Lou Out of Luck

by Nat Luurtsema

  Text from Dad.

  When you get in, please can you fondle the laundry?

  Sure, I can give it a quick kiss and cuddle.

  FOLD, I meant.

  Woohoo, it’s Friday night! Am I off to a gig, a club, a friend’s house to watch zombie films? No … you overestimate La Brown, I am doing my English coursework at home in my room.

  Although, massive plus side, my lovely boyfriend is helping me. I apologized for the vegetables and buildings in Gabe’s PowerPoint, he apologized for his snotty tone (TOO RIGHT, I thought but didn’t say) and now we’re going through the finer points of metaphor and allegory. He seems more relaxed than he has done in ages – though he still looks too thin, with dark sleep-circles under his eyes.

  Gabe and I are lying on my bed. We’re allowed to sit on it if we keep the door open, and we began the evening that way but have honestly just slid down a bit. Lav and Roman aren’t allowed to be on their own in her room AT ALL, ha ha. Lavender was furious, said it wasn’t fair. But as Mum pointed out, if they’re all over each other like cheese on pizza in public, what on EARTH would they do with privacy? Whereas Gabe and I don’t even really hold hands when we’re out. It’s not our way.

  It’s lovely lying here with Gabe, though. So warm and cosy. I wish we were always like this, not misunderstanding each other and falling out and worrying about Hazel (OK, that’s more me than him).

  I tell him I understand how stressed he is, wanting to do well at school but then also risking a relapse through stress, so missing more school and feeling MORE stressed about having more to catch up on. Poor guy. I show him the calming breathing exercises that Hannah sent me, and we lie side-by-side, breathing loudly together.

  Mum pops her head round the door. “What ARE you doing?”

  “Breathing exercises.”

  “Oh. Good. It sounded… Never mind.” And she goes as quickly as she came.

  “I will cut down on the unicorn emojis and time the vegetable ones better,” I tell Gabe, squeezing his hand. “And I’ll read more.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Au contraire! I WANT to be more mature. I have a keen, intelligent brain,” I say, hoping this is true. I’ve not really tested the theory. “What’s your next debate about?”

  “The Middle East,” he tells me.

  “Like … Birmingham?”

  “The Middle East of the WORLD, Lou, not Britain.”

  “Oh, right, right,” I say. “Yeah, like Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Blazakhstan…” I trail off, as this is all I know and I suspect Blazakhstan might not be a place.

  Rain hammers down on the window and I’m so happy. I think guiltily of Dermot. I don’t know why, I just imagine him in his damp-smelling house on his own. Although I said I’d go to Performance Class with him tomorrow morning, didn’t I? Mustn’t forget.

  “How’s Dermot?” says Gabe, interpreting my silence with unnerving accuracy. See? We’re made for each other.

  “He’s OK. Deeply weird of course,” I add, looking at Gabe with a smile but he doesn’t smile back.

  “Don’t be mean,” he says.

  “I’m not! That’s not fair. We’re friends. I’ve been spending loads of time with him since the prom stole Han. Smell me.” I hold out my arm. “I bet I smell of old corduroy.”

  “Hey,” says Gabe. “He’s a nice guy.”

  “I know. I like him. That’s the sort of joke I’d make in front of him.”

  And there we go. Instantly, we switch from calm and peaceful to me feeling like he’s judging me when I was only being silly.

  “OK,” Gabe says, doubtfully.

  “Why, don’t you trust me? I’m not a bully!” I say. I’m offended.

  “Hey. I love you, Lou,” says Gabe, “but…”

  Breathe, Lou. He just told you he loves you. Your boyfriend just said he loves you. I cannot wait to tell Hannah!

  “But sometimes you can be mean. You think you’re being funny—”

  “I AM being funny!” I say, my voice wobbling. He doesn’t understand: funny is my thing. I’m not pretty, I’m not clever and now he wants to take my only skill away from me, like it’s nothing?

  Do not tell Hannah this bit.

  My temper flares. “I’m sorry I’m not clever like your little debating team, snogging maps of the Middle East because my … the –” I cast around wildly for an insult – “because I’m deeply insecure and need everyone to know I’m SPESHUL.”

  “Hey,” he says. “Now that’s mean.”

  “Yes,” I tell him. “I’m trying to be mean now. See the difference? This lot sound like –” so hard to insult people you’ve never met! – “like they’re the sort of people who always have clammy hands.”

  Gabe bursts out laughing.

  Tell Hannah this bit.

  “Lou! That’s nasty,” he says, grabbing my ribs and tickling me.

  “But you’re laughing!” I say, slapping his hands off me. “So get off your high horse. Have you never seen the films? Girls do not change for boys. That is always the wrong thing they do first before they realize they’re brilliant as they are.”

  I’m joking. But not a hundred per cent.

  “I’m sorry,” he says sincerely. “I know you’re a kind person…”

  “Thank you!” I say with dignity.

  “Deep down. Really deep down. Maybe, level minus six.”

  I hook my legs around his and try to push him off my bed. He fights back. He’s surprisingly strong and I don’t manage it. He pulls himself up next to me again, holding my feet so I can’t kick him.

  I reckon it’s THREE WHOLE MINUTES before we stop kissing. That was the best kiss I’ve ever had. Even if he was holding my feet the whole time.

  Hannah will not want to hear that detail.

  We both glance towards the open door and look guilty.

  “Now,” Gabe announces loudly, picking up his iPad. “Metaphors and allegory.”

  Dad pops his head into my bedroom, looking suspicious. “What are you doing in here?”

  “Breathing exercises,” I say, a little breathlessly.

  Later, Roman comes to drop off Lav and pick up Gabe. I open the front door in time to see Ro leaning towards Lav for a kiss and puckering up to thin air because she’s already out of the car. I feel Gabe’s shoulder against mine. He saw it too. We exchange a mystified look.

  “Hi, Lavender.”

  “Hey, Gabe.”

  “Bye, Lou.”

  “Bye,” I say, giving him a fond high-five before he runs through the rain to his brother’s car.

  Lav heads straight upstairs, clearly in a right old mood. I decide to leave her to it. When she’s cross with someone, it can spill out and splash an innocent bystander. I don’t fancy that tonight. I want my happy mood to stay. I poke my head in the living room but it’s empty, Mum and Dad must’ve gone to bed early. I don’t know why they’re tired, they don’t do anything these days.

  I go to grab a glass of water and see a gas bill lying on the kitchen counter, with red writing on. I feel bad for ever sneakily turning the heating on. I won’t do that again.

  I head to bed. Out the window I can see a light on in Dad’s shed. The light is flickering in the little window. Why’s it flickering?

  Because he’s dancing.

  He’s dancing alone in his shed, in the middle of a rainy night.

  WORRY DIARY

  Dad (late night solo shed-dancing).

  I wake up with a start. I fell asleep watching kitten videos on my phone. I wipe the dribble off it and see I have two texts. The vibrating must have woken me; the weak winter sun certainly wasn’t going to.

  One from Dermot, sent twenty minutes ago.

  Want to come to mine before Perf Class? Or Aggy could come get you? If you still want to come that is?

  Perf? I think, groggily.

  And one from Gabe, but in trying to read it, I accidentally call Dermot.

  “Hey!”

  “Oh hey! Sorry.
I called you by mistake!”

  “Shall I go?”

  “No, no, no. I’ll come to yours if you just give me your address. What time?”

  “In, like, fifteen minutes?”

  “How long will it take to get to you?”

  “Um…”

  “Fifteen minutes?”

  I haul myself out of bed and dance around my cold bedroom, scribbling down Dermot’s address.

  “What shall I wear?”

  “Anything!”

  “Really? Not things I can stretch in or…?”

  “It’s not yoga!”

  He sounds amused. But all I know about this class is that it isn’t yoga. So unhelpful. Loads of things aren’t yoga, like bowling or arson. I pull out the closest clothes to hand, jeans and a top with leopard-print elbow patches. I examine the top: it’s suspiciously nice, too nice to be mine. It must be Lavender’s. Mum’s obviously put it in my room by mistake. Technically not my fault. I pull it on and sneak downstairs, hoping Lav doesn’t catch me.

  Shall I put on make-up? No, I don’t have time to wipe it off when I get it wrong and give myself droopy sloth eyes. So I just bundle my coat on and I’m heading out the door when Mum appears in the doorway of the living room, still in her dressing gown. I suddenly feel bad being all, Oooh, look at me, so busy – lots of things to do!

  On impulse I dart forward and give her a hug. She’s smiling by the time I pull back.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Dermot’s house. I’m going to this Performance Class with him. Do you know anything about it?”

  “I think Aggy enrolled him in it to make some friends as he didn’t have any.”

  “Mother.”

  “What?”

  “Poor Dermot.”

  “I meant … to get away from all the girls bothering him.”

  I shake my head and back out of the door. “Bye, Mother.”

  “Coming straight home afterwards? Or do you need a lift?” She looks like she doesn’t want me to say yes. I bet the car has, like, the barest whisper of petrol left in it.

  “Don’t worry,” I say, closing the door behind me. “It’ll be nice to get some –” hail hits me in the face, hard – “fresh – argh! – air.”

  I jog to Dermot’s because I’m late and also because, honestly, if I stop I fear I’ll freeze to the pavement. As I run, I realize Dad wasn’t home. I don’t know how I can be so sure, but he’s a man of many noises, sighing when he sits down, humming when he’s eating and snickering when he’s reading. You know when he’s home and when he isn’t. He’s doing “work” for Uncle Vinnie, isn’t he.

  After ten minutes, I slow to a walk. Then retrace my steps, turn back and walk up the road again, checking Dermot’s address on my phone. This can’t be it, it’s a massive old house at the end of a long driveway. It looks like something out of a fairy tale.

  It’s probably divided into flats and he and Aggy live in a small part of it. The driveway is lined with grotesque gnomes, missing limbs and noses. Aggy definitely lives here. I crunch up to the front door. I can’t see individual doorbells so I bang the huge claw door knocker and hope for the best.

  There’s a little scuffling behind the door and it opens very, very slowly. Dermot appears, out of breath but grinning. “Sorry, it swells in wet weather. And hot weather. In fact, it’s only usable in a mild September.”

  “Are they your gnomes?” I ask.

  “Aggy thinks they’re funny and now people bring her any new ones they find. It terrifies the local kids.” He gives me a quick sideways look. “Karl Ashton lives on this street.”

  “Oh…” I say.

  “Yeah, he loves that. My mum, the crazy lady in the old house.” He does spooky witch hands at me. “Let’s find her, I haven’t seen her in a while.”

  I follow him in, thinking, How can you lose your mum in a flat? Dermot is so odd.

  And then I get it. We’re standing in a gigantic hallway. At the far end, a huge staircase curves around up to the first floor. A chandelier the size of a small car hangs, dusty and browning, above us.

  “This is all your house?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All of it?”

  “Except the floor. We can’t touch that. But the rest is ours.”

  I stare at him. He stares back.

  Dermot’s funny. It’s just an unusual brand of funny. I can see why it goes unappreciated in our school.

  There are piles of boxes everywhere, draped in large white sheets. “Aggy’s in here somewhere…” says Dermot. “But I lose her regularly.”

  “What about your dad?” I ask without thinking.

  “Ah. We lost him, two years ago.”

  “Behind the fridge?”

  “Cancer, but … ah … so.”

  “Dermot, I’m really—”

  “That’s all right. Come on.” He leads me upstairs.

  “I am sorry,” I tell his back. Today he’s dressed in a three-piece tweed suit with a cartoon T-shirt underneath. Even when we’re talking about cancer, my brain notices stupid things.

  “It’s really OK,” he says. “It was a long time coming and the last year was terrible.”

  “Oh!”

  Aggy pops out from behind a tower of boxes and it’s hard to say who’s most surprised.

  She clambers over the boxes to give me a dusty hug. Surprised, I hug her back.

  She looks at me thoughtfully. “I’ve never seen you face-on, only profile,” she tells me. “You have strong eyebrows.”

  I’m kind of thinking the same thought. Aggy’s such a whirlwind of pink hair and noise in the morning, but from the front, without all the shouting, she has a lovely face. Like an apple.

  “Mum.” Dermot is clearly embarrassed and I decide to keep the apple thought to myself.

  “Thank you!” I tell her, genuinely pleased. “I know they’re big but I worry they’re wonky.”

  “Oh yes.” She examines my face. “They are, but I like that. It’s different.” She has price stickers all over her hand.

  “Be careful none of the boxes topple over onto you,” she says, pointing at us warningly. “You’re very precious to me,” she adds to Dermot, taking a £9.99 sticker off her hand and popping it on his jumper.

  “Please, woman,” he chastises. “Can we get a lift?”

  “Yes. Five minutes. Show Louise the house?”

  “She doesn’t want to see a house.”

  “I do!” I blurt out. This is a RICH PERSON’S HOUSE.

  I follow Dermot up another big spiral staircase.

  “Mind those steps.” Dermot grabs my arm. “They might be rotten.”

  “This place is like a castle,” I marvel, touching an embroidery hanging on the wall.

  “A rotting castle. My parents always meant to do it up, but…”

  “It’s cool as it is,” I say. “It has character.”

  I walk into a huge cobweb and stifle a scream.

  We reach the first floor and go into a huge room with yellowing stripy wallpaper and windows looking front and back. There’s a suit of armour leaning heavily to the left with a leg missing, but it sort of suits this house.

  “What is this room?” I say.

  “I suppose … like a second living room?” Dermot says vaguely.

  Two living rooms. I should feel jealous, but my eyes follow a crack from the floor up the wall to the ceiling. There’s a lot of dust in the air, and the furniture is beautiful, but everything is stained or broken in some way.

  The crack ends in the base of another huge, browning chandelier. I delicately step out from underneath it.

  “So … did you used to be rich?” I ask, more nosy than polite. Dermot nods.

  “Yeah, my mum and dad were musicians. They were just starting to make money writing for adverts.”

  “Which ones?” I’m curious and he sings a couple. I recognize them but I don’t know them well enough to sing along. I try anyway.

  “It’s OK.” Dermot waves away my t
uneless attempts. (Meeeehhh bu bu da da da dooo-weeee Krispies?) “They were big in Japan and India. But anyway, then Dad got sick – just after they bought this house.”

  “Could Aggy write music without your dad?” I ask.

  “I hope so. She’s just had a bad eighteen months.”

  “God, Derm,” I say. “You’ve got a complicated life.”

  “I’m very, very brave,” he deadpans.

  The way he says that reminds me of Gabe and I realize I never read his text. I take out my phone. He sent it late last night, asking if I’d like to meet Hazel, Lara and Lisa tomorrow. And him, of course! (He doesn’t usually indulge in an exclamation mark, but there’s loads here. It’s like he’s trying to make the prospect of meeting them sound FUN.)

  So I apologize to Dermot and quickly text back, I’d love to! Tell me where and when. And, I add, in a lovely display of maturity, I’m looking forward to meeting Hazel, Lara, Lisa, Llama, the whole lot of them. (Unicorn emoji, smiley face.)

  I am a nice, non-jealous, calm gf.

  Although. If he texted me late last night to invite me, was he texting them late at night to arrange it? I’m so petty. It doesn’t matter if my boyfriend texts other girls late at night. You either trust someone not to flirt with other people or you don’t. And I do. So shut UP, subconscious. If you work as I think you do.

  I put my phone away. Dermot is showing me something. Aggy’s art collection. “She only keeps the really ugly paintings,” he says, waving a hand across a series of cross-eyed, double-chinned portraits propped against the wall.

  “Think my mum dated a couple of these,” I muse. Which is a BIT mean but he laughs and so does Aggy in the doorway so I feel it’s OK.

  “Right, ready to go?” she asks.

  This is so weird. I am standing in a circle with people who ARE all wearing stretchy trousers, thank you, Dermot. In fact, it looks exactly like a yoga class.

  Performance Class is held on the ground floor of a vast warehouse-type building, and we find the entrance down an alleyway next to a boxing club. It feels cool and edgy, walking past tattooed men with towels over their shoulders, then pushing open a vast steel door. However, as soon as you’re actually in Performance Class, the edginess dribbles away in the presence of people in stretchy trousers flexing and talking about avocados.