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He wasn’t though, and she knew it. She’d have to have been blind not to notice how into her our neighbour was. She only had to say ‘Hi’ and old Brown Teeth would colour up like a moulding beetroot.
Matty rubbed at his shoulders, blew his lips.
‘Cruel warm,’ he said. ‘Could do with a breeze.’
An Indian Summer, he called it. Hot enough for shorts and T-shirts during the day, cold enough for a fire at night.
He said that too, another connection I only spotted with hindsight.
‘We should light a fire tonight, Ams. Cosy up.’
I remember him saying it because it was the most loving he’d sounded for a while. And also because some perverse part of me was jealous.
My friends began to arrive, a bubbly mass of ra-ra skirts and denim cut-offs.
‘Your dad’s gorgeous,’ one girl whispered.
‘He’s not my dad.’
‘Really? His eyes are just like yours.’
‘I’ve got a game planned for you, ladies,’ Matty called. ‘Come on outside. It’s going to be deadly!’
We shared a garden with Des Banister, but we were the only ones who used it.
‘Worried the daylight will kill him,’ Matty joked one time, capering about making claws with his hands. ‘Save me. Not the light. . .’
‘That’s not nice,’ my mother rebuked. ‘It’s not his fault he’s—’
I finished the sentence for her.
‘Totally weird?’
Matty laughed, gave me a high-five. Nice one, pumpkin.
My mother put a slide in when we’d first moved to London. If you stood at the top you could see the trees on Parliament Hill, and a splash of reddish brown in the distance which was the running track.
‘The slide is base,’ Matty told my friends now, giving it a pat. ‘You have forty seconds to hide, then I hunt you down.’
With anyone else, the game would have been lame. We were in high school, a bit old for Forty Forty Home. But Matty put magic in it. That, and all my friends were blatantly crushing on him.
‘Who’s ready for cake?’ my mother trilled. Plastered-on smile, plate raised high like she was a waiter in a fancy restaurant. She even had a tea towel over her arm. On each cheek, a tongue-pink blush.
I knew she was shy of my friends, worried they’d think she was hick. Do they know we get help with the school fees? What cars do their mothers drive? Did they all go to university?
I should have empathised more. Instead, I felt a prickle of irritation, as if her discomfort would infect me, tar me by association.
Why couldn’t she be fun like Matty? Easy-going. Why did she always have to hang back from the other mums? Was it really so hard to join in with them, chat a little, go for coffee?
As she held the cake aloft, all pleased and proud, I wanted to die. It was a misshapen pancake, one side risen while the other side slept.
My friends’ mothers bought them birthday cakes from Sherrard’sin Hampstead Village, beautiful creations with piped pink icing and vanilla frosting. This cake looked like it belonged in a charity shop.
My friends glanced at each other, smirking. Embarrassment lit my face.
I scowled at my mother.
‘Not now. We’re playing.’
