by Jenny Colgan
‘We should go,’ said Cal eventually. I’d lost all track of time.
‘Oh yes, we must,’ I said. ‘You’ll miss your big party and everything.’
‘Oh, that’s finished now,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll be much better off being mysterious and not turning up and everyone can talk about me.’
I swallowed hard. ‘I’m so, so sorry,’ I said, rubbing at my face. I felt much better. Weirdly. Cathartically cleansed, somehow, inside. Just telling someone. Naming the nightmare I’d been living through might make it go away a little. I could never forgive myself completely. But perhaps I could learn to live with it.
‘No, I mean it,’ he said. ‘Oh, there’s your mate Philly over there, chivvying Jay Joplin. Shall I go and tell her to fuck off?’
‘Neh,’ I said. ‘It’ll keep.’
He kept his arm around me as we walked out of the union, supporting me.
‘I don’t want to go back home,’ I said.
‘I don’t think Eck will be there,’ Cal said.
Oh Eck. I’d liked the idea he’d represented: of comfort, and stability, and security. Everything I’d lost. But it had all been a lie.
‘Oh God. I don’t want to talk to him. Everything I thought about him. None of it . . .’
There was a long pause.
‘I probably shouldn’t say this,’ said Cal. ‘But I knew you two weren’t right. Not really. It’s just good you figured it out before you went and did something stupid, like moving in together.’
‘Oh God,’ I said, weary and sad. ‘What am I going to do now? I’m going to have to start all over again.’
‘So what?’ said Cal airily.
‘What do you mean, “So what”?’ I said.
‘Well, life is unpredictable. One day you’re up, one day you’re down. I’m sure you’ll be fine,’ he said.
‘Well, thanks for that.’
‘You’ve done it once. You can do it again.’
I sniffed. I suppose he was right. I could pick myself up. I’d learned a few things; I was no longer the spoiled ignoramus who couldn’t make herself a cup of tea.
We turned into the long road home.
‘’Course,’ he said, finally, ‘you could always take me along for the ride.’
‘You?’ I said. ‘You and your constant cheek to me and your millions of girlfriends?’
‘Well, first of all,’ he said, ‘constant cheek is maybe my way of telling you I like you.’
‘A stupid way,’ I said, but I felt something strange happening to me. The corners of my mouth were turning upwards.
‘And secondly, not millions of girlfriends, no. Just me. I mean it, Sophie. You and me. Of course, after you ditched me, I had to drown my sorrows somehow.’
‘I didn’t ditch you!’
‘Course you did. One night, and that was me, history.’
‘I thought . . . I mean, I woke up and you were gone.’
‘I’d gone to get myself a cup of tea. And make you one, in fact.’
‘But I thought it was your way of saying I was dumped.’
Cal shook his head. ‘Oh God, Sophie, tell me that’s not true.’
We stopped and he turned me round to face him. A sudden bolt of electricity raced through me, just as I’d felt when I’d first moved in. God, I fancied this man. I was, I had to admit it, utterly crazy about this man. But it was madness. I couldn’t have him. He belonged to all the women of the world, apparently, and I had to set my sights elsewhere. It struck me. I’d known it wasn’t right with Eck. I had known, Cal had known, but I couldn’t admit to myself that I was failing again.
This, though . . . this was completely different.
‘You couldn’t be with just one woman,’ I said playfully.
‘Surely you of all people might believe that people can change?’ said Cal, quietly. ‘Oh, I tried to forget about you, but I couldn’t.’
‘Well, I was right there all the time.’
But Cal wasn’t listening; he obviously had to get this off his chest.
‘I’ll never make you any false promises, Sophie. I won’t promise you the happy ever after, or a little country house, or a steady job or any of that kind of thing. I can only promise you my heart and soul and all that kind of stuff. The girls . . . well, I was single, they were there, and I couldn’t have the person I really wanted, so I figured it didn’t matter. I know this is hard to believe, but I’m actually not a bad boyfriend. Probably.’
I smiled. ‘I’m no picnic, you know.’
‘Oh, I know,’ he said. ‘But from the second I saw you with your head stuck down that toilet . . .’
‘Oi, none of that.’
He was back to his grinning, mocking ways. But I could feel that beneath his light-hearted tone, his heart was thumping. I took the lovely, lovely liberty of moving towards him again, and pressing my body against his. His heartbeat mirrored my own.
‘Can I?’ I said, looking up at him.
‘Can you what?’
‘Can I have all of you?’
‘All that I have is yours. Of course, that is basically a hundred per cent of fuck all.’
‘Ah, we’ll manage,’ I said. ‘Night bus?’
‘Let’s walk,’ he said. ‘We’ll save money.’
‘Yeah, all right,’ I said. And he pressed me into him, and we half-stumbled, half-kissed, and clumsily, in no hurry, and filled, at last, with a kind of strange, fierce joy I’d never, ever known before, we made our slow way up the whole length of the Old Kent Road.
And that night I dreamed about my dad. And he was smiling.
Part Three
Now
Chapter Eighteen
‘What are you laughing about?’ says Cal, as he heaves back up the beach. ‘It’s not easy, carrying fish and chips - and you!’
May, our two-year-old, giggles in delight as her daddy bounces her up and down.
‘I’ve had to walk miles!’ he says.
‘MILES!’ yells May happily.
‘We had to walk for miles. But here you are, my princess. Our first fish and chips of the year. Only . . . oh, never mind what it cost. We can put it down as a work expense seeing as Mummy had to take so many stupid photos of me.’
May turns her father’s face to hers and gives him a big smacker on the lips.
‘Mummy take photos of me now,’ she confides to him.
‘Well, that’s fine.’
I open the steaming packet and stare out to sea. It smells so good.
‘What were you thinking about?’ says Cal. ‘I’ve been watching you all the way across the dunes. You were miles away.’
‘Oh, just about how we met,’ I say.
He looks at me in confusion. ‘Well, you moved in to my flat and jumped my bones.’
‘Not in front of May, please.’
‘Hot, hot, hot!’ May was saying, trying to throw a chip to the seagulls.
‘I thought we were always going to be honest in front of her.’
I grin up at him and he ruffles my hair.
‘Well, there was a bit more to it than that.’
‘Nothing that matters. Give me a chip.’
Of course, it wasn’t always easy at first; living on nothing and budgeting. But God, it was fun. We worked out of a series of studios Cal’s new patron helped us find in the East End, and we survived on loads and loads of fierce sex and cheap sandwiches. And the loads and loads of sex took their toll and we got pregnant, and thought, Well, you might as well bring a child into a loving home without central heating as anything else, so we had May, who was born in May obviously, but is also as beautiful to us as a spring garden.
James came back safely from the Balkans and finally bought his house, quite near us in fact, and he let Wolverine move in, and he has a big garden, so that works well. Wolverine has been sleeping with Philly for years now but we must pretend she’s only at James’s by coincidence. And James always seemed to pop by ours just when I was breastfeeding.
The pho
tography went from strength to strength really - well, we’ll never be rich, but after May came along Julius offered to go into partnership with me, so while I run the wedding side of the business, he can devote even more time on his weird fashion supplements. Grace, Kelly and Delilah are May’s godmothers and she adores them to pieces and wants to dress like them all the time. This worries me a bit. And she absolutely loves Gail, who is back working for a travel company again. She clambers on to her lap and demands stories and sweets and chitchat and orders her about, and in every way is the little girl, I think, that Gail would have liked very much, and I’m oddly touched to have been able to do that for her, however late.
Cal’s pieces have started to sell a little more - particularly the work inspired by May’s feet and hands, because it turns out that babies’ hands and feet all look rather similar and people are willing to pay quite a lot of money to be reminded of the crooks of their precious one’s elbows, or the dimples on their knees. It’s still pretty chilly in the winter without the heating on and I still have to be reminded not to use every drop of hot water if I ever have a bath, but all our friends are skint too, so having people round for the spag Bol I’ve now learned to cook and cheap wine is just what we do, and I look over at Cal in his grubby old shirt throwing his head back and laughing, or winding someone up on purpose, or tossing May in the air, and I think, Christ, I’m so lucky.
Oh, when my poor Eck came to pick up his stuff on our last day in the flat, he was embarrassed and as sorry as a schoolboy caught stealing. I gave him a hug and told him it was all right - I didn’t want to make him feel worse than he clearly did, worse, even than me, once I’d got over the pain of the deception. He winced a bit when he saw Cal and I had got together, but over time he and Cal got reacquainted - they’d been good friends once, before I’d come along and buggered it all up - and we were at his wedding not too long ago, to a nice girl; a very well-off accountant with her own house in Battersea and a BMW convertible and the nose of a fox, according to Cal, but I think he was just a bit pissed off from having to listen to six million conversations about house prices at the wedding when we were still renting and thus doomed to eternal penury, according to Eck’s new stuffed-shirt banker friends, and so Cal got drunk and told them they were all bourgeois dick brains which went down fantastically. He can still be the rudest man I’d ever met. God it’s sexy.
But then a couple of months ago, Cal got offered the Tate Modern space. He was one of the youngest artists ever to be offered it, it was an amazing breakthrough; Sloan had pushed him like crazy. The day of the unveiling was mad; everyone turned up - there were press and art world grandees everywhere. Carena came, without Rufus - ‘He’s up country most of the time these days, darling, whereas I miss London too much.’ Or the twin boys she’d had, whom I’d never met and I think spent most of their time with a nanny. I over-mothered May terribly, I couldn’t even bear to send her to bed without telling her a million times how Mummy and Daddy would be right there for her in the morning, as indeed we would as we invariably woke up with her small body sandwiched in between ours for warmth, but I think Carena left most of that to the help. Twins are tricky, I suppose.
At the launch, Cal had peppered the space with sculptures of people looking at pieces of sculpture, so beautifully done it was hard to tell who was real and who wasn’t, and many of the guests ended up in conversation with someone who turned out to be made of stone. The whole place had been turned into a forest. Critics were muttering words like ‘kitsch’, but the dozens of children there were running in and out of the trees like it was a wonderland. There were also two of Eck’s metal spiders integrated so subtly into the design they didn’t look unpleasant at all. Anyway, at the launch, Leonard came up to me. We’d stayed in touch over the years, so of course I’d invited him, along with Stefano and Avi from the greasy spoon. I’d never forgotten their kindness. And Esperanza, of course, who hugged me like a long lost relative. Leonard, a wise grand-father several times over, had sweets in his pockets for May so she jumped on him like a small happy monkey.
‘Sophie,’ he said, tickling May. ‘You have a birthday next week, don’t you?’
‘Turning thirty,’ I said. ‘Getting old.’
‘Well, please come and see me after that,’ he said. ‘Lovely installation, by the way.’
And so today is my birthday at the beach, and tomorrow we’re going to see Leonard. I don’t know why.
May sleeps all the way home back to Hackney and Cal and I don’t even make much conversation, we’re too dazed and tired by the fresh sea air and the running about and the beers we had after the fish and chips and the splashing in the chill water and May’s unsuccessful attempts to trap a WIDGEON to take home. I took tons of photos and Cal tickled us both in the sand dunes and called us his best girls in all the world. It was such a happy day.
Now May and I are waiting in St John’s Street for Leonard. June is pleased to see us and immediately rustles up cakes and tea. The last time I’d been here seemed a long time ago.
‘Sophie,’ says Leonard, sweeping into the room with his little glasses on and kissing us both fondly. ‘I have something for you.’
‘You don’t need to get me anything,’ I say. ‘I don’t like being reminded I’m thirty! Thanks, though.’
‘Actually, it’s not from me,’ he says, handing me a box. Instantly, I feel my heart pounding and set May on the floor.
‘What is it?’
Leonard shrugs at me. ‘Open it.’
I do.
Inside, nestled on a box of ice blue satin, sits a huge, multifaceted, multicarated diamond.
I can’t breathe.
‘What the hell is this?’ I demand, finally.
Leonard still says nothing, but simply hands me the envelope that came with it.
My darling Sophie, it reads.
I don’t know why I’m writing this - I think I’m a little drunk. I’m sure it’s not necessary, but sometimes I do worry. Anyway. This is for you, and I wanted to keep it safe until you turned thirty. In case anything happens to me or, my darling girl, and I’m sure this won’t happen, but just in case you fritter away your inheritance, or marry a bad sort or make some bad investments . . . I know you won’t do anything like that, my good girl, but I am a silly old worrier. Anyway. If you are doing well, this should be a nice surprise, if not, it may even prove useful. Please carve off a chip and make yourself something pretty to remember me by.
I’m sure I’ll be whooping it up with the best of them at your thirtieth (IF I’m invited - I haven’t forgotten your twenty-first!!!) but if I’m not, Sophie, you should know I love you more than life itself. You are everything to me. I wish you and Gail could be better friends, and I wish you every happiness in life. Sometimes I look at you, with your parties, and your dresses, and your glamorous friends and your crazy life, and I wonder if you really are as happy as you ought to be.
I do hope so, my darling, darling girl.
Always yours
Dad. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I look up at Leonard, face streaming.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about this?’
‘I didn’t know what it was,’ says Leonard, gently. ‘Anyway - client/ attorney privilege, remember?’ He looks at the diamond, with a broad smile. ‘Oh, I’m so pleased for you, Sophie. Do try not to mention it to the authorities.’
I hold it up to the light. It’s spotlessly clear, possibly flawless. It has dozens of carats. It’s a monster.
‘I’ll chip off something for me, something for May,’ I say. ‘He’d have loved her, too.’
‘Yes, I think so.’
And then we have to get home, my heart in my mouth the entire time.
Cal can’t believe it. He stretches his long legs out on our moth-eaten sofa, nuzzling May the whole time.
‘Oh my God,’ he keeps saying. ‘The Tate . . . and this . . .’
He glances at me. ‘You know what this means?’
I smile back at him. ‘W
e’re going to be rich?’
‘Argh,’ he yells, and buries his face in his hand. ‘Oh, no, no, no, no.’
‘Your worst nightmare.’
‘The worst thing that could possibly ever happen.’
I smile, and look at him, and he looks back at me.
‘I just want to say,’ I say. ‘You and May - you are everything. Everything a girl could ever dream of.’