“Oh really?” Mum seemed at least mildly curious. “What sorts of things?”
“Soups? Stuff with rice, I think. It’s mostly while Oliver and I are asleep.”
Judy made a sound of nostalgic reverie. “Takes me back. I had a husband once, liked to cook while I was asleep.”
“That’s nice,” I said. “What did he cook?”
“Meth.”
I should have seen that one coming. “So”—I steered the conversation firmly away from hard drugs—“how is everybody?”
“Extremely upset about the murders.” Mum looked suddenly grave.
Okay. They weren’t doing this to me again. Despite the alarming death rate amongst Judy’s husbands, this was not going to be a real thing. I kept my tone very normal. “Murders?”
“Oh yes.” Mum sounded genuinely upset. “First there was that nice Aisha girl. Then the police lady. Then John, then Matt. We’re terrified about who will be next.”
“If anything happens to Andrea,” Judy confided, “frankly, I don’t know what we’ll do.”
I searched my mental list of shit my mum could be talking about. Fortunately, it was a fairly short list. “UK Traitors, season one?”
“I will tell you what.” Mum grew conspiratorial. “They are playing, as they say, a blinder. The Faithfuls do not seem to have a clue what is happening.”
Judy leaned back in her chair. “Next season,” she declared, “you and me, old girl. We’ll take ’em all out.”
“Please don’t,” I said. “One parent on reality TV is bad enough.”
“Did you see your father on the lastCelebrity Bake Off?” asked Mum. “His savoury quiche was a disgrace.”
It was probably a measure of how far Mum and I had both come that Jon Fleming making a tit of himself on national television felt neither good nor bad. It was just a slightly annoying fact of life, like the weather or Ed Sheeran. “BetweenStrictlyand theCelebrity Big Brotherannouncement, I must have missed that one.”
“You know, back in the day, your father used to have muchmore dignity than this. If he wanted to be on television, he’d just whip his dick out at the Grammys.”
I put my head in my hands. “Can we not? I don’t think I’m strong enough to talk about my dad’s dick right now.”
Always sensitive to my moods—even if I did have to express them through the language of dicks—Mum came and sat on the sofa with me. “Is something wrong, mon caneton?”
Being asked was like being pricked with a pin, if instead of a person I was a balloon full of jelly. I flobbered down into a pile of fuck. “Honestly,” I told her, “I’m not doing great.”
“Non?”
“I always knew CRAPPstonbury was going to be a reach. But the one thing it had going for it was that even if the event sucked goat arse, as long as Saint’s band was playing, it would probably be enough that he’d keep funding us.”
Mum gave me supportive mum face. “It was a good plan.”
“It was an okay plan,” I conceded. “But it had a tiny, tiny flaw.”
“Which was?” asked Judy, blunt as ever.
“That Saint’s a piece of shit who has systematically alienated everybody in his life.”
“I know a lot of men like that,” said Mum, with a shrug. “People still work with them.”
“I’m betting that’s because either the music was good or the money was good.” I sighed. “Here, the pitch I was making to two old men with quite busy, quite sorted lives was, ‘Do you want to play mediocre punk rock with someone you hate for free?’”
Judy nodded. “That does sound like a bit of a tough sell.”
“Right?” I nodded with her. “So now all I’ve got is a festival I’ve thrown together with a limited plan, hardly any acts, no marketing, and, if I’m lucky, adequate toilet facilities. The whole thing is going to be a colossal waste of everybody’s time and energy unless it’s either so cool that Saint comes crawling back anyway or sosuccessful we can tell him to shove his money up his arse. Neither of which is going to happen.”
