31 Dream Street (20 page)

When he came to bed that night, however, he felt strangely indifferent to the prospect of sleep. He dropped his pillow to the floor, felt for the nub of his light switch and threw his room into darkness. But he wasn’t ready for sleep. The friends of his nether world waited like shadows in the wings of his mind, but he didn’t want to meet them yet. For now, he wanted to dwell in reality.

Because, for the first time in fifteen years, the reality of his day had been far, far better than anything his tired, confused, fragmenting brain could come up with. Because, for once, something good had happened to him. He’d spent time with a woman. They’d shared a bottle of wine and their conversation hadn’t come close to drying up. They’d made an arrangement to meet on Saturday afternoon, for a walk across the Heath. And then they’d stood outside the woman’s house and they’d both stopped and smiled and, even though they hadn’t kissed, a current had passed between the two of them, an invisible crackle of something meaningful, something entirely possible, something that made the prospect of tomorrow thrilling and terrifying. And that was why Toby finally succumbed to sleep that night. Not to escape his present, but to hasten the arrival of his future.

38

Boris seemed, if anything, to be getting even thinner. His fur looked even stragglier and his eyes looked even bulgier. Toby was concerned that this was more than just a weird-looking cat, that this was a cat preparing to meet its maker, so he made an appointment for him at the nearest vet.

He was staring out of his bedroom window, pondering the logistics of getting a cat from Silversmith Road to the surgery which was a ten-minute walk away, without a cat box, when it occurred to him.

Melinda’s car.

He was staring right at it.

It was red and shiny and parked outside. Which meant that Melinda was at home, as she never went anywhere by foot or public transport. Before he’d given himself a chance to think of a dozen reasons why he shouldn’t do it, Toby was knocking on Con and Melinda’s bedroom door.

Melinda came to the door. She was wearing a pink towelling dressing gown. Without her make-up, Toby noted, she looked much younger, much more approachable. She smiled when she saw him, making no attempt to bring her dressing gown together over her cleavage. ‘Hello!’

‘Hi, there!’ Toby smiled and wondered briefly, not for the first time, how this pink, blonde, overly genial woman had ended up living in his home.

‘This is a rare privilege.’

‘It is?’

‘A visit from the lord of the manor! I
am
honoured! What can I do for you, love?’

‘Are you busy today?’

‘No, not particularly. Did you want me to do some ironing for you? Or a spot of dusting? I don’t mind if you do. Keeps me busy!’

‘No, no, no. Nothing like that. It’s just, I’m a bit worried about Boris. And I’ve made an appointment for him at the vet’s later and I was wondering, if it’s not too much hassle for you, if you’d mind taking us there? In your car?’

‘What time?’

‘One o’clock?’

She smiled. ‘No worries. I’d love to. I’ll see you downstairs at one.’

Toby couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in a woman’s car. Women’s cars were strange, alien places. They were a funny shape, round, bulbous. They had tissues in them and, in Melinda’s case, soft toys. And they smelled strange, not like cars at all. More like cakes. Melinda’s car smelled of peaches. Not lovely fragrant peaches, straight off a tree, but sickly sweet peaches, steeped in syrup. The root of the smell was a small plastic peach hanging from her rear-view mirror.

She was restored to her usual state of casual glamour in bleached frayed jeans, pink hooded top, pink trainers and a Burberry visor. She tapped her foot pedals gently and methodically, as if they were driving a church organ. And she talked. And she talked. And she talked.

Toby sat in the back with Boris on his lap in a cardboard box trying to find an opportunity to start the conversation he’d been hoping to engineer since he’d first set eyes on Melinda’s car this morning. He waited until they approached a roundabout, as he’d noticed that she tended to stop talking for a moment when she was concentrating, then he said the first thing that came into his head.

‘So, are you…
seeing
anyone at the moment, Melinda?’

She turned round and grinned at him. ‘Why? Are you interested?’

‘Good Lord, no. I mean. No, not at all. Not that I wouldn’t… not that I don’t… but no. I was just wondering.’

‘No,’ she said, turning back to the road, ‘no. I’m young, free and single. And that’s the way I like it.’

‘It is?’

‘Yes. Bloody men. I’ve had it up to here with them all. They’re all losers.’

‘Oh, surely not all of them.’

She smiled at him again. ‘Well, not you obviously, Toby. You’re different. But generally speaking, in my opinion, men are just liars and losers and idiots.’

Toby drew in his breath, about to do something that
was so out of character for him that he felt like his head might fall off. ‘So,’ he said, ‘then you wouldn’t be interested in meeting my friend Jack?’

She laughed. He couldn’t blame her. ‘Your friend Jack?’

‘Yes, well, not
my
friend, exactly. A friend’s friend. A friend. Of a friend. She’s been raving about him. Says he’s amazing. Apparently.’ He breathed out, feeling quite dizzy with embarrassment.

‘Oh, yeah?’ Her head turned from side to side as she approached a junction to turn right. ‘Well, if he’s that great, then why doesn’t she want him for herself?’

He shrugged, then winced as one of Boris’s claws pierced first the cardboard, then his jeans and then his skin. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe she doesn’t fancy him.’

‘Well, then, he’s obviously a minger.’

‘No, no, no. Not at all. Apparently he’s very handsome. And very rich.’

‘That’s what your friend’s told you, is it?’ She laughed again, somewhat patronizingly. Toby began to feel that maybe he’d gone about this all the wrong way.

‘Yes,’ he said, sliding the wriggling, scratching box off his lap and onto the seat next to him. There was a small freckle of blood on his jeans which he dabbed at with a fingertip. ‘I have to admit, I’ve never met this man, but he does sound like quite a catch.’

‘Oh, bless you, Toby and your way with words. Quite a catch, eh?!’

‘Well, apparently.’

Melinda pulled in to the car park behind the veterinarian’s and turned off the ignition. ‘What are you trying to say here, my love? You want to fix me up with this rich old guy who your mate don’t fancy?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t say he’s old…’

‘Well, what sort of age is he, then?’

‘I’m not sure. Your age, I think. Maybe a little older. And he’s Italian.’

He felt her go still in the driver’s seat, like a child hearing the distant tone of an ice-cream van. ‘Italian?’ she said.

‘Yes. Jack. Short for Giacomo.’

‘
Giacomo
.’ She let the name run across her tongue and over her lips. ‘Is he dark?’

‘I don’t know. I assume so. I mean, I could find out for you if you’d like.’

‘And when you say rich, how rich exactly?’

‘I don’t know exactly, but he’s got a four-bedroom house on Cranmore Gardens. With a swimming pool.’

‘And he’s not married?’

‘No. Recently divorced. Two teenage daughters. Desperately lonely, according to my friend.’

‘Nah,’ she said, ‘sounds too good to be true. Sounds dodgy.’ She pulled her keys out of the ignition, slung her handbag over her shoulder and headed towards the vet’s.

The vet was unable to find any medical reason for Boris’s deteriorating condition. ‘Boris is very old,’ he said, sympathetically. ‘I would imagine that he’s pining
for his late owner and, being a runt, he probably isn’t able to deal with the degradations of ageing as well as a more robust feline. Leave him be, see how it goes and, if it gets much worse than it is now, bring him in and we’ll put him to sleep.’

‘How long do you think he’s got?’ Melinda asked as if she were playing a bit part in a daytime soap.

‘That’s hard to say.’ The vet patted Boris’s head. ‘Could be a few days, could be a few weeks.’

‘So basically, he’s dying?’ said Toby.

‘Basically, yes.’

Melinda started to cry then, thick rivers of mascara running down her cheeks.

But Toby felt a curious sense of unburdening, of a loosening of the straps tying him into his rut. Boris was dying, but slowly, day by day, Toby was being reborn.

39

The sun came out that afternoon, just as Toby left the house. It matched his mood. He hadn’t been for a walk across the Heath in a very long time. He hadn’t, now he thought about it, been out on a Saturday afternoon for a very long time. Saturday afternoons were for other people, Toby felt, for people with children and people with partners and people who’d been in bed all morning because they’d been out all night. Saturday afternoons involved partaking in activities of which Toby had no experience – playing sports, doing the weekly shop, seeing friends. People did things on Saturday afternoons that they couldn’t do during the week because they were at work. Toby, being without gainful employment, had no need to venture out on a Saturday afternoon. But now Toby had a friend, and Toby had somewhere to go. He felt strangely euphoric as he walked down the High Road towards the Tube.

He met Leah outside East Finchley station and they walked down the Bishops Avenue together, playing the ‘Which house is most disgusting?’ game. It always disturbed Toby somewhat that people with so much money were allowed to spend it on such horrible houses. Toby had seen one for sale once, in one of the property magazines that got hefted through his
letterbox occasionally, a low-built Southfork monstrosity with pillars and red bricks and cathedral windows. It had a gold-plated entrance hall, a cinema, a gym and two swimming pools. It was priced at
£
35,000,000.

Toby and Leah weren’t the only people to decide that it was a nice afternoon for a walk around Kenwood. The grounds around the house were thronging with designer prams, big dogs, and toddlers in fleecy hats. The sky was a brilliant shade of blue and the sun was a blinding white orb behind the leafless trees.

They were ascending a small slope and Toby felt his lungs begin to strain against the amount of breathing he was having to do.

Leah stopped and turned to look at him. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Yes,’ he said, holding his hand to his chest and squinting slightly. ‘Just a bit…
breathless
.’

Leah smiled. ‘Are you really that unfit?’

Toby nodded. ‘Too much time… in front… of my… computer.’

‘Oh, dear Lord, that’s terrible. You know, I’ve seen you up there at your desk, every day, every night, for three years. It never occurred to me that I was actually
watching you die
.’

‘Oh, God, it’s not that bad.’

‘But it is. Look.’ She pointed at the hill they’d just climbed. ‘It’s barely a slope. Terrible,’ she said. ‘Terrible. You should start exercising.’

‘No, no, no.’ Toby shook his head and they started walking again. ‘I’m not that kind of person. I don’t do sports.’

‘It doesn’t have to be sports.’

‘I don’t do gyms.’

‘Swimming,’ she said, ‘try swimming. It’s the best all-round exercise.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I have a slight phobia of swimming baths. The smell of chlorine, the eerie echo, women in rubber hats. And I get claustrophobic in goggles.’

Leah laughed. ‘Come with me,’ she said. ‘I go every week. And I don’t wear a rubber hat.’

‘You don’t?’

‘No. I promise.’

‘Well, then, maybe I will. Though I must warn you, I don’t have entirely the correct physique for swimming trunks.’

‘And what exactly is the correct physique for swimming trunks?’

‘Oh, you know, muscles, shoulders, buttocks – all that business.’

‘Well, I’ve got muscles, shoulders and buttocks, so we should sort of balance each other out.’

Toby envisaged Leah in a damp swimsuit, her muscles, shoulders and buttocks shiny and wet. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Yes. Why not? Let’s go swimming.’

‘Good,’ said Leah. ‘It’s a deal.’

They headed back to the main house and queued for tea and cake in the café. It was mild enough to sit outside, so they took their trays into the courtyard and found themselves a table.

‘Con’s girl stayed the night,’ said Toby, stirring the bag round his teapot.

‘What, the posh one?’

‘Yup. He cooked her dinner. Well,
we
cooked her dinner. Her coat was still in the hallway the next morning.’

‘Well, that’s brilliant.’

‘You know, I’m starting to feel rather fond of Con. In a kind of paternal way. There’s more to him than I originally thought. In fact, I’m starting to feel more warmly disposed towards all my tenants. And you know, in a strange way, I’m quite enjoying this project. I’m quite enjoying being…’

‘Nosy?’

‘Yes,’ he smiled, and poured his tea into his cup. ‘Yes, being nosy. It’s fun.’

‘Well, I
am
having a good influence on you, aren’t I?’

‘Yes,’ said Toby, ‘I’d say you are.’ He glanced up at Leah. She was scraping whipped cream off the top of her hot chocolate and licking it off her spoon. Her cheeks were the colour of strawberry sauce. She looked divine. He stared at his hand for a while where it rested against his teacup. He could feel it twitching. It wanted to move; it wanted to slide across the wooden table top and lie on top of Leah’s hand. Toby talked to his hand. ‘Don’t do it, hand. She’ll freak out. It’ll spoil everything.’ But the hand seemed intent on disobeying Toby’s instructions. He watched as it moved across the table, slowly, disembodied from him, like something out of a zombie movie. It was halfway across the table when
someone suddenly boomed in Toby’s ear, ‘Leah! Leah!’, and his hand came scuttling back to him like a nervous cat.

There was a large man standing behind him, in a fur-lined parka and trendy jeans.

‘Am!’ said Leah. ‘My God!’

‘Hello,’ said Amitabh.

‘Am – you know Toby, from across the road?’