Strong Female Character by Fern Brady

Author:Fern Brady [Brady, Fern]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Octopus
Published: 2023-02-14T13:45:21+00:00

Occasionally he’d take a break from these topics to put on some weird timelapse arthouse film called Koyaanisqatsi and bellow along: ‘KOYAANISQATSI!’

‘Can we watch something else? I still have Callie’s Legally Blonde DVD?’

‘KOYAANISQATSI!’

I was always the audience for him and his opinions. I once watched him dance shirtless in front of a mirror in his flat while The Rite of Spring blasted on the record player. I had been waiting for us to go out before inevitably returning to my flat. He was then back onto Caravaggio again.

‘Caravaggio killed a man, you know,’ he said, out of breath. He danced faster as the music sped up. ‘And he got away with it.’ He danced faster and faster, doing weird jerky puppet movements, staring at himself in the mirror.

I liked how eccentric he was. He felt like my twin, albeit the more popular, confident one. Adam, my ex-boyfriend in high school, had been eccentric but unsure of himself. John made big sweeping statements all the time and was devastatingly funny with an offbeat sense of humour. The girls in the student flat all loved to be around him. Everyone loved him. Everyone except Lauren.

I was laughing at something she’d texted me one day as I sat beside him on the couch.

‘She’s not as funny as you think, you know.’ He said it casually, eyes not moving away from the TV, but to say Lauren wasn’t funny was such sacrilege the barb caught me.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You make out she’s hilarious, but she’s not that funny.’

I woke up at John’s parents’ house on Boxing Day. We’d only been seeing each other a couple of months. I felt shy at first as my family would never in a million years let me have someone I wasn’t married to stay over, but they were Protestants so my presence at breakfast in the morning was as mundane as going to the toilet. They invited me to stay all day and have dinner with them. His sister was there with her partner and their baby. They had a huge Rottweiler that, like all owners of huge Rottweilers do, they insisted was friendly.

As I walked up their driveway his dad booted a football towards me. As with all sports, I froze and stood motionless watching it dopily. The ball hit me in the vag.

‘Oof! Right in the fanny!’ The dad, John and his brother all laughed to each other. Protestants were nuts, man. Everyone was so casual with each other.

John turned to me: ‘We play a family game every Boxing Day where we take turns going through the alphabet and saying a swear word for each letter.’

I nodded, grateful for the heads-up.

Throughout dinner and drinks and Christmas telly, I remained deep in thought about how I could win the swearing game and everyone’s hearts and minds. Finally, the game started and I watched them go round the assembled siblings and their respective partners.

His mother said, ‘Arsehole.’

Grinning, his dad said, ‘Bastard.’

I watched the baby play with the Rottweiler.

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