The Shape of Us: A hilarious and emotional page turner about love, life and laughter

by Drew Davies

  Belinda gives a long drawn-out sigh.

  ‘It’s this stupid antenatal class. All these north London Stepford wives and their bland, boring husbands. You should see how much they pity me.’

  ‘Why doesn’t Frank go with you?’

  ‘I haven’t asked him to.’

  JoJo grunts. She can’t really see Frank doing breathing exercises with the other mummies and daddies. He was more of a cigar-in-the-waiting-room kind of man.

  ‘I would go by myself,’ says Belinda, ‘but I’m scared I’ll jinx everything. I’m convinced I’m doing it all wrong as it is.’

  ‘Can’t you take your mother?’

  ‘She’s not well. And anyway, she doesn’t approve.’

  ‘Of antenatal classes?’

  ‘Of the baby. Of Frank too. Of anything really.’

  JoJo thinks of Frank, tucked up serenely in their bed, and fights the impulse to go tip a pint glass of water over him. He should be taking more responsibility, she thinks angrily, it was his duty.

  ‘I’ll talk to Frank,’ JoJo says, clearing her throat, although how she’d bring it up without blowing her cover, she had no idea. She was basically a double agent in her own life. ‘Leave it with me.’

  ‘Please don’t,’ says Belinda anxiously. ‘It’s fine, you’re right – I’ll sleep on it. Everything will be better in the morning…’

  ‘What’s the problem now?’

  ‘You know what Frank’s like. It’s almost worse when he takes an interest. And really, he’s doing his bit: he’s buying vitamins and reading books.’ This is news to JoJo, and she feels a tight pinch in her side. ‘I needed to vent and now I feel better, so thank…’

  ‘When’s the class?’ JoJo finds herself saying.

  There’s a slight pause.

  ‘On Saturday.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘One o’clock, but…’

  ‘I don’t think I’m doing anything on Saturday.’

  ‘JoJo, I didn’t mean…’

  ‘Nonsense! If you give me the details, I can meet you there.’

  ‘That’s… really… are you sure?’

  ‘Of course, but Belinda?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’ll owe me one.’

  Adam returns to the corner office in a daze. He checks the time on his phone: it’s a few minutes past midnight – all the adrenaline from his encounter with Cara has drained from his body now and he feels sluggish and tired. Peeking through the blinds, he tries to spot the new cameras (he can’t see any, but that’s the point – there might be one trained on him this very minute) before recoiling from the window and nervously sitting down at the desk. Turning on the computer, Adam finds he can still access local files, but the intranet now has an ominous new security page (and his old login details don’t work).

  To calm himself, Adam opens one of the Excel spreadsheets from the pile of documents on the desktop. He scrolls down the long list of numbers and notes – he remembers this one, he’d changed ‘Valution Pint’ to ‘Valuation Point’ and ‘Anal Management Charge’ to the markedly more appropriate ‘Annual Management Charge’. He’d also tweaked the font (Verdana was so uninviting, Arial worked much better on the page) and tidied up the alignment. The row numbers speed away – 5,645, 10,193, 15,022 – until he reaches the end of the data list. Here, he stops. At the bottom of the spreadsheet, on the last line of the column, someone has written: ‘Hello?’

  Adam stares at the innocuous word for a very long time, so long in fact, black spots start to blur his vision. He clicks the cell in the next column – the black spots in his eyes fading to a bruised purple. ‘Hi’ he types, saving the changes, closing the document and shutting down the computer.

  He sits staring at the wall. What has he done? A grenade had been thrown at his feet, and instead of running for cover, he’d ignored it and lobbed another one back. Something was about to detonate. The only question was – when?

  It happened most nights between three and four – the racing heart, the sweating, the tightening of her chest. Strangely, it was worse if Frank stayed. During the weeks when JoJo was alone, at least she could walk the length of the house, or turn on the World Service to distract herself until she was so drowsy, this new bout of sleep anaesthetised her completely. With Frank beside her, JoJo was forced to lie still – he was a deep sleeper, true, but the risk of accidentally waking him was too great. There could be no witnesses in this secret, shameful place...

  Her father, of course. His death when JoJo was six. Her mother’s grief and resentment; the farm slipping into disrepair. Leaving South Africa without saying goodbye to her family, not properly. Flying on an aeroplane for the first time: the adrenaline, the fear and the deep sense of what now? The rogue’s gallery of men who hurt her – or tried to – before she developed tough, rubbery skin. The indifference of the doctor bearing news after JoJo’s hysterectomy. Everyone who labelled her ‘great fun’ or ‘feisty’ at parties, but neglected to invite her again. And the people (almost always women) who called her ‘insensitive’ or ‘heartless’ to her face, when JoJo was only protecting herself from an ocean of emotions. ‘You handled that so well,’ others would say, more recently. ‘I would have gone to pieces…’ Come and stand at the foot of my bed each night, JoJo felt like screaming, and then see!

  But mainly it was Frank. She’d been so careful not to fall apart, she’d never cried, not once – it wasn’t seemly, her mother would not have approved, she didn’t want to appear broken – but she was, oh she was, and it was only here, wilfully paralysed in the dark, that her truest anger appeared. It would build then, furiously – everything Frank had done to her, the betrayal! – and here she was, lying next to him as if none of it had happened. JoJo wanted to beat him with her fists, beat herself, tear at her chest and wail. How could she think so little of herself to try and win back this liar? Her blood boils! She seethes! Her feet arch and her fingernails almost cut the skin in the fists of her hands. JoJo wants to curl into a ball, and for her mother, and grandmother, and all of her female relatives going back generations, to coddle her in their arms. She imagines death. She imagines the ground swallowing her whole. This is how it goes, almost every night.

  But now, a new image creeps in from JoJo’s subconscious. It takes a few moments for her to figure out who the hell this man is. Some old flame perhaps, sent to torture her? But no – it’s the Duke, she realises. Belinda’s closeted Duke. JoJo’s seen so many photos of him – always smiling, as if the viewer has stumbled upon some wondrous moment, the Duke clutching the hand of a pretty, well-dressed young woman – the images are burned into her brain. But why him? What demon does he represent? And then she understands – it’s his eyes. The ‘aren’t-we-having-fun-ness’ trying desperately to mask the deceit. Just like Frank, when he came home a little too jolly, a little too ‘everything-is-fine’ – his eyes giving him away before JoJo found the note in his wallet, before there was even an inkling of suspicion. In every photo, the Duke has this exact same expression. JoJo thinks of his lover then – the son of the Sheik – and what he must see in those photos; the defence and the apology all rolled into one. It’s not really happening. I’m sorry, it’s not really happening. But it was, it was! The foolish Duke, his poor secret lover! And JoJo knew how ridiculous it was to cry over strangers, especially ones who could afford to buy a Caribbean island – this was all a hysterical projection – but it’s easier to cry over the tragedy of others, especially in the seething darkness. And so JoJo sobs for these two men playing out their games of deception, and finally, for herself, and sometimes even for Frank, the tears streaming down either side of her face, JoJo unable to move and wipe them, hoping against hope that her pillow will be dry by sunrise.

  A foreign noise jerks Dylan awake. Illuminating the corner of his bedroom is an odd beam of light and his brain takes a few moments to register its meaning. The Janelle phone! He jumps out of bed and snatches it off his chest of drawers – he’s shaking, he’s so exc
ited. The text message reads:

  Oh, Dylan, why is this happening to me?

  Dylan writes:

  What’s happening?

  Five minutes go by. They are the longest five minutes Dylan has ever experienced in his life.

  The phone beeps.

  I’m scared.

  Of what?

  He sits on his bed, waiting for a response, but after twenty minutes he climbs back into bed to keep warm, and the next thing he knows, it’s morning.

  Twelve

  Not wanting to tempt fate twice, they make their journey by train this time, boarding at Marylebone station with coffees, pastries and an ecologically irresponsible number of the Saturday papers. Once on the carriage, they snag a table by a window and settle down, still wearing their coats and scarves to ward off the late November cold.

  Neither has slept well, so as the train pulls away from the station, they huddle together, eyes closed, occasionally mustering up the strength to take sips of their coffees. Daisy imagines she’ll sleep, but before she can nod off, they’re disturbed by a gang of train-walkers roaming the aisles for better seats, laughing and banging the carriage door as they go. Maybe just as well, she thinks, sitting up. Last night, she’d been visited by a spectral Cara, her voice ringing in Daisy’s ears like Marley’s ghost: ‘I told him it was too soon. We’d only been going out for a few months… too soon! Too sooooon!’ Dream Daisy had phoned Dream Chris in a panic, but he’d never picked up or returned any of her calls, and when she’d tried to message him instead, the buttons were wrong, the vowels all Egyptian hieroglyphs, only adding to her anxiety. Why was he ignoring her? she’d thought. What if Cara was right? And could the cat sphinx symbol be an ‘a’ or possibly an ‘i’?

  Chris is staring out the window, a dopey expression on his face. Daisy puts aside her unsettling dream and takes a moment to appreciate how lucky she is to have fallen for one of the nice boys finally. She wants to squeeze his ribs, or take a bite out of his freshly shaven jaw.

  ‘We should’ve brought a hip flask,’ Chris says in a hoarse voice, turning to meet her gaze.

  ‘And arrive half-cut? No, thank you!’

  Chris shrugs and faces the window again.

  ‘What are they like?’ asks Daisy.

  ‘Don’t want to ruin the surprise.’

  She is quiet for a second, before asking coaxingly: ‘Are you more like your mum or dad?’

  ‘My dad, I guess.’

  ‘I bet you look like him.’

  This was only an assumption, as there were no family photos anywhere in his flat (not that Daisy had snooped – okay, yes, she’d snooped).

  Chris doesn’t respond – Daisy wants to grab his lovely jaw and give it a good yank. Instead, she tries a slightly different tack:

  ‘When was the last time you visited them?’

  ‘Hold on, you have an eyelash,’ he says.

  Daisy knows all of Chris’s avoidance techniques by now, but she lets him gently scrape the inside of her eye with his finger and hold it out to her.

  ‘Make a wish.’

  She can’t see anything, but Daisy dutifully blows on his finger.

  I’m about to meet your parents, she screams in her head as the imaginary eyelash flutters away, and you’ve not told me anything! Not one thing!

  The train chugs on through the outer boroughs. Chris takes a bite of his Chelsea bun and reads their horoscopes aloud from all the papers. Mystic Meg tells Daisy, a Taurus, to ‘take a closer look at relationships and reassess them on both an emotional and practical level,’ (‘Gulp,’ says Chris), while The Telegraph suggests it might be time to ‘stop putting off difficult decisions.’ Chris, an Aries, is ‘going on a journey,’ (full marks), but shouldn’t ‘set too many expectations,’ or he’ll ‘find [himself] in dangerous water,’ (ominous). And with ‘Pluto at odds with Uranus’ (unfortunate), ‘things may not go to plan.’

  ‘We should call for a live personal consultation,’ Chris says. ‘It’s only seventy-seven pence per minute.’

  Daisy snorts: ‘And ask why their predictions are all so different?’

  Chris folds the newspaper and places it on the table.

  ‘The real art is figuring out which ones are genuine.’

  ‘The horoscopes with good news, you mean?’

  ‘Bingo,’ he says, the ‘O’ developing into a long yawn.

  The rest of the hour passes in a similar dozy fashion, interrupted only by the ticket inspector, and their bladders. Their arrival at their destination – Aylesbury (a market town an hour out of London) – catches them off guard, and they have to rush to make it off the train in time.

  It’s bitter outside. Three cars wait in the small car park, and from one especially shiny Mercedes steps a sandy-haired man in a dark blue shirt and pressed trousers.

  ‘Here we go,’ says Chris under his breath, squeezing Daisy’s hand.

  ‘Christopher!’ the man calls.

  ‘Dad!’

  The two men hug and slap each other’s backs (a good sign, thinks Daisy) and then Chris’s father – introducing himself as Jack – sticks out his hand rather formally. Daisy’s prediction was right – Chris does look like his father: taller, less crinkly, and without the frosting of dandruff, but otherwise a carbon copy. She shakes Jack’s hand, but also opts for a simultaneous cheek-kiss, somehow managing, as she leans forward, to pull his clasped hand into her cleavage. Classy, she thinks, as Chris opens the rear door of the Mercedes for her, good start.

  Inside the car, Daisy realises Chris is sitting up front with his father. Of course, she thinks, probably doesn’t want his dad to feel like the chauffeur – but she can’t help feeling like a wayward child abandoned in the rear of the saloon.

  ‘This your first time to Aylesbury, Daisy?’ asks Jack as they set off.

  ‘It is,’ she replies. ‘Seems lovely,’ she adds charitably, as they’ve barely left the station.

  ‘Looks can be deceiving. We’re having a huge problem with the gypsies at the moment.’

  ‘Dad…’

  ‘What? It’s a fact.’

  ‘We don’t call them gypsies anymore.’

  ‘Travellers then. Not that they do much of that. Stay-Putters would be closer to the mark.’

  Rolling his eyes, Chris mouths the word ‘sorry’ to Daisy.

  ‘It’s pandemonium here on the weekends,’ Jack says, tapping the driving wheel with his thumbs. ‘The gypsies start fights with the chavs, and the skateboarders join in and beat up all the goths. It’s like Romford High Street on a Saturday night.’

  ‘When have you ever been to Romford?’

  Jack ignores his son’s question. ‘Puke and blood all over the streets. Sorry, Daisy,’ he says, ‘I shouldn’t be so vulgar with a lady in the car.’

  ‘Let’s talk about something else,’ suggests Chris.

  ‘The police are powerless,’ continues Jack. ‘They’re too afraid of being sued by one of these louts for messing up their hair. It’s mob rule, I tell you.’ He shakes his head sadly. ‘Mob rule.’

  ‘I think it’s a more complex issue, Dad…’

  ‘I’d forgotten you were a human rights crusader. Daisy, did you know my son was going to run off and join the Peacekeeper Corps? – for all of about five minutes, until he realised he might catch a tropical disease or possibly be shot at. Personally, I think it was a ruse to meet Angelina Jolie – although you’d never have stood a chance with those terrible dreadlocks of yours…’

  ‘What?’ Daisy says, propelling her head between the gap of the front seats. ‘Chris had dreads?’

  ‘Glorious, they were. Flowing in the breeze like Botticelli’s Venus. And a breeze was desirable because those things could get pretty whiffy!’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ says Daisy, laughing. ‘I need to see pictures. Oh my God, do you have pictures?’

  ‘They can be arranged,’ Chris’s dad replies jovially.

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ explains Chris, a strain to his voice. �
�And dreads don’t smell, that’s a myth. Wash them once a week and they’re fine.’

  Daisy is still shaking her head in disbelief.

  ‘What made you get dreads?’

  ‘It was a cry for attention,’ says Jack. ‘A way to punish his weary parents.’

  ‘I was twenty-three – I’d been travelling around Brazil. It was the thing to do.’

  ‘There was also a dreadlocked señorita in the mix, if I recall correctly,’ Jack says, raising an eyebrow in the rear-view mirror. ‘Only a pretty woman can make a man do something that ridiculous. Your mother nearly had kittens, she was afraid you’d start tying yourself to trees or throwing red paint on her furs.’

  They stop at a zebra crossing, abruptly, and wait for an elderly pedestrian to totter across the road.

  ‘How is she?’ Chris asks, turning down the heating as they drive on.

  Daisy cranes forward a few inches.

  ‘Your mother? Fine, fine. The same. Actually, no – she’s had a rough week. The azaleas in the glasshouse all performed hara-kiri, en masse. They were rather festive one day and,’ Jack blows a raspberry, ‘gone the next.’

  ‘How awful,’ says Daisy, unsure what hara-kiri meant (but it sounded posh).

  Jack glances at her in the rear-view mirror. ‘So, Daisy, tell me everything. News. Gossip. Embarrassing stories. We never hear a peep from Christopher. Has he joined a cult?’

  Daisy tries to think of something funny yet parent-friendly to share.

  ‘No cults – but he does look a bit like Charles Manson in his new passport photo.’

  ‘Terrifying,’ says Jack, wiggling his eyebrows. ‘So, how long have you lovebirds been dating?’

  ‘Over three months now,’ Daisy replies.

  ‘Cripes, and he’s brought you to meet us already! You’re not pregnant, are you?’

  Jack says this with a grin, but he also locks eyes with Daisy in the rear-view mirror as if waiting for an answer, so she shakes her head vigorously.