I think we’re breaking up.”
“Oh,” said Mum. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Well.” What else was there to say? I felt a bit stupid, obviously, because the night Mum met Mark was the night she was trying to tell me to cool it.
“Whose idea is that?” said Mum.
“No one’s, really.”
“Have you talked about it?”
“No.”
“So how do you know?”
“That’s what it feels like.”
“If you’ve gone off her, then you should tell her,” said Mum.
She was right, of course, but I didn’t. I just never went round, and I left my mobile off, and I didn’t reply to her texts. So she probably got the idea, in the end.
One night I got a very sad message from her. It just said…Actually, I don’t want to tell you what it said. You’ll end up feeling sorry for her, which isn’t what I want. When I said before that we’d got bored with each other…well, that wasn’t right. I was bored with her, but she wasn’t bored with me, yet, I could see that. Or at least, she didn’tthink she was bored with me. She didn’t exactly seem thrilled to be with me on our last few times together. Anyway, I tried talking to TH about it.