How We Met (3 page)

Oh, God, she was back now, padding towards the bed, naked except for a pair of lacy, black knickers that had largely disappeared up her behind and clutching her massive, Christ, GIGANTIC breasts. Fraser sat up, pulled the duvet right up to his chin and arranged himself in the most asexual, un-come-to-bed position he could muster. But she got in anyway, so he moved right up against the wall.

‘So,’ he said, brightly. ‘Coffee?’

Brilliant. There was no better feeling, decided Mia, ten minutes later, than sitting down with a half of Carling and a baby still asleep – even if it was minus five and blowing a gale. This is how she got through the week, these days, by finding the odd little pocket of time to herself and guarding it with her life. At least there was that about being a single mother – you really got to appreciate your own time. What on earth had she done with it all before she had a baby? Work and drink she imagined. And lots of face-packs.

Sometimes, Mia dreamt of her old life, before she’d moved in with Eduardo in Acton – not one of her better ideas – and Liv had moved in with Fraser to start her new teaching job in Camden, when she, Liv and Anna had shared a flat in Clapham and she was working all hours God sent for Primal Films as an art department assistant.

She’d wake up when it was still dark, thinking she was back in her old bedroom on the Ikea futon and that she had ten minutes to chuck on some clothes before jumping in the car and driving through the silent city to Shepperton Studios for another thirteen-hour day. She’d loved those days. She loved the exhaustion she’d felt, an excited kind of exhaustion, totally different to the tiredness that comes with motherhood.

Barely conscious, she’d then imagine the noise she could hear was Liv and Anna making a racket downstairs in their gloomy Victorian kitchen with the huge table all six of them had spent so many hours drinking at. Then she’d come to, realize it was Billy crying and that it was just the two of them, alone in their boxy new-build flat in Lancaster with its woodchip and ubiquitous laminate.

Still, things had improved lately. Yes, definitely, things had improved. She still wondered occasionally if her son didn’t rate her that much, or wasn’t that impressed with the whole set-up, really, what with it being just the two of them in a poky flat and a dad who only turned up when he felt like it.

She still didn’t really know how to talk to him and
found herself stuck for words when it was just him and
her. She marvelled at mothers who seemed to be
able to coochie-coo so naturally in public, whereas she just felt like a dick a lot of the time. Then Billy would get that look of wounded entitlement on his face as if to say, ‘Seriously, is this all you’ve got?’ And she’d wonder if she was really cut out for this motherhood thing at all.

But at least the panic had gone. She didn’t worry about him dying every night any more, which was something, and now Melody and Norm had moved back up North to Lancaster, they sometimes offered to help, which was really sweet, even if Melody drove her mad by suggesting single motherhood was somehow ‘romantic’, that Mia was like J. K. Rowling, writing an award-winning film script in a freezing cold flat she couldn’t afford to heat, when in reality she wasn’t writing anything at all, was reading
OK
!
magazine and tucking into the wine in a flat she couldn’t afford to heat and feeling thoroughly guilty that her brain was probably half dead by now.

Mia put her hood up, took a sip of her lager and took her mobile out of her pocket so she could text Fraser to see if he was still on track for tonight, and check he was surviving the day so far. When she looked at her phone, however, there was a text from Anna:

was at a party in Kidderminster last night so there’s a SMALL chance I might be late but WILL BE THERE I promise. Start without me.

Spanner x

Mia rolled her eyes; she knew ‘a SMALL chance’ translated as ‘am still in Kidderminster and will be two hours late’, and composed her message to Fraser, wondering whether she had time for another rollie.

Then her mobile went. It was Eduardo. Her heart sank. Do not do this to me, she thought. Please, please, do not do this to me. Not tonight. To add insult to injury, him calling had also woken Billy.

She picked up.

‘Hi, Eduardo.’

‘It’s me.’

‘I gathered that.’

She told herself to keep the tone neutral, but it was hard – so very, very hard.

‘What’s going on?’ he said.

Oh, fuck off, she wanted to say. Why did he always have to use that accusatory tone?

‘Nothing’s “going on”.’

‘Why is Billy crying then?’

Because I’m strangling him, what the hell?! He was a baby. Babies cried. He’d know that if he spent any time with one.

‘Where are you?’ said Eduardo, sharply, before she had time to answer.

‘At the pub.’

He snorted.

‘The pub?’

Yes. We’re having a pint – three in fact – and we might follow that with a tequila chaser.
She thought better of it. She wasn’t in a position to piss Eduardo off. She needed him, that was the most galling thing of all.

Eduardo sighed, in that martyred way he did. She knew just from that sigh what was coming next.

‘Anyway, look Mimi …’

Mimi? Stop calling me bloody Mimi.

‘… work have just called and—’

‘Er, NO.’ Mia felt the rage rise like bile in her chest. ‘Come on, Eduardo, you are not doing this to me.’

Billy was wailing now, rubbing his eyes. Mia pushed the buggy back and forth.

‘You know how important tonight is, what day it is today, you’ve known for ages.’

Silence.

‘Mia, this is not about choice, is it?’

She hated how he did that. Always put ‘is it?’ on the end of everything, so subtle and yet so successful in making her doubt herself. ‘I need the money. I’m late on my rent, I’m fucking desperate here, I don’t have the luxury—’

Luxury? HA! Don’t fucking talk to me about luxury, thought Mia, you total lying, manipulative bastard, but she stood there, the wind howling, Billy crying now, and she knew it was pointless.

‘Whatever, Eduardo,’ she said. ‘I can’t be arsed any more. Go. You go to work.’

Then she hung up, tears of frustration already running down her face. And what she really wanted to do was to call her best friend, but of course she couldn’t.

Where were those fags? He could have sworn he’d hidden a couple in here. Fraser was now in his freezing kitchen, rummaging futilely in the kitchen drawer in his dressing gown. The fridge. Maybe he’d put them on top of the fridge? Right at the back so he wouldn’t be tempted but they’d still be there, just in case of real emergencies like this one he was currently facing, a moment of true, genuine need.

He patted his hands on top but couldn’t feel anything. Perhaps they’d fallen down the back? He steadied his feet and wrapped his arms around the fridge to move it, giving it an enormous hug, relishing the coolness against his hot, toxic skin, thinking maybe it would be nice just to stay here for a few minutes, just him and the fridge in their cool embrace. He pulled and pulled but he was too weak, too sleep-deprived, too fucking hungover to manage it. When he finally let go, the door flew open and a cucumber shot out, hitting him on the chest like a missile.

He gave up, leant against the kitchen worktop, breathless, his head pounding, thinking what to do next. Maybe he could go to the corner shop for cigarettes? Then just do a runner? Just not come back! Ah, that only really worked when you were in someone
else’s
house though, didn’t it?

Fuck it. Fuck it, you moron.

He was giving himself a talking-to now, firm but sort of kind. He knew who that reminded him of.

He held the heels of his hands to his face, stretching the skin outwards, watching his reflection in the greasy microwave door as if, if he did it for long enough, he might actually be able to escape his own skin. He thought of tonight, of approximately eight hours from now, of walking into the pub to face his mates. God, he wanted to hurl.

What was really bothering Fraser was how comfortable Karen seemed to be in his bed. How
happy.
No sign of post-bender jitters whatsoever.

If she’d just been some flirty barmaid who’d wanted a bit of sexy time then that would have been fine. Not fine, but
finer
; he would have felt less guilty. But she liked him, she’d liked him for ages, she’d told him last night. Which was just brilliant
, just the absolute best.

He considered his options:

• Be nice, go for breakfast with her, ask for her number then never call her. Of course all this meant that he could never drink in the Bull again; or, if he did, he’d have to wear a disguise. He briefly went through how this might work in his head and decided it never would.
  
• Say he was going out (which he was, just not for another four hours but Karen didn’t need to know that …) wait till she was safely out of view then go back to bed. The thought of bed, alone, right now, was amazing. Truly amazing.
  
• Tell her the truth: Say he’s sorry, she’s a lovely girl but he was drunk, he’s still grieving his girlfriend and it should never, ever have happened. Can they be friends?
  
• Fuck that. He didn’t want to be friends!
  

Anyway, right at this point, all three sounded hideous. Especially the last. He felt sure the last would guarantee tears and the last thing he could handle today – especially today – were tears from a barmaid he barely knew.

Norm. That’s who he wanted right now: simple, unjudgemental, chilled-out Norm. Norm, who he’d known since he was nine.

He took his phone off the side, sank down onto the kitchen floor in his dressing gown and texted him:

So guess who woke up today in bed with Karen from
the Bull? What a cock. Head in bits. Need some
Norm wisdom.

A reply buzzed immediately:

You cock.

Fraser groaned and half laughed at the same time – he knew Norm didn’t really mean it, that that level of genuine harshness was beyond him.

He texted back:

I know, it’s not normal. Today. Any day but today! What’s wrong with me?

He held the phone in his hand, waiting for a reply, and something caught his eye: the photo of Liv held against the fridge door with a magnet in the shape of a beer bottle. He reached forward and took it in his hand. This was his favourite photo of her. They were at a fancy dress party – Anna’s twenty-third birthday. It was a ‘come as a London Underground Station’ party and Liv had gone as Maida Vale.

‘I
simply
made myself a veil …!’ she’d said, standing on his front doorstep, in a voice like a posh, wooden TV presenter from the 1970s . It made Fraser giggle even now.

He stared at the photograph. She was wearing her homemade veil and a French maid outfit that revealed her comely thighs – she always had fantastic legs – and which plunged at the neck (her cleavage was pretty fantastic too). She was holding a cocktail with an umbrella in it and standing in a naughty-postcard-type pose, doing an exaggerated wink, her wide mouth half open, revealing her lovely teeth. Liv had the best teeth: big, naturally white teeth with a tiny gap in the middle. That was his favourite bit of her – that little sexy gap. Fraser smoothed out the frayed corners of the photo, kissed it and put it back.

A text from Norm:

Mate, chillax. Nothing’s normal for any of us today. See you at 8 in the Merchants, you oaf. Cuddles and kisses Norm x

Fraser smirked and shook his head. Cuddles and kisses? Norm was such a plonker. Then he stood up, rather too quickly so that the blood rushed to his head and he had to put his head between his knees so he didn’t pass out, climbed the stairs to his bedroom, and prepared to face the music with Karen.

Mia walked into the Merchants with Billy at gone eight. For some reason, she was thinking of the film
Look Who’s Talking
, and winced as she imagined what her son must be thinking now:
The pub, twice in one day, Mother, and now for the evening? Classy!
And wished so much she could explain without sounding embittered and abandoned. This is what Mia most resented about this whole situation, the opportunities it held for mental behaviour: screaming in the middle of the street at Eduardo, slamming phones down, revenge plots and murderous thoughts. She spent far too much of her time, these days, feeling like a character from
Coronation Street
.

Of course it pissed her off whenever Eduardo let her down, but tonight felt especially cruel. Although she was not one to drag out self-pity too long, she couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for herself as she pushed Billy past the cosy, candlelit arches, looking for her friends.

This was one night,
one night
out of the whole year,
for remembering her best friend whom she didn’t even have any more, and he thought the customers of Bella Italia needed him more than she did? And she’d had a
baby
with this man?

She had considered cancelling – there was nobody else she could call to look after Billy, after all, since Melody was coming too – but she was too angry, too
sad,
too at risk of binge-drinking alone if she stayed in tonight and, anyway, she wanted to come, she
had
to come. Surely, Bruce, the landlord, would relax the rules on the baby front just this once?

But then perhaps not; not after last year’s reunion, which had been utterly grim. Melody and Anna had drunk far too much, got far too maudlin and ended up literally rocking, clinging onto each other in a sentimental sobbing wreck, people openly gawping at them, and Mia had found herself actually cringing at her friends’ display of grief.

Norm had been unusually quiet – said barely a word, in fact, and spent the entire night at the jukebox putting Green Day on a loop (he and Livs were bonded in their mutual love of Green Day), until he got shouted at to literally ‘fucking change the record!’ by some hard-nut local who Fraser – also steaming drunk – then decided to punch, resulting in two broken fingers and them all getting chucked out.