to know him better, that I just gushed out a thank you.
By the time Saturday chunked around, I couldn’t have been more grateful that Cory was coming to the rescue. I’d given Victor the letter Ginny had instructed me to hand over. He’d been quite moody since his birthday, more monosyllabic than ever, as though turning eighteen without Ginny had truly cemented in his mind that she really had gone. I tried to let him know that I was there for him but just succeeded in making us both more self-conscious with my ‘I know it’s such an odd time for you, Victor, losing your mum and coming to live with us, as well as starting a new school. But I’m always here for you to talk to, if there’s something bothering you.’ I immediately wanted to snatch those words back in. ‘Bothering’ didn’t seem big enough for what he was going through. He was probably asking himself at that very minute how his super-smart dynamic mother had landed a dullard like me as a best friend. I suspected he’d rather implode with grief than speak to me.
I nearly suggested the school counsellor that I’d tried to get Phoebe to see – ‘Mum. No. Only “special” people go to the counsellor. I’m just not doing it.’ – but I didn’t know how to broach it without making Victor so awkward he’d never come out of his room again.
Just before Cory arrived, I mentioned my concerns to Patrick.
‘What did you think would happen? The boy’s lost his mother, moved away from everyone he knows, at a school where multiracial means there are a couple of Asian kids whose parents are medics, and that’s without everyone taking the piss out of him for sounding like Tom Jones.’
‘I shouldn’t think anyone their age knows who Tom Jones is.’
Patrick sighed. ‘You know what I mean. I don’t know, Alun Wyn Jones, then. Poor lad stands out like a sore thumb among all of us southerners. I hope he makes some friends before the Six Nations, otherwise he’ll be stuck here watching it with me.’ Patrick managed to bring rugby into everything. He brightened for a moment. ‘Maybe he’d like to come to a match with me if I can get tickets?’
Given it was one of the few times Patrick had shown any real initiative in organising anything for Victor, I didn’t do my usual ‘How much would that cost?’ The mere thought that Patrick might participate in topping up everyone’s happiness quotient made me want to shower money at anything he suggested. ‘Yes, why don’t you look into tickets?’
‘Don’t need telling twice.’
And then Cory and Lulu arrived, and we’d barely done the introductions when Mum turned up fifteen minutes early, ‘Didn’t want to keep you waiting,’ as though we’d all been peering out of the window in breathless anticipation of her arrival.
I shuffled them all into the sitting room, aware of Lulu’s gaze flitting around. If she’d been hoping that Cory’s friends had a great big country mansion in keeping with his fancy flat in Battersea overlooking the river, she was going to be disappointed.
‘This is very cosy,’ she said.
I was so busy making sure my mother didn’t corner Cory before I’d even had the chance to take his coat, I hadn’t tuned in my ‘judgement of Cory’s new girlfriend’ antenna sufficiently to know whether she was being genuine or not. Most of his girlfriends were pleasant enough – ‘innocuous’, as Patrick frequently described them – but often seemed a strange choice for a man who, when we’d lived with him, loved engaging in debates, loved the challenge of sharpening his very smart brain against an equal match. He could never sit still or bear a moment’s silence, which made him entertaining or infuriating depending on the mood. If silence threatened, he’d launch into one of his list games, which we’d all shout down but end up getting dragged into. It was thanks to Cory and his interminable lists – ‘Give me all the countries in Europe.’ ‘Name twenty Olympic sports’ – that I had any general knowledge at all. It certainly wasn’t because my parents had rushed me off to any museums or art galleries while I was growing up. Unlike Phoebe, who’d only had to say, ‘When did the Titanic sink?’ and we’d find an exhibition about it, which she’d drag herself around asking if we could go to H&M on the way home.
I hoped we wouldn’t have to rely on Cory