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“Who needs it?” asks Ralph.
“I’ve half a mind to turn around right now and say bad job to it all,” Nana Pauline goes on, which isn’t exactly what we want to hear what with how we’ve been walking twenty minutes and are about halfway up the road.
Jonathan looks at his grandmother who, despite her protestations, is still gamely tromping away from the home and towards the car. “I’d really rather you didn’t.”
“Hark at the cheek on him.” Nana Pauline turns to Ralph for confirmation. “Did you hear him, the cheek of him?”
“I wasn’t cheeking you, Nana.”
With a look of gentle disapproval, Ralph draws in a breath. “You shouldn’t contradict a lady, son, it’s ungentlemanly.”
“Now you’re just being silly.” It’s probably not what I’d’ve personally chosen to say to my nan’s new boyfriend, but I’m sort of glad Jonathan said it.
Nana Pauline, though, is less glad. “Well, will you listen to that? Airs is what he’s got.” She turns to Jonathan. “Airs is what you’ve got. He’s gone up that London, and it’s give him airs.”
Jonathan’s still not standing for this, which I respect. “I do not have airs.”
“You do. You’re covered in airs.”
“Airs aren’t something you can be covered in.” As I watch, Jonathan begins to slip slowly but surely fromnot standing for thistomaking a bit of a tit of himself.
Nana Pauline’s eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”
“I mean airs are a thing you have.”
“I know.” Nana Pauline nods emphatically. “All over your 'ead for a start.”
I laugh.
And Jonathan glares. “Was that a joke?”
“It was, yeah,” I tell him, patting him on the back. “Come on, let’s get going.”
We make it back to the car without Jonathan hacking his nan off too much and without Ralph or Nana Pauline saying anything so outrageous he’dhaveto hack her off. Once we’re there I quietly remind everybody of the whole stay-in-Sheffield-so-I-can-grab-the-van plan which, now me and Jonathan has become, well, me and Jonathan, I’m feeling a whole lot worse about. Partly because I’m ditching him the night after we first got together and partly because the whole van scheme is part of this tangled web of amnesia-related lies that seems like it’ll never go away.
Though I’m sort of hoping it might this time. Because the GP should be able to give me a clean bill of health on the concussion and the amnesia both. Then I’ll be able to head back down to London being all “yeah, it’s mostly back now which explains why I’ll sort of recognise folk from the Sheffield branch and that.”
I kiss Jonathan goodbye. Not as much as I’d like, mind, on account of his nan being right there. And then they’re gone, so it’s just me again, with nowhere to go except back to my flat.
Once there, I ring Claire and tell her what’s happened. Then she brings the rest in so I can tell them and all.
“Youwhat?” asks Amjad.
“I quit,” I explain.
“But not in a fucking us way?” asks Tiff. “Because I’ll be honest, this feels abitlike you’ve quit in a fucking us way.”
“I’m not fucking yez,” I insist, hoping I’m right. “We made a deal.”
“A deal?” asks Claire. I mean I sayasks. I more meanrepeats in an incredulous tone.
“Yeah. I said if I quit it’d mean he’d save my salary and you could do my job okay since you were already, and nobody’d have to get sacked.”
Claire doesn’t sound especially convinced. “And you’re sure you did this because it was best for the team, and not because you wanted to ride Jonathan Forest’s tower of throbbing man meat?”
Sometimes, Claire can be the fucking worst. “How about we make a new deal,” I suggest, “where you never, ever say the wordstower of throbbing man meatagain?”
“Is it, though?” asks Tiff. “Towering?”
