Normally, I’d have been, like, hold on, and disappeared to the loo to call Grace and ask what she thought, but Grace’s giggles at lunchtime had made it pretty clear what she and Nell were up to that night, so, without saying yes or no, I just shrugged and fell in step alongside him, realising quick enough how even Max’s voice had less swagger when Jacob Mansfield wasn’t in tow.
‘What you listening to?’ Max could have just pointed at the earphones hanging round my neck, but he actually lifted one from my shoulder and nodded at the phone poking out from the pocket of my bag. ‘Play it,’ he said.
If I’d put it like this to Grace, I swear she’d have been rolling her eyes, like, you just don’t get it, do you, Izzy?, and citing it as an example of Max’s patriarchal power. But it was more gentle than that, more of a question, and not even a piss-take when I had to explain it wasn’t Radio 1 or Spotify but this show, Desert Island Discs, that basically sums up my childhood with Mum.
‘It’s a radio programme,’ I said to Max. ‘On Radio 4.’
‘Radio 4! Isn’t that for old people?!’
‘Not always!’
And I reached for the earphones, but Max was all ‘I’m kidding, Izzy!’ and totally ‘Go on then, tell me more…’
‘It’s simple really. Each guest imagines they’re cast away to an island and has to choose the music they’d take with them.’ Funny, isn’t it, how easily the words came when it was just the two of us. ‘Eight songs. Possibly the only music they’ll have for the rest of their lives!’
‘Cool.’
And I couldn’t tell if Max was serious, but: ‘It is!’ I was practically gushing. ‘Cool, I mean.’ Though really it’s so much more.
I’ve been listening to them all again, those Desert Island Discs. On my own this time around, although sometimes, but not so much recently, if Daniel’s out I’ll give Mum an earphone, and while it’s not the green chair the two of us would squish into when I was a kid – that didn’t go with Daniel’s leather sofas apparently – the shared wires bring us close enough for me to feel her shoulders drop and her breaths deepen, for me to believe she’s also remembering how Desert Island Discs was once our thing.
Because it was definitely a thing. We’d kick off Sundays listening to pop music in a super deep bath. She’d let me wash her hair, stick a flannel to her face and make shampoo potions, which I’d rub into the purplish lines on her tummy, and we’d marvel at my wizard genius as, over time, they faded silver. When the water was cold and we were wrinkled, we’d get dressed, and I’d curl into Mum’s lap in that charity-shop green chair she bartered down to seven pounds fifty-five after we first moved out of Great-grandma’s place. And she’d stretch to switch from Radio 1 to Radio 4, ready to welcome guest after guest on to this island we’d made perfect for two.
And my mates reckon it’s a bit weird cos, I know, right, Desert Island Discs isn’t exactly Teletubbies or Postman Pat. And, to be clear, I did watch those things too. But Sundays were special. ‘Incredible’, Mum would say sometimes when the castaway had chosen their eight tracks, their luxury and their book, struggling occasionally to decide which one record they’d save if their collection was at risk of being lost to the sea, ‘what some people do with their lives…’ She’d hold me for some time after. ‘What they overcome.’
And last Friday, Max’s smile when I did hit play – it was curious, none of that sneering they’re so full of in the canteen. And it felt kind of nice, kind of all right, to be with Max Dale when Grace was so obviously caught up in Nell.
‘’S cool.’ He nodded, like, honestly, Iz, I’m not taking the piss, returning the earphone when the castaway’s track ended.
Jacob was hurling ‘oi oi’s from across the street by then, sniffing and waving his fingers, and it was clear the moment was done.
‘Later!’ Max was away, over the road, shrugging off whatever Jacob was saying, with one last look back at me before they were gone.
‘Quite sweet?’ Grace says now. ‘This flake is sweet, Iz.’ She licks at the 99. ‘Max Dale is not sweet. He might not be as gross as Jacob, but he’s best mates with the guy, and that’s got to say something.’
‘I’m best mates with you. I hope people don’t judge me for that!’
I take a swipe at her ice cream, but she’s too quick.
‘Should have got your own,’ she says. Then, like always, she says, ‘Have a bit if you want.’ But I’m on this food plan my stepdad Daniel’s cooked up for my mum and me. ‘Suit yourse— Oh, hold it a mo, would you?’ And the Mr Whippy’s practically in my face as she starts digging for her ringing phone in her bag. ‘Babe,’ she says, as the cold slips down my throat and into my belly. ‘Sure,’ she says, ‘about ten minutes, yeah?’
And the cold mixes with the sad cos it’s clear I’m about to be abandoned. It’s practically a habit now, how Grace leaves me for Nell. Even the chocolate’s no consolation.
‘You don’t mind, do you, Iz?’
Of course I shake my head, no, I don’t mind, because as much as I hate that face Grace has whenever she hears from her girlfriend – that wide-eyed look of the Beast in the animated version when he meets Beauty on the stairs for a dance, sporting a suit and that crazy big can’t-believe-his-luck kind of grin – it offers me hope, too. Hope, I guess, that for all the crappy places it can take you, it’s also possible love will lead you to that top-step moment when anything seems possible, when the Beast changes from a monster and a happily ever after doesn’t seem so much of a fairy-tale trick after all.
‘Go! Have fun.’ I mean it too.
Just like I mean the smile as she skips off and mean it still as Max Dale appears from behind a beach hut, asking in that not-so-swagger kind of voice if I fancy meeting up later. Grinning, totally friendly, totally cool, he says, ‘Thought maybe you’ve got some more old-people radio shows you wanna share?’
FOUR
‘Who was he?’ Daniel’s voice is a can of Coke – I know the rising bubbles are in there but can’t be sure how fierce they’ll be until he opens the can. It’s always tricky to tell how much he’s been shaken.
‘Who do you mea—’
But my stepdad’s speaking over me, already on his next lot of questions, asking if ‘that boy’ goes to my college and where did we head to looking so close and so conspiratorial.
‘Imagine my surprise,’ he says, stirring milk into the tea he’s making for me, taking the sugar from the cupboard but with a quick glance at my belly, an almost undetectable shake of his head, putting it back without adding any, and then arranging three cookies on a plate and leaving them on the end of the breakfast bar, just within arm’s reach. ‘I wasn’t sure if it was you at first. I didn’t think you were the kind of girl to be out with a boy on your own.’
He takes a biscuit, delicate bites, elongated chews, eyes on me while my gaze flits from him to the plate, where a chocolate chip has come loose.