by Mike Gayle
‘How long have you been here?’ he asked, taking off his headphones and bundling them into his bag as Angie did exactly the same.
‘About an hour.’
‘Didn’t you get my text?’
‘Of course I got it,’ she said tersely. She kicked a stone at her feet. ‘Look, let’s just get a drink, OK?’
‘Yeah, of course, anywhere in particular in mind?’
‘I don’t care,’ she shrugged. ‘I just don’t want to do this here.’
Russell noted Angie’s unequivocal use of the words ‘do this’ as though there was no doubt in her mind that ‘this’ would indeed get ‘done’.
He suggested a bar on Manchester Road that his housemates had been raving about earlier in the week. Angie didn’t say anything and so Russell considered offering her an alternative venue as though it was his choice of bar and not the situation between them that was the problem but then he thought better of it. Instead he just started walking up the road in the hope that Angie would do the same.
Aware of the awkwardness that lay ahead Russell launched into a monologue about the Mongolian beers that were served in the bar, pretty much regurgitating word for word what his housemates had told him. When he had exhausted that topic he went on to tell her all about his week at work, concluding with his run-in with Jeanette. Angie still refused to bite. Finally, he threw himself into a marathon of monologues encompassing everything from a newspaper article about a new weight-loss wonder drug through to gossip about a mutual friend until they were finally at their destination.
‘So here we are,’ announced Russell, shoe-horning a note of jollity into his voice in the hope that it might coax Angie out of her mood. ‘Looks pretty busy but I reckon we should be able to get a seat.’
He moved aside to let Angie walk in first but she didn’t move.
‘I can’t do this, Russell,’ she said, looking down at her feet. ‘I thought I could but I can’t so I’m going home.’
As she headed back down the road Russell felt as though he had lost all control of his limbs. His best friend in the whole world was walking away from him. He had to do something. He had to say something. Because if he didn’t there was a strong chance he would never see Angie again.
He yelled her name at the top of his lungs and as she turned round he finally unfroze and ran until he was standing right in front of her.
‘Ange.’
She didn’t say a word.
‘I’m sorry.’
She still didn’t speak.
‘Look, I don’t understand what you want from me,’ he pleaded, feeling himself flood with indignation given that she had been as willing a participant in the kiss as he had been. ‘I really don’t understand! What is it you want me to say? How scared I am that I’ve ruined everything between us? How all week I’ve been missing you like mad because my mum and dad have split up and you were the only person in the world I wanted to talk to? You don’t get it, do you? You’re everything to me. Everything. I feel like I ruined it all for a stupid kiss.’
‘You’re wrong,’ said Angie. ‘You’re about as wrong as you could ever be. It wasn’t a stupid kiss, Russ. It was the best kiss of my life because if this is the moment that we’re finally going to say all the things that need to be said then you ought to know that I love you, Russ. I really bloody love you. I always have done and I always will.’
‘That’s what difficult is, Dad.’
At the very moment that Russell was being presented with Angie’s surprising and overwhelming declaration of love, Luke was slouched on the sofa at home half watching a Sky news bulletin on TV while he waited for Cassie to get home from her spin class so that they could order an Indian takeaway and settle down in front of the TV for the night in the hope of unwinding from the disastrous week they had both had.
Luke hadn’t spoken to either of his parents since the visit to his mum’s house had revealed that contrary to his dad’s banging on about ‘needing his freedom’ like he was south Manchester’s answer to Nelson Mandela it had actually been Mum who had kicked him out. Part of the reason was that his workload had reached a critical mass and he’d had to sleep in Travelodges as far apart as Exeter and Peterborough for three nights in a row in preparation for a variety of site meetings. But mostly it was because he wanted to stick his head in the sand and pretend that the whole thing wasn’t happening.
Luke picked up the remote control and flicked over to a comedy panel show on Channel Four. He was about to reach for the menu for the Raja Indian takeaway when the phone rang. Luke’s first instinct was to let it go to voicemail but after two or three rings his resolution crumbled and he picked up the cordless receiver and jammed it up to his ear.
‘Hello?’
‘Luke, it’s me,’ said his Dad. ‘Have you got a minute?’
Luke felt his whole frame sink. He could hear the sound of Cassie opening the front door. ‘Yeah, I’ve got a minute,’ he sighed. ‘What’s up?’
Dad said, ‘How are you?’
‘I’m fine.’
There was pause. ‘Look, I understand this is difficult for all of you boys but I—’
Luke cut him off. ‘No, Dad,’ he snapped, ‘you don’t understand. You don’t know anything at all about me, or about Russ or Adam because if you did, you and Mum wouldn’t be doing this.’
‘Look, son, it’s—’
‘It’s what? Difficult? No, Dad, I’ll tell you what’s difficult. Difficult is watching something that you thought was completely solid fall apart. That’s what difficult is. I still don’t understand what’s going on here. You’re saying one thing and Mum is saying another. And I’m getting to the stage where I’m not even sure I care any more. So unless you’ve called to tell me you’re heading back home to sort out this mess I don’t want to hear anything you’ve got to say.’
‘Luke, it’s complicated, OK. This thing with your mother and me, well it’s going to take time and—’
Luke had had enough. ‘Do you know what? I can’t do this right now. I’m sorry but you’ve caught me at a really bad time. I have to go. Let’s talk some other time, OK?’
Luke put the phone down just as Cassie entered the room, kissed him and sat down next to him.
‘Who was that?’
‘Dad.’
‘Is he OK?’
Luke shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t particularly nice to him.’
Cassie took his hand. ‘I’m sure this will all get sorted soon, Luke,’ she said, squeezing his hand tightly. ‘They’ve been together too long for it to be all over.’
‘Do you think?’
‘I know.’
Luke picked up the menu from the coffee table and handed it to her. ‘Hungry?’
‘Starving.’
‘Good. Death by chicken bhuna it is then.’
Later that night, having watched TV, demolished their takeaway and worked their way through a half-dozen bottles of Budweiser each, they made their way upstairs and fell into each other’s arms underneath the duvet.
‘That has got to be the single best night that I’ve had this week.’ Luke kissed the top of Cassie head. ‘We should both book a week off work and do this every single night until our arteries harden and our blood turns the colour of curry.’
‘You’d love that, wouldn’t you? You don’t care that in the space of a couple of hours you’ve helped me to ruin all the good results of a ninety-minute spin class, do you?’ She rested her head against Luke’s chest and then fell silent. Luke thought she might have fallen asleep but when he looked down at her face her eyes were open and she clearly had something on her mind.
‘What is it?’
Cassie sat up and pulled the duvet up around her. ‘I know you must have a lot on your mind with everything that’s going on with your parents,’ she said, avoiding all eye contact. ‘And I know you must think I’ve got the worst timing in the world but I can’t keep this in any more. I need to talk about us.’ She corrected herself. ‘We need to talk abo
ut us.’
Luke studied her face. She was looking away from him, her eyes glued to the end of the bed. His heart went out to her. She had been an absolute rock over this thing with his mum and dad. And now she was looking for help to get the conversation started which he had promised her they would have about their future. About children. No woman wants the man she loves to have to be forced at gunpoint into agreeing to become the father of her children. It should be a freewill offering. Obviously there were women in the world who didn’t mind making direct demands; who had the self-belief required to make life-changing decisions not just for themselves but for others who lacked their clarity of vision. But Cassie wasn’t one of them. Luke could see how much she wanted this to be a joint decision. The slightest hint of doubt on his part; the slightest sense that this wasn’t a decision made by two equals and everything would be permanently tainted. And even though he was tempted to slip into avoidance-through-conflict mode, he had a duty to make this as painless as possible for Cassie.
‘You’re right,’ he said, reaching out to touch her hand. ‘We do need to talk, because I promised you that I would think about it and I’m sorry I didn’t bring the subject up before now but the truth of the matter is I just haven’t had the time.’
‘Oh,’ said Cassie in a small voice.
‘You know work has been mad and then there’s this thing with my parents . . . But how about this? How about we set a date right and even if we hear that the world is going to end the following day we will definitely talk about it.’
‘When?’
‘How about this time next week?’
Cassie pulled herself tightly into his chest. ‘If that’s OK with you?’
‘It’ll be fine,’ said Luke, reaching over to his bedside table to turn off the light, plunging them into the darkness of the night. ‘It’ll all be absolutely fine, I promise.’
‘Are we really happy for them?’
A week later, Luke and Cassie were sitting in their back room about to have The Talk. Earlier they had been out for a meal in town at a restaurant that all their friends had been talking about for weeks that they had both tried (and failed) to enjoy. The problem hadn’t been the food or the company but rather the timing. The deadline was over. A decision was going to have to be made. And with only one of them knowing for sure which way the conversation would go it was hard not to feel like a prisoner on death row partaking of a final meal.
‘So here we are,’ began Cassie nervously. ‘I can’t believe we’re really going to talk about this.’
‘I know,’ sighed Luke. ‘My stomach is all tied up in knots.’
‘Mine too,’ said Cassie. ‘I almost sent you a text today suggesting that we call the whole thing off. I hate having this hanging over our heads. It’s ridiculous. We’re getting married next year. We should be celebrating us and everything we’ve achieved and instead I feel like I’ve ruined everything.’
‘You haven’t ruined anything, babe,’ reassured Luke. ‘It would’ve been much worse if you hadn’t said anything. This is just one of those things that pops up every now and again even in the best of relationships and the fact that we’re talking about it shows that we’re going about things the right way.’
‘OK then, I’m ready. I’m absolutely ready.’
Since their conversation Luke had thought and thought about whether he was willing to start a family with Cassie. All week he had applied his best analytical skills to building cases both for and against until finally, on the night before his self-imposed deadline, he left his hotel in Exeter, found a quiet wood-panelled pub in the city centre and determined not to leave until he had come to a conclusion.
He had bought himself a pint of bitter, found a nearby table, sat himself down, taken a few sips from the glass then reached inside his jacket pocket for his single most treasured possession: a photograph of his daughter, Megan, taken shortly after her fourth birthday.
The photo showed Megan (all curly black hair, teeth and smiles) standing in the garden of the house that he and Jayne had first bought when they moved to Manchester. It had been summer and Megan had been wearing a green and white stripy T-shirt and the red plastic sunglasses that Russell had given to her. She had fallen in love with those sunglasses and had insisted on wearing them everywhere regardless of whether they were indoors or out or whether it was daytime or night. Her face captured the essence of everything that makes children so life-affirming; a single moment of happiness. Her smile was so huge and her eyes so full of life that it was as though she was beaming happiness from her every pore. Whenever Luke looked at this photo he had no choice but to smile too and he knew that others felt the same; he had seen it happen too many times for it not to be an objective fact. Even his solicitor, a man not given to needless sentimentality, had cracked a grin when Luke first showed him the photo.
It went everywhere with him. Yet every time he took it out he knew he was lying to himself and to Megan too. In the four years since the photograph had been taken she was bound to have changed. She would no longer be his chubby-cheeked angel. She would be older and wiser, perhaps already seeking her own little forms of independence. The girl in the photograph who was his hope and his mainstay no longer existed apart from in photographs and home video footage and yet here he was pretending that one day she might come home. Could he really bring another child into the world when he had done so badly by the first? Was it possible for him to start a second family with Cassie without feeling as though he had abandoned his first? These questions had clarified his position.
‘I can’t do it,’ he said quietly. ‘Cass. I can’t.’
There was a long silence. Cassie let go of his hand. He tried to read her face but it was inscrutable.
‘I know you must be disappointed,’ he began. ‘I know you must think it’s unfair but—’
‘My sister’s pregnant again,’ said Cassie, talking over him. ‘She called me at work yesterday morning to tell me. It’s going to be a June baby apparently.’
Luke’s instinct for self-preservation told him to say nothing but his conscience wouldn’t allow the silence to continue.
‘We should send her and Mark a bottle of champagne or something to celebrate,’ he said quietly, aware that his innocent comment was about to be torn to shreds.
‘Should we?’ said Cassie. ‘Are we really happy for them?’ Tears started to roll down her cheeks. ‘I’m not sure I am because when she told me the news I cried. And they weren’t tears of joy, Luke, they were tears of jealousy. I was so jealous of her. My own sister. I was so completely and utterly jealous that all I felt was rage.’
Imagining what would drive Cassie to feel jealous of a sister she loved more than life itself brought home to Luke just how much she wanted children. This wasn’t a whim, or a yielding to peer pressure, but a real want, a desire that had become central to her being.
‘Look,’ began Luke. ‘I know you must feel like I don’t love you enough. Or that I don’t trust you enough. Or even that I don’t care how you feel. But that’s not true. I love you with my whole heart and I’d trust you with my life, Cass, I would. And I do appreciate what having a kid must mean to you. You love your family more than anything. You love my family like they’re your own. Family means everything to you just as it does to me. And it’s because family means so much to me that I’m sitting here telling you all this. If I started a family with you it would feel like I was giving up on Megan, the family that I’ve left behind, and I just can’t do that to her.’
‘But it doesn’t have to be that way!’ Cassie stood up, trying to wipe the tears from her face. ‘I’m not asking you to give up on Megan. I’m asking you to start a family with me.’
‘I know, I know. But if I start a family with you, to me it would be exactly like giving up on Megan! She’ll be nearly eight now, you know. Can you imagine how it must feel to be eight and not have a dad around? She must feel that I don’t love her. She must feel like I didn’t care about her at all! And how cou
ld I ever prove her wrong if I start all over again with someone new? How could I ever look her in the eye and tell her that she meant the world to me when I’ve been playing happy families somewhere else? I won’t do that to her, Cass. I can’t.’
‘Where’s the logic in that?’
In the dim light of his bedroom Adam could just make out the outline of a man leaning over him. The man was saying something but through the drunken fog of confusion clouding his brain, Adam couldn’t quite work out what. He glanced over at the clock on his bedside table: it was seven thirty a.m. The man slowly came into focus as though Adam was looking through the lens of a camera. It was his dad. He was holding a tray of food: a plate of sausages, bacon, fried eggs, and tinned tomatoes with a mug of tea next to it. The volume suddenly kicked in. Dad was saying: ‘I thought you might fancy a spot of breakfast. I’ll leave it down here, shall I?’ Adam looked at his dad, at the food and at the clock again. He attempted a quick calculation, subtracting the time that he had gone to bed having stayed up late watching DVDs (three thirty-five a.m.) away from the current time (seven thirty-one a.m.) and after several stalled attempts worked out that he had been asleep for approximately three hours and fifty-six minutes in total. He looked at his dad again. His face was like that of a child: open and eager to please. Adam uttered a gruff ‘Cheers!’ in his dad’s direction which appeared to do the job: Dad grinned from ear to ear, put the tray down on the floor, then left the room closing the door behind him and returning Adam to a world of darkness and mild nausea.
Having his dad as a house guest for this past month had been pretty much the stuff of nightmares. Within days Dad had abandoned any illusion of formality and transformed himself from father figure to housemate. With a swiftness that took Adam by surprise Dad’s twenty-year-old (formerly royal blue now pale grey) bath towel became a permanent fixture in the bathroom; meals of the ‘meat and two veg’ variety kept making an appearance in Adam’s fridge with handwritten notes attached to them (‘microwave for two minutes and thirty seconds’); and, most alarmingly, Dad (who had at one point seemed genuinely scared of Adam’s vast array of remote controls) had taken up permanent residence in front of his widescreen TV. Of course Adam loved his dad. Of course he didn’t want anything bad to happen to him and of course he wanted him to feel at home, but he didn’t seem to be making any plans to patch things up with his mum or move into a place of his own. In fact he appeared to be bedding in for the long haul and now Adam wanted his old life back and he wanted it back now.