by Rebecca Done
‘Hey, Moll,’ he says to me, squatting down to let Isla clamber on to his back while he lifts George up, a familiar routine. The two children giggle and brush noses over his shoulder as he kisses them hello.
‘Hi, Tom.’ I smile, trying not to envy this picture of familial bliss: the bliss I always assumed Alex and I would get to experience for ourselves.
I catch Eve’s eye without meaning to. She knows Alex and I were trying, in the months before his accident. It just didn’t happen for us in time, and to this day I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. On the one hand, our unborn children have been protected from everything that’s happened and everything that’s to come. On the other, we might well have missed our only chance, because any talk of starting a family with Alex is on hold now – not to mention the fact we’re barely intimate enough to be in with a shot, were we even to decide to go for it.
There’s no physical or medical reason why we can’t have children. The huge impediments, for me, are entirely emotional.
‘Good day? You’re just on time, sweetheart. Right, kiddiewinks!’ Eve claps her hands, removes the food from the oven and divides it between the plates without so much as blinking. Tom stirs into action too, sorting hand-washing, orange squash, paper napkins. I simply stand there observing, like a useless maiden aunt pressing her nose up against the glass, desperate to be let in.
3
Alex – 18 December 2010
It’s less than a week before Christmas, and Graeme’s visiting me in London for what’s meant to be my final farewell to the city. I’m moving back to Norfolk in February, to help look after our dad, who’s ill. I’ve got a job offer in Norwich, someone lined up to take over the tenancy on my flat and a reassuring series of welcome-back benders lined up with Graeme and all my friends at home.
I’m with Graeme in Soho. Well, I say with. I’ve been sitting solo at our (highly coveted) table for about twenty minutes now while Graeme stands motionless in the crowd at the bar waiting to get served. Quite honestly, it’s not my sort of place – there are too many backlit water features and hip young kids slapping brightly coloured cocktails and bottles of champagne on to their credit cards. At heart I’m a country boy – I prefer pies and pints to cocktails and canapés, country lanes to city streets, fields to gated parks with byelaws. But Graeme wanted to check this place out, and as everybody never tires of telling us, we’re like chalk and cheese, even though we’re twins.
Just as I think I might have to pop down the road for a swift half while I’m waiting, I see Graeme dip his head next to a beautiful long-limbed, dark-haired girl. She has impressively tanned skin for the time of year, and is wearing a playsuit in pink chiffon with a grey leather jacket and heels. Exactly his type. My brother looks particularly sharp himself tonight, in his favourite black shirt and grey trousers. Graeme, unlike me, is what you might call smooth.
Possessing a confidence and charm I consider myself to lack entirely, Graeme has had no shortage of women to help him forget the fact he’s been single for about six months. Objectively speaking, his success rate is pretty impressive, and as I watch the girl throw her head back and laugh at something he’s said, I have no doubt he’s already got plans to end the night in the same way he usually does. Which means I’ll end the night in the same way I usually do too – watching the sports channel with my headphones on, volume up high, not daring to venture from my bedroom.
Graeme’s flirtatiousness around women was one of the reasons he was ditched by his ex, Rhiannon, who today called him for the fifth time this week to insist he return all the stuff she left in his flat – though I suspect really she’s trying to catch him in the act with one of these beautiful women who seem to constantly crop up with him on social media since they went their separate ways.
Graeme carries on chatting to the dark-haired girl for about five minutes while I carry on flicking through my phone, occasionally glancing up to see if he’s made his move yet. At one point he has his hand on the small of her back – classic Graeme – but the next time I look up I catch him disappearing through the front door, talking angrily and gesticulating into his phone.
They’ve got their drinks at this point but the girl’s been left stranded at the edge of the bar, looking a bit embarrassed. She’s clearly here with friends – her tray is holding three cocktails – but she’s also been left in charge of my pint and Graeme’s Pisco Sour, and she’s evidently not sure what to do. Stay or go?
Moments later, I am at her side. ‘Um, excuse me …’
‘I thought you’d abandoned me!’ She breaks into a smile, then meets my eye and hesitates.
‘I’m his brother,’ I say quickly, smiling at her and simultaneously registering the sweet scent of her perfume, her glossy hair, her hazel eyes. She is undeniably beautiful. ‘I’m who the pint’s for.’
She covers her mouth. ‘Oh my God. I’m so sorry. That’s embarrassing.’
‘We look quite similar,’ I reassure her.
‘You have the same face.’
‘Well …’ I say, with a loose shrug and a smile, ‘twins.’
‘Of course.’ Then her eyes catch mine and widen. ‘Oh God, please ignore me! What a stupid thing to say.’
‘So,’ I say, clearing my throat, because I really am quite terrible at chatting to beautiful women, ‘where’s he gone, my errant twin?’
‘He had to take a phone call.’
‘I can take our drinks if you want to …’ I nod at her own tray of drinks, not wanting her to feel obliged to keep me company. Nothing worse than someone hanging out with you because they think they should.
Looking slightly crestfallen, she smiles sadly. ‘Oh, right. Well, thanks. It was nice to meet you …’
‘Alex,’ I supply quickly. ‘Alex Frazer.’
‘Molly Meadows,’ she says, probably just to be polite.
‘Sorry,’ I say then, feeling like I’ve been really unkind – both to her and my brother. ‘You can wait for him if you like.’
‘Er, no,’ she says awkwardly. ‘That’s okay.’
Subliminally, she seems to understand exactly what I didn’t really intend to imply: don’t waste your time on my brother. I feel my cheeks heat up and look at the floor. Finally, she moves off, so I head back to our table, long-since swooped on by a group of lads. I end up standing awkwardly at the foot of the staircase, waiting – as always, it seems – for Graeme.
Eventually, he finds me staring dejectedly into my half-finished pint, his untouched Pisco Sour on the ledge next to my shoulder. ‘Hey,’ he says breathlessly, ‘what happened to our table?’
‘I had to go to the loo,’ I lie smoothly, without really meaning to.
‘Bloody hell. What about the girl?’
You mean Molly? ‘You left her waiting for, like, twenty minutes, while you were on the phone to your ex,’ I say incredulously, feeling slightly riled on Molly’s behalf. Or maybe I’m just a bit sick of him abandoning me all the time for one girl or another.
Graeme shrugs smugly, like he can normally rely on his good looks to override his shoddy behaviour.
‘You’re such a tosser,’ I inform him, lifting my pint to my lips and taking a long draw from it.
‘Sucker more like,’ he harrumphs. ‘I paid for her drinks.’
‘Well, here’s a tip then – don’t leave her waiting at the bar like a lemon.’
Graeme snorts. ‘Er, sorry, but when was the last time you even spoke to a girl, let alone chatted one up, Alex? You’ll forgive me if I don’t take any dating tips from you.’
‘Yeah, yeah, all right,’ I grumble at him, because although I know he’s joking, I’ve heard all this goading about me not being confident enough around women before, and to be honest it’s quite annoying.
‘I’m serious, mate! I worry about you. It’s not natural, going that long without a shag.’
I think but don’t say that the way Graeme approaches his love life is hardly normal either. Never mind that it’s only been e
ight months that I’ve been shag-free, not eight sodding years.
‘We’re going to find you a girl tonight, Golden Boy,’ he says, surveying the room. ‘I am going to Sort You Out, once and for all.’
‘You’re all right, thanks,’ I mutter. It annoys me, his nickname for me, a reference to his longstanding idea that I was always our dad’s favourite son.
‘You want to go somewhere else, don’t you?’ he says with an eye roll, misinterpreting my reluctance for disapproval of his choice of bar. ‘Fine – but so long as it’s not back to yours. It’s nearly bloody Christmas. The most romantic time of the year.’
As I wonder if it’s really possible that Graeme can have forgotten about Molly already, I consider asking him precisely what he thinks he knows about romance, but then his phone rings. It’s Rhiannon again, and once more he gets to his feet. Knowing them as I do, they’ll probably be hooking up again before the weekend’s out. They’ve been doing this strange little dance of combining post-split rows with passionate make-up sex for a while now, and I don’t see why this time should be any different.
In the end we decide to stay put, and I head to the toilets twenty minutes or so later while Graeme’s fetching in more drinks.
As I’m exiting the gents’ I run into Molly exiting the ladies’. She smiles uncertainly at me for a moment.
‘I’m the nice one,’ I say quickly, as a joke.
Her smile spreads, and she shakes her head. ‘Again – sorry. You have better hair,’ she adds, like she wants to make up for her error.
‘Ha. Thanks,’ I say. If she’s examining my appearance then it’s quite a good job that Graeme and I are just emerging from a particularly dedicated period of pre-Christmas gym attendance. He trains in Norfolk and I train in London, then whenever we get together we have one of those sad little ego competitions to see who’s fitter.
‘Does that ever get confusing?’ she asks me. ‘The twin thing?’
I laugh. ‘Not for me.’
Molly’s eyes widen with embarrassment. ‘Sorry, I have no idea what I’m talking about! Again.’
I expect her to smile and walk away at that point but she doesn’t. ‘Well,’ she says, lingering on the word without moving.
I realize it’s my turn to say something. It always handicaps me slightly, Graeme telling me how awkward I am around girls, because his opinion usually comes to mind at just the point I’m trying to talk to one.
Molly smoothly saves it. ‘So, how’s it going?’ she asks me. ‘Boys’ night?’
‘Well, it would be okay if Graeme wasn’t constantly on the phone to his …’ I trail off at the last moment.
‘Dealer?’ she jokes.
I shrug with a what-can-you-do smile. ‘I’ve tried telling him.’
‘What is it with –’ she starts, then stops herself.
‘With …?’ I prompt her.
She shakes her head, smiles apologetically. ‘Never mind. You’re brothers.’
‘If it helps, it was his ex on the phone,’ I tell her sheepishly, before realizing I’ve probably just made things worse. I scrabble to clarify. ‘Not … I mean, he’s not currently with …’
‘Guys in bars,’ she says then, finishing her original sentence, admonishing herself with a tut. ‘What did I expect, really?’
‘I’m a guy in a bar,’ I say, wide-eyed, ‘and I promise I’m nice.’
‘Not to be cynical,’ she says, though she’s still smiling, ‘but it’s normally the ones who assure you they’re nice that really aren’t.’
‘Actually, I’m pretty sure this is a moot point anyway,’ I tell her then. ‘Since this isn’t technically a bar.’
She smiles, glances around the little toilet-lobby we’ve found ourselves in. ‘Mmm. More like a substandard cloakroom.’
‘So how about you?’ I say. ‘Girls’ night?’
‘Well, it was until our table was hijacked.’
‘Sounds painful.’
She grimaces. ‘You don’t even know. Some lads from the VIP area thought it would be fun to persuade us into drinking games.’
‘Can I take it they’re not actual VIPs?’
She smiles. ‘They’re no A-listers playing truth or dare over there, let me tell you.’
‘Could be fun?’ I suggest.
‘I’m a lightweight,’ she confesses, ‘and they’ve already got blue tongues.’
I wince a little. ‘Ouch.’
‘They kept trying to make me join in, so I ran to the loos.’ She laughs. ‘Oh, I am so pathetic.’
‘I can keep you company if you like.’
She hesitates for a moment, upon which I smile. ‘You’re still thinking about me being a guy in a bar, aren’t you?’
She laughs. ‘Sorry.’
‘What can I say to convince you?’
‘All right,’ she says, like I’ve thrown down some kind of personality gauntlet. ‘Give me your best chat-up line.’
I hesitate, struck dumb for a moment by my distinct lack of talent for seducing girls, especially ones I’ve only just met. So I decide to come clean. ‘I literally have nothing. Sorry. I don’t normally –’
She smiles like I’ve just delivered the most winning line she’s ever heard. ‘Wow. Okay. You passed.’ Then she looks right into my eyes.
As I look right back into hers I think of my brother waiting for me out in the bar and feel a twinge of guilt. ‘You see,’ I say softly, ‘I don’t really do the whole chat-up thing.’
‘That’s good,’ she whispers, ‘because neither do I.’
At this point the door leading back into the main bar swings open behind us. It’s not (thankfully) Molly’s friends or Graeme, but it does inject an imaginary sense of urgency into the air.
As Molly shoots me a wide-eyed look that I choose to interpret as a plea for chivalrous assistance, I think of Graeme taunting me, always berating me for not being forward enough with girls. ‘Well then,’ I say, tilting my head to the left of us, where a fire exit door is slightly ajar.
She looks at the door, then back at me, then grins. ‘We can’t – can we?’
‘It’s me or the VIP drinking games, I’m afraid.’
She pretends to sigh, then grabs my hand. ‘Well, if I’m going down, you’re coming with me.’
It’s the sort of joke Graeme would be unable to resist making some crass guffawing remark about – and my ability to let it slide is how I am temporarily able to justify sneaking out of a bar hand in hand with the girl he saw first.
We quickly find a far less pretentious place where Molly insists on buying the Long Island Iced Teas before we squeeze into a dimly lit corner together. Around us the music is oozing, grinding, which makes me want to shuffle closer to her, but I resist. Play it cool, Alex, you nerd. I can just hear Graeme saying it.
‘You’re sure your brother won’t mind being ditched? What’s his name again?’ Molly’s sipping on her straw, long hair draped over one olive-toned shoulder in a loose ponytail.
‘Graeme.’
‘Graeme won’t mind? Really?’
‘He’s done it to me plenty of times before,’ I assure her. And he has, especially after splitting with Rhiannon – always texting me to say he’s met a girl and will see me back at the flat. Which is precisely the text I’ve just sent him (my first one ever, I hasten to add).
Between us, with dipped heads and held gazes, we condense our lives. I tell her about my job as a graphic designer, my flat in Balham, the bands I like, some gigs I’ve been to recently, the sketchbook I carry with me everywhere. I tell her about doing the festival circuit this summer (a distinct and welcome lack of mud), my travel ideas for next year (Iceland and Morocco the top contenders). But what I definitely don’t tell her is that in February I’m moving back to the country. I’ve known her for no time at all, and already it’s feeling like a hard conversation to start. So I don’t – instead I ask her questions, discover she’s a Londoner born and bred, that she lives with her parents in Clapham and is still utterly in
love with her city. But she wants to travel too, learn French (‘Proper French, not guidebook French’), fly up the ranks in her creative agency, work abroad one day, get better at cooking, run a marathon …
‘… except right now I’m maybe the unfittest I’ve ever been,’ she concludes wistfully.
I struggle not to voice what I’ve been thinking since I met her and what Graeme would just come out and say: that she has an unbelievable physique, which in my humble opinion is in no need of any gym work whatsoever.
‘But you’re in pretty amazing shape,’ she tells me with a smile, somehow managing to pull off the exact same compliment without sounding sleazy, as I’m sure I would.
‘Oh, thanks,’ I say, briefly glancing down bashfully. ‘Me and Graeme do have a bit of a gym thing going on.’
Molly’s eyes sparkle. They’re stunning hazel, the sort of eyes you can’t stop looking into. ‘Aha. Competitive brothers.’
‘Maybe in the gym,’ I concede.
‘I need to get back into it,’ she says, nodding determinedly like I’ve somehow inspired her. ‘I’m lapsed.’
I resist a stalker-like compulsion to say I’ll go with her. ‘New Year’s resolution?’
She smiles. ‘It’ll have to be. Tragic, isn’t it? But work just takes over. You know what it’s like when there’s a big pitch on. You get in at seven a.m., drink coffee all day and end up eating pizza at midnight.’
I smile. ‘Then lose the pitch.’
‘Cue more pizza, then an all-night bender …’
‘… which is exactly why Graeme’s in better shape than I am.’
As Molly shakes her head to disagree, a smile sneaks across her face. ‘So, Alex,’ she says. ‘I sort of forgot to check before I kidnapped you.’
I smile back, thinking I’m more than happy to play hostage.
‘Do you have a girlfriend?’
I shake my head. ‘Nope. Fully available for kidnappings.’
She laughs. ‘I was hoping you’d say that.’ Pause. ‘So …’
‘Two years ago,’ I supply with a smile.