I launched into my recent disastrous crowning glory with Rory the squirrel. Carl had to stop walking once we reached the row of shops and Terry’s Tool Hire, he was laughing so much.
‘Oh my God, that is honestly the best thing I have heard for ages.’ He wiped his eyes. ‘I really wish you had gone on the date just so we would know what his costume looked like!’
‘Thanks very much! I’m glad my dating disaster is so amusing.’
‘I’m sorry, it’s just that it makes my life look less chaotic and mad.’
‘Maybe we should start a support group for dating addicts. I’ve got a spotter’s badge for nutters, and you also need to stay away from the ladies. Both of us need to get on track with work and shouldn’t be allowed to even look at anyone until we’re more sorted.’
‘Sounds like a good idea to me. Will we have DA meetings with biscuits and watery tea?’
‘And a secret handshake.’
‘Like this?’ And he bent down and threaded his arm under his leg and offered me his hand.
‘That’s not really secret, is it?’ I said, grabbing it and shaking it so hard Carl almost fell over. ‘Anyway, we’ve shaken on it now, we both have to remain single. It’s an anti-love pact!’
18
The Spy
Samantha cracked open a chilled bottle of cava and poured it into twinkly crystal glasses arranged on a pretty Brazilian-style cocktail tray as we huddled round her laptop. Lila and her boyfriend had done a brilliant job transforming the rough footage. It was snappy and funny, fast and engaging with on-point graphics. Lila and I came across as if we had lived in each other’s pockets for so long we’d collected fluff.
‘You two are a bit of a double act,’ Samantha enthused as she handed me my fizz. ‘Well done for finding your inner presenter, Ali.’
‘Cheers to you!’ Jo said. ‘Maybe this is the start of something new for you? Will you be modelling bikinis? We could film a whole episode from inside my Roller.’ She winked cheekily at me. Her Rolls-Royce had suddenly appeared on her drive a week after her accident. It was a gleaming maroon slick-fest and we’d all piled in in turns while she drove us around the block for a spin, Abba blaring out of the speakers.
Apparently, according to Lila, between 3 and 4 p.m. on a Thursday was the most lucrative time to launch a new vlog. She had advertised it all over Instagram and had garnered thousands of likes. We now had to wait and see how many viewers would get sucked in and subscribe to the channel.
‘You did look good in that dress,’ Carl said, sipping his orange juice. ‘You should get your legs out more.’
‘Oi, perv! I do. I wear skinny jeans.’
‘You know what I mean. Summer’s coming, wax your pins and show them off.’
‘Wax my pins – who says that? You’re like a gay man trapped in a straight man’s body.’ He laughed.
‘It’s working in the business for twenty years. I’ve sucked up all the magazine speak by osmosis.’
‘Wow, look!’ Samantha cried at the end of our debut. ‘The subscribers have stacked up!’ We all craned our necks to get a better view. Samantha had refreshed the screen and it showed five hundred in ten minutes. ‘It’s amazing! That almost never happens.’
As I was leaving Samantha’s with Grace and Carl, a bit giddy from fizz on an empty stomach, I noticed Nick the Spy’s car pull up outside his house. He ran round to the passenger side and whipped open the door, helping the older lady out like the previous occasion, this time handing her a walking stick. He looked up and, emboldened by the cava, I waved at him and smiled. He jumped like I’d tazered him and the lady turned round so I waved at her too.
‘Oh, you’ve just made the spy’s day,’ Carl hissed. ‘Look at him. He’s going bright red.’
The woman beamed openly at me; Nick slowly ushered her inside the house while shooting me some kind of strangulated grimace that I think he thought passed for a smile.
I checked the subscription numbers once more after Grace was in bed (up to seven hundred and sixty. Come on, little vlog, you can do it!) when my outside doorbell startled me. I opened the door straight away without first checking and standing there was a complete stranger with a twitchy lip and geek glasses.
‘Hiya,’ he said in a vaguely northern accent that could have swung from anywhere up the M6 between Leeds and Manchester. ‘I’m really sorry to disturb you, but I’m having a bit of bother.’
‘Nick the Spy!’ I cried, my brain performing its usual motor-mouth party trick.
‘The spy?’ he asked nonplussed. ‘I’m the guy at number three. My mum’s fallen and I need some help getting her up again in case she’s broken something.’
‘God, how awful, can’t you just call an ambulance?’
‘No, I can’t.’ He squirmed uncomfortably.
‘Let me knock for Elinor and then I’ll come. My daughter’s asleep upstairs.’
‘OK. Thank you.’
‘What on earth can Nick the Spy need?’ Elinor asked, mystified.
My gut instinct told me not to mention his mum. ‘I think he needs some furniture moving. New stuff. I won’t be long.’
When I reached his front door, it was ajar.
‘Hello?’
‘Come in, we’re in the kitchen.’ The first thing I noticed was an expensive Jo Malone diffuser balanced on the hallway radiator cover, acting as an inept decoy for another very discernible smell. If someone had blindfolded me and spun me around outside then plonked me inside Nick’s house, I would have known immediately that this was a man’s pad. The kitchen had been revamped with shiny black cabinets and sparkly granite work surfaces. There were no utensil jars or pictures on the stark white walls. Nothing personal cluttered up the surfaces apart from a scented candle on the windowsill. In the words of Amanda: the space was energetically male.
The older lady was lying prostrate on the black and white tiled kitchen floor with her leg bent awkwardly. I didn’t understand why Nick couldn’t help her up.
‘Oh, you poor thing, are you OK?’ I bent down to hesitantly grab her arm. She was like a frail baby bird fallen from the safety of its nest.
‘I’m fine, just a bit dizzy. Nick can’t help me – he’s just had a hernia operation and might bust his stitches.’ She laughed softly and Barbara Windsor came to mind. Maybe it was her curly white hair and naughty eyes or possibly her gravelly voice, though the distinct northern accent was very un-Babs.
‘Is your leg OK?’ Nick uselessly hovered behind me as I helped his mum up to standing. ‘Do you need your stick?’
‘I’m fine. I don’t need my stick… What’s your name? Nick didn’t say. I just asked him to call you over because you waved earlier. I’m Linda.’
‘Alison, call me Ali. Can you put weight on the leg?’ She tentatively tried and winced. ‘How bad is the pain?’ I thought once more about the ambulance, a common occurrence in the soap operatic Mews.
‘It’s not because I fell, it’s just normal pain.’
‘Thanks for helping,’ Nick butted in. ‘I’m sure we don’t want to keep you any longer from your little girl.’
‘Oh, you have a little girl?’ his mum asked, sitting down at the circular white kitchen table and straightening up her black trousers. ‘How old is she?’
‘She’s five going on thirty-five. She’s called Grace. My neighbour is watching her for me.’
‘What a lovely name. Nick, why don’t you offer Ali a glass of wine or something?’
He glared at her and she glared back, a spikey unspoken communication whiplashing between them.
‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked woodenly like an actor reading through his lines.
‘I’m fine, thanks. I should get back. Are you’re sure your leg is OK to walk on?’
Linda stood up warily, holding on to the table and rested her weight from one foot to the other and then gave me a stilted twirl.
‘Go on, stay for a drink. I don’t get out much and Nick never has guests.’
Probabl
y because he was an awkward bugger, I thought, but I liked Linda. She seemed like fun.
‘OK, just one, then I’d better leave.’
‘Red or white?’ Nick asked, obviously unimpressed with his mum hijacking the situation.
‘Red, please.’
‘I’ll have red too, please,’ Linda chimed in.
‘Mum, you really shouldn’t.’
‘One glass won’t hurt.’ He tutted and pressed one of the cupboard doors behind him and it slowly lifted horizontally revealing two shelves of neatly ordered wine glasses and mugs grouped together by size and use. All the flutes were clustered on the right upper shelf, stable-mates with the everyday wine glasses, and the lower shelf housed the mugs and water glasses.
Nick placed two small glasses of red down on the table in front of us both.
‘Are you not having one?’ I asked.
‘I have work tomorrow.’
‘All work and no play makes Nick a dull boy,’ Linda deadpanned, her aphorism obviously meant to gently sting. He rolled his eyes. I felt like I had started a box set two discs in, jumping the explanatory opening.
‘Fine.’ He got himself a glass and poured a measly slosh of wine in it and sat opposite us. His lip twitched and he drummed his fingers on the table a few times so I had to turn my attention on Linda to quell my own uneasiness.
‘So, Ali, what do you do?’
I launched into my stylist spiel and ended with the vlog.
‘Well, we have to watch it now you’ve said that.’ Linda clapped her hands together excitedly. ‘Nick, where’s your laptop?’
‘No, please, not when I’m here. It’s embarrassing. Look when I’ve gone home, if you must.’
‘I do love clothes and I used to love dressing up, but I don’t get out to the shops any more, and online isn’t the same as real browsing.’
‘How come?’
‘Oh, various things, mostly because I have MS.’
‘Multiple sclerosis?’ I asked uncertainly.
‘Yes. I haven’t been able to drive for a few years and get tired so easily.’
‘Mum, I thought you weren’t going to talk about it,’ Nick said brusquely.
‘Oh, Nick, it’s not a secret.’
He sipped his wine silently.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said, genuinely sad for her. ‘Does it affect you badly?’
‘I’m in constant pain and have bad muscle spasms, which is why I fell over earlier. My vision can deteriorate too when I have a prolonged attack. It’s boring and I’ve had it for years, but old age and the menopause have made it worse.’ She sighed and picked up her wine.
‘So you don’t go out at all?’
‘I do occasionally. My daughter, Lesley, Nick, and John, my husband, take me. However, the most convenient way to get around now is in a wheelchair, and that’s so bulky in clothes shops and none of them are interested in fashion like I am…’
‘Are there drugs you can take? Is there a cure?’
Nick subtly stiffened in my peripheral vision.
‘No cure – it’s degenerative. But people can live with it for decades successfully as I have, and some people eventually die from it. There are certain things that can give pain relief but they’re—’
‘Mum!’ Nick snapped.
‘I’m sorry, Ali, Nick doesn’t like to be reminded about it all the time.’
‘I should probably go.’ I necked my wine, eager to escape whatever was simmering under the surface here. He must be a fucking spy – he was so weird and insular, his house so devoid of any personal touches as if to keep his identity a secret. Then I remembered the dating profile. Would a spy go on Tinder? Wouldn’t it be a security breach? Unless he just shagged and left like James Bond, but looking at him in his geeky specs I couldn’t conjure up a love rat or a dynamic killing machine.
‘It was lovely to meet you, Ali,’ Linda said warmly. ‘I’ll look your blog thingy up online.’
Nick stood up abruptly and pushed his chair out behind him.
‘I’ll see you out.’ He made it sound like I was going to filch something. As I walked into the hall, a very faint smell wafted up my nostrils. I couldn’t tell what it was now with the Jo Malone diffuser almost masking it. Maybe my nose had desensitised since being in the house, like when you unconsciously douse yourself in perfume and everyone else is coughing up a lung from inhaling your fumes.
‘Thanks so much for helping out. I’m sorry about my mum going on.’
‘I don’t mind, it’s fine.’ I stood on the threshold, one foot on the step, one on his pristine doormat. Maybe he would be less weird if he actually talked to people? ‘You know there are Mews BBQs most weeks, don’t you?’
‘Maybe. I can’t remember.’
‘You should come to one. Samantha’s hosting next week’s from six.’ He stared at me blankly.
‘I’ll see.’
‘OK, no worries, bye.’
Before he’d even shut his door, Norman’s door flung open.
‘Hey,’ he hissed at me from the front step. ‘How come you were in there?’
Norman was in a dressing gown again.
‘His mum fell over and needed help.’
‘I’ve lived next door to him for three years and he’s never ever asked me in there. I’ve invited him countless times here.’
‘Maybe he’s shy?’
‘No, he’s odd. Did you notice the funny pong? I can smell it on my upstairs landing sometimes. It must come from his side because it’s not me!’
‘No, Norman, there was no smell and everything was normal. Good night.’
19
Nick
Nick walked back into the kitchen after he’d shut the door on Ali, picked up her glass from the table and placed it carefully in the sink. Through the window he watched her walk back to her house and let herself in, lit by the streetlight outside the college professor’s house. He couldn’t remember her name.
‘She was a nice girl,’ his mum said in an overly casual way that meant something else entirely.
‘Hmm,’ he replied non-committedly. He squeezed some washing-up liquid on the sponge and ran it round the rim of the glass, eradicating the lipstick smudge, then inside to clean out the red wine residue. He then rinsed off all bubbles and placed it upside down on the draining rack.
‘How long have you lived here now?’
‘Three years.’
‘And you don’t know anyone.’
‘Ali’s new – she’s only just moved in.’
‘I’m not talking about her; all the others she’s friends with. If she’s just moved in, how come she’s already going round for drinks to people’s houses and getting involved?’
‘Mum, you know why I don’t get involved with the neighbours.’ He’d sat back down now and thought about having another glass of wine, but voted against it. He couldn’t risk it in case he had to drive in an emergency.
‘Nick, even before all this, you hadn’t talked to them.’
He shrugged. He didn’t like talking to people if he didn’t have to. He had to talk all day at work, lead teams, direct people, when he got home he just wanted to not talk. His mum used to make life-long friends just waiting at a bus stop when she was younger. As much as he hated to admit it, he was more like his dad. His sister was somewhere in between the two extremes.
‘Mum, I’m not like you, I like my space.’
She eyed him from above her wine glass. ‘Do you go on dates?’
He rolled his eyes. Here we go…
‘Not that it’s any of your business, but I do go out, yes.’
‘I just want you to be happy.’ His mum was one of those people who thought you could only be happy if you were married or in a relationship. His dad drove her round the bend a lot of the time but, at the end of the day, Nick knew she would be lost without him. It was almost like she had to have him there to complain about or life wasn’t happening. Maybe it was watching their lopsided marriage, the fact that his mum was so
reliant on her husband even before she had major relapses, that made him less inclined to get to that point with women.
Nick’s friends up north were mostly married or with someone, or getting divorced. He was the only one who had never found ‘The One’. He didn’t believe in ‘The One’. He was too logical for that kind of thinking. For him it was most likely all down to timing. He’d had girlfriends in the past, in his twenties, and he’d actually been in love with one of them, but getting married wasn’t on the set of cards he’d dealt himself. Shelley had got sick of waiting and said she wasn’t wasting her time on someone who wasn’t committed to the same things she wanted. He’d been twenty-nine. How was he supposed to know if that was ‘it’ at twenty-nine? He knew how to manage his career, but he couldn’t work out if he wanted something everyone else around him was throwing themselves into.
‘Just because I’m single doesn’t mean I’m about to kill myself because I don’t have another half to share my wonderful life with.’
His mum made a huffy noise and sipped her wine.
‘You’re forty, Nick,’ she replied eventually. ‘Don’t you want to have a family?’
‘What’s brought all this on?’ he asked in a strained voice. He was used to the occasional dig or interrogation and he indulged her, but this felt like a graver level of probing.
‘Nothing.’ She looked out of the window. ‘I just worry I’ll never get to meet anyone you’ll marry because you’re leaving it so late.’
‘Mum, I might never get married and you’ll just have to accept it. It’s not on my dance card.’ She smiled weakly at him. ‘Anyway, you might not like them if I did meet someone.’
‘I would if they were like that nice Alison.’
‘Mum!’ He started laughing. She was like a dog with a bone.
‘Well, I’m allowed. I’m your mother and I worry, that’s all.’
‘Don’t. I’m the one who should be worrying. Bloody Nosy Norman tried to interrogate Ali when she left.’
‘About the smell?’
‘Yep.’
‘What are you going to do?’
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