by Lindsey Kelk
I watched the two of them going at it on the sofa until it felt indecent, which didn’t take very long at all. All smiles and hands and red cheeks, they dumped notes and coins on the table before hurrying off into the night, holding the door open for someone as they left.
‘You’re a sight for sore eyes,’ Patrick said, striding through the bar in his charcoal-grey trousers and white linen shirt. He leaned down and planted a firm kiss on my lips, his mouth warm and wet, alcohol on his breath. Without asking, he sat himself down in John’s empty chair. ‘Christ, I thought dinner would never end, thank you so much for waiting.’
‘I totally forgot you were coming,’ I admitted, searching the bar for John. Nowhere to be found.
‘Charming,’ Patrick said, smiling. He picked up John’s wine glass and gave it a sniff. ‘Pinot Grigio? Classic Sumi, never had a clue about wine. White and wet and in a glass as I remember. Where is she? In the ladies?’
‘It’s a Sauvignon … never mind. Sumi had to work, that’s not hers,’ I told him as I tried to fasten the top two buttons of my jeans without him noticing. ‘How was your dinner?’
‘Long,’ he said as he picked up the wine glass and took a swig anyway, pulling a face as he put it down. ‘Can’t wait to get you home.’
‘Rough day? Me too. Honestly, work today was—’
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Patrick interrupted, skewering me with his light blue eyes. ‘I’ve got a bottle of Valpolicella at home that will wash the taste of this away in no time.’
‘OK, give me a minute.’ I hurriedly fished around under the table for all my things, my shoes, my jacket, my backpack. I couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to John but, at the same time, I really didn’t want him to see Patrick. They just weren’t fated to be best friends, why make a lovely evening awkward?
‘If you’re not a whisky girl, how about a cognac?’
John reappeared from the kitchen, dusting off a big, square bottle. ‘I’ve had this for ages but it’s still incredible stuff.’ He looked up and saw Patrick in his seat. ‘Oh. Hello.’
It might have been the least welcoming greeting I’d ever heard.
‘Ahh,’ Patrick stood up, hands on his hips, chest puffed out. ‘The bartender.’
‘The bar owner,’ John corrected.
‘Do you want a drink?’ I asked Patrick hurriedly. ‘John’s got some amazing stuff.’
‘We’re about ready to close up,’ he said before Patrick could reply. ‘I was going to pour you one for the road then kick you out, I’m afraid.’
‘Not to worry,’ Patrick said, peering at the bottle in his hand. ‘That’s a pretty nice cognac though. Ever been to the Chateau de Royal Cognac?’
John shook his head as he tested the weight of the bottle in his hand.
‘It’s about an hour and a half out of Bordeaux, you should try to visit, incredible place.’ Patrick stepped away from the table and picked up my bag, slinging it over his shoulder and narrowly missing clobbering me right in the chops. ‘I’d better get this one home.’
He took my hand tightly in his and pulled me towards the door. I looked back at John with a smile I hoped conveyed how grateful I was for the burger and the wine and the conversation, how much I’d enjoyed hanging out with him, how much I wished I could have said a proper goodnight. It was, in all honesty, probably too much to fit into one smile.
John’s eyes stayed locked on mine as I lingered in the doorway.
‘Thanks for dinner,’ I called as I clung to the doorframe. Better that than nothing. ‘I’ll see you soon.’
‘You will,’ he replied.
And it sounded like a promise.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The tennis club was not a natural venue for a wedding, second or otherwise.
I’d driven past it a thousand times but never bothered to take the right turn down the long driveway to see the place for myself. In my mind, tennis clubs were Wimbledon, Roland-Garros, champagne and strawberries and lots and lots of Robinsons squash. I’d expected civilized-looking types to be wandering around in tennis whites, shouting things like ‘Jolly good forehand, wot wot’, and I’d hoped for at least one Roger Federer lookalike to ease my distress at having to race home from work and take two different buses to meet Mum and Dad at their venue of choice for six thirty, on Thursday night.
I was disappointed on all counts.
‘This is where Dad comes every Sunday?’ I whispered in Mum’s ear as we let ourselves through the fingerprint-smeared glass doors and inside the club. It looked as though someone had thrown it up as an afterthought in 1962 and hadn’t bothered to update it since. Faded sky blue and primrose yellow panels that had been patched up with bits of painted plywood ran all the way around the bottom half of the outside, with big, mucky windows above.
‘It’s looking a bit worse for wear at the moment,’ Mum agreed. ‘But I’m sure they’ll give the windows a rinse before the event. We haven’t got a lot of time to find anywhere, you know. I’m grateful they can accommodate us at all.’
‘No, you’re right,’ I replied, looking for the potential as we passed the changing rooms and entered a large, empty space.
‘And this,’ Dad said, holding his arms out wide. ‘Is the event space.’
The tennis club was impossibly sad but Dad looked more relaxed than I’d seen him in a long time. It was weird to think this was my dad’s happy place. When you think of someone in their element, you assume it’s going to be a tropical beach or a five-star hotel or a no-holds-barred spending spree at Tiffany but here he was, surrounded by pine-clad walls and orange plastic chairs and the smell of stale smoke that was baked into every single surface despite a thirteen-year-old smoking ban, walking around like a pig in shit.
‘Oh,’ Mum said weakly, pulling her beige Marks & Sparks cardi tightly over her neon-pink boob tube as the regulars around the bar leered in her direction.
My phone began to vibrate in my hand. I looked down and saw Ted’s name in all caps, screaming at me.
‘I’ve got to take this,’ I said, throwing Mum a supportive smile before run-walking back out to the foyer. ‘Hello? Ted?’
‘Snazz wants Beezer Go-Go as his guest on the first episode of the pod,’ he announced, as though there was something I could do about this at almost seven p.m. on a Thursday evening.
‘Right, OK,’ I replied, wandering over to the noticeboard. Lots of people trying to sell second-hand Ikea furniture at this tennis club.
‘It’s only a couple of weeks away, Ros. Can you get him?’
‘Yes, absolutely I can.’
The Ros reflected back at me in the sliding glass door of the noticeboard did not look as certain as I sounded. Possibly because she had no idea who Beezer Go-Go was.
‘He’s going to want first-class flights and I’m sure there’ll be a fee,’ Ted said, audibly exhaling with stress. ‘He’s only getting two companion flights though.’
‘Only two,’ I clucked, pressing my fingers into the skin around my eyes and lifting it up and back. Did I always look this tired or had I aged considerably in the last forty-eight hours?
‘And they’re business, not first-class,’ he warned. ‘I can be flexible with the budget for this episode if he’ll do it, what Snazz wants …’
‘Snazz gets,’ I finished for him, wondering where all this money was coming from. My salary was reasonable but it was not in any way, shape or form generous. It was days like this that I was furious I’d wasted all the time reading books and learning when I could have been playing computer games and practising talking shit into my phone camera for hours on end.
‘I’m kind of in the middle of something,’ I said, glancing over my shoulder to see my mum hanging by the doorway of the event space while a man in a rugby shirt climbed on top of an orange plastic chair to poke a fluorescent light with a snooker cue. ‘Can we pick this up tomorrow?’
Ted tutted and muttered something under his breath that I couldn’t quite make out but sounded a lot
like my twenty-six-year-old boss was suggesting that I, his thirty-two-year-old employee, was an entitled little millennial.
‘Fine, tomorrow,’ he replied and immediately ended the call.
‘And I don’t know if you’re thinking about a band or a DJ but we’ve got connections with both,’ the man in the rugby shirt said as I walked back into the events space. ‘My friend Keith does a brilliant disco, gets everyone boogying on the dance floor, does Keith. But if you’re looking for live music, we had a Welsh turn on at the Valentine’s dance, fantastic fella. His band performs modern covers in the style of Elvis, they’re called The Wonder of Huw.’
‘Ros,’ Mum said, speaking in the voice of a strangled cat. ‘Didn’t you say you wanted to do the music?’
‘Yes,’ I said as smoothly as possible, agreeing enthusiastically with this imaginary conversation my mother and I had definitely, absolutely had. ‘I am very particular about music, very much wanted to be in charge of that, so no need to bother Huw.’
The rugby shirt looked me up and down and shrugged. Clearly he considered this my loss. ‘Shall we have a look in the kitchen?’ he suggested.
‘I promised I’d FaceTime Jo,’ I said, looking past him into a stainless-steel miseryland. ‘Show her the venue.’
‘That’s nice,’ Mum said. She ran a fingertip along the windowsill and her shoulders sank. ‘Don’t let her go without us saying hello.’
‘So she’ll answer the phone to you, will she?’ Dad chuntered as he followed on into the kitchen. ‘Tell her we need to have a conversation about her last phone bill. There’s a cap on her data usage for a reason, she’s supposed to be in Cambridge to work.’
I returned to the lobby, smiling briefly at an older gentleman on his way into the changing rooms as I found my sister’s contact info.
‘What?’
Jo appeared on the screen in front of me, bored before we’d started.
‘I’m at the tennis club where Mum and Dad want to have the wedding,’ I said, flipping the camera to show her the lobby. ‘It’s a bit sad.’
‘It’s murder–suicide depressing,’ she replied.
Jo’s face truly was perfection, like a Disney princess come to life, little pointed chin, bright blue eyes and long, glossy brown hair she had pulled back in the perfect messy bun, one it would take me an hour to achieve.
‘What do you want?’ Jo asked, driving the heel of her hand into her eyes. Her dark circles only served to emphasize her fragile prettiness. Who looked better when they were tired? My genius sister.
‘I thought you’d want to be involved,’ I replied, flipping the camera back to selfie mode and rubbing at my own dark circles. ‘Since you’re not here.’
‘Don’t try to guilt-trip me because it won’t work.’ She shoved a pencil into her bun and pouted. ‘I’ve only got two months until the semester starts, I haven’t got time, Ros. I’ve said I’ll show up but honestly, I don’t know why you or Mum and Dad expect me to be happy about their celebrating the fact they’re spent more than half their lives reinforcing one of the key institutions that props up the patriarchy.’
‘Jo,’ I said, too tired to get into it. Two months until the semester started and she didn’t have time. Because it wasn’t as though I had a job or anything.
‘Marriage is death,’ Jo declared, staring daggers right at me. ‘It limits both parties, traps everyone financially and emotionally and forces people to become co-dependent. Did you know male suicide rates are soaring? It’s not just women that suffer in this shitty society, men are just as at risk, they’re not allowed to—’
‘The man who runs the club was asking if we wanted a DJ or a live band,’ I interrupted loudly, right as someone opened the door to the men’s changing room and left it swinging back and forth to reveal the elderly gentleman stepping into a jockstrap. Why did this keep happening to me? ‘Do you have a preference?’
‘Remind me to bring my AirPods,’ she groaned as I spun on my heel and turned to face the corner, praying that was not a glimpse into my future. Did all balls get that saggy? ‘Do not, under any circumstances, allow them to get a band. My boyfriend is a musician and I would rather eat red meat than make him suffer through any local shit.’
Jo had AirPods? I didn’t have AirPods.
‘You don’t eat meat?’ I wondered out loud. ‘And since when do you have a boyfriend? What happened to your girlfriend?’
‘Meat is killing the planet and if you’re not plant-based, so are you,’ she replied. ‘Don’t be so close-minded, you can have a girlfriend and a boyfriend at the same time, you know. He’s obsessed with me, it’s so cute, he’s so cute, we’ll probably move in together or whatever.’
I could not wait to see her try to explain that one to our parents.
‘I’ve got to go, I’m cooking dinner for the homeless shelter by the halls,’ Jo said, checking the time on an Apple Watch. Where was she getting all this stuff? Last Christmas, Mum and Dad had sent me an old-lady dressing gown from Marks & Spencer and a spiralizer. I lived in that bloody dressing gown. The spiralizer remained in its box.
‘That’s nice,’ I replied, smiling at my little sister. ‘How did you get into that?’
‘Wilf’s mum runs it?’ she said, as though I might know who Wilf was. ‘Wilf is my boyfriend? We’re going to give a lecture on the importance of avoiding conflict diamonds while they eat. It’s a cause Wilf feels, like, really strongly about.’
I chewed on the inside of my cheek for a moment.
‘You’re going to give a group of homeless people coming to a shelter to eat a meal a lecture on the ethics of the diamond industry?’
‘They’re homeless, not stupid,’ she snapped. ‘God, Ros, you’re such a bigot.’
And then she hung up.
‘Serves me right for calling, really,’ I muttered, tucking the phone in the back pocket of my jeans.
The door to the men’s changing room opened again and the gentleman walked out, thankfully dressed in crisp tennis whites.
‘Good evening,’ he said with a polite nod. I smiled back, unable to form words.
‘Ros?’ I heard Mum shout. ‘Are you still on with Jo?’
‘Um, she didn’t answer,’ I called back before joining them. ‘I was just checking work emails, talking to myself.’
I was a terrible liar.
‘Maybe we’ll cut off her credit card,’ Dad suggested. ‘See if that gets a response.’
I said nothing. I did not have a credit card when I went to university, let alone one that my parents paid for.
‘Shall we have a look outside?’ rugby shirt proposed. ‘You can have the rose garden as well as this room, in case you want a bit of outside space.’
‘Rose garden!’ I said to Mum, giving her an encouraging nudge. She forced a smile, attempting to reinflate herself for a moment as we ventured outside.
A moment was more than long enough. The rose garden was not a rose garden. The rose garden was a square of ancient Astro turf with a battered white picket fence around the outside and half a dozen plant pots filled with plastic flowers.
‘Nice spot for the smokers,’ rugby shirt said. He nudged one of the plant pots and I realized it was brimming with cigarette butts.
‘We can make it nice,’ I said as my mother’s face fell so far, I’d have had to get down on my hands and knees to pick it up. ‘Lucy’ll help. You know she’s amazing at this kind of thing.’
‘If we burn it to the ground would there be time to rebuild?’ she asked.
I was trying to work out just which shade of lipstick to put on this particular pig when my phone buzzed again. Only when I saw the name on the screen, this time I was very keen to answer.
‘Sorry!’ I said, holding the ringing phone aloft again as evidence. ‘Another important call. I’ll be two seconds.’
‘She’s a producer,’ Mum explained to our host with a warm edge of pride in her voice. ‘She just got back from a very important job in Washington and they always need her h
elp at her new job.’
‘She’s never off the bloody thing,’ Dad clarified. Rugby shirt rolled his eyes and nodded in understanding as I skipped along to an empty bench next to the tennis courts.
‘Hello?’ I answered, breathless.
‘What are you doing tonight?’ Patrick asked. ‘I want to see you.’
I shivered with delight.
‘Sorry, I’m with my parents,’ I told him, all regret. ‘They’re doing wedding stuff and I said I’d help.’
‘That’s a shame,’ he said sadly, even though I could hear the smile in this voice. ‘I finished my chapter early, I was hoping I might lure you out for a drink.’
‘I wish I could but it would be at least …’ I looked down at my watch. It was after seven now and we clearly wouldn’t be done here any time soon. I’d have to go home, pick up some clean knickers, give myself a Vegas shower with a bunch of baby wipes and then scoot back across London. ‘I think at least nine by the time I could get to you? Maybe even nine thirty?’
‘Then I’ll just suffer without you,’ he lamented. ‘I was just sat here, thinking about the first time we met.’
‘Oh?’ I replied, my body prickling to attention. I remembered the night with violent clarity.
‘I remember walking into that party with my editor and all I wanted to do was turn around and walk out again,’ Patrick said. His voice was rich and warm and heavy and I could taste him as he spoke.
‘And I nearly didn’t go in the first place,’ I replied, my pulse quickening as my voice lowered. I heard liquid being poured into a glass. ‘The Mapplethorpes’ annual Christmas tree trimming. Mum bullied me into going.’
‘I walked in and saw you and I couldn’t believe my luck.’ He took a sip of something and the sound of it sent tingles sparking all along my scalp. ‘This gorgeous creature, all those wild brown curls and big eyes, just boring into me.’
Someone nearby was calling out scores for a tennis game but I was somewhere else entirely. A warm living room in East Mosely, the smell of homemade mince pies in the air mixed with a freshly cut Christmas tree and too many middle-aged women wearing the same Estée Lauder perfumes. I’d actually had my hair up that night but I wasn’t about to spoil his fantasy with pedantic facts. It had certainly been down by the end of it.