The Importance of Being a Bachelor (13 page)

‘How long have you been here?’ he asked, taking off his headphones and bundling them into his bag as Angie did exactly the same.

‘About an hour.’

‘Didn’t you get my text?’

‘Of course I got it,’ she said tersely. She kicked a stone at her feet. ‘Look, let’s just get a drink, OK?’

‘Yeah, of course, anywhere in particular in mind?’

‘I don’t care,’ she shrugged. ‘I just don’t want to do this here.’

Russell noted Angie’s unequivocal use of the words ‘do this’ as though there was no doubt in her mind that ‘this’ would indeed get ‘done’.

He suggested a bar on Manchester Road that his housemates had been raving about earlier in the week. Angie didn’t say anything and so Russell considered offering her an alternative venue as though it was his choice of bar and not the situation between them that was the problem but then he thought better of it. Instead he just started walking up the road in the hope that Angie would do the same.

Aware of the awkwardness that lay ahead Russell launched into a monologue about the Mongolian beers that were served in the bar, pretty much regurgitating word for word what his housemates had told him. When he had exhausted that topic he went on to tell her all about his week at work, concluding with his run-in with Jeanette. Angie still refused to bite. Finally, he threw himself into a marathon of monologues encompassing everything from a newspaper article about a new weight-loss wonder drug through to gossip about a mutual friend until they were finally at their destination.

‘So here we are,’ announced Russell, shoe-horning a note of jollity into his voice in the hope that it might coax Angie out of her mood. ‘Looks pretty busy but I reckon we should be able to get a seat.’

He moved aside to let Angie walk in first but she didn’t move.

‘I can’t do this, Russell,’ she said, looking down at her feet. ‘I thought I could but I can’t so I’m going home.’

As she headed back down the road Russell felt as though he had lost all control of his limbs. His best friend in the whole world was walking away from him. He had to do something. He had to say something. Because if he didn’t there was a strong chance he would never see Angie again.

He yelled her name at the top of his lungs and as she turned round he finally unfroze and ran until he was standing right in front of her.

‘Ange.’

She didn’t say a word.

‘I’m sorry.’

She still didn’t speak.

‘Look, I don’t understand what you want from me,’ he pleaded, feeling himself flood with indignation given that she had been as willing a participant in the kiss as he had been. ‘I really don’t understand! What is it you want me to say? How scared I am that I’ve ruined everything between us? How all week I’ve been missing you like mad because my mum and dad have split up and you were the only person in the world I wanted to talk to? You don’t get it, do you? You’re everything to me. Everything. I feel like I ruined it all for a stupid kiss.’

‘You’re wrong,’ said Angie. ‘You’re about as wrong as you could ever be. It wasn’t a stupid kiss, Russ. It was the best kiss of my life because if this is the moment that we’re finally going to say all the things that need to be said then you ought to know that I love you, Russ. I really bloody love you. I always have done and I always will.’

‘That’s what difficult is, Dad.’

At the very moment that Russell was being presented with Angie’s surprising and overwhelming declaration of love, Luke was slouched on the sofa at home half watching a Sky news bulletin on TV while he waited for Cassie to get home from her spin class so that they could order an Indian takeaway and settle down in front of the TV for the night in the hope of unwinding from the disastrous week they had both had.

Luke hadn’t spoken to either of his parents since the visit to his mum’s house had revealed that contrary to his dad’s banging on about ‘needing his freedom’ like he was south Manchester’s answer to Nelson Mandela it had actually been Mum who had kicked him out. Part of the reason was that his workload had reached a critical mass and he’d had to sleep in Travelodges as far apart as Exeter and Peterborough for three nights in a row in preparation for a variety of site meetings. But mostly it was because he wanted to stick his head in the sand and pretend that the whole thing wasn’t happening.

Luke picked up the remote control and flicked over to a comedy panel show on Channel Four. He was about to reach for the menu for the Raja Indian takeaway when the phone rang. Luke’s first instinct was to let it go to voicemail but after two or three rings his resolution crumbled and he picked up the cordless receiver and jammed it up to his ear.

‘Hello?’

‘Luke, it’s me,’ said his Dad. ‘Have you got a minute?’

Luke felt his whole frame sink. He could hear the sound of Cassie opening the front door. ‘Yeah, I’ve got a minute,’ he sighed. ‘What’s up?’

Dad said, ‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine.’

There was pause. ‘Look, I understand this is difficult for all of you boys but I—’

Luke cut him off. ‘No, Dad,’ he snapped, ‘you don’t understand. You don’t know anything at all about me, or about Russ or Adam because if you did, you and Mum wouldn’t be doing this.’

‘Look, son, it’s—’

‘It’s what? Difficult? No, Dad, I’ll tell you what’s difficult. Difficult is watching something that you thought was completely solid fall apart. That’s what difficult is. I still don’t understand what’s going on here. You’re saying one thing and Mum is saying another. And I’m getting to the stage where I’m not even sure I care any more. So unless you’ve called to tell me you’re heading back home to sort out this mess I don’t want to hear anything you’ve got to say.’

‘Luke, it’s complicated, OK. This thing with your mother and me, well it’s going to take time and—’

Luke had had enough. ‘Do you know what? I can’t do this right now. I’m sorry but you’ve caught me at a really bad time. I have to go. Let’s talk some other time, OK?’

Luke put the phone down just as Cassie entered the room, kissed him and sat down next to him.

‘Who was that?’

‘Dad.’

‘Is he OK?’

Luke shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t particularly nice to him.’

Cassie took his hand. ‘I’m sure this will all get sorted soon, Luke,’ she said, squeezing his hand tightly. ‘They’ve been together too long for it to be all over.’

‘Do you think?’

‘I know.’

Luke picked up the menu from the coffee table and handed it to her. ‘Hungry?’

‘Starving.’

‘Good. Death by chicken bhuna it is then.’

Later that night, having watched TV, demolished their takeaway and worked their way through a half-dozen bottles of Budweiser each, they made their way upstairs and fell into each other’s arms underneath the duvet.

‘That has got to be the single best night that I’ve had this week.’ Luke kissed the top of Cassie head. ‘We should both book a week off work and do this every single night until our arteries harden and our blood turns the colour of curry.’

‘You’d love that, wouldn’t you? You don’t care that in the space of a couple of hours you’ve helped me to ruin all the good results of a ninety-minute spin class, do you?’ She rested her head against Luke’s chest and then fell silent. Luke thought she might have fallen asleep but when he looked down at her face her eyes were open and she clearly had something on her mind.

‘What is it?’

Cassie sat up and pulled the duvet up around her. ‘I know you must have a lot on your mind with everything that’s going on with your parents,’ she said, avoiding all eye contact. ‘And I know you must think I’ve got the worst timing in the world but I can’t keep this in any more. I need to talk about us.’ She corrected herself. ‘
We
need to talk about us.’

Luke studied her face. She was looking away from him, her eyes glued to the end of the bed. His heart went out to her. She had been an absolute rock over this thing with his mum and dad. And now she was looking for help to get the conversation started which he had promised her they would have about their future. About children. No woman wants the man she loves to have to be forced at gunpoint into agreeing to become the father of her children. It should be a freewill offering. Obviously there were women in the world who didn’t mind making direct demands; who had the self-belief required to make life-changing decisions not just for themselves but for others who lacked their clarity of vision. But Cassie wasn’t one of them. Luke could see how much she wanted this to be a joint decision. The slightest hint of doubt on his part; the slightest sense that this wasn’t a decision made by two equals and everything would be permanently tainted. And even though he was tempted to slip into avoidance-through-conflict mode, he had a duty to make this as painless as possible for Cassie.

‘You’re right,’ he said, reaching out to touch her hand. ‘We do need to talk, because I promised you that I would think about it and I’m sorry I didn’t bring the subject up before now but the truth of the matter is I just haven’t had the time.’

‘Oh,’ said Cassie in a small voice.

‘You know work has been mad and then there’s this thing with my parents . . . But how about this? How about we set a date right and even if we hear that the world is going to end the following day we will definitely talk about it.’

‘When?’

‘How about this time next week?’

Cassie pulled herself tightly into his chest. ‘If that’s OK with you?’

‘It’ll be fine,’ said Luke, reaching over to his bedside table to turn off the light, plunging them into the darkness of the night. ‘It’ll all be absolutely fine, I promise.’

‘Are we really happy for them?’

A week later, Luke and Cassie were sitting in their back room about to have The Talk. Earlier they had been out for a meal in town at a restaurant that all their friends had been talking about for weeks that they had both tried (and failed) to enjoy. The problem hadn’t been the food or the company but rather the timing. The deadline was over. A decision was going to have to be made. And with only one of them knowing for sure which way the conversation would go it was hard not to feel like a prisoner on death row partaking of a final meal.

‘So here we are,’ began Cassie nervously. ‘I can’t believe we’re really going to talk about this.’

‘I know,’ sighed Luke. ‘My stomach is all tied up in knots.’

‘Mine too,’ said Cassie. ‘I almost sent you a text today suggesting that we call the whole thing off. I hate having this hanging over our heads. It’s ridiculous. We’re getting married next year. We should be celebrating us and everything we’ve achieved and instead I feel like I’ve ruined everything.’

‘You haven’t ruined anything, babe,’ reassured Luke. ‘It would’ve been much worse if you hadn’t said anything. This is just one of those things that pops up every now and again even in the best of relationships and the fact that we’re talking about it shows that we’re going about things the right way.’

‘OK then, I’m ready. I’m absolutely ready.’

Since their conversation Luke had thought and thought about whether he was willing to start a family with Cassie. All week he had applied his best analytical skills to building cases both for and against until finally, on the night before his self-imposed deadline, he left his hotel in Exeter, found a quiet wood-panelled pub in the city centre and determined not to leave until he had come to a conclusion.

He had bought himself a pint of bitter, found a nearby table, sat himself down, taken a few sips from the glass then reached inside his jacket pocket for his single most treasured possession: a photograph of his daughter, Megan, taken shortly after her fourth birthday.

The photo showed Megan (all curly black hair, teeth and smiles) standing in the garden of the house that he and Jayne had first bought when they moved to Manchester. It had been summer and Megan had been wearing a green and white stripy T-shirt and the red plastic sunglasses that Russell had given to her. She had fallen in love with those sunglasses and had insisted on wearing them everywhere regardless of whether they were indoors or out or whether it was daytime or night. Her face captured the essence of everything that makes children so life-affirming; a single moment of happiness. Her smile was so huge and her eyes so full of life that it was as though she was beaming happiness from her every pore. Whenever Luke looked at this photo he had no choice but to smile too and he knew that others felt the same; he had seen it happen too many times for it not to be an objective fact. Even his solicitor, a man not given to needless sentimentality, had cracked a grin when Luke first showed him the photo.

It went everywhere with him. Yet every time he took it out he knew he was lying to himself and to Megan too. In the four years since the photograph had been taken she was bound to have changed. She would no longer be his chubby-cheeked angel. She would be older and wiser, perhaps already seeking her own little forms of independence. The girl in the photograph who was his hope and his mainstay no longer existed apart from in photographs and home video footage and yet here he was pretending that one day she might come home. Could he really bring another child into the world when he had done so badly by the first? Was it possible for him to start a second family with Cassie without feeling as though he had abandoned his first? These questions had clarified his position.