How We Met (37 page)

‘So, is this for me?’ she said, quickly changing the subject, gesturing to the big box by Fraser’s feet. ‘Fraser, I told you, no gifts, just donations to my personal charity: Young Mothers on the Edge.’

‘Actually, it’s from Norm,’ said Fraser.

‘Really?’

‘Yes. He says he’s sorry he’s not going to see you on your birthday but he’s been very preoccupied with the next thing on the List. For a change. Come here …’ And Fraser ushered her into the warmth of the waiting room, put down the white box and took off the lid. It was a sugar-iced birthday cake.
FOR MIA
, it said in blue icing,
FROM LIV AND ALL OF US
.

With no warning at all – she never seemed to be able to make it through her birthday without crying, but still, at barely 11 a.m., this was early – Mia burst into tears.

‘Mia!’ said Fraser, alarmed. ‘It’s supposed to make you happy, not blub.’

‘I am happy,’ she said. ‘I’m really, really happy. A Victoria sponge.’ She looked at Fraser through tear-filled eyes.
‘The perfect Victoria sponge …’ He wrapped his arms around her. ‘Wow, you really are a young mother on the edge, aren’t you? And also I’ll have you know that that Victoria sponge is the result of about three weeks’ practice by Andrew Normanton. If I ever have to eat another piece of fucking Victoria sponge in my life, it will be too soon and all your fault.’ She laughed into his chest and he held her closer and they stayed like that possibly longer than they should have in the waiting room of Lancaster Station.

They walked through town towards the café. The snow had started again, soft, thick flakes that drifted silently, sitting forever on their hair and their coats. Lancaster looked like a ski resort: moon boots and Uggs had replaced normal shoes; people had adopted funny walks in their multiple layers.

Fraser was pushing the buggy. Mia kept looking over at him, thinking how sweet he looked, like he was concentrating very hard.

‘Fraser, it’s not a shopping trolley, you know, it does sort of go the way you push it.’

‘I know, I know,’ he said. ‘I’ve got it. Anyway, is Anna meeting us there?’ Melody was still too busy sorting out the aftermath of the divorce and not in a head space to socialize, she said, so had offered to babysit. Anna was supposed to be joining them.

‘No,’ said Mia. ‘In fact I wanted to talk to you about that. True to form, she was very odd on the phone this morning. She wished me happy birthday, but as if someone were holding her at gunpoint; then when I said you were coming up, she suddenly went really weird and said she’d changed her mind about lunch, something about how this was her only day to Christmas shop – which was a little insulting, I have to say …’

Fraser was very quiet.

‘Frase? Has something gone on with you two?’

He gave her a double take, as if he hadn’t heard her the first time around, but she knew he had.

‘What?
No
. Not that I know of anyway …’ He paused. ‘However, who knows what goes on in the mind of that woman. She’s totally bonkers most of the time.’

Mia briefly wondered if now was a good time to share with Fraser her worries about how she felt Anna was growing more distant from her; then remembered just in time that – like soft furnishings – this was one of those conversation topics that were essentially incomprehensible to the male species.

They carried on into town, their faces growing numb with cold, deciding to call into Marks & Sparks for Fraser to get supplies for Scrabble night.

He stood in the biscuit aisle examining a packet of luxury chocolate-chip cookies.

‘So, apparently, I’ve got to go round to a woman called Jean Harp’s house tonight, to play Scrabble with a bunch of old dears,’ he said, as if saying it aloud might make it more normal.

‘Think yourself lucky. I’ve got to go and sit in a really posh restaurant with my boyfriend for three hours. I’m sick with jealousy. What I’d do for a game of Scrabble and a luxury Belgian cookie.’

If Fraser was pleased by Mia’s hint at a lack of enthusi
asm, he was trying very hard not to show it in his voice.

‘You make it sound like community service. You’re lucky: candlelight, the tinkling of a piano, crying into your gazpacho.’

She wacked him on the arm with a packet of bourbons.

‘I’m joking,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be lovely.’

‘It is,’ said Mia, determinedly. ‘It’s going to be very, VERY lovely.’

Although the longer she spent with Fraser, the more she wished she could just hang out with him, here in Marks & Spencer’s food hall. It would be like old times, except they’d graduated from Asda to M&S.

Fraser stood at the cash desk, balancing the biscuits plus some cheese straws and, because he’d heard these Scrabble players could get pretty wild, some pink fizz.

‘You know, I think I’m quite looking forward to the Lune-y Scrabblers now,’ he said. Mia looked at him. He seemed happier, somehow – more level than in recent times. ‘I’m glad I’m going, although I’m still worried we’re not going to get the List done by March.’

‘Do you know what
I’m
worried about?’ said Mia. ‘The fact it’s December now, there are three inches of snow, and I’m supposed to be swimming naked in the sea at dawn.’

By her own admission, Mia had put off this task for weeks and weeks. If she could have sold it off, she would have done, but the rules of the List were vigorous. No passing up the tasks you pulled out of the bag.

‘I’m not one for getting my kit off at the best of times, let alone in bleakest midwinter. But then I suppose,’ she nudged in closer to Fraser, ‘if you did it, wouldn’t your bits shrivel right up?’

Two women in the queue turned around.

‘Do you want to say that any louder?’ said Fraser. ‘Anyway, think yourself lucky, I’ve still got to sleep with an exotic foreigner.’

There he went again; anyone would think he actually wanted to sleep with Emilia.

‘What about Karen?’ said Mia. ‘Is she foreign in any way? She fosters a dolphin in Florida, or is it adopted?’

Fraser kicked her in the shin. ‘Ow! That hurt.’

Seven hours later and Mia was standing before the full-length mirror in her bedroom, trying to be positive. She had gone the full whack at the hairdresser’s, having her hair cut, highlighted and blow-dried and – because it was her birthday and there was an offer on – her make-up done. She’d also bought herself a new dress – ‘a cocoon-shaped, hound-tooth’, apparently to go with a pair of ‘bondage’ heels that she’d bought in five minutes in Top Shop, several weeks ago, whilst Billy bucked in his buggy, shouting, ‘OUT! OUT!’ at the top of his lungs. The sales assistant had told her they were ‘bang on trend’ but, what with the make-up and the hair, a bob blown bouffant-style, because hairdressers seemed incapable of understanding the word ‘flat’, and her old fake-fur jacket, two words came to mind, and those were Barbara and Cartland.

She hadn’t had her hair highlighted since Billy was born, simply because she never had four hours to spare, and, she had to say, the whole thing had been mildly depressing.

‘So, doing anything nice for Christmas?’ the stylist had asked her, numbly.

‘Well, my mum will be coming up from Buckinghamshire,’ she’d said, although she doubted that counted as ‘nice’. The thought of cooking Christmas dinner whilst her mother got slowly pissed and flirted with Eduardo filled her with dread. Then came the next question.

‘So, what do you do?’

It had become her worst-ever question, right up with, ‘So, what does your husband do?’

‘Well, I look after my little boy at the moment, but I used to work in films and TV.’ Yes, she’d become one of those women – at thirty, not forty, as she was sure it w
as supposed to be – who talked about what they ‘used’ to do.

‘
Wow, really?
’ said the stylist. No other questions as she very, very slowly pasted Mia’s hair in bleach and wrapped it up in foil.

Billy was now eighteen months old, and the question of work was beginning to press on her mind. She couldn’t go back to films and TV – that would mean moving to London and she couldn’t do that, but with Eduardo’s measly salary – £350 a week at the most, of which only £30 went to her – she had to do something. Plus, she didn’t want to be on the rock and roll forever. She’d never dreamt she’d
ever
be on the dole in her life. The question was, what else could she do? What job was out there that would be worth the childcare?

Right now, the question made her want to open her mouth and pour an entire bottle of white wine down her throat in one go. No, for a little while longer yet, she would put it to the back of her mind. Maybe she would call Fraser to see how it had gone with Billy, but she’d already called Fraser several times this afternoon to see how he was doing with Billy, and they were fine, having a whale of a time – it seemed her services were no longer required. No, she was going to go out and she was going to have FUN. It was her birthday, after all. ‘Eduardo?’ She got up and called downstairs. ‘We should go now or we’re going to be late.’

Across town, on the Scotforth Road, Fraser sat on another bus with his brand-new Scrabble board and a Marks & Spencer’s bag between his knees. Half an hour ago, he’d dropped Billy off at Melody’s. It was the first time he’d been since she and Norm had split up, and he’d tried to act thoroughly normal even though it was thoroughly weird. The house had been so still, so quiet. He’d felt as if he was visiting someone who’d been recently bereaved.

At least they’d had Billy to distract them. Fraser caught his own reflection in the bus window and almost flinched to see himself smiling at the thought of him. Fraser had never thought of himself as a natural with children – they made him a bit nervous and could be very unpredictable, a bit like horses. But even he had to admit that he and Billy got on well and, considering there was a good twenty-eight years between them, they even seemed to laugh at the same things, namely people skidding on the icy streets. Fraser had always been afflicted with a tendency to laugh when he shouldn’t and it seemed Billy shared this.

They’d had a great day: After lunch at the Sunbury Café and saying goodbye to Mia (there’s a manual with a number you can call in the bottom of the buggy if you get stuck, she’d said. Fraser was ashamed to say, he’d actually looked), they’d walked along the frozen canal, Fraser throwing stones and Billy watching, transfixed, when they made cracks in the ice.

They’d had a snowball fight – Fraser perhaps at an unfair advantage, but Billy seemed to take the blows like a man, laughing his head off every time Fraser chucked a handful and, when it got dark, they’d popped into the Water Witch, where Fraser had had a pint and Billy a packet of Mini Cheddars.

Fraser had thoroughly enjoyed himself and he’d been surprised how satisfied he’d felt when Billy slept at the right time, or had given him a big grin for no particular reason he could decipher.

They rolled down Scotforth Road and on through the city. Fraser had never seen Lancaster look so still, so beautiful, and it made him nostalgic for student winters, the six of them trying to keep their house warm and themselves in beer. He passed the Greaves Park Hotel, picturing many a hungover Sunday lunch in front of the fire, the snow-covered lawn in front of it glistening in the moonlight. They went around the roundabout, the bus wheezing and bending, and there it was, 5 South Road. Fraser looked inside –
probably vacant now that it was Christmas holidays – and, as he did, he saw him and Mia, eating a very small moussaka on a very small table, listening to Phil Collins, everything to play for …

And now they were friends and that was fine. Mia Woodhouse and Fraser Morgan were just good friends. Karen was right – what had he been thinking of, calling her up pissed and amorous when she had a baby and a boyfriend? Thank God for Karen. Looking back, Karen had made him see many things, and now he was getting clean and wholesome. He was doing the right thing, and that felt good.

He reckoned a day looking after a baby followed by a game of Scrabble was a good way to start.

In Franco’s, ‘Lancaster’s most romantic restaurant’, an intimate, rustic affair, with traditional red-and-white-checked tablecloths, and olive branches hanging from the ceiling, Mia sat alone at a table looking out of the frosted windows onto the white world outside. Eduardo had gone outside for a cigarette for the third time that evening: she didn’t know if he was bored, or nervous, or intent on freezing to death; but whatever it was, it was starting to piss Mia off. Their night wasn’t exactly going well. Without the TV and a baby to distract them, it seemed they had little to talk about, and their conversation had now turned to polite chitchat, i.e. they had to be polite in front of the other clientele, since chucking tea towels and secretly flashing Vs at one another, like they did at home, might just be plain rude in a restaurant. They’d
covered the food, the ambience, and even had a discussion about how nice the cutlery was, but Mia knew there was something hanging in the air.

Eduardo came back, bringing with him a gust of icy air and the whiff of fags. He sat down, cleared his throat, pressed his palms together, placing his fingers on his lips: ‘So,’ he said, ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

‘I just want to go for a walk,’ Mia said outside the restaurant, her breathing still shaky. ‘I just want to be on my own for a while.’ It sounded dramatic, the sort of thing they said in TV dramas, but she meant it. Plus, if she had to look at him for five more seconds, she might punch him, then leave him for dead in the snow.

She couldn’t believe it. She COULD NOT BELIEVE IT. Was it possible for anyone to be more selfish?

‘I can’t do it any more,’ he’d said. ‘I can’t wait tables any more. It’s crushing my soul!’ God, she’d wanted to hurl her penne al forno over the table. ‘I need to develop myself as an artist. I have a creative soul, Mia, I can’t just deny that. I want to go back and do an MA. I want to do Fine Art.’

Right, and what did he think she’d been doing for the past two years if it wasn’t putting a lid on her creative soul and looking after their baby? She adored Billy, but didn’t he think she rather fancied going back to uni? Doing an art course? Any course? Something that might give Mia her identity back?