She stayed relatively normal all night though it took me a while to recover from dinner. I’d forgotten how quickly she could flip between fine and drama – it had been months since she was like this. I couldn’t believe Dad had set her off again. In a burst of parental obligation, Mum even asked me how school was going and I told her about my Media Studies project.
“Well, we’ll have to watch a romance film then. For research, won’t we?”
“You sure that’s a good idea?”
“Oh, don’t be silly, Audrey. I’m a grown woman. I can handle a romantic movie, even in my state.”
We shoved a packet of microwave popcorn in, dug out some Cadbury’s and settled on the sofa. It was so dark outside already. The heating groaned and clanked up to the high ceilings, the curtains rustled softly from the draught. She picked Say Anything – an old eighties film with John Cusack.
“Your dad and I went to watch this at the cinema when it had its ten-year anniversary.”
Your dad and I, your dad and I. Why did she still insist on doing this to herself?
But, despite her enthusiasm, Mum fell asleep twenty minutes in. I persevered for the sake of my research but it made my intestines coil themselves around each other. John Cusack was just so…in love with this girl. The way he looked at her, it made me wish someone could look at me like that.
Milo used to look at me like that. But then look at how that had turned out.
Mum snored softly to my left, her feet right up on the sofa, her tights wrinkled and bunched up around her ankles. I tried to tune her out, tried to focus on the film. When we got to the famous scene where John Cusack stands outside her house with a giant boombox to try and win her back, I’d had enough. I hit pause and sank back into the sofa, staring blankly at the freeze-frame.
Nothing like that ever happens in real life…
I pulled out my phone and scrolled through everyone’s updates. The girls had uploaded dozens of photos of themselves at Pizza Express – in full make-up, pulling duck faces and taking multiple selfies. Leroy had tagged me in at the local bowling alley and I quickly sent him a message.
Audrey: A bowling alley???! FFS?! If you’re going to make me your beard, at least make me a cool beard.
But he didn’t reply. He was probably too busy not-bowling with Ian in a not-bowling alley.
I went through all the various sites, catching up on the news from people I didn’t like or care about, but still felt shit that they were out and I wasn’t. Then I saw Dad had uploaded twenty plus photos and I found myself clicking on them. My brother and sister beamed out of my screen – their pudgy faces filling most of the frame. The album was entitled Our new vegetable patch and mostly involved Dad and Jessie smiling and posing with giant spades – their faces dirty and ruddy and healthy from hard work.
It just looks like a pile of dirt now, but wait until the harvest, Jessie had commented. And the white-hot rage catapulted back, singing through my veins.
I tried to focus on the photos of the twins – smiling. I couldn’t help loving them – after all, it wasn’t their fault Dad was an arsehole. But I had to be so careful around Mum about them. I couldn’t mention them, or ever have them over. It would be too big a betrayal. I had to tuck away my love for them and save it for the odd few days a month when I could see them. At least I’d see them this weekend, even if talking to Dad was unlikely to work.
God, I couldn’t not live in this house. In this room, this beautiful living room. With its mint green paint and warm fire, and memories of how we piled in here every Saturday night for family movie night. We watched every Audrey Hepburn film here – Mum and Dad looking dewy-eyed at each other. Roman Holiday always came out at least twice a year.
“This is where he proposed,” Mum would say, and Dougie and I would roll our eyes because they’d told the story so many times. But we also secretly enjoyed hearing it again. The story of Them. Mum and Dad. Their epic romance. Their epic proposal. Their Hollywood wedding…
Dad had commented under a photo of Jessie. Love of my life. My best friend. Followed by twelve heart emojis.
The comment had fifty-one likes…
Mum’s snore interrupted my angsty stalking and I glanced up at her. She moved onto her side, using the armrest as a pillow.
Fifty-one likes.
Poor, poor Mum.
I turned off the TV and got out an old blanket to drape around her. I checked the front door was locked, and climbed the stairs, pulling on Milo’s T-shirt and getting into bed.
It wasn’t even ten.
I stared at the ceiling for a while. I tried to read a book but couldn’t concentrate. So, at half past ten, I sighed and pulled out my phone again – scrolling through the updates of everyone else’s better Friday nights.
I found myself tapping in Harry’s name.
We had ten mutual friends – one of them Dougie. His profile photo surprised me. It was him holding up a video camera, just one eye staring out behind it. I clicked through some of the photos that had slipped through his privacy settings. They were mostly gigs – blurry photos of his face highlighted by the flashes of club-night neons. But there were a few of everyone dressed up as zombies. Harry stood proudly in the middle, holding up his camera again. That girl from the car was in one of them, their arms around each other. She was splattered in fake blood, obviously playing some sort of zombie. I wondered again if she was his girlfriend, and if so, why Dougie was warning me off him. I was tempted to ask Harry about the zombie stuff on my shift tomorrow, but then realized that would reveal I’d been stalking him.
I was asleep by eleven.