Chapter 26

Andrew did not sleep well that night. He was restless as he thought about the night before and the conversation with Suzanne. He didn’t even work out in the morning when he finally got up. It was a day for silence, which was okay as it was Remembrance Sunday. The school had a war memorial for former pupils and staff members who had died during both the First and Second World Wars. The CCF paraded at the memorial and had their own minute of silence at 11.00. As a way of putting the drama of the night before into perspective it worked. When Andrew got to the warehouse, he and Nikki worked away quietly for the whole three hour shift. They had switched from water to a cup of tea as the warehouse turned colder as winter approached. It was only at the end as they were getting their jackets that she asked if he was alright. Andrew didn’t fob her off and told her that he was having trouble dealing with dating. He was off to talk to Leslie about it and was sure he would have some updates next week. Andrew told her he would see her on Wednesday afternoon for his usual weekly visit. Leslie took one look at his miserable sorry arse when he arrived at the Campbells and she burst into laughter and grabbed her coat.

“Come on, let’s go for a walk. You look like you need to talk.”

She then turned back to the house to tell her mother to cover their dinners as they were off for what was likely a long walk. Andrew went through the week. The conversations on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday, he went through them all. He talked about the quick kiss in front of her parents and then the long rollercoaster conversation at the restaurant. He finished with the kiss at the bus stop the night before. Leslie at least didn’t laugh but he could tell that it was touch and go in places. They had walked for 25 minutes before he was finally finished. They turned round and headed back to her house as Leslie start to respond.

“We all forget how new this is to you. Your goals are also getting in the way as well. Your goals are all long term in nature. Your life has been in flux for so long and yet it is barely 10 months since you were released from hospital. You are also caught in the stage of relationships where there is nothing physical. It is not like you can head out, pick someone up and have a one night stand. You both get to have sex and you say goodbye the next morning. Everyone gets what they want. You are too earnest and are still too new to the whole thing of having friends. We talked about it all those months ago with Faith. You need to separate sex and love. Yes, I know that you are not having sex but don’t be surprised to face that issue much sooner than you think.

“I think we should talk a couple of times during the week as well as on Sundays. You are navigating a minefield and you have no idea what you are doing. Think about this Andrew. All goes back to that talk we had with Faith. Puberty and the changes to a woman’s body. Men are biologically imprinted to respond to it. Tits and arse Andrew. Milk for the baby and wide hips for a safer childbirth. 100,000 years of evolution. There is no point in trying to fight it. Then there are the changes to a man’s body. Hairier, broad shoulders, muscle mass, taller. That guy is going to beat the other guys and protect his mate and is going to go out and wrestle a woolly Mammoth or some such thing to bring food to the table. Look at you, getting taller, broad shoulders, building muscle mass. Again, women can’t fight 100,000 years of genetic coding. Then you are kind, nice, clever i.e. you can provide even if all you do is go to the supermarket. You are a friend, you support them. And then to fucking cap it all off you turn down a 14 year old’s wet dream of lots of dates, lots of snogging and no commitments because that is not what friends do.

“You are going to have to hire a bodyguard!”

The response had got progressively louder until it was verging on a rant. Leslie took a couple of deep breaths and settled down.

“I don’t know where you go from here. Part of your issue is that the three or four obvious women to date are all in your class or you are tutoring them. I see your point about losing friends, even if they say all the right things at the moment. You saw it with Suzanne’s kiss at the end of the night. That was not a ‘thank you for a nice night Andrew see you on Monday’ kiss. It was also not a ‘take me now’ kiss. But it sure was a lot closer to the later than the former.

“I think you have to put your year out of bounds. Suzanne, Paula, Kate and Alessandra would go out with you in a heartbeat, or it seems like it. Several of the rest of the year would probably as well. You can’t date your four friends in case it blows up and you can’t date the rest of your year because it will just be unkind to your friends. The best I can come up with is that you go out as a threesome so that you all chaperone each other. Then you can practice dating but there are three people so it won’t get out of control. That seems a little Mormon but it is the best I can think of.”

“Mormon?” Andrew asked.

“Oh, they used to be allowed to have multiple wives.”

He looked horrified.

“Hell, I am having trouble dealing with one woman. Multiple, are they insane?”

Leslie laughed in a knowing manner.

“You never know Andrew. It might be fun.”

She then wiggled her eyebrows in a blatant attempt to get him to blush. Andrew obliged instantly.

“Come on cheer up. All we have to do is find you some people to date who are not already your friends. There are millions of women out there Andrew. We have only put ten off limits.”

They both laughed and walked back to her house. She gave her parents a highly entertaining and salacious account of his evening. She told her dad that Andrew was hiding out here because Suzanne’s dad was hunting for him with a shotgun. The very next thing she said to her mum was that he was hiding out here because Suzanne was looking for him all dressed in white. It felt good to release the tension with the laughter, Andrew laughed so hard there were tears in his eyes. On the ride home he asked Leslie.

“If you don’t have plans would you like to go out next weekend?”

She looked guilty.

“I am sorry Andrew but I have a date on Saturday night.”

“Don’t be sorry. I am happy for you. You deserve to have some fun. Is it still the same guy, Matt?”

This wasn’t faked emotion. Andrew was happy for her. She needed to hang out with someone other than a 14 year old.

“Yes, it is still Matt. We are going to a house party in Kirkcaldy. One of his mates moved there and it is a housewarming party.”

She seemed excited.

“Have fun. Do everything I wouldn’t do.”

He laughed at the thought. She laughed with him.

Although Andrew was sad about not trying to date any of his friends or any of the women in his year, even although he knew it was the right decision, by the end of Monday he was completely convinced it was the right thing to do. Fucking hell teenage boys are a pointless bunch of twats. It was a day without end of stupidity. From form room through every crossover walk to whispers in every class. Andrew and Suzanne had been spotted on Saturday night at the movies so the rumoured date was now a confirmed fact. From then on it was every teenage boy innuendo that could be conjured up. By lunchtime there was murder in his heart and by the end of the school day he seriously thought about not going to the library. Suzanne’s day seemed to have followed a similar pattern to his, the same teenage boy shit. She looked shaken when she sat down next to him.

“You look like you have had a day similar to mine. Let me guess. We kissed, I groped you and/or you groped me, I felt you up, I fucked you, I dumped you or you dumped me. Did I miss any?”

She looked a little stunned at this blunt litany of their antics but it did make her laugh.

“You forgot the blowjob.”

They both blushed.

“Before we continue to bitch about our year mates, I would like to tell you that I had a great time on Saturday. I know we were all over the place but you were great. That dress. Wow. I dropped off a letter with the headmaster with a request that it is considered for the new girl’s uniform. Holy moly.”

He got a lovely smile and an adorable blush. Andrew wished that he could just keep chatting away to her and enjoy her company but they needed to deal with the current reality.

“So sorry to drag this back to today but the reaction was bonkers. I live in my own little bubble sometimes, and I definitely don’t keep up with all the gossip. I have no idea but do you know if there have been any other couples in our year yet?”

Andrew neither knew nor cared.

“Maggie Olds from my class has gone out with a fifth year but nobody is giving her shit because he looks like a thug and nobody wants to get a smack. You on the other hand are this nerd in 3A who is always in the library. Therefore I was fair game.”

“Yeah. Everyone is getting out of their system on us. Once the third or fourth couple comes around nobody is going to give a fuck.”

Andrew was pissed but there is nothing he could do. As usual, at least for him, studying soothed his nerves and the two hours went by even quicker than usual. As they walked to the gates just after 5pm he asked if they could spare 20 minutes to talk to him. They both could although they, rightly, looked suspicious. They found a small café and sat down with three cups of hot tea. Andrew explained what he and Leslie had discussed. They were not happy even although they understood the logic, Suzanne seemed particularly upset. Andrew then talked about more than two of them going out as friends. Going to a movie, whatever else they wanted to do on a Saturday night. Just there would always be at least three of them to keep things under control. Looking back he should have picked up on the look that Paula and Suzanne shared between them. They cheered up at this.

Andrew headed home and spent the night thinking about computing. How to take this to the next stage? The lack of formal courses, training or exams was holding him back. He always reverted to studying, this is how problems were solved. His life was busy and he seemed to spend a lot of time dealing with drama. Most of it of his own creating admittedly but still he wished there was less drama in his life. What he hadn’t yet grasped was to remind himself of this before he did something stupid rather than bemoaning the fact afterwards. Mind you the drama that week was Nikki’s fault not his.

Before that Andrew had his first call with Leslie on Tuesday night. They chatted away about the girls in his year and how Suzanne and Paula had taken the news. He also talked about the idiotic boy stuff he had dealt with over the previous two days. She had laughed at that.

“Teenage boys can be such twats. Don’t worry, someone else will become the focus of attention soon and you will be yesterday’s news.”

This is where he and Suzanne got to themselves and so he moved on. They ended up talking about computing and Andrew was complaining about the lack of structured courses that he could take to start to improve his skills.

“Andrew, I have been doing some digging around. Asking a few people here at the college about this and I think there might be a solution.”

She had baited the hook well.

“Don’t be doing all dramatic pauses on me Leslie Campbell, out with it”

She laughed at his impatience and held the pause just long enough for “Leslie!”

“Alright I’ll stop teasing. Do you have your socks on though Andrew as I am about to blow them off?”

Again the dramatic pause but this time he outwaited her.

“You’re no fun!” she mock pouted. “I think that you should register for the Open University Computing and IT course.”

University? Andrew was 14. How was this going to work?

The Open University was, and is, a distance learning institution. They had a small campus in Milton Keynes, a new town an hour north of London, but nearly all their students studied at home. They broadcast some course material late at night on the television. That is how Andrew knew about them at all. At the end of regular programming there would be a couple of hours of lectures on tape. He knew very little beyond that and if not for occasionally seeing something on the TV he doubted he would have known even that.

“You are too clever not have a plan. I will state the bleeding obvious and mention that I am 14 years old. And still at school. What are you up to?”