Dad wouldn’t notice one more!” I smile in spite of myself. “Why don’t you, like channel your feelings into our art?” Hol waves her arms around in what she obviously imagines is an arty fashion.
Hol is one half of said art project – our (as yet unnamed) band. She doesn’t write songs. She claims her role is “more of an actualisation deal. Like, you provide the raw materials – I bring the magic.” What this actually means is that I spend every night wigging out on my own in my room like a loser (singing along to my knackered old keyboard in apparent silence via my gigantic orange headphones) writing songs for which Hol then has to create a four-note bass part. Like she says – magic.
“What was that one you wrote last week?” she asks, sucking a few grains of sugar off her index finger.
I cast my mind back to last Wednesday, when I stayed up late writing about this really annoying girl in our class who has a secret tattoo. The chorus was particularly satisfying (“You’ve got your boyfriend’s name in ink on your bum/ And if you don’t shut up/ I’m telling your mum”).
“Er…Inkspots?”
“No! The one about Ray!”
“Oh! Chairman of the Bored.”
“Yeah – you could adapt that and make it about this. You know what John Lydon says, ‘Anger is an energy’. Use it to your advantage, Caine. Now put on your regulation issue disguise and let’s discuss Operation Awesome.”
She may not do sympathy very well, but if you want cheering up, Pirate is the girl for you. “Sir, yes sir!” I slip on my extremely 70s Elton John eyewear, my head now inviting the empty café to LOOK.
Operation Awesome is our plan for world domination by our band, using the weapon of amazingly brilliant music. Holly and I spend most of our time together discussing logistics, tactics, album titles, who we’ll tour with, which cities we’ll play in and what we’ll wear onstage. The fact that we are the only members, own one battered old Casio and a borrowed bass does not figure in any of this. We have a Facebook page called Operation Awesome inviting the public to help us on our road to superstardom. So far we have three friends, two of whom are us. The other one is Glad.
Removing a tattered notebook and pen from her skip of a handbag, Holly flicks through the pages until she reaches the list of potential names we were working on yesterday lunchtime.
“So…where did we get to? The Neon Girls, Play, The Twister Sisters…”
“I hate that one. And there’s already a metal band called Twisted Sister.”
“…Daydreamer, Ice Scream…”
“And that one. Cross it out – people will think we’re a screamo band. Totally wrong.”
“Totally!” agrees Holly, who refuses to acknowledge her enormous emo phase which finished three months ago (her wardrobe has yet to catch up with her music taste). She puts a decisive strike through the offending moniker. “But we do need something. It needs to say who we are and what we’re about – it needs to show that we mean business and – CHIPS! WOO HOO!”
Surly Girl plonks the plate down between us. Hol turns beaming towards her. Surly Girl is wearing a badge that says, ‘My name is Nicola. Ask me about our FREE REFILLS!’
“Danke, Camarero! Could we possibly have another fork, sil vous plait? And what’s the deal with these free refills I’ve been hearing about?”
Surly leans in close enough for us to catch the surprisingly pleasant scent of perfume and cigarettes.
“One fork per order only and the free refills is only for a family party who get the lunchtime special. Not timewasters and broken biscuits who haven’t got nothing better to do with themselves than hang around here making one order last all day.”
A crescent-moon smile spreads across Holly’s impish face.
“Ooh, you’re good! Nicola, is it? You’re GOOD!” She starts scribbling in the book.
Taken aback by Holly’s apparent delight, Surly straightens up, gives a derisory snort and stalks off.
“Thank you!” Holly calls after her with a wave. She turns to me, still beaming, before doing her best Professor Higgins, “By George, I think she’s got it!” She turns the notebook round. The entire list of band names has been scratched out and underneath in letters as big as her grin she has written THE BROKEN BISCUITS.
Before long we’re laughing and the world almost feels the right way round again. Pirate can do that to a person.
We stumble out of the café and take the bus up the coast. As we bump along, Hol gives a particularly animated account of her escape from double maths and a life in which she might have grown up understanding long division.
We end up in a little village a couple of miles out of town. Its selection of shops is pretty odd – a tearoom, a fancy dress shop and a newsagent that also sells reproduction antiques. Somehow Holly convinces the owner of the fancy dress place that we are fashion students looking for kitsch accessories for our end of term show. We spend an hour trying things on. Wigs, feather boas, clown noses, witches’ hats…In the end we buy a pair of cat ears (me) and rabbit ones (her). We add them to our disguises, Holly promising to return to buy more “when we’re closer to curtain up.” There’s nowhere else to go and no more money. So we walk down to find a bench on the freezing beach and split a packet of bubblegum.
Glad once told me there is actually no definitive line where the sea ends and the sky begins. They are made of the same thing. I didn’t understand at the time but today I know just what she means. I can feel the sea in the air, like silk. We watch the waves throw themselves one by one on to the sand, each trying to escape the sea. Failing. That’s how the tide comes in, I suppose.
Still in our comedy ears and sunnies, we sit huddled together blowing orange bubbles that look like plastic Halloween pumpkins. We hunch together in the cold for a long time, looking out to sea as if we’re waiting for a ship of loons to come and rescue us, to take us to a place where people wear rabbit ears and sunglasses every day and love music as much as we do. I think about Operation Awesome – Pirate’s the kind of person who’s just about mad enough to manage to make that happen. I need her help with something else. I take a deep breath, the damp February air is cold enough to sting my teeth.
“I think I need to find my dad.”
Hol’s bubble freezes mid blow, then she sucks it back in thoughtfully, bursting it with a smacking sound.
“Is this cos of the wedding?”
“Yeah, kind of. I mean, I’ve always wanted to know who he is. But in a way, not knowing was cool before. Like, he could be anyone. He could be Johnny Depp or Brad Pitt or something. Stupid.”
She smiles and resumes chewing. “It’s not stupid. I used to wish I was adopted for the same reason. Then I realised that it was unlikely my mam would have wanted to adopt, like, her fifth baby when the others were still little. Unless my dad actually had been Brad Pitt. He loves that kind of thing.”
I roll my eyes at her. “Ha ha. The thing is, now that Ray’s going to be my stepdad, I care. He’s taking my dad’s place. Whoever he is. But I can’t do this on my own. I’m going to need help. From you.”
