Vince and Joy (25 page)

‘Well, what happened to good karma and being mellow and all that.’

‘Fuck that,’ she said. ‘This is war.’

Cass and Vince didn’t make it to 44 Wilberforce Road that night. A howling gale arrived in Finsbury Park at around seven o’clock, accompanied by horizontal rain and a wind-chill factor of minus two degrees.

‘We’ll go tomorrow night,’ said Cass, wearing a scarf and hat, and stirring a steaming pan of something green and pungent on the hob.

‘Can’t tomorrow night. I’m busy. And Friday night.’

‘Well, then, we’ll go at the weekend. Saturday afternoon?’

‘Why don’t you just write her a note instead? That way you don’t have to come into contact with her?’

‘No,’ said Cass. ‘That’s too easy I want to see the whites of her eyes. I want her to feel the full force of my fury.’

‘Fine,’ said Vince defeatedly. ‘Fine. Saturday afternoon. We’ll go on Saturday afternoon.’

Joy glanced down at her left hand and fiddled with a small silver ring on the third finger. It was embedded with a dozen small diamonds clustered around a larger diamond, and had originally belonged to the wife of the man who wrote
Charley’s Aunt,
according to the man with the handlebar moustache from whose antique jewellery shop on the New King’s Road they’d bought it.

‘Don’t even think about the cost,’ George had said. ‘Just choose the one you love the most.’

As it happened, the one she’d loved the most had cost exactly a quarter of the amount of £50 notes George had folded up into his wallet, and he’d proclaimed her a cheap date.

The ring had been the centre of attention all week long.

‘Let’s see it, then.’ She would dutifully hold out her left hand, in a faintly regal manner, while some overexcited girl or other oohed and aahed and turned the ring this way and that to catch the light.

‘It’s a bit puny,’ had been Bella’s response. ‘Thought you said he was rich.’

So the ring had been chosen and paid for in cash, the dress was a work in progress, the banns had been posted at Chelsea Town Hall, a classified had been placed in the announcements section of the
Daily Telegraph
(her
mother’s idea), the last few remaining boxes of her possessions were squashed into the boot of her mother’s car and she was an hour away from leaving her single life behind for ever.

Joy felt curiously numb as she emptied her lovely room, took pictures off the walls, pulled photos from the mirror frame, hoovered away the detritus of ten weeks of her life. If she thought too much about what she was doing she’d have to stop to think about everything else, and if she did that, then… well, it was too late to do anything about anything now, so there was no point.

She watched her mother trundling down the path towards the Volvo estate carrying a box of shoes – she looked about ten years younger than she did the day those same shoes had arrived at Wilberforce Road more than two months earlier. Barbara had barely had the puff to perform a three-point turn then, but now here she was marching briskly back and forth between the car and the flat with all manner of boxes and bags, barely breaking out into a sweat.

She’d lost a few pounds since Dad left. She’d taken to walking the half a kilometre to the local shops and back every day, to pick up a paper or a lottery ticket – just to get her out of the house, just for something to do. And she couldn’t be bothered to cook properly, not for herself, so she tended to graze her way through the day on Rich Teas, Cuppa Soups and Golden Delicious.

She’d changed her hair, too – decided to try a new salon, just for a change. It was still old-lady hair, but softer, warmer, less sausagey old-lady hair. It hadn’t taken her long to recover from the shock of Alan’s departure
and, now that Alan and Toni had moved into a new house three miles away and she no longer had to watch their silhouetted forms disrobing at night through their bedroom window or watch Alan gallantly helping Toni into the passenger seat of his Jag or see him happily pushing a shopping trolley around Asda in a way he’d always resolutely refused to do for her, she finally felt as if she could get on with her life.

‘Well,’ said Joy, letting herself fall into Julia’s marsh-mallow embrace, ‘it’s been fantastic. Short but very sweet.’

Julia pulled back and regarded her fondly. ‘You’re a very special girl,’ she said, ‘and George is a very lucky boy’

‘See you next week, for your second fitting,’ Bella swooped towards her and hammered a birdlike peck on to each cheek before swooping briskly away again. ‘And don’t forget to invite us to your hen night.’

‘I won’t,’ she said.

She got into the passenger seat of her mother’s car, belted herself in and waved goodbye to Julia and Bella, feeling strangely as if she’d forgotten something.

She racked her brain for the full forty minutes of the journey from Finsbury Park to Stockwell, but couldn’t think what it was.

And it wasn’t until they pulled into the access road behind George’s mansion block, and saw him beaming at them from the kitchen window on the third floor, that she realized – it was herself she’d left behind.

‘This is it.’ Cass forced her hands into the pockets of her Afghan coat and came to a halt outside one of the fat red-brick houses on Wilberforce Road.

‘Very nice,’ said Vince appreciatively.

Cass threw him a withering look and walked forcefully towards the front steps. ‘Come on,’ she said as she turned to him impatiently, ‘let’s get this over with.’

Vince whistled nervously under his breath while they waited for the door to be answered. A few seconds later a large woman in a not-quite-long-enough T-shirt and pink angora socks appeared at the door. She had bright orange hair tied up in a ponytail and was smoking a green cigarette.

‘Hello,’ she said, smiling at them widely.

‘Hello,’ said Cass, whose hands were bunched up into fists at her sides. ‘I’m Cass and this is Vince. We live over there – ’ she said, indicating behind the woman. ‘On Blackstock Road. We’ve come to talk to you about my cat.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘Yes. Madeleine. The big Persian tabby.
My
cat.’

‘Oh, well, how utterly hysterical – he’s a girl! Bella! Bella!’ the woman shouted into the hallway behind her. ‘Guess what! Mou-Shou’s a girl!’ She turned back to them. ‘We thought he was a boy,’ she said, somewhat unnecessarily. ‘Would you like to come in?’

The woman’s flat was high-ceilinged and cluttered. Wine
glasses and unemptied ashtrays littered every surface. A large duvet was folded on top of a red sofa, and a very thin man was curled into the corner of a very large leather armchair on the other side of the room, wrapped in a blanket and halfway through a chocolate Hobnob.

‘Told you it was a girl,’ he said to Julia, unfurling a thin leg and eyeing up Vince and Cass with undisguised disdain.

‘This is Vince and Cass. They live on Blackstock Road. Mou-Shou – sorry,
Madeleine
— is their cat.’ She turned to smile at them, and Vince smiled back at her extra hard to make up for Cass’s deadpan belligerence. ‘This is my friend Bella.’

Vince and Cass both turned as one to reassess the thin man in the armchair. He had long hair and thin eyebrows, but was indubitably a man.

‘Can I get you a coffee?’ asked Julia, jamming her green cigarette into a tray of multicoloured stubs.

‘Actually,’ said Cass, ‘this isn’t a social visit.’

‘Oh,’ Julia looked disappointed.

‘No. I’ve come here to tell you to stop feeding my cat. I mean, it’s just not on. I’ve had her for five years. I’ve paid all her vet’s bills, taken time off work to take her there, fed her, loved her, been there for her when she needed me. I mean, me and Madeleine – we’ve got this
connection’
She tapped her temple with her finger. ‘Do you see? She’s not just some cat – she’s, like, my best friend. And ever since you started feeding her whatever the fuck it is that you’re feeding her, I hardly ever see her and, even when she does come home to me, there’s this…
distance.
It’s not the same as it was. And anyone who knows about cats knows that you
just don’t
feed other people’s cats. It’s rude and it’s cruel and I want you to stop!’

Cass was a livid shade of red by the time she drew breath at the end of her tirade. Her hands were shaking and she’d started crying.

Vince held his breath and listened to the ringing silence. The thin man called Bella had retreated even deeper into his blanket, with a Hobnob suspended halfway between the packet and his mouth.

‘Oh, you poor, poor darling.’ Julia steamed towards Cass with her arms outstretched. ‘I had no idea.’ And then she buried Cass between her bosoms and squeezed her tightly. ‘If I’d thought for a moment… oh, God, I feel dreadful, so utterly dreadful.’

Cass started sobbing properly then, and buried her face deeper into Julia’s T-shirt. ‘Bella,’ said Julia, ‘coffee, please, darling – and make it strong.’

She ferried Cass towards the sofa and sat her down. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘you must tell me what we can do to sort this out.’

‘I told you,’ gulped Cass, ‘stop feeding her.’

‘But, sweetness, we don’t feed him –
her.
I would never do such a thing. From the moment she appeared at the door, I said to her, “You’re very pretty, but we’re not bloody well feeding you.” But she kept coming back. She’s in love, you see, in love with my lodger.’

Cass turned to look at Bella in bewilderment.

‘No, not with him. With Joy’

‘Joy?’

‘Yes. Lovely Joy. My ex-lodger,’ she sighed.

Cass and Vince exchanged a glance.

‘She just moved out this morning, actually. We’re feeling very sad.’

‘Weird,’ said Cass. ‘We’ve been looking for a girl called Joy’

‘Have you, really?’

‘Yes. I don’t suppose… ‘ She looked at Vince. ‘It couldn’t be the same one?’

‘Of course it’s not the same one,’ muttered Vince.

‘What did she look like, your Joy?’

‘Slim,’ said Julia, ‘dark. Very pretty, very pale.’

Cass threw Vince a questioning look. He shrugged and nodded.

‘How old?’

‘Mid twenties. Thereabouts.’

‘Surname?’

‘Downer.’

‘Oh. My. God.’ Cass slammed her hand over her mouth and began hyperventilating.

‘Is it her?’ said Julia. ‘Is it the same girl?’

‘Yes,’ breathed Cass.

‘Spooky,’ said the man called Bella, coming back into the room with a fistful of mugs.

‘Fucking hell,’ said Vince.

‘Sugar?’ said Bella, plonking mugs of coffee on to a table.

‘I mean,’ Cass got to her feet and began pacing the room manically, ‘we’ve done nothing but talk about this Joy girl for ages. She came up in a tarot reading I did for Vince and he admitted that he was still in love with her…’

‘I am not
in love
with her,’ he interjected.

‘… and that was why he was so crap at relationships, then he decided to find her and I even bought a crystal ball, you know, looking for this girl, this mysterious Joy, and all the time she was here.
Here.
Just around the corner. This is just, like, the
freakiest thing ever.’

‘Sugar?’ demanded Bella again, wagging the teaspoon up and down impatiently.

‘Vince, can you believe this?’ Cass flopped back on to the sofa, quivering with excitement.

‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s unbelievable.’

He couldn’t decide what to feel. He subconsciously sniffed the air, searching for physical evidence of Joy’s recent presence in this strange flat with these bizarre people.

‘How is she –
was
she?’ he muttered. ‘Is she well?’

‘She’s getting married,’ said Bella, abruptly.

‘Oh,’ said Vince.

‘Next month. To a bloke she met in the classifieds.’

‘Oh,’ said Vince again. ‘You’re joking,’ said Cass.

‘No. It’s true,’ said Julia, whipping the teaspoon out of Bella’s hand and ladling three spoons of sugar into her coffee. ‘She moved in two months ago, then she met this fellow called George through a personal ad and he’s completely swept her off her feet, got engaged last week and now they’re getting married. Frankly, it’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard…’

Vince gulped. ‘But isn’t she, a bit
young
to be getting married? I mean, she’s only twenty-five. I would have thought… ‘ He trailed off. What would he have thought? That someone as special as Joy wouldn’t be snapped up while she was still fresh? That every man she met wouldn’t
fall insanely in love with her and want to marry her on the spot? Of course she was getting married.

Yes, she’s young. But she’s very mature.’

‘And what’s he like, this George?’

‘Never met him,’ said Bella, ‘I reckon he’s got three eyes and a wart on the end of his nose.’

‘Bell!’ Julia reprimanded. ‘Stop being awful. I’m sure George is lovely’