Junk - Melvin Burgess [3]
Stone Age!
‘What about her GCEs?’ I said. ‘What about her ability to put her lipstick on properly?’
My mum tried to bring the conversation into the real world.
‘Darling, you’re too young – ‘she began.
‘She’ll have to learn!’
‘What are we going to do, Gemma? Your father’s right, there have to be rules. Surely you can see that?’
‘Where’s David?’ my father said. That’s Tar. I christened him Tar, because he was always telling me off for smoking.
‘You’ll get tar in your lungs,’ he kept saying.
‘Ring up his house and find out,’ I told my dad.
‘I have. He’s not come home. But his father’s promised to give him what for when he does.’
I nearly said, He’ll have a long wait, then. But I bit my tongue. ‘He already has,’ I told him. ‘He beat him up again the night before last.’
Dad snorted. ‘He got into another fight, you mean.’
Tar’s dad’s a teacher at one of the local high schools. You can see the way my dad’s brain works. Teacher = good. Bad relationship with Tar = Tar’s fault.
‘He hits the bottle,’ I told him. ‘Go round and see him next time. You’ll smell it. That’s the sort of influence we young people have to look up to,’ I said.
‘Don’t try and be clever with me!’
‘Look… Tar was upset. He just needed someone to stay with him. But there was no sex. Honest. All right?’
There was a pause in which my dad looked at me. You could see how furious he was. As if me being responsible was some sort of threat to his authority.
Then he said, ‘Liar.’
The whole room went cold. My mother was furious, I reckon. She glared at him. I mean, I don’t know if she believed me, but she wanted to. I don’t know what he believed. He just wanted to hurt me, I reckon.
He did. But I didn’t let him see that. I just said, ‘I believe every word you say, too,’ or something, and made for the door. Of course that wasn’t good enough for him and he dragged me back and started up again but I’d had enough. I just lost it.
‘Just… drop down dead!’ I screamed and I ran out of the room.
I locked myself in my room and tried to take the planet over with music.
THEN WHEN HE SEES YOU IN THE COLD MORNING LIGHT
HE SAYS DAUGHTER WHAT YOU GONNA DO WITH YOUR L-I-IFE?
OH DADDY DEAR YOU KNOW YOU’RE STILL NUMBER ONE
BUT GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FU-UN
OH GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN
THAT’S ALL THEY REALLY WA-A-A-A-ANT…
I played that over and over and over but I expect it was lost on my dad. He never listens to the lyrics.
The difference between Tar’s dad and my dad is that Tar’s dad is basically a reasonable bloke who forgets to be reasonable, even if it is in rather a big way. Whereas my dad’s basically an unreasonable bloke who never forgets just how much you can get away with by appearing to be reasonable.
He came up afterwards and apologised and for a bit I thought the whole thing was going to be settled in a friendly way. I should have guessed what was going on when he started on about how he’d been big enough to admit when he was wrong. Now it was my turn.
Well, I wasn’t wrong. I’d have been a real cold bitch not to keep Tar company on his last day in Minely. I was beginning to think the only thing I’d done wrong was refusing to sleep with him. But I know when to open my mouth as well as when to keep it shut. Dad’s easy enough to handle. The trouble is he enrages me so much I forget to do it sometimes.
I decided it was time to do sugar-sugar. I apologised, whimpered, flung my arms around him and gave him a hug and a kiss.
‘You’re still my number one, Daddy,’ I told him. And he went as pink as a cherry. I had him right there, in the palm of my hand.
That was when my mum popped round the door like something out of a pantomime.
‘Have you two made friends now?’ she asked as if she didn’t know. She must have been hiding behind the door waiting for her cue the whole time. I hate being manipulated.
‘Oh, yes,’ said my dad. ‘Er, we were just discussing what to do next, weren’t we, Gemma?’
Now, my dad tends to be the business end of this parenting. Like, my mum points him at me when she wants me to jump. It was fairly easy to disarm the old man on