‘Well it sounds as though you have a direction,’ Charlie told Audrey, completely oblivious to the way Sam kept her eyes on her plate, staying out of the conversation. ‘Sometimes it takes more guts to follow a completely different path than the one everyone expects of you.’
Immediately, Charlie was back in Audrey’s good books. Why couldn’t her mum see something he’d just summed up perfectly with one considered sentence?
‘Audrey and I have talked about it,’ Sam began, most likely on a path to spoiling everything as usual. ‘We’ll see how she goes with her GCSEs first. And at least she’ll have some focus here at a different school.’
‘What was so bad with the last one?’ Charlie wondered.
‘There were a few distractions.’
‘She’s talking about Sid, my best friend,’ Audrey announced to everyone sitting at the table at such close quarters. The round wooden kitchen table was fine for just her and Gran, a little uncomfortable now her mum was living here, and tonight for five of them it was a real squeeze.
‘Audrey,’ Sam warned.
The tension in the room mounted but Audrey had to have her say; she so rarely felt her side was heard. ‘That’s what you mean, isn’t it?’
Charlie was trying to carry on eating, Veronica looked at her plate and even Layla despite her young years picked up on something going on and kept her gaze focused on her dinner.
‘If you must know, yes, I think Sid is a bad influence. He got you suspended from school.’
‘We both got suspended because we both did something we thought was funny. And yes, I know it was stupid, we deserved what we got, but when are you going to see that I’m my own person – I’m not led along by someone else.’ When she noticed Gran beginning to look even more uneasy, she backed off. ‘There were some horrible kids there, bullies, and Sid and I, well, we stuck together.’
‘It’s good to have a friend,’ said Layla with the same positivity she always brought to the house. ‘That’s what my teacher always tells us. She says we need someone our own age to talk to and tell our problems to. Is that what Sid does for you?’
‘It is,’ Audrey smiled. Layla and Charlie between them saw more in Audrey than her own mother did these days. ‘I tell Sid things and he tells me his troubles too. Sid wants to be an actor, but his parents are digging their heels in about him wanting to go on to study performing arts at university.’
‘Sid’s going to university?’ Sam asked.
‘Don’t look so surprised, Mum, he’s clever. He helps me with my maths homework all the time; he’s even agreed to tutor me online while I’m here if I get stuck. But he also has talents for singing and dancing and acting. In his spare time he goes to a stage school to study all three disciplines.’ She was enjoying the gobsmacked look on her mum’s face. Sam had never liked Sid, but she’d never asked about Sid either, and Audrey hadn’t volunteered information to a person so adamant that he was a bad influence on her.
‘He sounds like a lovely lad,’ Veronica said, while Charlie nodded an approval as he sipped more wine, and Sam looked like she didn’t quite know what to do with herself.
Audrey nudged Layla with her elbow, which wasn’t hard given they were practically sandwiched together in the confined space. ‘Mum’s worried I’m going to fall in love with Sid, run off and get married.’ She got a giggle for her jokey efforts. ‘What Mum doesn’t realise is that we are just friends. And besides,’ she added, scooping up another piece of broccoli with her fork, ‘Sid’s gay.’
‘He’s gay?’ a shocked Sam asked. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Why would I need to? Doesn’t make any difference to being his friend.’
‘Well of course not, but—’
‘That’s what I meant by Sid has had some problems,’ she clarified. ‘He inevitably got stick from people at school, he’s had some nasty comments, things scribbled in the school toilets about him and other people, all pretty nasty. When he was going through that, I wasn’t having a very nice time with some of the girls in my year, and we just bonded, I guess.’
‘Then hang onto him,’ said Veronica. ‘You’re friends for life, I’d say.’
Sam twiddled with the stem of her wine glass. ‘You never told me about the girls in your year giving you a hard time.’
Audrey shrugged. ‘Nothing I couldn’t handle.’ Although she’d skived off school twice, forging a letter in her mum’s signature both times, when the girls were at their worst. Once she befriended Sid and they stuck together, it was as though they managed to repel the worst of the trouble and whatever did come their way they tackled together. Audrey knew, even if she went to New Zealand – a decision Sid thought crazy, although he had promised to visit the minute he had a job and enough money – they’d be friends for ever. Some friends passed through your life and left a small mark, others left a dinosaur-sized footprint that meant you’d never forget them. Sid was one of those people.
Charlie topped up his wine and Sam’s. ‘There’s a bully in every school year, that’s what my dad used to say.’
‘Were you picked on, Daddy?’
He put his hand out and
