“Besides, Tom wasn’t great at parties anyway!” Darcy reminded me. “He’d always just pull you into a corner and talk to you about his job. You’ll have more fun without him here.”
“But at least I had an ally,” I whispered as she pulled me across the room. “Plus, he always made me feel safe from him.” We walked past Sambo, who looked at me with disdain. I shivered the way that I used to when Roy looked at me that way.
There was more alcohol than I’d ever seen at this party, and while making sure that I was drowning any sorrow that I might currently or ever have had, Darcy and Fran, once Darcy had filled her in on the break, thought it would be fun to rally some of their school friends around me in order to create the best OkCupid profile a team of six could construct now that I was temporarily without a partner.
“I don’t want to do this,” I said as Fran took my phone from me.
“But it’ll be fun!” she said. I was too tipsy to protest. “Okay, so, I think that you should accentuate your features, hon? Like your voluptuous figure?” Fran pushed me against a white wall. “And maybe, like, pout your lips? God, babe, you’re so lucky your lips are just like that.” She stared at my mouth in wonder.
I stood against the wall and folded my arms awkwardly. “I’m not really good at the pouty stuff,” I said. “How about I just smile?”
“Okay, well, why don’t you just give, like, a sass face?” another girl suggested.
“Mmm, I don’t think so. I reckon I’ll just look pissed off, and guys don’t seem to go for that angry black girl thing.”
The girls carried on pulling me this way and that, when a boy who’d been pointed out to me earlier as James’s only single colleague, came over and told me that it wasn’t necessary. He introduced himself as Rich and handed me a glass of something that, after drinking it in three hungry gulps, I deduced was a lot of spirit and a little bit of mixer.
Quite a bold thing to say, and he was tall, which made me feel petite, I thought woozily. Something that doesn’t happen very often, given that I am the average height for a woman in the United Kingdom but, unlike all of my friends, a size fourteen.
“Why isn’t it necessary?” I asked, looking up and blinking about a million times in an attempt to be doe-eyed, because I’d read that boys like that sort of thing in a teen-girl magazine when I was about fifteen.
“Why do you need to go on a dating app when I’m here?” he said, smiling. “Do you like playing games? I don’t.” I took a swig of wine that finished me off. I was drunker than I’d ever been.
“Sorry, what did you say?” I asked him, my eyes blurring.
? ? ?
“What did you say?” I asked Tom’s uncle, trying very hard to register what had just come out of his mouth. I could feel my face getting hot.
“You’re not going to take that seriously, are you?” Stephen barked his reply. “Come on, don’t be so politically correct, you silly girl.” He twirled the Clue cards around in his hand before smacking them down on the table. “We’re having fun!”
I looked at Tom, who avoided my gaze and looked at his brother awkwardly. “Tom?” I asked him sharply. “Don’t look at Adam, look at me!”
“Queenie, leave it,” Tom finally said quietly.
“Leave it?” I asked, looking around the room, waiting for anyone to defend me. “Did you hear what your uncle just said?”
“He was joking, Queenie, don’t get worked up!” Adam scoffed. “And the character is actually black, so—”
“Am I in some alternative universe?” I asked, standing up. “Your uncle just said, ‘Was it the nigger in the pantry?’ and you’ve got nothing to say?” I pleaded with Tom. “I’ll go, if you’re going to pretend I’m not here.”
I charged out of the living room and fell straight into Viv, who was leaving the kitchen with her birthday cake, a beautifully decorated thing that she’d explained to me earlier that day had been made by her ninety-five-year-old great-aunt “despite the unyielding arthritis.” We both watched it slip out of her hands and land on the floor at our feet with a loud splat, the iced “60” still intact.
“Look what you’ve done!” Tom said, appearing behind me.
“What’s going on?” Viv asked, confused, agitated. She looked at Tom and me, then to the mess on the floor.
“Ask your son!” I said, stepping over the cake and walking toward the front door.
“Don’t fucking walk out,” Tom groaned. “Why have you always got to take this stuff so seriously?”
I looked at Tom, saying nothing as I pulled my sneakers on.
“The silent treatment has started already?” Tom put his hands to his temples. “Fucking hell, Queenie.”
I stepped out the door and slammed it behind me, then walked down the front path and onto the silent suburban street. I looked behind to see if Tom had followed me, but the front door stayed closed. I carried on walking until I eventually got to a smelly bus shelter and perched cautiously on the bench inside, making sure not to sit on the wet patch at one end or the brown patch at the other. I didn’t have my phone and I’d given up smoking ages ago, so had no way to occupy my hands. I was forced to sit with my own thoughts until I calmed down. Why would Tom never stand up for me? What would happen in ten years’ time when his uncle was saying that word, making racist jokes to our children? Would he defend them, or would they have to grow up being attacked by their own family? I wished there was some sort of interracial dating handbook to consult when these things happened.
I stayed sitting in the shelter until it got dark and I got frightened. I’m not used to this provincial silence, I need sirens and noise from passing cars to make me feel safe. “I should have handled it better,” I ended up telling myself. “His uncle is an idiot and a bigot, but he didn’t mean it,” I repeated over and over. Maybe it was better for me to suffer these things in silence. Buses came and went, passengers and passersby alike looking at me more cautiously the closer to nighttime it got. I stood up to walk back to the house, the late autumn air making me shiver gently.
“Queenie.” I peered into the darkness. Tom.
“This is where you are. It smells awful in here,” he said, before taking a deep breath. “Sorry I got angry earlier on.” I kept my mouth shut. “But you can’t keep doing this, Queenie,” he said, disappointed. “I know that in your family everyone is loud and you solve problems by shouting about them, but my family is different!” He looked at me as if searching for an apology. “This keeps happening, and I don’t know what to do, I can’t protect you when it’s my family you think you need protecting from.” Tom ran his hands through his hair dramatically, and I rolled my eyes. “You know what my uncle is like, he’s from a generation where they said the n-word quite a lot.” I looked at him and blinked slowly. By now he knew that this meant: “If you think I feel sorry for you, you’re wrong.” “Not that I’m excusing it,” he said quickly, “but come on, you can’t ruin my mum’s birthday because of it.”
Silence. “Here you go,” he conceded eventually, handing me my coat and rucksack. “All your stuff is in there.”
“Thanks.” I felt myself soften at this act of kindness. Plus, easy to forgive someone bringing you a coat when you’re freezing cold. “You didn’t need to do that,” I said quietly, reaching out for my things. I put my coat on and moved into Tom.
“No,” he said, stepping back.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Let’s forget it. I needed a bit of space, but I’ve calmed down now. I should apologize to your mum. I feel so bad, that cake was so nice, and the sentimental valu—”
“You should go home,” Tom said firmly, cutting me off mid-ramble. “You ruined my mum’s birthday, Queenie. She’s been wiping bits of cream off the walls since you slammed out. I don’t want any more drama.”
I felt the anger that had dissipated in the bus shelter rise again. “Me? Drama? Me?” I spluttered.