Page 29 of I Love You, I Love You, I Love You

‘You know, it wasn’t our fault; it’s not what we wanted,’ he tells me. ‘Hey, look at me, you know I love you so much, don’t you?’

I look at him, just quickly though, nod and carry on scribbling. I mumble, ‘And you love Mum too, right?’

He looks strained and hesitates. ‘Of course I love your mum … ’

‘What’s going on?’ I ask. ‘I’m fifteen. You can tell me the truth now, Dad.’

By truth I obviously mean, Please say things are exceptional between the both of you, that you’re madly in love and have never been better, Dad. Not the actual truth.

Dad takes a breath, holds it in his throat, looks at me like can she take it? ‘Your mum and I are breaking up.’

WHAT? I mean, I knew they weren’t milk and honey, but, guys, seriously, this is extreme. They can’t break up. That happens on TV, not in real life. They’re a team. By having us they made a promise. My mind jumps straight to worst case scenario mode – I see something tragic like a plane crash:

It’s more than just turbulence on the jumbo jet of us. Violet and Sonny are reaching for their oxygen masks. I should help them, they’re my siblings, but how can I when I can’t help myself? When our luggage is flying everywhere? As we nosedive towards concrete. My crazy parents, panicked pilots, battling it out over which one should steer us to safety.

‘Me and your mum will still remain best friends’ – cos you really sound like it – ‘and nothing will change.’

Even I know that’s fucking impossible. I begin to cry.

‘Aw,’ he comforts. ‘Bellie, don’t cry. It will be OK.’ But this makes me cry more.

‘Maybe don’t tell your brother and sister just yet?’ he back-tracks. He can see that this news is going down like a wet weekend and is regretting it. ‘They’re too young to understand.’

Oh. So they were wearing oxygen masks after all then?

I want to say, But Dad, I’m too young to understand.

I thought I wanted them to tell me the truth but actually knowledge is not power: knowledge is shit.

Later on, now it’s all out in the open, Mum says like it’s nothing, ‘Your dad’s moving his stuff out; he’s staying with Brian for a bit until he gets his own place.’

Brian? But Brian’s single. And a DJ. That means Dad will be out there on the town again.

‘OK,’ I reply, in that way you sometimes do when you’re a kid. It’s a receipt. I hear you. Now stop. And OWN PLACE? What does that mean? Chill! He doesn’t need to move out! It feels so detached and separate. Like will wild dogs eat him out there on his own? Will he find a new family? Start again – without us? Then again, maybe his ‘own place’ would be nicer than 251 and I can live with him instead and finally I can try ham and pineapple pizza without Mum saying it should be banned.

Dad’s moving out. But he can’t be; he’s my dad. We’re meant to see each other on the landing. Argue about who didn’t push the toothpaste up from the bottom. Accuse one another of leaving the lights on: ‘It looks like Piccadilly Circus in here!’ I’m meant to hear his whistle.

I nosily peer into Dad’s half-empty bedroom and see all the good stuff has already gone. Tears bubble up in my eyes. I have the urge to go into my bedroom and listen to the Lighthouse Family, but thank God I manage to muster up a grain of mental resilience to resist before things get that bad.

Here I am, a teenager, desperate for any excuse to strop about, something to blame for my mood swings, to blast all my angsty fury at, an epic life story to make me have the right to write a masterpiece memoir like Tracy Beaker’s. And now it is here and I wish it would go away.

At school, I don’t want anybody to know. I don’t want anybody to ask me about it. But at home, I use it to my advantage. If they’re going to break up, then I’m not going to waste my time revising for my exams, am I? (Pretty stupid, really – joke’s on me.) If they’re going to split up then I’m not going to tell them when I get to my friend’s house safely, am I? If they aren’t going to take care of us – well, neither am I. At a party I let a friend’s mum make me a glass of sangria and I learn to like it. It’s delicious as far as alcohol goes, with big juicy rounds of orange – a drink and a snack. And I make a whole batch in a washed-out water bottle to take to a house party at yet another really nice house and throw it all up over the white walls. I sick up some kind of knobbly cat food out of The Twins’ mum’s people carrier’s backseat window, and all along her pebble stone drive like some necessary purge. I stink of orange rind and shame. It’s now my go to turn – and boy have I turned. Never this bad before where the room is spinning and every word is sliding and every lightbulb is a disco ball. I am carried upstairs, undressed by my friends and rolled into a bed like a burrito. I really regret wearing a thong.

I hope I didn’t get so drunk that I told anybody I loved Lowe?

I start to despise my parents; they’ve told The Kids that Dad’s moving in with Brian for a bit because he has a ‘migraine’. HA! Unbelievable. Are they actually buying this shit? Get a cold flannel and an Anadin Extra like everyone else’s goddam guardians. (Anything but please don’t leave, Dad; please stay at home with us and be our constant.) It annoys the hell out of me seeing my brother and sister go about life as though nothing has changed, as though life is a perfect, shiny, spinning wheel of Babybel cheese when actually, sorry, everything has changed, and they are still in blissful, innocent, ignorant childhood, and I am here in the dark stuff, alone. And nobody even likes Babybel.

I slam out towards the high road on a cloudy day where the air is close and thick. I listen to my Discman really loudly, holding it upright like I’m a cocktail waitress otherwise the CD skips. I decide this summer will be the greatest summer of my life if I can basically locate the skill to ignore anything real that’s going on.

We spend it stretched out on The Twins’ trampoline, the elasticated mesh now punctured by cigarette-hot rocks. I sit next to Lowe, always. Just having him next to me is enough to make the day go fast, and yet I want it to go on forever. We sit in the park in giant crop circles in the press of the sun until it slinks away and we remain, like statues, under the eye of the swollen moon. The apple-green grass turns rat-grey.

He says, ‘I love the way you do stuff.’

‘Do stuff? What stuff?’

He now wishes he never opened his mouth because he has to explain. ‘I dunno what it is but how you move your hands’ – I look down my little trotters and think, strange but OK – ‘how you tell a story, how you move the hair out of your face, how you give directions to a stranger or whatever.’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever given directions to a stranger, not accurate ones anyway.’

---