The Philosophy of Love, page 1
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For Mum and Dad
2010
Victory is nigh.
I can feel it, taste it. In the next ten minutes, that trophy is mine.
We’re in the hall for the Year 11 awards assembly at Easington Roman Catholic High School. The blinds are drawn, and the air is thick with dust.
‘I Gotta Feeling’ by the Black Eyed Peas blasts from massive speakers whenever there’s a lull in proceedings. There’s even a photographer from the Easington Gazette.
Mr Hall, the headteacher, is on stage behind a little wooden podium, talking really, really loudly even though the mic is working. He’s already announced some of the lesser awards – the ones voted for by the other pupils. Like the one for the person most likely to become famous. (Rachel Stone, which is fair enough because she almost got through to judge’s houses on The X Factor.)
But now we’re onto the biggest award of the night.
Mr Hall holds up the trophy for the academic excellence award.
I squirm in my seat, a bag of nerves. It’s between me and Luke Priestly, I just know it is. Luke’s been the best at maths and science since Year 7. But I’m the best in the arts. I like all the arts. English, history, actual art. But it’s philosophy that I really love. If anything is going to win me that award, it’s how well I’ve done in philosophy.
I sit up straighter, like I used to do when I was little, and I’d balance a book on my head to practise being a princess for the day.
‘And the winner of the Easington High’s academic excellence award goes to…’ Mr Hall drums his hands on the little podium as his secretary passes him an envelope. He opens it as if we’re at the Oscars. I can’t take the tension anymore.
‘Well,’ he says. ‘This is an unprecedented situation. Completely unprecedented.’ I’m holding my breath. ‘It’s been awarded jointly. Alice King and Luke Priestly, come on up and collect your award!’
Hang on a second. What’s happening here? He definitely said Alice King. That’s me. I’m Alice King. But then he’d said Luke’s name too.
‘Come on, Alice! Luke!’ Mr Hall calls.
My breath catches. The sound of people clapping feels far away. I’m so full of everything that I think for one horrible second I’m going to have one of my funny turns.
Please.
Not now.
But then the packed hall comes back into focus, people are smiling at me and reminding me that I’ve done well. What a relief.
I stand on shaky legs and start shuffling my way along the row filled with my friends, heading in the direction the stage.
‘Well done, Alice!’ Ms Small, my philosophy and ethics teacher calls from the front row where she’s sat with the other teachers. I smile back, trying not to let the success go to my head.
So, I won it jointly with Luke. I still won. I won’t have to tell people that I won it jointly. I’ll just be able to say, ‘yes, I won the award for academic excellence’, there’s no need to qualify it.
These thoughts make me feel a lot better. I smile and wave some more.
I make my way up the steps to the stage. Luke is already there. He’s very scowly for a boy who has just won a trophy and some WHSmith book vouchers.
I try not to think about Luke and his scowls. Instead, as soon as my hands are on the trophy, I lift it up like it’s the World Cup, only stopping when I hear Luke snort out a mocking laugh behind me. I give him a dirty look.
‘Let’s get a picture of all the winners, shall we?’ The photographer from the Easington Gazette says.
‘Great idea.’ Mr Hall beams.
There’s a few minutes of chaos while the other winners make their way back onto the stage with their trophies. I’m about to ask Luke how we should go about drawing up our trophy rota but there’s no time. The photographer gestures for us to move to the front of the group, asks us to hold onto one side of the massive trophy each.
We’re front and centre. Luckily, I straightened my hair extra carefully this morning. Aunty Moira let me use her ghds and everything.
Luke looks like he hasn’t so much as looked at a hair brush this year. It’s so far forward at the front I’m amazed he can even see to walk. But still, there’s nothing to be done.
‘Say cheese!’ The photographer starts snapping away.
‘Come on, act like you like each other,’ he says, waving a hand over to me and Luke. We’re stood really far apart. And my arm is starting to ache from holding the trophy up.
I shuffle an inch closer. Luke doesn’t move. I notice that his school jumper is pulled over his hand so that you can only see the tips of his fingers where they’re curled around his half of the trophy. His black nail varnish is chipped.
‘That’ll do,’ the photographer sighs. He doesn’t look especially pleased with us and I assume that’s because of Luke scowling the whole time we were there. I was doing my biggest smile.
It’s important to be nice though, even when people aren’t nice to you. That’s what I was always taught at church. So, while everyone moves around us, I say ‘congratulations’ and stick out my hand for Luke to shake. I don’t exactly know what possesses me to do it, I don’t normally go around shaking people’s hands. But I’m almost an adult now and this seems like a sort of grown-up thing I’ll be expected to do.
Luke looks at my hand and frowns an even deeper frown, which I didn’t think was possible. I keep talking, my hand just hanging out in the space between us. ‘You can take the trophy first if you like,’ I say.
I pull away my hand because he obviously isn’t going to shake it, which is kind of rude.
‘The trophy’s shit,’ he says, brushing past me, heading for the stage steps.
The assembly is over and most of the teachers are dismissing their classes row by row.
The trophy’s shit? It doesn’t even make sense!
Luke is halfway down the steps but I need to say something back. To defend my trophy against this unprovoked attack.
‘Well, I think you’re shit!’ I call, irritated that I can’t think of a better comeback.
‘Language, Ms King!’ one of the teachers says and I wrinkle my nose, annoyed at the fact that I’m the one who got called out for swearing.
I huff out a breath, relax my shoulders like I’ve practised. I can’t let Luke ruin today for me.
Hopefully, once we leave school for good, I’ll never see or hear from Luke Priestly again.
Present Day PART ONE
CHARLES
‘Love shouldn’t make you feel small.’
Chapter One
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past two hours, it’s this. It really doesn’t matter how crappy your life is. Bad hair will always make you feel… well… bad.
‘Sorry, but do you by any chance have any purple shampoo that I could buy, please?’ I look hopefully at Stephanie, apparent hairdresser extraordinaire, currently wielding some heavy-duty tongs around the back of my head.
I’m thinking that I can just wash it as soon as I get home. Get rid of the ringlets. And the funny colour. Purple shampoo isn’t a want, it’s a need at this stage.
‘You’re out of luck, Alice, pet. It’s V05 Smoothly Does It. Can’t beat it.’ She finishes another tight ringlet. Her final one.
‘Okay, well thank you anyway, it’s… really nice.’ This is a lie. But still, there’s no point in both of us feeling bad.
It had been Mum’s suggestion to get my hair done. According to her, a new do is guaranteed to make you forget about the fact that six weeks ago you caught your boyfriend getting frisky with someone who isn’t you.
Ex-boyfriend.
Charles had maintained that he didn’t regularly get down and dirty on the living room rug. The shag rug I should add. Shaggy by name, shaggy by nature. But seriously, can any relationship survive the sight of someone else’s finger up your boyfriend’s bum? Ours certainly hadn’t.
And so fresh out of the mother of all breakups, I find myself back in the former mining village I’d grown up in – Easington Colliery. I’m basically heartbroken and living in my childhood bedroom. The ghost of Vidal Sassoon himself couldn’t make me forget that.
Mum had forewarned me that Heavenly Head Hairdressers still didn’t take cards, so I pass Stephanie £30 cash, panicking about the fact that I really don’t have £30 spare. The only faint silver lining of this morning is that with Easington prices being decidedly on the cheaper side of things, the new do only costs me £28. Still, it’s possibly my first cash-based transaction of the last half decade. ‘No, honestly, keep it,’ I tell Stephanie as she tries to hand me my change. ‘You did such a good job,’ I finish, because I’m British and so I will take these ringlets to my grave before I admit my true feelings on the matter.
And really, brassy (read orange) curls should be the least of my worries. It’s just that in the part of the stories where everything finally starts to go right, the heroine never, ever has bad hair. Even if she’s been stuck in an unexpected downpour or some other freak weather phenomenon, it’s always plastered to her face in an artful sort of a way. Stephanie has applied so much hairspray to my cu
Keen to escape a building with quite so many mirrors, I set off back home, walking slowly down the red-brick terraced streets towards Mum and Dad’s house. I skirt around a worn sofa by the kerb, doing my best to blink away the tears that always seem to come when I’m alone.
It’s when I’m on my own that I feel this overwhelming sense of hopelessness. Like the swell of a wave pushing upwards inside me.
Six weeks ago, I had a boyfriend, a job, a whole future in London.
And now I have none of those things.
I have to stop for a second to rest my head against a crumbling brick wall, the perimeter of someone’s yard. Close my eyes tight against the world. Maybe it would just be easier if I expired round the back of a row of Victorian terraces.
What would my obituary read?
Alice King, found dead in the Easington gutter.
Am I even important enough for an obituary? Unlikely.
At this point, it’s doubtful that I’d even be able to afford a funeral plan. Mum and Dad seem to get a daily flyer pushed through the letter box about them. They’re crazy expensive. Do we still have pauper’s graves anymore? Maybe I’d end up in one of them.
I push away from the wall, deciding against a gutter-based death, sternly reminding myself that aside from those old couples who die within days of each other, no one actually goes from a broken heart. And I would know. I’ve googled it.
* * *
Mum and Dad’s house is one of those two-bed terraces that you sometimes see getting done up on Homes Under the Hammer. They’ve lived here the whole of their married lives. It’s two doors down from where Nana and Grandad used to live, and my Aunty Moira is across the road. Basically, we Kings haven’t so much as conquered a country, but we do rule over a small section of this here terraced street.
And if the thought of my ruling anything isn’t farcical enough, I can’t even claim a bit of the street. I left for university when I was eighteen and had never come back for more than a quick visit. Not until six weeks ago.
‘I’m home!’ I call, slamming the front door.
‘Hi, pet,’ Dad says as I come through into the front room. He’s watching Bargain Hunt, from his designated armchair. It’s one of those American-type ones where you pull a lever, and a footrest pops out. Like the one Joey had. It’s older than me.
I’m braced for him to say something about my hair as I perch on the chair’s arm and watch as the red team makes a tidy profit of £3. This past month and a half I’ve watched enough daytime TV to make my eyeballs bleed. Approximately no one is made to feel better about their prospects hearing the Loose Women complain about the decline of the fish knife.
He pulls me in for a sideways hug without even breaking his glance from the screen.
‘Is that you, Alice?’ Mum calls.
I reluctantly follow her voice through the dining room and into the kitchen. If we were rich, you’d call the layout of downstairs ‘open plan’. But we’re not rich, so ‘mostly one room’ just about covers it instead. The kitchen’s a sort of wonky extension at the back of the house, eating up fifty percent of our yard.
Nothing about it has changed since I was a little girl. The decor is like a dysfunctional game of Jumanji – if the only things to emerge from the vortex were pine cupboards.
The smoke alarm makes a half-hearted beep as Mum wafts at the air with a tea towel. It always gets like this when she has her frying pan out. Which is at all times. She said once that she’d be buried with that pan and I’m not exactly sure that she was joking. Now she’s shaking it on top of the old gas hob that’s liable to kill us all in our sleep one day. Spam fritters hiss and spit from the blackened pan, shooting flecks of hot oil into the air. A scorching drop lands on my arm, and I retreat.
‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’ I ask. ‘The hair.’
Doubtfully, Mum looks at the top of my head. ‘Is that… what you asked for?’ she asks.
‘I’m not sure. I think I said the word “ash”, but I can’t be certain.’
And I really can’t. It’d be just like me to ask for the wrong thing.
She peers a bit more.
‘Well, I don’t suppose it matters. You’d look like a super model in a bin bag. Naomi Campbell or what’s her face,’ she gesticulates with the spatula, ‘with the legs.’
Naomi Campbell seems an unlikely comparison. I’m pasty, only two inches taller than mum and my natural hair colour is dark blonde. Or at least I think it is. I haven’t seen it since some point in the late 2000s. Charles once said that my face was ‘unusual’. Which I think is code for ‘your eyes are too far apart’.
‘At this rate, I’ll be resorting to bin bags,’ I sniff.
‘Still no luck on the job front?’
‘Nope.’ I peer down at the floor miserably. Easington isn’t exactly a hive of economic activity. The last success story we churned out was Billy Elliot. And he isn’t even real.
‘I’m sure if you just told people you’d been to university in London—’
I shake my head miserably. Barely completing exactly one year of a philosophy degree a decade ago really doesn’t open many doors. Especially in Easington where there are so few doors to start with.
If I think about it too much, I start to get a stress rash.
I just don’t exactly know what I want to do. Years ago, I had a plan. Go to university, get a job in philosophy, meet the love of my life. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am.
Except, university in London was hard. Way harder than I’d expected. I was a little fish in a capital city-sized pond.
At least in Easington I’d made the front page of the Gazette once. Mum and Dad still have the picture; it’s framed on the mantelpiece taunting me about how much potential I used to have.
I wonder what Luke Priestly is up to these days.
Probably not dodging spam fritter fat in his mum’s kitchen.
After I’d just scraped through my first year at university, I’d taken a summer temp job as an admin assistant at the head offices of Beck Health Cafés Incorporated. A chain of meat-free, dairy-free, gluten-free, wholefood cafés across London.
It was maybe half an hour after I met him that I realized I was in love with Charles, my new boss. He’d smiled at me and put his hand on the back of my office chair, and… I was gone.
I never went back to university after that summer. Instead, I just stayed working for Charles’s company for most of the last decade, thinking that achieving fifty per cent of your life goals isn’t too shabby. But here’s the thing, breaking up with your boss leaves you sad and poor.
I’ve been wallowing in these less than happy memories for a fair few minutes. When I look up, Mum is staring at me, the fritters abandoned. ‘It’s just that I’m not exactly an appealing prospect,’ I tell her. ‘I don’t have much experience beyond working for Charles. And, well…’ I trail off.
Mum’s lips press into a thin line. Same as they always do whenever Charles is mentioned. She makes a noise somewhere between a hum and a growl and returns to the fritters, flipping them like they’ve personally wronged her.
‘That man really is a… a… pillock.’
Obviously, I’d spared Mum and Dad the more sordid details of our separation. Because no one wants to be responsible for explaining about the male G-spot to their parents. Being cheated on is humiliating enough.
‘Agreed. Pillock.’ Another sniff. ‘Can we talk about something else?’
‘I know!’ Mum declares in her best I-will-cheer-you-up-if-it-kills-me voice, ‘Why don’t you go to Durham tomorrow? You could get something new to wear for your birthday.’
I get that odd sense of déjà vu. I’m almost certain that Mum said the exact same thing to sixteen-year-old me. It makes me wince.
And even if I am ridiculously grateful to them for taking me back, letting me live here rent-free, I really, with every fibre of my being, wish we weren’t acknowledging me turning thirty in two days’ time.
Thank God I put my foot down about a party.
And I absolutely cannot afford a dress.
Mum carries on. ‘And are you sure you don’t want to invite a friend? It doesn’t seem right, spending your birthday with just us lot. They could stay in your room now that it has a double bed.’
