Misspent Youth

23. CARDINAL PUFF FOR THE THIRD TIME

“I WOULD LIKE TO THE DRINK to the health of Cardinal Puff Puff for the third and…”

“Wrong!” the rest of them roared exuberantly.

Simon’s teeth ground together. “Oh fuck it, you are unserious!”

“Drink. Drink,” they all whooped.

Simon tried to focus on the miniature Manhattan island of bottles and tall glasses covering the table. He plucked one at random and guzzled its contents. Rum and coke trickled down his already wet T-shirt. “Okay.” The bottle waved around as he tried to put it back down. “This is it. I’m doing it right now.” He wiped his lips with the back of his hand, concentrating furiously. He picked the glass up carefully between his thumb and forefinger. “One finger, see. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to health the drink of Cardinal Puff…”

“Wrong!”

Simon started giggling, tears of delight running out of his eyes as he slowly slid out of the canvas chair and onto the decking. Rachel fell on top of him, her shoulders quaking with drunken joy.

Tim thought it was equally hysterical. He tried to throw his arms around Annabelle to share the mirth. They’d been drinking since late afternoon, after finally finishing with the Jet Ski. Everybody had been out on the lake, taking turns to have a go. It had wound up quite competitive among the boys, of course, with Tim and Simon timing themselves along the buoys and heavily disputing the results. Nobody felt confident enough to try the ramp yet. But there would be a lot more days like this one during the summer.

When they’d all showered in the caravan’s small bathroom, and put on warmer clothes as the sun went down, Martin had fired up the barbeque and started cooking. Light cables looped around the trees started to glow at dusk, giving the little site a cozy appearance. There were après-water parties breaking out at plenty of the other caravans around the lakes, their lights shimmering across the water as laughter and music drifted through the cooling air. The beer had come out, and they settled around the long table. They finished the beer along with the last of the burgers, and moved on to spirits. Someone suggested the drinking game.

“It’s very simple,” Vanessa said. “Listen, I want to drink to the health of Cardinal Puff…” She spluttered off into a laugh.

“No!” Sophie and Natalie chorused.

“You’ve got to start with ‘ladies and gentlemen…’”

Vanessa tried to drink a Bacardi forfeit while she was still laughing. It sprayed out across her jeans and dribbled down onto the planks. She just laughed louder.

Tim, who was now lying across Annabelle’s legs, turned around to smile up adoringly at her. “Let’s go inside,” he said quietly. “Please.”

Annabelle shifted her knees, trying to move his weight to a more comfortable position. “Don’t think so, Tim.” She was quietly furious with Tim for doing his usual, and pouring more and more booze down his throat—especially after this morning. Did the boy have no brain? She felt badly let down. Again.

“Ow, come on,” he slurred.

The others were starting to pay attention. She struggled to her feet, spilling Tim onto the decking. “I’ve got a ton of work to revise before Monday,” she said. “I’ll see you.”

Martin and Simon put their arms around each other’s shoulder and warbled out a cry of camp derision, which everyone else thought very funny.

A bleary Tim frowned up at her. “What?”

“Catch you later.”

He tried to climb up, but his trainers slipped on a puddle of beer, and he fell back down. For a moment he did nothing as everyone stared silently at him, then he began to snigger.

Annabelle ignored the drunken amusement behind her as she walked away from the caravan. Two members of the Europol protection team were waiting with bored patience beside their car. “Good night,” the Dutch sergeant said; his smile was sympathetic and understanding.

She put her helmet on, and straddled the e-bike. It took forty-five minutes to get back to Uppingham.

Her house was in a twenty-year-old estate that bordered London Road, just behind the grounds of the local sixth-form college. The development company had constructed all of them to be energy efficient and with minimal ecological impact. It was a squat, dark, unimaginative box, with silver windows and wind-powered conditioning units whirring away under the eaves like the rustling of dry leaves. As always, she hesitated when she reached the front door.

The Goddard family had moved in when she was three years old. It had provided a lovely childhood with both her parents taking care of her. Back then the house had been big and light, filled with laughter and fun. There had been birthday parties with her friends running around everywhere, and magic Christmases with feasts and too much chocolate. In summer, her parents threw barbeques that would last all afternoon long, with the adults chugging back drinks and the children playing together in the pocket-size garden.

Tonight, when she did open the door, the hall lights gave off a meager glimmer, as if someone had replaced the electric bulbs with candles. The aging domestic computer with its antique programs was saving power as best it could. Their regenerator module desperately needed new electrolyte gel, and the solar cell panels on the roof were filthy with algae and moss.

Her father, Roger, was watching the screen in the living room when she came in. It was an Australian hospital soap sponsored by some health insurance company she’d never heard of, one of the twenty or so soaps that dominated his life. She could never tell them apart, or keep up with the parallel story lines. They all seemed to be written by the same creative writing program, churning out improbable plots driven by absurd coincidence and long-lost relatives. But he sat there and soaked them up, slumped bonelessly in the broad leather reclining chair positioned directly opposite the screen. That chair had arrived in its factory packing case on the day the Goddards moved in, as had all the current furniture and carpets. Nothing had changed, the interior had simply grown shabbier with the years.

She went into the kitchen, hoping her father hadn’t heard her tiptoeing along the hall. A forlorn hope.

“It’s Saturday,” Roger Goddard said. “I thought you’d be out all night.”

Annabelle was searching through the freezer for some bread to toast. She didn’t stop; she’d had nothing to eat all day apart from a dubiously cooked sausage at the barbeque. “So, I came home. It’s not a crime.”

“I know. Are you all right?”

“Just great, thanks.” She found half a loaf, and slammed it down on the worktop, separating the frosted slices.

“It’s not like you to be back this early, that’s all.”

The note of absurd earnestness infuriated her. As if he had ever shown any real concern. She straightened up, keeping her anger in check, and shoved the bread in the toaster.

Roger looked at the black T-shirt she was wearing, his lips tightening with disapproval as he read the print. But he was in one of his trying-to-be-a-father moods, so he didn’t comment. “Did you have an argument with Tim?”

“No. Dad, just log off. Please? I’m home because I want to be. That’s it.”

“I just worry about you. I know you don’t think much of me, but you’re still my daughter. I care.”

“About what? That I’m home early for once. I thought you’d be glad of that.”

“If I thought it was so you could spend time with me, I would be.”

“It’s late for that, Dad, by about ten years. Okay?”

“I’m sorry. I do my best.”

She wanted to scream at him, let out all her fury in one easy blast of vitriol and accusation. Looking at the shambolic man standing there with his pathetically eager expression held over his face like some kind of shield, the anger shifted to dismay and a sudden wave of exhaustion. There was no way she could ever understand what had happened to him, and through that, her. Their once-cozy house was degenerating along with the whole estate, where one in three families had no job and kids hung out all day intimidating anyone on the street. He never did any cleaning or cooking or gardening. The only real money she ever saw was a monthly allowance from her mother, the kind of money that nearly every other girl at school spent in an afternoon on a single outfit. Their only other source of income, the pitiful unemployment benefit her father received, vanished straight into the household account. Every week the domestic computer’s finance program would pay off the mortgage and local taxes. Then it would spend a few moments accessing the regional supermarket sites to update itself with their current grocery prices, comparing them with the necessities list she’d loaded in years ago. On Friday the Community Supply Service van would pull up outside and deliver their food for the week, a depressing cluster of supermarket own-brand packages and bargain offers.

There were times when she could remember her childhood, time spent with a man who used to take her out to the parks and play with her. A man who’d tell her stories, and read to her, and watch the children’s shows on cable with her. It was difficult to make the connection between that distant figure and the man standing in the kitchen.

In a way her father was the opposite of Tim’s. He always used to complain that Jeff never joined in much when he was a kid.

Jeff Baker.

Annabelle pushed that thought away before it had a chance to form. Right now she had enough problems trying to decide what to do about Tim. She was still furious with him over tonight. If things had gone according to her plans they’d be in bed together right now; and it might have been as good as it was with Derek.

Roger was still standing at the kitchen door, awkward at the silence.

“Dad, you know I’ve applied for university, don’t you?”

“I know. I remember, you told me. Just don’t do accountancy. You’ll wind up like me.” A nervous judder of a laugh.

“That means I’ll be leaving at the end of summer. Leaving home.”

His head bowed slowly. “I know. I’m pleased about that. It’s what you need. It’ll be good for you.”

“Okay then.” The slices clunked up out of the toaster, barely brown. She grabbed them.

“So, you’re all right then?” he persisted.

“Dad, yes, I’m fine. I just wanted a night in, that’s all. Nothing to worry about.”

An insistent bleeping from her PCglasses woke her up at nine-thirty the next morning. It was a txt from Derek.

By ten past ten she’d had breakfast, showered, put on some clean clothes and was out of the house on the way to catch her bus.