Β© 2020 Bad Hobbit
'Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear Nadine
Happy birthday to you"
Nadine was smiling broadly as she stepped up to blow out the eighteen candles. I applauded and smiled with the rest. My little sister, eighteen. Wow -- it was hard to believe.
Mum and dad hugged her, and then it was my turn.
"So glad you could make it, Liam. Me miss you." She kissed me. It was surprisingly a little beyond sisterly -- and on the lips. I still hated the fake Jamaican patois, but I tolerated it because it was her birthday.
"I've missed you too, sis. You look beautiful tonight."
"Yeah, she do, don't she?" Shay stepped forward and gave her another hug and, almost to demonstrate ownership, a very big kiss. Eventually Nadine pushed him away.
"Hey, baby, you now have to snog me face off. Least, not here."
"She's a jewel," I said, making eye contact with Shay. "Look after her." There was just a tiny hint of 'and if you don't, I'll beat your sorry arse to a pulp' about my last statement.
"Me will, man. Me will," Shay replied, almost as if trying to placate me. I leaned forward and gave my sister another quick kiss, this time on the cheek, smiled and headed back to get another drink.
My grandpa came over in the Windrush generation. Back in Barbados he'd been a teacher, but his qualifications counted for nothing in wonderful, welcoming Britain. The only work he could get was on the buses, initially as a conductor, and later a driver and finally an inspector. But he put his son, my dad, through grammar school. Dad ended up with some A Levels and he got a good job with a bank. I was the first member of our family to go to University. I couldn't let the family down, so I worked hard and got a 2:1 and a decent job with a pharmaceutical firm. I could say it was my own talent, but it had a lot to do with two generations of men who were prepared to work hard and stick around for their wives and kids. Not all the men in my community did the same.
And now little Nadine was celebrating not only her eighteenth birthday but also an acceptance to read law at Kings. Choosing a London college meant staying at home, but it also meant a lower student debt and being close to Shay. I've always been protective of my kid sister, since she was a toddler and I was barely six, so I try to check out the suitability of her boyfriends. Shay was a bit too flash for my liking. I sincerely hoped that my sister had now found herself a decent-enough guy, but I still felt uneasy.
Mum and dad had really splurged tonight. They'd booked a function room in a smart hotel, and there must have been around a hundred people here, friends of my parents as well as of Nadine. Mum asked if I wanted her to invite Charmaine, but I just said "No thanks, Mum, that's history. Ancient history." She didn't ask any more.
Charmaine and me, we'd been on/off friends through most of secondary school. She was about six months older than me, and I guess it was a few days after my own eighteenth birthday that our relationship really blossomed. I lost my virginity inside Charmaine, but I wasn't her first. She'd already had one or two boyfriends, and -- as I later discovered -- had tried, or been persuaded to try, most things.
Although we'd applied to several of the same Unis, things didn't work out and my best offer and hers were at Sheffield and East Anglia respectively -- quite a way apart. So over that long, last summer she showed me a few things; quite a ride for an eighteen year old. I stayed faithful to her for the first two terms at Sheffield. Seems odd now. Black guys have a reputation for being promiscuous, but I wasn't. We visited each other at weekends whenever we could, and we'd fuck like rabbits. She had a very high sex-drive -- maybe even an overdrive.
But then I discovered, quite by accident, that she had a boyfriend -- possibly boyfriends -- at her Uni, so I'd decided the time for fidelity was up. Over the next few years I got a lot of experience with a mix of black, white and Asian girls. A fit black guy always seemed to be of interest to them, if only to see if the stories were true. Most of these relationships didn't last more than a few weeks -- some only one night -- but I like to think that no girl left me unsatisfied, even if some were a little sore. And they could go away saying that yes, the stories were definitely true.
Having said hello to friends and family, some of whom I hadn't seen for months, I headed for the drinks table. There -- I guess unsurprisingly -- I saw Anna. Mum was a Ward Sister at Guy's, and Anna had started as a student nurse under her. She'd shown real promise, and was now a Sister herself in charge of an ICU. It was a job that suited Anna perfectly. She was always calm in a crisis and, Mum said, a very good nurse.
But there was another side to her. She was one of very few white friends in my mum's group, but no-one seemed to think she was any different from the others. Anna was the one who was always joking, saying outrageous things that only she seemed to get away with. Her skirts were always too short and her tops were always too low, and she seemed to have a string of boyfriends, both white and black. On a girls' night out with my mum's friends, Anna would always be the loudest -- hard to do in a group of very down-to-earth black nurses and midwives -- and usually the one who drank the most.
When she saw me, Anna's face, which had seemed uncharacteristically serious, lit up.
"Liam! Am I glad to see
you
!" She instantly threw her arms around me, hugged me very tightly and kissed me hard and full on the lips. With anyone else I might have been a bit shocked, but this was fairly standard behaviour for Anna.
"Shit, boy, you've
grown
! My God, how tall are you now?"
"Around six-six." I smiled down on her. Anna's only about five-three, although in her heels that's closer to five-eight, and she's trim with it.
"And you've not only headed upwards. What have they been feeding you up there in Manchester? That's not a Boddington's body."
"I've been doing athletics. Decathlon. Running's my best discipline, but you've gotta be fit all over to do ten. I've been offered a trial for Team GB in a couple of months."
Her eyes went wide. Well, they're quite big to start with, but they took on this almost-shocked look; something that didn't look bad on her. "Wow! That's quite an achievement. I bet your mum's proud."
I smiled. "What about you? How are things at the hospital?"
"Oh, you know. Blood and bits everywhere, mopping up puke and piss and shit every day. It's really glamorous."
I smiled. I knew that Anna was a great nurse -- my mum told me, and she never lies. As I said, Anna puts on this very showy exterior, but inside she's as steady as a rock.
"How's the job? Working in Manchester can't make it easy to keep a relationship going with Charmaine."
"Oh, we're not together. Haven't been for a while. She -- she got a job abroad. Spain. But it was hard, at Uni, keeping things going when you're two hundred miles apart. We just -- you know..." I trailed off. I didn't want to explain that Charmaine and I had split years before graduation.