‘Bond,’ he said, ‘Brendan Bond, in that tuxedo.’
‘What accent is that you’re doing?’ I said.
‘Russian?’ Mum asked.
‘Scottish!’ Dad said. ‘Connery – the best Bond – after Brendan, of course.’
I wasn’t sure where this humour was coming from, Dad wasn’t usually the type to be jokey. Mum and me were sharing a look as if we weren’t sure whether to laugh or check his temperature.
‘OK,’ I said slowly, ‘you better not be doing any silly accents or jokes in the car when we pick Jennifer up on Saturday.’
‘Who, me?’ he said in a kind of English accent. ‘Cor blimey, who’d go and accuse me of a thing like that? Heavens to Betsy, I’m right ole offended, I am.’
‘Mum, can you drive us?’
‘Ah, now, Brendan,’ Dad said, ‘I’ll drive you. I’ll be on my best behaviour, I’ll even put the chauffeur hat on and everything.’
‘Mum?’ I said pleadingly.
‘Can’t. Working,’ she said with an exaggerated grimace.
‘I’ll phone a taxi,’ I said, puffing out my cheeks.
‘No, Brendan,’ Mum said, ‘your father will be on his best behaviour like he said, no chauffeur hat and no silly voices.’
Dad did a mime of zipping his mouth up and steering a wheel.
‘Does he have whiskey in his tea or something?’ I asked. They laughed and I half did too; a rare thing for us to do together.
I went back up to my room and kicked off my shoes. I was taking the jacket off when I saw the white envelope that hadbeen in the bottom of the suit bag. I lifted it but it felt like it had something more than a receipt in it. Inside was another bowtie. It looked like another black one until I took it out; it had a red tone to it when tilted under the light. The red was threaded through the black material, very subtle, like tiny blood vessels. There was a rectangle of McMillan’s headed notepaper inside the envelope with a handwritten message on it:
In case you change your mind and want something a little more than ‘just the black’.
I took off the black one, clipped on the new one, put the jacket back on and walked over to the mirror to see how it all looked.
Starting at my feet I scanned up my body and stopped at the new bowtie dappled with pulses of red as if it were emitting some sort of electricity just below my Adam’s apple, which was trampolining up and down, on and off the knot of the tie; bouncing, until I swallowed hard to make it stop.
With everything still, I walked over to my bed to put my school shoes back on and returned to the mirror. I couldn’t say how, but it looked better,Idid; we fitted each other.
32
The excitement spreading through school as the formal drew closer was especially strong in the canteen; Thursday’s lunchtime Science revision had been cancelled because Mrs Robbins was off sick, so I went to find Jennifer. Margaret had been with her and made it clear she wasn’t too happy about me stealing her friend away from her once again.
‘Sure you can fit me into your schedule?’ Jennifer said, which wasn’t the first time she’d said this. It used to sound like a joke but it somehow didn’t.
I picked a table for us and took out my lunch box while Jennifer got her food from the hatch, standing behind Leanne Newell and her friends in the queue.
‘I just overheard Leanne,’ Jennifer said, sitting down opposite me with a plate of vegetable rice. ‘Apparently she’s wearing a dress by Christian Dior to the formal.’
‘Who’s that?’ I asked.
‘Oh, it’s some ridiculously expensive designer brand, but her mum’s in fashion so probably got it for free,’ she said.
‘Did you get yours sorted?’
‘Yes, we’re still going fancy dress, right? Because theBeetlejuicecostume I’m wearing is going to knock your socks off; I’m going for the green hair and everything.’
‘I love that film! I haven’t seen it in ages!’
