Summer Daydreams (5 page)
‘But—’
‘I want you to take the bag, Nell. Take it and enjoy it. You deserve it.’
‘It’s lovely, Phil,’ I say. ‘I didn’t expect this.’
‘Can I offer you something else, Nell?’ he says. ‘A piece of advice?’
I shrug.
‘Don’t stay here.’ His voice cracks with emotion. ‘I don’t want to lose you, but you’ve got so much more to offer than serving fish and chips. Look at what you’ve done.
Really
look at it. It’s amazing.’
Now I’m blushing.
‘You’ve got to find a way to use that creativity. Don’t waste your talent. Go to art college or something. I don’t know. But you have to do something with your life, Nell. Promise me that.’
‘OK,’ I say.
But what? What can I do? Phil has said out loud what has, for some time, been silently tiptoeing through my brain. I would love to do something more creative. Be someone special. But how? Where would I even start? I’ve got commitments. To Olly, to Petal. To add to that, we’re flat broke. How can I possibly be selfish and do something for myself?
Tonight is a rare occasion. Olly and I are in bed together – alone. Petal is fast asleep in the next room for once, and even the dog has stayed in his bed.
We only rent this small, two-up, two-down, terraced house, but we’ve done our best to make it home. The landlord is very tolerant of our somewhat eclectic decorating style. All he says when he sees yet more of our handiwork is ‘just make sure it’s all magnolia when you leave.’ Can’t say fairer than that.
On the downside, the house is on a busy main road so all our conversation has a backdrop of thundering traffic. On the upside, it’s just a short walk into the town centre – ten minutes max, which is just as well as neither Olly or I drive. Olly has actually passed his test whereas I haven’t. Sometimes he does a bit of van driving for friends for some extra cash, but we can’t really afford to run a car. We own a slightly battered but much loved Vespa scooter as our sole mode of transport. It’s not exactly practical now that we’ve got Petal – we can’t exactly put a toddler on the back of a scooter – but Olly has owned it since he was nineteen and I think he’d rather saw off one of his arms than part with it. He insists that it was his impressive skills on his scooter that made me fall in love with him. Even now, he and Petal sit and polish it together for hours on end. I snuggle down next to Olly. My shiny new handbag sits on the dressing table and I’m admiring it by the light of the moon, watching the myriad colours as they glimmer.
‘Phil said I should do something more with my life,’ I tell him.
‘Like what?’
‘He said maybe art college.’
Olly makes a ‘hmm’ noise in the dark. Is it a yes ‘hmm’ or a no ‘hmm’? Can’t be sure.
‘Soooo, I took Petal into the college this afternoon,’ I continue. ‘Just to see what they had on offer.’
I feel Olly sit up slightly. ‘You’re seriously thinking about it?’
‘I really don’t know,’ I admit. ‘But it got me wondering. Maybe I shouldn’t spend my life in a chip shop.’
‘But you love it.’
‘I do,’ I agree. ‘But perhaps I could love something else more.’ I can’t even begin to express how proud I am of the makeover at the chippy. It turned out so much better than I’d expected. If I can do something like that in a weekend on a tiny budget, what else could I achieve if I really put my mind to it? I hoped Olly would understand that. ‘Perhaps I should try to achieve something, be a better role model for Petal.’
‘Hmm.’ That noise again.
‘We should both try to do more. Build a better life.’
‘We’re doing OK.’
‘We’re not,’ I remind him. ‘Not really. We can barely make ends meet.’ There’s certainly nothing left over for luxuries. ‘You can’t want to spend the rest of your life in a pizza factory?’
‘I haven’t actually thought about it,’ Olly admits.
‘Well, I have and I want to do something about it. The college have got an art and design foundation course starting in a couple of weeks. I’ve already spoken to the admissions staff and they’ve got a few places left.’
Olly sits bolt upright now and switches on the bedside light.
‘You’re kidding me?’
‘No.’
‘How much is it?’
Now the hard part. Gulp. ‘The best part of two and a half grand including materials and exam fees.’
‘Wow.’
Wow, indeed. Like the price of the handbag, I might as well have said a million pounds. Now it’s out, I rush on. ‘It covers fine art, fashion, textiles, photography and print techniques.’
I confess that I haven’t been able to stop pouring over the brochure since I picked it up.
‘What do you get at the end of it? Can you walk straight into a job?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Two and half grand is a heck of a lot of money for an “I don’t know”.’
That I
do
know.
Olly sighs. ‘We simply don’t have that kind of money, Nell. How would we manage? Would you have to give up your job?’
‘I might still be able to do some shifts. I’m sure Phil would help me out as much as he could. After all it was him that put this idea in my head.’ Or, more accurately, gave it a voice.
‘Wow,’ Olly says again and runs his hands through his hair.
‘You have been giving this a lot of thought.’
‘Yes,’ I admit. ‘I have.’
He puts his arm round me and pulls me close. ‘Perhaps next year,’ he says. ‘We can save up. I can do some extra work.’
I gaze up at him. ‘You mean it?’
‘If it’s what you want to do. There’s no way we can possibly raise the cash in the next few weeks, but we should be able to do it in a year.’
I ignore the nagging little voice in my head that says ‘how?’ We’ve never had enough spare money to be able to save any. What’s going to be different from now on? Instead of questioning it further, I kiss him soundly. He likes the idea of me doing this course and that’s enough for now. ‘I love you.’
‘Mmm,’ he murmurs and leans over me. ‘Just how much do you love me?’
‘Very, very much,’ I say in my best seductive voice as I ease myself beneath him.
My lover plants soft kisses along my throat.
Then our bedroom door bangs open. ‘I can’t sleep,’ Petal announces.
‘Not now, Petalmeister!’ Olly cries.
Unperturbed about interrupting her parents’ futile attempts at romance, our child stomps in.
‘There’s a monster in my wardrobe and he’s eating crisps. Loudly.’
Olly sighs, rolls off me and flops back on the bed while I stifle a giggle. Any passion that had been rising ebbs away.
‘I need to get in bed with you. Now.’ Petal bounces onto the bed and pushes her way between us. When she’s barged us both out of the way, she settles down in the middle. For a small person, she takes up an awful lot of room.
The dog, clearly feeling left out, has broken free from the bounds of the kitchen and pelts up the stairs and leaps onto the bed too.
‘Oh, Dude!’
Petal is never likely to have a baby brother or sister if things carry on this way.
In a weary tone, Olly asks, ‘Think you could cope with studying
and
a job and
this
?’
As I try to ease Petal’s elbow out of my ribs and move my leg so the dog doesn’t give it pins and needles, I think I could. If I wanted it enough.
I work solidly for four hours in Live and Let Fry. The queue is never less than ten deep. I am a lean, mean, chip-dishing-out machine.
Frankly, I’m lucky my eyes have stayed open. Petal has to be the wriggliest child in Christendom. I don’t think either Olly or I got more than a couple of hours of kip. She’s got sharp elbows and sharp knees and uses them to good effect to get more room. Oh, the joys of parenthood. The only good thing is that she doesn’t fart quite so much as the dog.
At the chippy, we close the doors at four – our new regime until Phil can find an extra member of staff to take us right through until six when the evening shift normally starts.
Sitting at one of the newly painted tables, I have a much needed cup of tea and a small helping of chips. Phil comes and sits opposite me with the same.
‘I still can’t believe how fantastic it looks in here,’ he says.
‘Thanks, Nell.’
‘Don’t start that again,’ I tease. ‘You’ll be making me so big-headed I won’t want to work here.’
He stirs a couple of spoonfuls of sugar into his tea, despite the fact that Constance is always nagging him to cut down.
‘Did you think about what I said?’ he asks with an overcasual air. ‘About art college or something?’
‘I did.’ That makes him sit up in surprise. ‘I took myself down to the college and got a brochure on their art courses.’
‘Yeah?’ Phil now looks quite pleased with himself. ‘Anything interesting?’
I take the brochure out of my pocket, open it at the wellthumbed page and push it towards him.
‘I’d like to do an art and design foundation course,’ I confide. ‘I had a word with Olly and he thinks we’d be able to afford it. Not this year, obviously, but maybe next.’
At that, Phil frowns.
‘It’s two and a half grand, Phil. We don’t have that kind of cash lying around.’ In all honesty, we don’t even have two and a half quid lying around. ‘This year’s course starts in two weeks, which is way too soon. But now that I’ve got a plan, we can start saving towards it.’
‘Let me lend you the money.’
‘No.’ I dismiss the suggestion with a wave of my hand. ‘You can’t possibly do that.’
‘I can.’ Phil puts his hand over mine.
‘How would you get the money?’
‘Look at this place,’ he says. ‘The takings are going up every week. I can manage it.
I chew anxiously on my fingernails.
‘Don’t waste another year, Nell. Do it now while you’re fired up. Wait a year and there’ll be all kinds of reasons why you can’t do it. Bite the bullet. Now.’
‘They only had two places left when I spoke to them. They might have already gone.’
Constance and Jenny come and sit down with us. Constance sighs and kicks off her shoes with a grateful sigh. ‘I bet even Ronald bloody McDonald isn’t as busy as this.’
Phil grins. ‘I’m just telling Nell that she should go to art college.’
‘Wow, Nell,’ Jenny says. ‘That’d be cool.’
‘It’s a scary amount of money,’ I point out.
‘But it would get you out of here. No offence, Phil,’ she adds hastily.
Phil rolls his eyes. ‘None taken.’
‘You deserve to do well, girl,’ Constance offers. ‘Look at this place, at what you can do. You can hardly call it a dump, Jen. It’s like a palace.’ My friend pinches one of the boss’s chips. ‘He’s right, love. You’ve got a real talent. Don’t waste it here.’
Now I’m racked with indecision. I’d agreed with Olly that I’d wait, but something inside of me has started to burn and I want to break out now while I have the chance. For the first time in my life, I feel passionate about doing something. It thrills me and it frightens me. Could this be how ambition feels? I suck in a wobbly breath. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Phone the college,’ Phil insists. ‘See if they’ve got a place left. If they have, then it’s fate or whatever that stuff is that you women know all about.’
A frisson of excitement sweeps over me. ‘Shall I?’
‘Go on,’ Phil urges. ‘What have you got to lose?’
‘Just do it. Just do it. Do it, do it, do it!’ Jen sings in the style of The Black Eyed Peas.
Constance gives me a nudge. ‘Go on, Nell. I wish I’d had the chance when I was your age.’
And do you know, that’s what does it. As much as I love Constance, would I want to be in her shoes? Do I still want to be working in a chip shop when I’m coming up to retirement? I’m thirty next year. That’s not getting any younger in anyone’s book and maybe I should be getting a move on.
Mind made up, I take my mobile out of my pocket. Phil reads out the number from the brochure as I punch it in with trembling fingers. They answer within seconds, instead of it going to voicemail or something, and I should take that as a sign too. I speak to the woman on the other end realising that I’m babbling. Moments later I hang up. Phil, Jenny and Constance all stare at me, holding their breath with anticipation.