by Nick Hornby
“Good,” she said. “Are you hungry? I didn’t ask if you were vegan, or Muslim, or anything.”
“Nothing that stops me eating eggs and bacon.”
“But you’re something?”
“Yeah. Sort of. I suppose. Christian.”
“Oh. What does that stop you from doing?”
He was sure she didn’t mean it to sound flirtatious. She didn’t look away from the pan, and all he could hear in her voice was curiosity. But he could feel his voice thicken, and as a result his answer, which was supposed to be neutral and reassuring, came out like a desperate bark.
“Nothing.”
She laughed.
“That’s the kind of religion I like.”
“I mean, it stops me from staying in bed on a Sunday morning, but . . .”
“You go every Sunday?”
“I try.” He didn’t need to get into the endless Sunday arguments with his mother.
“And you believe in God.”
“The short answer is . . .”
He didn’t know whether the short answer was yes or no. Maybe he believed that God created the universe, but he didn’t know where that got him. And when he saw the old ladies on Sunday in the first couple of rows, he wondered whether God let too many people off the hook. They’d had depressing, difficult lives, the people who’d come over decades ago, and they still turned out every week to thank God. He didn’t have a lot of time for the idiots who’d looted the electrical stores in Wood Green five years previously, the only night his mother had ever locked the door to keep him and his sister inside. But if he had to choose between chucking a brick through a window and sitting around waiting to die so that he could enter the Kingdom of Heaven, he wouldn’t have to think for too long.
“Sorry. You only came round for eggs and bacon. Boys! It’s ready!”
The boys came in, spudded Joseph, and sat down. They wanted to talk about football, in its physical and virtual incarnations, and they wanted to know when he would be babysitting again.
“I haven’t been asked,” he said.
“We’re asking you,” said Dylan.
“I need somewhere to go first,” said Lucy.
“What about tonight?” said Al.
“I definitely haven’t got anywhere to go tonight,” said Lucy.
“Next weekend, then.”
“OK, next weekend,” said Lucy. “If you’re not busy.”
“No,” said Joseph.
“Neither am I,” said Lucy, and laughed.
The coffee was out of a pot, and the bacon was crispy, and the jam was homemade by a colleague at Lucy’s school.
“This is to say sorry,” said Lucy. “And we hope you’ll give us another chance.”
Joseph looked at her and widened his eyes, as in, are we allowed to talk about that?
“The boys know,” said Lucy.
“Oh,” said Joseph brightly.
“Dad got drunk and started a fight,” said Al. “And you pushed him over.”
Joseph didn’t really know how to proceed.
“Yeah, well,” he said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Oh, you should,” said Dylan. “When Dad’s drunk, he’s horrible. I’d push him over, if I was strong enough.”
“You never will be,” said Al, matter-of-factly. Al was the younger of the two, and much bigger than his older brother.
“Yeah, but I go to judo. So I can smash people bigger than me.”
“You won’t be smashing me, mate. I can just hold you off with one hand.”
“We’re here to say sorry and thank you to Joseph,” said Lucy firmly.
“You don’t have to say sorry,” said Joseph. “Any of you.”
“We just don’t want you to think it would always be like that if you look after the boys.”
The boys had already finished eating, and their desire to see Joseph had been extinguished.
“Can we get on with our games? We’re both in the middle of FUT Drafts.”
“Oh, well, in that case,” said Lucy. “Are they being rude, Joseph?”
“It’s fine by me.”
He didn’t want to seem too keen to get rid of them, so he tried to say it casually. They were gone almost before he’d finished the sentence. Lucy shrugged.
“More coffee before you go?”
“Thank you.” He held out his mug. It was orange and white, and said GREAT EXPECTATIONS CHARLES DICKENS on the side. He wasn’t going to say anything about Charles Dickens. He’d cross that bridge if the bridge ever got built. There wasn’t even anything for the bridge to go over yet.
“I don’t even know what you do the rest of the time.”
“Oh, a bunch of stuff. Some child care, some football coaching, a couple of days in the leisure center, some D.J.-ing.”
He should have left out the D.J.-ing. It was both the most interesting thing in the list, and the one that wasn’t strictly true. But it was the thing that stopped him from being someone going nowhere with a string of unconnected jobs.
“Oh, you D.J.? Cool.”
Shit.
“I’m more . . . There isn’t so much D.J.-ing at clubs and parties yet.” Not so much. “I spend a lot of time working on my own stuff.”
That much was true. Or rather, it was closer to the truth than the stuff about D.J.-ing at clubs and parties.
“And then what do you do with it?”
“You play it for people. You develop a following. Someone hears it and you get offered a deal.”
“That still happens?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, good luck.”
“I’ll probably see you again before I make it.”
He knew what she was thinking: everyone wanted to be a star. She probably had kids who wanted to be YouTubers, with followings of millions; she probably taught kids who wanted to be on The X Factor or Love Island. And here was another one. He knew he was good, and he knew he had ideas. But he wasn’t daft. He also knew that he’d be managing a leisure center in fifteen years’ time, if he was lucky.
“Why haven’t you been in the shop recently?”
“I was embarrassed. I thought I needed to thank you properly, not by text or over the counter.”
“How did the boys find out about the, the fracas?”
“Paul told them.”
“Oh. Why?”
“I don’t know. Well, I do know. Honesty is very important to him, when he’s going through this. He’s got a sponsor and all that. It’s something to do with him. But it wasn’t a shock. They’ve seen him do stupid stuff before.”
“That must be hard for you.”
“I think it’s harder for him. He’s made a mess of his marriage and his parenting.”
“Is it too late?”
“Marriage, yes. Parenting, no. I hope not, anyway. Maybe when they’re older they’ll get properly angry. Now it comes and goes. Do you want kids one day?”
“I suppose. I don’t really think about it.”
It was stupid, but he didn’t want to talk about what he might or might not want to do with another woman. (He was pretty sure it would have to be with another woman. They’d have to get a move on, if it was going to be Lucy.) He looked at his phone.
“I should go.”
“Thank you for coming.”
“Ah, no. That was so nice. The best Saturday lunch I’ve ever had. Hey, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“You know the referendum? How are you going to vote?”
“That’s a very personal question, young man.”
“Oh. Yeah. I’m sorry.”
“I’m joking. I’m voting to stay in.”
“Do you know anyone who’s voting out?”
“My parents. But they read the D
aily Telegraph and live in Kent.”
“That’s it?”
“I think so.”
“OK. Thanks. We were talking about it at work this morning.”
For a moment he wondered if he should tell her about the voting intentions of the people he knew, his father and some of the people at the gym, but she seemed to think that she’d given the right answer, an insight into the minds of everyone in the world of adults, so he let it go.
She walked him to the door, and as he was leaving she kissed him on both cheeks. She smelled of something that none of the girls he’d ever kissed would have worn. It probably wasn’t even a perfume—it didn’t nuke your nostrils the way a perfume did. It was a cream, or a soap, and the subtlety and lightness felt grown-up. The kisses and the scent were like the gray cardigan and the eyebrows. They took him out of himself. On the way back to the shop he felt a little bit shaky. If he didn’t start seeing someone, he was going to make an idiot of himself. He’d already begun to make an idiot of himself in his head. He needed to forget about eyebrows. And he wasn’t about to start reading Charles Dickens just because of a coffee mug.
* * *
—
He met Jaz because he wasn’t looking for her, although there had been many times in his life when he might have been. He was in the leisure center, putting away the badminton nets and putting out the five-a-side goals, when she came up to him to ask if there was a women’s five-a-side league.
“Asking for a friend,” she said.
“Well, tell her there isn’t at the moment, but we’re trying to get one started.”
“I’m the friend,” she said.
“Who are you a friend of?”
“That’s what people say, isn’t it?” she said. “Asking for a friend. Like, ‘Do you know how I can get talking to the fit guy who works in the gym and never takes any notice of me? Asking for a friend.’”
“I’m lost.”
He wasn’t, really.
“OK, so say there’s a peng guy who works at the gym.”
“Yes.”
“Well, how can I get talking to him?”
“I could introduce you.”
“What if it was you?”
“Me?”
“Christ. Yes.”
“And do I know the friend?”
He was winding her up, and taking pleasure in both the flirtation and the irritation.
“I’m the bloody friend.”
“You’re the friend AND her friend?”
“There is no other person. Only me. I am the person wondering how I can get talking to the fit guy—you—at the gym.”
“We’ve been talking for ages.”
“Not about what I want to talk about.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“When we can go out.”
Only now did Joseph begin to take notice of her. All things being equal, the eyes usually swung it, and not just because it was the eyes that made the face beautiful. The eyes were everything—they contained the first indication of whether someone was smart, kind, funny, hungry in all the right ways as well as some of the interesting wrong ones. Jaz had great eyes, big and brown and alive. But all things had to be equal, and, without examining Jaz too closely, he could tell that there was a great deal of equality.
“Thursday,” he said.
“Is that because you’ve got a girlfriend and you see her at the weekends?”
“It’s because I have a load of jobs and I’m working Friday night.”
“Good answer.”
She’d plucked her eyebrows, but it was all within the bounds of reason. He’d only just noticed, for a start, which meant that they weren’t leading the attack. She seemed more concerned to accentuate the equality of all things, although that might just have been the natural properties of gym wear. She’d chosen to approach him while wearing it, though, so she certainly wasn’t trying to hide anything.
“I see my girlfriend Wednesdays and Saturdays.”
Jaz laughed and punched him on the arm. That seemed like a good sign.
“I’m Jaz, by the way.”
“Hi. Joseph.”
“Not Joe?”
“Never.”
“Got it.”
They put numbers into each other’s phones, and Jaz went to find her spin class.
* * *
—
Lucy wasn’t expecting to hear from Michael Marwood after her sudden disappearance from the dinner party, but he called one evening, just as she was preparing tea for the boys.
“Oh, hi.”
She had the presence of mind to keep the last vowel short. Elongating it, she felt, would have suggested an enthusiasm and excitement that she’d rather not reveal. There was a great deal of excitement, she realized the moment she heard his voice—not necessarily for him, but she knew that he’d have phoned Fiona to get her mobile number, and Fiona would have teased him about it a little, and he’d plowed through the teasing anyway and here he was. There was intent. Intent was always enthralling, or it used to be, back in the days when someone might phone with it.
“What are you doing tomorrow? I wanted you to be my date for something. A film premiere. But I should warn you, I don’t think the film is very good.”
“Oh.”
“And as a consequence, the premiere won’t be very glamorous.”
“Oh.”
“Sold?”
She laughed.
“Sold.”
“But please don’t judge me on the bad films that are made from friends’ books.”
“Is that what we’re going to? A bad film made from a friend’s book?”
“I’m not going to that,” said Al, who was sitting at the kitchen table doing his homework.
She shook her head at him and made a face.
“Will you meet me there?” said Michael. “It’s in Belsize Park. Seated by seven p.m.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
* * *
—
Joseph was in the leisure center, sitting on the lifeguard’s chair, when he got her text. He wasn’t supposed to be on his phone, but there was one woman in the pool, and she was walking her lengths. A lot of the older people did that when they’d hurt themselves somehow. She wasn’t about to drown any time soon.
Are you free tomorrow night?
And then, before he’d had a chance to respond, I’m going on an actual date.
Ha, he said. I’ve got one too.
Anyone nice?
Don’t know her really. And then, But she’s hot.
Hot is good.
Oh, I’m free btw . . . by the way.
Lol, I know btw! Mine’s not hot. Too old. But attractive.
So hot then.
Middle-aged hot. Warm.
How old is he?
I don’t know. Fifty-something?
How old are you?
Ha. What? Well, how old are you?
Twenty-two.
Oh. I was hoping you wouldn’t tell me. And then, after a short pause, I’m forty-two.
Christ. He would just ignore that.
What time?
Early OK? 5:30/6?
Joseph started to text a joke about middle-aged dating and then deleted it.
Fine.
He was just about to put the phone away when there was another ping.
What makes her hot? Interested.
Ah basic stuff. And then, Not proud.
But she’s nice?
No idea yet.
He had to say something, now they were this close to the subject. He had to say something, while at the same time he knew already that whatever he said he would regret bitterly as soon as he sent it. The trick was to be vague.
There are all kinds of hot.
That wasn’t so bad. He didn’t want to run to wherever she was and snatch the phone out of her hand, at least.
* * *
—
There are all kinds of hot.
Was it pathetic to imagine that he was expanding the definition to include her? Or was he talking about Michael? But that would make no sense. They had moved away from the subject of Michael, surely? If he was talking about her, telling her that she was one kind of hot, in his opinion, and his Thursday-night date another . . . Well, it wouldn’t mean anything, surely? If Joseph’s mother went out on a date, and she looked at herself in the mirror, wouldn’t a devoted son say something like, “There are all kinds of hot, Mum”? Almost certainly. She imagined that Joseph would be a kind, supportive son.
So that was it. She was hot like Joseph’s mother was hot. The conclusion depressed her, inevitably. She didn’t want to be Joseph’s mother in this or in any other context. She read through the thread again, just to make sure. Basic stuff . . . not proud . . . no idea if she’s nice . . . all kinds of hot. If she showed this exchange to a friend, she was pretty sure that the bolstering-mother theory would be demolished very quickly, partly on the admittedly solid grounds that she wasn’t Joseph’s mother. But then, that was the trouble with friends. It was their job to bolster too. And it was impossible to ascertain which of the two competing bolsterings was closer to the truth. The whole point of bolstering was that it wasn’t very interested in the truth.
She was in her office, more or less on her own: Missy, a Year Ten student who had been sent out of a junior colleague’s lesson for throwing a book at a love rival, was sitting in the corner, apparently revising. Missy would almost certainly be able to interpret the troublesome text with insight and empathy, but it would be inappropriate to ask her.