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

by Lia Louis

  I look up at her. ‘No,’ I say. ‘There isn’t. I’ll take a look.’ And I mean it, I think. The irritation that I felt when I first pulled them from the envelope, dissolved a little as Mum spoke, and now there is nothing but that tiny spark flickering in my belly, again.

  ‘Good,’ says Mum.

  ‘This doesn’t mean I’m going to Australia, though,’ I tell her, over my mug. ‘And to be honest, if Garth’s sculpting brother is out there waiting for me with his questionable smells, then I am happy to rule it out for ever.’

  Mum bursts out laughing and puts her hand on my leg. ‘Oh, darling, you do make me laugh. You’re so like me.’

  Mum and I watch soaps together with more tea and slices of toast and Marmite, like we used to, and despite myself I feel safe beside her; content for the first time in a while. When Mum first left us – me, Nathan, and Dad; her family – something was lost between us. She was my mum. The only woman in the world I was supposed to trust, wholeheartedly, a person who was meant to love me in a way no other person ever could, protect me – and she left me. Like I was part of the furniture of an old house she’d grown out of. Like it was no big deal, like it was expected, after what Dad did. She called every day, of course, voice wobbling, asking us to live with her and Clark, her new boyfriend, as if it was just a case of packing a bag and starting again, but I couldn’t leave Dad. I couldn’t leave Nathan, or the house I’d known since I was six. And she didn’t deserve me – us. That’s how I felt. That pull in my stomach towards her died when she walked out that Sunday afternoon, as I sat at the kitchen table, alone, her cup still warm from the last tea she drank with me in that house. I muted it. Pulled it from the root. I just haven’t realised it’s been trying, over the years, like a flower through a crack in the concrete, to grow again. To bloom. Tonight, it has. I guess, because I let her in. I let her be Mum to me again, for just a moment.

  Mum leaves at half past eight. She stands in the open doorway, the cream tartan shawl she always brings out at the whiff of autumn slung over her shoulders, handbag hanging in the crook of her arm.

  ‘We’ve been invited, by the way,’ she says, ‘Clark and I. To Olivia’s wedding.’

  ‘Wh— really?’

  Mum nods, amused. ‘Can’t actually believe ol’ Shall has allowed it. But then me and Livvy often chat on Facebook. I am her auntie. Or was, for thirteen years.’

  ‘I can’t believe it either,’ I blink. ‘Are you going to—’

  ‘God, no. I can’t be in the same building as your father.’

  My heart sinks as I stand there looking out of my front door, a draught circling my ankles. I don’t know why. It’s not like I’m surprised. I suppose it would just be nice to have Mum there, to see me in my bridesmaid dress, to spend the day with all of us under the same roof, for once. To have Mum not act like it was just hours and not over thirteen years ago that she checked the savings account outside Morrisons and came flying home in a hysterical rage.

  ‘Anyway, remember what I said,’ says Mum, pulling her shawl closer at the chest and shuddering. ‘Don’t take any crap from this whole bridesmaid thing. They’re lucky you even agreed again after Shall’s bloody vow circus. Honestly, that woman has no right getting on her high horse—’

  ‘Mum.’

  Mum, fussing with a clump of tassels that are caught on the zip of her bag, looks up. ‘Yes, darling?’

  ‘You remember Roman, don’t you?’

  And I don’t know why I tell her. It just feels right that I do.

  Mum’s face doesn’t flicker. She doesn’t look down, or away, the way Dad does when I bring him up, or the way Olivia and Auntie Shall do. Mum just smiles. ‘Of course. Why?’

  I gaze down at the brown, scratchy doormat beneath my feet. ‘I’m trying to find him.’

  Mum’s sandy eyebrows lift. ‘Really?’

  I nod again. I don’t tell her about the letter. I don’t say anything else, and for a moment, there is silence between us, until Mum asks, ‘Have you got very far?’

  ‘I’ve been round the houses a bit, but I think I know where he might be now.’

  Mum’s eyes soften. ‘That’s wonderful, darling. He was … he was very important to you. I know I wasn’t really around then and—’ Mum stops, swallowing. ‘But he kept you going. It was just a shame it ended like it did, but he had a lot going on, didn’t he? I remember Nathan telling me about that mother of his.’ Mum grimaces and gives a shake of the head. ‘Well, keep me posted, won’t you? I mean that.’

  ‘Course.’

  Mum cuddles me and steps backwards.

  ‘Can’t wait to hear what he’s like now, what he’s doing, how he looks.’ She stops at the top of the steps and gives a little wink over her shoulder. ‘I love a romance.’

  ‘It’s not a romance,’ I laugh, but Mum isn’t listening. She’s starting down the stairs with a wave and a blow of a kiss. I say goodbye, and start to close the door, but she stops on the steps. I freeze. ‘And remember,’ she whispers, through the banister, ‘next time Auntie Shall gets all high and mighty and Mrs Moral Bloody High Ground with you, remember that she once posed in knickers and suspenders for Reader’s Wives in the eighties and made it very, very clear she liked it up the … well. Harris.’

  I open my mouth. No words come out. Mum raises her eyebrows and says, ‘Bye, darling. Now close the door. There’s a terrible draught.’

  This is your booking confirmation for your appointment on 17 OCTOBER 2017 at 17.45, with STEPHANIE AKENZUA in Careers Advisory. Thank you for choosing Borough of Camden College.

  Chapter Fifteen

  28th October 2004

  ‘I stay in here a lot.’

  ‘Overnight?’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Roman. ‘Not so much in the winter. It gets so cold that you practically die.’

  ‘Does your mum know?’

  Roman laughs and slumps down on the narrow, brown flock sofa bordering the rickety caravan walls. ‘No. Yes. Who the fuck knows? Either way she doesn’t care. Even if I am in the front garden, stealing the electricity through the garage.’

  I tell Roman I like it – Sea Fog – this tiny metal caravan anchored to his driveway, and he says he’s glad, and he’s only sorry it doesn’t have a driver car at the front like a motor-home so he could drive us to the sea. We spend the rest of day inside it, playing music through Roman’s laptop, and eating cereal and bowls of crisps, and tea made from water he boiled on a portable camping hob in a saucepan that looks two hundred years old. As he boils and stirs, I watch him, loping about the kitchen, too tall for such a tiny space, and imagine we are travelling across the country, and have just pulled up at some picturesque roadside in Cornwall, with nothing but sand dunes and cliffs and turquoise seas around us. I imagine us as a couple. I imagine us as friends, on an adventure. I don’t know what feels better.

  ‘I think something’s going on with Priscilla and Ethan Sykes,’ I tell Roman as he sits beside me holding two small mugs, covered in orange seventies flowers, full of steaming tea. He hands me one. Rain batters the caravan, and from inside Sea Fog, it sounds like we are being soaked by waves. ‘She’s acting weird with me. Has he said anything to you?’

  Roman shrugs and shakes his head. ‘Saw him Saturday. He just said he likes her.’

  ‘As a mate or …’

  Roman laughs, stretching his arm along the back of the sofa. ‘More. Obviously.’

  ‘Why obviously?’ I ask, irritated. ‘What, he must fancy her ’cause he’s a boy, she’s a girl and they hang out all the time?’

  ‘Like us?’ Roman asks, small smile on his face, his eyes not drifting from mine. I look at him, waiting for him to laugh. He doesn’t. I look away.

  ‘I- I just …’ I stutter. ‘I wish she wouldn’t go there, that’s all.’

  Roman sips and looks down into his mug. ‘Why?’

  ‘Why?’ I look up at him then, my brow wrinkled. I can’t help it. ‘The guy’s a … he’s a dickhead, Roman. He terrorised our teachers at Wo
odlands, and he’s always knocking about with that big gang, and they’re just … wrong’uns. Hubble says he sees them most nights from his bedroom window in the park and they’re always causing trouble—’

  ‘So, I’m a wrong’un?’ Roman slowly looks up at me. His fingers with the nails painted blue through fingerless gloves, hold the mug inches from his lips.

  ‘No. You’re not in his gang,’ I say. ‘Are you?’

  Roman brings a shoulder up quickly. ‘But I hang about with him sometimes.’

  I look at him. ‘And I wish you wouldn’t.’

  ‘What, you want me to stay home instead?’ Roman laughs tightly, straightening, his eyes flashing. ‘Eat my home-cooked dinner, sit on the sofa with Mum watching the telly, help her with the dishes, tell her all about my awesome day, like she gives a shit?’

  ‘I- I don’t mean—’

  ‘No, course you don’t,’ he snaps. ‘Nobody ever does.’

  I freeze. I feel like I’m going to cry. ‘Ro,’ I start, my voice tiny. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that, you know I understand. I just … I …’

  ‘No.’ Roman takes a deep breath, eyes closed. He leans in, breathing out noisily through his nose, touching my arm. ‘No, I’m sorry, J. I didn’t mean to snap at you. I would never mean to, I— he’s a mate, Lizzie. He texts, he calls, he cares about what I’m doing, and OK, if I’m clearing up my mum’s puke and he calls and invites me over the park then, yeah. I’m gonna go.’

  I stare at him, but eventually I nod. Because he’s right. Where’s safer? Where’s less lonely? In a house with his drunken mother, clearing up her mess, like a glorified carer, or at the park with a gang of boys, up to no good, who see him as one of them? A regular seventeen-year-old boy.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says again. ‘You didn’t deserve that.’

  ‘You don’t have to explain anything. I get it.’ I put my hand on his. He bows, rests his lips against the skin of my knuckles. Goosebumps prickle my arms, like spitting rain drops.

  ‘I don’t deserve someone like you,’ he whispers, breath hot against my hand.

  ‘Don’t talk daft.’

  He looks up at me. ‘I don’t, J. Not even close.’

  We say nothing else for a while. We just drink tea, listening to the rain, and the rumble of cars that go by, and I steal looks at him, and try to remember what life was like, back in June, before I met him, before I knew he even existed. I can’t. Life before Roman seems clouded.

  The rain slows, the sun creeps out from the clouds, and we finish our tea. That’s when Roman sits up, eyes fixed on the misty window. It’s his mum, giggling up the path with a man who has his arms around her waist, his lips on her neck. Roman stares at the floor. It’s the same guy we saw last week. The one Roman despises.

  I take our mugs to the kitchen, just for something to do while the air is this thick, this awkward. I rinse them with an old Coke bottle full of water.

  ‘Do you ever just think that your life is one big mistake?’ says Roman, cutting through the silence. ‘That … you’re not actually meant to be here, but somewhere else?’

  I look up from the kitchen counter – mugs wet in my hands. His eyes stare forward, his back straight against the back of the sofa.

  ‘Your grandad, Hubble. He said something last week when I was waiting for you on the drive,’ Roman utters. ‘About chances you don’t take, paths that you end up on, because you said yes to this, no to that, and how everything can change – your whole life can change – just by choosing a different option.’ Roman swallows. ‘And I’ve been thinking about what that Roman’s doing. The Roman whose mam chose not to drink, not to chuck her life away.’

  I don’t move, eyes fixed on him.

  ‘And I reckon that somewhere in the universe, in some alternative life, that Roman is part of a massive, big family. Loads of brothers and sisters.’ Roman smiles, a tiny glimmer of one, his eyes not moving from the ground. It’s as if he can see it, right there, playing as if on a screen. ‘And he’s happy and he’s at college with a buff-as-fuck girlfriend and a mum and dad that go ’round Sainsbury’s with a trolley and eat dinner at a table, and go to Homebase at the weekend or something.’ Roman laughs, giving a shake of his head. ‘And that Roman drags his feet, moaning because he’s bored, ’cause he just wants to be at home, or with his friends, real friends, that go to the cinema and don’t knock about in parks. ’Cause his mam and dad would never allow that. They’d be too worried about him doing that.’

  I can’t speak. I don’t know what to say. He looks smaller, somehow, in this moment. Vulnerable. Child-like. I put the mugs down and cross the floor to sit beside him on the sofa. As I sit down, close to him, hip to hip, he puts his arm around me and pulls me to his chest. I close my eyes to stop the tears. Because it’s such a lovely idea. That Roman is such a lovely idea – the Roman I know, but truly happy, and in a life he deserves. And now I can’t stop thinking about the other me – the other Lizzie, at school like all the other kids, coming home to homework, instead of Dad in bed, cowering and crying; instead of Mum speeding away from the drive, car bursting with new suitcases, the tags still attached, leaving the remnants of her family along with the bin bags of old rubbish she doesn’t want anymore. I think about my brain not being against me. I think of happy, safe, contented Lizzie, where nothing – absolutely nothing – is falling apart.

  Roman sighs, shakily. There’s a long pause, and we listen for a moment, to the fading voices and trudging footsteps of passers-by, to cars, and the wind that’s picking up. Roman rubs my arm, his hand smooth and warm, and rests his chin on the top of my head, his breath against my scalp. We talk about our other lives, playing out right this second; about family holidays, and summer barbecues, huge Christmas trees and Christmas dinner tables so long, that you need to bring in the garden tables and chairs to fit everyone in. We talk about our futures, playing out somewhere in time and space. I talk about paying McFly to play secret concerts for me, about trips to blustery beaches, for fudge and chips in paper that sticks to the soggy ones, about drawing cartoon strips and greetings cards in a studio at the bottom of my garden, while a hot husband that looks very much like Christian Slater brings me bacon sandwiches and love notes written on napkins. Roman talks about bonfires, and lines of bookshelves with a ladder, and shotgun midnight trips to the beach for ice cream in waffle cones. He talks about freedom, and France, and having a dog – ‘someone to love him in all of his ugliness,’ he says, and I want to tell him that I already do.

  ‘Maybe,’ says Roman, softly, lips against my hair, ‘one day we’ll work out how to jump to that place,’ he says. ‘Visit.’

  ‘That sounds nice,’ I mutter, my cheek against his chest. ‘Do you reckon we still meet? In that other place; the life where you go around Sainsbury’s with a trolley and have a buff girlfriend?’

  Roman laughs, his arm squeezing me tighter to him. ‘Are you joking?’ I can’t see him, but his voice is thick, and I’m sure there are tears on his cheeks. ‘Try to stop us.’

  I nuzzle closer. The sun outside dims like a dying bulb, and winds tremble the caravan. But we’re safe here. Safe, from it all, in our tiny metal bubble.

  ‘Whatever happens,’ whispers Roman, ‘wherever we end up, when we’re older and free from all this … I know that somewhere out there, there we’ll be.’

  ‘In Sea Fog,’ I say.

  ‘Far away,’ says Roman. ‘Somewhere where there’re no people, and it’s just sea for miles and miles. And a wraparound porch.’

  ‘And your wood-burning stove.’

  Roman laughs. ‘And my wood-burning stove. I promise you. If I can get there, that’s where I’ll be.’

  ‘Deal. Meet you there.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Grove is quiet, save for the odd distant ringing phone, which makes it so much easier to hear my own heart, thumping in my ears. This feels unreal. Like I’ve woken in a dream. It’s barely changed. The straight-backed, itchy chairs still sit in a u-sh
ape as you walk in the door to the lobby, the area where we would squish and bunch in the mornings, some of us still with our coats and bags on, as Ramesh or Cassie took the register. In the first week I sat as far from anyone as I could, sitting on edges, or choosing to stand, my hands wet with sweat, but after that, I always sat beside Roman, our legs becoming more and more squashed together as the weeks sped on, him playing with the keyring dangling from my bag, and me, sneaking looks at the perfect inverted arc of his nose, trying to work out if I fancied him or just adored him, like I did Priscilla. Roman and The Grove were the only constants in my life, back then. I may have woken every morning to a silent house and an empty fridge, Dad still in bed where he’d likely stay until lunchtime, and panic creeping in like smoke, but as I sat alone in the dingy, messy living room, watching the minutes tick until eight o’clock, a part of me was hopeful. Because I knew it’d be waiting for me – The Grove, unremarkable but safe. Roman, standing at the entrance to the park, cigarette burning, clothes mismatched, face breaking into a smile as he saw me. Happy I was here, to see another morning.

  I stand, feet still on the ground now, and take in the room – a room I know every inch of. Why here? Was he visiting? Does he work here now, mere minutes from my flat? You hear of that, don’t you? People estranged from their parents or siblings or friends, people searching for missing loved ones desperately, who end up discovering they have been living just minutes away, probably passing each other, missing one another by seconds, year after year, but not seeing them because you’re not looking; you’re not tuned in this close to home. You never expect them to be living in the world right in front of your eyes.

  Footsteps. Heels on stark, thin carpet – the same carpet, brown like a monk’s cowl – getting closer. It was Charlotte who buzzed me in – the same voice I kept hanging up on yesterday. She was friendly, but hesitant when I told her I was hoping to talk to Ramesh, an old friend. But then I don’t suppose it’s very often she gets a knock from someone who isn’t a frazzled parent or social worker.