‘So are you, sweets,’ he told her. ‘So are you.’
Katie scoffed, but knew better than to say anything. Lydia’s ‘Technicolour Dwarf’ comment drifted through her head. At most Katie knew she was cute. Cute was not beautiful. Cute was not in international-stunningly-gorgeous-actress league. Cute was like a stray puppy or a fluffy guinea pig. Men like Sam might go for cute when there were no other females in sight, but not in the normal way of things.
Chapter 16
He needs someone like you
‘Twll Din Pop Saes!’ Dylan shouted, downing a shot of Baileys (this being the last alcoholic beverage they had managed to locate in Katie’s house).
‘Twll Din Pop Saes!’ Katie, Rosie, Russell and Bryn cried in response, downing their own shots (Lizzie was the only Welshie not to respond, but this may have been to do with the fact she was passed out, her head resting on her hands on the table).
Lou rolled her eyes. ‘God I hate it when you lot get all drunk and Welsh. I bet that was something really xenophobic too.’
‘Of course not, darling,’ Russell cried in mock horror. ‘We were merely sending peace and love across the border.’ Lou raised her eyebrows at Russell until his face cracked into a smile. ‘Okay, maybe we might have said, “Arseholes to all Englishmen,” but as you’re an Englishwoman it doesn’t really apply.’
‘Back at you, mate,’ Rob said through a smile, toasting Russell with his own shot of Baileys, then downing it.
Turns out that cat’s funerals can last well into the evening. It was nearly midnight and the kids had long since been put to bed upstairs in Katie’s spare room. Most people had sloped off home but the hardcore remained crammed around Katie’s kitchen table. It was surprising, perhaps, that at eighty-seven years of age Bryn was included in this hardcore contingent, but then he had loved Katie’s cat and he certainly loved any excuse for a few wets, so maybe not altogether a shock. Katie herself had long since decided that the solution to grief in the here and now was to drink through it. It was a policy she wished she could have adopted at her mum’s funeral (but seeing as she was only sixteen at the time the option was never really open to her).
‘I love it!’ shouted Eva, who had gone from tipsy into the realms of pissed as a fart about two hours ago. ‘When I get back to uni I’m so going to use that one. I’ve decided that I’m an honorary Welshman!’ Eva was studying I.T. at Cardiff, describing herself as a ‘code nerd’; somehow it seemed to fit her, purple hair and all.
‘No offence, but you’re too crakcach* to pass as Welsh, young lady,’ Bryn told her.
‘And give up on the being-a-man bit too, darling,’ Russell put in. ‘Even if you were LGBT material, you’re not exactly a bull-dyke; you don’t even qualify as a “Chapstick lesbian”, so you’ve no chance.’ Eva looked puzzled for a moment and Russell pulled her in for an affectionate hug. ‘That’s a compliment, toots.’ Russell had definitely warmed to Eva’s quirky, brutally honest personality over the day.
‘Oh,’ she said, her expression clearing. ‘Well, by the time I go back I want to speak Welsh and I want to speak Gay.’
‘You’re in the right place; no one speaks Gay like Russell,’ Katie told her. She herself thought she could probably hold any type of conversation in a gay bar using any form of slang and know exactly what she was talking about, from cottaging to teabagging: she was the ultimate fag hag. The relentless drip feed of Russell’s bedroom antics related to her over the years had gradually sunk into her subconscious; some things she would quite happily un-learn (scattingbeing an example Russell had once used to put her off her lunch).
‘Right,’ Rob said, pushing back his chair and getting up from the table. ‘I need to somehow transport one rather large, sleeping, pregnant woman and four sleeping boys up the road.’
Taxis started arriving and everyone filtered home after that. Katie, knowing Sam as she did now, was not surprised when he took responsibility for Bryn, offering to walk him back and saving Bryn’s pride by pretending to need the cold air to sober up. (Katie had noticed that Sam mighttakea drink but he did not actuallydrinkit. He’d been nursing his beer for a good three hours now. Not that it surprised her; being out of control was not exactly Sam’s style.) Eva, however, was a different story.
‘I love you for him,’ Eva said to Katie as they were tidying up the kitchen and waiting for Sam to get back from walking Bryn home. Katie looked at her, and, to her surprise, saw that Eva’s eyes were wet.
‘Eva, honey,’ she said in concern, moving around the table to get to her. Eva held onto both her hands almost desperately, a tear spilling over her lashes and down her cheek.
‘He needs someone like you,’ she said. ‘He needs someone warm and full of light. Someone who can …’ Katie was starting to think that Eva had in fact strayed into the realms of slightly loopy drunk, but changed her mind with what she said next. ‘He’ssucha good brother. He might be thirteen years older but he always had time for me. Mum said that before I came along he was so serious, so quiet. She’s only his stepmum, you see; his mum, she wasn’t … she wasn’t right. You know … in the head.’
‘His parents were divorced?’
‘Oh, they divorced when he was a baby, and seeing as his mum was nuts and Dad works likeall the time, he hardly ever saw him. Dad still blames himself.’
‘For what?’
‘For leaving him with her.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘She died when he was ten. He lived with Dad after, but Dad’s not exactly the most sensitive, touchy-feely type of man. Then he married my mum and they had me. Mum always says that the first time she ever saw Sam smile was the day she brought me back from the hospital.’ Eva smiled a smug smile and Katie couldn’t help smiling with her, imagining the serious, dark-haired boy meeting little baby Eva and having her melt his heart. ‘Then of course there was Richard – he was good for Sam and they were thick as thieves at school.’ For some reason this made Eva’s face cloud for a moment. Katie was about to ask about this Richard guy when Eva cut her off.
‘Mum would love you,’ Eva told her, her expression brightening as she squeezed Katie’s hands even tighter. ‘She’s been so worried since all that stuff happened in the army and he lost –’
‘Eva,’ Sam’s sharp voice cut through what Eva was about to reveal. ‘I think it’s time I took you home.’
‘I’m staying with you,’ Eva said, her chin lifting to a stubborn angle.
‘No you’re not,’ Sam told her in his Voice of Authority. ‘You can’t miss any of your lectures this week. You told me that yourself. I’ll take you back tonight.’