Half Plus Seven by Dan Tyte Page B

post?’
    â€˜No, love.’
    â€˜NO? I could bloody throttle my secretary. And no flowers either?’
    â€˜No, love.’
    â€˜I expressly told her to… oh, look, it doesn’t matter does it, Mum? I’m sorry.’
    â€˜It’s okay, love, I know you’re so busy. The fact you’re here is all that counts.’ I’d post a card on Monday.
    â€˜I know, Mum. We’re so slammed in the office at the moment that I’m working most weekends.’
    â€˜Well, I hope they’re paying you double-time, love.’
    â€˜Something like that, Mum.’
    â€˜It really is a shame you can’t make it tonight, love. Barry’s booked a Motown tribute act – The Four Degrees. There’ll be five when you get up with them won’t there, Barry, love?’
    â€˜I’m not sure about the equipment and acoustics in the club, babe, but I’ll give the old lungs an airing after a few shandies, no doubt. Just like old times…’
    Now don’t be drawn in by his nostalgia bullshit. Old times, my fucking arse. Costa Del Sol karaoke bars still looked shit in sepia. That was Barry’s Everest: running five-time weekly sing-along sessions in the sun, playing the Sonny to a revolving saloon door of desperate divorcée Chers. Which, yes, as you’ve guessed, was where he met my mum. Four years ago today. They married 365 days later. She’d been drawn in by the glamour, the attention, the chance to be in the spotlight and on the stage. My dad had barely put her on a bus. It’s hard to know if they were over over when she fell for Barry’s bum notes. In truth, they’d never even got started. My dad was distant and drunk, or drunk and distant. After a while it was better for him to be the latter, Mum and me got along just fine when he was out of the picture. The house was better without his brooding, boozing time-bomb around the place. You never knew when he’d be back to explode. He didn’t give warning calls like the IRA. When I thought about it, really fucking thought about it, you know, objectively, I suppose in some ways Barry was better for her. Probably. At least he was there. And when he was there, he wasn’t out of his head.
    But I hated him.
    Why?
    He made my mum happy, something she’d only known fleetingly before. I hated him because – without getting all Holden Caulfield on you – he was a phoney. He had one dogshit song in the charts 40 years ago, and then pressed play on a tape deck and hogged a mike until his crow’s feet kicked in. To call him a failed rock star would be a disservice to failures. But at least he tried, I suppose. My dad was trying, but he never tried, not at anything worthwhile. Maybe I hated Barry because he wasn’t him. And, slowly, little by little, I was.
    My mum went back into the kitchen. I looked at Barry. He looked at me. She reappeared with three glass dishes. This wasn’t a roast.
    â€˜Now, I know you said you didn’t want to spoil your roast, but I’ve done a prawn cocktail. I know how you like prawns.’ Christ, she was doing her Christmas menu. She’d bring me in some socks and a body spray and shower gel gift-pack any minute now.
    â€˜Thanks, Mum.’
    â€˜You’re welcome, love.’
    The silence we ate in was broken only by Barry’s chewing. Some Thousand Island dressing dribbled onto his chin.
    â€˜Remember Jessica Jennings, love?’
    â€˜Who’s that, babe?’
    â€˜No, not you, Barry. Bill, remember her, love?’
    â€˜Vaguely, Mum, vaguely.’ I remembered her alright, she lived on our street. She was fat and ugly then. She’d be fatter and uglier now. Time was no one’s friend.
    â€˜Vaguely? Gosh, Bill, you practically grew up with her. Well, she’s coming tonight. She’s been teaching English in Japan you know. She doesn’t even speak Japanese.’
    â€˜Don’t get me started on