Twenty-Two
Later that week, for the first time in ages, I had a day off. I had big plans: I was going to sleep and sleep for as long as I could, then have a long bath with the bathroom all to myself, put a treatment on my hair, sort out my nails, and then spend as much time as I wanted on the sofa, mainlining tea, biscuits and Netflix. I’d already had a word with Frazzle and told him he was welcome to join me.
I was as excited by the prospect as I would have been, in my old life, by a night out at a fancy restaurant or a weekend in Paris.
But I’d reckoned without the workings of my body clock. When Joe got up to get ready for work, I found myself awake too, lying sleepless in the darkness while I listened to him try to get ready super-quietly so as not to wake me.
I heard his toothbrush buzzing and the shower running, Frazzle’s grumpy morning food order, Zoë’s voice chatting to him, Joe saying, ‘Ssssh, Alice is having a lie-in,’ and Zoë whispering back, ‘Oh my God, I forgot! Sorry!’
Then their voices dropped to nothing more than whispers, and I felt the last wisps of sleep vanish as I wondered what they were talking about.
I heard Joe come back into the bedroom and the not-so-quiet rattle of hangers as he rifled through his wardrobe, trying to select a shirt by touch alone. And then I heard an almighty crash as he dropped a shoe on the floor, and a muttered, ‘Oh for fuck’s sake!’
‘It’s okay. I’m awake. You can turn the light on.’
‘Sure?’ The room blazed with light. Joe stood there, shirt and tie undone, his trousers not yet on, his hair sticking up at odd angles because he hadn’t put gel or whatever he used on it yet, and I felt a sudden, equally brilliant surge of love for him.
I stretched and sat up in bed, holding out my arms for him, and he leaned over, giving me a tantalisingly brief hug, his warm, freshly showered body pressed against mine, smelling of toothpaste and shampoo and his citrussy aftershave.
‘I should be home early tonight,’ he said. ‘I’m going to see a client in Harmondsworth and they won’t be expecting me back in the office.’
‘Is it W—’
‘Let’s talk later. We could go for a drink, if you like?’
‘Sounds good. Although maybe just one day without seeing the inside of a pub…’
He laughed. ‘Fair point. Text me and tell me what you fancy. I should be back at sixish.’
He kissed me and turned the light out again. I heard him pick up his bag and keys and open and close the front door. Then I heard Zoë pottering about, the hum of the coffee machine, the ping of the microwave, her telling Frazzle off for jumping on the kitchen counter, and her own tooth-brushing and shower routine.
At last, she too opened and closed the front door, and the flat was in silence.
I realised I could barely remember the last time I’d been there, at home, alone, and it seemed like too precious an opportunity to waste sleeping. I could have a sneaky nana nap on the sofa later, I told myself, swinging my feet out of bed and pulling on my dressing gown.
The wooden floor chilly under my bare feet, I wandered through to the kitchen. Zoë had left her and Frazzle’s breakfast bowls in the sink, along with Joe’s coffee mug. There was a buttery knife on the counter, and I could feel grains of cat litter under my feet. The washing basket in the bathroom was overflowing, I’d noticed when I passed the open door – almost tripping on a damp towel that someone had left there.
How long had our flat been in this state? Months, probably. Every now and then someone would stack the dishwasher and switch it on, or do a load of laundry, or run the Hoover round – but the tide of mess and dirt had been creeping steadily higher and higher, and we were all too busy to do anything about it, and not home enough to care.
My idea of collapsing on the sofa was forgotten.
‘Right, Frazzle. I’m going full fifties housewife,’ I said aloud.
The cat didn’t respond; he was up on the counter, diligently licking the butter off the knife.
‘Oh, you’re helping, are you? All right then, you crack on while I get dressed.’
Two hours later, I’d begun to fight back. I’d sprayed and wiped the kitchen surfaces, hoovered and mopped the floors, changed the sheets on Joe’s and my bed, and was drinking coffee while I waited for the first load of washing to finish.
By lunchtime, all the washing was done and draped over the airer and radiators to dry, and the bathroom scrubbed cleaner than it had been in months. Frazzle’s litter tray was the one thing I didn’t touch – but I didn’t need to, because Zoë’s carelessness didn’t extend to her cat’s welfare; it was scooped out and refilled every day.
‘Lucky you, having someone to take care of you,’ I told the cat, but he’d fallen asleep on the sofa and barely opened an eye when I chatted to him.
I opened the fridge and saw a half-full bottle of milk, the oat milk Zoë put on her porridge, an unwrapped pack of butter that was full of crumbs, an open pack of cheese slices that had gone dry and curly round the edges, and a bag of salad leaves so wilted they’d practically turned to compost.
‘Bloody hell, Frazz, it’s all gone to shit, hasn’t it?’
Seeing me in the kitchen, the cat hopped off the sofa and came over to wind himself round my legs, making hopeful suggestions about lunch.
‘I’m bloody starving myself, actually,’ I told him. ‘Time for a supermarket run, I think.’
I made my way to the high street, resisting the urge to just pop into the Nag’s Head and check everything was okay. But then I saw the sun glinting off the glass door of Craft Fever and remembered that Archie had played BROWSER almost twenty-four hours before and I still hadn’t worked out what to do with my jumble of vowels and single N, and found myself crossing the road. I hesitated outside the door for only a second, then pushed it open. Archie was behind the counter as usual, his back to me as he rearranged the display of bottles on their glass shelves, but when he heard the ping of the bell he turned around, his expression changing from polite anticipation to surprise – shock, almost.
‘Morning! How’s your day going? I’m off – I stayed in bed until nine and I feel like a new woman.’
He smiled, but his smile looked slightly forced. ‘Lucky you. Kind of busy here – run-up to Christmas, I guess. Everyone’s planning out-of-control alcohol consumption.’
‘Sounds like that’s good for business.’
‘Yeah, it’s—’ Then he looked around, and a woman emerged from the door behind the counter. She was tall – almost Archie’s height – with long legs clad in Lycra leggings printed with Christmas baubles. Her glossy dark bob was almost hidden by a red hat with a grey pompom, and her clear, pale skin was free of any trace of make-up I could see.
‘Er, Nat, this is Alice, who runs the Nag’s Head next door,’ Archie said. ‘Alice, my girlfriend Nat.’
‘Hello.’ Nat reached out a hand and I stretched across the counter to shake it. Her skin was cool and soft, and her nails unpainted.
‘I just popped in,’ I said, wishing I hadn’t and wondering how soon I could pop right back out again.
‘So did I,’ said Nat. ‘Archie left his laptop at home, and I’m on my way to the gym so I dropped it off.’
She paused for a second, looking curiously at me as if to say, ‘And what’s your excuse?’
‘I wondered whether that ginger and cinnamon ale you were telling me about has come in yet,’ I said, although I knew it wasn’t due for another week.
‘Not yet,’ Archie said. ‘I’ll drop you a line when it arrives.’
‘Okay, great, thanks.’
Shit. Why the hell would I go there, on my day off, for any reason other than wanting to see Archie? That was my reason – my excuse was tissue-paper flimsy. But we weren’t doing anything wrong. We were friends, that was all. And then I thought, I wonder whether Archie hides his phone from Nat when he’s playing Scrabble, like I hide mine from Joe?
‘Right then,’ I added. ‘I’d better head off. Got to get som
e grocery shopping done, haha.’
‘And I’ve got to get my workout done,’ Nat said.
‘Bye, Archie,’ we both said together. Together, we headed for the door, and there was an excruciating ‘after you’, ‘no, after you’ moment that ended with us both squeezing through together.
Nat hesitated, her face serious, like she might be about to ask me something. But I said, ‘Great to meet you. See you around,’ and headed off down the high street as fast as I could.
There was nothing between me and Archie, I insisted to myself. Nothing to feel guilty about. No reason for Nat to look at me in that curious, doubtful way. Nothing.
Forcing the image of her face out of my mind, I joined the throngs of shoppers in Sainsbury’s. Somehow, almost without my noticing, Christmas had landed. There were stacks of mince pies and selection boxes in the aisles, wreaths and tinsel strung everywhere, plastic-wrapped turkeys and gammons in the chiller cabinets, and cheesy Christmas music playing.
And then I thought: decorations! It was like a string of coloured lights going off in my brain.
When I got back to the flat, I was carrying not only a carton of soup for my lunch, the ingredients for roast lamb and all the trimmings for dinner, but also the world’s tiniest Christmas tree and a whole load of baubles, tinsel and lights. If I was going to spend the day being a domestic goddess, I told myself, I might as well do it properly.
I pulled the now dry washing off the radiators, put it all away – I wasn’t going to iron anything; I wasn’t that far gone – and arranged the tree in a corner of the living room, festooning it with sparkly things until hardly any of its green needles were visible. I peeled potatoes and chopped carrots and stuck cloves of garlic into the lamb and left it in the fridge.
Then, finally, I showered, dried and straightened my hair, painted my nails, put on some make-up, and I was sitting on the sofa with a glass of wine when Joe arrived home just after six thirty, early like he’d said he would be.
He walked in and looked around the flat, smiling, then put his arms round me and held me tight.
‘The place looks amazing. I thought you were just going to chill.’
‘I was, but then I got started and I couldn’t stop. You know how it is.’
‘I don’t, actually.’
I laughed and punched him playfully on the shoulder. But his face was serious again.
‘God, I need a shower and a massive fuck-off drink.’
He pulled off his jacket and tie and dropped them on the floor, then looked at them, looked at me again, picked them up and went to hang them up in the wardrobe. I switched the oven on and put some water on to boil for the potatoes.
Once I heard the shower running, I went and stood in the bathroom doorway, so he could hear me.
‘How was it? Did you see Wesley? Was Maurice there?’
Joe looked at me, shampoo lather dripping down his face.
‘I saw Wesley,’ he said carefully.
‘And? What’s going to happen? They can’t deport him, after he’s lived here all these years. Can they?’
‘Hold on.’ He moved back under the shower head, soap suds and water streaming down the angles and planes of his body. ‘That feels so good. The smell of that place – it feels like it’s in my clothes, my hair, everywhere.’
‘Why, is it dirty? Surely they can’t detain people somewhere that’s not…’
Joe switched off the shower, wrapped a towel and scrubbed his face and hair.
‘It’s not dirty. Not the bit where I was, anyway. But it smells institutional, you know. Of disinfectant and shit food. Like a hospital. And of fear, too. Frightened people smell. Especially when they’re cooped up in a cell thirteen hours a day.’
I moved out of his way as he hurried through to the bedroom, dragging on a pair of ancient jogging bottoms and a T-shirt worn almost transparent with washing.
‘But they can’t keep Wesley there for long, can they? I mean, it must be a mistake, surely, them threatening to deport him?’
I followed Joe back to the living room. He rummaged in his bag for his phone, put it down on the sofa, then went through to the kitchen, pouring a glass of wine for himself and filling up mine. He bent down to fuss Frazzle, peered into the oven and tipped the potatoes into the pan of water, which I hadn’t realised was boiling.
Then he walked back to the living room, looked at the little Christmas tree, touched the star on its top and came back to join me in the kitchen.
It was strange. It was like those horrible videos you see of animals in zoos, pacing and pacing and going nowhere because they can’t. I wondered whether Joe was imagining what that would be like, or just enjoying being able to walk around his own home, knowing he could leave it any time he liked.
‘Joe? It’s a mistake, right?’
‘Alice.’ He stopped, right next to me, and wrapped his arms round me. My face was level with his chest and I could see the tiny bobbles on the fabric of his T-shirt, from it having been washed over and over again. ‘I can’t talk to you about this. Not about Wesley specifically. I know he came to us through you, and I know you care about Maurice, but I can’t. It’s a client confidentiality thing. Because Wesley’s my client now, I can’t discuss this matter with you.’
‘But you can, surely? I mean, it’s just me. I’d never tell Maurice about anything you said.’
‘Alice… Fuck.’ Finally he sat down, flopping on the sofa, his long legs extended in front of him. ‘I wish I could. Because this whole thing is totally weird and I can’t make it make sense.’
I said carefully, ‘They’re the Windrush generation, right? They came to the UK when places like Grenada were still colonies – that’s where Maurice was born, he said – and then there was that whole thing about clamping down on immigration and the hostile environment and loads of people got deported unfairly. It’s been a huge news story recently. Everyone knows the deportations are unfair and wrong. Maurice is a British citizen – he must be; he worked for local government for years and he owns a flat and claims a pension and everything. So surely his brother is here legally too?’
Joe said, ‘Look, Alice. I want to get my head around this. I wish I could talk to you about it. There’s no one I’d rather talk to. But you know about legal professional privilege – come on, it’s basic, first-year stuff. I’d be breaking my client’s trust if I disclosed any details to you. I don’t want to lose my job over this and I don’t want to act unethically. So please stop asking me about it. Okay?’
I don’t want to lose my job. I felt blood rushing to my face – a mixture of shame and anger. Joe didn’t want to lose his job like I’d lost mine.
‘Alice? Come here.’
Reluctantly, I sat next to him on the sofa and he took me in his arms again.
‘I love you,’ he said.
‘I love you too.’
And, in that moment, I remembered how much I did, and why. He’d tried to let me sleep in that morning, even though he was knackered himself. He bought me random presents for no reason. He’d chosen to work in an area of law that was all about helping people, not about making money for them. About helping people like Wesley. He was a kind man. He cared about things that mattered.
He kissed me and I kissed him back and suddenly the closeness of him – his strong back under my hands, his soft hair tickling my face – and his need for me made me frantic with longing to restore the closeness I worried we were losing. We didn’t even undress properly – we had fast, hard sex right there on the sofa, and when it was over we ate the meal I’d cooked in stilted near-silence, the lights on the Christmas tree twinkling behind us.
Twenty-Three
I arrived early at the Nag’s Head for my shift the next day. I’d slept badly, Joe’s head beside mine on the pillow, his body next to me in bed reminding me that there was a new distance between us that was nothing to do with his arm around me. I’d had weird dreams all night, jerking awake, Joe’s closeness making me feel afraid instead of secure, a
s if it wasn’t him in bed next to me but a stranger who ought not to be there. And I started that day with a horrible, overshadowing feeling of dread that not even the twinkling Christmas lights on the high street, the Salvation Army band playing carols outside the station and the posters advertising the annual Festive Fair could shift.
But still, I tried to greet Shirley cheerfully when we arrived at the pub to open up.
‘I was thinking, we need to get our Christmas decorations up, don’t we? It’s the third of December already. All the shops on the high street have theirs out.’
Shirley sighed. ‘We’ve had the same tree for years. A silver one, with blue lights. I love that frosty look, don’t you? And back in the day, we always used to have a lock-in on Christmas Eve, people still in here drinking until three or four in the morning. Those were wild times!’
‘I can imagine.’
‘I remember one time, John Sutcliffe – he passed away a couple of years back – his missus came down in the small hours, banging on the door and shouting that she’d already got up to put the turkey on, and what the hell was he playing at, still down the boozer.’
She laughed, and I joined in, although if I was honest my sympathies were entirely with John’s missus.
‘Joe and I normally go to my mum and dad’s,’ I said. ‘Mum does the whole shebang – turkey, beef, Yorkshire puddings and bread sauce – and my granny and aunt and cousins will be there too. But obviously that might be different this year, if you need me here.’
Shirley pushed back her hair. She looked tired, I realised – just as knackered as I felt.
‘Shirl? Are you okay?’
‘Make me a cuppa, would you, love? You know how I like it.’
I obliged, piling three sugars into Shirl’s tea after brewing it until it was the colour of a Love Island contestant’s tan, and made a coffee for myself, and we sat down together at one of the tables. I normally loved the pub at this time of the morning, quiet and sleepy still, as if it was taking a deep breath in readiness for the rush to come, calm in contrast to the bustle of the street outside.
Just Saying: An absolutely perfect and feel-good romantic comedy Page 20