The Great Escape (7 page)

‘Spike,’ Charlie said grandly, ‘meet my dear friend Astrid.’

Astrid beamed at him. ‘Uh, hello,’ Spike croaked, taking in the cute peasant top and slender hips and legs that went on for about seventy miles in dark skinny jeans. Her ankle boots were scuffed, and she wasn’t wearing make-up which, to Spike, suggested a self-assuredness he found incredibly loin-stirring. ‘Hi, Spike,’ Astrid said breezily, kissing his cheek and nearly sending him staggering back into a table laden with drinks.

When Spike tries to replay that night, he can’t remember all of it. If someone were to ask, ‘What did you and Astrid talk about? What did she drink?’ he wouldn’t be able to answer. All he remembers is Charlie melting into the crowd, and some godawful Dire Straits tribute band playing on a tiny stage, and he and Astrid escaping to flirt in a dark corner until last drinks were called and they ventured out into the night.

Somehow, they found themselves falling into a damp alley where they kissed against a wet wheelie bin. Spike found his hands accidentally falling into Astrid’s top, getting pulled up there by some kind of strange magnetic force, at which point he realised she wasn’t wearing a bra. She laughed and disentangled herself, and they swapped numbers before going their separate ways. Spike watched her swish off down the street (she wasn’t wearing a jacket – Astrid seemed impervious to the cold) and realised that something incredible had just happened to him.

Spike had just met a woman who knew how to
live.

‘Here you go, baby.’ Astrid has reappeared at her bedroom doorway with two mugs of tea.

‘Thanks, honey.’ She’s no longer naked, disappointingly, but at least she’s only wearing a short, silky slip thing. It’s nothing like the floor-length pink dressing gown that Lou bundles herself up in, constructed from two-inch-thick fabric with all the sexual allure of a gigantic marshmallow. No, the thing Astrid is wearing definitely isn’t a dressing gown. It’s, um … Spike sips his tea and tries to think of the word. ‘What’s that called?’ he asks.

She glances down and frowns quizzically. ‘What’s
what
called?’

‘That … that thing you’re wearing.’

‘What, my chemise?’

Ah,
chemise
. He might have known it’d have a sexy French name, like something you could happily drown in. ‘Yeah,’ he says, pushing dishevelled dark hair out of his eyes. ‘I knew it was something like that.’

‘You’re funny,’ she says, ‘but listen, much as I’d like to discuss my chemise at great length, I need to get moving so you’ll have to get out of here I’m afraid.’

‘What?’ Spike groans. ‘Already?’

Disappointment wells in his stomach. He’d envisaged another couple of hours here at least; it’s only half-six, and he’s already constructed the Charlie alibi. He’d even planned to call Lou a little later to say the rehearsal was going so well, they’d be carrying on late and she needn’t wait up for him.

‘I’m booked to do a voiceover at half-seven,’ Astrid adds briskly, ‘and I still need to get showered and sorted.’

‘What, in the evening? Who works at that time?’ Spike tries to erase the hint of possessiveness in his voice.

‘Loads of people do,’ she laughs, ‘especially at radio stations. It’s for some programme trailers and I need to do it with the guy who does the evening show.’

Despite his irritation, Astrid’s job as a voiceover artist actually increases her attractiveness. Spike can imagine happily buying incontinence pads if it were her voice purring away in the ad.

She marches over, grabs the duvet and pulls it away with a laugh, exposing Spike’s naked form. ‘Hey!’ he cries in protest.

‘Oh, don’t be shy, baby.’ Then, just as things are looking hopeful again, she fixes him with a steady gaze. ‘So, does Lou have any idea about us, d’you reckon?’

‘Um, no, I don’t think so …’

She tuts loudly. ‘Ah, so you keep telling me it’s all over between you two, that you’re just flatmates really, blah-di-blah, yet you still act as if you’re terrified about her finding out.’

‘I’d just rather pick the right time,’ he says, feeling hurt.

‘Oh, I’m not saying you
should
tell her,’ Astrid adds brusquely. ‘That’s up to you. It’s your life, Spike, but I hope you’re not kidding me, yourself or Lou by pretending your relationship’s dead in the water when your girlfriend obviously doesn’t think it is.’

‘Actually,’ Spike mumbles, ‘I probably will say something soon. Maybe it’s for the best …’

‘She might be pleased,’ Astrid says with a shrug. ‘Maybe she’s been trying to pluck up the courage to tell
you
.’

‘To tell me what?’ he asks, aghast.

‘That she wants to break up. Face it, Spike – the only reason why you’re round here four times a week is because you’re both in such a rut, which is hardly surprising, is it, after how many years together?’

‘Um, about thirteen,’ Spike says dully.

‘Hey.’ Astrid’s face softens. ‘I’m just being realistic, honey. I mean, you were both so young – well,
she
was young when you first got together …’

Spike nods, marvelling at how Astrid manages to drop in casual references to his age. She, like Lou, is younger than him; in fact at twenty-nine, she’s even younger than Lou. Is it
his
fault, though, if he attracts younger girls? What’s he supposed to do – go out hunting for forty-eight-year-old women?

Spike clambers out of Astrid’s bed, gathers up the clothes he threw off in haste and reluctantly puts them on.

‘You make me sound like a real shit,’ he huffs.

‘I didn’t mean that, babe. You’re not shitty to me. You’re quite lovely, in fact. Apart from that time when you didn’t tell me Lou was going to show up at that gig …’

‘What, the Christmas one? I had no idea! She said she was going to her work party.’

‘Yeah,’ Astrid says sternly, ‘and she snuck off early so she could see you play, devoted girlfriend that she is.’

Spike’s face droops. ‘Yeah. Well, I’m sorry. That must’ve been uncomfortable for you.’

Astrid smiles, takes hold of his shoulders and kisses him firmly on the mouth. ‘I’ve had better nights, but never mind. Now move it, you. I need to get ready.’

‘Okay,
okay
…’ He follows her downstairs to the front door which she opens with a flourish, mouthing bye-bye, apparently not caring that anyone could walk by and see her clad only in a chemise
.

‘Bye,’ he says, stepping out onto her path. He knows he’s sulking, and he turns to give her a big smile, but Astrid has already shut her front door.

Spike doesn’t feel guilty, he decides as he leaves her street of tidy redbrick terraces. It’s not thirteen years he and Lou have been together, he realises now, but
sixteen
. God, that makes him feel old. Spike is two years off fifty, a fact he rarely dwells on, but which now causes a flutter of panic in his chest.

He met Lou at the end of her foundation year at art school: a beautiful, fresh-faced doll of a girl who’d gone on to study jewellery, scooping prizes galore, while he’d scraped a living with the odd short-lived job – van driver, kitchen porter, postman – whilst trying to revive his music career. At twenty-one, Spike had had a hit with a plaintive, acoustic love song based on the
Black Beauty
TV theme tune, imaginatively entitled ‘My Beauty’ which had, for one summer, been the slow-dance song of choice. He’d moved from Glasgow to London, hoping to follow it up with another release to showcase his talents, but his second single had flopped, as had his third, and then his record label had dropped him and the horse telly thing had become a bit of a joke. There’d been a brief frisson of hope three years later, when his manager had called him, suggesting continuing the horse theme with ‘an ironic, tongue-in-cheek version of Follyfoot or maybe even White Horses, you remember that one …’

‘I don’t want to be seventies-horse-telly-man,’ Spike had snapped. Broke and desolate, he’d drifted back to Glasgow and into the arms of a cute art student called Lou. Is he passionate about her, after all this time? Not really, he reflects, striding past Sound Shack, his favourite music shop in York and giving Rick, the owner, a nod through the window before marching purposely home. Oh, she’s pretty all right. She’s barely aged at all, with that cheeky little face and smattering of freckles that he finds so sweet and endearing. Yet spending sixteen years with the same woman, no matter how lovely, is hardly sexy and dynamic, is it?

Spike doesn’t know any couple, apart from his own mum and dad (who are old and therefore don’t count) who’ve been together that long. Surely it’s not natural to meet one person and stick with them forever, all through your young years when you’re meant to be wild and crazy and shagging like mad. And
he’s
not old. Forties are the new thirties these days, and he still
feels
young, which is what matters. Spike can proudly say he’s never set foot in a Homebase. So here he is, a youngish virile man, and if Lou can’t appreciate him and insists on wearing that marshmallow dressing gown instead of a chemise, then who can blame him for having a little dalliance now and again?

It’s not as if he’s ever brought Astrid home while Lou’s been at work.
That
would be out of order, Spike decides as he strides down their shabbier street and climbs the stairs to their first-floor flat. As he lets himself in and grabs a beer from the fridge, Spike contents himself with the fact that no one can say he doesn’t have morals.

ELEVEN

Daisy is cleaning her teeth before bed. Normally, Hannah avoids going into the bathroom if she hears one of the kids in there, even if the door is wide open as it is now. Occasionally, she’s made a mistake, and leapt out at the sight of Josh clad in his boxers, dabbing at a chin-spot with a little piece of loo roll. But now, hearing the sound of bristles vigorously scrubbing enamel, she figures that teeth cleaning isn’t too personal and that it might be okay to tiptoe in.

‘Hi,’ she says casually. Daisy turns to her from the washbasin with a mouth oozing pink froth. ‘Er, I was thinking,’ she starts, ‘that maybe me and you could go shopping in the West End on Saturday, just the two of us?’ Daisy blinks slowly as if anticipating a cruel punchline:
Because I’d like to buy you an embarrassing coat.
‘I know your dad suggested all of us going,’ Hannah ploughs on, ‘but Josh is going to Eddie’s and I thought, well … wouldn’t it be nice, just me and you? Would you like that?’

Daisy wipes some toothpaste from her chin, then turns back to the washbasin where she spits noisily. ‘I dunno,’ she says.

Hannah wonders if this means she’s unsure of her availability, or whether or not it would in fact be ‘nice’. ‘Well, I thought maybe we could choose you a dress,’ Hannah offers, starting to sweat a little now. ‘I mean, you are our bridesmaid, Daisy.’

She spits again – more for effect than out of necessity, Hannah suspects – then fills her cupped palms with water from the cold tap and slurps it noisily.

‘Or, if that’s too girlie for you,’ Hannah soldiers on, ‘maybe you’d like a skirt and a nice top, and a little cardi in case it’s cold. It doesn’t matter really. We don’t even have to look at clothes. We could, er …’ She tails off, stuck for words, as if faced with a particularly hostile interviewer. Why is she doing this anyway? Hannah doesn’t care what anyone wears to the wedding. Yet it’s not about shopping, not really. Hannah and Daisy have never done anything on their own together, because Hannah has always assumed Daisy would either come up with an excuse, like she was planning to stay home and count the woolly tufts on her bedroom rug, or reply with a curt ‘No, thank you.’ But now, with the wedding thundering towards them, she’s decided to stop assuming anything.

Daisy sucks on a tendril of hair and looks at Hannah as if she’s just suggested a trip to the chiropodist.

‘Just me and you, d’you mean?’ she asks cautiously.

‘Yes. Wouldn’t that be fun?’

Daisy pulls her lips into a thin line and nods.

‘Great, then,’ Hannah says, turning to leave the bathroom.

‘Hannah?’ Daisy has followed her out to the landing.

‘Yes?’ Hannah says eagerly.

‘Wanna see something in my room?’

‘Er, sure.’

She follows Daisy into her pale turquoise bedroom, carefully treading between the books, clothes and sweet wrappers that litter the floor. Hovering uncertainly, Hannah watches as Daisy crouches down to rummage at the bottom of her wardrobe. Finally, she pulls out a small, black, leather-bound book.

‘What’s that?’ Hannah asks.

‘Mum and Dad’s wedding album.’ She clutches it in front of her, as if about to present it to Hannah as a prize.

‘Oh! That’s nice. Did they, um … give it to you?’

Daisy perches on the edge of her bed. Hell, Hannah thinks, she’s going to make me look through it. She’s going to make me examine her mother in that billion-sparkles dress. Hannah feels vaguely queasy, and can feel beads of sweat on her upper lip.

‘She made me and Josh one each,’ Daisy explains, tossing back her long dark hair. ‘I don’t think he looks at his though.’

‘Oh. Well, I guess boys aren’t really into that kind of thing.’

‘What, weddings?’

‘No, um … looking at wedding
photos.
You know.’ Hannah’s entire body is now prickling with unease as she tries to conjure up a fictitious emergency downstairs – the smell of burning or gas – that will give her an excuse to charge out of Daisy’s room. She doesn’t want to scare the child by making her think her home is about to explode, but nor does she wish to peruse the album, which Daisy has now opened on her lap to reveal a full-page close-up of Petra’s radiant smiling face.

Petra doesn’t look like a fat nurse. There’s nothing medical about her whatsoever. She’s so lovely and elegant with her jet-black hair piled up that Hannah’s breath catches in her throat. For an instant, she thinks Daisy must have found a copy of
Brides
magazine, snipped out a picture and stuck it in the album to trick her. But no, it’s her mother all right – those are Petra’s steely grey eyes, sharp cheekbones and perfectly painted red lips. ‘This is Mummy arriving at church,’ Daisy murmurs, stroking the side of Petra’s face.