Page 40 of The Notecard
‘So you can reminisce about my teenage diaries? Sure,’ says Laura.
‘Laura, do you have to always be so negative? It’s Dad’s birthday.’
‘You don’t even know where he is. He could be lying in a ditch.’
‘I don’t think from the time I left the room until now, Dad could have left the flat and be lying in a ditch.’
She’s right though, I have no idea where they’ve gone. Dad might have gone for a cigarette, but not with Mum. They’re not in the kitchen. I look in my bedroom and it’s empty. I try the bathroom door. It opens and I walk into something truly awful. Time stops.
‘What the fuck are you doing? Jesus, Mum, I can see your boob!’ I say, putting my hand over my eyes.
Mum and Dad are kissing each other passionately, and Dad is fondling her breast, which is out of her shirt. As soon as I walk in, they stop, caught out like two frisky teenagers. Mum’s putting her boob away, squashing it back into her bra. Warm custard. Dad stands up straight like he’s in the army. Attention!
‘You could have knocked!’ says Mum.
‘You could have locked the door!’ I say.
‘What’s going on?’ says Laura, walking up behind me.
‘Mum and Dad were about to have sex in my bathroom.’
‘Gross,’ says Laura before she walks away.
I walk away too and back into the living room. What’s going on? Are Mum and Dad getting back together? From what I saw in the bathroom, it seems so, which would be brilliant, but I really didn’t need to see that. For once I agree with Laura. It was gross. Mum and Dad walk out sheepishly. Mum’s still buttoning up her shirt. Simon walks back in and asks what he’s missed, and Laura explains what happened. I look at my parents, and I’m happy for them, obviously. On Dad’s birthday too. That was one present he definitely wasn’t expecting. I ask Mum what it means.
‘I don’t know,’ says Mum, flustered. ‘It just happened. It was all the reminiscing and the wine. You know what I’m like after a few glasses of wine.’
‘We’ll see,’ says Dad, attempting a half-hearted smile.
We’ll see. The food should be here soon. The room is palpable again. It’s a different palpable than before. Now it’s a Will-My-Parents-Get-Back-Together palpable. Laura wants to discuss her hen weekend. I look at Dad. Dad looks at Mum. Simon is looking at his phone. Laura looks annoyed. Fucking palpable. My phone buzzes with a text. It’s Keri: Two shags down. Seven to go!
Nick
Molly and I broke up because of an argument we had at Portobello market. It was a Saturday morning, and Molly was hungover after a late night out with work. I was tired after a long week in A&E. I had worked six days on the trot and was looking forward to a day off. Molly had wanted to go to the market to find something for her flat. We were going to have a long, potentially boozy lunch afterwards in a Notting Hill pub, and then a night at her flat. From the moment we met at the market, I could tell she was in a bit of a mood. Molly has always been temperamental. She’s either wonderfully happy or aggressively annoyed. Before we had a look around the market, we stopped off to get coffee. This is where things started to unravel. Molly ordered, they asked for her name, and when she got her coffee and looked at the cup, she was furious.
‘What the hell is this?’ she said to the poor barista behind the counter.
‘Sorry?’ said the girl in a broken English accent.
The girl was young and looked nervous.
‘My name is not blood Jolly. Jolly is not even a fucking name. It’s Molly. With an M. You can’t even spell my fucking name,’ said Molly, while I blushed and felt awful for the poor girl.
‘I sorry,’ said the barista.
‘You should be sorry. Fucking Jolly,’ said Molly. ‘God.’
‘Can we please just go?’ I said, aware everyone in the shop was looking at us and probably judging us.
‘It’s fucking crazy,’ said Molly loudly, pulling her sunglasses down over her eyes as we walked out. I heard a few mumbled comments about how rude Molly had been, and I didn’t disagree.
We walked out and began strolling towards the market. Molly was still seething over the Jolly mistake, while I was quietly pondering the end of our relationship. She had shown glimpses of her true self over our time together, and her shouting at a poor barista over an obvious mistake was the last straw. There had been another incident in a pub in Fulham where she had shouted at a barman for getting her order wrong, and the time she’d almost got in a fight at a Pizza Express. Molly’s volatility and general rudeness had worn me down and I was done with it.
We finally got to a stall that was selling clocks. We had barely spoken since the coffee shop incident. I was doing my best to avoid her, and she had spent most of the time texting someone at work. She started browsing the clocks and found one she liked. I was standing idling looking around when I heard her talking to the person at the stall. He was quite old and spoke with a heavy German accent. She was trying to get the price down, but in a tone of voice and with an attitude that made me dislike her more by the second. I knew that Molly could be condescending, verging on appallingly rude, but I was sick of it. I couldn’t be with someone like that. Eventually I couldn’t stand by and listen to her vehemently arguing with the stall owner about the price of the clock.
‘I’m off,’ I said.
‘What do you mean, off?’ said Molly.
