Young Wives' Tales (42 page)

Craig knows how to get his way with me. I thought Andrea was the only person who knew that the way to my heart is through beer and bolognese. I agree.

Craig lives in a small two-bedroom ex-council flat in Notting Hill. He bought it as soon as he started earning, with the help of an inheritance from his old nan. It was a smart investment. Nationally, house prices have rocketed; teachers can rarely afford to buy anything, anywhere, nowadays and in Notting Hill, in particular, prices have gone cosmic. After
the film
everyone wanted
to live there. I think people believed they’d end up being a neighbour to Julia Roberts.

But his flat, while worth a bob or two, is nothing special. It’s barely distinguishable from just about every other boy flat I’ve ever been in. The walls are blue, there’s lots of IKEA furniture, the kitchen is an 80s horror and the towels in the bathroom smell a bit musty. I feel quite at home, as I used to live in just the same way, well, worse actually, until I married and Andrea brought wood floors, shaggy rugs and cushions into my life. While I have regressed back to eating take-aways practically every night, I have hung on to her sartorial influence, not least because having a cool and/or comfortable pad helps when pulling women. Craig’s place is discernibly different from most men’s in one way; there are lots of books, photos and postcards, which, generally speaking, men avoid.

When I arrive at Craig’s a smell of fried onions and mince is drifting on to the communal landing. Good as his word. He opens the door to me and we greet one another in our usual way.

‘All right.’

‘All right.’

Both enquiry and reply. No one would guess I’m chuffed to see him or him me. We eat in relative silence. A DVD of
Blade Runner
is playing in the background. It’s Craig’s favourite movie so it’s usually playing when he’s home. At my house it’s
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
. When the credits roll I take charge of the remote
and flick from channel to channel until I settle on
Jackass
.

‘Nice bol, by the way. Cheers.’

‘No problem.’

I’ve taken the chair and Craig is flopped on to the sofa. We watch
Jackass
and laugh our heads off if anyone gets seriously hurt or humiliated, not just me, but Craig too – proving that he does have the Y-chromosome.

‘What did you think of her?’

I have no idea what Craig is talking about. Johnnie Knoxville is on screen when he asks this so he can’t mean a TV hottie. Craig sees my confusion.

‘Rose? What did you think of her? The girl I took to Tom’s wedding – she was the one I was telling you about.’

Despite the fact that Craig said he wanted to talk tonight, I’d hoped he didn’t mean he wanted to talk
talk
. We talk
talked
last month, I’m not sure I’d be comfortable if it became a habit. Still, there is no such thing as a free lunch. I decide to help myself to another tinnie – if I’m going to have to do deep and meaningful then I’m going to need a little lubrication.

‘Your special someone?’I conclude, quickly getting with the programme.

‘Well, hardly. Well, no. Well, yes. But.’

‘Which is it?’

‘I think she’s special,’he says finally.

I’m not into redheads and I thought she was a bit lardy but then lots of men really go for that, they like
something to get hold of. Craig looks bloody miserable, which is odd. Now he’s found his ‘special someone’he can have a profound and intense relationship and finally get his leg over – conscience fully satiated.

‘She ran away,’he says.

‘What?’

‘At the wedding. We were getting on so well. Or at least I thought we were. No. Yes. We really were. I don’t understand it.’

Craig is staring at me in exactly the same way he used to when he was a kid and some hard bastard off our estate had robbed his dinner money or deliberately run over his bike to bend the front wheel.

I mute the TV volume and say, ‘Talk me through it, mate.’

He doesn’t need to be asked twice. ‘We were having a great time, chatting, getting to know each other a bit better. She seemed very relaxed and happy. We even danced.’

I know this. I watched them through my alcoholic blur and yes, from where I was swaying, they were having a great time. She was definitely into him. She was laughing at his jokes, gazing into his eyes, the full monty. Frankly, I was jealous. Not that the Rose bird is my type, not anywhere near, but anyone could see that whatever they were cooking up between them was pretty
special
, to use Craig’s word.

It was that honest and straightforward even I saw it.

I remember looking from them to Tom and Jen and back again. Frankly, it was a bit fucking depressing. It
was Craig and this woman’s promising start that led me to drink so much. Not that I begrudge Craig a bit of happiness. Honestly, I want him to be heaped with happiness. And the same for Tom and Jen. If I ever won the lottery I’d buy Craig a new gaff and I’d do the same for Tom too. They are like brothers. I think that’s why seeing them both operate so damned functionally drove me to drink. I’m not a cretin, and I’m the best-looking of the three of us, so the question had to be asked, why was I the one sitting on my own with no one other than Aunt Madge for company?

Look, I’m digressing. My point is that Craig and his girl seemed to be getting on just fine.

‘What happened? Step on her toe? Women can be very funny about their shoes.’

Craig refuses to let me lighten up the evening.

‘You happened, you idiot. Rose noticed that you were catatonic and so I went to try to sober you up, which took a while.’

‘Sorry.’

‘And then there were the speeches. I kept looking for her. At first I thought she must be in the loo or at the bar but no, she’d gone, vanished without a trace.’

‘A regular Cinderella.’

‘I thought that perhaps she’d got a call from home. She has twin boys. Maybe something was wrong with one of them. So I called her mobile and left messages but she’s never got back to me. I called all the next day, too. It was a relief when the boys turned up to school on Monday as usual but she wasn’t at the gate, a friend
of hers had dropped them off. I made casual enquiries. The boys said their mother was fine but because they are seven years old they didn’t offer any details and I could hardly probe.’

True, what is the etiquette when it comes to the headmaster talking to a couple of lads about the potential of boning their mother?

‘I can’t talk to her friends to see what’s wrong because they’re all mums at my school, it would be unprofessional. I wonder if I should call round. But when? I can’t visit when the boys are at home but I can hardly dip out of school to see to my personal business. What do you think?’asks Craig.

‘I think you’re insane to involve yourself with a woman with two seven-year-old lads.’

‘For God’s sake, John.’

‘OK. Sorry. Did you tell her she’s fat?’

‘No! Of course not. For one thing she isn’t.’Craig looks exasperated.

‘You didn’t say that she looked “well”? Because women think you mean fat if you say that.’

‘Do they?’

‘Always.’

‘No, I think I said she looked beautiful.’

‘Did you comment positively on any other woman in the room, including the bride?’

‘I said that Jen looked relaxed.’

‘That’s OK. Did you cut across her sentence?’

‘No.’

‘Did you disagree with her? Suggest that women only
vote for the vaguely sexy political candidates? Criticize her driving? Talk about
Star Trek
?’

‘No, no, no. John, I honestly don’t think I said anything to offend her.’

‘Well, someone must have, mate. You need to find out who and what.’

‘You think I should talk to her.’

‘It helps, in a relationship, and I should know.’

‘You don’t talk much then.’

I grin at my clever friend, ‘No, mate, not if I can avoid it.’

‘Should I go round to see her and ask her why she ran away?’

‘Yes.’

‘You think so?’

‘Yes.’

Craig sits up and punches my arm. ‘It’s good to have you on side, mate. You’re a real buddy.’

‘Can we just watch the rest of
Jackass
now?’I ask and turn the volume back up.

Craig stares at the screen for about four minutes and then he says, ‘Tom told me that Andrea got in touch to say that she’s expecting a baby with her new bloke.’

‘Did he?’

‘How do you feel about that?’

‘Pleased for her.’I don’t take my eyes off the TV.

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘Didn’t you two ever fancy having kids?’

I press the mute button again. The hilarious antics
carry on silently. Without the cries of agony or the screams and crashes the programme loses something. It puts me in mind of an old Charlie Chaplin movie, which I never found that funny.

‘I think Andrea thought I was a kid.’

‘Bit unfair,’says Craig loyally. Then more honestly he adds, ‘But just a bit.’

‘We did try at one point but timing was all wrong.’

‘Girl stuff?’he asks, misunderstanding me.

I can’t bring myself to explain that I don’t mean her lunar-driven cycle and all that, more
our
timing. We only tried for a baby to stick us together but we were already shattered. It was a good thing that the fertility gods weren’t paying us much attention.

‘Can I ask you something really personal?’Craig has no idea about what level of probing is acceptable conversation between blokes. I consider it a sweet eccentricity and privately, I don’t mind indulging him.

‘Fire.’

‘Was Andrea your One?’

‘No mate, Cameron Diaz is my One. She just doesn’t know it yet.’

‘Seriously.’

He won’t be budged. He stares at me earnestly. His face is twitching with concern and a real desire to understand me. It suddenly dawns on me that I might have been duped. Of course Craig knows that he has to go round to see this Rose bird, if he wants to make a go of it. He’s not an idiot. He probably only asked
for my opinion so that he could bring up the subject of women and lure me into exchanging confidences.

I watch the silent screen and tell him, I don’t believe in The One. There are loads of people out there who could make me happy.

‘Why don’t they then?’

‘I’m happy.’

‘You didn’t seem it at Tom’s wedding.’It’s not a question, so I’m not obliged to comment. Craig works with little kids all the time, so he rephrases. ‘I hadn’t seen you that drunk for a long time, mate, and I wondered why you wanted to get wasted.’

‘Nervous about giving the speech.’

‘No. You were excited about giving the speech.’

Craig is kind enough not to point out that while I stumbled through the speech it wasn’t as good as it perhaps could have been. I still got the laughs but the humour wasn’t as fast and sophisticated as I’d planned. I couldn’t read my prompt cards and had to ad-lib a fair amount. Still, not to worry, if Craig cracks it with this Rose bird I’ll dust off my speech and try again in a few years.

I don’t take my eyes off the TV but I know that Craig is still staring at me with the full intensity of a concerned best mate. The heat is making me itch. I give in.

‘It does mean something to me that Andrea is up the duff. I’m not jealous,’I hasten to add this and turn to him so that he can read my face and know I’m being as honest as I know how to be. ‘She’s a good lass. I’m
happy for her. She’s clearly moved on and that’s good. But it sort of brought home to me that I haven’t. I haven’t really moved since the divorce.’

‘You bought your new house in Marlow.’

‘Yes.’

I can’t believe that the one time I want Craig to understand that I’m not talking literally, I’m talking figuratively, he’s turned all man on me. I mean I haven’t moved on emotionally but I’d wax my ass and chest before I say so straight out.

‘In some ways I feel that I’m right back where I was ten years ago, except in those days I listened to Oasis and Blur when I was fucking and now it’s the Arctic Monkeys and Kaiser Chiefs. I keep running over old scenarios and wondering what I could have done differently to change the outcome.’

‘With Andrea?’

‘Among others. I’m sort of conducting an experiment at the moment.’

‘An experiment?’

‘Yes. Do you remember I once talked to you about that woman whose kid goes to your school?’

‘Mrs Baker?’

‘Yes, Connie. She meant a lot to me at one point.’

‘And then nothing at all. You said so.’

‘I just wonder if I’ve got that last bit wrong.’

‘What?’Craig leaps off the sofa and starts to pace the room. He’s melodramatically running his hands through his hair. ‘Are you having an affair with her?’

‘No.’

‘Are you planning on doing so? Are you trying to seduce her?’

I don’t answer directly. ‘She’s aged well. She’s looking great and she’s got this new indefinable aura, a sort of confidence that she didn’t have when we were together.’

‘It’s called happiness. She’s a happily married woman. She’s a mother.’

Craig is furious. When he gets really angry a small muscle in his cheek flickers and he looks like a psycho. When we were kids I used to encourage him to use this party trick to freak out the bullies, but he can’t do it on demand. I’ve only seen it appear about a dozen times.

‘I really want her.’

‘No, you don’t, John. You don’t know what you want and you are going to mess with her head. It’s not on.’

‘She’s a big girl, she’ll be able to decide for herself if I’m going to mess with her head or not,’I point out.

Craig flops back into his chair and looks defeated. I know he wants to grapple together a compelling argument for me to leave Connie alone.

‘Why are you suddenly interested in her after all these years?’he asks. His voice is always soft but today I can barely hear him.

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Do you think it might be rebound from the divorce? Or an ego boost? If she used to be mad about you, do you see her as an easy target?’

‘Not at all,’I say with a wry grin.

‘A challenge, then? You like a challenge.’