even if, like me, you don’t mind your job. She was bright and sparky, joining in Tom’s and Mike’s arguments about Nasser Hussein’s batting average (perhaps it was cricket they were talking about. Who knows?).
‘You used to be so good, Tom,’ she said. ‘D’you still play?’
‘I’m in a team at work, but it’s not much cop,’ said Tom. ‘Wareham did pretty well last summer, though, didn’t they?’
‘They’re still pretty useful – but they’ll miss David this year,’ said Dad, spreading butter on his roll. ‘He was the star bowler, I seem to remember. Always saved the day.’
‘Er,’ said Tom hurriedly. ‘Uncle John…’
I got on with my soup, wishing he’d shut up.
‘How – um – how did they do in the end, then? Wareham,’ Mum asked, in the silence that followed.
‘They did jolly well, actually,’ said Mike. ‘Top of the local league.’
I stared at him. ‘How on earth do you know that? Is the Wareham team newsletter distributed on the Lower West Side?’
‘Internet, dummy,’ said Tom. ‘It’s how I know Jimmy Gooch maintains his batting average. Unfortunately, it’s also how I know he hasn’t died and turned into slime, as I fervently hoped he would.’
‘Ah, Jimmy Gooch,’ said Mum wistfully. Tom coughed and looked outraged. ‘Nice boy. I know he was a bit mean to you at school, Tom, but it was his parents. Horrible people. The father was a drunk. He used to beat Jimmy up.’
‘No, he didn’t!’ Tom exploded. ‘That is a complete myth! It was the other way round! Jimmy Gooch used to beat his father up! He’s an evil thug! He made a policeman cry!’
‘I know you didn’t like him, but he wasn’t a bad boy. I was rather fond of him,’ said Mum. ‘He had terrible stress headaches, even when he was little. Poor mite.’
Tom put his elbows on the table, made a pyramid with his fingers and cleared his throat. ‘Oh, honestly, Aunt Suzy, you’re so naïve.’ He then told my mother that all of the prescriptions she’d written for Jimmy Gooch at primary school had been sold in the playground for hard cash by the same Jimmy Gooch: he had claimed, to a circle of goggle-eyed ten-year-olds, that they were ‘hard drugs what made your bits feel funny’.
My normally cheery mother, who had made a pet of Jimmy Gooch, was devastated. She sat in silence for the rest of the evening, which alarmed all of us, even Tom, then went to bed early, muttering that she needed to get up early and check her records.
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