I close my eyes and let my mouth fill up with words. I think of Issy: small, pale Issy, with no chance to have another first kiss – in fact, no chance for a lifetime of firsts beyond that – and I let her memory make me brave, reckless, alive. This time, I open my mouth and let the words come tumbling out.
‘Ben, will you have sex with me? Let’s just find a place, have sex. It won’t matter if it’s awful – you’re my friend, the person I trust. I know you’ll take care of me. And we love each other enough to be careful, without feelings and stuff getting in the way, and the only other time I have ever had sex it was over in less than two minutes and was frankly quite depressing … Please, will you do it, with me, for me? I want to feel that way again, the way I felt after the kiss. I want to feel alive.’
Ben looks in turn appalled and then terrified, and then he thinks for a long moment.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Yes, OK, then.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
HUGH
Sarah opens her door as I walk up my front path, and I discover that I am pleased to see her – I’ve been thinking about her.
By the time she’d got in last night after I’d looked after Mikey, I’d dropped off in front of the TV, and Mikey had taken himself to bed. Suddenly, I was aware of her weight on the sofa, and forcing my eyes open I turned to look at her, collapsed into the all-engulfing cushions, her neat profile and small nose ending in a perfect ski slope. She’d smelt faintly of bleach, her jogging trousers were ripped at the knee, her boots worn down. Her hair was tousled, her hands looked chapped and cold, her sooty eyes were closed. She was too tired to talk; as I watched her, her breathing stopped and then slowed as she drifted into much-needed sleep in the very place she had been able to stop.
‘How was it?’ I’d asked her, because somehow it felt wrong to leave her sleeping there, her long day so unfinished.
Her eyes had fluttered open, and she sighed.
‘You know, cleaning up other people’s mess, it’s always the same.’ She’d reached out an exhausted hand and it landed heavily on my knee, with a soft thud. ‘Cheers, though. You saved my life.’
Before I could reply, she’d used my leg as a prop to force herself into a weary standing position, and I’d followed her into the hallway, guessing how much she wanted to be in bed for a few short hours.
‘Night,’ she’d said, leaning on the front door as she opened it. And just before I left, she stood on tiptoes and kissed me on the cheek. That’s the part that I have been thinking about.
‘Hello, Hugh,’ she says now.
‘Hello, Sarah,’ I reply. ‘Everything OK?’
‘I hope you don’t mind: I wanted to say thank you for last night, for you sitting with Mikey and that, so I made you a casserole. It’s nothing fancy, just cobbled together out of what I’ve got. You don’t even have to eat it if you don’t want to.’
‘Well, that would be stupid,’ I say. ‘It smells lovely, better than the pizza I was thinking of ordering.’
‘You probably think I’m weird.’ She laughs as she holds out a casserole dish, encased in a tea towel. ‘Last place I lived, no one talked to each other. We spent most of the time just trying to stay out of each other’s way. But I remember my nan saying that she and her neighbour were always in and out of each other’s houses, back in the day, and that … I always thought it must be nice to live that way.’
The look on my face must say a lot, because she laughs.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not eyeing you up for regular childcare. I just think if a person is nice, you should be nice back, right? I mean, that’s what it’s all about – I reckon, anyway.’
‘Yes.’ I find myself smiling, and I take her dish, noticing that it’s quite hot, despite the tea towel, which is a little bit of an issue because she doesn’t appear to be ready to go yet.
‘Mikey told me you’re an orphan?’ she says, concerned.
‘Well, both my parents are dead,’ I say. ‘But, you know, as I said to Mikey, I don’t think it counts as orphanhood when you are over twenty-one.’
‘And you live alone?’ Sarah’s dark, thickly fringed eyes elongate into a triangle of sympathy. She pities me, which is kind but disconcerting.
‘Well, yes, but I don’t mind. I’m living the bachelor life, you know.’ She nods sympathetically, and I realise I have somehow made myself sound forlorn.
I shift the heft of the casserole dish from one burning palm to the other.
‘But, you know, I actually like it.’ Nope, no that sounded like I am protesting too much. Now she thinks I am a poor lonely man with only a cat to talk to – no, in fact she doesn’t even know about Jake and our one-way conversations. She thinks I am more pathetic than a person who lives alone and does have a cat!
‘Look, don’t take that inside, bring it round mine. Come in, have dinner with me and Mikey? I’ve got more of that inside, plus potatoes, veg and that. I like to make sure Mikey gets his five a day. Let me make sure you’ve got yours today, too.’
‘I can’t,’ I say, putting the dish down on the wall, feeling suddenly panicked at the prospect of her sweet, gentle face feeling sorry for me all night.
‘Why not?’ She looks at the dish, and I realise it looks a little bit like I’m returning it.
‘It’s work, my work. I’ve got this job; I curate this private collection, in a museum, and I’m working on a new exhibition, and I’ve got so much to do, and so …’
‘But you’ve got to eat, right?’ she says. ‘How can you work hard if you don’t have the right food in your belly? Come on before this goes cold. Just to eat with us. It’s nice for Mikey to have a bloke to talk to, every now and again, and you can leave right after pudding.’
‘Pudding, you say?’ I can’t resist her kindness any more. ‘Well, if you insist.’
Jake is curled up in Mikey’s lap as I go in, and he doesn’t even give me a fleeting glance that might signal some semblance of loyalty.
‘Hello, Mikey,’ I say, waving the flat of my hand at him in an oddly robotic way.
‘Hello, Hugh,’ he says back, mimicking my middle-class accent and mirroring the gesture. But he hasn’t called me a pervert, so I’m taking the win.
I follow Sarah through to the kitchen, where she lays her table, which is small and square and only just about seats two comfortably, and yet I watch as she tries very hard to fit three sets of knives and forks around it. Her long hair is as dark as her eyes and perfectly straight, finishing in a ragged line just above the small of her back. She’s wearing a pair of very tight jeans under another huge baggy sweatshirt. It’s almost like she dresses to be invisible. I try not to imagine what her body looks like underneath the billowing top, but I think perhaps it might be like a dancer’s body – light and wiry, subtle and mysterious. Correction: I try and fail not to imagine what her body might be like.
‘I feel like I’m intruding,’ I say, suddenly disconcerted by my own thoughts. ‘Honestly, I can go. You don’t need some stranger right in the middle of your family time.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Sarah says, standing back from the rather precarious arrangement at the tiny table, brushing off my declaration as if it were an errant crumb. ‘You don’t have to be anything or any way with us. We are just eating dinner, not discussing politics or what’s-his-face, Shakespeare. There, that’s not bad, is it? Beer?’
Defeated by her utter disinterest in my declaration, I nod, and she hands me one of four cans that she has in the fridge.
‘So, tell me about your job. This casserole will be heated through in a minute.’ She opens a beer for herself.
‘It’s very dull to most people,’ I assure her. ‘But I love it.’
‘Is it cleaning bogs in an office?’
I shake my head.
‘Then you are already winning.’
‘Very well.’ I shrug. ‘But I think I already told you the gist of it. I work in a private collection, a museum. I’m a historian, a curator of …’ I think about telling her exac
tly what the museum holds, but I hold back. I don’t want to alarm her. ‘Old Victorian relics. Me and a whole load of old stuff, all day long, and actually it’s my dream job. And now the board wants me to put on our first exhibition open to the public, because they want a grant to help with upkeep next year, which is terribly trying, if I’m honest. But I suppose if I don’t do what’s expected, the museum might close down anyway.’
‘Well, today,’ she says, ‘my vacuum got clogged up with something when I was hoovering under a desk, and when I unblocked it, I realised it was a used condom, so it could be worse.’
‘Evidently it could be,’ I agree, and I can’t help but smile as she smashes some potatoes into smithereens.
‘Do you always talk like that?’ she asks, amused. ‘Like Sherlock Holmes or something?’
‘I have no idea,’ I say. ‘You’ll have to tell me. I don’t think I do. I don’t think I do it on purpose, anyway. I always like to think I’m the hip, young cool dude out of all the academics I know.’
She glances up at me. ‘You are wearing a bow tie.’
‘It’s ironic,’ I protest, although I am starting to think Mikey might have been right about that. ‘Is it hard? Managing on your own with Mikey?’
‘It’s hard not to give up, sometimes,’ she says, turning the gas off underneath a pan of vegetables. ‘It’s hard to work at a crap job that is always going to be crap, and hard to have a son with no dad around. Hard to feed him proper food, bring him up to be decent. Hard to find the time or money to go out with my mates now and then; hard to not have anyone special, you know? But then, look at this place. Two bedrooms, nice area – I’m lucky I’ve got this. So it’s hard, but not as hard as it is for some people. What about you? What do you find hard – apart from chatting?’
‘Oh, my life isn’t really hard,’ I say. ‘I’ve got enough money, and a house, and a job I love. Girlfriends now and then; it’s cushy.’
‘No kids, anyway?’
‘No.’
‘Mikey said your mum died when you were about his age? I think it must have got to him; he needed a proper hug that night.’ She pauses, sipping her beer. ‘It must be hard for him, you know, to think that he only has me and that’s it. I worry about it. I mean, what if I get hit by a bus, what will happen to him?’
‘I only had my dad for a long time,’ I say. ‘I never really thought about it. He was a really great man. I miss him.’
‘And your mum? You must miss her too.’
I take a long drink of beer. One of the drawbacks of having an actual conversation that isn’t just flirting, or work talk, is the moment when people ask about my mother. It’s not like words turn to ashes in my mouth, because there are no words. There is no way you can say out loud that you can hate someone for dying as much as I hate her.
Dear Leigh,
There is something I wanted to say before I go. A thing that I can’t really say to your face because if I try, you’ll get that look again – that one when you think I’m interfering, that I don’t really understand. I think you’ve forgotten that I did everything you did before you: fell in love, got married, had children. But I suppose, just like you, I never wanted to listen to my mum. I always thought she was interfering, that she didn’t really understand. Which is why I am writing this letter, because I think if you see it written down, you might take it a bit more seriously.
I just want to talk about Lisa, just for a minute. You had a hard road to find her, Leigh. It took you a long time, a painful and difficult time to find the right woman for you. But Lisa is that woman; she’s the one that welcomed you with open arms, that loved you, no matter what anyone else thought. She’s the one that’s given you a little boy, my darling grandson. She’s made you into the person I always knew you could be: kind, gentle, the best parent in the world. She’s taken all the anger that you had growing up and turned it into love. She succeeded where I failed. But sometimes I think you have forgotten everything you went through to be together. Sometimes, Leigh, I think you take her a little bit for granted. I’m not saying that you don’t love her. I’m not saying that. But I am saying, make sure she knows it, every single day. Do something, say something, that will tell her how much you love her, and that without her you wouldn’t be the wonderful, wonderful woman and daughter that I love so much now.
Dear, dear Leigh, no matter what happens next, just remember: always, always let the person you love know, every single day, how much you love them, and you will be just fine.
I love you,
Mum x
CHAPTER NINETEEN
STELLA
The house is dark when I wake up, silent and dark. The side of the bed where Vincent lay, for a little while, for the first time in ages, is empty and cold. I close my eyes for a moment, remembering the luxury of falling asleep in his arms, the beat of his heart under my cheek, the circle of his arms around me. I can’t hear any noise downstairs or see any lights on under the bedroom door.
What if that was a goodbye? What if he left me while I was sleeping?
I sit up abruptly and, suddenly convinced that he is gone, turn on the lamp beside me.
‘Hey?’ He opens the door, and I see that he is dressed. Jeans, a shirt, open at the collar. He’s shaved, which is hard for him because the stubble doesn’t grow where the burn has healed but in all the places in between. I appreciate that he’s made the effort, because I know it causes him pain. His hair is damp and there’s a scent of soap. For the first time in months, it isn’t masking the smell of alcohol.
‘You’re up?’ he says. ‘You were sleeping so peacefully, I didn’t want to wake you.’
‘Yes, I’m up.’ I draw the duvet up under my chin, feeling suddenly vulnerable, visible. ‘I slept well. Did you?’
‘I did for a bit …’ He nods. ‘I miss that, being near you, you know. It was good, to talk, to be near you. It felt good. Everything I said before …’
‘You don’t have to talk about it, not now.’ I climb out of bed, letting my arms drop by my sides. ‘We don’t have to talk about anything, do we, tonight? Tonight we are just a married couple going out for dinner. What time is it? Is there wine in the fridge? I wouldn’t mind some?’
‘It’s not too early,’ he says. ‘You must have been exhausted. I’ll bring you up a glass,’ he says.
‘No, it’s OK. I’ll only be a couple of minutes. I’ll be down before you’ve poured it.’ He hesitates and then after a moment more, he steps forward and kisses me on my cheek. It’s just a brief gesture that’s over almost before it has happened, and yet it fills me with this sense of quiet joy. After such a long time of feeling out in the cold, lost and alone, just that one simple kiss makes me feel like I am coming home.
An age has passed since I last looked in my wardrobe at the clothes I used to collect so avidly. It feels like I have lived in scrubs, jogging bottoms and T-shirts all my life. I go through the racks of skirts and tops with a kind of fascinated detachment. Who was this girl who had a bright pink mini skirt that barely hung beneath her bum? Who wore tight low tops and pencil dresses? Who had a taste for bold primary colours, because she knew they set off her hair? Right at the back I find what used to be my favourite dress – the dress I secretly always thought summed me up: my burnt-orange mini dress, made of a fine-knit light wool. I always thought it suited me down to the ground. It was the dress that I wore on my first date with Vincent because it fitted over my hips and breasts in just the right way, without making too much of a feature of my soft plump belly. Funny how much I used to hate that little pouch. I miss it now, because it signified something. It meant contentment.
The dress doesn’t hang on me in quite the same way since I started to run every day. The places where it used to cling to curves are baggy and empty now, but my legs look pretty good with some thick tights and a pair of low rubber-wedged heels. I try a touch of lipstick, brush my hair and stop when I really catch sight of myself in the mirror.
A stranger is looking back at me. So
me woman with short hair – hair she cut herself one night with a pair of nail scissors because it just kept getting in the way. Short dark curls that cling to a hollow-looking face. I never used to have cheekbones, my eyes never looked so big and I never looked so … hot. Not hot like a movie actress, but fevered. I touch my skin, which is moon-pale after weeks without sunshine, and it’s cool to the touch. It’s shocking to realise how rare it is these days for me to look at myself. I’m always leaving, running, rushing, keeping my head down, avoiding eye contact with everyone who isn’t one of my patients, including myself. I vaguely notice the looseness of clothes that used to fit just right, or the rumble in my belly when I’ve forgotten to eat for the day. The dip in energy that sees me and Laurie standing in the kitchen, knocking back sachets of sugar, neat, like it’s crack cocaine. But I don’t stop to look at what the life I have accidentally slid into – no, run into – has done to me. It brings tears to my eyes. Vincent is not the man I fell in love with, and I am not the girl he first met. And perhaps he is right: perhaps it is too late to change that. And perhaps it is my fault because, as much as he has run from me, I ran away from her – from the woman he loved – and I’m not sure I left even a trace of her behind.
Something gnaws at my gut and I realise I am ravenous. It’s been so long since I ate proper, cooked food, and suddenly I’m starving for sustenance. There is no way of knowing if there is one last hope for us, but we have to at least try. And eat, at least we can eat.
Vincent is waiting for me in the living room, a glass of wine on the table. He’s turned on all the lights and is staring at the unlit fireplace.
‘All set?’ I ask him, picking the wine glass up and drinking it down in one. I don’t drink much these days, and I can feel it fizzing through my bloodstream, going straight to my head. He has a glass of Coke in his hand, I notice – an implicit commitment to our evening together.
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