And then he stumbles, one ankle sliding away from him.
It all seems to happen quite slowly.
Carl raises his two fists like a hammer, high over his head –
Skippy’s just standing there, tottering –
and everyone bellows because they know that as soon as he’s hit he’s toast, and that’s when the real fun starts –
As the fists come down he swings out blindly –
he doesn’t know whether it’s meant as a punch or a block –
but it connects with Carl’s jaw:
the impact shoots back through his bones and up his arms; Carl’s head snaps sideways –
and he goes down –
and he doesn’t get up.
Nothing happens for a long moment; it’s as if all sound has been sucked out of the world. And then everyone is cheering! Maniacal, incredulous, ecstatic cheering, as if this is the first time in their lives they have truly cheered – laughing and whooping and jumping up and down, like the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy’s house lands on the Witch, the same people who a second ago were roaring at Carl to pull Skippy’s guts out. Skippy might have found this odd, but he’s too dazed to think about anything, and now he’s swamped by his friends.
‘A glass jaw,’ Niall marvels, ‘who’d’ve thought it?’
‘It was the move he did,’ Mario explains. ‘The Italian karate move, didn’t you see it?’
It seems as if the only person not celebrating – other than Damien Lawlor, who is sunk on his heels, whispering ashen-faced to himself, ‘I’m ruined…’ – is Skippy himself. Instead he’s gazing at the spot of gravel occupied only a moment ago by Carl’s fallen body. Where’d he go?
‘Legged it,’ Niall pronounces.
‘He’d better leg it,’ Ruprecht comments darkly.
‘Come on, Skip.’ Mario takes him by the arm. ‘We should clean you up before you go see your lady. You have a limited amount to work with at the best of times.’
‘Make way for the champ!’ cries Geoff, clearing a path to the Tower.
And ten minutes later – hair tamed, teeth brushed, irremediably shredded school jumper exchanged for a clean hoodie – Skippy’s leaving it again, pedalling Niall’s bike uphill towards the gate. The rain has cleared and the clouds given way to a sunset that blushes deep and fiery, lush pinks and warm reds piled on top of each other in a breathy rushed jumble like a heart in love; and as he weaves out weightlessly into the traffic, leaving their final words of advice – ‘Full hardcore sex!’ ‘Just don’t puke on her!’ – to disappear into the evening, the euphoria blossoms inside him at last, and with every yard travelled, continues, star-like, to grow. The grave canopies of the trees overhead merge with the incoming dusk; the dual carriageway hooshes by him, its tall streetlamps seeming to sing through the twilight; the chain and wheels hum at his feet, the chocolates swing from their bag on the handlebars, as he turns down her road, past the old stone houses with their ivy veils, to arrive at her gates; and there, at the end of the driveway, just as he imagined it, she is – in the lamplight, on the doorstep, laughing like he’s just told the greatest joke in the world.
In the beginning he has to keep pinching himself to remind himself this is actually happening: it seems unreal, like one of those Kinder ads where everyone’s been dubbed into another language.
‘You’re here!’ she exclaims, holding her arms out to him. Her eye catches on the bruise on his temple as she leans in to kiss him, but she doesn’t say anything about it. ‘My parents are dying to meet you,’ she says instead, and taking his hand she leads him inside. They go down a hall full of paintings to an airy kitchen with a huge domed skylight, where a tall, slightly fierce-looking woman in a black dress is chopping courgettes. Skippy wipes his palms on his trousers, ready to shake hands, but Lori breezes right by her, through a glass door: ‘Hey, Mom, look who’s here!’
The woman stretched out on the divan is the image of Lori: the same magnetic green eyes, the same carbon-black hair. ‘Oh my goodness!’ she lays down her magazine and swings her bare feet onto the tiles. ‘So this is the boy! This is the famous –’
‘Daniel,’ Lori says.
‘Daniel,’ Lori’s mum repeats. ‘Well, you’re very welcome to our home, Daniel.’
‘Thank you for having me,’ Skippy mumbles, and then, remembering, ‘I brought some chocolates.’ He hands Lori the box, which in the cathedral-like conservatory looks downright microscopic; nevertheless, both women make exactly the same Ohhhh sound.
‘He’s adorable,’ Lori’s mum pronounces, skating her fingertips over Skippy’s cheeks.
‘Can we have some OJ?’ Lori asks.
‘Of course, sweetie,’ her mum says, and calls through the door to the other woman, ‘Lilya, fetch the kids some juice, would you?’ then kneels down on the floor in front of Skippy so her perfume swims up his nose and it becomes nearly impossible not to look down her top. ‘It’s nice to finally meet you,’ she says in a fake whisper. ‘I knew there had to be a boy on the scene. Though Lori’d deny it till the cows came home.’
‘Mom,’ Lori groans.
‘You may find it hard to believe, young lady, but I was actually a girl myself once. I know the tricks.’
‘Mom, go and do some Pilates or something,’ Lori pleads, moving towards the kitchen.
‘All right, all right…’ She resists her daughter for long enough to fix Skippy with an appraising eye and declare again, ‘Oh he’s just too adorable,’ before disappearing, laughing, back to her divan.
‘Sorry, I should have warned you,’ Lori says. ‘My mom is like the world’s biggest flirt.’ She reaches for one of two glasses of Sunny D that have appeared on the counter along with a big plate of chocolate-chip cookies, and shines Skippy a lighthouse-beam smile. ‘Come on, I’ll give you the tour.’
The house is endless. Every room gives way to another even bigger, each one an Aladdin’s cave of screens and sculptures and stereo equipment. Following after Lori, half-listening to her chatter, Skippy feels happy but strange, like a shadow that’s won some competition and been invited for one day to be an actual person and not just a fuzzy shape on the ground – ‘And this is my room,’ she says.
He snaps out of his reverie. Holy shit! It’s true! They’re in her bedroom! The walls are pink and covered with girl-type posters – two horses nuzzling each other, the Sad Sam dog, a boy-cherub stealing a kiss from a girl-cherub, BETHani in an almost-but-not-completely-see-through swimsuit, and again, in a picture cut out of a magazine, hand in hand with her boyfriend, the guy from Four to the Floor. On the dresser is a photograph of Lori, the beautiful mother and a man who must be Lori’s dad, kind of like if GI Joe was made of wood and wore a suit, the three of them looking so perfect together, like the example picture that comes with the frame.
‘Let’s watch TV!’ she says. There’s a television in here but she’s already going down the stairs to one of the living rooms, where she sits on the sofa about two feet away from him, the cat cradled in her lap and her pop-socked feet dug comfortably under a cushion. The Simpsons is on. Skippy wonders if he was supposed to have kissed her upstairs. She didn’t act like she was expecting him to. So should he kiss her now? She does seem quite interested in the programme. Bollocks, maybe it’s not a date! Maybe they are friends!