Page 9 of The Reboot
Out on the street, he tested the theory. He pulled his hood down as he made his way to his nan’s house, eyeballing passers-by as he went, almost daring them to see him. He tried to look open and approachable, like he’d welcome someone asking for a selfie or an autograph. But it didn’t make any difference. He didn’t need to hide anymore, because apparently he was invisible. People looked through him – or worse, looked right at him and saw nothing but some chubby loser in sweats with a bag of biscuits and nothing better to do in the middle of the afternoon than eat himself into a diabetic coma. It seemed his notoriety had finally worn off. He didn’t like it as much as he’d thought he would.
He could probably strip naked right here in the street and still not even make the sidebar of shame, because who’d care about some nobody flashing his bits and howling at the moon. There’d be no opportunistic photos or banner headlines – Roly Punch papped leaving his Narcs Anonymous meeting; the former boy band hottie gone to seed, an arrow helpfully pointing to his flabby belly as if you couldn’t spot it for yourself. Roly Poly! Punch Drunk! His name had been a tabloid editor’s wet dream and the asinine headlines had practically written themselves. The last time he’d seen himself in any kind of news story, it was one of those social media clickbait articles – ‘you won’t believe how shit these former celebs look now’ or some such crap, with a picture of him looking like his nan in bad drag to draw people in. He suspected it was photoshopped. There was no denying he’d had some bad days, but he refused to believe he’d ever looked quitethatgrotesque.
Well, fuck it! Maybe this was the wake-up call he needed. He’d turn over a new leaf, get his life back on track – for real this time. When he got home, he’d throw out all the crap in his cupboards and go for a run. He hesitated as he passed a bin. Maybe he should start right now, and chuck the biscuits out. If he brought them home, he’d just sit on the sofa and scoff the lot while he played FIFA. But then he thought what his nan would say, and he couldn’t do it. Because, after all, there were people starving in the world. You couldn’t just throw away food like it was nothing. It was disrespectful. He’d bring them to his nan’s and they could have them together – that way, even if they ate the lot between them, he’d still be halving his calories.
‘How was your meeting?’ his nan asked when they were sitting at the table in her cosy little kitchen, a pot of tea and plate of biscuits between them. Christine Punch’s ex-council house in the Liberties was tiny, but it was warm, cheerful and homey, and it was where he had always felt safest and happiest. Whenever the meditation teacher in rehab told him to ‘go to his happy place’ this was where he went.
‘It was good. Tinky Winky fell off the wagon at the weekend, though. Went on a bender.’ He picked up a chocolate digestive and bit into it. He’d start the diet tomorrow.
‘Oh no! And he’d been doing so well.’
‘Yeah, he was gutted. I felt really bad for him.’
‘And how about Laa-Laa? How’s she doing?’
‘Great.’ He nodded. ‘She spoke to her daughter at the weekend. It looks like they’re going to patch things up.’
‘Oh, that’s good news.’ His nan smiled, reaching for a biscuit. She loved hearing about his NA group, and followed their stories like her favourite soap opera. He knew it was all supposed to be confidential and he shouldn’t tell anyone what happened at the meetings. But he’d named them all after children’s TV characters to preserve their anonymity, so he didn’t see any harm in it. She had no idea who they really were, and even if she had, it wasn’t as if she was going to hunt them down.
‘How’s your mum? I haven’t seen her all week.’
‘She’s good. She has a new boyfriend.’
Christine rolled her eyes. ‘Honestly, I don’t know why she keeps putting herself through it. I wouldn’t mind if it made her happy, but she really knows how to pick them.’
‘Maybe this one’ll be different,’ he said hopefully. It was true his mum had awful luck with men. He didn’t know why because she was lovely – kind and good-humoured, and really pretty. She looked after herself – dressed well and wore make-up and all that – and she still looked good, even though she was almost fifty. She deserved someone nice who’d see how great she was and treat her well. But her boyfriends never stuck around for long. She seemed to have an unerring knack for attracting absolute fuckwits. But she remained ever optimistic, so he tried to be too. He’d feel disloyal if he admitted to sharing his nan’s scepticism.
‘Well, I suppose stranger things have happened.’ Christine sighed. ‘Though I can’t really imagine what. Where did she meet this one?’
‘Online – some dating website, as far as I know.’
‘Well, I suppose that’s a step up from a phone app, at least.’
Roly didn’t think it was really, but he said nothing. He wouldn’t give her any more ammunition for criticising his mum.
‘What’s he like?’
Roly shrugged. ‘Don’t know. I haven’t met him yet. Neither has she, actually – not in real life.’
Christine tutted exasperatedly. ‘I don’t know what Loretta thinks she needs a man for anyway. It’s not how she was raised.’
That was the trouble with his nan – she didn’t get it, because apart from Roly and his grandfather, she thought men were basically a waste of space. She had various mugs and posters around the place saying as much in different ways. ‘A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle’ was printed on the T-shirt she was wearing right now. She’d been a major hippie and feminist in her day, always going on marches about women’s rights and torching her underwear. He’d seen the photographs of the protest rallies and bra bonfires.
‘But she never had the sense she was born with when it came to the fellas,’ Christine continued. ‘Starting with that father of yours.’
‘Yeah, she’s a sucker for romance,’ Roly said with a grin.
‘There was precious little romance involved with that gobshite.’ His nan had no illusions about Roly’s father, a Premier League footballer who’d got her daughter knocked up at eighteen and promptly abandoned her. His mother, on the other hand, had long held out hope that he’d come to his senses and settle down to playing happy families with her and Roly. Instead, after his football career was brought to an abrupt end following a leg injury, he’d moved first to Australia and then to Singapore, before finally settling in Thailand, leaving a trail of abandoned women, children and debt in his wake.
Thankfully, his mum had eventually realised he was never coming back and moved on. But Roly couldn’t help feeling his nan was right and she’d be better off giving up on men altogether. He hated seeing her so sad and disappointed all the time when the latest wanker let her down and screwed her over. He felt guilty too, because being lumbered with a baby at eighteen had seriously curtailed her love life, and he knew he’d been responsible for scaring off more than one of her boyfriends. So he tried to keep out of her way and be encouraging about her new relationships, even as he didn’t hold out much hope of them making her happy.
‘Speak of the Devil,’ his nan said as the front door opened, and Roly heard his mother’s quick step in the hall.
‘Roly, you’re here!’ She breezed in and hugged him from behind, enveloping him in a cloud of warm perfume as she kissed his cheek. ‘Been to your meeting, love?’
‘Yeah.’ He smiled at her as she shrugged out of her coat. She got a mug from the cupboard and helped herself to tea, as at home in this house as if it were her own. It was where she’d grown up, and where Roly had spent the first five years of his life, before she’d got them their own place.
‘You look good, Mum,’ Roly said as she sat beside him.
