How We Met (6 page)

Even though Mia liked to think of her style as ‘thrown together arty’ (although admittedly, of late, it was more single mum on benefits), she was a traditionalist at heart and had said yes to both, in the right order. Liv had said yes to marriage but definitely no to kids, ‘Over my dead body!’ How those phrases came back to them now.

Mia had loved those times, when everything was hypothetical, when it felt like life was a game and they could press ‘reset’ at any time. These days, of course, it all felt so real.

Mia walked back towards the terrace from the café, carrying a large black coffee for Fraser and a cappuccino for herself and eyed him in a motherly way. This was the thing: she had no problem feeling naturally maternal towards her friends; it was just her son she sometimes struggled with.

Fraser was all wrapped up in his parka like a duvet and was pushing Billy back and forth in his buggy – a bit too hard if Mia was the sort to be pernickety, which she wasn’t – trying to get him off to sleep, and Mia thought what a cute dad he’d make and whether, if Liv had still been around, he might even have changed her mind and they might have made a baby together by now.

‘So basically, I’m a mess,’ he said suddenly. It took Mia by surprise. Fraser wasn’t one for outbursts of self-awareness, it was all going on inside with him, all being secretly brooded about.

She put the coffee down in front of him.

‘Um, yeah, I’d say so. But that’s OK, that’s workable with.’

He smiled, weakly.

‘Can I come clean about something?’ he said.

Mia sat down.

‘You’re in love with me. That’s OK.’

Fraser sighed, wearily.

‘Sorry.’ Mia grimaced. She knew she did this; this was her coping mechanism – humour in dark times. In some ways, she often thought Fraser was more in touch with his raw emotions, that his were somehow closer to the surface than hers, Norm’s, Melody’s and Anna’s put together.

‘I’ve stooped low,’ he said.

‘Oh?’

‘With the whole grief, mess, not coping thing, I’ve stooped low, Woodhouse, Really low.’

‘Well, it can’t be as low as I’ve stooped in the last twelve months,’ said Mia, scooping the froth from her coffee onto the saucer (Fraser noted this, and once again wondered why she insisted on ordering cappuccino when she hated the frothy bit, the whole point of a cappuccino, surely?). I once left my son with a seventy-eight-year-old batty old woman who lets her cat poo in her knicker drawer.

He blinked and shook his head.

‘What?’

‘Mrs Durham. You know the old lady I look after on Tuesdays? Billy was teething – well, that’s always been my excuse, but I just think he’s one of life’s screamers, to tell you the truth. He’d have about ninety-two teeth by now if he’d really teethed at the rate I had people believe …’

Fraser laughed, properly, for what felt like the first time in ages, and once again felt a rush of gratitude that his friend was here, that he wasn’t alone.

‘Anyway, he’d been at it, nonstop all weekend. It was round about the time of Liv’s anniversary last year and I was desperate to have just twenty minutes on my own, so I took him round there in desperation, practically chucked him in her doorway like a rugby ball. She’s stone deaf anyway, so an ideal child-minder.’

They both laughed.

‘
Anyway,
as I was saying …’ said Fraser. Mia could see he was eager to get back to his point. ‘You know last night when I was in that taxi? I’d fucked up, I was hungover, nearly an hour late because the stupid train didn’t stop at Preston and you know what? I blamed Liv. I
actually believed
,’ he said, enunciating his words as if this was the most preposterous idea ever, ‘that she was stirring things up from heaven, having a laugh at me. At one point, I said out loud in the taxi – the taxi driver had his screen up so he didn’t hear: ‘“Right, enough now, Olivia, you’re not funny any more.”’

Mia smirked with recognition. On the day of the funeral, all sorts of nonsense had gone on, and she’d said the very same thing. For starters, in one of those ‘you couldn’t make it up’ moments, the night before, Eduardo had been walking home from the pub, fallen through an open trap door in the street, into the beer cellar of a pub, and broken his leg, so didn’t even make it to the funeral. Then the battery of Mia’s car was found to be flat for no apparent reason and she
’d had to get a lift with Fraser instead. Yeah, that was Liv, always the practical joker. But that was the day of the funeral, that was eighteen months ago. The most strange and dark day – like a scene in a film: she still couldn’t believe it had actually happened.

She said, ‘But that’s kind of nice, isn’t it? To feel she’s still with us? The Olivia Jenkins effect?’

‘Yeah, but I’m finding myself blaming her for loads of stuff,’ Fraser said. ‘How I feel, what I do – or
don’t
do, which is more to the point. But it’s not her fault, is it?’ he continued. ‘None of this: how I feel, how you feel, the total pig’s ear I seem to be making of my life – it’s not her fault she left us, is it? Or …’

He stopped.

‘Or what?’ said Mia.

‘Nothing. You know.’

‘Fraser, you have to give that up, seriously.’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know.’

‘I know it’s hard – I think about it too – but it’s really unhealthy. Plus,’ she leant over to check on Billy who had fallen asleep, his head lolling to the side, ‘it’s bollocks and it’s irrelevant.’

Fraser didn’t say anything.

‘Isn’t it?’ she said again, peering into Billy’s buggy. ‘It’s irrelevant?’

‘Yeah, guess so. Survivors’ guilt and all that. And anyway, it changes nothing.’

‘Exactly,’ said Mia. ‘So, no, it’s not her fault, Fraser. The wallpaper in your lounge is her fault and the fact we saw in the new Millennium in a queue for a kebab, but nothing else.’

Fraser rolled his eyes.

‘You’ve never forgiven her for that, have you?’

‘Nope and I never shall,’ she said, a twinkle in her eye to tell him she didn’t mean it.

She watched him as he drank his coffee in the crisp, winter sun, feet up on the chair – he could look like someone enjoying après-ski if he didn’t look so shocking. His hair had obviously not been washed for days so that the waves clung together in a greasy mess, gathering in an unsightly duck’s arse at the nape of his neck. His skin had a deathly pallor today and definitely lacked the elasticity a man barely turned thirty should possess. But she couldn’t deny, he was attractive too. Or appealing, maybe that’s what it was. Whatever it was, Mia found herself inexorably drawn to his face. Maybe it was the symmetry thing she was always reading about in the vacuous magazines she liked to numb her brain further with after Billy had gone to bed. Maybe he looked like her dad – not that she knew what her dad looked like.

There was something real about him, something, what was it …? Northern, perhaps? He certainly didn’t look like the Home Counties rugger-buggers she’d been to school with, or even the artsy lot with their foppish hair and ‘ironic’ jumpers. No, he was definitely more real than that. You’d never cast him in a Richard Curtis romcom, she thought, but maybe a Mike Leigh.

He had charm rather than being beautiful or ruggedly handsome, or even particularly good-looking, now she came to think of it. Thick, darkish hair that had a nice, almost wartime wave to it when he actually washed it. Blue, almond-shaped eyes – his best feature – if it weren’t for the fact they were half blind
, but he never got round to getting his eyes tested, meaning he was permanently squinting. This often got misread as a scowl by people who didn’t know him, which was something Mia thought was a great shame and easily remedied, but Fraser seemed to prefer to go through life with impaired vision.

He had a cute, sort of squishy nose, which was scattered with freckles and, she noted today, broken capillaries, hinting at the excessive drinking he’d been doing of late. A nice mouth. The teeth a bit discoloured after a long and intense affair with Silk Cut, but a nice mouth all the same, with expressive lips. This morning, sporting a shocker of a coldsore.

‘What?’ said Fraser suddenly.

‘What?’ She came to. ‘Nothing. You’ve got a coleslaw, that’s all.’

He smiled – that’s what Liv always called them – and put his finger to it, self-consciously. ‘I know. I started with it last night.’

‘You make it sound like labour and don’t touch it! You’ll spread herpes all over your face.’

Fraser tutted.

‘Anyway, I was just thinking,’ she continued, ‘about what you said, about Liv having a laugh at you. I mean, besides it being a bit morbid, why would she want to have a laugh at you? She loved you.’

Fraser took a deep breath; there was no point dragging this out any longer, it was killing him. He covered his face. ‘Oh, God, I slept with someone.’

Fraser didn’t know what he expected Mia’s reaction would be, but three small words that conveyed neither sense nor feeling, and a face like he’d just told her he had a fungal infection, wasn’t really it.

‘What? Oh.
Eeeew
…’ She was actually recoiling, screwing her face up.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he said.

Mia didn’t really know what
that
was supposed to mean. They were just the first noises that came out of her mouth.

‘Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything, it’s just … God, OK.’ Something strange was happening to her facial muscles and her voice but there seemed little she could do about it. She attempted to smile. ‘So who was it?’ she slapped her knees with her palms. ‘Come on!’

‘Karen,’ said Fraser.

‘Karen?’

‘Yes, you know, Karen from the Bull.’

A cruel ‘Ha!’ escaped from Mia’s mouth. That didn’t seem like something she could help either. ‘What? The really old one who looks like Ness from
Gavin and Stacey
?’

‘She’s not really old, she’s forty-two.’

Mia felt her eyebrows rise involuntarily and put them back, sharpish.

‘And she looks nothing like Ness from
Gavin and Stacey
.’

‘She so does!’
Rein it in, rein it in.
‘A bit. I mean in
that she’s got dark hair and she’s, you know … curvy …
’ REIN. IT. IN.

‘You mean fat.’

‘I did NOT say fat, you did. Also, she’s …’

Fraser cocked his head.

‘What? Easy. Bit of a slapper?’

‘I did NOT say slapper, you did! No, I was going to say bubbly, actually.’

‘Bubbly,’ said Fraser, flatly.

‘Yes, bubbly. You know, outgoing, chatty …?’

‘Mmm,’ said Fraser, unconvinced. ‘Anyway, crucially, she’s not Welsh, she’s from Hull.’

There was a long and sudden pause.

‘Well, I’m sure she’s very nice,’ Mia said, eventually.

‘She is and she’s got a very pretty face.’

‘Well, we all know what
that
means.’

Fraser’s mouth dropped open.

‘Oh, Fraser. It was a joke!’

Neither of them said anything for a moment. Fraser was confused and yet he wasn’t even sure what he was confused about; he just knew he’d expected a proper discussion or even a motherly telling off about one thing – i.e. the fact he’d slept with someone,
anyone
, the night before Liv’s reunion – and he’d got something else entirely.

‘I just think it’s a bit disrespectful,’ Mia blurted out when she’d tucked Billy in as much as she could and the silence was getting too much. ‘Not just to Liv but to Karen. I mean it’s not like you intend to see her again, is it?’

Fraser felt sick. What was it about girls that meant they could always do that? Psychologically strip you in a flash – it really pissed him off. This was exactly how he felt, exactly what was driving his guilt, but still, the way this whole conversation was going … it was making him defensive.

‘I was drunk,’ he said. ‘I was pissed. I didn’t know what I was doing, did I? And she’s been really good to me. She’s a nice person.’

Mia looked at him. ‘But you don’t fancy her.’

‘I don’t
not
fancy her.’ Fraser was getting more agitated. ‘Anyway, what’s with the double standards?’ This was another thing girls did that really got his goat. Double standards, left, right and centre. ‘I mean look at you and Eduardo. He’s such a tit, Mia, he lets you and Billy down constantly and yet you still let him sleep on your settee.’ He jabbed a finger in her direction. ‘And I bet it’s not your settee every time, young lady.’

Mia fidgeted uncomfortably – how could he possibly have deduced that when all she ever did was slag Eduardo off? He was far more perceptive than she gave him credit for. Still, she was riled now. She hardly thought him sleeping with Karen and her letting Eduardo – the father of her child – stay over now and again were quite the same thing.

‘Fraser, it is actually quite hard on my own, you know. Really bloody hard, actually.’ She hated doing the poor single mother thing, but she was really hacked off now. ‘If I had the luxury of being able to wipe Eduardo from my life, then I would, course I would, but, as it happens, I rely on every scrap of support and help I can get.’

‘Oh, God, look, I’m sorry,’ said Fraser, getting up. ‘I’m going for a fag.’

‘I thought you’d stopped,’ Mia called after him.

‘I started again.’

Fraser walked around the front of the café and leant against its façade, cupping his hands to light his cigarette. Well,
that
went well. Clearly, he’d been deluded to think Mia would ease his guilt – she’d basically just made him feel worse! And the awful thing was, she was the most objective and reasonable of the group (except Norm perhaps. Norm was Switzerland. But that was more down to being stoned than any political decision to remain neutral.) If
she
thought what he’d done was bad, there was no hope for everyone else. And yet, it had to happen some time, didn’t it? Presumably, he couldn’t swear himself to celibacy all his life? Become a monk, one of those shaven-headed ‘Tibetan’ ones he often saw in Lancaster town centre, who weren’t Tibetan at all; more ex-drug dealers from Skerton – Lancaster’s answer to Moss Side – who wanted to turn their life around and still spent all day hanging outside Greggs, waiting for food handouts. Presumably, he had to get laid some time? Surely, Liv would have wanted that? Wouldn’t she? He didn’t know any more.