Don't You Forget About Me (Page 22)

Dad smiled. ‘Marriage is compromise. You’ll understand some day.’

‘I’m not marrying anyone who doesn’t like curry. No way.’

Mum usually tolerated our outings as a positive thing, but I remember that night we got back and she needed scraping off the ceiling.

Dad hadn’t warned her, cauliflower cheese had gone to waste, our clothes ‘reeked’ and would need washing, why wasn’t Esther invited, why couldn’t we do a family dinner, how much had that cost. At first I tried placating her but when that failed, I slid off upstairs and left them to it.

Esther was back from her first term at York, where from what I could tell she’d spent her time mixing with posher people and feeling ashamed of us. She came flying out of her bedroom and into mine.

‘Why do you do this?’

‘Do what?’

‘Stir things up between Mum and Dad? You knew she’d have a fit if you went out for dinner and you know you have Dad round your little finger and he’ll do it. Then you waltz off and leave them to a screaming match.’

‘I didn’t know Mum didn’t know.’

‘How was she going to find out if you didn’t tell her? Dad never uses that phone he has. He doesn’t even switch it on.’

Esther had a point. If I’m honest, I did know Mum didn’t know. I knew she’d just say no, that’s why I didn’t tell her. But you don’t admit to anyone already that angry with you that you know they have a point, or you might as well lie down, like antelope with lion, and invite them to gnaw your carotid vein.

It was in the unwritten rules of our dysfunctional unit: Dad vs Mum could always go nuclear and it was our role to act as go-betweens, to soothe and smooth.

‘Why was it on me to tell Mum, anyway?’ I said. Only because it was the only defence left open to me, I’d not really thought about it. Later, with Fay’s help, I would think about it.

Esther furiously jabbed a finger downwards, in the direction of the heated voices. ‘THAT’S WHY.

‘… I’ve had to spend my evening eating minging cold cauliflower cheese with Mum’s blood pressure going through the roof while you’re off having fun and now the atmosphere in this house is even WORSE. Fuck you, Georgina, you’re so fucking selfish.’

She slammed out and I lay on my bed listening to the bickering voices below. Mum’s voice carried up through the bedroom floorboards.

‘She’s not your plaything, to entertain you. She should be out with people her own age.’

‘I’m glad Georgina still wants to do things together. She won’t be here forever, will she?’

‘If you want a curry, you could go with Graham or some other friend?’

‘She suggested it!’

‘To please you. She’s only trying to please you and you’re selfish enough to let her.’

This was untrue, but years ago I’d learned that when Mum weaponised me against Dad, it went very badly if I contradicted her. Dad and I, the selfish ones. Mum and Esther had decreed it.

I realise with hindsight that even before Mum weighed in, there was a melancholy to the Glossop Road expedition. We were both nervous, Dad and I, about the day I would leave home, looming on horizon. We were pre-sad.

Not only as we’d miss each other; but because he was going to be alone with Mum. It was mine and my sister’s responsibility to act as buffer zones and brake pads, and simply to be someone living in their house that they liked. And we were both abandoning our posts. Both Esther and I had wondered how they’d function. They’d each recruited an ally in their children – without us, it was endless civil war.

Then, as it turned out, in a surprise twist, due to three blocked arteries, it was Dad who left home.

Here’s what life has taught me so far: don’t worry about that thing you’re worrying about. Chances are, it’ll be obliterated by something you didn’t anticipate that’s a million times worse.

Anyway, the point is, I love curry.

Cauliflower cheese, I can take or leave.

I wait until the waiter has delivered four pints of Kingfisher, condensation sliding down the glasses, and we’ve lifted, clinked cheers and sipped, to say:

‘Can I check, is my treat tonight invalid if I’ve got back with Robin?’

Rav does a comedy choke-spit on his lager, Jo sucks in a shocked breath and Clem says: ‘Your sanity is invalid if you’ve forgiven that rancid hound!’

I lower my eyes, Princess Diana style, and say: ‘He’s promised me he can change. He says he only slept with Lou because he was frightened by how much he felt for me. It was like a boobytrap in himself, a tripwire. He denies himself happiness with acts of … of … desecration.’

‘Is this real, because if so I’m going to be sick,’ Clem says flatly.

‘I want to help him be a better person,’ I conclude, looking round a trio of nauseated faces.

‘Why would you do that?’ Clem says. ‘Why not pick an achievable goal?’

‘I believe he truly wants to change,’ I say. I am enjoying the gag, though I didn’t think I could convince them I’d be that stupid. Victory: pyrrhic.

‘Yeah well. R Kelly believed he could fly.’

There’s a pause, while they all eye me uneasily.

‘Nice try, George,’ Rav says. ‘But you love curry way too much to risk ruining appetites in this way at the start of the meal.’

‘Balls, you got me.’

I start gurgling with laughter and everyone tuts and scolds.

We’re at Rajput in Crookes, which along with the Lescar, is undoubtedly a soother to my soul.

‘Are we having poppadoms?’ Rav asks and I say, ‘YES definitely it’s essential, I want all the bits,’ and Clem pouts and says, ‘They make you too full,’ and we say, ‘Er don’t eat them then?’ and she says, ‘Well I’m going to have to if they’re there, aren’t I?’

Clem, tonight in white go-go boots and a minuscule pinafore dress from her boutique, is rigidly controlling of what she eats, to maintain rationing era measurements. To the point where she saw an advert about the signs of cancer that said ‘Unexplained Weight Loss’ and she said Ooh I’d love me some of that and we shouted at her.

Whenever anyone says to her: But you don’t need to be on a diet, she replies, with the steely fanaticism of the truly devout, ‘I don’t need to be on a diet because I diet.’

I only wish Clem’s neuroses weren’t played out in front of Jo, who is a buxom 14–16, and loathes her figure. She wages war on her metabolism with awful dieters’ dinners that look like something from Woman’s Own in the Seventies – tinned beetroot with blobs of cottage cheese and pepper matchsticks. She has a body blueprint that will never be redrawn by cottage cheese, and the futile self-torture makes me sad. Needless to say, we all suspect her on-off obsession, Shagger Phil, has contributed to a sense of Not Being Enough. Or, being too much.

During our starters, Rav entertains us all with his latest tales of harrowing online dates.

‘She said her tarot reader had told her a dark, stormy spirit would come into her life, then disappear, but soon return.’

‘Her tarot reader?’ I ask.

‘Yeah she was a real “Luna Lovegood” type. I said I thought it sounded a lot more like she was going to vomit spiced rum, and made my excuses.’

As the mains arrive, Rav and I update Clem and Jo on That’s Amore! and I read Greg Withers’ comment in full.

‘You’re so good at things like this,’ Jo says, as the laughter subsides.

I turn my phone off again and throw it into my bag. ‘Thanks. Sadly you can’t spend “thank you” clicks on TripAdvisor reviews. Greg’s scored quite a few.’

‘You say that,’ Rav says, dipping a piece of roti in his dahl, ‘but you’re a funny writer, you’ve got a way with words, you’re good at telling stories. And you’ve got lots of experience in the service industry. Maybe you could put the two together somehow.’

Wait … sharing shame?

‘I suppose I’m quite good at telling other people’s stories,’ I rattle on, but my mind is whirring. ‘Robin once said I had “comic impulses but lacked the discipline”.’

‘You see, what the hell does that mean?’ Clem says, hoovering her lamb pasanda with impressive efficiency. She will carbon offset it tomorrow by living off Heinz cream of tomato, Diet Coke and menthol cigarettes. ‘What discipline does he show?’

‘He said I said I wanted to write, and talked like a writer, but never wrote. He had a point,’ I said.

Nearby, a young couple beckon the waiter over. I sense the man, who can’t be more than twenty-five, is trying to impress the date he’s with, who has a huge mane of backcombed hair and a very tiny Lycra dress.

‘We didn’t ask for this? … Why bring it then? Make sure it’s not on the bill, please.’

The waiter is being apologetic while the lad bristles with righteous indignation. Ugh. I know the sort. Talking to you like a sultan with a serf.

‘He’s failing the Waiter Rule,’ I say, under my breath.

‘What’s that?’ says Jo.