A Friend of the Family (14 page)

Millie’s sudden blast of uncharacteristic anger broke through Sean’s defences. He got to his feet and gripped her wrists. ‘Millie, Millie,’ he soothed, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m being a cunt. I’m really sorry. Come here. Come here.’

He wrapped his arms around her and she buried her face into his shoulder as she sobbed and Sean smelt her hair and tried desperately to remember what his life had felt like a mere fifteen minutes ago.

A baby.

Sean didn’t want a baby. He wanted Millie. To himself. He wanted a baby
one day.
Definitely. More than one baby, in fact. A whole gaggle of babies. Lovely fat babies all over the place. But not now. He wanted his time with Millie first, wanted it to be just the two of them.

They’d only had two months.

*

They talked until two in the morning. Sean reassured her that everything would be fine, that the baby would be fine, that
they
’d be fine. Everything would be
just fine.
But after the conversation petered out and Millie’s breathing became heavy and regular, Sean traced a finger across her shoulder and kissed her fingers where they rested against her cheek and then lay wide awake until five. And as he lay there, he stared at the muted lights in the windows of the flats opposite, flats where people were sleeping and content, where people had control over their lives, and he wished more than anything and for the first time in his life that he could be somebody else.

There’s Good News and There’s Bad News

Gervase came into Ned’s bedroom on Monday morning and said, ‘There’s a girl called Carly on the phone for you.’

Ned had never got out of bed so quickly in his entire life. He hurtled down the hallway, threw himself on to Mum and Dad’s bed and picked up the phone from Gerry’s bedside table.

‘Hello,’ he said, breathlessly.

‘Well, hi,’ drawled someone ridiculously sexy-sounding.

‘Carly?’

‘Ned?’

‘Yes.’

‘God. Ned. It didn’t sound like you.’

‘Neither did you. Sound like you. God. Carly. How did you know I was home?’

‘I bumped into Mac in Soho last night. He told me. Look, Ned, I’m at work right now so I can’t really talk. But it would be really good to see you. Let’s meet up. Yeah?’

They made a plan, they said goodbye and Ned hung up.

‘Yes!’ He punched his fist into the air and flopped
backwards against Mum and Dad’s crumpled pillows. At last. The first good thing to have happened to him since he got home. Thank God. Him and Carly. Back on. Had to be. It was only nine o’ clock – she’d only known he was back since last night and she’d phoned him first thing. She was keen. And they were meeting up next week. Fantastic.

He linked his fingers together behind his head and stared up at the ceiling for a while. A smile gambolled cross his face as he imagined the whole reunion scenario. He wondered how long it would take for things to settle down between them, how long it would be before they were back to normal. God, he really could not wait for things to go back to normal.

‘Ned!’ he heard Gervase calling up the stairs.

‘What!’

‘Parcel for you!’

And that was when it hit him. Life was far from getting back to normal. Life was a good long train ride away from normal.

Ned felt a chill run down his spine and he wrapped his parents’ duvet around his shoulders, breathing in the aroma of their night-time bodies to comfort himself. He rolled himself into a duvet pancake and closed his eyes, counting slowly backwards to ten. And then he went downstairs.

There it was. Another box. Smaller than the last one. This one had been sent by airmail and, according to the green customs label, had been sent by someone called Tallulah d’Oignon of Chrispee Towers, Sydney.

Ned sighed. At least she hadn’t lost her sense of humour.

He peeled the brown paper off the parcel and withdrew the small brown box, which was again emblazoned with the word ‘CUNT’in red marker, this time written enthusiastically all over the box, like jaunty, X-rated wrapping paper. With a heavy heart he opened it. Inside there was a clear plastic pouch, like a spliff-holding sort of pouch. At first there didn’t appear to be anything in it but then he held it up to the light and realized that it was full of tiny little dark hairs, about half a centimetre long. Little crescent-shaped hairs.

He tipped a couple on to the palm of his hand and peered at them. Eyelashes.

Mon’s fucking eyelashes.

Oh Jesus. He tipped the lashes back into the pouch, put the pouch back into the box and closed it. ‘Mon,’ he muttered to himself, ‘what the fuck are you playing at?’ He pictured her there, in Sydney, hairless, lashless. Oh God. She was falling apart. He’d known it – he’d known that there was no way she’d have taken his leaving in her stride. She wouldn’t just get drunk with her female friends, cry herself to sleep and lose loads of weight, like a normal girl.

He thought about phoning her. He really should. Kate and Jamie were there in the flat with her but she wasn’t close to them. Ned was the only person who really knew her. He should phone her – talk to her.

But no – that was exactly what she wanted, he thought. If he called, she’d win, like she always won.
This was all a ploy, thought Ned, a ploy to make him worry. She was addicted to him worrying about her – and that was his fault. He’d allowed her to become dependent on him over the course of their three years together. Every time they got close to finishing, even when he
had
finished it, she’d haul him back in by going mental on him. He’d wanted to escape before when things were messy, but he’d never felt able to, always felt this huge tug of responsibility towards Monica. If he wasn’t there to keep an eye on her then who else would? Ned ignored the nagging voice at the back of his mind saying, Who’s looking after her, Ned? Who’s making sure she’s all right?’No, he thought, Monica wasn’t stupid; she was, in fact, incredibly clever. She knew what she was doing. She was playing him. That wasn’t even a full set of eyelashes and she’d been going on about getting her hair cut for ages.

He set his jaw and re-wrapped the box. He took it up to his bedroom and slid it under his bed with her hair and then he went back downstairs for some breakfast.

Gervase was eating a sandwich in the kitchen. A proper-looking sandwich cut into diagonals like your mum would make if you asked for one. He ate it off a plate with a folded piece of kitchen roll on it. Gervase was very proper, Ned had noticed. He used the pot with a cosy when he made tea, he answered the phone like an old lady and now this sandwich business. It was all so out of keeping with his appearance. And it was strangely endearing.

‘Morning, Ned.’

‘Morning.’

‘How are you today?’

‘All right. You?’

‘Fan-tastic. As it goes.’

‘Oh, really – why’s that?’

‘The sun is shining. I’ve got the day off. And my Robert Gordon tickets have just turned up in the post.’

‘Robert who?’

‘Gordon. Remember? That guy I was telling you about in the pub last week?’

‘Oh yeah. The rock-and-roll guy. Yeah.’

‘I’ve got a spare one, as it happens. Fancy coming along?’

‘Er…’

‘Friday week. It’s up in Wood Green. But it’s OK – my mate Bud’s gonna drive.’

‘You have a mate called Bud?’

‘Yeah. Bud. He’s a good bloke, Bud. So – what d’you reckon?’

Ned was about to go into frantic fabrication-of-convincing-sounding-excuse mode, when Gervase suddenly stood up, really fast, strode towards him and put his hands on to his shoulders. And then that chocolaty thing happened in Ned’s stomach again and Gervase started staring at him.

‘You haven’t done anything about it, have you?’ he said, his hands still gripping Ned’s shoulders.

‘What?’

‘Your problem. The mess you left. It’s still bugging you, yeah?’

‘Jesus’ said Ned, ‘what are you talking about?’

‘I don’t know what I’m talking about, Ned. Only you can know what I’m talking about. All I can do is tell you what I feel.’

‘What are you?’ said Ned, ‘some kind of mind-reader?’

‘No. I’m more of a vibe-reader, Ned. I can sense your pain.’

‘My pain?’

‘Yes, your pain. It’s like an invisible coat you’re wearing. But I can see it.’

‘And what does it look like, this coat?’

‘Well, it’s not really like a coat. It’s more like a cape, really.’

‘Yes, yes. Whatever. What does it look like?’

‘It looks –
scared.’

‘My cape looks scared?’

‘Yeah. Scared and confused,’ he loosened his grip on Ned’s shoulder. ‘D’you wanna talk about it?’

‘My scared, confused cape?’

‘Yeah.’

‘No, not really.’

‘Good. I’m not all that great on talking about stuff.’

‘So why bring it up in the first place?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t help it. I just see these things and they’re kind of hard to ignore. D’you know what I mean?’ He sat back down, stared out of the window for a second and then started eating the second half of his sandwich. ‘There’s a nice bit of ham in the fridge if you fancy one.’ He gestured to the fridge with his head.

Ned looked at him in amazement. He really was the
most bizarre person he’d ever met. He was the sort of person you usually only met in some dodgy pub when you’d just had a spliff and ended up having a really surreal conversation with them. Except Gervase wasn’t a hazy stoned memory from an unfamiliar pub – he was eating breakfast in Ned’s kitchen.

‘So,’ said Gervase, ‘this Carly. Who’s she, then?’

‘Don’t you know?’ he said facetiously, ‘am I not wearing some invisible
hat
?’

‘No. No hat. But you got out of bed pretty fucking sharpish. She’s obviously someone
significant.’

Ned felt himself starting to mellow and sat down and poured himself a cup of tea from the pot. ‘Yeah. She is. She’s my ex.’

‘Aaah,’ Gervase nodded.

‘Yeah. We went out for ten years and then I dumped her to go off to Oz with Mon.’

‘And you regret it?’

‘Yeah. A lot. But I think it might still work out. You know?’

‘Good. Good. I wish you luck, mate.’

‘Thanks.’

There was silence as Ned stirred his tea.

‘So,’ he opened, ‘what about you? Anyone special in your life?’

Gervase put down his sandwich and considered the question. ‘Nah,’ he said eventually, ‘not really. There’s girls, you know? But no one special.’

Ned nodded and examined the design on his teacup. ‘Where are you from?’

‘Nowhere in particular. Born in London somewhere. Moved around a bit. Ended up here.’

‘Where were you living before you ended up here?’

Gervase cleared his sinuses very loudly and swilled the contents around the back of his throat. Ned tried to pretend that he hadn’t.

‘Vauxhall. With a bird.’

A bird. Ned liked that – it had been a long time since he’d heard a man refer to a woman as a bird. It reminded him of his childhood, in a Spangles-and-Pac-Man kind of a way.

‘Yeah, I thought she was the one. She had everything, you know, everything that you’d want in a woman.’

Ned imagined that what Gervase wanted in a woman and what he wanted in a woman were two entirely different things.

‘Intelligent. Clean. Nice flat. No kids. You know.’

Yup, thought Ned, entirely different things.

‘Still. It was on the fourth floor.’

‘What was?’

‘Her flat. No lift.’

Ned nodded again and decided that he was banging his head against a brick wall. He stood up and poured himself a bowl of Shreddies.

‘Anyway, no point dwelling in the past, Ned. Live for the day, that’s what I always say. And that’s exactly what I intend to do today. I’m going to get my hair cut, then I’m going up to Camden Town to get myself some new clobber, then I’m going to see some mates out east, have a few drinks, see a band. Lovely.’ He wiped his
mouth with the folded kitchen towel and put the plate in the dishwasher. ‘Wanna come with me?’

‘Eh?’

‘Well, you’re just hanging around here all day feeling bad about something or other. Why don’t you hang out with me?’

As much as Ned would have liked to witness the secret artistry behind Gervase’s extraordinary haircut and find out where he bought his manky old T-shirts, the thought of spending the whole day with him was too weird to contemplate. ‘Er, no. Thanks, mate. I’ve, er, promised I’ll do some stuff for Dad today.’

‘OK, then. What about the Robert Gordon gig. Eh?’

‘Er, yeah. Yeah. Why not?’

Ned had no idea where that had come from. It was a trick, obviously. Gervase had given him the more unpalatable of the two options first so that when he gave him the second he’d say yes in a knee-jerk response. Shit.

‘Cool,’ said Gervase, running his fingers across his flat-top. ‘See you later.’

And then he sauntered out of the kitchen, his hands in his pockets, whistling ‘The Wonder of You’ and walking like the Fonz.

Hormones, Probably

The London College of Art and Design was housed in an imposing deco building on Woburn Place that Tony had probably walked past a hundred times in his life and never noticed. He found the interior-design department and wandered around aimlessly for a while, looking at displays of student projects in cabinets until he bumped into someone who looked older than him and asked them if they knew where he could find Millie. She’d popped out to get some lunch, according to the very helpful woman, but she’d be back in a few minutes. When he told the helpful woman that he was Millie’s boyfriend’s brother, her face lit up. ‘Oh,’ she said, beaming at him, ‘you mean you’re her
fiancé
’s brother.’

‘Yes,’ he muttered, ‘that’s right.’

‘Oh well. Why don’t you wait for her in her office, then?’

She showed him to the end of a corridor and left him in a room that had Millie’s name on the door. Tony sat down for a moment on a very expensive-looking tubular-steel chair, but then stood up again almost immediately to have a look around. So, thought Tony, this was it – Millie’s office. And what a very lovely office
it was. Tony sat down in her chair for a moment, savouring the feeling of his buttocks caressing the indents made by hers in the upholstery. He leafed non-chalantly through her paperwork for a while – assessments, schedules, photographs of chairs and curtains, boring, boring, boring. And then his eye was caught by a small bejewelled picture frame. He picked it up and looked at it. It was a photograph of Millie and Sean, Sean at the forefront grinning like a goon, Millie just behind him with her arms wrapped around his neck and her cheek pressed against his, looking like a goddess. He let the frame drop back, glumly. ‘Fiancé’s brother,’ he muttered to himself, ‘for God’s sake.’