The Harder They Fall (24 page)

“You know what I’m talking about. If we are going to do anything about this, then it’s only right to end your relationship with Andy first.”

“We’re just friends,” she assured him again. This had been the recurring theme of the last fifteen years, but its importance was magnified by their renewed romantic involvement over the past few days. “Anything else we had is over.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“I’m certain.”

The waiter arrived with their main course, providing brief respite. When he left, Rob took her hand again and gazed into her eyes.

“You need time to work things through. I’m not prepared to share you, Jess.”

“And why should you?” She withdrew her hand. He was driving her wild with this constant checking that he wasn’t pushing her into something she’d regret later.

“Why don’t we wait until after Eleanor’s wedding?” he suggested.

“Because I don’t think I can wait. I want you, Rob. I’ve wanted you since Saturday night. The only thing stopping this from happening is you.” She picked up her fork and speared a floret of broccoli. “I’m ready for this,” she continued, biting the top off the vegetable. “If you’re not interested, just say so.”

He watched her for a while, her expression purposeful and serious. Then he started to laugh.

“A woman who’s prepared to proposition you with greenery stuck in her teeth isn’t to be doubted, I suppose,” he said. Jess immediately put down her fork and probed her teeth with her tongue. “And even pulling those ridiculous faces you are still sexy.” He shook his head and began eating his own meal. They continued in silence, other than occasional requests to pass the salt or queries about filling glasses with wine. Afterwards, they chose two desserts that they both wanted to try so that they could share. Rob carefully positioned a morsel of cherry sorbet on his spoon and held it up towards her. She steadied his arm with a hand around the wrist, and closed her mouth around the entire bowl of the spoon, slowly withdrawing. He watched her closely, his knee finding hers beneath the table. She extended her leg and rubbed it up the inside of his thigh.

“So,” she said, “are we still going to wait until after Ellie’s wedding?”

“Like hell we are!” He threw down his spoon, the waiter’s attention attracted by the clattering. It was unintentional, but served a useful purpose nonetheless. “Can I have the bill please?”

Two minutes later, Jess climbed onto the back of Rob’s powerful bike and they roared off towards home. It was light again before they parted company.

George’s mum was a very odd little Mancunian woman who wore rollers, all day every day, whether she was going out or not. Sometimes, if she had to pop to the supermarket, she’d just stick a hat over them, which made her look even more ridiculous and people would stare, but she wasn’t bothered. She didn’t believe in heat treatment and insisted it was the only way to control the frizziness that she had passed on to her only son. For all of this, she didn’t stand out from any of the other women in the block of council flats, many of whom could, on occasion, be spotted chatting across iron-railed balconies, heads draped in hair nets, cigarettes drooping from corners of mouths, as they hung out their washing for the world to see, should it ever look their way. This was the last remaining tower block in the town and it seemed like the council had given up trying to re-house these retired housewives, instead choosing to wait for them to leave of their own accord, by hearse or otherwise.

She didn’t have to live like this; it was her choice: yes, she was that stubborn. When George inherited the ranch from his father, his first thought was to sell it and buy them a house somewhere better, but his mum was having none of it. She didn’t want “that filthy bastard’s stinking fuckin’ money”, she said, uncaring that it was George’s father she was talking about. And then she went out to ‘fetch some cigs’, scarf draped over rollers and off to ‘the Paki shop’. He cringed with embarrassment every time she uttered those words, as she had just ten minutes before, when she bustled past and awoke him. George lifted his head and glanced at the old carriage clock on the cluttered mantelpiece.

“Why doesn’t she buy a bloody new one?” he thought aloud. He tried to turn over so he could get his phone out of his jacket, which was just out of reach on the coffee table, next to an ashtray full of cigarette ends, but he couldn’t move his legs.

“Come on, Monty.” He nudged the small yet surprisingly heavy Westie with his leg. The dog grumbled, circled a couple of times and lay down again. George pulled his legs free and sat up. “Ooh. Headache.”

Now, much as he’d had what could reasonably be described as ‘a skinful’ the night before, he was quite certain that the banging in his head was due to oxygen deprivation, in the smoky, nicotine-tinged living room of his mother’s pokey, ninth floor flat. She didn’t believe in opening windows, “too fuckin’ chilly and a total waste of leccy”. Even the poor dog was yellow. George sniffed the arm of his t-shirt, but he couldn’t tell if it smelled of cigarettes or not. He went to put the kettle on, using the time it took to boil to visit the bathroom.

The bathroom: pristine, but so full of stuff you could hardly move without knocking a shampoo bottle or a loofah into the toilet bowl, so he stood with his legs together and his elbows in, carefully aiming his shot (“Fuckin’ men, are you all fuckin’ blind, or what?”) and wondering what he was going to do about the lack of toothbrush. He spotted a bottle of mouthwash, flushed the toilet and gave himself a quick spruce with cold water (“Don’t you touch that fuckin’ immersion switch, or else.”), swooshed his mouth with the absurdly strong, green liquid, and arrived back in the kitchen just as the kettle clicked off. His mum’s best china mug was the only one devoid of stains. It was the one he’d bought her for Mother’s Day when he was nearly eight—just before his father left. He filled both this and the next cleanest one he could find with tea and returned to the living room. The flat wasn’t dirty, but presumably the nicotine had also tainted her eyes and she couldn’t see the orangey-yellow hue hanging in the air and clinging to all of her belongings. The dog started barking to indicate she was on her way back along the draughty, urine-scented corridor from the lift, and she duly arrived, half-burned away cigarette hanging from her lip.

“Ta, love.” She took the mug of tea from him, shoved the duvet to the end of the couch and sat down, pulling the dog onto her lap. “I’ll take you out for a piss in a bit, Monty love,” she said, ragging the little dog’s ears. He didn’t seem to care at all.

“I’ll take him now, if you want?” George offered. His mother released the dog. “Come on then,” George cajoled, picking up the red lead from the coffee table. It brushed across the full ashtray, sending a grey plume into the air.

“Fuckin’ell George. Be more careful!” She brushed the light dusting of ash off the surrounding table. George didn’t respond. He clipped Monty’s lead to his collar and made a hasty exit, coughing his guts up as soon as he was out in the corridor, whereupon he discovered the source of the smell of urine, when Monty cocked his leg on the bins and turned on his heel, ready to go back inside.

“Let’s go for a little walk,” George said, pulling the reluctant mutt away from the bins and in the opposite direction. He needed fresh air and still had some way to go before he’d find any, down eighteen flights of stairs (how many times had he climbed these?), past discarded polystyrene trays of chips and curry sauce, empty beer cans and cider bottles, then out onto the expanse of muddy, threadbare grass at the bottom. He could, of course, have taken the lift, but he thought he’d save that delight for the return journey. Monty didn’t appear to mind which he did, and gladly trotted down the stairs a couple in front, stopping off to mark his home turf several more times, and then to bravely challenge a Rottweiler, before they emerged into the world outside. George wandered around the perimeter of the grass, watching the little dog as he darted about on the end of his running lead, sniffing at patches to determine if they were worthy of a leg-cocking, then squatting down to do his other business. George hadn’t thought to bring a bag to clean up (not that his mum would possess such a thing), so picked up an empty crisp packet and used that instead. The ‘poo bin’ was bolted to a post that was in turn bolted to a low wall, and this is where he decided to stop after he’d deposited the crisp packet.

When he lived here, he didn’t really think about the sort of place it was. It was just home: not the nicest of neighbourhoods, admittedly, but people did still stop to pass the time of day, and would take in parcels for the flat next door. Alcohol and drug abuse were no more of an issue here than in any working class community, where unemployment had already hit hard, long before the double whammy of prolonged recession. The council’s promise to tidy up and renovate the block had dropped off the agenda before he left, but for his mum and all the others who had resided here for the best part of their adult lives, it would always be home. So, regardless of whether he was the first in his family to get a degree, and these days was privileged with middle class luxuries and lifestyle, he would always be this: a working class boy.

And he was ashamed, not of his social background as such, but the fact that he’d kept it from his friends all these years, lying about it whenever it came up in conversation. The most they knew was that his mother lived in a flat that was too small for her to have him stay when he came home from the States to visit. He may even have implied that she was quite well off, and it was an easy deception to uphold, for she had made sure he was never without. She might be a chain-smoking bingo addict these days, but she had been an elegant, beautiful woman in her younger years, and this was his dad’s doing. He loved her and was proud that she was his mum, grateful for her sacrifices so that he could stay on at school and go to university. For all of this though, there was no way he could stay in that flat another night. Today he was going to talk to Sean, not that he believed for one minute he would give the information freely, but from what Ellie had said, he’d been as close to Josh as any of them, maybe even closer.

Monty was done with sniffing and running and was currently busy cleaning himself, not a care for who might be watching, with his back end on full view.

“Come on, Mont,” George said and the little dog followed him back along the path and into the lift, which reeked like vomit, although there was none, back up to the ninth floor, where his mother was on her tenth cigarette of the day.

“I’m off, Mum. Thanks for letting me stay.” He leaned over and kissed the cheek she offered without turning her attention away from the TV. It was one of those shows where people fought their private battles in front of a studio audience, with shrieking women and couldn’t-give-a-shit men. If she’d been paying any attention at all, she might have recalled that his request last night was to stay until the weekend, but he held no sway here these days and she was too busy shouting at the people on TV (“Fuckin’ right an’ all, you tell ’im, love!”), so George just gathered his change and phone and made a quiet exit. Yes, he was still a working class boy at heart, but he’d seen the greener grass up-close and couldn’t go back to where he once had been.

It was probably an abuse of their friendship, but the easiest way to make contact with Sean was through Sophie. She was working at the farm, so he sent her a text message to ask for Sean’s number, under the guise of needing to chat with him about arranging a new placement. It wasn’t really being deceitful, and he would tell her eventually, but right at this moment he didn’t feel up to explaining. Her unquestioning acceptance of his cover story made him feel even more guilty about using her, but he now had Sean’s mobile phone number and knew he was working at home today. A quick call was all it took to see him heading out of town on the bus to Sean’s house, and he was relieved to find that the archaeological pit in front of it had been filled in since the last time he was here—with Josh. The memory of the pair of them laughing uncontrollably, as they tried to clamber out of the muddy, three foot deep hole, stung like vinegar in an open wound, and it was this that drove him towards Sean’s front door, in spite of his metaphorical, rather than actual, cold feet.

Given that it was only a little after ten in the morning, he probably shouldn’t have been surprised to find Sean still in his pyjamas and dressing gown, unshaven and hair sticking up on one side of his head, looking so distantly removed from the clinical psychologist who delivered their lectures that it was almost possible to forget they were one and the same person.

“I’m sorry. I can see I’ve caught you at a bad time,” George said.

“Not at all, George, not at all. I was about to go for a shower when you called, but thought I’d wait. Come in, come in.” George accepted his invitation and stepped into the hallway, waiting while he closed the door. The house was filled with the aroma of tea and porridge, and Sean wandered onwards to the kitchen, scratching his head, which made his hair stick out even more. He took a spoonful of porridge directly from the pan and put it in his mouth, waving his hand to indicate that it was hot.

“Still not mastered that microwave sorcery,” he explained. George laughed lightly. “Will you have a cup of tea?”

“I’d love one, thanks.”

Sean proceeded to get a cup, holding milk over it (George nodded) and then a spoonful of sugar (George shook his head), before filling the cup from a canteen-style teapot.

“There y’are,” he said, pushing the cup towards his guest. “Shall we sit down?”

George followed him into his lounge and waited to see where he should sit. He’d already spotted the wallpaper—the one that was the same as Josh’s, until he ripped it all down again.

“So what is it you need, George? Soph mentioned you’d been having a tough time at the prison.”

“Err, yeah. It was OK really, but not for me,” he said nervously. He hadn’t expected Sophie to say anything at all, not after he’d told her last week that he’d sort it out himself. He really didn’t want to get the prison psychologist in trouble. These things had a habit of coming back to get you later.