The Life of Lee (31 page)

A night out in Scarborough for Heather’s twenty-first birthday.

It never takes me long to get to know people. I’ll have a chat with anyone, and by now we had both got to know quite a few locals. We’d made many friends who, just like us, were working throughout the summer. So nine times out of ten we’d get our tea free of charge; sometimes we’d even get a full free meal at the pub. The Bell was a real hub for the locals, so the advantage of working for Scott was that I got to know everybody from the boss of the arcades and the owners of the restaurants to the local mayor, who came in for a pint of Bass. I know it’s a bit of a cliché, but I’m going to say it anyway: we had nothing,
but for Heather and me life couldn’t have got any better. The sun just seemed to shine every day.

Only on one occasion would our precious bubble of bliss be popped by the harsh realities of the world outside. Mr Nudds, Heather’s father, unexpectedly arrived in Scarborough one day, checking into the best hotel in town, on what he said was a short visit. He explained to Heather over the phone from his suite that it was time for her to meet the new woman in his life and the one he had arranged to marry.

Heather was taken aback – not just about meeting the woman but about the fact that her father suddenly had all this money and could afford to be staying in hotels and hiring suites. ‘He’s never had money like that,’ she said. I felt slightly awkward. I didn’t really want to get involved; after all, it was Heather’s family and I thought it wasn’t for me to give an opinion on the odd behaviour of her father. I barely knew him and didn’t want to make a judgement. ‘He seems like he’s been possessed by this woman. He’s acting like a teenager,’ Heather reflected after putting the phone down.

Still, her dad was desperate for Heather to meet the new woman and had taken the liberty of booking a restaurant so we could join them for dinner. I remember thinking at the time, ‘It sounds like an audience with the Pope. Why can’t they just come over to the flat?’ But I suppose he wanted to give her the big introduction, do her a bit of justice. Also, I knew the restaurant he was talking about and was aware how nice the food was. We hadn’t been able to afford to go out anywhere posh and – not wanting to be disrespectful – I fancied a right go at the menu.

The dinner was a disaster from start to finish.

I took the night off from the pub in the expectation of really filling up on the food at the restaurant. I was going to make sure I reminded Mr Nudds as I tucked into dessert that it was he who had asked us, so I took it that he was paying.

We had no decent clothes, as we couldn’t afford any. So I went in my work clothes, hoping they wouldn’t get too close to me as I smelled of pub beer and pork scratchings. And Heather? Well, whatever she wore, she looked amazing.

We made sure we arrived at the restaurant at the arranged time, but found we had to sit at the bar waiting for quite a while. Things got tense as Heather was extremely nervous, and we felt out of place hanging around for that long. We certainly couldn’t get a drink as we had no money. So we had to sit there pointing at the optics for an hour. There are only so many times you can make a joke about optics. I did it to stave off Heather’s mounting anxiety and then I started on the beer mats.

At last, the door swung open. It was a very excited Ted, Heather’s father. He quickly urged the waiter to gather us up and hurry us to the table. ‘Here we go!’ I thought. Ted made sure we were all sat down and ready when she arrived. I was quite fired up about it all, as it seemed quite exciting. But then I glanced over at Heather and could see she looked very anxious. After all, it was only recently that she’d lost her mum. For her, perhaps, the dust hadn’t quite settled yet, and here was her father introducing her to his future wife, a woman she’d known nothing of until the day before.

‘Stay there. I’ll go and get her,’ Ted said, fussing around the table to make sure everything was just right for what had now been built up into the big arrival. I smiled at him, but even I was turning into a bundle of nerves as he ran out of the restaurant again. There was a long pause, as Heather and I, beside ourselves with expectation now, fixed our eyes on the door.

Suddenly Ted burst in, waving his hands in the air. He stood there, holding the door to create the maximum effect for her entrance. Bam! In she strutted, a cross between Danny DeVito and Bette Midler. She was a strumpet and a Rottweiler rolled into one. Three feet off the ground, she was a little ball of hard-as-nails hellcat. You could tell straight away that this woman had been there and done that.

‘Heather, Lee,’ Ted said proudly. ‘Meet Denise!’

If I’m honest, I wanted to laugh, but I managed to keep it inside for Heather’s sake. She just sat there, completely confounded that her father, who had previously only ever behaved in a relatively sane and conservative manner, could suddenly become so besotted with someone who could clearly eat him for breakfast.

Denise played the part to perfection. She stood there, taking in the moment. Then, flicking her leopard-skin fur coat back over her shoulder, she gave a mock display of searching the room for someone she might know. But all the time it was quite clear it must be us she’d come to meet as we were the only ones in the frigging place!

I was keen for us all to get started as I was starving and desperately wanted to dig into the decent-looking nosebag on offer. After all, a chance like this wouldn’t come
along for perhaps many years. But, unfortunately, despite the good food, the evening went rapidly downhill.

The whole meal was taken up with this strange women – who we’d never met in our lives – filling us in on the most intimate details of her and Ted’s sex life: he likes it like this, I like it like that – you get the picture. This, I decided, was a family affair, so I tried hiding my head in the menu, but Denise was a relentless piece of work. It kept coming thick and fast, some of it quite sordid. By the time we were halfway through the dinner, even I was finding it difficult to swallow any of the cock and bull stories emanating from her overly crimson glossy lips, so I can’t imagine how Heather was taking it. I watched her as she ventured little disbelieving glances at her father, hardly touching any of her food.

Ted, on the other hand, seemed in raptures, laughing boyishly and suggestively nudging the rattling big hairdo on legs next to him. Their hands were all over each other as she ramped up the vamp. It was perfectly obvious she was playing a game with Heather, so that right there and then she would know who she was dealing with.

Looking at it objectively, I felt sorry for Denise as she appeared very insecure. She was straight on the attack from the beginning and really needn’t have been. Heather was just a young girl, inexperienced in the games people play, only wanting her dad to be happy. But, alas, from that first meeting, there would never be a chance of a relationship between poor Heather and that woman. Even an idiot like me could see that would be impossible.

We all left the restaurant on apparently friendly-enough
terms. Ted and Denise seemed happy, which only emphasized their lack of understanding for Heather’s feelings. From that moment on, a cloud hung over Heather’s head. Me? I did what I always do: tried to make light of it.

Having hardly eaten a cocking thing all night, as soon as we got back to our flat I made Heather and me some toast. But as we sat down on the couch to eat it, she burst into floods of tears. I put my arms around her – this, let me remind you, was before even taking a bite out of the toast, so I still hadn’t had anything to frigging eat. I held her tight as she gradually and quietly fell asleep. As we sat there in the small, dark room, Heather lightly breathing in my arms, I thought, ‘What a shame! Why do some folk want to break other people’s hearts? It could all be so much better.’

I looked around the room. It was just the two of us, all still, no sounds. Then I caught sight of my plate of toast on the opposite arm of the couch. It was lying there, taunting me.

I harrumphed to myself. ‘I won’t be getting that tonight.’

28. The Stork

Scarborough was now a whole lot different. The mood in the flat had changed. The clouds seemed to gather, blocking out the rays of the sun. The work at the pub seemed to get longer, harder. I didn’t mind – it was extra money and I was enjoying it. But Heather had made up her mind: she wanted to return home.

I could see she had begun to worry, probably about her father and what might be happening back home – after all, her younger brother was still there. But there was something else playing on her mind, something deeper. I took it that it was down to her father’s recent mad visit. I watched patiently as she went about her business, working in the rock shop, coming home, making dinner. She was doing things around the flat, but not with her usual busy, rushed-off-her-feet attitude. It was more like she was going through the motions. She looked vacant, like her mind was fighting something else.

We used to chat loads over dinner, but now we sat in silence with just the sound of the clock ticking. So quiet was it, in fact, that we could hear each other’s eating noises. I initially decided I’d let it go on as long as I could and wait until she was ready to tell me whatever it was that was troubling her. But it had hung over our flat for a
week now, so I confronted her at the dinner table. ‘Right, that’s it, Heather. I can’t take this any more. You have to tell me what –’

‘I’m pregnant.’

‘What?’ My mouth dropped open.

‘I’m sorry.’ She lowered her head and began crying.

I sat in stunned silence. I mean, what do you say to that? As per usual, I just said the first thing that came into my head. ‘If you keep crying like that, you’re going to run out of liquid. How much more can you have? You must be nearly empty by now –’

‘Lee!’ she interrupted. I was rambling and she knew I hadn’t quite taken it in. ‘This is very serious. I’m pregnant.’

I didn’t know what to think. This was all new to me. ‘What? Actually, like, really, I mean, you’re –? Honestly?’

‘Yessss!’ she insisted.

‘Well, how did that happen?’

Heather started laughing across the table. ‘Oh, the stork came last night, you fool.’

‘Stork? What stork? I’ll kill him.’ I knew what she meant, of course, but I wanted to make light of it. It was my defence mechanism kicking in. If in doubt, muck about.

I jumped up from the small table, sending the plates flying. I reached over, grabbed her face and gave her a massive kiss. She smiled broadly and began whipping the tears away. ‘So that’s all right then?’ she sniffed.

‘All right?’ I shouted. I was ecstatic. I paced the tiny room, frantic, one hand behind my back like some sort of statesman, the other pointing, jabbing towards the
floor. I rattled out my plans like a machine-gun. ‘Well, we’ll have to get started right now. I don’t want my son growing up –’

‘It could be a daughter,’ Heather interjected with a laugh.

‘Exactly. I don’t want my son growing up being no daughter of mine. Oh no, he’ll need proper stuff – like shoes. Actually, I don’t know why, we’ll be carrying him about for two years. Well, that’ll save us a few bob anyway. Wait. I’ll have to sort myself out, get a proper job, somewhere to live.’

‘Not just you! Us, all of us,’ Heather protested.

Then the magnitude of what she had just told me sank in. I stopped dead like a plank in the middle of the room. I could not believe it. I slumped back into the chair, my eyes glazed over, and fixed a stare straight ahead of me. I was void of any thought and only managed to mumble a few words. ‘I’m going to be a bloke. I’m actually having a baby, Heather …’

She rose from her seat and calmly came and stood next to me. She took my hollow, silly head gently in her hands, pulled it to her tummy and held it there. ‘I can hear it,’ I whispered.

‘Lee! It’s only just happened.’

I looked up at her, as her huge, watery eyes scanned my face. ‘Then what are you panicking about?’ I asked.

She spoke very firmly. ‘We need to go home.’

I noticed the clock from the corner of my eye. ‘I’m late for work.’ I sprang from the chair, grabbed my jacket and gave Heather a big kiss. Just before running out the door, I looked back at her; she was crying and laughing at the
same time. I was so happy, I shouted, punching the air: ‘We’re going to have a baby!’ And I was gone.

A couple of weeks later, we arrived back at Heather’s house in Essex in the early hours of the morning. It was pouring with rain, but luckily we managed to jump in a cab at the station. After dropping Heather off first, I was intending then to ride it on back to mine. But the moment the cab came to a stop, Heather peered out of the rain-splashed window and instinctively knew there was something wrong about her house.

Because of the rain, we hurriedly climbed from the back of the car. Grabbing the suitcase from the boot, we quickly ran to the front door. Heather slammed in the key and swung the door open. As soon as we entered, it was obvious: her dad had done a runner.

Empty houses always have that same cold echo when there’s nothing to soak up the sound. Heather groped around for the hall light-switch, but it didn’t work. As we stumbled through the dark into the kitchen, we could tell the full extent of what had happened. The house was stripped bare; there was nothing left, not even carpets.