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“No. But then I wasn’t forced to play it for a living.”
He sighed. “You get used to things you don’t really enjoy. After a while.”
“After a while you should have stopped. You could have stopped, Alfie.”
“Yeah, but I think you know why I didn’t. In fact, I’m betting it’s one of the reasons you settled for writing a memoir for some annoying pillock instead of writing your own stuff. Counting every penny, always worried about the wolves at the door—even when you don’t really have to be anymore,” he said.
To which she sort of wanted to reply no.
No, that wasn’t one of the reasons why she never went after more.
This was just what she was comfortable with. What she was good at.
She didn’t have deep unexamined issues having to do with money.
It was fine doing this. It was fine. It was absolutely okay.
Tell him it’s okay, her brain said.
But somehowthiscame out instead:
“I still do the calculator when I go round the shops.”
And got a sound of recognition and a rueful nod.
“Caught myself doing it at the takeaway the other day. Some bloke asked me why I was adding stuff up, when I was Alfie fucking Harding. Had to tell him it was for tax purposes. Couldn’t face explaining all that when it’s been over twenty fucking years since I last had to survive on salad cream fucking sandwiches.”
“For us it was crisps, for a sandwich filling. My dad used to get big cheap boxes of them on offer from Kwiksave. Horrible, like little shards of plastic. But it was better than just bread and margarine, so we didn’t complain.”
“Complaining never got you anywhere anyway.”
“No. Often times it would just make things worse.”
“You’d wind up with a clip round the ear.”
“Yeah, or maybe the belt.”
She regretted it as soon as she said it.
Partly because she didn’t know how she had said it, considering she usually hated to reveal a thing about the less fun aspects of her past. But mainly because she saw him react the second she did so. Like someone had walked over his grave, she thought it looked like. His shoulders went stiff; all the cords in his neck stood out; the hands he had on his knees suddenly clenched into fists. And he didn’t sound calm when he finally got some words out.
“Your dad still around, by any chance?” he asked.
Then he cracked his knuckles, one hand over the other, in a way she understood. She understood all of what was happening, even before she told him, in a voice that sounded too hopeful about something she wasn’t supposed to want:
“He died about ten years ago.”
And then he just went ahead and spelled it out.
“Good. Now I don’t have to kill him with my bare hands,” he said.
While her heart tried to beat right out of her chest.
And she couldn’t even fault it for that, either.
Because yeah, you weren’t supposed to want violence. But god, sometimes it was good to know someone thought it should happen on her behalf. That she wasn’t just weak or nuts or exaggerating. Someone who didn’t just deserve pity, or whatever else she usually feared she would get, if she dropped some of her Bubbly Girl armor. It was bad, and he would do things about it, if he could.
Things that made her want to do good by him, in return.
