A Fucked Up Life in Books (11 page)

‘HE DIES AT THE END, YOU KNOW!’ bellowed someone else, right in my face.

‘What, Harry?’ I said.

‘YEAH,’ said the drunk.

‘Mate, you’re forgetting the first rule. Never kill the hero. Harry doesn’t die.’

The drunk laughed at me. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t die. I know who does though … whatshisface … Alan Rickman, Snape, yeah, he dies. I heard it on the radio. Some lad in ASDA had the book in the back and read a bit of it out and …’

What happened next around me was pretty amazing. People who had been standing silently, or chatting quietly with friends, people with lightening scars on their heads and scarves of all of the four Hogwarts houses put their hands up to their heads, covered their ears and started shouting to block this guy out. As angry as I was at this prick I couldn’t help bursting into laughter as I watched manic twenty-somethings with closed eyes go ‘ARGHHHHH’ or ‘SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP’, or the best one, sing the Harry Potter theme: ‘DA DA DA DA DAAA DAAA DAAAAAAAAA DAAAAA, DA DA DA DAAAA DA DAAAAAAAAAAAAAA …’

The Drunk looked confused, and after a minute turned back to me. ‘Yeah, so he dies. Snape. He was good all along.’

‘FUUUUUCCCCKKKKK YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.’ I roared in his face. What a bastard. And Snape. Poor Snape. I hoped it wasn’t true.

The Drunk mumbled something about us all being ‘mental’ and then fucked off to the nearest Wetherspoons.

‘What a dick,’ said some girl standing in front of me. I nodded solemnly.

What a dick indeed.

The next day I got a call from the boy I was seeing who told me that one of his friends was stood a few people back from me in the queue. He forwarded on the text that his friend had sent.

‘
Hey, I went to get the new Harry Potter last night and XXXX told some drunk guy to fuck off! Well, she didn’t tell him really she kind of screamed it in his face. She’s fucking mental.
’

I’m not mental. I just fucking love Harry Potter.

This boy that I was seeing was a bit different. He was sweet and kind but got into the most horrible panics when he had to plan something, or do something. He always wanted me to tell him exactly what to do, and if I didn’t, he got so stressed that he couldn’t cope with it and got really upset. To make it even worse he wasn’t a bookish kind of person. I didn’t care that he wasn’t a bookish kind of person, but it did bother me that it was making him panic.

I didn’t want him to get upset, and I also wanted him to feel like he’d done something right and not feel bad about it. I was going to be in a similar situation in a couple of days when he sent me to HMV for an ‘interesting South American film’, but that is another story, and I rarely panic in shops. So on the day when he headed off into town I waited a few minutes, met my friend, and then followed him.

He arrived at Smiths. We arrived at Smiths. We followed him in. I’d already been in there earlier in the week and had made The Plan with my friend. Unfortunately, it was a massive Smiths which is why I had to be there too. He walked into the huge books section on the ground floor, and so did I, ducking into the maps and reference section and peering out towards where he was now standing anxiously, looking around for ideas.

It was time for The Plan. I phone my friend.

‘He’s in children’s books. Ground floor on the left. Next to the lift. No, not next to the fucking stairs next to the LIFT, Jesus, woman.’

My friend walked into the shop and vaguely towards where he was.

‘Good, now, he needs to be in the back left corner. There’s loads of shit there. Fucking loads of it. Hardbacks. Illustrated classics, poetry, big ornamental coffee table books. Steer him, he’s just going to stand there all day and then leave if you don’t. Go.’

She walked towards him. I’d told her to be cool. She’d better be fucking cool.

‘OH, HI! FANCY SEEING YOU HERE! Are you looking for X’s Christmas present?’

Dickhead.

He looked panicked, he told her he didn’t know what to get. He couldn’t find anything.

She needs to be cool.

‘OH! Well! I am also here looking for a present for someone who is a lot like X! What a coincidence! I was going to go to the back left corner, let’s go there TOGETHER!’

Twat. So much for being cool.

He looked uncomfortable as she steered him in the right direction. They stood and looked at the books as I shuffled closer.

He stood for a long time just staring at the selection in front of him. My friend started to pick some of the books up and comment on them, and eventually, he started to pick some up and turn them over in his hands and look at them.

I thought he was alright then. I rang my friend.

‘HI MUM!’ she shouted down the phone, nodding at him and then turning and scanning the aisles.

‘Mum? Fuck you. He’s okay now, let’s go.’ She excused herself and we left.

The last day that I saw him before we went home for Christmas he excitedly handed me my present.
Fairy Tales
by Hans Christian Andersen. He’d got it, he said, because it had pictures of cutouts that Hans had made, and because he likes the cover, and because he recognised one or two of the stories.

It was perfect.

A few years ago my Dad was told that he needed to have a hip replacement. My brother was still living at home and I decided to go back to my Dad’s to help out a bit while he was recovering. On the morning of his operation my brother and I hid his car keys so that he couldn’t attempt to drive while he was on the mend, and drove him to the hospital.

After checking him in and saying goodbye and I’ll see you tomorrow, we decided to go for a walk around the city centre of this town. It was a little way away from where we lived, and we hadn’t been there before. My brother just fancied a look around, but I had bigger things on my mind. The new Terry Goodkind had come out that day and I wanted it. My brother said he’d buy me it for my birthday. Excellent, I’d already saved myself twenty quid. Off we went.

We had some time left on the parking in the hospital car park and so left the car there to start the twenty minute or so walk into the town centre. After five minutes of walking my brother’s phone rang.

‘Hey man, I’m sorry to do this to you, it’s your Dad’s op today, right? Is he okay? Well I’ve just come outside to get in the car to go to work and my car wasn’t there but there was loads of glass on the floor. So I walked up the street a bit and there was the car, all smashed in halfway down the street. It’s fucked, the whole back end is caved in. Yeah, and listen, that’s not the bad bit. I followed the glass along and it led to your Mum’s house. Her car’s parked outside and the front of her car is smashed up and the windscreen is only half there. I rang the doorbell but there wasn’t an answer. Could you give her a call?’

After relaying the conversation between him and his friend my brother was pretty angry, and then worried. I got my phone out and selected her name in the phone book. Home phone number. It rang and rang and no one answered.

Right, try the mobile.

That too, rang and rang with no answer.

My brother rang his friend back and told him to bang on the door some more. He was really worried now but I just felt angry.

I rang a few more times. On the fifth or sixth attempt she answered the phone.

‘Eurghh, hello …?’ She croaked down the line.

I could hear my brother’s friend banging on the door in the background.

‘Go downstairs right now and answer the door. It is X. Tell him that you are alright and on the phone to me and then close the door and get the fuck back up here.’

‘What? No …’

‘I SAID: ANSWER THE FUCKING DOOR.’

I heard her grumbling as she put the receiver down on the table and went downstairs, heard her answer the door, do a little laugh and then come back to the phone. It took a look time to get it to her face, judging by the fumbley scratchy noises that I could hear.’

‘Now, why the fuck are you ringing me at … 8.30 in the morning. I was asleep.’

‘Where did you go last night?’ I asked.

‘Out,’ she replied.

‘Out where?’

‘To a friend’s, to X’s.’

‘Drinking, were you?’

‘A bit.’

‘Drive there, did you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where does X live?’

She told me.

‘Are you fucking kidding me, that’s a five minute walk. So you went round there, drunk, I don’t know how many bottles of wine, and then got in the car and drove home?’

‘Yes, look I don’t know why you’re so angry or what the problem is here, calling me at this time in the morning and screaming down the phone at me. I’m a grown woman, I can go out if I like, I can have a drink if I like. I probably shouldn’t have driven home but it was fine. Nothing happened.’

‘NOTHING HAPPENED?’ I was really screaming at her now. ‘GO AND LOOK AT YOUR FUCKING CAR AND THEN COME BACK HERE AND TALK TO ME.’

More grumbling. More muffly scratching noises as she put the phone on the table and went outside. Then a THUD THUD THUD as she ran back upstairs.

‘Where’s the car?’

‘End of the road. Go on. I’ll wait.’

She went again. It took a while. When she came back she groaned into the phone, ‘Ooohhh, fuck. What happened?’

‘You, dickhead, went out, drank, drove home and stacked your car into X’s car. Then from what it apparently looks like, you reversed your fucking car, drove round his and parked somewhere up the road and somehow managed to find your house. You cunt.’

‘Don’t call me a cunt.’

‘You are a cunt. What the fuck were you thinking?’

‘The roads were quiet …’

‘THE ROADS WERE QUIET? My fucking BROTHER, your SON drives around those roads at night. If you had hit him and hurt him in your fucking ridiculous state I would’ve fucking killed you. That’s not a threat or me being dramatic. I would have killed you. You FUCKING IDIOT.’

She was silent now. On the other end of the phone I was throwing my hands in the air and sighing and gasping for breath and wondering if she cared.

‘Right,’ I said eventually. ‘I am coming over right now.’

‘Oh no, you can’t, I’m …’

I hung up. We were pretty far away. I’d take us an hour to get there.

We drove back towards home, taking the fourth turn at the roundabout instead of the first, which led us to Mum. I got out of the car, marched towards the door and slammed my hand down on the handle. It didn’t move. Locked.

‘OPEN THIS FUCKING DOOR RIGHT NOW,’ I screamed.

Someone opened the door. Not my Mum. Some old man.

‘Brilliant. Who the fuck are you?’ I asked. He gave me some name and I pushed past him.

Mum was in the living room having a cigarette. My brother and I went in. Someone else was in there too. A woman, who I thought I recognised as being a neighbour.

‘Hello,’ said Mum. ‘I’ve spoken to X, it’s all fine. The police are just on their way over now for insurance purposes. It could have been a lot worse if it weren’t your brother’s friend! Hahahaha, quite funny really. Anyway, I’ve been talking to my friends …’ she nodded at the man and woman in the room with her, ‘… and there’s no harm done. X will get his car fixed on my insurance, and he’s going to say it was a mistake, we’ve worked something out.’

I looked at the pair of unfamiliar faces in the living room. Her friends.

‘So, she’s told you what she did, and you said there’s no harm done? And what fucking planet are you on exactly? I don’t know who the fuck you are but you are probably the worst people in the world that I have met so far. Tell her it’s okay to do something like that, not to worry about it? You’re fucking disgusting.’

‘Darling, I do wish you wouldn’t swear at my friends.’

‘Fuck you.’

She turned back to her friends. ‘She takes after her Mother! Fiery!’

‘I DO NOT TAKE AFTER MY FUCKING MOTHER. YOU ARE FUCKING INSANE. YOU ARE INSANE AND YOUR FRIENDS ARE CUNTS.’

I went to storm out of the house as the door knocked. The police. I left the door open and told them to take her fucking licence off her. They looked at each other in bemusement and stepped past me and into the warm welcome of my Mum’s smoky living room. They didn’t take her licence off her.

Because it was my brother’s friend’s car that she’d crashed into, he’d felt bad and not pressed charges. We went and looked at his car, and the impact of her smacking into the back of it had crumpled the back seats, one which had his daughter’s baby car chair in, deeply into the back of the drivers and passenger seats. It made me feel sick.

She paid out for his car and she paid out for her own, ignoring what could’ve happened to her and what kind of trouble she could’ve been in, and instead making up a new story to tell friends and family about what happened.

When I passed my driving test a few years later and was worried about my driving, my brother said to me, ‘Your driving is fine. There is nothing wrong with your driving. It’s all of these other cunts that you have to watch. You don’t know what they’re going to do. Just watch the road and watch them.’

A fucking good piece of advice, if you ask me.

I used to go out with a boy who loved Terry Pratchett. Now, I’ve never really been all that interested in Pratchett; I’ve read a couple of books but I can’t remember now exactly what was going on. And yes, they made me chuckle a few times but only having plucked two from the massive back catalogue of choice I had never really got all that invested in the characters and their world. I am currently collecting up the
Discworld
books, in order, so that I can remedy this because I think I’d like them.