from Nick Hornby’s novel About a Boy, a real fish out of water at the best of times.
‘My love life is still going through a dry period Sid. No, that’s wrong; suspended animation would be a better description.’
‘You need to get out more, Kat. You have to be seen to be dated. I mean, nobody’s going to turn up at your door, are they?’
‘I had two Jehovah’s Witnesses around last night.’
‘Were either of them cute?’
‘They were both cute, smartly dressed and glowing like someone had just buffed them up with a leather chamois and a bucket of car wax.’
‘Maybe you should try the internet.’
‘Online dating? My friend Hayley did that. It wasn’t good for her.’
‘She’s the hot one?’
‘Yeah, so hot she’s on fire.’
‘But it might be different for you, Kat; you’re not so …’
I pointed my spoon, dripping with lethal minestrone, at him. ‘Watch what you say here, Sid.’ I laughed as he struggled to find words.
‘Obvious, you’re not as obvious as her, so you would probably attract less weirdos.’
‘I’m Goth, Sid, I’m a weirdo magnet.’
‘You’re being too hard on yourself. I think you’re very pretty. There’s absolutely nobody on the horizon?’
The desperately cute image of a sleeping Nathan Jones flashed into my mind and for the thousandth time since I’d met him, I wondered how he’d fared since going home, but as usual I dismissed it. He had a wife and three kids to boot. ‘No, Sid, nobody at all.’
‘Maybe drop the Goth thing, then?’
‘I don’t think I can. I’ve never felt comfortable in my own skin. Even as a kid when my mum used to cart me off to birthday parties dressed in sequinned silver party dresses, I felt like I stood out like a sore thumb and that everyone would be staring and judging how ridiculous I looked, like a gorilla in hot pants.’
‘I bet you didn’t.’
‘No, I know that now, but back then, well, that’s how I felt.’
A few minutes of pleasant silence passed between us as we finished eating before I brought up the subject of family. ‘How’s your folks?’
‘Mm,’ Sid mumbled while swallowing a fork-full of potato. ‘They’ve started on a new project. Recreating the Settle to Carlisle line, in 1:64 scale.’
‘Sid, that made about as much sense to me as the number eleven.’
‘Eleven?’
‘Yeah, I’ve always thought it should be onety-one. I assume the thing your mum and dad are doing is something to do with trains?’ Sid’s parents were model railway enthusiasts and they’d met at a fair, or whatever they called places where train weirdos got together. He’d regaled me with stories of his childhood, he and his brother foraging in the fridge for food at mealtimes, sitting alone with his teacher on parents’ evening because his mum and dad had become so engrossed in their latest project they’d forgotten all about everything else.
I noted the bewildered look on Sid’s face as he tried to work out the ‘onety-one’ thing, then he shook his head and said, ‘Yeah, the Settle to Carlisle line is the highest railway line in England and—’
‘Yeah, thanks, Sid. I could probably have lived out the rest of my life quite happily without knowing that, thank you very much.’
‘Me too, but you did ask.’
‘I did.’
‘What about you – have you been home to see your mum and dad recently?’
I finished chewing on a rubbery piece of bread crust. ‘Not for a few weeks. I’ll need to make the trip next weekend, I suppose, seeing as I’m not working.’
‘“Make the trip”? You make it sound like it’s hundreds of miles; it’s only Glasgow.’
I laughed. ‘Yeah, but a trip home always makes me feel like I’ve entered The Twilight Zone.’
Sid smiled at me. ‘What’s your dad got in his sheds these days?’
‘I dread to think. It’s an ever-changing smorgasbord.’
‘Does your mum still have her ironing fixation?’
‘Ironing, hoovering, washing her hands, cleaning the light bulbs …’
‘Cleaning the light bulbs?’
‘Yeah, that’s one of her new ones. A few months ago, the light in the hall needed a new bulb and when she went to change it she felt disgusted, that was her word, “disgusted”, to see how dusty and dirty it had become, so she’s now taken to cleaning all the light bulbs in the house … and other people’s houses.’
Sid put his cup down. ‘Other people’s houses? I can’t really imagine she goes and knocks on their door and says, “Can I come in and inspect your light bulbs, please?”’
I laughed. ‘I wouldn’t put it past her, but no, my dad had to take her home from their friends’ house last week because she started doing it there. My dad has his foibles too, but I think my mum is getting worse; we used to think the menopause might be partly responsible but she’s past that now, so we don’t have that excuse. Her latest, apart from the light bulb cleaning, is that she’s got a thing going with the fridge.’
‘A thing going?’
‘Well, yeah, it’s one of those big American models and she stood for half an hour opening and closing the door.’
‘Why?’
‘She wanted to make sure the light went out when she closed the door.’
‘But you—’
‘I know.’
‘That’s—’
‘I know.’
‘What did your dad say?’
‘He took the bulb out.’
‘That’ll work.’
‘Smart man, my dad, but it doesn’t work in other people’s houses.’
‘No, it wouldn’t.’
‘They don’t visit much just now.’
‘No, I don’t suppose they do.’
‘That’s why my dad spends much more time in his sheds, looking at sheds online or even better if he can sit in a shed talking online to other people about their sheds. He’s going to enter “Shed of the Year” this year. Actually, that’s not true. He’s entering two of his sheds for the “Shed of the Year”.’
Sid shook his head and gave me the same look he always did when we talked about my parents, the one that said, ‘How the hell did you make it out of childhood with only a Goth persona and confidence issues?’
The worry is that one day I’ll end up like my mum. True, I don’t have to go back home three times every day to make sure I’ve switched off the cooker and unplugged the kettle or check seven times that I’ve locked the door before getting in my car and I don’t always need to count to twenty-five when ordering a coffee from Costa or to eighty-one in Starbucks. I know that sounds kind of random, but my mum needs to multiply the number of letters in the coffee shop’s name by itself (Costa – five letters times five letters equals twenty-five). If she ever visits a café in that weird Welsh village with the ridiculous name, I might never see her again.
Although I’ve not reached that level I have enough issues to know I might get worse