If there was one emergency Delia could help with, it was a culinary one.
‘I’ll make that, you concentrate on this,’ pointing at the grill.
She took over in the kitchen and in half an hour, they were sitting down to a very decent meal, half cut on cold beers and fresh air. Adam left the door open, as planes intermittently zoomed overhead.
‘We’re on the Heathrow flight path,’ he said, glancing up. ‘Why is this potato salad so good?’
‘Red onion, lemon juice and gherkin, fine dice. Cuts through the clagginess of this much mayonnaise.’ Delia nibbled a chop and thought what comfortable company Adam had become.
‘Why did you pick Clapham?’ Delia asked.
‘It’s where I landed when I moved here and you tend to stay where you land. It wasn’t as much of an arsehole jamboree then. The local’s still good though.’
Adam explained that Dougie was a few doors up in the Bread & Roses pub with his Scottish friends, and would probably crash through the door at any moment. Delia couldn’t believe she’d ever thought this would be awkward. Alright, she was quite drunk, but she and Adam were chatting, laughing, bickering and debating like old hands.
That said, she wished she’d been a little less relaxed when she went upstairs to the loo. Delia hadn’t spotted the transparent shower curtain trailing out of the bath and had stepped on it as she walked away, ripping the rail part of the way out of the ceiling, a small shower of plaster coming down with it.
After she went back downstairs and coughed to it, Adam was unconcerned, refusing her offer to pay for the damage. The disagreement escalated.
‘Adam, I insist. In fact, forget it. I don’t need your approval. I’ll post the cash to you inside a sock.’
‘Don’t! I don’t want to take a shift’s wages from you.’
‘I’m not a charity case,’ Delia said. ‘Seriously. Why should you and Dougie pay?’
‘The landlord’s easygoing.’
‘He lets you bash the house up?’ Delia said, smiling.
Adam gripped the edge of the table and exhaled. ‘Your nickname should be Tenacious D. Alright, look. The landlord, he’s me. I’m telling you I don’t want your money.’
A forkful into a very decent cheesecake – Adam admitted he’d bought it, plated it and thrown some icing sugar over it – Delia paused. ‘How can you be the landlord?’
‘It’s my house. I own it.’
‘Is that true? Why not say so before?’
‘It’s a general policy. I don’t want randoms trying to move in. I don’t mean you.’
Delia swallowed some cake. ‘Isn’t renting out rooms a great source of income though? Online journalism can’t be hugely well paid.’
Adam sighed. ‘Too many questions.’
‘Sorry,’ Delia said, embarrassed. Speculating about his salary was over the line. ‘I didn’t mean to be so … northern and blunt.’
Adam regarded her over his dessert, pushed his plate away and blew out a breath.
‘I don’t know if I should tell you this. This information can’t be un-known.’
Delia found herself unexpectedly nervous. She liked the Adam she was having vanilla cheesecake with, who’d bothered to light candles on the windowsill and put Stevie Wonder on the CD player. He and Dougie kept rooms free for what, hosting swinging nights? Sheltering criminals?
‘I’m rich.’
‘OK.’
‘My Dad was a hedge-fund manager in the City, set up his own company. It did very well. He gave up work before fifty. My sister and I had trust funds we came into at twenty-one. Large ones.’
Delia regarded him.
‘Ooh. Like, millions?’
‘Yes.’
This wasn’t bad news, exactly, yet Delia felt a gulf between them had gotten wider. Clapham already seemed far too brash-preppy and full of popped rugby collars for her. With this, she realised she was truly out of her depth.
‘See,’ Adam said. ‘You’re already adjusting how you think about me. This is why I never tell people.’ He fixed her with a look. ‘I mean it, Delia, please don’t tell anyone else. Dougie knows, that’s it. I guarantee if you do, I can see it in their faces within seconds. You get attuned.’
‘I promise I won’t.’
Delia turned it all over in her head and examined her feelings. Adam’s crisp self-assurance wasn’t what she was used to. She’d guessed it was partly borne of a private education. Now she pictured him on yachts, as well as attending Hogwarts. They had so little in common …
‘You used to work for those papers? None of that’s made up?’ she said.
‘I’ve done those jobs and got the scars to prove it.’
‘And Alice is a teacher?’
‘Alice is a full-time, knackered, overworked, summer holidays-loving, Education Secretary-hating, certified authentic 100 per cent teacher in Tower Hamlets.’
‘She’s rich too?’
Adam nodded.
‘What happened was – my parents divorced when we were teenagers. We grew up in Surrey, went to university, had normal if privileged lives, and then bam. My dad announces the trust funds, before he disappears to France with Wife No. 2. My mum was dead against it. However, my dad did tell us, in incredibly vehement terms, not to tell anyone, as a condition of receiving it. I’m glad he did because I didn’t understand why, back then.’
Adam drew breath.
‘At first, I thought, what’s to worry about – it was all my Christmases at once. Alice was doubtful. Twenty-one-year-old Adam decided to live like a dissolute Saudi prince. I travelled, I bought stupid gadgets. I had a stupid tiny red car that weighed as much as a Coke can, and I crumpled it like one too.’
Delia grimaced.
‘Yeah, every dickhead cliché I’m afraid,’ Adam said, misconstruing why Delia had grimaced at the thought of him crashing a car. ‘I told Alice she was mad to enrol on her PGCE. She’s since told me she was worried I’d become an irretrievable arsehole. One day I woke up and noticed something that I’d been hiding from myself with the excess. I was incredibly bored, and isolated.’
‘Isolated?’ Delia said. ‘Couldn’t you buy company? Or a company.’
‘Think about it, Delia,’ Adam said, getting up to pull the back door shut. Delia didn’t know if he did it because it had grown chill in the twilight, or due to the secrecy of the discussion. ‘Think about what never having to work again means. Being nothing like anyone you’ll ever meet. It’s like living in zero gravity. My friends were in their first jobs, learning stuff, meeting people. There I was, lying on a couch, throwing Wotsits into my mouth, fast becoming a very dull person. I realised, the only way this is going to work is if I do what Alice had already sussed we had to do. Behave as if the money didn’t exist, until we needed it for something important.’
‘It shouldn’t matter so much. Emma out-earns me to the power of seven, and it’s never affected us. You work, you’re not some parasite,’ Delia said.
‘That’s the problem. Think that through. You’re complaining about work in the pub. Sooner or later someone says bitterly: “I don’t know why you don’t leave, it’s alright for you.” Admiration for your work ethic is a short hop away from resentment. You’re taking a job from someone else. You get a promotion, ahead of a mate. Imagine how annoyed they are then? They need that extra income to get a mortgage. Say it’s pre-payday, everyone’s short – why have you only got your rounds, why not get them all? You feel guilty, but when you buy the rounds, they end up hating you for that. You’re tight if you don’t, and flash if you do. Soon they’re avoiding you, because the normal rules don’t apply and it’s uncomfortable. Eventually they want you to piss off to Boujis and drink Treasure Chest cocktails and play polo and stick with your own.’
He suddenly looked alarmed. ‘Shit, this isn’t meant to be a Poor Me. I’m incredibly lucky, obviously. I’m just over-compensating in case you think this means I’m some vile swaggering hooray.’
‘Hah. No!’
Delia put her head on one side. She could see it, when he put it like that.
‘Neither you or Alice ever tell anyone?’ Delia said, feeling some burgeoning pride in being among the trusted few.
‘No one. Not even when drunk.’
‘Not girlfriends?’
‘Especially not girlfriends.’
‘Not Freya?’
Adam raised an eyebrow. ‘Not a girlfriend. And no.’
Delia’s pride flickered again. It was an honour to be told? He did make it sound as if she was a complete anomaly. What category was she in? Tech heist co-conspirator? Bathroom wrecker?
‘Why especially not girlfriends?’
‘I didn’t ever want to wonder if the loot swung it for me. An ego thing.’
Delia laughed.
‘I think with the right person, that wouldn’t even be a question,’ she said. ‘You’d want to trust them with it. When you fall for someone, you want them to know everything about you.’
‘Yes,’ Adam said. ‘You’re right.’
He took a large swig of his drink.
Delia sighed. ‘I never considered being insanely loaded was this complicated.’
‘It’s not, if you hand it over to accountants, pay yourself a reasonable salary and largely ignore it.’
‘That’s how you fund the website?’
‘Yeah,’ Adam said, clearing the plates, waving away Delia’s attempts to help, ‘With power comes responsibility and all that. You give to charity, but it’s passive. When I got very disillusioned with the state of the press generally, I thought, you have a unique chance to do this differently. I have a trade I can always go back to if it fails miserably. Rich boys love their doomed vanity ventures – at least this one has an honourable aim. It’s not some awful Mayfair club night.’
Delia added this up, turned it over.
‘I don’t want to turn into some trustafarian,’ Adam started, as he dumped the crockery in the sink and sat back down.
‘Adam,’ Delia said. ‘You’re a southern posh boy who probably hangs his sunglasses on his shirt.’
‘… A funny thing you discover with money. It’s much better at easing pain than giving pleasure. Think of a “best moment” in your life so far …’
Delia put her head on one side and thought of her and Emma drinking cider in taffeta gowns and elbow-length gloves. Adam gave her an odd, intense look.
‘Thinking of one?’
‘Yep.’
‘Did it cost much money?’
Delia put a hand up and waggled her fingers as she counted off the pounds. ‘Hardly any.’
‘What is it? Do I want to know?’ Adam said.
‘Grad ball.’
Adam’s intense look went.
‘OK. There you go. How often is that answer “An Alain Ducasse restaurant”? Or “skiing in Meribel”? Almost never. Being stoned on a day you skived off lectures and laughing with a friend ’til you hurt. Cost: your PlayStation, a bag of weed and the trouble you got into later for knowing nothing about the Reformation.’
Delia nodded.
‘The best things in life are free,’ Delia concluded, doing a ‘cliché’ face and jazz hands.
‘Ah, but they are,’ Adam said. There was that unreadable look again. ‘Such as, the bottles of champagne I got at an awards ceremony a couple of months ago. Want to help me drink them?’
‘Hmmm. Champagne was my downfall in AppletiseGate.’
‘Delia Moss’s life struggle – repeatedly forced to drink free champagne.’
‘I could do a misery memoir. Please, Barman, Stop.’
‘What does Dougie do for a job?’ Delia asked, as Adam unwound the wire on the neck of a bottle of Moët at the Formica breakfast bar.
‘He works for Coutts. You know, the Royals’ bank? You have to have a quarter of a million liquid to open an account. Before you ask, no I don’t have an account.’
‘That’s so not what I expected.’
‘Seems the most unlikely job imaginable for him, doesn’t it? He’s got a mad head for numbers. Although he’s always overdrawn. Dougie is what’s known as a curate’s egg. Nice lad.’
Adam pulled out the cork and slopped fizzy into wine glasses, while Delia surreptitiously eyed the kitchen. She thought of the things she’d do with it if she owned it. Paint, furniture re-think … she couldn’t help it, home-making was in her blood. Still, it certainly looked like a rented home, so Adam’s disguise was working.
They clinked and took their drinks to the saggy sofas in the front room.
‘You and the hacker wizard guy, you know each other well?’ Adam asked.
Delia filled in the Peshwari Naan folklore, leaving out Joe’s problems in meeting face to face, which she wasn’t sure she was licensed to share.
‘You have a … special rapport,’ Adam said, lightly, sipping his drink.
‘It’s not like that.’
‘Like what, exactly?’
Delia shrugged and smiled. She wanted to turn the attention away from herself.
‘You’re not seeing anyone?’ she said.
‘Nope.’
‘No one as in everyone at the same time? Freya did say …’ Delia smirked.
‘You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?’
‘Most men wouldn’t mind being spoken of as successful with women.’
‘Well I do. It makes me sound like an indiscriminate seedy praying mantis. Which was of course her intention.’
‘Aren’t you, then?’ Delia said.
‘I’ve been single for a while and I did what single men do. Freya was massively overstating the case.’
‘Freya’s one of the everyone, I take it?’
Adam nodded and Delia was surprised to find that, despite trying to tease him, it backfired on her. She twinged at the confirmation, and discovered she’d been hoping for a denial. Must be because she’d started to think of Adam as her kind of person, not Freya’s.
‘Only a one-off thing but she wanted a relationship, and I didn’t. We stayed friends. Not friends with benefits, I hasten to add. Friends with drawbacks.’
‘She makes life hell for your girlfriends?’
‘She would if she could, but I’ve not had one since forever. The thing is …’ Adam rubbed at his hair, ‘I say this, knowing full well how bad it’ll sound. I’ve not met many people I’ve liked enough to commit to. I thought I was in love a couple of times, got embroiled, and then realised I wasn’t in love – or at least not enough. It caused a lot of hurt. So I thought I’d rest relationships. Better to be honest about how much you want, then move on. It’s not what I planned or necessarily wanted, it’s what’s happened.’
‘You’ve never been in love?’
‘Enamoured, maybe … but no. Nothing deep and lasting. Obviously.’
He was what, mid-thirties? Didn’t sound like he was designed for it, then. Delia could easily imagine that any woman vesting her romantic hopes and dreams in Adam would be like keeping custard in a colander. She didn’t doubt many had tried. It made her feel dismayed, somehow.
‘I see you with a Jemima Khan-type,’ Delia said, trying to lighten herself.
Adam guffawed.
‘Jemima Khan? Nothing like my remit. More likely to boff the Aga Khan.’
‘Or Shere Khan?’ Delia said.
‘Amir Khan.’
‘Genghis Khan.’
‘Wrath of Khan.’
They laughed.
‘I’m uncomfortable with labels like incredible swordsman and skilful eroticist. I don’t like stereotyping.’
Delia laughed til she gurgled and Adam looked pleased.
‘Do you mind me asking if you’ve seen anyone, since you moved here?’ Adam said.
‘No,’ Delia snorted.
‘It’s not that absurd an idea,’ Adam said.
‘This is going to sound pathetic. The idea of being … with someone who isn’t Paul still freaks me out. It’s as if I still belong to Paul.’
‘What,
you’d feel you were cheating on him?’
Delia’s skin heated. She wouldn’t have said this, sober. ‘Yeah.’
‘That’s silly. He didn’t feel very exclusive about your rights over his nudger, did he?’
Delia giggled at ‘nudger’ and was surprised – the whipcrack snap of pain at thinking of Paul and Celine together wasn’t there. Time was a healer.
‘Stop living for him. Your body isn’t his, it’s yours.’
‘I’m scared by sleeping with someone else. What if he wants—’
Delia fell silent.
‘Wants …?’ Adam did a ‘carry on’ hand gesture.
Delia started giggling and couldn’t stop, the words coming out strangled. It felt good to offload to Adam.
‘Say … bum sex, up front?’ she mouthed the words.
Adam squinted.
‘Tell him it’s quite difficult to have bum sex up front.’
Delia giggled.
‘You know what I mean!’ she said, mock-mournfully. ‘I’m so uncool.’
‘If you don’t like something, you say so,’ Adam said. ‘What am I missing?’
‘Then he goes away and tells everyone on the internet he’s had the most boring sex of his life with me.’
‘If he does that sort of thing, I’d question why you were sleeping with him in the first place. Who is this, by the way? Someone I know? Is he going to brute force a seed attack on you?’
‘No! A hypothetical man.’
‘A hypothetical bum-sex bully online over-sharer. I see why you’re concerned. This entirely made-up man you’ve had imaginary sex with is quite the non-existent dick.’
Delia was shaking with laughter now.
‘Or. You could sleep with a man who wants you to enjoy it, and doesn’t check in as Mayor Of Your Ass on Foursquare.’
‘How will I know when this prospect presents himself?’ Delia said. ‘How do you tell a good one from the bad ones? Like the squirrels testing the nuts in Charlie and the Chocolate Fact—’
‘He’ll kiss you like this.’
Adam moved across, tipped Delia’s chin towards him, bent his head and kissed her. It was perfectly judged – not pushy or too full on, but definitely full of intent.
Delia was initially motionless, in shock, immobile. Then she found herself responding. Quite a lot.
It's Not Me, It's You Page 32