Page 49 of For Real

I take my shoes and socks off and sit on the end of his bed. Granddad’s resting at the moment. He sounds all wheezy, but not like he’s in pain, and I find myself sort of breathing along with him, like I’m helping or something.

Of course, the moment he wakes up, which doesn’t take long because he doesn’t sleep that deeply, just kind of a lot, he says I shouldn’t have let him nap through my visit. And then I’m all like, “Yeah, you’ve made me late for my dinner with the Queen,” and we go on from there.

He tells me he’s feeling good, which is probably a lie.

I tell him the snowdrops will be out soon. We used to pretend we’d see them again together some day, but we don’t anymore.

I tell him that Mum’s doing this exhibition in a disused railway arch.

I tell him I’ve added cider vinegar to the cream cheese frosting on my red velvet cupcakes.

He tells me he’ll let me know what he thinks. I don’t think he’s got the energy to eat one right now.

But that’s okay.

That’s okay.

I ask if he wants anything, but he doesn’t. I get him some fresh water anyway. Because you always need water, right?7

We talk a bit about some of the people we know here. You don’t really call them friends. They’re kind of something else, more and less than that.

It’s really weird the way you can have everything in the world to say, and fuck-all. And I can see he’s starting to drift again.

“Granddad?”

He blinks at me a bit. He’s all in his eyes right now. That’s where he lives. Not in his body anymore, which is just hollow skin. “Toby?”

“I’ve kind of met someone.”

He lights up for me, and I smile right back at him.

“Who?” he asks. “Where? Not on the whatsit…the interweb.”

Great. My granddad’s a meme. “No, at a…” Oh shit. Shit. Kinky sex club? “Uhh…party. His name’s Laurence. Laurence Dalziel.”

“Like Dalziel and Pascoe?”

“Huh?” He breathes in a particular sort of way that I know is what’s left of his laugh, so I let it go. It’s probably some old person reference I’m never going to get. “Anyway, I call him Laurie.” Casually ignoring the fact that I had to beg and whine for the privilege. It was totally worth it. “He’s…really nice. Clever and funny and kind and handsome.”

I’m simplifying of course. I’m starry-eyed, not completely mind-controlled. I mean, Laurie is all those things (well, not so much on the handsome, but you don’t say “hot” to your granddad), but he’s also…other things, as well. More complicated things. And weirdly, that just makes me like him more. Or want to, anyway. If he’d let me. If he’d give me enough so I could.

“He’s a doctor. And you know those fairy tale houses round Primrose Hill? He lives in one. I mean, not at Primrose Hill. But one of those type of houses. The white ones. Isn’t that totally weird?”

It was my favourite game when I was a kid. We’d walk past these sugar-cake houses on the way to the park, and I’d tug on his hand and go, “Who do you think lives there?” And he’d say, “A sailor who met a mermaid who gave him a pearl the size of a cantaloupe.” And then we’d go on a bit further, and he’d point at one and say, “But who lives there, Toby?” and I’d say, “The prince of a kingdom trapped in a marble.”

The truth is way better than any of it. Even though it’s just a man called Laurence Dalziel.

“But how’s his dancing?” asks Granddad.

He makes me grin, the cheeky old bugger. “Steady on. I haven’t asked. Can’t have him thinking I’m only after one thing. But honestly, I’d still like him if he had all the left feet in the universe. When I’m with him…it’s like…” I have no idea how to explain this. Partly because it’s sort of connected to kinky sex and partly because it sort of isn’t. “Zing, you know?”

“Strings of your heart, eh?”

I nod, feeling a bit of a dork. I’d really liked that song when I was little. It sounded how I thought being in love ought to be: all bright and brassy and full of joy.8

In any case, Granddad seems pleased. “That’s…good to hear.”

I think he wants to say more, but he can’t quite get the words out. I give him some water. And I know what he’s probably going to tell me anyway. The truth is, my granddad’s a pretty biased man. He thinks I’m this astonishing, talented, wonderful person, in spite of all available evidence to the contrary. But that’s sort of what love is, I guess. A perpetual state of semideranged partiality. And I think he’s sort of worrying that, without him, I’ll have nobody to feel like that about me.

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