31 Dream Street (25 page)

She fiddled with them on the floor, arranging them absent-mindedly into words. LEAH. AMITABH. And then, weirdly, TOBY. She scuffed them together, hurriedly, into a puddle of letters, and took them upstairs. She was alone in the shop. Her assistant wasn’t due in until eleven. She looked round the shop, and sighed. What was she doing here? Why was she arranging cookie cutters on shelves? Something was wrong. Something was missing. She felt overwhelmed by a sudden need to escape, to shut the shop and to run away somewhere for the day. It was as if a parallel world had veered into her real world just for a moment, as if she’d caught a fleeting, fuzzy glimpse of another life – and she liked it more than this one. And if she stayed here, if she followed the pre-ordained pattern of her day, she’d be missing her chance to jump across the parallel lines and see what else life had to offer.

But she had to stay here. It wasn’t her shop to shut.

She sighed and unlocked the door, turned the sign from ‘closed’ to ‘open’, and hoped that maybe today her destiny would come and find
her
.

51

I am thinking bout u, my ruby-chews I am thinking that I luv u! I need u. can’t breath without u. c u tonight. T xxxx

Ruby smiled tightly and switched off her phone. She was in a laundrette on the High Road, watching her underwear swirl slowly back and forth inside a gigantic tumble drier. The tumble drier at home was out of commission while the kitchen was being replaced and she’d been forced to bring her washing here. Not that she minded. She liked laundrettes. She liked the people who used laundrettes. She could relate to them. People who didn’t have washing machines tended not to have mortgages or children or jobs. They were students or OAPs or immigrants living in temporary accommodation. She liked the smell of laundrettes, the dry heat, the feeling of having nothing better to do than read a magazine for an hour. She liked the old-fashioned sign-age, the washing-powder machine; she liked being somewhere that was exactly the same today as it had been twenty years ago.

She opened her in-box and read Tim’s message again. She should reply, but she didn’t know what to say. She’d never told a man that she loved him before, even when she had. The thought of using those words
fraudulently made her cringe. Once those words were uttered, everything changed. She would lose her power; he would expect more of her. But worse than that, Tim Kennedy would probably leave his wife.

Ruby had slept with married men before; she’d heard all the clichés about problematic marriages and unempathetic wives. A dozen men had told her how unhappy they were at home, how they only stayed for the children. But Tim was different. He really was unhappy. And he really would leave his wife. He’d leave her tonight. He’d leave her now. All Ruby needed to do was say the word. Tim Kennedy was in love, like no one had ever been in love with her before. He sent her text messages twenty times a day. He sent her flowers; he bought her jewellery. He’doffered her his heart on a cushion.

Tim was a stockbroker. He lived with Sophie, his wife, in a Georgian cottage in Hammersmith, a one-minute walk from the river. He’d been married only a year. They’d been together for five years before that. They had no children, but they had a bulldog called Mojo over which they’d signed a pre-nup. They’d just got back from a skiing holiday in Austria or Switzerland or somewhere like that, and they played a lot of tennis – in couples. Tim drank red wine and played squash and worried about his weight. Sophie, apparently, was very thin and went to the gym five nights a week, when she got home from her job as a retail director for a chain of furniture shops.

It was all too, too tedious for words. It was no
wonder he was crazy about her. He’d never met anyone like her before in his life, and if it hadn’t been for the chain of events that had led to Ruby walking into the same Soho bar as him that night, and if she hadn’t been in the very particular state of mind that she’d been in that night, he never would have. They were from two different worlds.

He’d turned up at a club on the Holloway Road last week, fresh from work in his suit and tie, wedged himself between sweaty men in thin T-shirts and women with tattoos, a plastic cup of beer clutched in his hand, just to see her play. When she came off stage he’d looked at her in awe, eyes blinking, mouth unable to form the words he wanted to utter. ‘You’re brilliant,’ he’d managed eventually, ‘completely brilliant.’

He adored her. And Ruby had to admit, she quite liked it. It had been a long time since anyone had felt so strongly about her and it couldn’t have come at a better time. But she didn’t love him. She didn’t even particularly like him. She could just about stomach having sex with him. But right now, with everyone else in her life letting her down, with Toby selling the house, her mother fobbing her off, Con ignoring her and Paul abandoning her, Tim was all she had left, and Ruby needed him, more than she could bear to think.

She pressed reply and started to type:

thinking I might love you too. See you tonight xxx

52

‘It’s time,’ said Melinda, peering over Toby’s shoulder at the cat, which was curled up against the wall, body expanding and contracting like a set of poorly maintained bagpipes.

Toby nodded his agreement. ‘Shall we go?’

Toby picked up the cat and wrapped him in an old bath towel. He placed him carefully in a cardboard box and they took him down to the car.

They sat next to each other in silence in the waiting room at the vet’s. Toby tickled the top of Boris’s head absent-mindedly with his index finger. Melinda flicked through a flimsy gossip magazine.

‘Boris Veldtman?’

Toby looked up. The receptionist smiled at them. ‘You can go through now.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said the vet, peering into the box at Boris, ‘yes. He’s very close to the end now. Very close. I would recommend a shot. End it for him.’

‘So you don’t think it would be better to wait, to let him go naturally?’

The vet put his finger to his lips and considered the question. ‘You could take him home now and he might last out another few hours, another day, maybe two. But I would say that right now Boris is experiencing
a fairly high level of discomfort. It’s up to you, but most people tend towards ending things sooner rather than later.’

Toby and Melinda exchanged a look. Melinda nodded. ‘OK,’ said Toby, ‘let’s do it.’

The vet nodded sombrely. A nurse brought through a hypodermic syringe and Toby and Melinda patted Boris’s bony back while the injection was administered. Boris didn’t even flinch when the needle punctured his skin and his bloodstream was flooded with cold chemicals.

Toby and Melinda watched the cat, rapt. His breathing continued long and heavy, up and down, for a few minutes, until finally it started to slow. Melinda grabbed Toby’s hand and squeezed it hard. He squeezed it back, surprised by the sense of emotional tranquillity the touch of another human being brought to him so quickly. A minute later, Boris stopped breathing. Toby turned to the vet. ‘Is he…?’

The vet put his stethoscope to Boris’s ribcage. He nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘he’s gone. Would you like me to leave you alone for a moment, just to say goodbye?’

‘Yes,’ said Toby, ‘if that’s OK?’

The vet and the nurse left the room and Toby and Melinda stood over Boris, stroking his warm, lifeless body and squeezing each other’s hands. Melinda sniffed. Toby glanced at her. There were tears rolling down her heavily made-up cheeks. ‘Poor old Boris,’ she said. ‘It’s so sad.’

‘I know,’ soothed Toby, ‘I know.’

‘But at least they’re together now. Him and Gus. Up there,’ she said, casting her eyes upwards.’

‘Do you think?’ said Toby, who tended towards an unromanticized view of death.

‘Of course,’ said Melinda. ‘He’s an angel now, too. A beautiful little angel cat with wings, flying off to find his daddy. That’s all he ever wanted. His daddy. Isn’t that right, little one?’ She tickled Boris’s dead head and wiped some tears from her cheek.

‘Come on,’ said Toby, who was starting to feel a little bit uncomfortable himself, ‘let’s go home.’

‘But what about Boris? What shall we do with Boris?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Toby. ‘I assume that they sort of deal with that.’

‘Oh, no,’ she cried, ‘we can’t leave him here. We need to give him a proper burial. A proper farewell. See him on his way.’

‘We do?’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘It’s the decent thing to do.’

It was raining by the time they returned that afternoon with Boris, now cold and somewhat stiff, in his box. Toby ventured into the garden shed, and rifled round for a while, searching through piles of compost sacks, wheelbarrows, old furniture, bicycle tyres and flower pots for a spade. He emerged five minutes later covered in cobwebs and clutching a trowel.

‘Couldn’t find a spade,’ he said breathlessly to
Melinda. ‘I don’t think, in retrospect, that I ever actually had one.’

‘I’ll get you one for Christmas, love.’

Toby smiled, grimly, and started to dig, in a spot selected by Melinda at the bottom of the garden. The earth was wet and smelled like old dogs. Melinda stood above him for a while, holding an umbrella, but soon retreated inside when she realized how long it was going to take. A mouse scampered past at one point, tiny and brown and utterly petrified. Toby clutched his heart, but carried on digging. His hands were icy cold and his knees were wet and muddy. Life didn’t get much bleaker than this.

Melinda brought Boris outside, once the hole was dug, and Toby gently lowered the towel-wrapped corpse into the hole. Melinda threw a handful of wet mud on top of the towel and immediately went inside to wash her hands. Toby covered the hole as quickly as he could, then went indoors. He wanted a bath, a big hot steaming bath in his beautiful new bathroom. He wanted to lie in his bath for an hour and get warm to the core and contemplate his existence, maybe even start a poem. But Melinda was standing in the doorway when he walked in, with a bottle of Cava in one hand and two glasses in the other.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘What’s this in aid of?’

‘We’re having a wake.’

‘Oh, God. Really?’

‘Yes. We’ve just buried someone. We have to have a wake.’

‘But I was just going to…’

‘Come on,’ she said, pulling him by the elbow into the dining room, ‘take your coat off. Sit down. We’re going to get pissed.’

53

Leah had just noticed with some pleasure that it was nearly five o’clock and it still wasn’t dark. It was the same realization that she had every single year at around this time and it was always a good moment. It meant she’d broken the back of winter, that the long hard slog of it was over. She opened her handbag, searching around for a packet of mints. Her hand passed over a note. She pulled it out and opened it up. It was Toby’s note about swimming:

Dearest Leah, today I did three press-ups. I feel I am now ready to tackle swimming. If I promise not to attempt my butterfly stroke, would you permit me to join you next time you visit the baths? Yours, with affection, Toby x

She smiled and refolded the note. It was about the fortieth time she’d read it and every time it made her smile. She loved his old-fashioned turn of phrase and the fact that he signed the note with a kiss, like a girl. The doorbell tinkled and she glanced up. It was Jack. She had the curious sensation of two good moments blending into one another and doubling in size. She smiled widely.

‘Jack! Hello!’

‘Good afternoon, Leah. You look very happy!’

‘Oh, don’t be fooled. It’s just a momentary lapse.’

Jack pulled a concerned face. ‘You aren’t happy?’

She smiled. ‘I’m fine. How are you?’

‘Excellent. I’ve been on a diet and I’ve lost nearly a half a stone.’

She eyed him up and down. He looked exactly the same. ‘Well done!’ she said. ‘You look great.’

‘Thank you. And I have to say, Leah, that you are looking more scrumptious than ever.’

‘Scrumptious?!’

‘Yes. Like a delicious pudding. Something rich and creamy, with whipped cream on top.
Scrumptious!
’

‘Right,’ she laughed uncertainly. ‘I’m not sure how to take that, but thank you, anyway.’

‘A compliment!’ he smiled. ‘Take it as a compliment. But I did not come here today to give you compliments. I came here to invite you to dinner.’

‘Oh!’

‘Yes. I have a professional kitchen, a spectacular dining hall and no one to cook for. I have been waiting and waiting for you to knock on my door, but you never came. And now my wife has taken my girls away for a whole week! Taken them skiing! So – here I am, all alone in my big house. Imploring you to join me for dinner. Bring your special friend, if you like?’

‘My special friend?’

‘Yes, I assume a woman as beautiful as you must have a boyfriend?’

‘Yes. I do, actually.’

‘Ah,’ Jack sighed.

‘But, if it’s OK, I’d love to bring my friend Toby. And maybe another friend of mine. A woman?’

‘A woman! Yes. Please. A woman, for Jack. You are so kind, lovely Leah. So kind.’

Leah smiled.

‘Is she pretty, this woman? In fact, no, no, don’t tell me. Let it be a surprise. I will imagine a very ugly woman with yellow teeth and stringy hair and tattoos all over her, and then I can only be pleased.’

‘She doesn’t have yellow teeth. She’s –’

‘Shhh,’ Jack put his finger to his lips. ‘No more. No more. I will see you and Toby and your ugly woman at eight o’clock, on Saturday. Come hungry. I will cook enough for a dozen.’

54

The sun had gone for the day, the windows of the dining room were black mirrors and Toby and Melinda had been drinking for two hours.

‘You’re a funny old sod, Toby, you know that?’

Toby shrugged. ‘Am I?’

‘Yes. I’ve never met anyone like you before.’ Melinda poured the last of their second bottle of Cava into her glass and let the empty bottle bang onto the table top.

‘Oh,’ said Toby. ‘Is that a good thing or a bad thing?’

‘Good, of course. You’re a good person. But it’s taken me a while to realize that.’