Alicia and I didn’t say anything.
“Thanks, Mum,” Alicia said after a while.
Like I said, there’s nothing you can do about the real future, the one you can’t get whizzed into. You have to sit around and wait for it. Fifteen years! I couldn’t wait fifteen years! In fifteen years’ time I’d be a year older than David Beckham is now, one year younger than Robbie Williams, six years younger than Jennifer Aniston. In fifteen years’ time, Roof might make the same sort of mistake that I made and my mum made, and become a dad, and I’d be a grandfather.
The thing was, though, I had no choice but to wait. There wouldn’t be any point in hurrying it up, would there? How would that work? I couldn’t cram fifteen years of knowing Roof into two or three, could I? It wouldn’t help. I still wouldn’t necessarily know him in fifteen actual years.
I hate time. It never does what you want it to.
I asked to see Roof before I went home. He was fast asleep, hands up near his mouth, and he was making his little snoring noises. The three of us watched him for a while. Hold it there, I thought. Everybody stay like this. We’d have no problem getting through the fifteen years if we could just stay here, saying nothing, watching a kid grow up.
CHAPTER 19
I’m telling you all this as if it’s a story, with a beginning, a middle and an end. And it is a story, I suppose, because everyone’s life is a story, isn’t it? But it’s not the sort of story that has an end. It doesn’t have an end yet, anyway. I’m eighteen, and so is Alicia, and Roof is nearly two, and my sister is one, and even my mum and dad aren’t old yet. It’s going to be the middle of the story for a long time, as far as the eye can see, and I suppose there are lots of twists and turns to come. You may have a few questions, though, and I’ll try to answer them.
What about your mum’s baby? How did all that turn out?
Mum’s baby Emily was born in the same hospital as Roof, but in the room next door. Mark was there, of course, and I took Roof in on the bus a couple of hours later.
“Here’s Grandma,” I said when we went in. “And here’s your auntie.” Mum was used to being Grandma by then, but not so many people get called Grandma while they’re breastfeeding a baby. And not many people get called Auntie when they’re two hours old.
“Bloody hell,” said Mark. “What a mess.” He was laughing, but Mum wasn’t having it.
“Why is it a mess?” she said.
“She’s been alive for five minutes, and she’s got a nephew who’s older than her, and two half-brothers with different mothers, and a mum who’s a grandmother, and God knows what else.”
“What else?”
“Well. Nothing else. But that’s a lot.”
“It’s just a family, isn’t it?”
“A family where everyone’s the wrong age.”
“Oh, don’t be so stuffy. There’s no such thing as a right age.”
“I suppose not,” said Mark. He was agreeing with her because she was happy, and because there was no point in talking about all that in a hospital room just after a baby had been born. But there is such a thing as a right age, isn’t there? And sixteen isn’t it, even if you try to make the best of it when it’s happened. Mum had been telling me that ever since I was born, pretty much. We’d had babies at the wrong age, with the wrong people. Mark had got it wrong the first time, and so had Mum, and who knew whether they’d got it right this time? They hadn’t been together that long. However much Alicia and I loved Roof, it was stupid to pretend that he’d been a good idea, and it was stupid to pretend we were going to be together when we were thirty or even when we were nineteen.
What I couldn’t work out was whether it mattered that we’d all chosen the wrong people to have kids with. Because it all depended on how we all turned out, didn’t it? If I got through all this and went to university and became the best graphic designer the world had ever seen, and I was an OK father to Roof, then I’d be glad that Mum and Dad were my parents. If I’d had some other mum or dad, then everything would have been different. It might have been my dad that passed on the graphic design gene, even though he can’t draw to save his life. We learned about recessive genes in biology, so his graphic design gene might have been like that.
There must be loads of famous people whose mum and dad should never have got together. Well, would they have been famous if they hadn’t? Prince William, say? OK, bad example, because if he’d had the same dad, he’d still be Prince William. Prince Something, anyway. The William might have been Diana’s idea. And he might not want to be a prince. Here’s one: Christina Aguilera. She’s written songs about how her dad was abusive and all that. But she wouldn’t be Christina Aguilera without him, would she? And she wouldn’t have been able to write those songs if her dad had been nice.
It’s all very confusing.
That day in the future when you took Roof for his injections…. Was there really a day like that?
Yes, there was. It’s clever, the future. It’s clever the way TH does it, anyway. When I get to those bits in my life, the bits I’ve visited before, then pretty much the same things happen that happened first time around, except for different reasons, and with different feelings. On that day, for example, Alicia did call me because she had a cold, and I did have to take Roof to the doctor’s. But I did know his name when we got there, so nobody could say that I’d learned nothing in all that time, ha ha.
He didn’t have his injections, though, so that part was true. What happened was, he started crying in the waiting room when I told him it wasn’t going to hurt. I think he worked out that as I never normally told him that something wasn’t going to hurt, then something was going to hurt, otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered. And I thought, She can take him. I don’t want to deal with this.
I think I can remember Ms. Miller telling us in Religious Studies once that some people believe you have to live your life over and over again, like a level on a computer game, until you get it right. Well, whatever religion that is, I think I might believe in it. I might actually be a Hindu or a Buddhist or something, without really knowing it. I’ve lived through that day at the doctor’s twice now, and I’ve got it wrong both times, except I’m getting better at it, very slowly. The first time I got it completely wrong, really, because I didn’t even know Roof’s proper name. And the second time I knew his name and I knew how to look after him properly, but I was still not good enough to make him go through with it. I’m not going to get a third shot at it, probably, because it’s not in the future anymore. It’s in the past. And TH hasn’t whizzed me back anywhere yet. He’s only whizzed me forward. So on the way home, I was thinking about whether I’d ever have another kid, when I was older. And maybe I’d have to take him or even her to the doctor’s for his or even her injections, and this time I’d do it all perfectly—get the kid’s name right, tell him or even her that it wasn’t going to hurt and that he could cry all he wanted, he still had to have it done. That would be the perfect day. Then I could move on, and stop having to live my life over and over again.
Oh, one other thing. I didn’t take him to the toy shop to waste time afterwards, so I saved myself £9.99 on that helicopter thing. I do learn. It’s just that I learn very slowly.
Do you still talk to Tony Hawk? And does he still talk back?
You’ll see.
College OK?
Fine, thanks. I mean, I can do the work. And the teachers are understanding and all that. I’m not sure I can get everything done, though, not in the time I have. You know I told you about my mum, and my grandad, and how they slipped off the first step? Well, I got halfway up the staircase. I can’t see a way of getting up much further than that, though. And I may have to come down again unless I can find a way of staying here.
Maybe Roof will get further up. That’s the thing in our family. You know that if you mess up, there’ll be another kid along in a minute who might do better.
And what about you and Alicia?
I knew you’d as
k me about that.
A while ago—it was just after Alicia got rid of her cold—we had sex again, for the first time since Roof was born. I can’t really remember how it happened, or why. It was a Sunday night, and we’d spent the day with Roof, together, the three of us, because we’d decided that he liked having both of his parents around. We usually took it in turns at weekends. I’d go round to Alicia’s and take Roof out, or bring him back to mine so that he could spend time with his baby aunt. I’m not sure he was that bothered. I think we just felt guilty about something. Probably we felt guilty about making him live in a sixteen-year-old girl’s bedroom, and about how he was stuck with a mother and a father who didn’t have much of a clue. Being in the same park or the same zoo together was something we could do. It was hard, but it was hard in the way that holding your breath for five minutes is hard, not in the way that maths exams are hard. In other words, any idiot can at least have a go at it.
We took him to Finsbury Park, which has been done up since I was a kid, so you don’t sit there thinking that it was only four or five years ago that you were swinging on those monkey bars. Andrea and Robert had given Alicia twenty quid, so we had lunch in the café, and Roof had chips and ice cream, and about four goes on those machines full of bouncy balls in see-through plastic eggs. We didn’t talk about anything. I mean, we didn’t talk about life and all that. We talked about bouncy balls, and ducks, and boats, and swings, and boys who had Thomas the Tank Engine scooters. And when Roof was on the swings or playing in the sand, then one of us had a sit down on the benches.
My mum once asked me what Alicia and I talked about when we looked after Roof together, and I told her that we didn’t talk about anything, that I kept out of the way. Mum thought that was a sign of maturity, but the truth was, I was scared of her. If she wanted a fight, she didn’t care where we were, so I found it was safer to sit on a bench and watch her pushing Roof on a swing than it was to stand next to her. If you did that, then you could suddenly find yourself in the middle of a playground being called all the names under the sun while a small crowd gathered to watch. I’m not saying it wasn’t my fault, half the time. It was. I forgot arrangements, equipment, food and drink. I made stupid jokes about things she didn’t want me joking about, like her weight. I was joking because I’d started to think of her as a sister, or a mother (mine, not Roof’s), or a friend I used to go to school with or something. She wasn’t laughing at these jokes because that wasn’t how she thought of me.
The day we went to Finsbury Park was nice, really. No fights, Roof was happy, the sun shone. We kept it going. I went back to Alicia’s to help her with Roof’s tea and bedtime, and then Andrea asked me if I wanted to stay for dinner. And after dinner we went into Alicia’s room so that I could see Roof asleep before I went home, and she put her arm around me, and one thing led to another, and we ended up going into her brother’s bedroom. The funny thing was, we still didn’t have any condoms. She had to go and pinch them from her parents again.
It had been a long time since I’d done anything like that. I’d kept myself to myself, if you know what I mean. Up until that night, I hadn’t wanted to sleep with Alicia, because I didn’t want her to think we were together. But I couldn’t sleep with anyone else, could I? That would have been the fight to end all fights, if she found out. And I was still scared. What if I got someone else pregnant? That would be the end of me. I’d just be walking one endless circle from child to child, with the occasional visit to college, for the rest of my life.
So I slept with Alicia, and what happened? She thought we were together. We lay there on her brother’s bed afterwards, and she said, “So what do you think?”
And I said, “About what?”
I swear I’m not leaving anything out. “So what do you think?” were her first words on the subject.
“About giving things another go?” she said.
“When were we talking about that?”
“Just now.”
When I say I’m not leaving anything out, I’m telling the truth. But I’m telling the truth as far as I can remember it, which I suppose is a different thing, isn’t it? We had sex, and then we were quiet for a little while, and then she said, “So what do you think?” Did she say it when we were having sex? Or when we were being quiet? Did I fall asleep for a little while? I’ve got no idea.
“Oh,” I said, because I was surprised.
“Is that all you can say? ‘Oh’?”
“No. Course not.”
“So what else can you say?”
“Isn’t it a bit soon?”
I meant, Isn’t it a bit soon after the sex? Not, you know, Isn’t it a bit soon after I moved out? I knew that the moving out had happened a long time before. I wasn’t that out of touch.
Alicia laughed.
“Yeah,” she said. “Right. How old do you want Roof to be before you make up your mind? Fifteen? Is that a good age?”
And then I realized that I hadn’t missed anything. I hadn’t missed anything little, anyway. I’d just missed the whole thing, that’s all, everything that had been going on in the last few months. She thought I’d been trying to make my mind up ever since my cold, and I thought I had.
“You wanted me to go when I did, though, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. But things have changed since then, haven’t they? It’s all settled down. It was difficult when Roof was a baby. But we’ve got it all worked out now, haven’t we?”
“Have we?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“Well,” I said, “that’s good, then, isn’t it?”
“Is that a yes, then?”
A lot of the last couple of years has seemed like a dream. Things happened too slowly, or too quickly, and half the time I couldn’t believe they were happening anyway. Sex with Alicia, Roof, Mum getting pregnant…Getting whizzed into the future seemed as real as any of it.
If I had to say when it was that I woke up, I’d say it was then, when the door to Rich’s bedroom opened and Alicia’s mother came into the room.
She screamed. She screamed because the room was dark, and she wasn’t expecting to see anybody. And she screamed because the people in there had no clothes on.
“Out,” she said, when she’d finished screaming. “Out. Dressed. Downstairs in two minutes.”
“What’s the big deal?” said Alicia, but she said it in a quivery voice, so I knew she wasn’t being as brave as she sounded. “We’ve had a baby together.”
“I’m going to tell you what the big deal is when you’re downstairs.” And she slammed the door hard as she went out.
We got dressed without speaking. It was weird. We totally felt as though we were in trouble, and I felt much younger than I was when we found out Alicia was pregnant. We were nearly eighteen, our son was asleep next door, and we were about to get yelled at for having sex together. One thing I can tell you, something I learned from those couple of years, is this. Age isn’t like a fixed thing. You can tell yourself that you’re seventeen or fifteen or whatever, and that might be true, according to your birth certificate. But birth-certificate truth is only a part of it. You slide around, in my experience. You can be seventeen and fifteen and nine and a hundred all on the same day. Having sex with the mother of my son after a long time without any made me feel about twenty-five, I’d say. And then I went from twenty-five to nine in two seconds, a new world record. I didn’t have a clue why I felt nine years old when I’d been caught in bed with a girl. Sex is supposed to make you feel older, not younger. Unless you’re old, I suppose. Then it might work the other way around. See what I mean about the sliding around?
Andrea and Robert were sitting at the kitchen table when we got downstairs. Andrea had a glass of wine in front of her, and she was smoking, something I’d never seen her do before.
“Sit down, both of you,” she said.
We sat down.
“Can we have a glass of wine?” said Alicia. Andrea just ignored her, and Alicia made a face.
/> “Will you answer my question now?” said Alicia.
“Which question?” said Robert.
“I asked Mum what the big deal was,” said Alicia.
Neither of them said anything. Robert looked at Andrea as if to say, This is all yours.
“You can’t see it?” said Andrea.
“No. We’ve had sex before, you know.”
I’d stopped feeling nine years old. I was somewhere around fourteen, but heading towards my actual age and maybe even past it quite quickly. I was on Alicia’s side. Now I’d stopped feeling like a naughty boy, it was hard to see what the big problem was. OK, nobody wants to think about members of their family having sex, but if I ever think about that, I just feel a bit sick. I don’t get angry. We were under the covers, so there was nothing showing. Plus, we’d finished. We weren’t in the middle of anything. And like Alicia had just said, Roof was living proof that this was old news. Maybe it was because we were in the wrong room. Andrea would never have given us such a hard time if she’d caught us in Alicia’s bedroom, I didn’t think. She wouldn’t even have gone in there. I thought I’d try that, seeing as nobody else seemed to have any ideas about what we’d done wrong.
“Was it because we were in Rich’s room?” I said.
“What the hell difference does that make?” said Andrea. So it wasn’t that. “Say something, Robert,” she said. “Why should it only be me that waves the big stick?”