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

by Drew Davies

  Still, at least it gave him something to do. Now that his access to the company Wi-Fi had been revoked after the security update, Adam had plenty of time on his hands. Books seemed the obvious answer, but they were in short supply – most were either stuffy business tomes or sports-star autobiographies (and occasionally both at once). He’d found a few works of fiction: American Psycho, Infinite Jest, The Fountainhead, but Adam longed for something fun and pulpy like a Grisham or a Stephen King.

  Over the past twenty-one days, the biggest sacrifice hadn’t been the Internet, or a hot bath, or even a good meal – it was not being able to see Cara. Adam has weighed up the pros and cons of taking a trip to the foyer to catch a glimpse of her, but he knew this was unwise, especially with Mr Maintenance still loose in the building. He had to stick to his own floor, and keep his head down. So, using the frustratingly erratic 3G on his mobile phone, Adam borrowed enough money from online payday lenders to cover rent and bills for the next couple of months. He sent a long text to Patrick, explaining he was on a business trip in Chicago and not to worry. He took meticulous notes on the activities of the cleaners. And he started to exercise again: press-ups and bench dips to work on his arms, squats for his legs. After finding a promotional yo-yo for a local gym under a desk, he practised every night until he had it mastered – walking the dog, rocking the baby, one he nicknamed ‘the rat’s nest’ because it always tangled the string – sending it humming to the floor and back again with a flick of his wrist. He would sit for hours, in a trance-like state, not thinking about anyone or anything: not Cara, or Mr Maintenance, or his painfully empty stomach – but as soon as the rhythm of the yo-yo was broken, Adam would snap out of his daze and find himself on the fourth floor of a building overlooking St Paul’s without fully understanding how he’d got there.

  In his bedroom, Dylan rifles through his wardrobe, removing the black bomber jacket, buried deep within. When his fingers touch the leather, it’s so cold and oily-feeling, it seems almost wet. The jacket had been an unexpected present from his mother two years ago, sent randomly it seemed, as it didn’t coincide with his birthday and was too early for Christmas (there had been a note, which his dad offered to read out loud, and then left strategically around the flat, but Dylan had actively avoided it. What could it contain except disappointments?). When the jacket first arrived, it was comically big on him, but now Dylan tries it on in front of the wardrobe mirror. It doesn’t exactly go with his Adventure Time pyjama bottoms, but yes – it’s a good fit, the sleeves not too long at all. It was definitely an upgrade to his image – he could almost pass as a French film star from the sixties (possibly, Dylan still hadn’t watched that film).

  He wishes he’d remembered the jacket earlier and worn it to school the other day. Maybe it would have made him feel more confident. Dylan and his father had gone to see Mr Lacey, the Head of Year, to talk about sitting GCSEs. Mr Lacey had been very careful with his language, making sure to refer to Dylan’s ‘situation’ and ‘the circumstances we find ourselves in’, never mentioning the word ‘illness’, and from anyone else, this might have been considered tact. From Mr Lacey, however, it meant only one thing: he still didn’t believe them. The boy was making it up: his ‘illness’ was the result of downright laziness, bad parenting or a character flaw. Dylan had bit the inside of his mouth. What about all the tests? The doctors, the specialists, the therapists. The weeks his father had to take off work? Why would they make that up? After twenty-five minutes, the outcome of the meeting was this: even with his extra study, Dylan had missed too much coursework and would have to be put back a year – unless Mr Moon wanted to home-school? Mr Lacey had seemed unabashedly hopeful.

  Afterwards, Dylan and his father walked through the H Block corridor, towards the car park. H Block was exactly the same: the crisp packets on the floor, the beat-up lockers, the smell of marker pens and Lynx deodorant.

  ‘Might not be all bad,’ Dylan’s father had said, ‘You’ve covered so much of the reading material, you’ll be ahead of the game for once.’

  Dylan had walked faster, mentally hurrying them both along. At any moment the bell might ring, and hundreds of his classmates would surge into the corridors, pushing and yelling, and either stare – or worse – completely blank him. To be invisible to your peers was to be practically worthless.

  * * *

  Touching the soft leather of the jacket one last time, Dylan takes off the jacket and returns it to the wardrobe, sits down at the computer desk, and launches his blog. He’d procrastinated for a week, but yesterday the words had finally started to flow:

  End of an Era

  Sorry I haven’t been posting very much anymore. Truth is, I’ve decided to stop this blog. I still want to write, I even have a typewriter to help me now, but I want to focus on important things – not just random stuff in my life. Sometimes it feels like an echo chamber of my thoughts bouncing around my head. I know that was the point when I started the blog, to express myself, but now I need to be braver about how I communicate those thoughts. And to whom. That’s the next challenge, I suppose.

  * * *

  Anyway, I’m going to delete everything tomorrow. Bye.

  Moon over Croydon

  Dylan is about to navigate away, when he notices two comments on the post:

  Sorry to see you go :-) Crystal

  * * *

  Best of luck… liked your blog - G

  He can’t believe it – actual people have left comments! Dylan feels a pang of regret, but he can’t back down now. He needs to rid himself of all distractions and focus. He thinks of Janelle’s note with the typewriter: ‘now go get ’em’. His heart swells at the thought of her. He was coming, Janelle! Dylan hoped he was in time.

  At the bottom of Account Settings is a big red ‘Delete account’ button. Dylan hovers the cursor over it. Should he keep the blog for posterity’s sake? What if his kids wanted to see it one day? He imagines if his own father had kept a blog at his age, would he want to read it? Dylan clicks the red button and the browser churns, spitting him out onto the generic homepage.

  He takes a deep breath. There’s still a lot to organise. Transport, for one. The train isn’t an option after his last disastrous journey (and anyway, Dylan wanted to travel in style). Whichever way he made the journey, it might be sensible to have someone with him, in case anything unexpected happened. And it obviously couldn’t be his dad.

  Picking up his phone, Dylan brings up his contact list. He scrolls down to C and pauses. If he opens this can of worms, there’s no way to retroactively close it. Maybe he could make the trip by himself? A vision of bright blue vomit flashes into his mind…

  Chris answers the call after only one ring: ‘The Twilight Saga,’ he trills, ‘New Moon Rising in da house, what’s up fo shizzle, my nizzle?’

  Oh my God, thinks Dylan, what have I done?

  JoJo puts down the phone and settles back in her armchair. She’d forgotten this feeling – the warm tingly afterglow, the buoyant hopefulness of it all. The last time she’d experienced anything like this was decades ago. Kicking off her shoes, JoJo rests her head so she’s staring up at the ceiling, her bare feet wiggling. She’s still not sure about his name though: Keith Lepsis. It sounded like an incurable disease.

  After their altercation on the street a few weeks back, JoJo had followed Keith to his beat-up Nissan Micra, and squeezed into the front seat, kicking aside the empty fast food cartons. While he’d taken off his coat, Keith had popped his camera on the seat next to her, and JoJo considered snatching it up – and what? Sprinting off with it? Dashing it against the pavement? That wouldn’t have helped anyone, not in the long run.

  Once on the road, Keith had begun to quiz JoJo about her life, and two things became apparent: he was fishing to see if Mr JoJo was in the picture, and they had driven by at least three cash machines. Instead of finding this alarming or sleazy, JoJo began to enjoy the flirtation (making sure she didn’t lower her guard too much – this was a papar
azzo after all) so by the time they reached the West End she even consented to having a quick drink in a bar he knew well. And that was how JoJo, still in her antenatal class outfit, found herself drinking caipirinhas in a Salsa club until the early hours of Sunday morning (but not before JoJo made Keith fetch the camera memory stick and smash it under the foot of his bar stool). She’d eventually warmed to his looks too – yes, his eyes were deep-set, but there was a sparkle to them, and he appeared less weasely as the night wore on. At some point in their conversation, he must have mentioned he was forty-two; he never asked JoJo’s age though, or mentioned her wedding ring, and she kept schtum about both.

  When the evening was over, they parted without a kiss, but Keith asked for her number and surprised her a few days later by calling to arrange a second meeting (she couldn’t bring herself to call it a date). JoJo wondered if she liked him, or the idea of being liked. Either way, there had been three such ‘meetings’ now, and the matter of her age still hadn’t come up. Perhaps he was a granny chaser? She knew they existed. Or maybe he was after her money? He didn’t seem to have an agenda when they were together. They talked about US politics, and the legalisation of prostitution, and hypocrisies in the government’s stance on drugs (despite papping celebrities for the right-wing press, he was a diehard lefty), but most of all, they made each other laugh. It felt good to break free from the petty dramas of her life, to leave thoughts of Belinda and Frank far behind.

  Obviously, JoJo hadn’t told anyone about her liaisons (no, absolutely not, ‘liaison’ was more appalling than ‘date’), but Frank, perhaps sensing a shift in their dynamic, had become uncharacteristically needy the past fortnight. She knew she was being a terrible hypocrite, but there were definite merits to having the ball in your court for a change. The small things no longer bothered her: when Frank arrived late for a meal, or if she caught the smell of perfume on his shirt, or whenever he slipped away to make a call. And really, there wasn’t much to tell. JoJo had met someone interesting, and they were getting to know each other. They had eventually kissed, but as affairs went, it was all rather tame. And his surname was Keith Lepsis, for Christ’s sake! It reminded JoJo of a boil that needed lancing.

  She picks up her mobile – she should probably ring Belinda back at some point. After the class, Belinda left several messages – JoJo purposefully avoided her calls, sending her a text instead, explaining she was fine, just busy.

  JoJo traces a crack along the plaster that runs from the light fitting all the way to the opposite corner of the room. She should really get it seen to. There was a time when Frank would have coveted a job like that, crashing around on a ladder, but not anymore – he didn’t have the legs for it. Was the same true for her? If JoJo’s relationship with Keith (Christ no, ‘relationship’ was even worse than ‘liaison’) evolved naturally, certain things would be expected. Why was she being coy? – sooner or later, they were going to fuck. The concept isn’t completely terrifying, which comes as a sort of revelation. JoJo remembers something then – the trip to Ann Summers, her hard-won purchases – where had she put them? She never had found an ideal moment to introduce them to Frank (although he’d found the whisky and guzzled that down happily, so much for that being a pawn in her original scheme to get him drunk and jazz things up in the bedroom). Would she have put them at the back of her underwear drawer, or in a box under the bed? And did they come with their own batteries, she wonders drowsily. Talking to Keith in the afternoons (when it was safest to chat) always did this to JoJo – the conversation itself wasn’t sleep-inducing, but the afterglow seemed to melt away any tension.

  Yes, she’d hidden them in the drawer, she remembers now. And there were spare batteries in the kitchen. Maybe she’d have a nap first. Or then again, maybe she wouldn’t.

  At midnight, the building’s heating system flipped onto standby, sending the temperature plummeting, so Adam made sure he was in his nest of coats, generating as much warmth as possible before the early morning chill. His makeshift mattress, created using foraged jumpers and cushions, didn’t protect against the hard floor or getting a painful crick in his neck, and he’d often wake up shivering so much it felt like he was having a mini seizure.

  Adam empties his pockets and finding the shrivelled grapes he’d taken from the fridge, throws them into his mouth as he strips down to his underwear and socks (it would be warmer to keep his clothes on, but he can’t afford the wrinkles). He lies down, adjusting himself to make sure he’s not visible from the doorway. Sleeping on his side, using a bundled-up leather jacket as his pillow and tucking his knees up into the foetal position works best, but tonight he can’t get comfortable. It’s his stomach. An almost exclusive diet of sugar and wheat (not to mention all the lactose!) is taking its toll: stomach cramps, constipation, bloating, and terrible, crippling gas.

  Unable to sleep after an hour, Adam gives up, puts his clothes back on and turns on the computer. As the machine boots up, he arranges the leather jacket over both his head and the monitor (like the cape on an old-timey tripod camera) to stop the screen from leaking light and to help keep warm. When the computer’s ready, he launches the master Excel document, and scrolls down to the discussion thread.

  Hello?

  Hi

  What on earth had made Adam reply? It was an involuntary reaction, he’d told himself the following day: when someone waves, you instinctively wave back. But something else had occurred to him: what if, on some level, he’d wanted to get caught? He’s definitely lonely and desperately craves human contact. Either way, there had been no one waiting in the office to apprehend him that evening. The security guards had continued their rounds as normal. The only follow-up from their interaction had been a new message in the Excel document:

  * * *

  Who is this, please?

  * * *

  Now Adam was caught. But something gave him pause. Adam knew the daytime owner of the office wasn’t technically savvy. Maybe he didn’t understand even the basics of IT security? There was only one way to find out. Under ‘Who is this, please?’ he had typed:

  * * *

  Computer support

  * * *

  When he’d nervously logged in the next night, a longer response was waiting:

  * * *

  Ah yes. Thanks for fixing mistakes. Old dog and all that.

  * * *

  Adam had written back:

  * * *

  No problem – it’s my job!

  * * *

  And that’s how it had begun.

  At first, their discussions were simply operational: how to change the name of a document, or calculate a set of numbers, or remove an annoying function, and Adam was happy to oblige. But as the days progressed, they created new threads on different tabs, allowing them to have several conversations at once, and moving on to new topics: football, Formula One, the state of the economy, until they finally came round to the issue of women.

  * * *

  Don’t get me started. Adam had written a few nights ago: There is someone, but it’s complicated.

  * * *

  Ha. You don’t know what complicated is. Came the reply the next day.

  * * *

  Why? Are you married? Have a girlfriend?

  * * *

  Yes. And yes. That’s the complication. Especially as it appears I love them both.

  * * *

  Adam now clicks the box under this text and types:

  * * *

  Alright for some.

  * * *

  He saves this, and moves on to another discussion thread on a new tab. Yesterday, he’d found:

  * * *

  I never asked your name?

  * * *

  Adam had sweated over this for hours. Should he give a false name? Would the owner of the office not check the employee records? Finally, after running every possible scenario through his head, he’d typed:

  * * *

  Adam.

  * * *

  He scans
to the bottom of the thread. Under his name, he can now see written:

  * * *

  Good to make your acquaintance, Adam. I’m Frank.

  ‘Mister Moon?’ comes the raspy voice on the other end of the phone, ‘I’m outside your pick-up address.’

  Dylan curses Chris. He’s late and the driver is already here.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ he says, ‘I shouldn’t be long, a couple of minutes…’

  ‘Take your time. Whenever you’re ready, sir.’