A Friend of the Family

by Lisa Jewell

  ‘Your mess. The mess you left behind.’

  Ned gulped. ‘You mean – you mean in Australia?’

  ‘Uh-huh. There’s still a lot of pain there. You left a lot of pain. And I know it’s not your fault, Ned. I know that. But you can’t just run away and pretend that it hasn’t happened. It’ll catch up with you sooner or later, one way or another. Deal with it now or it’ll only be more painful.’

  ‘Monica?’ said Ned, quietly. ‘Are you talking about Monica?’

  Gervase pulled away from him suddenly, as if someone had cut through a piece of thread that had been tying them together. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and knocked back half his pint of lager.

  ‘I don’t fucking know, do I?’

  ‘Oh.’Ned picked up his pint, too. His hands were shaking. And then Gervase suddenly banged his glass down on the table, stood up really quickly and stalked off to the toilet.

  Ned breathed out a huge chilled lungful of air and tried to concentrate on his mum singing, but it was really hard. He wished there was someone sitting with him, a mate or something, so that he could just laugh and say, ‘Blimey, what the fuck was all that about?’But as it was, he was stranded with his head full of the last thing he wanted there: Monica. Ned tried to recall exactly what Gervase had said. ‘You’ve got to sort it out.’ He shuddered. Because whether Gervase knew what he was talking about or not, he was right. It was a mess. But just because that mess was on the other side of the planet, didn’t mean it had gone away.

  The hair in the box under his bed was testament to that.

  He downed some more beer and tried to put the thought of it to the back of his mind. Which was, he was aware, all he’d done since he got home and it wasn’t a comfortable sensation. It was like spending the best part of a week holding in a really big fart.

  ‘So – Ned. What kind of music are you into?’ Gervase was back, smelling overpoweringly, but not unpleasantly, of the liquid soap they had in the toilets. Ned jumped a little in surprise, both at Gervase’s sudden reappearance and the blunt tangency of the question. He exhaled. ‘God. I dunno. Loads of stuff really. Chart dance music, you know, Fatboy Slim, Faithless, Moby…’

  Gervase sneered at him. ‘Cack. All of it. Music for fucking zombies.’

  Ned was about to cut in with some kind of defence, but Gervase was on a roll. ‘Rock and roll. That’s the only real music’

  ‘What, like the old fifties stuff?’

  ‘Yeah. Sort of. I mean I used to be into all that rockabilly, psychobilly thing, you know, King Kurt and all that. But, as I… mature, I find myself more drawn to the kings. The real stuff.’

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘Robert Gordon. Now there’s a man. A real, bone fide rock-and-roll singer who’s still doing it, yeah? Doing it live. No Chuck Berry theatrics. No Elvis Vegas stuff, no rhinestones. Just a man, his band, his guitar and his voice. Pure unadulterated rock and roll. Do you like rock and roll, Ned?’

  ‘Well, yeah – some of it.’

  ‘Your mum – she likes rock and roll. Your dad, too.’

  Yeah. But all mums and dads like rock and roll, don’t they? It’s in their genes. They can all do it as well, you know, the dance. Every one of them can rock and roll.’Ned laughed. ‘It’s like they’re these normal human beings. They watch telly and go to dinner and complain about you playing your music too loud and then someone puts on ‘Great Balls of Fire’ and all of a sudden they’re up and out of their seats and dancing like fucking spastics. Doing all the twirls and everything. I mean – what the fuck are we going to embarrass our kids with at weddings when they’re twelve?’

  Gervase slapped his hands on to his legs, spilling a long finger of ash all over his jeans in the process. ‘Exactly,’ he said, ‘spot on! There’s no dance any more, is there? Our grandparents had the charleston, their grandparents had the waltz. Our parents had rock and roll and the twist. There was disco in the seventies. But what have we got? Sweet FA, that’s what. It’s a tragedy, Ned, a true tragedy. I mean dancing, it’s tribal, right? It’s an integral part of the way we express ourselves. You know? And now we express ourselves either by getting plastered at the office party and doing the Time Warp or by taking a load of poncey designer drugs and waving our arms in the air until eight in the morning.’ He tutted, shook his head slowly from side to side and cleared his sinuses. ‘It’s a sad world, Ned, it really is. A sad, soulless, monochrome world.

  ‘That’s why I like coming here on a Wednesday night, seeing your mum sing. Look at her.’ They paused and looked at her. ‘If only everything in the world was like your mum, Ned. And I mean that with all the respect in the world, I really do. But your mum – she’s so alive. It’s like that house – your house – without your mum, it would just be a dump. And I mean that with all the respect, too. But it would. Your mum’s got soul. Real soul…’

  And then he turned to watch Bernie and his foot tapped up and down and the conversation, patently, was over. Ned looked at Gervase for a while, at the slightly beak-like profile, the pock-marked skin, the dyed black hair and sinewy, tattooed neck, and for a split second it was almost like he was looking at somebody from another planet. Or maybe just another era.

  Ned felt a sudden surge of warmth towards this ageless, rootless man and settled back to enjoy the rest of his mother’s set with a whole new appreciation for her talent and for her soul.

  Romance in Catford

  Sean pulled the ring out of its little navy box and held it up to the light. It really was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen. He slid it back into its crevasse, snapped the box closed and popped it in the table drawer.

  Tonight was the big night. And not just because he was about to propose to his older woman. It was also the first time Millie had been to his flat. It wasn’t deliberate, just that London law said that if you lived in a fantastically appointed, centrally located flat on the north side of the river the idea of going to Catford, for any reason whatsoever, was akin to having a toothache and going to India to visit a street dentist. There just never seemed to be a good enough reason to take her back to his, so he hadn’t. But tonight, as chance would have it, Millie was having a late meeting in Camberwell; and once you’d crossed the river, well, sod it, you may as well get stuck in. So she’d suggested he cook her dinner here. Insisted, actually. She wanted to have a sniff around, she said, unearth all of his dark secrets. And, actually, it was perfect. He’d thought about a fancy restaurant, taking her to Nobu or the Dorchester, booking them into a swanky hotel room, but proposing here, in his flat, was much, much better. It was going to be fantastically un-corny.

  He hadn’t bothered to do much to his flat, just turned all the lights down really low and lit some candles so that you couldn’t see what a state it was in and hoped that the aroma of garlic bread baking in the oven would draw attention away from it. He’d warned her in advance about the insalubrious nature of his home, so she had a fairly good idea of what to expect, and anyway, Millie didn’t care about shit like that. Millie didn’t care about anything that wasn’t important – that was one of the things he loved most about her.

  Sean never thought this day would come. He’d thought he’d spend the rest of his life working his way systematically through every girl in London between the ages of twenty and thirty with half a brain cell and a penchant for going out with commitment-phobic men. And then when he was too old to pull, he thought, he’d end up living here alone, for ever. And he’d been happy to think that, because he’d always preferred his own company to anyone else’s. He never thought he’d want to marry anyone. He never thought he’d meet someone who’d turn his preconceptions about love on their head, who’d make him feel sociable, nurturing and strong. He’d always known that Tony would settle down and marry and he fully expected the same of Ned. They’d be the ones to replicate their parent’s happy marriage, they’d provide the grandchildren and the stability. But now, well, it looked like there might be a last-minute contender coming up on the inside �
� him. Sean had fallen through a familial hole somewhere along the line and had always felt like he didn’t quite fit in. But, since Tony got divorced, Ned buggered off to Australia and Half a Man came out, all that had changed. He was now the brightest star of the family. And now he was about to climb another rung on the ladder of parental approval. He was going to get married. And not to just anyone, but to this incredible, beautiful woman who was out of his league in every way.

  He gave his arrabiata sauce a quick stir on the hob, chucked in a few more chilli flakes and put a pan of water on to boil. And then the doorbell went.

  ‘Hi,’ he said into the intercom.

  ‘Hi. Uptown Girl here. Is that Downtown Boy?’

  He smiled. ‘Come up,’ he said, ‘eighteenth floor.’

  ‘Blimey,’ she said, ‘sure I don’t need special breathing equipment for that?’

  He buzzed her in and waited for her outside the lift, subconsciously seeing it through her eyes. It wasn’t bad, as towerblocks went. It was on a nice estate that was well looked after and mainly full of couples. He’d put his name down on the council waiting list when he was twenty. At the time he thought that he was never going to be in a position to afford to buy a place. And he was too antisocial to share a flat, anyway. And, yes, he should move out now, he knew that. He didn’t need this place any more. He was taking up valuable space. You could get a family of three into his flat. And he would move out. Soon. It was just that he hadn’t entirely got used to the having-money thing, he didn’t trust it. It had taken him over a year just to feel comfortable buying things he didn’t need, and even now he was able to spend his money only in bite-sized chunks. The idea of blowing the lot, in one fell swoop, just like that – well, it was terrifying. He’d be poor again. No more cabs, no more meals, just him, sitting in some beautiful flat he could never afford to leave.

  The lift doors slid open and Millie strode out. She was wearing jeans with pointy-toed boots, a big suede coat with a furry trim and her hair was piled on top of her head. She was also, Sean was delighted to note, wearing red lipstick. She’d never worn red lipstick before and it was one of his favourite things.

  ‘Hello, gorgeous,’ she said, wrapping her arms around his neck and giving him a big kiss on the lips. ‘I’ve just been chatted up.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Sean, ‘who by?’

  ‘A ten-year-old boy wearing DKNY jeans. He said I was “hot”. And that he liked my boots.’

  ‘See – I told you you’d like it here.’

  He unlocked his door and let her in. The sounds of Spiritualized wafted through the flat, along with the smell of garlic and fresh basil. The candles he’d lit around the place gave an almost romantic glow and then there was his secret weapon.

  ‘Oh my God!’ She pushed past him and headed straight to the back of the living room. ‘This is amazing.’She’d spotted his secret weapon – the floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows on three sides from which you could see pretty much every inch of London spread out below, like a glittering rug. Oh my God,’ she said again, her hands pressed against the glass, her mouth open with amazement. ‘Look – the Dome. The London Eye. And the river. Oh wow,’ she moved to the south-facing window, ‘look, it’s the Crystal Palace mast.’

  He joined her at the window, following her fingertip to the flashing head of the mast, and slipped his arm around her waist.

  ‘You can see Crystal Palace from nearly everywhere,’ he said proudly. ‘Primrose Hill, Suicide Bridge, Alexandra Palace. Even from Ilford on a clear day. It’s like the North Star.’

  They stood for a while watching the blinking light on the horizon.

  ‘God, I can see why you don’t want to give this place up – it’s absolutely amazing.’

  ‘You haven’t seen the toilet yet.’

  ‘Why,’ she said excitedly, ‘what can you see from there?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘it’s just really grim, that’s all.’

  She laughed. ‘Look, I was brought up on a farm – I know all about grim toilets.’

  Some farm, he thought to himself. She always referred to it as a farm but he knew it was an estate, with a management office and people employed to deal with things like dung and corpses and artificial insemination. The stable block was probably bigger than his parents’ house and her father was a Sir.

  ‘Aren’t you going to give me the grand tour?’

  He shrugged. ‘This is it.’

  ‘But where’s the bedroom?’

  ‘It’s the dank, musty hovel just through there,’ he indicated with his eyebrows. She pulled off her sheepskin coat and Sean pulled an ice-cold bottle of Louis Röederer from the freezer compartment of his Smeg where it had been chilling for the last hour.

  Sean wasn’t given to romantic gestures. None of the London boys were, really – it wasn’t in their genes. Their father was a kind man, an affectionate man, a man in love with his wife, but Sean couldn’t recall him ever buying Mum flowers or whisking her away for a surprise weekend. Gerry showed his love in other ways; nuzzling Bernie’s neck while she was hoovering, talking proudly about her achievements with friends, doing the washing-up without comment and driving out to Croydon at two in the morning to collect his drunken wife from a nightclub after her monthly girls’ night out. These had been the London boys’ lessons in love.

  Millie looked at the bottle in his hand with surprise.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you are a classy act.’

  ‘What – this?’ he said, waving the £45 bottle of champagne around airily. ‘This is nothing. You wait to see what you get on our three-month anniversary.’

  She smiled and sauntered around the corner into his bedroom. Sean carried the bottle and glasses on to the balcony. It was mid-April and Sean could just about distinguish the lazy, magical scent of a London summer encroaching. He could hear the EastEnders theme music coming through the balcony doors of the flat next door and the distant echo of children in the playground eighteen storeys below. Spring was very much in the air. Sean spent hours out there on his balcony in the summer, wrote most of his first book on it, when he used to write longhand. He’d miss this secret little corner of London when he finally got his act together and got out of here. He’d be hard-pushed to find another view like this, tons of cash or no. It was ironic that only the very poor and the very rich could afford a London panorama.

  ‘Cool wallpaper,’ Millie said facetiously, coming up behind him.

  ‘Fucking shocking, isn’t it? I keep meaning to do something about it, but you just sort of get used to bad wallpaper after a while, don’t you?’

  ‘Ah – so it wasn’t your choice, then?’

  ‘What?! How dare you! If I ever get round to buying my own place I will astound you with my natural sense of style and taste, I can assure you.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ She picked up a wine glass and held it up expectantly. ‘So – are you going to open that, or what?’

  He smiled at her and attempted to ease the cork from the bottle. ‘Jesus,’ he muttered as the cork refused to budge.

  ‘Here, give it to me – I’m an expert.’ She took the bottle from him and popped the cork easily. They both watched as it flew in an elegant arc across the London skyline, tracing the tops of towerblocks and cranes, caressing the curves of Blackheath Common and landing incongruously among the junk-filled paladins below.

  Millie poured the champagne and passed Sean a glass. ‘Cheers,’ she said, ‘here’s to your flat. About bloody time too. And to meeting your family in three days’ time,’ she grimaced nervously.

  ‘You don’t have to come, you know. It’s fine. I’ve given you a get-out clause. No one will mind.’

  ‘No, no. I want to. I really want to. It’s just a bit daunting, that’s all.’

  Sean looked at his older woman, then, standing on his Catford balcony in her Portobello jumper and inherited earrings, nervously clutching her champagne and looking up at him as if she were about to be introduced to the Royal family, and felt a huge
, overwhelming surge of love for her that started in his stomach and went all the way to his tearducts.

  ‘Aw, come here,’ he said, holding his arms out to her. ‘They’re going to love you, you know that. They’ll adore you.’ She smiled warmly and stepped into his embrace and he hugged her tightly to him, inhaling her aroma. Now, said a little voice in his head. Now, do it now. There could never be a better moment; a mild April evening, London beneath them, the sun setting above and a whole bottle of chilled champagne left to drink.

  He held her hands in his and looked at the ginger flecks in her olive eyes, the laugh lines that grew from the corners of her eyes, the little scar just above her top lip, the little imperfections he’d grown to love almost more than her perfection over the past eight weeks, and as he looked he found himself doing it, saying it, without even having to think about it:

  ‘Millie – will you marry me?’

  She looked at him in shock for a brief moment, a smile twitching at the corners of her mouth.

  ‘What?!’

  ‘I said,’ he got down on his knee this time, ‘Millie, I know we haven’t known each other long, but we know each other well enough for me to know that I want to spend the rest of my life with you so I’d like to ask you – will you please marry me?’

  He stared up at her, feeling slightly foolish but very excited, and waited for her to react. She stared at him blankly for a moment. And then she threw her head back and started to laugh.

  ‘Are you winding me up?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘You want to marry me?’

  ‘Yup.’

  She laughed out loud. ‘But, nobody wants to marry me. That’s the whole point of me. You can’t possibly want to marry me.’

  ‘Oh, but I do.’

  ‘But I’m a spinster. I’m an old maid. I’ve never even lived with anyone. Are you sure about this?’

  ‘Never been surer.’

  ‘And I’m six years older than you. You do realize that?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘And whatever happens in this world, I will always be six years older. In four years’ time I’m going to be forty. And you’ll only be thirty-four.’