Over the Moon by Jean Ure Page A

won’t make you undress. You don’t have to go in the pool!”

    “Actually,” he said, “I do.” He opened the door of the cubicle and I tried very hard not to stare at his leg, cos a) it would have been rude, not to mention insensitive, and b) it would have embarrassed him; but quite calmly he said, “It’s all right, I’ve psyched myself up for it. I should have done it before. It’s just stupid vanity.”
    “Me, too,” I said. Simon said no, I was right, it was worse for me. He said, “I guess it’s always worse for girls.” I told him very firmly that he was being sexist – though in the nicest possible way – and that it was in fact worse for him, because my eyes had onlyswollen up through my own stupidity, whereas he couldn’t help what had happened to him.
    “Plus I’m almost back to normal, but Matt said you’d got to have more operations?”
    Simon said, “Yeah, well … that’s the way it goes. And you
are
back to normal. You don’t look in the least like a pickled walnut!”
    “So will you tell Matt?” I said.
    He promised that he would, and we both went into the pool and sploshed up and down for a bit, then sat on the side and talked. We were there for ages! Simon was such an easy person to talk to. He told me more about his mum and dad, and how they’d got on really well before his dad had gone and trashed the car. And then he thought about it and said maybe that wasn’t quite true; maybe they
hadn’t
got on quite so well. The reason his dad had trashed the car was that he was in a towering great rage.
    “He and my mum had just had this really big fight and Dad was, like, still seething. So I guess, maybe, him screwing up just brought matters to a head. It’s funny,” he said, “I’ve never really admitted that before. I’ve always liked to believe that everything was perfect. But looking back, I can see that it wasn’t. Not really. There were all sorts of clues.”

    I said that when
I
looked back, I couldn’t see any clues at all.
    “Not until these last few months.” Before that, everything
had
been perfect. I said this to Simon, and he said maybe it had only seemed so.
    “It could be something that’s been building up for ages. Like your mum could have been feeling more and more frustrated and just, like, keeping the lid on things?”
    I said doubtfully that I supposed it was possible.
    “Doesn’t strike me as something that’d come on suddenly,” said Simon. “It might have seemed sudden, when she finally came out with it, but that’s only because you didn’t know what was going on.”
    “No,” I said, “and neither did Dad!”
    “You reckon?”
    “I’m sure he didn’t!”
    “He probably did,” said Simon. “People usually do. They just close their minds because they don’t want to know. If you let yourself know, it means you have to do something.”
    “Like what?” I said. “There’s not much you can do if your mum walks out!”
    “Just give her a bit of time. Give them both a bit of time. I’m sure they’ll work things through. Your mum seems like a really together person.”
    “What about my dad? What does he seem like?”
    Simon hesitated when I asked him this. He said, “I don’t really know your dad.”
    “From what you’ve seen of him.”
    “I only really know what you’ve told me. From what you’ve told me it sounds like he still loves your mum but he’s feeling, like … hurt? And confused? Like she’s throwing everything back in his face and he doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve it.”
    “He hasn’t done anything to deserve it!” I cried. “He just doesn’t understand!”
    “Could be that’s the key to it. Once he does— ”
    “They’ll get back together again? You really think so?”
    “Maybe if you help them,” said Simon.
    What he thought I could do, I really didn’t know, but at least it gave me something to hold on to. Afterwards I thought what a lovely guy he was, and what a shame he was