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To Graeme, Fergus and Dot, who put the song in my heart
I’m on the Pyramid Stage at the festival. In eight bars (thirteen and-a-bit seconds) my band is going to smash into our biggest, loudest, most stupidly catchy single yet. The crowd will jump so high, so fast, the field below us will shake. Lights will flash like the sky is on fire. People will spring out of the throng – sea spray crashing against rocks in a storm. I turn to Hol, she’s on bass and coming in first. She starts playing…the wrong notes. DUN DUN DUN DUGGA DUN-DUN! What the hell is that?
ICE, ICE BABY…
Vanilla Ice. Mum singing along. The dribble-dribble of the shower. Experimentally, I raise one eyelid. Pale, cold sunshine pours in like vinegar eye drops. As I suspected: I’m alive. It’s today. Unfortunately I’m still me.
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
1 Their Bloody Valentine (the Morning After)
2 Gladly
3 Operation Awesome
4 The Beast and the Godbrother
5 Squashed Bananas and Stew
6 The Magic Bus (Stop)
7 Bravery, Cunning and Feats of Daring Do
8 Operation Who’s the Daddy?
9 Bus Girl, the Dream Boat and Pants Stain
10 5-4-3-2-1…Blast Off!
11 Wrecked
12 Queen Candy and the Court of the Insane
13 The Broken Biscuits Come Together
14 This Just In
15 Finding the Wow
16 G-Day
17 Inge Rhabarbermarmalade
18 Like No Business I Know
19 R41N N8N
20 Jugs and Melons
21 Found, Still Lost
22 The Wierdest Family Reunion Ever
23 Living Your Dreams, Enjoying Your Nightmares and L-O-V-E
Copyright
About the Publisher
1 Their Bloody Valentine (the Morning After)
Hello. I’m Candy Caine (I know. I know. Didn’t name myself, did I?) Bit of an odd moment to meet, but since my life isn’t about to get any awesomer (and it isn’t, It’s Monday) I suppose it’s as good as any.
Here I am in bed, seven-eighths obscured by my ancient Forever Friends duvet cover, hair exploding from the top of my head like a firework. A brown firework. My eyes are screwed up, as if I can somehow stop the day from starting by not being able to see it. The duvet cover of shame matches the too-short curtains on the window above my bed. One of Mum’s exes put them up when I was seven. That’s nearly half my life ago, people. Dave I think he was called. Or maybe Clive? There was a -VE somewhere in there. Anyway he’s long gone, but his rubbish DIY is still here, in my bedroom, although his teddy-bear curtains are now framed by hundreds of pictures of my favourite bands. I also have a clear view through the gap, out of the window and up into the freezing blue sky. Gulls scream and circle overhead, delighted by the prospect of another day scavenging old chips and bits of kebab off the seafront.
I’m not slagging my home town off. Bishopspool is pretty much your average seaside settlement: small, cold and (I think) beautiful, tucked in beside the unfathomable depths of the sea. We only really ended up here because Mum “stuck a pin in a map” when she left London. So here we are. And it’s…fine.
Reluctantly, I roll myself up to a sitting position before staggering over to the wardrobe, pins still wobbly and sleep-drunk. My extremely un-fetching maroon school uniform is hanging up, all scratchy and angry-looking. The thought of putting it on is about as inviting as swapping clothes with my maths teacher (and I’m including underwear in that).
It’s not just the uniform, though. For me, school is like being forced to play a really complicated contact sport where nobody’s told you the rules and everybody else is on the other team. So you’ll excuse me if I don’t get totally jazzed about it. All the same, I am basically a Good Girl (check my report, it says “bright, tends to daydream”) so after drizzling myself clean under our no-power shower, I slip into my uniform’s polyester embrace, ready for another six-point-five-hours of academic excellence and hearty banter with my classmates. Can’t wait.
If it weren’t for my best mate Holly (and Mum I suppose) I’d probably have stopped going to school by now. She’s the only other sane person in Bishopspool. Holly, I mean, not Mum. Mum’s as mad as a frog in a sock.
Speaking of which, I’m leaving my attic room at the top of our rickety seafront-house, the bottom floor of which is Mum’s business – a beauty salon called The Cutie Parlour (you see what she’s done there?) – when I hear her giggling and, is that…singing?
“Ice ice BABY! Ice ice BABY!!!” Insane laughter (told you). A man’s voice joins in.
Oh no – Ray. That’s put me off my cornflakes already. He must have stayed over last night (after their special Valentine’s Day dinner. Ick).
Ray Hoppings is Mum’s latest boyfriend. Ray is a life coach. What this involves, I couldn’t tell you, although I have a mental image of him following people around the supermarket while they do their weekly shop yelling, “GO FOR IT! WAY TO SELECT CARROTS!” like a football coach at the side of the pitch.
I have actually heard him refer to himself as (DIRECT quote) “Bishopspool’s answer to Paul McKenna”. Paul McKenna! Ray can’t even hypnotise people! I asked him about it once and he said, “I can hypnotise myself” like that was in any way remotely cool. Maybe he’s hypnotised himself not to realise what a total dofus he is.
Opening the kitchen door, I am greeted – even by Our House standards – by an unusual scene. Mum, resplendent in her pink fifties-style salon coat-dress and heels (she’s a dresser-up) is dancing around the kitchen with Ray. In her free hand she’s holding a spatula, on the hob there’s a frying pan, eggs and bacon sizzling away. They’re both still singing Ice Ice Baby. Suddenly Mum shimmies back a few feet and then actually RUNS towards him. Ray holds his arms out. She leaps! And in one Dirty Dancing move, he hoists her into the air before spinning them both round, placing her gently down in front of the oven and kissing her on the cheek.
“Ahem.” Seriously. I can’t think of anything else to say.
“Candy! Morning darling!” says Mum, flustered. “We were just…celebrating! Sit down. I’m making us a proper breakfast.”
Then I notice our big old kitchen table. The usual mess of glossy mags and science-lab salon stuff have been replaced by a smart checked tablecloth, a teapot, knives, forks and actual alive flowers in a vase. Something is clearly up.
“Celebrating what?” I ask, pulling out a chair and easing myself into it.
“It’s a beautiful day!” Ray chirps, setting down a plate of toast. “On a day like this, anything could happen! Dreams could come true! Maybe they already have…” He looks over to Mum, who gazes back gooily. Ick.
“Celebrating what?”
Still humming that appalling Vanilla Ice song, Mum is dishing up slightly burned eggs and bacon with her back to me. She picks up two plates and plonks them down with a flourish on the table. As she lifts her hand away I notice a flash. There – gleaming and glistening on her fourth finger. Left hand. Ice Ice Baby. Oh no.
I feel the shock register on my face before it hits my chest. My eyes widen, my jaw drops open. Mum swoops down into the chair next to me and leans over to give me a huge squeeze of a hug. Beaming her beautiful, perfect-lipstick smile she clasps my hand in hers. Ray is saying something.
“…have decided to take our relationship to the next level…”
They’re getting married.
“…truly make a lifetime commitment…be a family…create something non-traditional but special…”
Oh. My. God.
Ray is still talking but I’m not taking in the words. I pull my hand from Mum’s grasp and drop it into my lap where it lies uselessly by the other one. For a moment I imagine them growing, superhero-style, to ten times their size, lifting Ray up and throwing him out of the kitchen window.
“Candy? Isn’t it wonderful news?”
It’s Mum.
“We’re so excited, darling! I know this will be a big change for you, for all of us, but it’s going to be wonderful! Like Ray says. We can be a family.” She’s holding my hand again, and Ray hers. For a second we look exactly as she wants us to.
“Mum, I’m fifteen! What’s he going to do – adopt me? Walk me to school? Dress up as Santa at Christmas?”
Mum’s smile falters. “I don’t mean that, Candy.” She looks at Ray. “Ray loves me. And you. He wants to be…part of your life. Maybe like a dad, maybe more like a friend. Is that so terrible?”
I can’t believe this. There were always Rays. Rays, Daves, Larrys, lans, Johns, Toms, Harrys and (total) Dicks. They might have stayed for a while but they were always THEM. We were US. And this is Our House. Suddenly I feel like a visitor.
Ray clears his throat.
“Candy, science has demonstrated that human beings only use twenty per cent of their brains. Did you know that?”
I sulk harder, wishing he’d only use twenty per cent of his mouth.
“Before I met your mother, I was using only a fraction of my emotional capacity. But Maggie makes me the best me I can be. In terms of happiness, I am at saturation levels.”
He pauses, allowing us to absorb the full impact of his wisdom. I look straight at my mum. She can’t seriously want to marry this guy.
“I don’t…I don’t know what to say, Mum.”
“Candy darling, Ray loves me and I love him! Don’t you want me to be happy? Don’t you think I deserve that?” She starts breathing a bit hard and I know she is trying to stop herself crying. I look at the clock – eight fifty. Clients in ten minutes. She doesn’t have time to re-do her makeup, so we can’t have an argument now.
“It’s all right, Maggie.” Ray puts his arm around her and leans in, touching his head to hers. Puke. “Candy’s entitled to her feelings.” He turns back to me, every inch the reasonable dad at the family meeting, dealing with the inexplicably moody child. I obviously must have missed the meeting where anybody asked whether I actually wanted to be in this family.
“Well we’d better get going. Start of a new day. Come on love.”
He gestures to Mum, who is still too busy concentrating on not getting upset to actually say anything.
Mum has this thing called “poise”. She developed it years ago, working as a model. It’s the knack of walking into any room as if it’s her surprise birthday party, no matter what kind of day she’s having. Another gift of hers I have not inherited, along with unbreakable nails and consistently obedient hair.
Shaking her shoulders out slightly, Mum adopts her delighted-you-could-make-it expression. She doesn’t even know she’s doing it. She places her twinkling left hand on my shoulder and leans in close.
“Candy. Darling, I love you. Both. Please, please try to be happy for us. If you can’t just yet then give it some time to sink in? It’s a big change, I know.” She stands up and they leave together. Be happy for us. The new us. One without me.
2 Gladly
I don’t remember much about the next ten minutes. All I know is, by nine o’clock that morning I am sitting on the step of the East Bishopspool Pensioners’ Day Centre under an empty blue sky. Believe it or not an OAP club down at the old docks is the only place I can think of going this morning. Yes, I’m that cool. There’s nobody around but I turn the collars of my school blazer up anyway to make it look less like I’m wearing my uniform, in case anyone spots me. Do people still call the police about truanting? They might call the taste police, in which case I’m stuffed. Guilty of possession of aubergine polyester.
Hurry up, Glad.
I’ve never skived off school before. The world looks weird, like it’s the wrong colour or something. I’m freezing and starving. Why couldn’t we have had all this upset after breakfast?
Where is Glad, anyway? She’s always here first. You know what old people are like for timekeeping – fifteen minutes early for everything. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep I look out of my bedroom window at the seafront about 6am and there are old guys out there. Why are they up so early? It’s not like they’ve got work or a train to catch.
The sudden crunch of enormous wheels approaching accompanied by a rapid crescendo of ear-bleedingly loud hip hop pulls me back into the present. Hurtling down the deserted road towards me is a tank-sized 4X4. Its windows are completely blacked out, indistinguishable from its gleaming inky frame. The music inside pulses louder, the throbbing track turned up just loud enough to make it indecipherable.
It’s pulling up. Someone inside kills the music. The black door zzziipps open with that exhalation sound spaceships make in films. I scramble upright. Have I stumbled into the middle of the weirdest drug deal ever? (I’ll meet you at the OAP club at 9.) Somebody is getting out of the car.
The tinted windows and glossy black door make it impossible to see anything apart from their feet.
Plop!
A little sausagey leg with a white plimsoll squashed on to the end lands on the ground, quickly joined by another one – apparently their owner is short enough to have to actually jump out of the car.
Scccrrriick! A familiar walking stick joins the sausage-legs. Little metal coats of arms are screwed into its length, indicating that whoever it is might need a bit of help, but still gets out and about on her travels, thanks very much.
Glad.
“Thanks for the lift, Calum!” she trills, sounding (as always) like a little Scottish cockatiel. The door swings open and a large square white plastic handbag appears, attached to an elderly lady of similar dimensions. “Candy! What on earth are you doing here, lassie? In the name o’ God! You’re freezing! Aren’t you supposed to be at school? Something’s happened – what is it now? An argument with your mother again? You’re as bad as each other, that’s the trouble. That’s it, Calum, just down there, I’ll get the door open…”
Without pausing for or expecting any kind of response, Glad reaches into the cavernous depths of her white bag and produces a huge prison-warden-style bunch of keys. As she immediately selects the right one from the bunch I recognise the driver of the car for the first time. Calum Stainforth. I sort of remember him from school. We all do. I mean, he was one of the wildest pupils in his year. Legend has it that he was eventually expelled for releasing not one but two dogs slap bang into the middle of his English Lit GCSE exam. Nobody knows how he got them in there, but the resultant chaos was so intense that Miss Aitken who was invigilating, had to have a fortnight off and some tablets from the doctor for her nerves. Since then Calum has been trying to make a name for himself as the baddest bad boy MC in Bishopspool. It is somewhat at odds with this precise moment. Calum has removed a fully-stocked tea trolley replete with cups, saucers, teaspoons and two urns from the back of the 4X4. He pushes it along in as manly a fashion as possible, towards the Day Centre. Two saucery-eyes peer out from deep within his hoodie. They meet mine and he stops dead.
“Hey,” I say.
“All right?” he mumbles, not waiting long enough for an answer, then presses on towards the door, with his head bowed even lower than it already was.
“Descaling,” Glad tells me, as if this explains everything, then she turns back to Calum. “Good boy, Calum. I’ll tell your granda what a help you are, he’s so proud of you!” She gives his arm a small pat of approval. Somewhere deep inside his fluorescent hoodie, Calum smiles wonkily at her and nods at me, before hopping into the car, reigniting the music and screaming off into the distance.
“Do you remember Calum from school?” Glad asks.
I squint and nod in a non-committal kind of way that tries to avoid saying, “Yeah, I heard he was a headcase!”
Glad smiles, apparently oblivious. “He used to be a bit of a wildcat but he’s a good boy these days.”
Glad fixes me with a beady glare, which makes her look not unlike Yoda from Star Wars. She taps one of the urns with the top of her walking stick. “Right you. Let’s fire this lot up and you can tell me all about it.”
So this is Glad. We go inside and she settles into her favourite chair in the corner of the optimistically named ‘Sun Room’ in East Bishopspool Pensioners’ Day Centre, clutching a proper cup of tea with saucer (very important).
“Well?” She Yoda-glares at me again over the faint steam and hiss of her cup.
“Mum’s marrying Ray.”
A pause. “I see.”
“What do you mean, you see? It’s a disaster! I feel like I’m in a badly updated fairytale. It’s Cinderella, but instead of a wicked stepmother I get David Brent as a stepdad. And she barely knows the guy! It’ll never work Glad, you know what Mum’s like as well as I do! She’s not…She’s never going to…to settle down. She’s not that kind of person!”
“Well, l would have thought not. But…people change. Maybe she knows herself better than we do, lassie.”
“She’s doesn’t! That’s just it. She’s not herself at all! She’s gone temporarily insane, or he’s hypnotised her, or…or…I can’t do it, Glad. I can’t! It’s only ever been the two of us. I don’t want her bringing a stranger in. A nuclear family! With a dad who pronounces nuclear ‘nuc-u-lur’ and thinks he understands me because he likes Coldplay!”
Glad sips her tea, does a whisky-grimace and chews over my news. She’s fond of a mull, is Glad. So while she’s thinking, let me fill you in on how a Little Old Lady ended up being the only person in the world (apart from Hol) who actually understands me.
You might not have noticed this about my mum, so let me spell it out. She is unusual. By which I mean NOT NORMAL. I mean, I love her and everything, but she’s unreliable. Take my name. Depending on what mood she’s in when you ask her, Mum either claims I’m named after Candy Darling from the Velvet Underground song Walk on the Wild Side or the Jesus and Mary Chain’s Some Candy Talking. Which means I’m either named after a vulnerable transvestite or a song that everybody thinks is about drugs. Brilliant. She forgets things (I don’t think I have ever got a permission slip to school on time). She doesn’t really know how to work our oven, even though we’ve had it since I was two. She makes bad choices (from shoes to boyfriends – neither ever fits – she walks home barefoot a lot to cry about being single). If the job of Me had been left entirely to Mum I would be a mess. OK, more of a mess.
Luckily, for the last thirteen years we have lived next door to Glad, the closest thing I’ve ever had to a nan. (The real Granny Caine lives on the Costa Brava. All we get from her is a card at Christmas with a new photo of her and my grandad and their shiny mahogany tans).
Glad is the opposite to Mum in every way. A piano teacher by trade, she has been as steady as the metronome on her upright ever since I can remember. Always next door. Most days after school she would pick me up and, back at hers, I’d plonk-plink-plonk my way through Twinkle Twinkle Little Star before being rewarded with a strawberry milkshake. That was how I first found music.
Playing gave me a sort of filled-up feeling, heavy and satisfied. And no matter how all-over-the-place things were at home, Glad was there in her front room, sheet music open at something I could dive into. Over the years my fingers got quicker and lighter until I felt they could almost play anything and then, eventually, I could just sort of think the music out of my head and into the keys and it wasn’t anything to do with my body at all.
So I live in the world, but I also live somewhere Glad calls Candyland – a place I slip in and out of all the time. I’m very susceptible to the power of a tune. A song floats by out of a car window and suddenly I’m lost in my imaginings. And my biggest imaginings of all are that I will one day make music of my own. The songs in my head will be out in the world.
How could Glad not be my mate, when she introduced me to all that? Anyway she’s finished thinking and is about to deliver her verdict. “Sabotage is out I suppose?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You heard me, lassie. If you’re THAT unhappy maybe you could sabotage the wedding?”
“What, in the ‘if any persons here present can think of any lawful impediment blah blah speak now or forever hold your peace’ bit I get up and say something? Like what? ‘He’s an idiot, Your Holiness! He calls having a chat dialoguing! His favourite film is Ghost.’ Glad. Seriously, what do you mean by these dark mutterings? I know you’re part-witch but can you let a mere mortal in on the secret?”
She cracks a smile – I can always get one out of her, even when she’s trying to be a grown-up. “I’m saying, Candy, I think your mother deserves some happiness. If it’s with Ray then so be it. He’s not of her usual stamp, I’ll grant you, but do what you’ve always done…And?”
“…and you’ll get what you’ve always got. I know.” Glad has been drumming this particular pearl of wisdom into me since I was as tall as her piano stool.
“I don’t believe you when you say Ray is wrong for your mum, Candy. He’s been a good influence on her, admit it.” She sips her tea, observing me over the top of the cup.
I try to think about the last time Mum did anything preposterous. “She made me miss our school trip, to go on the road with a Kiss tribute band!” I huff, remembering the mortifying week I spent touring the seaside resorts of Britain with Smooch.
Glad makes a face. “That was down to that awful Brian laddie.”
Oh yeah. Brian. Mum’s boyfriend before Ray. He was Smooch’s drummer. Mum was desperate for me to sample “the magic of life on the road”. The reality of watching her boyfriend dress up as a cat and play metal every night almost put me off music for life. Almost. “What about the Guinea Pig thing?” I ask, in the style of a lawyer making a spirited case for the prosecution.
A few weeks ago Mum bought twenty-five of the things from a pet-shop because “they looked sad”.
Glad smiles, casting a glance at the cage in the corner where her own two dozy furballs (Winston and Adolf) are snoozing contentedly. “He was away that weekend – remember?”
She’s right, dammit! He was on a course called Becoming Your Own Biggest Fan.
Glad smiles kindly. “I think what you’re finding hardest about all this is what it means about who you are. You’re just starting to work out who you want to be and now you’re going to belong to somebody you never asked for. It’s tough, but can I let you in on a secret?”
Like I have a choice. I do an if-you-must eyebrow at her.
“None of us get to pick. That’s how family works. And there are much, much worse fathers to have than Ray.”
“He’s not my father!”
“He’s the closest thing you’ve got. And he wants the job. He’s not what you’d call ‘cool’ but so what? Dads aren’t cool. If he’s not so terrible a choice that you’d sabotage the wedding maybe you just need to accept him.”