The World Out There - 42. Forty-Two

Liam sat on the sofa, in the Common Room with his book on his lap. Like this, he could just look down at his book, quietly read it, and no one would notice him doing so. It was a Tuesday evening, so there was little chance of anything on the television there that would interest him. He glanced down at his book and began to read the first paragraph on the left-hand page.

“It’s starting now,” Ed said, as his elbow nudged Liam in his side.

“What is?” Liam looked up from his book and at the television screen in front of them.

“Celebrity Love on the Beach. I told you about it when we had dinner.”

Ed had chattered away about some new reality TV show all through their dinner. Liam listened to him as Ed bubbled away about how crap and bad it sounded, and, therefore, he had to watch it tonight. But where had Ed heard about it? It wasn’t that they were kept well-informed on pop culture. Maybe one of the nurses had told him? Liam had nodded his agreement as they ate.

The Common Room’s television was displaying the channel’s ident with a voice announcing, “Now we have our new show where twelve celebrities are in search for love. It’s Celebrity Love on the Beach!”

The screen was filling with fast moving images and loud upbeat dance music, and images of beaches, tanned flesh, brightly coloured drinks, palm trees all appearing fast. It all ended with the screen being filled by Celebrity Love on the Beach in bright white text. This gave way to a long shot of a low Spanish villa - at least the building looked like one of them to Liam with its white walls, brown-tiled roofs and boxy construction, as if several, different sized oblong boxes had been pushed together to form a building. Around the villa, the ground seemed dry and pale, baked so by the hot sun, while the few trees and bushes were equally as dry looking, no more than brown sticks with dark and dried leaves. Yet, as the camera panned around it, there was a sparkling blue swimming pool at the back of the villa, its bright blue laying as a contrast to the dry countryside around it.

As the camera panned over this villa, a sharp Geordie-accented voice told them, “Here we are at the Celebrity Love on the Beach villa which houses twelve terminally single celebrities who are gagging for a bit of romance. They’ll stay at this villa for the next three weeks trying to find their perfect match, or someone who won’t kick them into the pool for their morning-after bad breath. If they don’t succeed, they’ll be sent back to rain-soaked, Blighty. Well, it’s summer back home, so, of course, it’s raining. The winning couple will receive a share of £20,000 and all the daytime chat show appearances they can handle. Who says you can’t buy love, or a boost in the ratings. Let’s meet our desperate celebrities. First is Paige Brooks, an online influencer and former wife of footballer, Albie Meadows, before she caught him playing away once too often.”

The screen changed to a dark-haired woman in a one-piece swimsuit, sitting in front of the bright blue pool.

“I’m Paige and, like any book, you shouldn’t judge me by my cover.”

Liam’s eyes dropped down to his closed book, in his lap. He could slowly open it again and start to quietly read it. This television program looked as boring as shit. Why did Ed want to watch it?

Slowly he reopened his book, making sure he didn’t make any fast movements. Ed wanted him to watch this program and he didn’t want to disappoint Ed. As he did so, he occasionally glanced up at the television screen when he heard a man’s name announced. They were mostly shirtless hunks, in baggy and loud shorts, who told the camera how they would be a great boyfriend.

He had his book open again and was reading the next paragraph on the page, when a name was announced on the television that snatched at his attention.

“Our next desperate single is Emma Duffield. She’s a newspaper columnist, TV talking head, and general rent-a-gob. She’s got more opinions than your embarrassing aunt at Christmas,” the Geordie announcer’s voice told them.

The television’s screen showed Liam’s mother. Her hair was now short and blonde, a style that was still swept back from her face, while her skin was deeply tanned, an almost brown/orange colour. She was wearing a white bikini, which only highlighted the colour of her skin, though it seemed to be made from tiny pieces of fabric held together with thin ties. Two triangles of white fabric covered her breasts, only covering the ends of her breasts and hiding her nipples, nothing else, while a small triangle of fabric covered her groin. She was sitting on a bench on another side of the blue swimming pool.

Liam had never seen so much of his mother’s body. He remembered her wearing tight and revelling clothing, especially when she went on one of her frequent nights out, but he had never seen so much of her body before. He didn’t want to look - she was his mother, but he also had not seen her in so long, even on the other side of the television. Here was his mother! Here was the woman who had been gone from his life for so long. But she was wearing should a small bikini. He could see the strange, faint scars along each side of her stomach, strange little ripples in her skin, as if the skin had been pulled apart in narrow and uneven lines, showing off paler new skin between the edges of these ripples. He didn’t remember her having these scars, but he had never seen her with so few clothes on before.

“I’m known for my opinions,” his mother said straight into the camera, her voice exactly the same as he remembered it. “But I know what the man and woman on the street are saying. I know what really matters and I know a fake when I meet one. I’ll call out any BS when I hear it, so expect some trouble from me with this bunch of fakes.”

Liam closed his book, his eyes remaining on the television screen.

He watched the whole program. It wasn’t the most exciting of programs: most of the “celebrities” just seemed to wonder about the bright blue swimming pool, trying to make awkward conversation with each other. They were called celebrities, but he barely recognised any of them. They were mostly all young and attractive people, women with thin bodies and men with muscular and sculpted physiques. The only two older people there were his mother and a middle-aged man who was said to be an ex-MP. This man’s body wasn’t as developed as the other men there - he had a small belly that hung over the waistband of his shorts which he obviously sucked in when he was shirtless, which wasn’t often.

There was a young black man, an actor called Sid, who caught Liam’s attention. Sid had a body as sculpted as the other men there, but he had a much more relaxed attitude, always smiling and lounging back on the benches by the pool, with his black hair in neat and tightly plaited braids. But it was his mother who held Liam’s attention. He couldn’t take his eyes off her every time she appeared on screen. Her hair was now blonde and her skin such a different colour, but other than that, she was exactly the same as he remembered her. She walked the same, had the same tight body language, talked the same, the same sharp accent, and she said the same things. She was soon looking down on the other celebrities in the villa.

The program had a “Confession Room” feature, where one of the celebrities would sit alone in a small room decorated with pillows and dark red curtains and would talk directly into the camera, confessing their personal thoughts. During the first program, half of the celebrities were shown making their confession, which all seemed to be them telling the camera which of the other celebrities they fancied and hoped to get close to. The last confession shown was Liam’s mother. She stared straight into the camera and announced, “This is a bloody waste of time!”

“Emma, remember, no swearing in the Confession Room,” an off-camera, female voice called out.

“How could I forget?” His mother replied. “It’s still a waste of time. There is no decent talent here. Yeah, those young men have fit bodies but that’s all they have. All of them are thick as a brick. They don’t know how to talk to a woman. ‘I’ve got 100,000 Instagram followers.’ Who cares if you won’t even get a lady a drink from the bar. And don’t get me started on Alan James, former MP. He thinks he’s such hot stuff, breathing down my neck and staring at my tits. He doesn’t even have the decency to wear deodorant. God his BO! I know why his wife left him… What’s the point of being here? The place is full of wan… worthless gits.”

She stared into the camera for a long moment. Was she expecting the viewers to answer for her? Liam moved uncomfortably on the sofa.

As the program ended, its titles playing across the screen as its loud, upbeat dance theme played. What had he just watched? It was that the nearest he’d got to his mother in so long, but he hadn’t enjoyed it. His mother was as brash and forceful as he always remembered her, but watching her interacting with other people when he wasn’t there, showed him not only how hard and unfriendly she could be, but also how two-faced she could be. She could be nice and friendly to someone, to their face, and yet behind their back, she’d complain, bitch, and rip them to pieces. Had she been like that about him? Of course, there were those interviews that Britney had shown him. His mother came over as such as unpleasant person in them. Was this her real self?

“Well, that was interesting,” Victoria, the nurse said.

“Who was that ugly old bitch?” a lad’s voice answered her. It was Harper.

“We don’t call women that,” Victoria replied.

“But she was horrible to everyone,” Harper said.

“She was that,” Victoria agreed.

Liam turned his head and looked at Ed.

Ed gave him a little smile and said, “That was a bit shit, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Liam agreed.

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Liam lay on his side and stared out at his darkened room. Why couldn’t he sleep? He was tired, his body ached, but his mind was alive and awake. Had watching his mother on that stupid television program that night upset him so much?

It was so long since he’d last seen her. It had hurt so much when she told him she wasn’t going to come and see him again, but that was a long time ago and it certainly didn’t hurt now. Eventually, it turned into a relief not to have to see her, not to have her constantly finding fault with him, her constantly pouring out her disappointment on him. He didn’t miss that. Honestly, he really didn’t miss her. He had Ed in his life now and Ed’s comfortable and enjoyable company. Mark still visited him each month, and Mark provided a link to the outside world. Mark was also fascinating company: the man knew so much and talked with Liam, not down to him. What had upset him?

His mother had been awful on that program. She’d never been nice to be around: she would be nice and flattering to a person’s face, and yet, as soon as she got away from that person, she would bad-mouth them. She bitched and complained about everything at the villa with almost the same tone as she had bitched and complained about the flat and estate where he had lived with her. And that villa was a far nicer place to be. She almost picked a fight with another of the celebrities there. His mother seemed to take a quick dislike to the woman Paige, snapping back at her, “I see why your husband left you. God, I would have gone and far quicker than he did.” This had been in reply to Paige talking at length, about why she’s left her footballer husband. His mother was so nasty. Was that how she really was?

All his memories of her - and so many of them were bad memories - were always memories of watching her when he was there. He’d never seen her when he wasn’t there. He had told himself, as a child, that she was so nasty because he was such a disappointment for her. He’d thought that she was happier and nicer away from him. Perhaps when she was with her friends or her latest boyfriend, then she turned into a nice person because she was away from the child who was ruining her life. But that wasn’t really true. That television program had shown him that she was a nasty person with other people, even when the television cameras were on her. Was she like this on the other television programs that she seemed to be a “talking head” for?

Liam rolled onto his back on his bed. Seeing his mother again was… was difficult and eye-opening. Why hadn’t he seen any of this before? He couldn’t even talk about it with Aiden because Aiden was off the ward until Friday - he’d taken some days off. He didn’t want to talk to Ed about this because he didn’t want to burden Ed with it. They didn’t talk about their lives before they came to Nurton Cross much. It just seemed a thing they did, they had fallen into it without any discussion. He’d liked that, well at first, it drew a line under his old life and stopped him worrying about it. He still didn’t want to talk to Ed about his mother, his mother was horrible, and he wanted nice things with Ed.

He stretched his body out, arching his back and stretching outwards his arms and legs, for a moment pushing away the aching tiredness from his body. Then he yawned. He was sleepy at last! He turned over onto his side, rearranging his body into a more comfortable position, and closed his eyes against the darkness.