31 Dream Street (10 page)

‘Oh, God, Leah. I’m sorry.’

‘Yeah, well, sorry’s not going to help. Sorry’s a load of bollocks frankly.
You’re
a load of bollocks. A load of pathetic, immature, selfish, fat bollocks.’

‘Fat?’

‘Yes, fat. You’re fat. And hairy. But that doesn’t matter because some poor woman will just have to marry you anyway because her mum and dad tell her to.’

There was a stunned silence, followed two seconds
later by a roar of what Leah at first assumed was indig nation, but quickly realized was laughter.

‘Oh, God, Leah. You’re so funny. I miss you.’

Leah felt her adrenalin levels drop and her muscles relax, then she smiled. ‘I miss you, too,’ she said. ‘Loads. I wish you weren’t Indian.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘so do I.’

It fell silent for a moment, then Leah looked at her watch. ‘Shit,’ she said, ‘I’ve got to go.’

‘Go where?’

‘To the Clissold Arms. It’s Toby’s birthday.’

‘Toby who?’

‘You know, Toby, across the road. Young Skinny Guy. Except he’s not that young. He’s thirty-nine.’

‘How come you’re going to the pub with him?’

‘He invited me.’

‘What? Like on a date?’

‘No. Of course not. He wants me to meet his house-mates.’

‘What – you mean you’re going to meet the Teenager? And, and the Air Hostess. And
Sybil
?!’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘maybe. I’m not sure who’s coming.’

‘And the Girl with the Guitar?’

‘I told you, Am, I don’t know.’

‘Oh, God, that’s not fair. I lived there for three years, then I move out and five seconds later you’re getting in with the neighbours. Can I come?’

‘No, Am, you can’t. We don’t go out together any more, remember?’

‘But we’re friends, aren’t we? We can still see each other?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe. Look, I have to go now. I’ll speak to you soon, OK?’

‘OK,’ he sniffed. ‘And Leah?’

‘Yes?’

‘I love you.’

17

Leah got home from the Clissold Arms just after eleven. She slammed the door behind her and leaned against it, heavily, her body wilting with the relief of finally being home. The evening had been a resounding failure, a disaster in fact. Only Con and Ruby had turned up and they’d spent the entire night flirting outrageously with each other before disappearing back to the house at ten o’clock, presumably, Leah imagined, to have sex with each other. Toby had watched the whole mating ritual unfurl with undisguised anguish and Leah had tried desperately to keep a jolly stream of conversation going. Which was why she’d ended up drinking so much. She’d learned nothing about Toby’s housemates, other than that they had the hots for each other, and all she’d learned about Toby was that he was obviously miserably in love with Ruby, as he talked about her non-stop for the remainder of the evening and at one point had even looked like he might be about to cry.

As the silence of her empty flat descended on her she felt a buzzing in her ears and realized how drunk she was. She sighed and gazed round the flat. She hated living here without Amitabh. But then the thought of living somewhere else, of living with
someone
else, was just as depressing. She thought back to her conversation
with Amitabh earlier that day, what he’d said about wishing he wasn’t Indian, him saying that he loved her. And then she did something ludicrous. She picked up the phone and she called Amitabh’s mother.

‘Hello, Mrs Varshney. Malini. It’s Leah.’

‘Leah?’

‘Hi, how are you?’

‘Leah. It’s very late.’

‘I know. I’m sorry. I’m just…’ She sighed, and sat on the sofa. ‘I’m just, I don’t know. How are you?’

‘I’m tired, is how I am. I’m in bed, you’ve just woken me up and I’m tired. Is everything all right?’

‘Yes. No. It’s just. You know, what Amitabh said to me when we split up. Is it true? Would you really not want to have me as a daughter-in-law?’

She heard Malini sighing loudly down the phone. ‘Oh, Leah, Leah, Leah. What can I say to you?’

‘Say it’s not true. Say he was wrong. Say that you would be proud to have a girl like me as the wife of your youngest son.’

‘And so I would,’ she replied softly, ‘so I would if I were someone else. If I were Mrs Smith and my parents were from Berkshire and I went to church every Sunday, then there is no other girl I would like better for my son to marry. But that isn’t the case.’

‘But what if I converted to Hinduism? I could do that?’

‘It’s not about
religion
, Leah. It’s about family and lineage and caste and tradition. I can’t do anything about it.’

‘But, Malini, I love him so much.’

‘I know you do, my sweet girl. But there is a fact here that has to be faced.’

‘What’s that?’ she sniffed.

‘The fact is that if my Amitabh loved you as much as you love him, then he would marry you and be damned. The fact is that my Amitabh hasn’t finished looking yet.’

18

Con pulled open his wardrobe and leafed through his clothes. They all looked wrong this morning, for some reason. Too bright, too clean, too considered. His jeans were too new, too blue, too many fussy zips and buckles. Con took his clothes very seriously and it showed. But this morning he wanted to wear something that looked as if it had found its way into his wardrobe by stealth, the sort of thing that Toby might wear. He considered the possibility of knocking on Toby’s bedroom door and asking him if he had anything he could borrow, but discounted this as a 100 per cent gay thing to do.

He flicked through a pile of jumpers. Beige. He wanted something beige. Or off-white. Something plain. He found a brown Paul Smith merino sweater with a pale lemon check, but it was way too Ivy League. And a French Connection linen shirt in pale lime. But that was too summery. Eventually he settled on his old Levi’s, a white flannel shirt with a grey windowpane check, and his brown suede Pumas. It still wasn’t right – the white of the shirt was too intense, the jeans had the beginning of a tear in the knee that looked a bit fake, even though it wasn’t, and the Pumas were too new-looking – but it was a step towards the look he’d been going for.

Melinda watched him from her bed. ‘What’s going on with you?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘What?’

‘How come you’re wearing your old jeans?’

‘I dunno. Just fancied something a bit old school.’

‘Is this about Ruby?’

‘
Ruby?
’ he scoffed.

‘Yeah. Are you trying to impress her or something?’

‘What?’ he said again. ‘Why would I do that?’

‘Er! Why d’you think?!’

Con sighed and touched his hair in the mirror. ‘No, Mum, I am not trying to impress Ruby. I told you, what happened – it was bollocks, OK? Nothing. I’m not interested in Ruby.’

‘Then why…?’ She paused mid-sentence. ‘Never mind, forget it. Men. You’re all a mystery to me.’

Con, in all honesty, was feeling like a bit of a mystery to himself in the wake of Friday night. He’d fancied Ruby for ages, but not in a specific way, just in that general way of fancying fit women. The world was full of fit women; it was like a long roll of wallpaper with a pretty print on it. They all merged into one, but sometimes a girl jumped out of the wallpaper. Sometimes you thought about a fit girl after you’d stopped looking at her; sometimes you wondered about her when she wasn’t there; sometimes you just wanted to stand and stare for as long as you liked, drinking in every last bit of her so you had some to take home with you. And when that happened you knew you were on to something special. And that had never happened with Ruby.

He walked past her on the stairs, thought, she’s fit, stopped thinking about her. He watched her eating a banana, thought, she’s fit, stopped thinking about her. He saw her walking up the road in tight jeans and dangerous boots, thought, she’s fit, stopped thinking about her. That’s how it was with Ruby. No wondering, no thinking, no stopping and staring. Just vague, general fancying. So the fact that he’d slept with her on Toby’s birthday was inexplicable. It was partly the drink, obviously, and the novelty. All her teasing about how he’d never had an older woman and a little voice in his head saying: got to have an older woman, tick a box, 100 things to do before you’re thirty, chalk it up, pin it down, do it while you’ve got the chance. It had felt wrong the minute they made the decision and, by the time they left the pub, Con knew he was making a mistake, but it was too late then. He couldn’t pull out; he’d have looked like an idiot. So he’d followed her into her bedroom, laid her down amongst all that girlie shit on her bed, cushions, throws, fluff and glitter, and he’d completely gone to town. Went at it like a porn star, as if he was being filmed. He had to live with this woman after, see her every day. He had to give her the best he could offer otherwise he’d never be able to look her in the eye again. So he had.

He didn’t know what happened next. He didn’t want to go back there, he knew that much. Once was enough. She wasn’t his type and he just wasn’t really that into her. Judging by the way she was with her other blokes, that shouldn’t be a problem, though. He was a scratch on her bedpost. And that was fine with him.

‘Is this shirt a bit spoddy?’ he asked his mum.

‘No,’ she smiled. ‘It’s lovely. But what’s the big deal? You’re only going to work. Who’s going to care what shirt you’re wearing?’

‘No one,’ he said. ‘No one.’

She was sitting at her desk in the window, with a shaft of sun cutting through her at a diagonal. She was wearing a cream chiffon shirt with roses on it, a cotton waistcoat with pockets, and a tiny denim skirt with a frayed hem. Her fine hair was rolled up at the back and her shoes were flat-bottomed and pointy. She looked like a little fairy, all pale and diaphanous.

She turned at the sound of his trolley and leapt to her feet. ‘Oh, God,’ she said. ‘Shit, sorry. Is it three o’clock already?’

Con nodded.

‘Shit. I haven’t got it all together.’ She started scanning her desk with her hands, trying to lay them on all the relevant envelopes and bits of paper. ‘I’m going to be a minute or two. Is that OK?’

This happened all the time. Dippy bloody teenagers, fresh from A levels, doing a bit of work experience before university, or graduates back from a year learning to scuba dive and smoke spliff on other continents. They didn’t wear watches. They never knew what time it was. Everything was always a last-minute panic. Usually it really bugged him. But not in this case. In this case he was happy for Daisy to take as long as she liked panicking prettily around him, like a distracted butterfly.

‘So,’ she said, flicking through a pile of cream envelopes, ‘how are you today?’

‘I’m good,’ he said. ‘Very well indeed,’ he added, somehow feeling a need to be a bit suave. His grandmother had always tried to get him to speak properly, to use proper manners. Then she’d sent him to the roughest comprehensive in Tottenham, where good manners and properly enunciated vowels didn’t really count for much. But at home it had been all: ‘Don’t say what, say pardon,’ and ‘Where are your manners?’ and ‘May I have some, not can I have some,’ and ‘Take your elbows off the table.’ His grandmother had been a proper old-fashioned grandmother, not one of these trendy ones in tracksuits and earrings. She’d been brought up by her grandmother and was a stickler for doing things properly.

‘How are you?’

‘Mental,’ she said, looping an elastic band round the envelopes and handing them to him. ‘They’re all off on a trip tomorrow, so of course everything has to be done, like, five minutes ago and everyone’s being foul to each other and pretending that their things are way more important than anyone else’s things and of course shit rolls downhill and guess who’s at the bottom?’ She stopped for breath and pushed some hair out of her eyes. ‘See – they’ve got me at it now. I never get stressed. Never. I don’t
do
stressed. It’s not in my genes. I tell you, I cannot
wait
until today’s over and they’re all on that plane halfway to Mauritius. Tomorrow is going to be sooo mellow.’

She loaded up his trolley with squidgy packages and slippery bags of clothes as she talked. ‘Are you going back down to the post room now?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘You know,’ she said, glancing across the room at a clock on the wall, ‘I might just come down with you. They’re waiting for something from Miu Miu and apparently if it doesn’t get here in the next ten minutes then the entire population of the world is going to get a terrible disease and die – apparently. I might as well just sit in dispatch and wait for it. Get me out of this hell hole for a bit.’

They stepped into the lift and stared at the doors, awkwardly, until Daisy broke the silence. ‘So,’ she said, ‘where do you live?’

‘Finchley,’ he said.

‘Finchley? Where’s that? Is that north?’

‘Yes. North of Hampstead. South of Barnet.’

‘Is it nice there?’

‘Yeah. It’s OK. I live in a nice house, so it’s good. What about you? Where do you live?’

‘Wandsworth,’ she said. ‘Just off the common. Nice area. Crappy house.’

‘Why – what’s wrong with it?’

‘Oh, it belongs to my sister’s boyfriend and it’s just tiny, you know, a little tiny weeny cottage with teeny tiny rooms. The kitchen is about as big as this lift. But I shouldn’t really complain. It’s nice of them to let me live with them and at least I’ve got somewhere to live, you know.’

Con nodded and thought about telling her, but decided not to. Maybe she’d feel sorry for him. Or, even worse, maybe she’d think it was really cool that he’d once spent a fortnight sleeping in a shop doorway in Wood Green. Maybe she would suddenly see him as a novelty, someone she could brag about to her posh friends and her sisters with the silly flower names; oh, my new friend, Con, so tragic, used to be homeless, you know, slept on a piece of cardboard and got washed in a public toilet.

The lift flumped to the basement floor and the doors slid open. Daisy helped Con manoeuvre his trolley through the doors.

‘So, who do you live with in your really nice house? Friends? A girlfriend?’