‘I suppose I could make room,’ Greg allowed, stowing the photo in his overnight bag.
The girls’ delighted squeals brought Jess bounding and barking into the room. Amanda leant against the door, watching this scene with wry amusement. She made no attempt to join the fun. This was Greg’s moment with his girls. They wouldn’t see him for the next couple of days; let them enjoy it. Amanda loved being their mother but imagined it must be bliss to be their dad. Talk about unconditional love. With her daughters’ laughter trailing her out of the room, Amanda started down the stairs. She recalled that she still hadn’t found the missing lunch box. Lauren must have left it at school. Again. Irritating bloody child!
Sarah cut Russell’s chicken sandwiches in two, then caught herself before halving the wholegrain bread again. Time was he wouldn’t eat them unless they were in quarters. Now the fifteen-year-old was mortified if his sandwich bag contained ‘kiddy’ portions. Sarah smiled to herself. This must be one of those markers that indicate a new stage in life, like acne, braces or (though not in Russell’s case – hopefully) breasts. She added a yoghurt sachet and digestive biscuit to his lunch box then, as an afterthought, tossed in an apple, hoping that her son might consume it before realising it was fruit.
Dan often gave Russell a lift to school on his way in to work, but today was taking a taxi to Euston Station. Russell was grateful for the opportunity to catch the bus. He found being alone with his dad somewhat tortuous. Neither of them could think of much to say and used the car radio to mask the awkward silence that was intermittently broken by their awkward conversation.
Standing at the front door, Sarah bade her menfolk goodbye. Russell allowed her to brush his cheek with her lips, the faintest touch before he fled, though Sarah was grateful for even this brief contact. She missed the kisses and cuddles they used to share. They seemed such a distant memory now, though it was only in the last year or so, since he’d slammed the door on childhood, that Russell had withdrawn from her. Dan was more forthcoming. He hugged his wife and pressed his lips against hers, but it was inadequate compensation for the loss of Russell’s display of affection.
Sarah closed the front door. She heard the latch take, the sound accentuated by the silence in the rest of the house, and retraced her steps to the kitchen. She had to clear away the breakfast things; there were clothes to be washed and an evening meal to plan – just for her and Russell, she remembered. The rest of the day loomed emptily in front of her. It was a daunting prospect.
It wasn’t meant to be like this. When Sarah first met Dan, they had both been working for an office supplies company. Sarah had been PA to the Managing Director, Dan the new boy in the sales department. They’d started dating and, two years later, had married. When Russell came along Sarah took maternity leave, fully intending to return to work. But after six months she hadn’t felt ready to hand her baby over to a childminder. Dan had supported her decision to stay at home. They could just about get by on his salary, and their financial situation would become easier as his income rose.
Except their outgoings rose faster. They took on a larger mortgage, expecting their family to grow. It hadn’t happened. Sarah fell pregnant three more times, but on each occasion miscarried. Finally, they decided to stop trying. As Dan explained to friends, it wasn’t the disappointment they couldn’t bear so much as the hope. And their continued attempts to expand their family almost seemed like an indictment of Russell, as though he, by himself, weren’t enough. Dan and Sarah resolved to appreciate what they had, not bemoan what they didn’t.
Sarah had thought she might return to work when Russell started primary school, but neither she nor Dan wanted their son to become a latchkey kid. You didn’t need a psychology degree to know that children fared better if they returned home not to an empty house but to a sympathetic ear, a glass of milk and a chocolate Hobnob.
When Russell graduated to secondary school, Sarah had felt her role diminish. He didn’t need his mother as much, nor want her. At last she desired to go back to work, but had discovered that the attraction wasn’t mutual. Her office skills were stuck in the mid-1990s, fossilised like an insect in amber. She could retrain, and for a while had tried. But whether it was down to hormones, age or disuse, Sarah felt that her brain had atrophied. She simply couldn’t learn like she had in her youth. She found simple commands (control, alt, delete) difficult to assimilate and impossible to retain. She had had to face up to the fact that she was obsolete.
The phone rang. It was Veronica Bragg, a sometime tennis partner of Sarah’s.
‘Darling!’ brayed Veronica. ‘I haven’t seen you in forever! We must catch up. Are you free for lunch tomorrow?’
Tomorrow, the day after, the day after that. Sarah didn’t much like Veronica, but in small doses she was preferable to solitude. They made a date for the following day.
‘Night night, sleep tight, see you in the morning light. Night night.’
Greg blew a kiss down the phone and mimed rubbing noses, to the right, to the left, to the right again. There was a strict choreography to his nightly bedtime ritual with Lauren, and Greg knew better than to mess with it.
‘OK, into bed, sausage. Put your mum on now.’
A moment later, Amanda’s voice sounded in Greg’s ear.
‘Hey, you,’ she said. ‘How’s the conference?’
How indeed? Every year it was the same. Greg looked forward to these two days away from the responsibilities of home, on expenses, in a four-star hotel. What wasn’t to like? But the reality was always a let-down. Each year he saw the same old faces, except they were a little older, wearier and more alcohol ravaged. Any influx of new blood simply served to remind him of the march of time: bright-eyed and ambitious youngsters elbowing a path through the crowd, shoving Greg and his contemporaries a little closer towards the exit. At thirty-eight, Greg was something of an elder among the tribe of salespeople (making Dan an eldest, he mused). The two were nonetheless respected elders, working for the British division of a multinational computer manufacturer. Between them they covered Greater London: Greg had the west, Dan the less glamorous and less lucrative east, but still the second most sought-after patch. Like Dan, Greg spent half his time on the road, with only Heart FM and the computer-generated voice of his Sat Nav (Natalie, Greg had christened her) for company.
That’s where Greg would prefer to be now: out in the field, somewhere on the North Circular, the smell of a potential sale in his nostrils. But instead he was in Birmingham, stranded like a beached whale that’s lost the will to live. At least the conference was good for networking. Many of his clients were here, affording him the opportunity to remind them that the next time they upgraded their systems (every two to three years in the fast-changing world of IT), he was their go-to guy. And already he’d made a number of new contacts, though only 5 per cent would ever amount to anything. Of course, Greg reminded himself, you didn’t know which 5 per cent, so it was only in retrospect that you could separate the wheat from the chaff, whatever chaff was – belly-button fluff, something like that. If only the people weren’t so dull. Strait laced, buttoned down. Like Dan, bless him.
Worse than the delegates were the sessions. The titles changed but the speakers remained as boring as ever, evangelising about arcane technological advances that only other geeks could get a hard-on for.
‘I wish I could come home,’ Greg told Amanda now, in a tone that his mother, had she still been alive, would have recognised from when he was twelve and had been sent on an Outward Bound hike in north Wales.
Amanda laughed, which Greg didn’t feel was an altogether sympathetic response. He was right.
‘You say that every year,’ she reminded him. ‘And then you have a great time. Someone has a party in their room, you all get horribly pissed and you can’t wait to do it again twelve months later.’
‘Perish the thought,’ said Greg morosely. ‘I’ll be a year older then.’
Two floors up and three rooms along, Dan was on the
phone to Sarah.
‘There was a fascinating session this afternoon – about the future of fibre-optic cable. I bet you can’t guess the speeds they’re talking of in two years’ time.’
It appeared Sarah had no intention of trying, as she changed the subject before Dan could continue.
‘I think you need to speak to Russell when you get home,’ she said. ‘I was on the laptop earlier, checked the browsing history.’
‘I thought he always deleted that.’
‘He must have forgotten. He’s been looking at some fairly dubious websites.’
Oh God, thought Dan. Please don’t let it be too perverse. Not animals. Or children.
‘Like what?’ he asked, not wanting to know.
‘Bondage.’
It was fortunate that there was a phone line and a hundred miles between them, or Sarah would have seen the guilty look that swept across Dan’s face. The night before, he’d been watching a wildlife documentary while Sarah was having a bath. At least, that’s what each had believed the other to be doing. Dan was in fact surfing the net and had happened upon a site he’d never seen before – the homepage of a dominatrix in Santa Fe. He’d been idly wondering what it was about New Mexico that made it such a Mecca for fetishists, when the door to the lounge had been flung open (or so it had seemed to Dan) and Sarah had loomed on the threshold.
‘God, that’s disgusting!’ she’d blurted. Dan was not surprised by this reaction. Even when they’d been in the habit of regular sex – back in the day – Sarah had been conservative in her tastes, regarding anything more exotic than the missionary position as unsavoury or absurd. Dan was, however, surprised to have been caught; he’d thought his reaction, in slamming shut the laptop lid, had been faster even than his broadband connection. It was when he’d looked at Sarah, ready to confess his sin, that he’d realised her eyes were fixed not on the computer screen but their forty-two-inch plasma TV. A cheetah was in the process of ripping a gazelle to bloody, high-definition shreds. Dan had casually laid the laptop aside, intending to delete the browsing history before he went to bed, but this task had slipped his mind. Thank God she suspected Russell.
‘Well, bondage isn’t so bad, is it?’ he asked now, before remembering to add, ‘Assuming the women were willing participants.’
‘No, it was harmless enough, but even so. I think one of us ought to have a word with him. I could, if you like.’
‘No!’ Dan was conscious of sounding a little too insistent; he adjusted his tone to nonchalant as he continued. ‘He’d be mortified if you talked to him about sex. Leave it to me. We’ll have a man-to-man when I get back.’
‘That would probably be best,’ Sarah agreed.
Dan had no intention of doing any such thing.
Spend any time in Birmingham and, before long, someone will inform you that the city has more canals than Venice. Still, you’d rather be in Venice, Greg reflected, as he and Dan strolled after dinner through the evocatively named Gas Street Basin. This city-central marina of narrowboats and barges features on every picture postcard of Birmingham, evidence perhaps of the city’s dearth of scenic sights. But Birmingham is not without other attractions. There’s its rich culinary heritage, most notably that traditional Brummie dish, the balti. Try finding a good curry in Venice.
Awash with Kingfisher lager, Greg and Dan returned to their hotel. Greg hoped that Amanda’s prediction might prove correct, that they would arrive to find the joint jumping, plans for a party being hatched. No such luck. A spattering of suits contaminated the bar, salesmen laughing loudly at their own piss-poor jokes. In one corner, a gym-toned woman in her late forties held court, wearing a tight jacket and tighter skirt, the colour of which matched her strident scarlet lipstick. This was Paula Stratton, a colleague of Greg and Dan’s, but senior to them – a Regional Sales Manager. Were London her turf, she’d be their boss, but her patch comprised Manchester and the north-west – fortunately, from their point of view. Not for nothing was she known as Strap-On. This nickname would have been cruel and sexist had she not coined it herself. She went to great pains (other people’s mostly) to live up to the reputation she’d so carefully crafted. Standing at the entrance to the bar, Greg and Dan exchanged a look. Each quite fancied another beer, but not that much. An early night suddenly seemed appealing. They discreetly withdrew. As Greg had feared, this year’s conference was proving to be a bust.
This assessment was reinforced by the first session the two men attended the next morning. The hotel’s cavernous conference hall was at best a third full; Greg suspected the other delegates must have been tipped off. The speaker was an American management guru who’d flown in from Seattle to deliver the keynote address. Jet lag could conceivably be to blame for his stuttering performance, but not for his complete lack of charisma. Greg, a full English breakfast settling on his stomach, struggled to stay awake as the lecturer monotonously read aloud the slides projected on to the screen behind him.
‘This diagram represents the Johari window, comprising quadrants which heuristically facilitate interpersonal relationships.’
Greg turned to Dan, who sat beside him taking notes.
‘What’s the title of this session?’
‘Getting Your Message Across.’
‘Well, there’s a definition of irony.’
Dan shushed him. Greg wondered if it was too early for a Jack Daniel’s. Quarter to ten. A tad degenerate. A change in the speaker’s cadence drew his attention back to the stage.
‘OK, we’re going to have a bit of fun now; we’re going to play a game!’ Greg hadn’t thought it possible for his spirits to sink any lower but now discovered that it was. ‘I want you to choose a partner, but not somebody you know.’
‘If this involves hugging, I’m out of here,’ Greg muttered to Dan. He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to find, leaning across from two rows behind, an attractive young woman. ‘On the other hand . . .’ He mugged at Dan.
‘Hi! I’m . . .’
‘Liz,’ said Greg.
‘Oh! Have we met?’
‘No. I can read.’ Greg gestured at the name tag she was wearing on her breast. A very shapely breast, he noted. Liz laughed prettily. She was in her late twenties, he estimated. Beside her sat her friend – Lynda, her badge announced – who was making the acquaintance of Dan. Both women were good-looking, though, in Greg’s opinion, Liz, being a brunette like Amanda, narrowly shaved it. From the stage, the speaker’s voice interrupted.
‘Now, I want you to tell your partner something about yourself, something interesting, that very few people are aware of.’
Greg hated party games. But he was prepared to give this one a go.
‘You first,’ Liz said.
Greg considered his options. Something interesting but not widely known. Once, when he was sixteen, his mum had caught him wanking over a picture of Pamela Anderson. No, perhaps not.
‘I can do this,’ he said, pulling his left thumb back against his wrist in a manner that appeared physically impossible.
‘Oh my God!’ Liz exclaimed. ‘That’s repulsive.’
Greg beamed. It was repulsive. And had he not been double-jointed, would have hurt like buggery.
‘Your turn,’ he said brightly.
Liz bit her bottom lip, deep in thought. Full lips, Greg noticed.
‘I’m a Sagittarian!’ she finally declared.
Greg was acutely underwhelmed. He’d been hoping for a more salacious revelation, something juicy, like her lips.
‘That’s not very interesting, is it?’ Liz asked.
Greg shrugged non-committally – agreeing, without the rudeness of actually saying it. Liz resumed the lip biting. She really was very attractive. Greg found it difficult to tear his eyes from the fold of skin trapped between her teeth, and made no attempt. Within his lower regions something stirred. It was not his full English breakfast.
‘It’s hard, isn’t it?’ Liz asked, and for a moment Greg thought she’d noticed. But she m
eant the task they’d been set.
‘I’m allergic to peanuts?’ It was posed as a question, presumably not as to whether she really did have a peanut allergy (Greg was prepared to take her word for that), but whether he deemed this admission of sufficient interest. It beat knowing her star sign, but not by much.
‘I know!’ Liz’s eyes lit up, and she leant forward, gesturing to Greg to follow suit. Together they bridged the row between them. She brought her bitten lip close to Greg’s ear. ‘When I’m sexually aroused, I purr like a cat.’
There is a poison used by certain tribes in the Amazon rainforest that can render victims instantly paralysed. Liz’s disclosure had a similar effect on Greg. He stood, rooted to the spot, his brain frozen like a crashed computer, unable to send commands to his limbs. Liz leant away but held his gaze. She smiled in a manner that Greg, had he had the power of speech, might have described as feline.
‘If you’ll resume your seats,’ announced the speaker, revelling in his role as game-show host. Greg somehow managed to drop his arse on to his chair. He could feel the heat of Liz’s aura two rows behind him, but dared not look back. The lecture continued for another forty minutes; Greg did not take in one word.
Cold Feet: The Lost Years Page 31