Life, Death and Gold Leather Trousers

by Fiona Foden

  At the front of the assembled parade, an old-man band starts parping. We start plodding behind the hula girls. I feel slightly sick as the bass drum thumps in time with my pounding heart.

  Skelling is posing on the pavement, and bursts into giggles when she spots my furry family. I try to send hostile vibes through my eyeholes. No sign of Riley yet. Maybe he’ll miss the whole spectacle and I can tell him about it and miss out the embarrassing bits (which, come to think of it, means all of it).

  As the procession stomps on, I remember Mum mentioning a little surprise a few days ago – something she wanted me and Lily to see on Carnival Day. What’ll it be? Maybe dinner at the Steak Shack? She does a wiggly dance for the crowd, who send out a cheer. The hula dancers shake their raffia skirts; then they part and, through the gap, I spot an older man in a long brown coat with matted fur around its hem. He’s dancing, if you could call it that – kind of jiggling his arms and swaying his hips and making his long hair fly about. Walking beside him is a thinner, slightly shorter figure, also in an ancient hippie coat with long black hair bushing down his back.

  I focus hard on the hippies.

  “Oh look!” Lily squeals as the boy turns round. “Look at those men in the long coats! Clover, it’s Riley, it’s your boyfr—”

  I don’t hear the rest, as Riley’s scanning the parade as if looking for someone. Then the man turns, and it must be his dad, as his broad, cheeky grin matches Riley’s exactly. I no longer care about Riley seeing me in costume. He’s dressed up too, after all.

  “Riley!” I call out, pulling off my furry headwear. “You didn’t tell me you were in the parade!”

  “Thought I’d surprise you,” he says with a grin.

  “Love the wig,” I snigger.

  “Love the bear suit,” he shoots back, adding, “Dad, this is Clover.”

  “Ah, the musical genius I’ve heard so much about. Pleased to meet you.” He holds out a hand and I shake it with my paw.

  “Dad nagged me to do this since he heard about it,” Riley explains. “It’s not often he gets a chance to dig out the old hippie gear.”

  “Hey, less of the old,” his dad chuckles.

  I fall into step with Riley, carried along by the cheers and applause. It no longer matters that I’m being roasted alive in my costume, or that anyone from school could spot me now my face is in full view. Mum and Lily still have their bear heads on, and Mum whoops and waves every time someone cheers our strange little group.

  Normally, it feels like years until the parade comes to a halt at the pier. Today, though, it flashes by.

  “Did you really do this for your dad?” I ask Riley as the balloon-festooned finish comes into view.

  “I didn’t have much choice,” he says, laughing. “And it’s only one day, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, guess so.” The parade has finished now, and we grab cups of weak orange squash from a table as Mum pulls Lily towards some friends. “Oh, and I heard about your hamburger costume last year,” he adds with a grin. God, did he? “…And I thought, not even Dad’s smelly old hippie gear could be as bad as that…”

  I burst out laughing. “It was pretty bad, believe me.”

  “Clover!” Lily’s voice cuts through the crowd. “Mum says we’ve got to meet her outside the Ship Inn in five minutes.”

  My heart crashes. The Ship Inn? I don’t want to go to the pub. I want to hang out with Riley and his funny dad. “D’you want to come too?” I ask Riley, with a sudden stab of shyness.

  “Sorry, Clover,” his dad cuts in, “we’re meeting up with the cavemen, then I think everyone’s heading down to the beach for a bit of a party…” Riley throws me a look which I think means: sorry.

  “You’re welcome to come too,” his dad adds quickly, “if it’s OK with your mum. Everyone’s meeting up at the North Cove…”

  “Er, I don’t think…” I start.

  “C’mon, Clover,” Lily insists, tugging my wrist. “Mum says we’ve got to go. Maybe we’re gonna get our surprise.”

  And what will it be? A packet of beef-flavoured crisps? A glass of watery lemonade? “I’d better go,” I say with a sigh, steering Lily away towards the Ship. Even worse, when I glance back at Riley, Skelling’s appeared and jammed herself at his side. She’s all teeth and smiles and her short white dress shows off her caramel tan to perfection. Riley’s dad’s laughing, and now Riley’s laughing too, and none of them seems in a terrible hurry to dash off to the cavemen’s beach party. Although I could crawl into a cave, no trouble at all.

  “Come on!” Lily pulls hard on my paw. “Don’t you care about Mum’s surprise?”

  I take a deep breath as we force ourselves through the crowds and into the Ship Inn’s beer garden to find Mum. By now, I do care about being roasted alive. Don’t you see stickers saying “dogs die in hot cars”? Could a person actually die inside a bear outfit – like, drown in their own sweat? That’d give Skelling something to snort about, if I collapsed from overheating in a pile of crumpled fur. Someone might mistake me for a cushion and try to sit on me. They might wonder why it’s all knobbly and zip it open and find me, Clover Jones, who might have been a famous musician like her uncle if she hadn’t melted on Carnival Day.

  Where is Mum anyway? Maybe she’s gone to the loo. Or she’s at the bar ordering iced Cokes for Lily and me.

  Then I spot her. Mum, no longer being Daddy Bear but in her normal black jeans and a tight pink top, doing something that makes my stomach lurch.

  She’s kissing a man. They’re standing there, kissing, not like Riley and me, but slobbery kissing with their hands all over each other.

  “Mum…” Lily whispers.

  “Shhh!” I hiss.

  The leopard dress. Red shoes. Now I get it. This is Mum’s little surprise.

  “Oh, girls, I didn’t see you!” Mum exclaims, blushing furiously as she tears herself away from the lip-sucker.

  I gawp at Mum – who looks mortified – then at him. He’s short and stocky with shiny pink cheeks like snooker balls. His T-shirt’s so tight, you can see all the lumps and bumps of his chest muscles. He looks corrugated, like a shed roof. “Um, girls, this is Ed,” Mum babbles nervously. “We’re, er, friends from the gym and he’s been looking forward to meeting you – haven’t you, Ed?” She looks around uncomfortably.

  Ed nods, sucking in his thin lips. Yeah, he’s really been dying to meet us.

  “This is Clover and Lily,” Mum prompts him, to fill the awkward pause.

  “Nice to meet you,” Ed says gruffly. “Kerry’s told me all about you.” He picks up a beer from the table and sips it.

  Mum takes a desperate swig of her drink. Ed doesn’t say anything else. Obviously, he doesn’t want us here. He wants to get on with more vile, slurpy kissing with Mum, who’s only been single for what feels like about five minutes.

  “I thought today would be a good time for us to get together,” Mum gabbles on, snatching her glass and rattling it so the ice cubes chink together. “The carnival’s such a special day, isn’t it?”

  “Yuh,” I mumble, my skin prickling in my bear suit. I wonder if Skelling’s still primping and posing around Riley, and if she’s blagged an invite to the cavemen’s beach party yet. Or maybe she and Riley have just snuck off to the other end of the beach together – wasn’t that the plan anyway? She’s probably got that custard-yellow bikini stashed in her bag, ready to slip on and dazzle him.

  Ed clears his throat. “So … can I get you girls a drink?”

  “Um, Coke, please,” I say.

  “Me too, please,” Lily says nervously.

  “Sure,” Ed says, disappearing into the pub.

  Mum fixes her gaze on me. “You OK, love? You look a bit…”

  “I’m just hot,” I say quickly, struggling out of the bear suit. I still can’t believe she got us all excited about a surprise
and presented us Ed like a gift.

  Mum helps Lily to pull off her costume. Her own outfit’s squished into an Iceland carrier bag at her feet.

  “How long have you known him?” I ask in a strangled voice.

  “Not long, love,” Mum says lightly.

  “Is he … your boyfriend?” Lily demands.

  “No, just, er … a nice man I’ve got to know lately…” Mum rakes back her hair as Ed struts towards us with our drinks. He hands us our Cokes and glances around the beer garden. “We’re all going out for dinner, aren’t we, Ed?” Mum says hopefully.

  “Oh, are we?” He looks as if he’d rather stab pins in his eyes.

  She nudges him. “We said, didn’t we, that it’d be a treat after the carnival?”

  An idea zings into my brain. Obviously, Mr Muscle doesn’t want us around. And if we are around – all the time, I mean – he’ll realize that Mum, Lily and me come as a package. Then he’ll leave Mum alone and everything’ll be normal again.

  “Would you like that, girls?” Mum asks brightly. “A lovely dinner at the Steak Shack?”

  “Yeah,” I say. My grin’s so fake, it feels like it could fall right off my face.

  In the fug of sizzling meat, where the steaks are the size of men’s slippers, we learn all about Ed. How he’d spied Mum through the glass partition when she was doing an aerobics class, and hung around by the water cooler until she came out. “He was stalking me,” Mum says, laughing.

  If it’d been me, I’d have called the police, but she seems to be flattered.

  “Well,” Ed says gruffly, “your mum’s a nice lady and we just got chatting.” Yeah, right. Having obviously run out of conversation, Ed rips into his lunch like a starved wolf. His steak lolls off either side of his plate and is slathered in onions and gravy. Thank God me and Lily chose nuggets. I wouldn’t have managed a tenth of that steak, and then Mum would have started up about food waste and starving children in Africa.

  Ed’s starting to look more relaxed now, but I know it’s an act. You can tell when someone’s allergic to young people. They pull a slightly pained face whenever they look at you. Is this how my life’s going to be now – with Ed in it, if he’s really Mum’s new boyfriend? The thought’s so horrifying that I need a few minutes to get my head around it.

  “Just need the loo,” I mutter, grateful to get away from our cosy group. Lily leaps up too, and scuttles across the restaurant behind me, obviously wanting to discuss Ed in minuscule detail. I dive into the ladies’ and bolt the cubicle door. I take my time, just sitting there, hoping she’ll give up and go back to our table.

  “D’you like Ed?” she asks, wide-eyed, as I come out.

  “Don’t want to talk about it,” I mutter as I wash my hands. She tails me out of the loo, and when we turn the corner Mum and Ed are laughing and flirting and touching each other, in a restaurant, where people are eating. For some reason she seems to think it’s perfectly OK to act like a teenager with this weird little corrugated man.

  Seeing us approaching, Mum tries to look all composed and normal again, and Ed fiddles with the bread basket. Those chicken nuggets swirl uneasily in my stomach. Right now, Riley will be at the caveman beach party with Skelling draped all over him.

  My meal’s gone cold now, and Lily doesn’t seem to be terribly interested in hers either. Mum tries her best to keep the conversation flowing, but there are awkward silences that settle over us like dust.

  “Anyone fancy dessert?” Ed asks as our greasy plates are finally taken away.

  Please say no, Mum, so we can get the hell out of here.

  “Shall we share one, Ed?” Mum asks. “And let the girls choose a sundae?”

  Although I don’t really want dessert, I choose one anyway so I’ve got something to do other than sit looking at them. Mum and Ed’s comes with two long spoons for sharing. Ugh. Thank God they don’t start feeding each other. My ice cream slithers down my throat, and I glance around the restaurant at all the normal families, chatting excitedly about the carnival.

  And I think about Riley, maybe splashing about in the sea by now, with Skelling in that custard bikini.

  “Thank you, Ed,” Mum says grandly as he calls over the waitress and pays our bill.

  “Thanks,” I add as she gives me a quick look, but I don’t think he hears me. We all shuffle out, our bear outfits stuffed into carrier bags.

  “Well, it was great to meet you, girls,” Ed says gruffly outside the restaurant.

  I smile bleakly. Lily kicks at a pebble on the ground. “Thanks, Ed,” Mum beams. “That was a fantastic meal. See you soon, OK?”

  “Look forward to it,” Ed says, before hauling his muscle-bound bulk down the street.

  The three of us set off home in silence. “I, um, hope that was OK, girls,” Mum says, clearing her throat.

  “The food was nice,” Lily blurts out.

  “Yes, it was,” Mum says, taking Lily’s hand. “I mean, though, about Ed…”

  I glance at her as we walk. “You could’ve warned us,” I mumble.

  “I know, Clover, but what could I have said? We’re just friends, love. But he’s a nice guy and I wanted you to meet him instead of keeping it from you…”

  I shrug. What about that slobbery kissing, then? She doesn’t normally do that with her friends.

  “And to be honest,” she continues, “I don’t know what’ll happen with Ed. It’s all very new. It’s just … nice, you know? Meeting him has cheered me up.”

  I mull this over, then think about Riley and me: that’s pretty new too, and I don’t know what’s going to happen there either.

  “Anyway,” Lily adds, gripping her own carrier bag, “next time we go there can I have the sundae with the sparkler in it like that lady had at the next table?”

  “Of course you can, sweetheart,” Mum laughs, glancing at me. Then her other hand folds around mine, soft and warm, as if trying to convince me that everything’s going to be OK.

  “Clover, d’you think Mum and Ed’ll get married?” Lily whispers in the dark. It’s almost eleven p.m. Our light’s been off for an hour but I can’t sleep. Neither, it seems, can Lily.

  I slide my gaze over to her bed. “They’ve only just met,” I hiss back, “and Mum says they’re just friends from the gym…”

  “But they were kissing at the pub!”

  “I know, Lil, but maybe … it was just all the excitement of the carnival.”

  I can hear her breath rising and falling as she thinks about this. “I think they love each other, Clover,” she adds.

  “Well,” I say, “maybe they do. Maybe it’s all happened really quickly and Ed cheered Mum up after Dad left. But you know what? People don’t decide to get married after going out two or three times, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

  There’s silence, and I can sense her chewing this over. “If they do get married,” she pipes up, “d’you think we’ll be bridesmaids?”

  I snort into my duvet. “Can you honestly imagine Mum ever marrying him?”

  “He’s got big arms, hasn’t he?” she says, giggling.

  “Yeah, like tree trunks.”

  “Or fat barrels,” she cuts in, “like the ones outside the Ship Inn that they plant flowers in…”

  We’re both laughing now, and I’m bunching wodges of duvet into my mouth so Mum doesn’t hear and come up to tell us to shush. Sometimes, sharing a room with Lily isn’t so bad at all.

  “Clover…” Her voice wavers.

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Are you sure Ed won’t be our new stepdad?”

  How do I answer this? Sometimes I think I know less than nothing about adults and the stuff they get up to. “Of course not,” I say firmly. “It’ll all be over before we know it, and then we’ll have our normal mum back again.”

  Lily wriggles in bed to get comfy, t
hen her breathing steadies and I know she’s asleep. It amazes me, how my sister believes me. And for one crazy moment, I almost believe me too.

  I don’t see much of Riley at school on Monday. Everyone’s gathered in groups at break and lunchtime, laughing about stuff that happened on Saturday, probably going over every tiny detail of the beach party I couldn’t go to because I was being held hostage in the Ship Inn. “So how was the rest of your carnival day?” Riley asks as we head down to Niall’s together.

  I exhale loudly. “Mum had arranged for us to meet her new man…”

  “She’s met someone already?”

  “Sort of looks like it. I don’t know if it’s serious or anything – I mean, Mum tends to jump into things without thinking, you know? Like the day she walked out of her job. Anyway, we had to sit through this terrible meal and watch him slurping his beer and slurping all over Mum…” I wince at the image of Ed in his too-tight T-shirt.

  Riley smiles sympathetically. “She’s probably just lonely,” he suggests. “My dad went out with a couple of women after Mum left, but neither of them seemed keen to hang out with a hairy old hippie like him.”

  I laugh, even though I can’t imagine being so lonely that I’d want anything to do with a pumped-up grunter like Ed. “So what did you do the rest of Carnival Day?” I ask as Niall’s house comes into view.

  “Oh, just hung out with Dad and some others,” he says.

  “Like … Sophie?” I blurt out.

  He turns and gives me a quizzical look. “Yeah, why?”

  “I, um, just wondered,” I say with an exaggerated shrug.

  Riley looks at me, and my cheeks flush hotly. “It was just a beach party, Clover,” he says with a laugh. “You should’ve come.”

  I can’t ask about the beach party after our lesson because Riley’s dad picks him up in his car. “I’m popping out for a bit later,” Mum explains when I get home, although as she’s wearing her sparkly top and short skirt, I’d hardly imagined she was planning a night in front of the telly.