One Plus One: A Novel (3 page)

Tanzie stood very still.

“I didn’t even know Elena was pregnant.”

“Yeah, I meant to tell you.”

Tanzie had a baby cousin. And she hadn’t even known. Norman flopped down at her feet. He looked at her with his big brown eyes, then rolled over slowly with a groan, as if it were really, really hard work just lying on the floor.

“Well . . . what if we sell the Rolls?”

“I can’t sell the Rolls. I’m going to start the weddings business up again.”

“It’s been rusting in our garage for the best part of two years.”

“I know. And I’ll come and get it. I just haven’t got anywhere to store it safely up here.”

The voices had that edge now. Their conversations often ended this way. She heard Mum take a deep breath. “Can you at least think about it, Marty? She really wants to go to this place. Really, really wants to go. When the maths teacher spoke to her, her whole face lit up like I haven’t seen since—”

“Since I left.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“So it’s all my fault.”

“No, it’s not all your fault, Marty. But I’m not going to sit here and pretend that you going has been a barrel of laughs for them. Tanzie doesn’t understand why you don’t visit her. She doesn’t understand why she hardly gets to see you anymore.”

“I can’t afford the fares, Jess. You know that. There’s no point you going on and on at me. I’ve been ill.”

“I know you’ve been ill.”

“She can come and see me anytime. I told you. Send them both at half term.”

“I can’t. They’re too young to travel all that way alone. And I can’t afford the fares for all of us.”

“And I suppose that’s my fault, too.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

Tanzie dug her nails into the soft parts of her hands. Norman kept looking at her, waiting.

“I don’t want to argue with you, Marty,” Mum said, and her voice was low and careful, like when a teacher is trying to explain something to you that you should already know. “I just want you to think about whether there is any way at all you could contribute to this. It would change Tanzie’s life. It would mean she never has to struggle in the way that . . . we struggle.”

“You can’t say that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you watch the news, Jess? All the graduates are out of work. It doesn’t matter what education you get. She’s still going to struggle.” He paused. “No. There’s no point us going further into hock just for this. Of course these schools are going to tell you it’s all special, and she’s special, and her life chances are going to be amazing if she goes, et cetera, et cetera. That’s what they do.”

Mum didn’t say anything.

“No, if she’s bright like they say she is, she’ll make her own way. She’ll have to go to McArthur’s like everyone else.”

“Like the little bastards who spend all their time working out how to bash Nicky’s face in. And the girls who wear four inches of makeup and won’t do PE in case they break a nail. She won’t fit in there, Marty. She just won’t.”

“Now you sound like a snob.”

“No, I sound like someone who accepts that her daughter is a little bit different. And might need a school that embraces it.”

“Can’t do it, Jess. I’m sorry.” He sounded distracted now, as if he’d heard something in the distance. “Look. I’ve got to go. Get her to Skype me Sunday.”

There was a long silence.

Tanzie counted to fourteen.

She heard the door open and Nicky’s voice: “That went well, then.”

Tanzie leaned over and finally rubbed Norman’s tummy. She closed her eyes so she didn’t see the tear that plopped onto Norman.

“Have we done any lottery tickets lately?”

“No.”

That silence lasted nine seconds. Then Mum’s voice echoed into the still air: “Well, I think maybe we’d better start.”

D
eanna Lewis. Maybe not the prettiest girl, but definitely the one who scored highest on Ed and Ronan’s campuswide Girls You’d Give One Without Having to Drink a Fourth Pint First points system. As if she’d look at either of them.

She’d barely registered him the whole three years of university, apart from that time when it was raining and she was at the station and asked him for a lift back to the halls in his Mini. He had been so tongue-tied the whole time she was in the passenger seat that he had said barely a word, except a vaguely strangled “No worries” when he let her out at the other end. And those two words somehow managed to cover three octaves. She had stooped to peel the empty crisps packet from the sole of her boot, dropping it delicately back into the footwell, before shutting the door.

If Ed had it bad, Ronan had it worse. His love had weighed him down like a cartoon dumbbell. He wrote her poetry, sent anonymous flowers on Valentine’s Day, smiled at her in the dinner queue and tried not to look crushed when she failed to notice. And after they had graduated, set up their company, and swapped thinking about women for thinking about software—until software became the thing they actually preferred thinking about—Deanna Lewis gently morphed into a college reminiscence. “Oh . . . Deanna Lewis,” they would say to each other, their eyes distant, like they could see her floating in slo-mo above the other drinkers’ heads at the pub.

And then, three months ago, some six months after Lara had left, taking with her the apartment in Rome, half the contents of his stock portfolio, and what remained of Ed’s appetite for relationships, Deanna Lewis friended him on Facebook. She had been based in
New York for a couple of years, but was coming back and wanted to catch up with some of her old friends from uni. Did he remember Reena? And Sam? Was he around for a drink at all?

Afterward, he was ashamed that he hadn’t told Ronan. Ronan was busy with the new software upgrade, he told himself. It had taken him ages to get Deanna out of his system. He was in the early stages of dating that girl from the not-for-profit soup place. But the truth was, Ed hadn’t had a date in forever, and a bit of him wanted Deanna Lewis to see what he had become since the company was sold a year ago.

Because money, it turned out, bought you someone to sort out your clothes, skin, hair, body. And Ed Nicholls no longer looked like the tongue-tied geek in the Mini. He wore no obvious signs of wealth, but he knew that, at thirty-three, he carried it like an invisible scent around him.

They met at a bar in Soho. She apologized: Reena had blown them off at the last minute. She had a baby. She lifted a faintly mocking eyebrow as she said this. Sam, he realized long afterward, never showed. She didn’t ask about Ronan.

He couldn’t stop staring at her. She looked just the same, but better. She had dark hair that bounced on her shoulders like a shampoo advert. She was nicer than he remembered, more human. Perhaps even golden girls were brought down to earth a little once they were out of the confines of university. She laughed at all his jokes. He could sense her surprise that he was not the person she remembered. And it made him feel good.

They parted after a couple of hours. He wasn’t really expecting to hear from her again, but she called two days later. This time they went to a club and he danced with her, and when she lifted her hands above her head, he had to focus really hard not to picture her pinned to a bed. She was just out of a relationship, she explained, over the third or fourth drink. The breakup had been awful. She was not sure she wanted to be involved in anything serious. He made all
the right noises. He told her about Lara, his ex-wife, and how she had said her work was always going to be her first love, and that she had to leave him to save her sanity.

“Bit melodramatic,” Deanna said.

“She’s Italian. And an actress. Everything with her is melodramatic.”

“Was,” she corrected him. She kept her eyes on his as she said it. She watched his mouth as he spoke, which was oddly distracting. He told her about the company: the first trial versions he and Ronan had created in his bedroom, the software glitches, the meetings with a media tycoon who had flown them to Texas in his private jet and sworn at them when they refused his buyout offer.

He told her of the day they’d gone public, when he had sat on the edge of his bath watching the share price go up and up on his phone and begun to shake as he grasped just how much his whole life was about to change.

“You’re that wealthy?”

“I do okay.” He was aware that he was this close to sounding like a dick. “Well . . . I was doing better until I got divorced, obviously . . . I do okay. You know, I’m not really interested in the money.” He shrugged. “I just like doing what I do. I like the company. I like having ideas and translating them into things that actually work for people.”

“But you sold it?”

“It was getting too big, and I was told that if we did, the guys in suits could handle all the financial stuff. I was never interested in that side of things. I just own a lot of shares.” He stared at her. “You have really nice hair.” He had no idea why on earth he said this.

She’d kissed him in the taxi. Deanna Lewis had slowly turned his face to hers with a slim, perfectly manicured hand and kissed him. Even though it was more than twelve years since they were at university—twelve years in which Ed Nicholls had been briefly married to a model/actress/whatever—some little voice in his head kept
saying: Deanna Lewis is kissing me. And she wasn’t just kissing him: she hitched up her skirt and slid a long, slim leg over him—apparently oblivious to the taxi driver—pressed into him, and slid her hands up his shirt until he couldn’t speak or think. And when they got to his flat, his words came out thick and stupid, and he not only didn’t wait for the change but didn’t even check what was in the wad of notes he handed the driver.

The sex was great. Oh, God, it was good. She had porn moves, for Christ’s sake. With Lara, in the last months, sex had felt like she was granting him some kind of favor—dependent on some set of rules that only she seemed to understand: whether he had paid her enough attention or spent enough time with her or taken her out to dinner or understood how he’d hurt her feelings.

When Deanna Lewis looked at him naked, her eyes seemed to light up from inside with a kind of hunger. Oh, God. Deanna Lewis.

She arrived again on Friday night. She had worn these crazy knickers with ribbons at the sides that you could pull undone so that they slid slowly down her thighs like a ripple of water. She rolled a joint afterward, and he didn’t normally smoke but he had felt his head spin pleasurably, had rested his fingers in her silky hair and felt for the first time since Lara left like life was actually pretty good.

And then she said: “I told my parents about us.”

He was having trouble focusing. “Your parents?”

“You don’t mind, do you? It’s just been so good . . . feeling like . . . I belong in something again, you know?”

Ed found himself staring at a point on the ceiling.
It’s okay
, he told himself.
Lots of people tell their parents stuff. Even after two weeks.

“I’ve been so depressed. And now I just feel”—she beamed at him—“happy. Like madly happy. Like I wake up and I’m thinking about you. Like everything’s going to be okay.”

His mouth felt oddly dry. He wasn’t sure if it was the joint. “Depressed?” he said.

“I’m okay now. I mean, my folks were really good. After the last episode they took me to the doctor and got me on the right meds. They do apparently lower your inhibitions, but I can’t say that anyone’s complained! Ha ha ha ha!”

He handed her the joint.

“I just feel things very intensely, you know? My psychiatrist says I’m exceptionally sensitive. Some people bounce through life. I’m just not one of those people. Sometimes I read about an animal dying or a child being murdered somewhere in another country, and I will literally cry all day. Literally. I was like this at college, too. Don’t you remember?”

“No.”

She rested her hand on his cock. Suddenly Ed felt fairly certain it was not going to spring to life.

She looked up at him. Her hair was half over her face and she blew at it. “It’s such a bummer losing your job and your home. You have no idea what it’s like to be really broke.” She gazed at him as if weighing up how much to tell him. “I mean properly broke.”

“What . . . what do you mean?”

“Well . . . like I owe my ex a load of money, but I’ve told him I can’t pay him. I have too much on my credit card right now. And he still keeps ringing me, going on and on about it. It’s very stressful. He doesn’t understand how stressed I get.”

“How much are you talking about?”

She told him. And as his jaw dropped, she said, “And don’t offer to lend it to me. I wouldn’t take money from my boyfriend. But it’s a nightmare.”

Ed tried not to think about the significance of her use of the word “boyfriend.”

He glanced down at her and saw her lower lip tremble. He swallowed. “Um . . . are you okay?”

Her smile was too swift, too wide. “I’m good! Thanks to you, I’m really fine now.” She ran a finger along his chest. “Anyway. It’s been
heaven going out for nice dinners without wondering how I can afford it.” She kissed one of his nipples.

That night she slept with one arm slung over him. Ed lay wide awake, wishing he could ring Ronan.

—

She came back the following Friday, and the Friday after that. She didn’t pick up on his hints about things he had to do at the weekend. Her father had given her the money for them to have a meal. “He says it’s such a relief to see me happy again.”

He had a cold, he told her, as she came skipping across the road from the Tube station. Probably best not to kiss him.

“I don’t mind. What’s yours is mine,” she said, and attached herself to his face for a full twenty seconds.

They ate at the local pizza place. He had started to feel a vague, reflexive panic at the sight of her. She had “feelings” about things all the time. The sight of a red bus made her happy, the sight of a wilted plant in a café window made her vaguely weepy. She was too much of everything. She was sometimes so busy talking that she forgot to eat with her mouth closed. At his apartment she peed with the bathroom door open. It sounded like a visiting horse was relieving itself.

He wasn’t ready for this. Ed wanted to be on his own in the apartment. He wanted the silence, the order of his normal routine. He couldn’t believe he had ever been lonely.

That night he had told her he didn’t want to have sex. “I’m really tired.”

“I’m sure I could wake you up . . .” She had begun to burrow her way down the duvet. There followed a tussle that might have been funny in other circumstances: her mouth poised to plug onto his genitals, him desperately hauling her up by the armpits.

“Really, Deanna. Not . . . not now.”

“We can snuggle, then. Now I know you don’t just want me for my body!” She pulled his arm around her and emitted a little whimper of pleasure, like a small animal.

Ed Nicholls lay there, wide-eyed, in the dark. He took a breath.

“So . . . Deanna . . . um . . . next weekend I have to go away for business.”

“Anywhere nice?” She ran her finger speculatively along his thigh.

“Um . . . Geneva.”

“Ooh, nice! Shall I stow away in your case? I could be there waiting for you in your hotel room. Soothe your troubled brow.” She reached out a finger and stroked his forehead. It was all he could do not to flinch.

“Really? That’s nice. But it’s not that kind of trip.”

“You’re so lucky. I love traveling. If I wasn’t so broke, I’d be back on a plane in an instant.”

“You would?”

“It’s my passion. I love being a free spirit, going where the whim takes me.” She leaned over, extracted a cigarette from the packet on the bedside table, and lit it.

He had lain there for a bit, thinking. “Do you own any stocks and shares?”

She rolled off him and lay back against her pillow. “Don’t suggest I bet on the stock market, Ed. I haven’t got enough left to gamble with it.”

It was out before he really knew what he was saying. “It’s not a gamble.”

“What isn’t?”

“We’ve got a thing coming out. In a couple of weeks. It’s going to be a game changer.”

“A thing?”

“I can’t really tell you too much. But we’ve been working on it for a while. It’s going to push our stock way up. Our business guys are all over it.”

She was silent beside him.

“I mean, I know we haven’t talked a lot about work, but this is going to make a serious amount of money.”

She didn’t sound convinced. “You’re asking me to bet my last few pounds on something I don’t even know the name of?”

“You don’t need to know the name of it. You just need to buy some shares in my company.” He shifted onto his side. “Look, you raise a few thousand pounds, and I guarantee you’ll have enough to pay off your ex-boyfriend within two weeks. And then you’ll be free! And you can do whatever you want! Go traveling the world!”

There was a long silence.

“Is this how you make money, Ed Nicholls? You take women to bed and then get them to buy thousands of pounds’ worth of your shares?”

“No, it’s—”

She turned over and he saw she was joking. She traced the side of his face. “You’re so sweet to me. And it’s a lovely thought. But I don’t have thousands of pounds lying around just now.”

The words came out of his mouth even before he knew what he was saying. “I’ll lend it to you. If it makes you money, you pay me back. If it doesn’t, then it’s my own fault for giving you dud advice.”

She started laughing and stopped when she realized he wasn’t joking.

“You’d do that for me?”

Ed shrugged. “Honestly? Five grand doesn’t really make a big difference to me right now.”
And I’d pay ten times that if it meant you would leave.

Her eyes widened. “Whoa. That is the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

“Oh . . . I doubt that.”

Before she left the next morning he wrote her a check. She had been tying her hair up in a clip, making faces at herself in his hall mirror. She smelled vaguely of apples. “Leave the name blank,” she said, when she realized what he was doing. “I’ll get my brother to do it for me. He’s good at all this stocks and shares stuff. What am I buying again?”