Life and Soul of the Party

by Mike Gayle

  Seven Months Later

  Melissa’s Party

  July 2007

  Melissa

  It was Saturday and I was sitting on the sofa in the living room typing out a text message: ‘Am throwing a party tonight. Would love for you to come. Feel free to bring Seb and Bri and a bottle! Let me know if you’re up for it and I’ll send details. Xxx Mel’ The text was to Billy as he’d been on my mind ever since we had run into each other in town a few weeks earlier. It had been midday, on the day after the last exam paper of my degree, and I’d been leaving Costa Coffee near Piccadilly station, enjoying the freedom of life without exams hanging over me when I practically bumped into him. It was the first time that we had seen each other since splitting up and at first I was a bit embarrassed.

  ‘Melissa,’ he said, appearing almost equally stunned, ‘how are you?’

  ‘I couldn’t be better. I finished my exams yesterday.’

  ‘I’d forgotten about your finals otherwise I would have sent you a good luck card or something.’

  ‘There’s no need but thanks anyway.’

  ‘How did you get on?’

  I shrugged. ‘I did my best and that’s all you can ask, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, congratulations anyhow. I’m sure you did brilliantly. Any plans about what you’re going to do next?’

  ‘I’m going to work full-time at Blue over the summer to get some money to make a dent in my overdraft but otherwise I have no idea.’

  ‘How about doing a Masters?’

  ‘I think I’m done with education for now,’ I laughed. ‘I don’t know . . . I’ll find something.’

  I told Billy I was sharing a flat in Chorlton with Laura and filled him in about Vicky, Chris and Cooper too. Billy had just been promoted to senior designer and was back living with Seb and Brian but he was getting tired of living like a student and planned to move on to something better by the end of the summer at the latest. There was no mention of him seeing anyone new and I had nothing to say on that score. Even so, there was something about his manner that made me think that he had moved on and I considered asking about Freya, but then thought better of it. At best he was being nice by not rubbing my nose in it and at worst probably didn’t consider it to be any of my business whether he was seeing anyone or not and I couldn’t really argue with that.

  As the conversation came to an end I kept telling myself to invite him to my party. Explain that it wasn’t a date and reassure him that he could bring whoever he wanted. I had a whole speech prepared if he asked what I was celebrating. ‘It’s sort of an all-purpose party,’ I’d say. ‘A house-warming party for me and Laura; a belated New Year’s Eve for those who hadn’t felt like having one back in December; and a last get-together for some of my university friends now that we were about to graduate. Above all it’s a moving-on party: a party where everyone will put the past in the past and look forward to a brand-new future.’

  I didn’t say any of that of course. I tried a couple of times but I couldn’t actually get out the words. Partly, I didn’t want to come across like some kind of stalker, but mostly I was scared of him turning me down.

  In a bid to take control of the situation I looked at my watch and said that I had to go even though I easily had another twenty minutes.

  ‘I’d better be off too,’ he said. ‘It’s not like my lunch is going to buy itself.’

  Then with a complete lack of self consciousness, he kissed my cheek. The gesture lasted no more than a few seconds and felt as natural as breathing. Something had changed inside me. A light had been switched on. The coldness I’d felt since Paul’s death began to thaw. It was as though I was springing back to life. And I felt the beginning of a sensation that I hadn’t experienced for the longest time: hope.

  Chris

  It was just after half past ten and I was in bed in Cooper’s spare room staring at the ceiling and contemplating my life. The thoughts that were my constant companions had done their usual tour of duty around my head one after the other: about the new baby and when it might arrive; worries about how living apart from William might affect him in the future; excitement at seeing Vicky and William for our afternoon in the park; sadness at knowing that these few precious moments would be over all too soon. But of all the thoughts that went through my mind the main one was always the same: how much I loved Vicky and how much I wanted her back.

  Things had been tough since the split, there was no doubt about that. On the night of Paul’s funeral, with nowhere else to go, I ended up on Cooper’s doorstep. Without making a single comment about what I’d done he invited me in and told me I could stay as long as I wanted. We talked a lot that night, staying up until the early hours. We talked about the funeral and how much we both missed Paul; we talked about the women in our lives and the mistakes that we felt we’d both made; and then finally, as the night sky that we had sat watching through the bay window in the living room began to lighten, we talked about our relationship with each other: stuff from the past when we were kids; long-held misconceptions; secrets shared. The evening was a revelation and changed for the better not only my opinion of Cooper but my relationship with him too.

  Over the months that followed, Vicky and I met up regularly. We tried couples’ counselling for a while but for every occasion that I felt as though we were close to making a breakthrough there was another when it seemed like things were irrevocably broken. The turning point was Christmas. Now that William was four, Christmas had taken on a new significance. He was getting excited about Father Christmas. He had a role as an angel in his pre-school nativity play. Christmas was no longer just a ritual to be endured but something in which he actively participated and might remember for the rest of his life. Neither Vicky nor I could stand the thought that the first Christmas he could remember would be the one that we spent as a family torn apart. So we both doubled the effort we were putting into making things work and this resulted in my moving back temporarily over the Christmas period.

  And now, even though I was back living with Cooper, things were good. Not great. But good. I saw Vicky and William regularly during the week and Saturday and Sunday were always spent as a family. There were times when I felt as though we were on the verge of getting back together again, the baby growing inside Vicky drawing us closer together with each passing day, but still there was something keeping us apart, one indefinable piece of the puzzle missing. I had no idea what it was. But as I climbed out of bed, sorted out my clothes for the day and made my way to the bathroom for a shower I determined that today was going to be the day I found out.

  Cooper

  I was making Naomi breakfast when I heard the front door slam shut signalling that Chris had left the flat.

  ‘How did he seem today?’

  ‘Okay, I think,’ I replied as the eggs frying in the pan in front of me began to spit. ‘It’s hard to tell with Chris these days. There’s a lot of stuff going on with him and Vicky.’ I looked at Naomi. ‘If you were Vicky do you think you would take him back?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She gave me a comforting half smile and returned to her newspaper. When the eggs were done I slipped them on to two plates already piled up with bacon, beans and white bread. It was Naomi’s favourite breakfast and represented one of the things that I really liked about her: her lack of fussiness about food. Unlike Laura she didn’t bang on about calories or fat content, cholesterol or the evils of hydrogenated fats.

  ‘Mmm, that smells lovely. I can’t tell you how much I love bacon.’

  ‘You don’t have to. The drool at the corner of your mouth says it all.’

  ‘Very funny. Do you know. Coop, this is all but perfect apart from . . .’

  ‘A lukewarm mug of tea?’ I reached across to the kitchen surface and picked up the waiting mug of tea. ‘Here’s one I made earlier that was steaming hot and is now . . .’

  ‘Absolutely perfect,’ said Naomi taking a sip. She smiled. ‘You do know that as long as you’re m
aking lukewarm tea and fry-ups like this I am never going to let you out of my clutches?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have it any other way.’

  For a relationship that had started as the result of an ill-conceived blind date, I was positively amazed by how well we were getting on. Naomi really understood me. Wanted the same things as I did. We were heading in the same direction. And because all my insecurities seemed to have disappeared, I no longer felt as though I had to play the grown-up all the time. For the first time in my life I was in an equal partnership. All this would have been perfect if Laura had stayed on the other side of the world. The fact that she had been seeing someone else while she had been out there had helped things considerably. Picturing her in the arms of another bloke meant that I could feel justified in hating her. And if I hated her then I couldn’t be feeling anything else.

  But then Paul had died and it had completely knocked my world off its axis, churning up my insides into one big mess. I hadn’t fully understood this until the moment I got Laura’s call that she was home some months after the funeral. Just hearing her voice brought everything to the surface. At the time I’d kidded myself that the anger I felt towards Laura was to do with her selfishness. But over time I realised that my anger had nothing to do with Laura’s behaviour and everything to do with the fact that, in some way that I couldn’t quite pinpoint, I was still in love with her. This moment of self-realisation hurt. It really hurt. Partly because I had always thought that I was better than that – still being in love with an ex long after the two of you are supposed to have moved on is the biggest cliché in the book – and partly because of what this new knowledge might mean for me and Naomi. Could I carry on seeing her knowing how I felt about Laura? Would it simply be a matter of time before Laura and I eventually got back together?

  I didn’t know the answer nor did I want to know. The best way that I could remain in a state of blissful ignorance was to avoid Laura altogether. My plan had worked up to a point. I hadn’t seen her since she had turned up to collect the rest of her things. And in the meantime I had become closer and closer to Naomi, so that I was almost convinced that what I felt for her was bigger and more intense than anything I had ever felt for Laura. But I needed to be sure. And the only way to do that would be to see Laura face to face and talk things through – something that I had been putting off. But now that Melissa’s party was finally here there was nowhere left to hide. Unless I wanted to make my peace with Laura in front of all of our friends and my new girlfriend, the only option was to try to see her some time today.

  ‘So what are you going to do while I’m in town?’ asked Naomi setting her knife and fork down on her empty plate. ‘You can’t sit here all afternoon on your own. Why don’t you join my sister and me? She won’t mind, honest, she’s your biggest fan.’

  ‘I’m her biggest fan too.’

  ‘So, you’ll come then?’

  ‘Thanks, but no thanks. I’ve got a lot of stuff I’ve been meaning to do and I think today is the day to get it done.’

  Melissa

  I was willing my phone to deliver a reply from Billy when Laura came into the room. Her blond hair was tied back in a ponytail and she was wearing a long slouchy grey jumper that I knew for a fact used to be Cooper’s, matched with faded blue tracksuit bottoms. This was Laura’s official lounging-around-the-flat outfit. It had come out every weekend since we had moved in together and for as long as she wore it you could guarantee she wouldn’t be venturing outside.

  ‘So you’ve done it then? Sent the dreaded text?’

  I nodded. ‘And I wish I hadn’t now. This is torture. I sent it fifty-five minutes ago and he still hasn’t replied.’

  ‘Maybe he’s taking a nap.’

  ‘Next to his delightfully young, thin and pretty girlfriend.’

  Laura laughed. ‘I’m telling you he’s single.’

  ‘But you don’t even know him.’

  ‘I don’t need to,’ smiled Laura. ‘I can just feel it in my water.’

  ‘Well, I guarantee that the predictive skills of your water are off course this time. I know for sure that he’s got a girlfriend. I just know it. I mean he was mad about that girl I told you about long before he ever met me.’

  ‘Didn’t you say that she wasn’t interested in him?’

  ‘But that was ages ago. You know how things change.’

  ‘Okay, so maybe they have hooked up but she probably dumped him and he’s been licking his wounds ever since.’

  I smiled in spite of myself. I liked the idea of Billy, however unlikely, being single and sort of sad. I liked the idea that I might be the one to cheer him up. I looked over at my phone lying dormant on the table. I just knew that he wasn’t going to reply to my text. ‘This is ridiculous. I’m thirty-six years old and yet I’m still acting like a lovelorn teenager.’ I turned off my phone.

  ‘And when you’re eighty-six, and still living in this flat with me you’ll be exactly the same,’ replied Laura. ‘Face the facts, babe, no amount of time or experience is going to change that.’

  I detected a slight cloud pass over Laura’s face and guessed it had to do with Cooper. Like most warring former couples they both had their grievances and both were too proud to admit to each other that they might be wrong. Laura believed that Cooper had started it with his refusal to speak to her when she called him on her arrival back in the UK. Cooper believed that Laura had inflamed the situation a few days later by refusing to speak to him when he called her at her parents’ house in Bristol to make amends. Since then, with the exception of a minor shouting match back in November on the day Laura finally moved her stuff out of the house, they had yet to say a word to each other, civil or otherwise.

  ‘So how are you feeling about tonight?’

  ‘About the prospect of coming face to face with Cooper and his new girlfriend? I’m fine.’ She paused. ‘Do you think they’re right for each other?’

  ‘They seem okay to me.’

  ‘I know that but, you know, do you think they’ll go the distance?’

  ‘None of us has got a crystal ball. If I did I’d be looking into it right now trying to see what Billy’s up to.’

  ‘You’re right. We’re far too old for this. I’m going to make myself a coffee, do you want one?’

  I declined her offer and she got up and went to the kitchen leaving me to return to the notepad I’d been using to write down a list of the remaining things we needed to do for the party. Only one item had a tick against it: ‘Send text message inviting Billy to party.’

  ‘Once I’ve had breakfast I am completely at your disposal,’ Laura called from the kitchen. ‘Feel free to order me about any way you like. Any post yet?’

  ‘I heard it drop through the letterbox a while ago but I was too busy willing my phone to do something to go and get it.’

  Checking that my Saturday morning ensemble – faded hooded blue sweatshirt combined with red-checked over-sized men’s pyjama bottoms and cow-print socks – was okay for a journey on which I might encounter people from the neighbouring flats, I made my way out to the communal hallway.

  Lying directly underneath the letterbox was a large heap of post which I sorted into three piles. The guys upstairs had a few bills and a reminder from the TV licensing people; the trendy couple on the middle floor had bills, bank statements and stack of credit-card applications; Laura and I had a couple of official-looking letters, a gas bill, a promotional offer from Habitat and a handful of letters that had their original address blacked out with marker pen and replaced with our current one.

  ‘Anything good?’ asked Laura as I returned to the flat.

  ‘Same old same old really.’

  ‘Anything for you?’

  ‘Just bills, circulars and some stuff that Susie forwarded.’ I flicked through my post plucking out anything that wasn’t a bill. The first letter in a plain white envelope was from my university asking me if I wanted to sign up for the alumni newsletter. The second letter in a br
own envelope was from the police relating to a statement that I had given them back in October when I had spotted a group of kids breaking into a car round the corner from us. They had arrested a number of suspects in relation to the crime and requested that I be available the following Wednesday in order to view them in a police line-up. The third letter was in a white A5-sized envelope and even though Susie had covered over the original address I could still just about make out the handwriting. I didn’t recognise it but it looked feminine. I was intrigued. I opened it up and was surprised to find that the only thing inside was a photograph of a smiling baby. A baby girl – fair hair, grey-green eyes and wearing a pale yellow polka-dot sleep suit. I checked inside the envelope again. It was empty. I turned over the photograph and in the same handwriting as on the front of the envelope were the words: Bethany Georgina Bannister. I turned it over again and stared at the baby. There was no doubting her parentage. The shape of the eyes and the chin were unmistakable.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Laura, glancing up at me. ‘Are you all right?’

  I handed her the photograph and her eyes widened just as mine had done. ‘Is this from who I think it’s from?

  I nodded. ‘It’s definitely a picture of Paul and Hannah’s baby.’

  Vicky

  It was just after midday when Chris, William and I arrived at Pizza Hut for lunch. The restaurant was heaving with parents and their offspring and the staff appeared rushed off their feet.

  ‘I knew we should have gone somewhere else. It’s always busy in here.’

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ said Chris. ‘Anyway, we’re here now.’

  ‘But we could be waiting for who knows how long?’

  ‘And what if we do? William had an ice cream not ten minutes ago, you hate pizza and I’m not that hungry anyway.’

  Chris was right. It wasn’t really as though any of us were hungry. I wondered what was really bothering me and was inundated with potential answers. There was the fact that I was standing when I wanted to sit down. There was the fact that every day this week I’d woken up feeling nauseous and was having to guzzle Pepto-Bismol like it was going out of fashion. And there was the fact that I was shattered because William had woken me up at twenty to five to ask me where foxes go in the daytime and then refused to go back to sleep.