Somewhere Close to Happy: The heart-warming, laugh-out-loud debut of the year

by Lia Louis

Lizzie: :) that’s made me smile.

  Roman: And you can trust me J. I promise you. With everything. You can. I’m hiding nothing. There are no other versions. Just me.

  Roman: Tall twat with the big gob.

  Lizzie: and swimming float tongue.

  Roman: RENOWNED swimming float tongue cheers.

  Lizzie: and I do trust you.

  Lizzie: more than anyone.

  Roman: :)

  Roman: I’m watching a program about aardvarks by the way.

  Lizzie: course you are.

  Roman: Did you know their bollocks are INSIDE their bodies?

  Lizzie: wow. it really is always balls with you isn’t it?

  Roman: Always.

  Roman: What else is there?

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Hello, darling. It’s Mum. Just calling you again, seeing how you are … again. Wanted to hear your voice. I made a vegan cushion today at the centre, we had a woman come in, and the whole time I could hear you in my head, laughing away at me. I thought of you the whole morning. I’m always bloody thinking of you. Why didn’t you come with Nathan and Katie for dinner on Sunday? I was sad, darling, I was. Call me back when you get this. If you ever listen to it, that is. Miss you, Lizzie.’

  Katie blows out a long, noisy breath, her blushed cheeks puffed up. The wine glass in her dainty hand looks like a fish bowl. Red wine rocks gently inside. ‘Wow, Lizzie,’ she utters. ‘So, this woman, his Dad’s widow. She was definitely referring to Roman?’

  ‘Yes,’ I nod. ‘I asked for him and that’s when she launched into it. Said all those horrible things, called him a waster …’

  ‘And a robbing nutjob.’ Under her blonde fringe, Katie’s brow furrows. ‘That’s a really horrid thing to say, isn’t it?’

  I run my fingers down the stem of my glass. ‘I know. And the way she said it, Kate. I can’t get it out of my head. She was so angry.’

  A waiter drifts by the table, eyeing the glasses in front of us. He smiles as he passes.

  ‘C-can I see it?’ asks Katie, leaning across the ring-stained wooden table, her voice dropping, and nose wrinkled, as if she’s telling a secret. ‘The letter. If you don’t mind, of course.’

  I reach down to the handbag at my feet and pull it out of the inside pocket that’s become its home over the last few weeks. I place it down on the table in front of her. Katie picks it up, as if it’s delicate lace, her eyes narrowed in concentration. If there is one word for my sister-in-law, it’s neat. She’s petite, her features in perfect proportion, and everything she does is gentle and measured, like a nurse. I still remember the way she would knock gently on my bedroom door when we were teenagers, the way she’d pad in quietly as if she weighed nothing and settle down a sandwich or bowl of soup. She’d ask softly if I was OK, if I needed anything, and on the bad days, she’d hug me. Wordlessly, but there. Katie is calm. She always has been. She’s probably never tripped over in public, or walked into a patio door, or had the runs on a date and made up a dead relative for an excuse to leave halfway through the starter. It simply is not her style.

  ‘Just don’t mention it to anyone,’ I whisper.

  ‘Course not,’ she whispers back. ‘Can I?’

  I nod.

  Katie reads the letter, and I find myself instinctively looking over my shoulder, to the restaurant’s heavy, brass-rimmed glass door, to check for any sign of a fast-approaching Auntie Shall, Olivia, or the other bridesmaids. It’s our second meeting, to help Olivia decide on her top three dresses before she makes her final selection. But there isn’t anyone there.

  It’s almost a week since I called Frank Matias’s phone number – a week since I got an earful, from his widow, Pam. Pam Matias. Priscilla had Googled the phone number after I’d spoken to her, and it had led us straight to her Facebook page – a cake making business run from her house in Leckwith, in Cardiff, and one photo of Pam, the Venomous Widow; short and auburn-haired, at least fifty-five, with leathery tanned skin, smiling on the balcony of an exotic-looking hotel, somewhere. Voices rarely match their owners, but she was almost like I’d imagined, though I wasn’t expecting someone quite so pruned. I sent her a message on Facebook while at work. It was the day after we’d spoken, and her voice – the anger, the snarling, the words she had used – made me want to explain properly. I was sure she had the wrong person, heard the wrong name. It was a short message, apologising profusely again (though I’m still not sure what for), and asking if she had any contact information for Roman. Hoping she would see my inconspicuous, smiling Facebook photo and I don’t know. Perhaps, realise I don’t look the type to bring trouble to her telephone. But she hasn’t responded yet. I’m positive a reply is never coming.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ says Katie, turning the letter over in her hand. ‘I’ve gone all cold.’ She lays the letter on the table in front of her, and with her gaze fixed on it, she picks up her glass and studies it. I wasn’t going to tell her – tell anyone else, in fact – but this situation is growing and swelling, taking up so much of my reality that not mentioning it to someone like Katie – someone that genuinely cares – would feel like lying. Sitting opposite her, my head pounding with questions, the letter smouldering in my bag, the weight of all this bearing down on my shoulders, saying nothing, would’ve been harder than saying it all out loud.

  ‘I feel like …’ Katie squeezes her chin with her thumb and forefinger, her eyes still on the letter. Her short, square fingernails are a perfect, neat fawn. ‘I don’t know. This headed paper.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I feel like I recognise it,’ she says.

  ‘Really?’ My pulse twitches in my throat.

  ‘I dunno. Which school did he go to?’ She looks up at me. ‘Before The Grove, I mean.’

  ‘St James’s.’

  She shakes her head and grimaces. ‘I don’t know. Maybe it just reminds me of something else.’

  ‘We Googled it,’ I tell her, rubbing the tops of my arms through my top – they are rough with goosebumps. ‘Nothing. Nothing substantial, anyway.’

  Katie sits back in her chair and takes another mouthful of red wine. ‘How’re you holding up?’

  I shrug, giving a slight smile. ‘OK, I suppose.’

  Katie leans in, eyes softening. ‘How are you really, Liz? Honestly?’ she asks, quietly. ‘I’ve been a bit worried since we talked at your birthday dinner. And I know you told me not to, but I have been. I just didn’t want to keep on. You know … prying.’

  The second she says those words, tears form at the edges of my eyes. I shake my head. ‘I’d be lying if I said this whole thing hadn’t raked up old memories, made me feel even more lost than I was feeling, but … oh, I dunno.’ I fiddle with the edges of the napkin under my glass. An eighties ballad wails through the restaurant speakers. ‘Twenty-eight was my scary age, Kate. By twenty-eight I thought I’d know exactly where I was meant to be, what I was meant to be doing – who I was meant to be. And realising that you aren’t even close on any of them. It’s frightening.’

  Katie nods gently. The light, silvery chain at her neck glistens in the light. ‘But does anyone even know what they’re supposed to be doing?’ she says. ‘I’m almost thirty-one and I’m not totally sure I do.’

  ‘But you’ve done a lot, Kate. You went to uni, you’re doing all this amazing stuff at the charity and that is always what you wanted. You travel, you do things, you’ve got Nathan—’

  ‘But you could meet someone if you dated,’ says Katie, eyes widening with enthusiasm. ‘I told you Nathan’s friend Liam fancied you when he met you at my thirtieth and he is really lovely.’

  ‘Katie, it’s not about meeting someone,’ I say. My heart is beating hard in my chest, embarrassment creeping up my body. ‘It’s … do you remember the course I enrolled on? The art diploma. When I was sixteen.’

  Katie nods. ‘At Ware college.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Well, I found the prospectus. In the box Nathan gave me from the loft. And the second I sa
w it I could hardly bear to—’ The words jam in my throat, as if catching on something. I drop my voice to a whisper. ‘I remember how much I wanted that, Kate. It was everything. I was going to take back control of everything; show everyone. Work hard, pass and then off I’d go. See places. Learn more. Teach.’ A tight laugh of disbelief escapes my lips. ‘And … I quit. Before I even really began. Thinking I’d try again the next year, and the next year, and the year after that. And I didn’t. All because I was scared.’

  ‘But you’d been through so much, Liz. You were grieving,’ cuts in Katie. ‘Hubble died, then your best friend disappeared—’

  ‘I’m twenty-eight, Kate,’ I carry on, my voice louder, clearer now. ‘Twenty-eight years old. A grown woman. And when I opened that box, I realised … I’m still waiting. Still waiting to be ready. Still waiting to feel brave enough to start.’

  Katie reaches across the table and holds my hand. ‘Lizzie,’ she whispers. ‘You’re twenty-eight, not one hundred and eight. If you want to do something, you absolutely can.’

  I shake my head. ‘I don’t even know what that’s supposed to be.’

  Katie brings her shoulders to her ears. ‘Well, what about college?’

  I look up at her and laugh. ‘Katie, I’m not bloody Billy Madison. Sitting there among teenagers with my lunch box on a tiny chair, trying to be down with the kids …’

  ‘I’m deadly serious,’ she laughs. ‘At the charity, we often help place people on courses, and honestly, these days, Liz … there’s a course for everything, on evenings, even at weekends, and for all age groups.’

  I glug a mouthful of wine, gulping away the tiny spark of something that ignited in my tummy as Katie spoke, and give a smile. ‘Is there one called How to Tame the Auntie that Wishes you’d go Fuck Yourself all the way to Saturn?’

  Katie smiles and gives a shake of her head. ‘You can do it, you know,’ she says, gently. ‘Whatever it is. You’re strong enough, and brave enough. Even though you think you aren’t.’ She pushes her hair behind her ears and looks across the table at me. ‘Back then, everyone treated you as though you were this … alien. But all I saw was this really strong person. I wouldn’t have coped with what you did, Liz. I definitely wouldn’t have coped with being taken out of school and put in somewhere like The Grove.’

  ‘You would have,’ I say, my voice wobbling at the edges.

  Katie’s eyes glitter in the golden spotlights above us and she shakes her head. ‘I remember your dad and even Shall telling us we weren’t to mention him, after he disappeared. We had strict instructions that we don’t do this, don’t say that, don’t talk about Roman because it’s bad for Lizzie to keep bringing him up.’ Katie scoffs a laugh. ‘As if you were this tiny, fragile, weak little thing that couldn’t even take hearing his name. After everything you’d already dealt with. And I remember thinking, You really have no idea, because Lizzie will cope, regardless. She’s strong, and she will cope and come through it, as she always has, because that’s who she is. And you did. You did, and you have.’

  I can’t speak now, and I bring the heels of my hands to my eyes and catch the stray trickle of tears. I manage a smile and bring a hand flat to my chest. It feels like a tight ball of fire is crackling there. Strong is something I have never felt. Strong has always been something I wished I was.

  ‘Gosh.’ Katie clears her throat and brings the corner of a napkin to her eye. ‘What’re we like?’

  ‘Quick,’ I sniff. ‘Let’s stop with all the emotions before Shall catches me crying and rings Dad to report me.’

  Katie laughs, dabbing the pads of her fingers on her cheekbones. ‘OK. So. Roman. Where were we? The address. What about that other address? The one that was crossed out.’ The music in the restaurant has changed to something upbeat almost as if the waiters sensed we needed a mood change, and Katie drains the last inch of wine in her glass.

  ‘It’s a Hackney address,’ I tell her, swallowing to clear the thickness in my throat, ‘a flat, I think.’

  ‘Hackney’s not far.’

  ‘I know, but it’s old info, isn’t it? Like, twelve years old.’

  Katie gives a shrug. ‘But I guess if that’s all you’ve got.’

  Then she looks past me and smiles, and before I can turn, bony hands squeeze my shoulders.

  ‘Enjoying your drink?’

  I turn around. Olivia’s radiant, rose-blushed face, greets me. She’s smiling, but her wide eyes and puffed up chest tell me she’s at least a tiny bit irritated.

  ‘Oh, hey!’ I smile.

  ‘So, you’ve both started without us, I see.’

  Katie is stuffing the letter in the envelope. ‘We were super early,’ she says, putting the letter on her lap and shuffling her seat closer to the table.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s just a few stops away from work,’ I start, but Olivia cuts in.

  ‘We were waiting outside.’ She slips off her thin sleeveless cardigan and drapes it over the back of the chair beside me. The other bridesmaids circle the table, smiling and lifting their hands in greeting, sitting down, picking up the drinks menus. Olivia is waffling, about waiting outside, about sweating in the heat, about being ‘seconds away’ from taking her phone out to call us as if it would have been a huge inconvenience, because she was worried.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘We just thought instead of waiting for half an hour, we’d come in and have a drink. I didn’t realise—’

  Olivia nods and gives a quick smile. ‘It’s fine. You got us a good table at least.’

  ‘Well, certainly one that’ll freeze us all to death.’ Auntie Shall appears in a fluster, her eyes skyward, eyeing the air conditioning vents as if they might be seeping tear gas. She leans down and kisses Katie on the cheek. ‘Hi, darling.’ Then she looks at me and gives a small smile, and says, ‘You’re in trousers, Lizzie. You’re always in trousers.’

  I nod and look down at my jeans. ‘Indeed I am.’ Auntie Shall has always made a point of mentioning the fact I nearly always wear trousers. Ever since I betrayed her and wore a pair to Olivia’s graduation. ‘I said dressy,’ she’d whispered. ‘You’re not a bloody boy.’

  A few moments later, a waitress comes over and passes us all menus. Auntie Shall asks us all what we’re having and then manages to push us all to the final page of the menu – Light Bites – a page that would be utterly depressing if it wasn’t for the desserts section at the bottom.

  ‘Katie, look,’ I laugh, reaching over and pointing at the last item on the dessert list. ‘Gooseberry crumble.’

  Katie’s eyes widen and she chuckles, her hand at her mouth. ‘Oh my god, we have to have it. If only to disrespect it in the way it deserves.’

  ‘Can you imagine Hubble?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  I shake my head at Auntie Shall. ‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Just Hubble loved gooseberry crumble, and he had a full-on row with someone at the allotment once who said that gooseberries in a crumble had to be the biggest disrespect to the fruit he’d ever come across and—’

  She looks away, down at her menu, as if I wasn’t speaking at all. Olivia and the other bridesmaids are still looking at me.

  ‘And?’ grins Olivia, eagerly.

  I blink, taken aback by Auntie Shall’s ardent rudeness – the way her back went up, like the pricks of a porcupine – but I carry on. ‘He erm. He was so angry about it. Kept going on about how his Mimi made the best gooseberry crumble, and that this guy was quote a “lumbering thicko”, and he was telling us. Me and—’ I stop. All eyes are fixed on me. ‘Roman,’ I carry on. ‘He was telling me and my friend. And then Katie and Nathan arrived and I remember Nathan asking us over and over “what’s happened? what’s happened?” thinking this bloke must’ve done something terrible because of how angry he was.’

  ‘Honestly. Over gooseberry crumble,’ jumps in Katie. The bridesmaids are laughing, politely. Olivia is smiling, but vacantly, almost embarrassedly, and Auntie Shall is holding the menu so close to
her face, she looks as though she’s hiding from someone.

  ‘Anyway,’ says Auntie Shall after a moment. ‘Are we ready to order? I think I’m having the salad.’

  The evening goes by slowly, as bridal magazines and Pinterest boards are passed around. I grin. I nod. I pick out favourites, and gush, and pin, and fold over edges in magazines. But I feel as though I am buzzing, unable to sit still, and that every moment spent here is wasted. Because the want to keep looking now feels stronger than ever. A want that has attached itself to me and has its own beating heart, because the more I talk about him, out loud, out in the open, in the present day, the more real he becomes, once again. What was it he did, that he had no words for? Why did he disappear, then, when we needed each other the most? I want to know everything. I want all of my questions, after twelve long years, answered.

  Chaos swirls through my head the whole night. Roman’s words, Auntie Shall’s face, Olivia’s sinking shoulders, at the mention of his name, and the conversation I had with Katie. ‘I remember your dad and even Shall telling us we weren’t to mention him.’ I replay those words over in my head, like a jumping record, anger bubbling beneath my skin. Sure, Dad wasn’t keen on a seventeen-year-old boy like Roman – someone with his background, his problems, the scruffy clothes, the smoking, the painted nails I always caught Dad eyeing as if they were concealed weapons. But he never deserved to be a dirty, unspeakable secret. Roman was never something to be ashamed of. I loved him. He saved my life. Not them. None of them. But Roman did. Every day.

  And more than anything, now, I want to – I have to – find Roman Meyers.

  Chapter Ten

  1st March 2005

  ‘Sweetcorn or leftover beef casserole?’ Hubble had asked, face straight, bent over the chest freezer.

  ‘Um. Sweetcorn, please, I guess,’ nodded Roman, nervously.

  Hubble had smirked then, amused, and threw the bag over to him. ‘Keep it on for as long as you can,’ he said, before strolling out of the kitchen and saying to himself, ‘Well, bang goes me sweetcorn fritters.’