How We Met (36 page)

‘Kentish Town,’ he says, ‘Leighton Road.’

He has opened the wine in the taxi and had a little swig, so that by the time he is standing on Karen’s front doorstep, he is still drunk enough not to have to engage his brain. He is living in the moment.

She seems to take ages to answer the door, so he presses on the bell, leaving his finger on it, just in case she’s asleep or got the TV on loud.

Eventually, the door swings open.

‘Surprise!’ says Fraser, walking straight in. ‘Late-night caller! Wine delivery … I thought the night is yet young, so we could have a little drink together.’

He takes off his jacket, letting it drop to the floor.

‘How are you, darlin’?’ he says. ‘Give us a kiss.’ He moves in to kiss her but Karen remains stiff against the wall, still holding the door open.

‘Um … Fraser.’ She takes one of Fraser’s hands, then the other, and places them next to his side.

‘Oh, hello …’

Just then Fraser turns to see Joshi standing in the hallway, wearing only socks, high-cut chinos and a jumper around his shoulders, like he lives there, like he’s fucking
moved in.

He steps forward, touching Fraser patronizingly on the arm.

‘How are you, buddy? Wow, you look like you’ve had a good night. Cup of tea? Karen, shall I put the kettle on?’

Fraser feels himself sober up in a flash. ‘No, thanks. Gosh, sorry I-I didn’t know you had someone here,’ he says, retreating out of the door, stopping just in time to pick his jacket up off the floor.

‘That’s OK, buddy,’ says Joshi, practically closing the door in his face. Fraser looks, just in time, to see Karen standing behind him, her hands over her mouth.

As Fraser walks back down Karen’s lamp-lit street he is already sober enough to be cringing. To make matters worse, it’s started to rain now – no, actually, it’s fucking hailing:
small, hard balls of ice needling his head.

Suddenly he hears footsteps behind him, growing louder, faster. He turns around …

‘Fraser!’

… to see Karen standing there in her big red coat, high-heeled boots, her hair a slightly frizzy halo under the streetlamp, holding something in her hand.

‘You left your phone,’ she says, breathlessly. ‘It fell on the floor when you took your jacket off.’

‘Oh, cheers,’ says Fraser, and he takes it from her, almost gingerly, like it might electrocute him or something. ‘Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to …’

Karen shakes her head. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she says. ‘Joshi’s just a friend, really, at the moment – we might go to the convention as partners; although I think he’d like to be more, which feels nice, Fraser, to be honest. To feel really wanted.’

Fraser smiles. ‘That’s good,’ he says, and he means it, even if it comes out lamely. ‘I’m still sorry, just turning up like that. I should have called.’

She shrugs.

‘Well, I’ve done it to you,’ she says, ‘so don’t worry. Although that’s different.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ says Fraser.

The hailstorm comes to a sudden end, so that they are now standing in silence, in the dark street.

Karen says, ‘Fraser, I read your text.’

‘What text?’

‘The one you wrote to Mia. I’m sorry, it was on your phone when I picked it up, I couldn’t really help it.’

He looks at her blankly.

‘The one saying you love her? That you always have.’

Fuck,
did he send it?

‘Fraser, can you do one thing for me? Can you make me one promise?’

Fraser nods slowly. He’s wary of making any promises right now.

‘I accept that you don’t love me, that you’ll never love me. I accept that you love Mia, probably. But, don’t mess her about, OK? You did it to me, don’t do it to her …’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, look at you, hun. You’re a state, you’re drunk, you take no control of your life or your actions. Mia has a baby and a boyfriend – don’t go calling her up and telling her you love her. Don’t mess with her life, whilst yours is still a mess.’

Fraser looks at the ground. Shit, was it really that obvious?

‘Sort yourself out, that’s all I’m saying. Take control of your own life, before you get involved in anyone else’s.’

‘OK,’ says Fraser, looking up at her.

‘OK, good,’ she says. ‘Goodbye, Fraser.’

‘’Bye, Karen.’

‘See you around.’

And then she turns, and she goes. Fraser looks at his message log.

He didn’t send it. Thank
fuck
, he didn’t send it. He clutches the phone to his chest. ‘Thank you, God.’

The nineteenth of December 2008, a week before Christmas, and for the first time in recent history it was a ‘white’ birthday for Mia – her twenty-ninth birthday – and already this morning, in the car park of her block of flats, she’d made Eduardo and any passer-by who was willing take pictures of her, then her and Billy, then her and Billy and Eduardo; with snowman, without snowman – just to record this amazing event.

Billy, look! Mummy’s got a white birthday!

Billy seemed very much to get the momentousness of this, squealing with glee as he picked up handfuls of powder in his little fat mittens and chucked it at his dad, who was not amused. No, Eduardo was officially ‘Not Amused’ by the snow. It was ‘cold and wet’, apparently, and made the restaurant floor dirty.

It was true that the beginning of December had brought with it record levels of snow in Lancashire, and it just kept falling, in great drifts, closing schools, freezing pipes, bringing the roads to a standstill. Every evening,
Look Northwest
brought only bleak reports of motorway pile-ups, children fallen through frozen lakes, OAPs shovelling snow from their doors. But the city of Lancaster was beautiful, silent and white; the River Lune a frozen, murky slab like months-old chocolate. Few cars were on the roads and, for days now, as she pushed Billy up and down the eerily muffled streets, her moon boots crunching, her parka hood up, Mia had felt as though she was in one of those art-house films by a Scandinavian director, where nothing happens, except a lot of walking in snow.

‘The coldest December so far in the history of the world ever!’ all the papers said:
THE BIG FREEZE CONTINUES
,
MORE SNOW TO COME!

Mia sat in Lancaster Station waiting room, nose in the
Lancaster Guardian
, scanning the apocalyptic headlines whilst Billy intermittently lurched for the paper, making a rustling racket and shoving it in her face. She managed to wrestle it from him again, this time tearing several pages in the process, making the rest of the waiting room turn and stare. She gave up, abandoning
the whole paper to him, which he took with a victorious smile, promptly ripping it to shreds while she scanned the Arrivals board nervously. Fraser’s train from London had already been delayed; she feared ‘cancelled’ was coming next.

Please don’t be cancelled.

The birthday plan was this: Fraser would have lunch with her at the Sunbury Café, then he would mind Billy
whilst she had her hair done and bought something to wear with a voucher her mum had sent her for her birthday (because really, one couldn’t go to one of Lancaster’s most romantic restaurants in a pair of New Look leggings). Then she was going for dinner with Eduardo (Melody was babysitting), whilst
Fraser
, young Fraser Morgan, was going to spend the evening with Mrs Durham because he had a very special task from the List to complete:

Use up all seven Scrabble letters in one fell swoop …

Fraser, not really a natural word-game player, or a rule-follower, more a lyrics man, was going to need some help.

It was a plan hatched in a moment of genius. After Mia had had her heart-to-heart with Mrs Durham, she’d wracked her brains for how to find her a new Barbara, someone she could play Scrabble with. And then Google had turned up a gem: Lancaster Scrabble Club, the
‘Lune-ey Scrabblers’
– who’d have known it!
Ten members meet every week at someone’s house, more word-crazy members wanted …
!’

Jean Harp – the social secretary – sounded lovely on the phone.

‘We’re quite an old lot already, so we don’t let anyone in without medication!’ she’d joked, before letting out the most joyous, naughty cackle. ‘We can’t have anyone dropping dead.’

Mia knew this was just the place for Mrs D.

And now she was hooked, militant about The Rules (try to get forbidden words past Mrs D at your peril!). This was her new religion and she’d taken to carrying around her copy of
The Official Scrabble Players’ Dictionary
, memorizing the five thousand ‘sevens and eights’ as she called them at every possible occasion.

She and Jean Harp got on like a house on fire too, chatting on the phone daily, comparing personal best scores, gossiping about rule breakers. ‘Apparently, there’s a woman been banned from Heysham Scrabblers,’ she’d heard her say to Jean on the phone the other day, ‘for learning to read the letters whilst still in the bag. Like braille, Jean. Yes, I know. Unbelievable.’ Mia would listen to these conversations on the phone and smile to herself. What a pair.

Mrs D had only been attending Lune-y Scrabblers for five weeks, but had already taken on the overconfident air of a veteran, which Mia thought was unbelievably sweet.

‘All seven letters in one go?’ she’d said, sucking in her breath, when Mia had told her about Fraser’s challenge and asked her if she could help. ‘Is that it? Jean and I would be disappointed if we didn’t get at least one of those per club night.’

So Fraser was going to the Lune-y Scrabblers tonight – he imagined ten over-60s in someone’s semi and a Fox’s Luxury Biscuit Collection. Mia thought of her evening ahead – three hours in an Italian restaurant with Eduardo –
and she had to admit she was a bit jealous. She just wished she felt more excited about spending the evening with Eduardo. But then perhaps this was what it was like with a baby? Perhaps she was expecting too much? Mia had spent much of her childhood yearning for a normal adult life: kids, a husband, the low-level bickering (although of course the low-level bickering hadn’t really featured in the dream), and here she was. She had arrived! ````
Or was this just what she told herself to make herself feel better? Sometimes, when she lay awake at night, which
was becoming
more often these days, she thought about what Mrs Durham had said back in October: ‘You don’t love that boyfriend of yours, you’ve never said one nice word about him … who’s wasting their days now, eh?’ It rang horribly true. Mrs Durham had turned things around – with her help, admittedly – but at seventy-eight she had a whole new life! New friends. And what was
she
doing? Opting out. Sticking her head in the sand. Perhaps if there was just herself to think about, she would have skedaddled by now. But there was Billy and all she’d ever wanted for Billy
was a normal family life. Everything she’d never had. That was the way it was meant to be. She at least owed it to him to try a bit longer.

Just then, there was an announcement on the Tannoy.

‘The next train to arrive at Platform Four is the delayed, eight-fifteen a.m. train from London Euston.’

Mia felt a churning sensation in her stomach and, for a fleeting and unnerving second, thought, No,
this
is the way it’s supposed to be.

She quickly gave herself a talking-to. They were friends, nothing more than that. Fraser’s behaviour after the drunken phone call from Soho had made this quite clear. For starters, she hadn’t heard from him for a fortnight; then, when she did, pretty much the first thing he said to her was: ‘Right, now, about this sleeping with an exotic foreigner thing … So does Emilia really want a date with me? Have you spoken to her yet?’

Yes, Emilia
desperately
wanted a date with him – she wouldn’t bloody shut up about it. ‘I adore British men!’ she’d purred. ‘They are the very reason I left Rio!’ As well as, of course, to improve her English – and, no, she hadn’t spoken to her yet.

Mia fastened Billy into his buggy. ‘Shall we go and find Big Fraser? He’s going to look after you today – aren’t you a lucky boy?’

Then she wheeled him out onto the slush-washed platform, just as everyone was piling out of the train, their breath smoking skywards in the icy air. And she saw him now, for the first time since their SOS trip to the Lake District.

He looked healthier and was wearing his parka – Liv had bought him that parka – and a huge smile, and Mia was suddenly overcome with nerves. She didn’t know what to do with her face.

‘Jesus Christ,
it’s cold up North.’

Suddenly he was standing in front of her, his hands tucked under his arms, jiggling from one foot to the other.

‘Yes, at least five degrees colder than London. I know, I live here. Anyway, you’re a true northerner, you were born in the North, what’s with this southern ponce behaviour—’ But she was stopped, mid-sentence, as he embraced her, for a very long time.

Mia closed her eyes and buried her face in his coat.

‘OK, Fraser, I think I may need to breathe now. Have you given up smoking again? You smell very fresh.’

‘Smoking gave up on me, I’m afraid. Apparently, I just blew hot and cold,’ said Fraser, and Mia rolled her eyes at another of Fraser’s crap jokes, at the same time as being aware of not being able to fight the smile stretching at her face.

He crouched down on the floor, the snow sticking to his hair and the fur on his hood. ‘Hello, Billy. Have you been nice to your mum so far on her birthday? Got her anything nice? A pot plant, some potpourri? She loves a bit of potpourri, your mum, which is lucky, ’coz that’s what Big Frase has got her. A lifetime’s supply of your finest orange-peel potpourri.’ He whispered in his ear. ‘She is gonna be
ecstatic
.’

‘God, Fraser, shut up!’ Mia laughed.

Fraser stood up. ‘Happy birthday.’ He grinned, and he took her face in his hands now and kissed her on the lips, just once, very hard. There was an awkward pause. Things had been said when he called from Soho that night, things Fraser had never said before, even if he was drunk.