Falling Fast - L.S

6

"How's the play going?" Mum's voice was all fake cheery. The tone she uses when her mind's really on something else. When what she's really saying is: my time is precious, but I've set aside five minutes for a Proper Chat.

I looked up from the kitchen table where I was bent over my script. "Play's going fine," i said.

It was Saturday morning, two weeks after that first real rehearsal. Harry hadn't been at the next one and I wasn't needed for the one after that, so i hadn't seen him since he'd done that weird thing of asking me if I was Catholic.

Mum peered over my shoulder.

"You still learning your lines?" She said. "I'd've thought you knew the whole play off by heart now."

I closed the play so that she wouldn't see I was actually reading - rereading - the scene where Romeo declares his love to Juliet. A scene in which, unsurprisingly, Juliet's nurse did not feature.

Mum slid into the chair beside me. She laid a hand over the play, and my fingers which rested on top of it.

"Is everything all right, Louis?" she said. "It's just you've been very quiet since you started these rehearsals."

I shrugged, staring down at Mum's fingernails. They were painted with a dark blue base, and decorated with silver stars and tiny crescent moons.
Mum's nails are the only remotely alternative thing about her now.

Her leaving all that hippy stuff behind was what made my parents split up. It happened a few years ago, half-way through my Year Seven. Mum told me recently she'd felt that she'd grown up and Dad hadn't.

I'm not sure it was that Straightforward. I think, maybe, that she just got tired of pretending to be someone she wasn't.

She works if an office now - still spouts all this stuff about capitalist oppressors and management bastards, but you can tell it's only skin deep. Come the war to end corporate global tyranny and Mum'd be first out the back door - looking for somewhere to do her nails in peace, probably.

"You know you can tell me anything," Mum said softly. "Whatever it is, I promise you I've been there already."

I looked up at her. No way had she ever let herself feel like Harry made me feel. Even when she was pretending to live the hippy life, she was always far too in control for that.

I mean, look at her, all neatly made up for some work-related conference she was going to later. On a Saturday, for God's sake. I could see she'd made a particular effort too - lipliner as well as lipstick, and was that a new eyeshadow?

"Some new bloke started at work recently?" I said.

Mum's cheeks pinked under their dusting of powder. "As a matter of fact, yes," she said. "He's nice. Divorced. Two young children, one of them Lottie's age."

"Anyway, we were talking about you," she said. "Why you're so quiet. Holed up in your room all the time." She put her arm round my shoulders and hugged me. "Is it a boy you've met doing the play?"

I pulled away. Mum was always doing this, trying to get me to talk to her about private stuff. I still hadn't told anyone how Harry had made me feel. What was the point? I was a zillion miles from ever getting to know him better.

He was far too attractive and sure of himself to be interested in someone like me. If I told anyone they'd just feel sorry for me or - worse - start offering me advice.

"Come on, Lou," Mum wheedled. "We used to talk all the time."

This was true. When I was younger, after Dad left, I remember clinging to Mum like I was falling out of an aeroplane and she was the parachute. I told her everything that was happening at school. What i did. Who was friends with whom. Everything the teachers said.