Tartly, Becca said, ‘I don’t mind. It’s good for a woman to know her husband thinks she’s obese.’
Having gritted his teeth and hung on in there, Leon had been promoted from internet date to husband.
‘She’s off!’ chuckled Leon. Having snaffled Becca he existed in a personal weather system of blue skies and sunshine. Her harsh words were balm, her incessant criticism muzak.
‘Of course you’re not fat, Becca, pet.’ Mum prowled the room, opening up Christmas cards, hoping to find more autographs for the collection she browbeat her book group with.
‘You’re a bit fat, Mummy.’ Flo’s honesty earned herself a quelling Flo-rence! from Charlie, who made an Oh my God face at Kate above his daughter’s head.
‘It’s my metabolism.’ Becca’s metabolism was often named and shamed: she refused to believe her extra poundage was anything to do with her constant eating. As she grew larger, so did her appeal. Becca was ripe, round, juicy: an eloquent retort to the fat-phobics who would round up all of womankind and herd them to the gym. Much of their income from Leon’s career as a current affairs camera operator went on glossing, veneering and waxing Becca, as if she was a municipal building that required constant upkeep. ‘If I even look at a cream cake I put on weight.’
‘Then don’t look at them.’ Flo couldn’t grasp the problem.
‘Ooh.’ Mum murmured happily to herself as she slipped an arty card into her bag. ‘Michael Fassbender.’
The length of the table sat between Kate and Angus, but she still felt his paw prints on her body from their lazy morning in his disordered four poster up on the top floor.
Fancying Angus had stolen up on Kate. Just as falling in love was a journey, so was working through lust to find true lovemaking. Kate had always gone for sleeker models, but Angus excited her.
Always on the edge of his seat, primed to dash off, he never dashed too far from Kate. She was, he told her, a long drink of cool refreshing water after his long route march across his very own Sahara. ‘My thirst for you,’ he would say, kissing the top of her head, ‘can never be slaked.’
His recognition of her had been instant; Kate took longer, but tumbling into bed with him had been inevitable after a few dates in low-lit rooms, with claret on tap and the air of debauchery that Angus disseminated even when in a greengrocer’s. Nothing like Warren’s stage-managed squalor, sex with Angus made a wench of her.
Lying together, his big hand on her hip, his hair on end like a dandelion, Angus would talk freely. Not the evasive gushing of his public persona, the way Angus spoke to Kate in bed was a compliment he bestowed on nobody else.
Mum waved a glittery card. ‘Who’s this Esther woman, Angus?’ She was coquettish and it was not nice to look upon.
Kate couldn’t be sure if her mother caught the discreet, distressed shake of her head. Mum was capable of ignoring such a warning. Of enjoying ignoring such a warning.
‘All these kisses!’ Mum pulled in her chin to underline the innuendo. ‘She’s certainly keen on you!’ She peered through her glasses to read. ‘Happy Christmas Big A kiss kiss kiss kiss.’
Not built for speed, Angus was at her side in a moment. Laughing, as ever, he spirited the card into his pocket as Kate felt Becca’s quizzical look boring into the side of her face. Mum’s thoughtlessness had set the ley lines of the table buzzing. She nodded; Yes, that’s her; Becca’s face softened in sympathy.
‘Wish Lucy was here,’ said Flo.
Another glance from Becca to Kate, this time checking that Kate had clocked her noble refusal to comment.
Leon, it would seem, couldn’t resist cliff edges. ‘Lovely girl, that Lucy,’ he sighed.
‘I wish she was here too, Flo,’ said Charlie.
‘To absent friends!’ Angus held up his glass, winking at Kate as the others all found a vessel to raise. The toast wasn’t just for Charlie, it was for Kate’s dad, and for his own spectres.
It had taken a long while to open up to Angus but he’d sniffed out Kate’s truths like a truffle hound. Kate felt older, larger, as if she added up to more than she did before. She felt like a woman. ‘To Angus!’ It was her turn to wink. He was the best, most un-looked for present she’d ever received.
‘Party games!’ shouted Angus.
Flo had begged. ‘Charades! Please!’
As Mum toiled her way through a complicated mime of When Harry Met Sally, Kate crept out to join Charlie in the courtyard, home to a tiled fresco and some bins, and therefore as schizophrenic as the rest of Soho, blending high culture and sleaze.
‘Had to get out,’ said Charlie. ‘To breathe.’
‘I understand.’ Who better to understand? thought Kate. When you’re nursing a bruised heart, Christmas Day is long.
‘Thanks for having me, Kate. It’s not my year to have Flo, so I’d have been on my own.’
‘You’re not a charity case, idiot. You have a mandatory invitation to my life, you know that. Have you written anything today?’ Kate knew all about Charlie’s diligence.
‘Nothing else to do.’
This despondency began when Lucy exited, stage right, three months earlier. Flo’s inability to get her head around why one of her favourite people disappeared tore at the scab each time it formed.
Only some of Charlie’s beans had been spilled; Kate wasn’t sure why he and Lucy had broken up. She knew about a series of rows and stormings out. A tearful reconciliation. A final goodbye. Your average heartbreak.
Lucy had stonewalled his endless phone messages. Charlie’s modus operandi has evidently changed since he split up with me: Kate did her best to keep that bitter thought at bay but sometimes it sneaked in by the back door.
She and Angus invited him to the club for long gossipy dinners: always room for one more at Angus’s table and he knew what Charlie meant to her.
Kate wondered if Angus knew more than that. The buffoonery was a front; Angus could sum folk up in a flash. When the right moment presented itself, Kate would fill him in on her backstory with Charlie. It would resign KateandCharlie to antiquity where they rightfully belonged.
A one man woman, Kate had found somebody else – somebody available, who loved her back – to be that one man.
‘Did Lucy send you a Christmas card?’
‘Nope. Too busy with her new bloke.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘She should be here. I feel all wrong.’ Charlie grasped at his arm as if it was a phantom limb.
Lucy’s defection had put a firework in Becca’s Spanx. ‘Now’s your chance! Charlie’s vulnerable,’ she’d coached. ‘Pounce.’
‘Charlie is not a wounded gnu and I am not a lion.’ Kate didn’t see herself as a pouncer.
‘He’s lonely. He needs you. That silly girl was just a passing fancy. He was blinded by her thigh gap.’
‘You never took the time to get to know Lucy. They were in love. He still is.’
‘Bollocks.’ Becca had been intransigent. ‘You’re the love of Charlie’s life. Go get him.’
Again, the chess board. If Kate and Charlie were to reunite, it would exonerate Becca, put right the wrong she’d done them both. Playing devil’s advocate, Kate had posited, ‘So, I pounce. Charlie isn’t appalled by my lack of sensitivity. No. Charlie takes me in his arms and it’s happy ever after. What about Angus?’ When Becca had made no answer, Kate had carried on. ‘No more parties at the club. No more Christmas lunches.’
That had silenced Becca on the subject. A future where she couldn’t casually name drop Ewan McGregor wasn’t a future she relished.
Like a well-groomed Satan, Becca had tempted the poor sinner, Kate, with a vision of an alternative reality, where Kate and Charlie lived in harmony, together at last. When Charlie’s masterpiece was published to great acclaim, he’d tell interviewers he couldn’t have done it without Kate.
There were other alternative realities, however. Ones where, as in the current reality, Charlie was dropped by his agent and suffered a crisis
of confidence. Alternative Charlie would lash out at alternative Kate, and she would snap back.
And somewhere out there, laughing and singing and lonely as hell, would be Angus.
Mature Kate wasn’t convinced she could cohabit with the mature Charlie. He complained. A lot. He’d turned into a fussy eater. They argued about politics with genuine vehemence.
Whatever happened with Charlie, Kate believed she would have found her way to Angus.
‘Becca’s right,’ said Charlie, in the here and now. ‘Lucy’s too young for me.’
‘Becca’s never right. Love just happens, Charlie.’
‘Was it love?’
‘It looked like it from where I stood.’
‘What now?’ Charlie looked hungrily at Kate, as if she might have the answer to it all.
Kate, who couldn’t even remember the password to her own laptop, was glad to be Charlie’s confessor and confidante, but lately she’d felt stretched. There were only so many times she could say It’s going to be all right. He needed honesty from her. I’ll be there for you: she could promise that. Dad’s favourite Shakespearean nugget came to mind. Thank you, Dad, she thought. ‘To thine own self be true, Charlie,’ she said.
‘Which self, though? The self that’s moping around, writing a book nobody wants to read?’ Charlie straightened up. Brightened. ‘I could come to China with you!’
‘Ah. Well.’
‘Oh no, Kate you’ve—’
‘Cancelled? Yes.’ Kate shrugged. ‘I know. Again.’ Her focus on Yulan House had led, inevitably, to an aspiration to visit Jia Tang.
Charlie bent to interrogate her. His breath smelled of gravy. ‘What’s the reason this time?’
‘I’m too busy with work.’
‘Your company practically runs itself.’
‘Only somebody who’s never run a business would say that.’
‘It’s Angus, isn’t it?’
‘No! He loves Yulan House.’
The white building among the magnolia trees had captured Angus’s imagination. The annual fundraiser at Astor House contributed to the cost of building a clinic in the grounds. Although they didn’t recognise any of them, the children had reportedly loved the video of famous faces wishing them ‘Good luck from London!’ in stuttering Mandarin.
‘It’s a shrine,’ Angus had laughed when he saw the photo of Kate’s spare room she’d sent to Yulan House, the space where she hung photos and displayed the myriad trinkets the children sent her above ranks of files and folders. Spotting the prized ‘Chinese teapot’ snap of a tiny Kate with her dad, he’d asked, ‘Do you think he’d approve of me?’
‘He’d approve of anybody who made me happy.’
When Angus had asked, ‘And I do, don’t I, despite it all?’ there’d been a plea in his voice that jarred with his physical bulk.
Charlie brought her back to him, tousling her hair as if she was Flo. ‘I know Angus loves Yulan House. I meant you won’t go without him. You two are tethered together.’
‘I haven’t had time to fix my place up properly.’
‘Because you’re always here.’
‘I like it here.’
‘And you like Angus, the lucky old lump. When are you both coming to mine? I’m fed up asking.’
‘It’s hard to drag him away from the club. Customers expect to see him.’
‘Just you, then.’ Charlie lifted his chin to look down at her knowingly. ‘Or do you have to ask permission?’
Kate poked him hard, glad he’d found a lighter tone. ‘I stay with Angus because I want to.’ And because I have to.
‘It’s . . . how long since I cooked you dinner? My fish pie isn’t as good as Lucy’s but I do my best.’ Charlie pushed hair that needed a cut out of his eyes. ‘This,’ he said, pointing first at her and then at himself, ‘is good, isn’t it?’
‘What are you on about?’ Kate felt something jump in her breast. Was it panic? Gladness? Through the glazed door she saw Angus lead a conga through the back bar.
‘Friendship,’ Charlie went on. ‘You’re my best friend in the world, Kate. I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
A rush of feeling made Kate bow her head, lips pursed tight.
Charlie put a finger beneath her chin and lifted her face. A sense memory, at a deeper level than thought, silenced Kate. The younger Charlie had done that to her a thousand times and what came next was always a kiss.
‘This,’ said Charlie, ‘is better than what we thought we had. This can’t split up.’
‘Friendship,’ agreed Kate, ‘trumps love every time.’ She stood up, startling Charlie with the abruptness of the movement. ‘Shall we get back to the others?’
Indoors, the party began to peter out. There were more defections.
Charlie slipped away.
Mum’s driver – a female: ‘very modern,’ said Mum – had strict instructions to toot the horn as they entered the close, in case the neighbours hadn’t noticed Mrs Minelli coming home in a Mercedes.
Kilian melted away at some point, and Rosie was picked up by a dubious-looking man.
Torn from her new Wii, Flo wore the scarf knitted for her by Kate as she hopped down the steps with her mother and stepdad, Leon guffawing at his own jokes about the dimensions of Becca’s bottom.
‘Kate, precious, I love your family . . .’ Angus sank like a toppled oak to the sofa.
‘But thank God they’ve gone?’
‘Exactly.’ Angus pulled Kate to him and together they jostled and fidgeted until they’d achieved maximum sofa comfiness.
Outside a lone drunkard sang a carol mash-up. Inside the old house creaked and ticked as the fire crackled. Kate assumed Astor House was haunted. By Ghosts of Piss Ups Past, perhaps. She’d grown accustomed to the odd merger of domesticity and trade, to the green glow of the fire exit sign and the glimpse of the cash register in the back bar.
Holding up her hand, she said, ‘I love my new ring.’
‘Your poor ma thought it was an engagement ring.’
‘Becca put her right.’
Angus’s impression was spot on. ‘No way!’ he flounced, à la Becca. ‘If Angus proposed he’d get her a massive diamond not a stupid pearl.’
‘No offence!’ They mimicked her postscript together.
‘Don’t,’ said Kate gently, staying his hand as Angus reached out for the decanter on a low table. ‘We’re too cosy to move.’ She snuggled deeper, pinning him down. ‘Another Christmas almost over. Today was a microcosm of our relationship.’
‘Don’t call it that. We’re having a grand affair, not a relationship. A conveyor belt of hanky panky and profiteroles.’
‘Whatever you call it, this morning was like our first dates.’ Both of them fresh as daisies, she explained, exploring each other. By the time they put the turkey in the oven they were on to the later dates, sure this was something special, a festive feel in the air. ‘And now, we’re relaxed and languid, because we’ve seen each other at our worst and our best, we’ve shared our secrets and we still love one another.’
‘But today’s not over yet.’ Angus shifted, the better to see Kate’s face. ‘Now you’ve compared today to our relationship, what does that make tomorrow? Our break-up?’
‘Tomorrow is Boxing Day. Just Boxing Day.’
‘How come my secrets haven’t sent you screaming for the door?’
Kate knew he was remembering Mum reading out the Christmas card. Kiss kiss kiss. ‘It was too late. I was already in love.’
‘I’m going to try. Really try, darling.’
‘Angus, don’t promise if you—’
‘I mean it.’
‘Good.’ Such understatement.
The gurglings of their tummies woke them up when they nodded off. Sitting up, sticky eyed, the room was still warm. The open fire, being gas, hadn’t gone out.
‘Almost midnight.’ Kate yawned, her breath noxious enough to qualify as a weapon.
‘Let’s have one last snifter.’ Almost to
ppling off the sofa, Angus leaned over and groped for the brandy.
‘Darling. Remember what you said . . .’ Kate laid her hand on Angus’s arm.
‘Kate, angel, don’t be such a fucking killjoy.’
It was her own fault. Kate had set herself up. Comparing today to their affair meant that their recent past was mirrored in the dregs of Christmas Day.
The fire was out. The lights were turned up full. Kate collected discarded glasses and smeared plates, stepping around the rug.
From the rug, where he lay stranded like an upended turtle, Angus hollered, ‘Look at you! You’re turning into your mother!’
‘Come on, you.’ Kate knelt, carefully jocular. ‘Time for bed.’
As she’d known he would, Angus lashed out, his legs pumping. The predictability of it all was one of the worst aspects of her situation. ‘Unhand me!’
‘It’s late, darling.’
‘The night is young.’
When Angus latched his arms about her neck, Kate used his ardour to heave him up until they both knelt, awkwardly facing each other. It was like a shambling Olympic Floor Exercise. Kate pulled at the much heavier Angus, who, limp and giggling, resisted her.
The four poster was three flights of stairs away. Kate persisted. She did this most nights, so she knew what it took to haul Angus to bed.
Convulsing, Angus broke free and scuttled through to the bar on all fours like a cockroach. ‘Let’s break out the rum!’
‘I’ve had enough to drink,’ said Kate. She added, tentatively, lightly, ‘and so have you, sweetheart! Let’s get you to bed.’
‘Seductress!’ Angus hauled himself to a standing position against the wooden bar counter. He slapped his tummy. ‘You only want me for my body.’ He grasped, like a baby grasps for a rusk, at the optics on the far side of the bar. ‘Plenty of time for monkey business after a tot of rum.’ There would be no monkey business in the four poster that night.
‘OK! I’ll be your barmaid.’ Bright. Chipper. That way she could dilute the booze, although she ran the risk of him charging like a bull if she went too far with that trick. ‘Here’s your rum, kind sir.’
The kiss Angus blew was wet and grotesque.
These Days of Ours Page 20