Slam by Nick Hornby

Author:Nick Hornby
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 2011-08-18T10:02:31+00:00

Afterwards, the three of us had to go out and eat and talk some more. We went for a curry, and when they’d brought the popadums my mum started up again.

‘Did you find that helpful?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. And that was true, sort of. If there had been any problems with school or Mum and Dad splitting up, that would have been exactly the right sort of place to talk about it all. The trouble was, I didn’t have any problems like that, but I couldn’t blame Consuela for that, and neither could anyone else.

‘What about Alicia?’ said my mum.

‘Who’s Alicia?’ said my dad.

‘This girl Sam was seeing. She was pretty much your first serious girlfriend, I’d say. Isn’t that right?’

‘S’pose.’

‘But you’re not with her now?’ Dad asked.

‘Nah.’

‘Why not?’

‘Dunno. Just …’

‘So there’s nothing in the timing?’ said Mum.

‘What timing?’

‘First you split up with Alicia and then you take off to Hastings.’

‘Nah.’

‘Really?’

‘Well, you know.’

‘Ah! Finally!’ said my dad. And then he had a go at my mum again. ‘See, why didn’t you bring that up in there?’

‘He hasn’t said it was anything to do with anything.’

‘He did! He just said, “Well, you know”! That’s as close as he ever comes to saying anything! In Sam language, what he just said was, That girl really screwed me up and I couldn’t handle it and I cleared off.’

‘Is that what you just said?’ my mum asked. ‘Is that what “Well, you know” means in Sam language?’

‘Yeah, I suppose.’

I didn’t feel like I was lying. At least we were talking about the person who mattered, as opposed to things that didn’t matter, like school and their divorce. So I felt a kind of relief. And she had screwed me up, Alicia, sort of, in a way. And I definitely couldn’t handle it.

‘What good was running off going to do you?’ said my dad. Which was a fair question, really.

‘I didn’t want to live in London any more.’

‘So you went to Hastings for good?’ said my mum.

‘Well. Not really. Cos I came back. But, yeah, I thought I was going for good.’

‘You can’t leave town every time someone dumps you,’ said my dad. ‘You’ve got a lifetime of this stuff. You’d be living in a lot of different towns.’

‘I feel bad because I introduced them,’ said Mum. ‘I didn’t think it would cause all this trouble.’

‘But how did you think it was going to help?’ said Dad. ‘Moving to Hastings?’

‘I knew I wouldn’t see her down there.’

‘Is she local, then?’

‘Where do you think she’s from? New York? When do kids ever go out with someone who isn’t local?’ said Mum.

‘I can’t make head or tail of this,’ said my dad. ‘I’d understand if you’d knocked her up or something. But …’

‘Oh, that’s lovely,’ said Mum. ‘That teaches him responsibility, doesn’t it?’

‘I didn’t say it would be the right thing, did I? I just said I’d understand. Like, that would be some kind of explanation.’

He was right again. It would be some kind of explanation. Maybe the best explanation.

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