Page 9 of Blow Down (The Plumber's Mate)
“Leave all that to you, don’t I?” It at least made him an easy bloke to buy presents for, which I appreciated, seeing as he had a birthday coming up in October and him proposing on my last birthday had set the bar a bit high. All I’d have to do would be take out a second mortgage and buy him another sweater. “Oi, I don’t have to dress up for this, do I?”
“Christ, no. Just wear what you want. Well, not your actual work clothes or they’ll think you’re taking the piss. And maybe give the joke T-shirts a rest.”
“Okay, you wanna stop before you rule out my entire wardrobe?”
“Don’t worry. I might think you look best naked, but I don’t reckon it’d go down too well with my mum.” Then he huffed to himself. “Either that, or it’d go down too bloody well.”
We eventually dragged ourselves out of bed—there’s only so long you can ignore the pointed miaowing of a couple of cats convinced they’re about to die of starvation—and grabbed a light breakfast of toast and coffee. Well, you’ve got to make sure you leave plenty of room for a roast dinner, haven’t you? Mortally offending Phil’s mum by refusing her Yorkshire pud probably wouldn’t be the best way to make a good first impression.
I’d thought maybe Phil would actually dress down for the occasion, but he just put on his usual gear of designer shirt and trousers so smart that if I wore ’em, I’d be pretty much guaranteed to spill gravy all over the front. I kind of liked that—like he was saying, This is how I am now, and I’m not gonna change for anyone.
Course, he might also have been saying, Look how far I’ve come, losers. Like I said, there’s a bit of a chip on those broad shoulders of his.
I dithered a bit, then put on a new-ish pair of black jeans and a dark-green shirt Gary reckoned brought out my eyes. Phil gave me a look.
“What?” I asked, narked.
He smirked. “Thought you weren’t gonna dress up.”
“Shut up. Are we going or what?”
Phil gave me a look like he wanted to say Or what. Then he squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and headed down the stairs.
I’d be lying if I said there weren’t one or two butterflies flitting around my insides as I followed, but Christ, how bad could his family be?
Phil’s mum still lived in the house he’d grown up in, which was on the Cottonmill council estate at the bottom of St. Albans. The estate had a bit of a bad rep locally, but it’s all relative, innit? A bad postcode round here was still dead posh compared to any of your inner-city no-go areas. Phil’s childhood home was one of a row of terraced houses with white-painted siding and a blocky entrance hall-cum-porch stuck on the front like a spare building block chucked there by a giant-sized toddler.
“Home sweet home, eh?” I asked as we marched up the garden path.
Phil coughed. It sounded a lot like Fuck off and die.
“Come on,” I said. “One meal, then we’re out of here. How bad can it be?”
Phil just looked at me.
I rang the bell. There was a short pause during which I’m pretty sure Mrs. M. hurriedly put on her lipstick, if the wonky line of it when she opened the door was any guide.
Not that it mattered, as she proceeded to leave most of it on Phil’s cheek and then turned to bung the rest on mine. I tried to wipe it off under cover of handing her the big bunch of flowers we’d brought. (Phil had tried to talk me out of them, but my mum brought me up proper.)
“Oh, love, that’s so sweet of you. And it’s lovely to meet you at last.” That was directed at Phil. “Come on in, love, don’t stand on the doorstep. The neighbours can bugger off and make their own entertainment, that’s what I always say. Come on, straight through to the living room while I sort out dinner. And call me Tracy, love.”
By the time I’d finished thanking God she hadn’t asked me to call her Mum, she’d shepherded us inside and closed the door behind us.
Phil might have been right about his mum preferring me naked, at that. I was guessing Mrs. Morrison—sorry, Tracy—fancied herself as a bit of a cougar, judging from the amount of leopard print she was wearing. It was a long top that clung tightly to her curves, of which she had an ample amount, and was low-cut to show about three times as much boob as any of the female members of my family would have thought it suitable to put on display.
Then again, if you’ve got it, why not flaunt it? Even if the only people around to flaunt it at are either (a) related by blood or (b) demonstrably gay. Still, for all I knew, she’d be off out merry-widowing this evening. She was a lot younger than my mum, after all. Phil had told me she’d been twenty when she had her first kid, and there weren’t that many years between any of ’em, which made her . . . Blimey. Midfifties, I’d say. Yeah, plenty old enough to be my mum, but still young enough for my mum to be her mum, at least theoretically speaking, which was all kinds of weird.
Still didn’t make it any easier thinking of her as Tracy.
The hall leading from the front door was narrow and cramped, half-full with shoe racks, recycling bins, and coats hanging six-deep on pegs. There was a strong smell of air freshener. It was a bit of a relief to get out into the living room, which was rectangular and boxy, with a squashy sofa in front of a large flat-screen telly at one end and a small, rickety-looking dining table already laid up for dinner at the other. God knows how Phil’s mum and dad had brought up three strapping lads and a daughter in a place this size. Maybe they’d eaten in shifts?
There were napkins on the table. And forks for dessert, and the reason I noticed all this particularly was because I was putting off paying attention to the other end of the room and, specifically, the sofa. Not that there was anything wrong with the sofa, mind. Unless you counted its occupants.
Jase, Phil’s brother, was sprawled across two-thirds of it reading the Daily Mail. He looked up briefly to say, “All right, mate?” then looked back down without waiting for an answer. The girl curled up at the other end with her nose in a magazine didn’t even go that far to acknowledge our presence.
The telly, as Phil had predicted, was off. I got the feeling Jase and Leanne weren’t any too chuffed about that.
I caught a barely there sigh from Phil’s direction. “Leanne?” he said loudly, and waited.
