Page 31

‘Ummm, the idea is that you try the mattress and move on,’ a cross-looking lady says, hovering over us with her husband. ‘You and your girlfriend have been on there for far too long, just having a chat it would seem. It’s rude and inconsiderate to all the other customers here.’

Lucy puts a hand to my shoulder, looking around the couple.

‘I’m so sorry, is there a queue?’ she retorts, then turns to me. ‘I think this one is a good choice, honey bear. When we’re scissoring, I think it’ll give us some good leverage.’

I close my eyes, trying not to laugh. The woman’s husband doesn’t know where to look. ‘Lawrence, LAWRENCE…go and get a member of staff.’ The woman drags her husband away towards a person in a yellow shirt.

‘We’re going to get thrown out,’ I tell Lucy.

‘And…? What a story for the ages. My nieces will love it. Meatballs first though, yeah?’

I smile. I haven’t even picked a mattress yet but maybe we can loop round through this labyrinth for refreshments.

As I stand, I look over at Janet and her husband buying their sofa bed.

They sit on the mattress together, laughing, his arm around her as he kisses her on the forehead, her eyes closed.

‘It’s those two over there…’ the angry woman’s voice screams out.

Yeah, we better loop round.

Charlie

‘Is this your boyfriend then?’

Brooke turns to the tour guide and then back to me and starts making very swift retching noises. ‘Oh god, no. He’s my brother, eww!’

I also scrunch my face up at the insinuation. The guide either thinks I look young or that I’m some older man after a teenager and all of it just gives ick factor. To try and reinforce the point, I shove Brooke in the arm and she pushes me back.

‘I’m sorry…’ the tour guide tells us, resplendent in a yellow university campus T-shirt. ‘Do you still want one of these?’

‘Yes,’ Brooke says, ‘I think that’s compensation for the trauma you’ve just put me through,’ she says, grabbing at the tote bag on the table and peering inside, not before taking one for me too and handing it to me.

‘Brooke, no…’ I tell her as we make a very swift departure from the foyer. ‘I’m too old to be carrying a bright yellow tote with #TOTESFUN on it.’

‘You’re not old, and there are free phone chargers in there so suck it up,’ she tells me, hooking an arm into mine.

Today, we’ve ventured over to a university open day in East London. It’s involved a trek to some Instagrammable food van and a shoe shop to look at vintage trainers, so I hope the university thing wasn’t a ruse and education is at the forefront of Brooke’s distractable mind.

‘So what are we looking for?’ I ask, skimming through a brochure in my hand. I scan the room and it’s a mix of parents looking earnest and enthusiastic, and confused kids being dragged around being sold the dream that this could all be theirs.

‘Cute boys and coffee shops with seating, no?’ she tells me.

‘You could have just gone on forums and YouTube for that sort of information,’ I tell her.

She grins at me with big giant teeth. ‘I joke. I’m so funny.’

‘According to you…’

‘There’s a talk in psychology at eleven thirty and I want to check out some accommodation and the people on the year abroad scheme,’ she says, showing me a note on her phone where she has it all planned.

Brooke is our mum, from the desperately curly hair to the way she cheerleads everyone in her life with her unwavering positivity.

In a house of three boys who sometimes deal with life in flatulence jokes and sweatpants, she’s made us presentable to the outside world, ensuring we have some female influence in our lives.

‘Your nose looks so nice since I did that face mask on you, you know?’ she says, putting a hand to my chin and examining my face.

She also spends her weekends preening me in the absence of having other females in the house to share these rituals with.

My pores are far more refined for the experience.

‘I have also been seeing the benefits,’ I say, to which she smiles broadly.

We join a stand where someone is talking about the student union and the many club nights they have here on a weekly basis.

My heart pangs to hear that information; I miss nights like those with their two-pound pints, but it’s also because this is part of my little sister’s future. It’s a mix of fear and pride.

‘Is this what Warwick was like then?’ she asks me.

‘Warwick was lovely and green and a little university campus isolated from the world, this is…’

‘Grim?’ she asks.

‘Quite the opposite. You’re in the thick of it, you can go to a club night and then head for salt beef bagels, five minutes that way. I think a city university is more your jam,’ I tell her.

‘Are you calling me some rowdy city type?’ she asks, laughing.

‘I’m saying that you need somewhere that will keep all of this entertained,’ I say, pointing at her up and down.

And close to us, but I don’t dare say that aloud.

Brooke leaving home would be a big shift in our dynamic.

When Max moved in with Amy, it was only fifteen minutes down the road and he’s still a huge part of our lives, but Brooke going will leave a massive gap.

I wonder how Max will cope. I also worry for my pores.

We wander along a big hall with tables set up for societies, student finance and volunteer schemes and I see her face light up as she takes it all in, wanting to be a part of it.

‘You never told us what happened with that girl from your school, by the way?’ she says, as she saunters along, stuffing flyers and free chocolates in her tote. I thought we were supposed to talk to these university people before we take their freebies. Maybe not.

‘Nothing,’ I say, reluctant to give too much away, knowing that ultimately she’s my sister and some of the detail of my last sexual encounter with Suzie can be kept from her.

‘Really?’ she says, disappointment in her voice.

‘But the way Max tells that story, you cried when you came home from holiday thinking you were never going to see her again. He said you texted him every day for two weeks to see if she’d got in touch.

You must have been happy to see her again.

’ I turn to Brooke and pull a face. ‘What? Max and I have coffee dates in the daytime when you’re at school.

He tells me things. I’m helping him plan his wedding. ’

‘I was not crying. I’m a little scared of flying and had indigestion.’

She raises an eyebrow. ‘Liar. You’re a big old softie. You cried during Inside Out .’

‘That was a sad film,’ I argue.

‘We were in a cinema. You scared the children,’ she tells me, laughing.

She reaches into her free tote to find sweets and rips the packet open, carefully deciding which ones I’m allowed to have. ‘So the French teacher is a no-go then? It was all sounding so promising.’

‘Well, I think all that promise was based on a one-off experience. Now that I’m working with her and seeing her in an everyday light she’s…’

‘Proper minging?’ she says.

‘No.’ She’s still attractive to me physically but the incident from a few weeks ago haunts me.

It makes my penis sad and I didn’t think my penis could have feelings like that.

Why didn’t it work? There was some conversational run-up to it all, the back and forth was flowing, it felt like it was still there, but in the harsh light of the real world, it didn’t seem to work.

Neither of us showed up. I shrug, hoping I look unbothered.

‘Maybe it was just a fling, the spark sizzled out in Mallorca. Mistake to think something like that could have translated over here.’

‘Translated,’ she says, pointing at me. ‘I see what you did there with your words.’ I laugh, watching as she dismisses a person trying to tell her about the board game society. ‘But it seemed like the stars aligned, no?’ asks me.

‘Sometimes I think fate just has a funny sense of humour. It saw me having uninhibited holiday sex with a stranger and thought, hey, wouldn’t it be funny if you bumped into her again?’

Brooke pulls a face. ‘Too much information, brother. I don’t need to think about that. Were you one of those awful Shagaluf types who did it in the club toilets?’

‘What do you take me for?’ I say slightly offended. ‘I had classy sex.’

‘Like with a bow tie?’

‘And a monocle.’ I can’t go into the sex, at least not with my little sister, but it was only respectable in that we did everything in private.

‘So there’s no chance that it might work out?’ she asks me.

I see the hope in her eyes, the dream of a big romantic happy ending. I like how she wants that for me.

‘I think the moment may have passed. So sorry to disappoint your visions of a YA Netflix series…’

She shrugs her shoulders. ‘And is there anyone else interesting in this school?’ she asks me curiously.

The problem with Brooke is that she takes an unhealthy interest in my love life and always has done.

When she was sixteen, she signed me up for My Single Friend and in what felt like some dodgy romcom plot, she spoke to several women, auditioning them to be my wife, writing under my profile that I always wore good shoes.

No old man loafers on this one. That said, she was also the one who suggested I ask out Krystal when really I should have understood our incompatibility from the start and given her a wide berth.

‘You know, Brooke…maybe this is the universe’s way of telling me to take a break from dating. Focus on my career for a bit.’ The look she gives me in reply is not impressed. ‘I can spend more time with Max. We can do boy things like get season tickets for football and…’

‘Eat kebabs every night and fart on each other’s pillows.’

Her sullen reply makes me smile, but it also makes me realise something. ‘Brooke, are you always so intent on setting me up with someone because you’re worried about leaving us without a woman in the house?’

‘No,’ she says sternly, before secretly smiling. Busted.

‘We will cope without your all-knowing, all-graceful female presence. And we will miss you intensely but I promise we will continue to do all the good things you taught us to do.’

She looks pleased that we’ll miss her. It will be strange not to have her around but not to the point where I should be simply replacing her.

‘And I’ll print a really big picture of you and put it on the fridge,’ I tell her.

‘That is a such a good idea. You can look at it every time you’re about to think Peperami and chips is an acceptable dinner,’ she says, hooking her arm into mine and resting a head on my shoulder.

We walk past someone else who hands her a leaflet for free STD testing.

She takes one and snarls, and I don’t quite know how to take that.

‘We never talk about your love life, Miss Shaw,’ I say.

She looks over at me suspiciously, and I feel like an awful legal guardian.

Perhaps I should have monitored this more closely.

I know there have been parties and possible snogs and more with boys, but she’s never brought a boyfriend home, I’ve never had to console her over a broken heart.

‘That is classified information. State secret.’ She leads me out of the hall, through to a university corridor, following a map in her hands closely to avoid the conversation.

‘I ask this out of concern as a brother and an adult but are you a…’

She puts a hand to the air, closing her eyes. ‘No!’

‘I could have said anything there?’

‘Still, no. You’re my brother and this line of questioning is wholly improper.’

‘Alright, Jane Austen. ’

She laughs but it dies down and she looks pensive as she continues walking. ‘Here’s a question for you. Do you sometimes find it hard to get close to people when we’ve been through what we’ve been through?’ she says, out of the blue.

I slow my pace as I digest her words. ‘Oh, Brookie.’ There’s a fiercely confident young lady here, but I guess it masks the turmoil she must feel not having our parents around. I suddenly feel guilty that I haven’t picked up on it.

‘I get worried about loving someone but losing them too. It feels safer sometimes to just…’

‘Be alone?’ I ask, my heart breaking a little bit.

‘I’m never alone though, really. I have my boys.’ I hug her shoulder as she says it, trying to not show her that I’m tearing up.

‘Brooke, you have one of the biggest hearts out of anyone I know, it would be a fucking shame not to share that with someone,’ I tell her.

She stops in her tracks outside the doors to a large auditorium. ‘That was cheeseballs, Char. And also you swore. You’re such a terrible influence. It’s a miracle I turned out so well.’

‘It certainly is,’ I say beaming. ‘Can I go on My Single Friend and find you a man?’

‘Hell to the no, to the never,’ she squeals. ‘If you do that I will go to your new school and tell them about the cock-sock thing.’

‘You wouldn’t…’

‘I will find the footage. I’ll put the stills on mouse mats.’ I push her and someone looks at us bizarrely, wondering whether to step in. She puts an arm around me instead.

‘Hate you,’ she says, pouting with a ridiculous kissy face.

‘Hate you more. Now tell me why you pulled that face when that man gave you that STD flyer.’

‘It’s because I have crabs. Big fat ones…’ she tells me with a serious face.

I scrunch my nose. ‘Lovely.’