Page 36 of Things We Never Said
‘Do I mind not having to pay for your huge white wedding?’ Sean asks. ‘Uh ... let me see ...’
‘And you’re not shocked?’
Sean laughs.
‘Do you think ...? How do you think ...?’ April stammers.
‘What would Mum have said?’ Sean prompts.
‘Yeah.’ April nods. ‘She wouldn’t have minded, would she?’
‘I doubt it,’ Sean says. ‘But I really couldn’t say.’
‘I don’t think she would have minded,’ April says, clearly trying to convince herself. ‘I honestly don’t.’
‘It’s immaterial,’ Sean says with a sad shake of his head. ‘She’s not here, sweetheart.’
During the train journey back to Cambridge, Sean tries but fails to sleep.
To say that he had not slept well in Matt’s bed would be an understatement. The street lamp outside had shone directly on his face (there were no curtains), and Matt’s lumpy, sagging mattress was quite simply the worst Sean has ever known. Matt needs, Sean thinks, to spend a little more on his bedding and a little less on records. He berates himself for being an old fogey as soon as he thinks this, but the fact remains that it’s true. The bed really had been awful.
By Saturday morning, Sean’s back had been stiff, and by Sunday, he had been thinking that he would have to book an appointment with an osteopath just to get his vertebrae yanked back into line.
But despite his lack of sleep and despite the gentle motion of the train, Sean’s unable to doze. His mind, instead, is running over April’s declarations, and the experience of the anti-Brexit demonstration. Because, yes, the demonstration had been a disappointment.
They had joined the ragged line of protesters just as they were leaving Hyde Park, but within an hour they had abandoned the procession to duck into a branch of Pizza Hut instead.
‘I feel like a real traitor,’ Sean had said, once they were seated. The last stragglers were still walking past the window.
‘Now you know why my generation doesn’t go to demos,’ April said. ‘It’s just too depressing.’
‘Surely it’s depressing because no one goes, not the other way around?’
‘I think it’s like a vicious circle of apathy,’ Ronan suggested.
‘Plus, it doesn’t change anything, Dad,’ April said. ‘Do you remember all the people who protested against the Iraq War? There were millions of them. But it didn’t change a thing. That’s how they’ve turned us into such an apathetic nation. By never listening. By not giving a damn what people think.’
Remembering Catherine’s similar analysis of the miners’ strike, Sean could only concur.
‘But to concentrate on the serious stuff,’ Ronan had said. ‘What kind of pizza are you having?’
Once home, Sean is finally able to catch up on his missing sleep. He lies down on the sofa and it’s only when he wakes up to darkness that he remembers he still hasn’t opened this weekend’s package. He glances at the broadband box and sees that it’s almost seven thirty. He’ll make dinner and then he’ll open the next envelope and he’ll spend the evening with Catherine. It will almost be like not eating alone, he thinks.
Snapshot #11
35mm format, black and white. Young people are dancing in the middle of a lounge. On the settee, which has been pushed to the far side of the room, can be seen three young men. They are grinning and holding bottles of beer. Draped across their knees is a young woman with long hair whose face is too blurred by movement to be identifiable.
Sean recognises two of the men on the sofa immediately. The man on the left was Andy. He looked so much like Sean that people had called them ‘the twins’.
The man on the right they had nicknamed Dave the Rave to distinguish him from Dave the Shave (who was beardless) and Original Dave (who had simply got there first). Dave the Rave never missed a party and had been the first person Sean ever saw performing the ‘big box, little box, cardboard box’ dance. The guy in the middle, Sean never knew, but he seems to remember that he had been a friend of a friend, who had turned up with the stunning Swedish exchange student in a miniskirt. Sean can still picture the girlfriend vividly. And in his memory she is still one of the most beautiful women he has ever seen.
‘Who the hell is she?’ Sean had asked Andy, on laying eyes upon her.
‘She’s hot, huh?’ Andy had said. ‘Her name’s Leah, I think.’
‘Princess Leah?’
‘Exactly.’
