Love Songs for Sceptics

by Christina Pishiris

  ‘But it’s a good thing,’ she insisted. ‘Simon needed to put on weight.’ She tapped his chest. ‘Now he’s just right.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I mouthed, when Mum turned back to the cucumber. She finished slicing it, and added it to the salad. ‘Is this enough?’ she said, pushing up her glasses as if she couldn’t trust her eyes. The bowl was the size of a laundry basket. ‘You never eat enough fruit and vegetables.’

  ‘I eat plenty,’ I said. It wasn’t a lie if I counted the bean sprouts in my Chinese takeaways.

  She fixed me with an I-love-you-but-don’t-believe-you stare, then surveyed her food mountain. ‘Maybe one more cucumber.’

  She swung open the fridge and I took the opportunity to slink off to the garden.

  Dad was barely visible through a halo of smoke. I could only see his bottom half. His jeans were the same colour as Mum’s skirt, which meant they’d gone on a recent spree in M&S. He shook Simon’s hand, and asked: ‘Are you well?’

  It had been more than fifteen years since they’d seen each other, but Dad wasn’t one for outward displays of affection.

  ‘I’m very well, thanks,’ Simon replied. ‘Hope you are too?’

  Dad nodded. It was about as much as Simon would get out of him – he wasn’t much of a talker. Dad now turned his attention to me. ‘How’s work?’

  The question threw me. It wasn’t his usual line of enquiry. He preferred updates on more important things, like if my landlord had done this year’s gas safety certificate and whether I was keeping an eye on that mole on my left shoulder.

  ‘Work’s fine, Dad.’ I felt ridiculously guilty, but I didn’t want to burden him with what was happening at the magazine. ‘I mean, a few minor niggles, but nothing I can’t handle.’

  Dad raised an eyebrow. Damn, he had a sixth sense for trouble.

  ‘The dishwasher doesn’t work,’ I blurted out.

  ‘Get them to check the outlet pipe. Same thing happened to ours.’

  ‘Yes, good tip. Thanks.’

  He nodded, then turned back to the barbecue, prodding the whitening charcoal with a skewer. As the orange flames held my attention, my ears tuned into a familiar song playing on Dad’s portable radio. A cover of Stevie Wonder’s ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You’ for saxophone and pan-pipes. Classy.

  Dad’s got bizarre taste, but I owe my own love of music to him. In my childhood, I used to relish going through his old 45s, because among all the Cliff Richard and Demis Roussos, he had some real gems, like Roy Orbison and Glenn Miller.

  Simon nudged me and pointed to the shed at the bottom of the garden. ‘Do you remember we used to play soldiers in there?’

  I nodded. ‘Until Pete decided he wanted to put in a pool table.’

  A second later, my brother emerged from the shed, carrying a cardboard box.

  ‘Nice to see you, Simon,’ said Pete. ‘Mum mentioned you were over.’

  ‘Great to see you, too, Pete,’ said Simon.

  ‘What’s in the box?’ I said, trying to peer into it.

  ‘Wedding stuff,’ he replied, as if it was perfectly obvious.

  There was an awkward silence, which was only broken by the sizzle of the raw meat Dad slapped onto the griddle. A plume of smoke columned above us.

  ‘Where’s Alice?’ I asked.

  A moment later she emerged from the shed.

  ‘Bet you they weren’t playing pool in there,’ whispered Simon. Alice had a smaller, lighter cardboard box. She stopped when she saw Simon and held my eye for a second, then said, all innocence: ‘Are you a friend of Zoë’s?’

  I made the introductions, then Simon offered to carry Alice’s box inside, which went down well with the Frixos males.

  *

  I’d been ordered inside to open the extending table when Pete cornered me. ‘How long is Yankee boy staying for?’

  ‘Don’t call him that.’

  ‘Did he stay over last night?’

  I ducked under the table to find the lever that released the two halves.

  ‘No, of course not,’ I said, my head level with Pete’s knees. ‘Help me with this, would you?’

  Without looking, Pete flicked the lever. The two sides of the table moved apart a few centimetres. I yanked one side towards me while Pete went to the opposite flank and in one go, we’d heaved the table apart. ‘Mum said he answered the landline when she rang you this morning.’

  ‘He’s staying up the road at Holland Park and had just popped in.’

  I didn’t meet his eye. Instead, I unfolded the extra leaf, slotted it in and clicked the lever back into place.

  Pete didn’t answer, which I took to mean he’d believed me. I just had to make sure the real location of Simon’s hotel didn’t come up in conversation later.

  ‘Alice said you two had a great night out.’

  ‘She did?’ How did Alice know about last night?

  ‘Yeah, at a ukulele bar of all places.’

  He was talking about Friday night, of course. But had Alice mentioned the texts from Simon?

  ‘Yeah, it was great,’ I said, casually. The conversation was veering into dangerous territory again. ‘These place mats are hideous – who buys cats in Charles the Second wigs?’

  Pete shrugged. ‘Mum, obviously.’

  ‘I’ll go and find the old ones.’

  *

  Mum had a bit of a meal time ritual: she didn’t pick up her knife and fork until everyone had piled their plates with double portions of everything. I dropped a stone when I moved out for university, and Mum was the only one who’d never understood why. I shouldn’t complain, though; we ate well as kids, and my parents still knew how to put on a spread. On a glistening stainless-steel platter they’d piled thick slabs of pork fillet, marinated overnight in red wine and herbs, and cooked perfectly over the charcoal – crisp on the outside, tender in the middle. On another platter were Cyprus potatoes, roasted in peanut oil until golden and crunchy. The salad was too big for the table so was relegated to the sideboard behind Dad. He kept reminding everyone where it was, in case we failed to spot the drum-sized bowl.

  Apart from comments such as ‘Have some more meat’ and ‘Plenty of potatoes still in the oven’, my family’s not big on talking when there’s food around. Mealtimes are for the jaw, not the tongue, as Mum likes to remind us. When we were kids, she’d tell us off when she couldn’t hear chewing – I had to seriously modify my noisy eating when I’d go over to friends’ houses for meals. Simon came from the opposite school of thought, though. Polite conversation was a must over dinner – silence was a dangerous invitation for simmering resentments to boil over. He kept trying to resuscitate the conversation, regardless of the scant encouragement. In one of the longer pauses, the cat-flap swung open and Athena scampered in. She made straight for her bowl which Mum had filled with finely cut pieces of barbecued pork.

  Simon pounced on the opportunity. ‘So, Sophia, when did you get another cat?’

  He knew how heartbroken Mum had been when our older cats died. We had two when I was growing up: Rocky and Rambo. Pete got to name them and I was too young to argue.

  ‘We didn’t,’ said Mum, forking another potato onto her plate.

  Simon frowned at me.

  ‘It’s the neighbour’s cat,’ I said. ‘Mum sort of encourages her over.’

  Simon nodded. ‘With food?’

  ‘And a cat basket, and a scratching post, and a new name,’ said Pete.

  ‘She’s free to go wherever she likes,’ said Mum. ‘She obviously prefers it here.’

  Alice had been throwing glances at me while we ate, but I’d refused to acknowledge them, mainly because Mum was so eagle-eyed she’d have immediately thought one of us had some huge news to impart – news that brought her closer to attaining her much-desired status of grandmother. But when there was a pause, during which Pete got up to make Greek coffee in a copper-bottomed pot and my folks made a start on the washing-up, she addressed Simon directly.

  ‘So, how long
are you here for?’

  ‘I’m kinda back for good,’ he replied.

  Alice shot me another look, but I pretended to look at my watch – when had it become a quarter to three?

  ‘Then you must come to the wedding,’ she said.

  I looked up in panic to see Simon’s reaction. He was shaking his head. ‘That’s so kind, Alice, but honestly, I wouldn’t want to screw up your seating plans or anything.’

  ‘Oh, we’re nowhere near doing that,’ she said. ‘Besides, you’re such an old friend of the family, it would be wrong if you didn’t come.’

  ‘My mum’s organising her own wedding,’ said Simon, ‘and she’d hit the roof if someone she’d just met wanted to come to hers.’

  ‘Well, we should all get to know each other, then,’ said Alice, who was showing the kind of determination that explained how she’d achieved the sculpted body of an Olympian. ‘Why don’t the two of you come over for dinner one evening? We don’t have much on this week.’

  Oh God. I knew what Alice was doing and however well-intentioned, it had the cringe-inducing whiff of trying to set me and Simon up.

  ‘That’s incredibly kind of you,’ said Simon, ‘I would love to – but can we give it a couple of weeks? I’ve got so many work meetings to organise.’

  I tried not feel a bit slighted. Because even though I didn’t want to go either, Simon ducking out of time with me still stung.

  ‘Oh, Zoë’s like that,’ said Alice. ‘You either have to book her weeks in advance, or catch her on a night where her plans have been unexpectedly cancelled.’

  An idea was dawning on Simon – I could see it on his face. ‘Are you guys free tonight, by any chance?’ Alice was nodding even before he’d finished his sentence. ‘Not for dinner, or anything,’ he continued, ‘it’s just that there’s a gig I was considering checking out.’

  My professional antennae twitched and not in a good way. ‘Gig?’

  ‘I was chatting to Pete about bands we both liked and this one happened to come up.’

  When had my brother discussed music with Simon? Pete’s taste ranged from Bruce Springsteen to the Village People, with a dash of prog rock for good measure. If Si was about to suggest we go on a group jolly to see Rush, I was going to scream louder than Geddy Lee.

  ‘What’s the band, Si?’

  ‘It’s actually the singer I knew from university. Do you remember Rydell and Jessica Honey?’

  Her name was a blast of arctic air from the past. Jessica was the girl Simon had crushed on at university; how close they’d come to doing anything about it, I’d never been able to ascertain.

  I’d been thrilled when Simon came back to the UK to do his degree, only to discover that he ended up at Edinburgh – about as far from Exeter, where I was, as it was possible to get.

  And then he fell in with Jessica Honeywell. Or rather, Jessica Honey as the press soon dubbed her, because good-looking female musicians needed to be put in their place with infantilised nicknames.

  ‘Are you still in touch with her, then?’

  I might have sounded accusatory, but no one seemed to notice.

  ‘No, I just follow her on Instagram,’ he replied. ‘She posted about this gig. I was up early because of my jet lag and was trawling social media to pass the time.’

  Pete returned with the coffees, followed by Mum who was carrying a giant fruit bowl and motioning at me to offer it to Simon.

  ‘Have some clementines, Si,’ I said, happy to distract everyone from Jessica Honey with citrus fruit.

  ‘I couldn’t,’ he replied, tapping his stomach.

  ‘I have bananas and kiwis, too,’ said Mum, undaunted. ‘And a watermelon in the garage.’ Without waiting for anyone to respond, she went on. ‘I’ll tell your father to go and get it.’

  She called my dad over, who muttered something about the watermelon not being very good because Mum had gone to the wrong bakali (grocer). ‘I can drive to the Kurdish shop,’ he said. ‘His watermelons are the best.’

  ‘Only if you know how to pick them,’ said Mum. ‘You have to look at the stem. You never do unless I remind you.’

  ‘No, you have to tap it. A ripe one makes the perfect sound.’

  ‘You can’t go round smacking every watermelon in the crate,’ said Mum. ‘That man in Wembley told you off last time you tried. That’s why we don’t shop there anymore.’

  ‘No, the reason we don’t go there is because he gets his watermelons from Holland.’

  Mum nodded and muttered something in Greek that sounded suspiciously like: ‘Blessed Virgin Mary save us from Dutch watermelons.’

  ‘Why don’t you get a melon melon instead,’ suggested Pete.

  ‘I can’t eat melon,’ said Dad. ‘Too sweet.’

  Pete rolled his eyes. ‘Says the man who mainlines Ferrero Rocher.’

  ‘Right, I’ll go and get the car keys,’ said Dad, whose appetite had no doubt been whetted for a spot of chocolate, too.

  ‘Oh, please don’t go on my account,’ said Simon, ever polite. My parents, however, didn’t seem to be listening.

  ‘I’ll come with you. I need some fresh almonds,’ said Mum to Dad’s departing back. ‘Then I can make some halva for when Simon next comes.’ She looked at me sternly. ‘I could have made it yesterday if I’d known he was coming. It’s always nicer the next day.’

  Great, now I was getting shade from my mum because she’d only had time to make a three-course lunch.

  ‘So, Simon, tell us more about the singer from Rydell – is her gig tonight?’ Alice probably thought she was being polite, picking up the thread of Simon’s conversation before Watermelongate. She didn’t know about my issues with Jessica, so I smiled tightly.

  ‘I loved that band,’ said Pete. I rolled my eyes. Pete had never liked Rydell – he’d just lusted over Jessica.

  ‘Then it’s decided – we’ll go,’ said Alice. She aimed her brightest smile at me. ‘Oh, Zoë, this is going to be so much fun!’

  Fun? One long drum solo would have been preferable. But it looked like I was going to have to suck it up and go.

  9

  Love is a Battlefield

  I regretted what I was wearing the moment I stepped into the club. We were in a converted factory – basically a room without windows, and very little ventilation. My kitten heels were sticking to the floor thanks to ten years’ worth of spiled beer, and the yellow top with spaghetti straps that had looked so chic in my bedroom mirror made me feel like a half-peeled banana.

  After eating some admittedly delicious watermelon, we’d left my parents’ house and Simon had gone back to his hotel, while I’d returned to the flat. I’d then spent ages rifling through my wardrobe before deciding on black skinny jeans and a canary-yellow top that I’d bought last summer and never worn. I should have stayed in my usual clothes, but Jessica Honeywell brought out my insecure side, hence my attempt at a bit of glamour.

  Simon had played bass in her first band when they were at university. When I’d gone up to visit him he’d seemed totally besotted with her. In fairness, most blokes were because she looked like a young Debbie Harry – with platinum hair and curvy white flesh poured into a Vivienne Westwood-inspired dress. I had stood at the side of the stage, clutching my Malibu and Coke, in my Topshop outfit, feeling like I’d rocked up at a royal wedding in a leper’s cast-offs.

  She left university early when her second band, Rydell, signed with a major. I anxiously followed her progress in NME and Re:Sound, secretly hoping her record would tank. But instead, it sold a million copies and she was invited on Marcie Tyler’s last tour, ten years ago. I’d been green with envy because Jessica had never really been a fan. First Simon and then Marcie – it felt like she was appropriating everything I held dear.

  She’d started to make inroads in America, but the second album, although brilliant, just never got the promotion it deserved and sales were dismal. Within months the label quietly dropped them. They’d fallen into obscurity, but then, about a yea
r ago, one of her songs – a cheesy ballad – had been used in an ad for mobile phones, and there’d been an upsurge in interest in her. She’d appeared on a reality TV show, had a fling with a fellow castmate and was now a tabloid darling. But no one ever talked about her music, preferring to obsess about her love life. I remember seeing an interview with her a few months back where she’d bemoaned the fact that everyone now associated her with wearing a bikini on TV and a stupid love song she’d written when was nineteen. I felt for her, but the royalty cheques probably made the burden easier for her to bear.

  Simon was at the bar now, and I was making small talk with Alice while fending off insults from Pete.

  ‘Blimey, sis, you’ve pushed the boat out,’ he said, as I hoiked up my shoulder strap for the fiftieth time.

  ‘Don’t be mean, Pete,’ said Alice. ‘Zoë looks lovely – why shouldn’t she look nice?’

  Pete rolled his eyes. ‘Dunno, maybe because we’re in a dive in Kentish Town?’

  I was spared further sartorial advice from Pete by Simon, who’d returned from the bar carrying a tray of drinks.

  ‘This is so exciting,’ said Alice. ‘Cheers, everyone!’

  Simon was acting weird. He seemed unsettled; nervous even. His eyes darted back towards the bar. I couldn’t work out why, but then I followed his eye-line and I realised what had prompted this change.

  Jessica was at the bar.

  I hadn’t seen her for over ten years, but she looked just as poised and glamorous as she had then. She was still blonde, but her poker-straight hair was several shades darker than the platinum tresses she’d sported in her twenties. She wore skinny leather trousers, a strapless top and body glitter across her shoulders which at first glance looked like radioactive dandruff.

  Pete noticed her next. ‘Fuck, is that Jessica right there?’

  The movement of the rest of the group turning their heads in her direction must have caught her eye because she suddenly looked up.

  Simon awkwardly held up his beer bottle to say cheers, and she frowned. Then, when recognition hit, she threw back her head and laughed. She picked up her own bottle of beer and started walking over to us.