How We Met (33 page)

When Mia had picked her up, she was tipsy, if not actually pissed, happily shoving down an enormous slice of black forest gateau, cream all over her face, and now, a week later, she was immobile, unable to eat – it was bollocks, thought Mia. Utter tosh.

Mia took a deep breath. Lectures of any kind didn’t really come naturally, but she was all fired up now and raring to go. Mrs Durham looked at her grumpily and slurped her tea. ‘Now, I know you are in some pain,’ she continued, ‘that your sight’s not what it used to be and that sometimes it’s hard, but you are only seventy-eight, which means you may have ten years, who knows, possibly twenty left …’

Mrs Durham closed her eyes and pressed her hands together, as if in prayer. ‘Dear Lord in heaven, please let someone shoot me before then.’

‘Well, no, that’s the point!’ said Mia, growing more
irate. ‘Nobody is going to shoot you before that’ (she
hoped, anyway, it was getting harder to resist) ‘so the only thing you can do is make the best of life. I come here every week and sometimes it’s fun, but recently you have been a real misery guts, Mrs Durham. You’re being …’ She faltered. ‘You’re behaving like a child, wasting your life
, and it’s not doing you any good. Now come on –’ she took three big strides towards her – the sun is shining, let’s get you up for a stroll, or we can go in the chair. It’s only quarter past two, we could make it to the Midland, have one of those lovely scones, a game of Scrabble – I bet you fancy that—’

Mrs Durham banged her fists on the table and stood up, making Mia jump. ‘I don’t want to go to the Midland, Mary! I don’t want to go for a walk or eat a blasted scone, with that dreadful UHT cream. I just want to sit here, I’m quite happy here.’

‘Yes, well, I’m not, I’m sorry …’ Mia was shocked by her
own outburst; it was as though she suddenly felt choked
with claustrophobia, hot and stuffy in this sweltering sitting room. It reminded her of being a child, of when her mum would spend hours entertaining men downstairs, whilst she had to stay in her bedroom and entertain
herself. She felt another hot flush come over her and went over to turn the gas fire down. ‘It’s … it’s sweltering in here. Christ, I feel like I’m going through early menopause. I feel like …
’ She started taking down the tinsel from the window. ‘I feel like time is standing still in this place. Please, at least, open a window …’

Mrs Durham got up and stomped towards the window, momentarily cured of her crippling legs, taking one end of the tinsel in her hand and pulling it. Brilliant, thought Mia, is this what life has come to? Playing tug-of-war with an old lady?

‘Put that down,’ said Mrs Durham, grumpily.

‘No, we are putting it away. It’s three months until Christmas: stop wishing time away. And open this window. It smells in here, it smells … it smells of death!’ Mia knew she had lost it now, gone too far, that she sounded unhinged, but she didn’t care.

‘DEATH?’ said Mrs Durham. Her eyes were wide and giddy. It was almost as if she savoured the word, the woman was obsessed.

‘Yes, DEATH,’ said Mia, yanking the tinsel from her and tying it manically in a knot. She seemed to be suffering from temporary insanity. Maybe it was catching. ‘But you’re not dead yet, Mrs Durham, you are not actually dead and I really think, if you just …’ Mia went on and on, she didn’t seem to be able to stop.

She didn’t think, when she had answered the ad in the newsagent’s window, that she would ever have opinions about how this old woman spent her days, that she would ever really care. She would come here, do some housework, clean up, possibly listen to stories about the war and go home, considering she had done her job. But now, she found herself livid, LIVID about how this woman was squandering her life. She felt hemmed in enough in her own house, her visits to Mrs Durham had always been her light relief, even if it was a game of Scrabble or a visit to the Midland Hotel, and now she felt thoroughly depressed by it all.

Mrs Durham shook her fists by her side. Mia felt a bit scared. ‘Now, you listen here, young lady. You listen to me. I didn’t ask you to come here, did I? I didn’t choose you; you chose me, remember? You answered that advert and decided to accept the job. Nobody made you; it’s you who needed me. Morecambe and Wise and I were quite happy before you turned up, so don’t think you can just swan in here, turning over all my things, trying to tell me how to be …’

She was breathing in short sharp bursts now, and Mia had the sudden, dreadful thought that she might have a heart attack – that her prophecy might actually come true and that she would drop down dead, right now on the living-room carpet. Mrs Durham,’ she said. ‘Mrs Durham. Please calm down. I’m sorry … I didn’t mean to …’

Mrs Durham shuffled out towards the kitchen.

‘So you can get your things and go, Mary.’

She sounded icily calm.

‘But,
Mrs D …’ Mia tried to follow her into the kitchen, but Mrs Durham swung around, sweeping up Wise in her arms as she did. Wise hissed at Mia in protective scorn.

‘I SAID, you can leave me be. I shall cope. I can feed myself, clean up for myself. I’m getting quite sick of people telling me what to do. I haven’t lived through a war, lost a husband, undergone three major operations, lived on my own practically all my life, to be told what to do by a young girl like you who knows nothing about life.’

Mia stood in the hallway, dumbstruck, a mixture of fury and disbelief and, for some reason, overwhelming sadness. She felt hot tears filling her eyes; she had only wanted to help. Was she now being sacked?

She stood there for a few moments – the house was silent. Then she took her coat off the banister, picked up her bag and walked slowly into the kitchen. Mrs Durham was sitting at the kitchen table now, stroking Wise on her knee, a calm smile spread across her face.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Durham,’ Mia said, quietly. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. I just …’ And then, to her horror, she burst into tears; she stood, in the tiny, old-fashioned kitchen, and sobbed like a child.

Mrs Durham watched her, saying nothing. There was just the sound of Wise purring on her knee, the drip of the kitchen tap, the sound of footsteps on the next-door neighbour’s garden path. Mia felt suddenly like she was in a parallel universe, that what was going on in this house was not the same life that was going on around them.

Mrs Durham was looking at her now, blinking. Mia found herself hiccupping, actually hiccupping with tears – how utterly embarrassing – and yet she couldn’t stop. She waved her hands about her face.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry …’

‘It’s all right, dear, you have a good cry. You wail like a Hindu at a funeral if you need to. Knock yourself out.’

And even though tears were dripping off her nose, Mia burst out laughing; she wasn’t sure whether at the first bit or the ‘knock yourself out’ bit, a saying she had taught Mrs Durham.

When Mia looked up, Mrs Durham was laughing too, a self-conscious, childlike chuckle, as if to say, ‘Did I get that right?’

The two women remained like that for a while, giggling like a pair of schoolchildren. Eventually, their laughter turned into one long ‘Aahhhhh …’

Mrs Durham rummaged in a drawer and handed Mia a hankie that smelt suspiciously of Parmesan cheese, but she wiped her face with it anyway.

‘Feel better? You jolly well needed that, didn’t you, dear?’

Mia nodded, and smiled. She felt completely exposed, standing there, weeping copiously. What on earth had brought all that on?

Mrs Durham walked around from the kitchen table and gave Mia a hug, which only made Mia cry more.

‘You see, I may be past my sell-by date, but I’ve not lost all my marbles, not just yet,’ she said, patting her back. ‘And I can see that I’m not the only one who’s been a bit down in the dumps, am I?’

Mia was trying desperately to take control of her chin, which was wobbling all over the place. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I suppose not.’

‘You don’t seem
that
happy, dear, if I’m allowed to say that,’ she said, taking her by the arms and looking at her now. ‘You’ve never seemed that happy, ever since you started. You have a lovely baby, Milly, to love …’

Mia smiled, amused. The wrong name was one thing, the gender was quite another.

‘… which would be quite enough for some people, it was quite enough for me. I wish I could have had more, because it’s over so quick. Sooo quick, dear. When you look back on your life at my age, you will realize that this time you had with your baby that seemed so hard, was a mere blink of an eye and you will want it all over again.’ Mia smiled, and wiped her nose with her hand. ‘
And
you’ve got a bonny one. My word, you’ve a bonny one. Those girls aren’t going to know what hit them,’ she said. ‘Milly and I got on like a house on fire when you brought him here. That was the best day I’ve had in a long while, did you know that?’

Mia thought back to that day, that dreadful day, when she’d been so desperate she’d brought Billy over to Mrs Durham’s. She’d come to pick him up, seen him perfectly content, propped up on cushions, and felt a total failure: even the woman she was visiting could look after her baby better than she could.

Mia dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief.

‘But it’s not enough, is it?’ said Mrs Durham, peering at her. ‘Mmm? Not enough. And you don’t love that boyfriend you’re with – mind you, I can’t blame you, he’s a waste of space by all accounts. You’ve never said one good word about him in all the time we’ve known one another.’

Mia swallowed. Had she not? Had she not said one good word about Eduardo?

‘But you still stick with him, don’t you? And I don’t see any signs of you wanting to marry him. I’d been married nine years by your age. So who’s wasting their days now, mmm?’ She looked at Mia through the glasses that made her eyes look so enormous. ‘Who is the misery guts now? Come on!’ she said, as if it had been her idea all along. ‘Let’s go into the garden.’

They wrapped up – Mrs Durham insisted on Mia borrowing one of her hats: a green, knitted, tea-cosy affair that Mia rather liked herself in – and went out the back. Mrs Durham’s garden was a simple square of lawn, with border flowers and a small shed at the bottom, tended fortnightly by a gardener. They sat on the bench, which backed onto the kitchen, Mrs D’s pants blowing in the breeze, the sun warm on their faces.

‘Mrs Durham,’ said Mia. She suddenly wondered why on earth she’d never told her. ‘There’s something I should tell you. Something that might explain if I’ve seemed a bit sad sometimes. Two years ago, my best friend Olivia died.’

Mrs Durham looked at her, her huge blue eyes filling with tears.

‘But why didn’t you tell me, dear?’ she said, eventually. ‘I thought you and I were friends.’

They chatted till the sun was low in the sky and it grew chilly, at which point Mrs D brought out the brandy.

Mia told her how she and Liv had met in halls in the first year, how they’d shared a toilet; one toilet between their tiny rooms with a shower head above it. ‘Shit and shower partners, we called each other,’ she said, a tiny bit tipsy and uninhibited now.

‘Shit and shower partners? Well, I never,’ said Mrs D, biting her lips. Mia told her her favourite memories: the camping in the Lakes, the times they’d abandon revision to go and sit in the Water Witch on the canal and sup pints till they were talking nonsense, the trips they made to the seaside resorts of the northwest, the stupid arguments about nothing at all.

And, as she talked, Mia realized that she hadn’t really talked about Liv to anyone, apart from her own friends, who knew and loved her as much as she did, and strangely that Mrs Durham was now closer to her than her own mum.

Then, Mrs Durham started to talk.

‘I had a best friend,’ she said, excitedly. ‘A best friend just like Liv. We were best friends from our very first day at secondary school, when we were eleven.’

‘Really?’ said Mia. ‘My goodness, how wonderful.’

‘We went on holiday together, too, went to dances with our husbands. And then when we were old buggers –
’ Mrs Durham chuckled, and Mia did too – ‘we used to play Scrabble; every week together, without fail, we’d have a game of Scrabble and a brandy.’

‘So who was this friend?’ said Mia. ‘She sounds great, I like the sound of her.’

Mrs Durham put her hand on Mia’s knee.

‘Barbara, dear,’ she said, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world. ‘Barbara was the best friend I ever had in my life.’

On a freezing cold night in early November, Fraser finds himself in Soho, sitting in a freezing cold bar, sipping on a freezing cold bottle of Smirnoff Ice. Not that he’s complaining – as Wham! once sang, ‘the drinks are free’; Smirnoff are launching their new caffeine-infused line this evening. It’s just, Club Tropicana this is not, the Arctic tundra is more like it. The bar has been converted into an igloo with ice sculptures and ice pops and bar staff with blue lips and white-sprayed hair, as if they’ve come straight from the set of
Narnia
. If ‘ice’ is the theme, then the organizers have surpassed themselves. It’s just
… he’s freezing. Absolutely fucking freezing. Sod Smirnoff, where’s Norm? So they can go to a proper,
warm
pub and he can have a pint next to a roaring fire?

Fraser stands up, pulling his faux bearskin around him – another ‘freebie’ handed out by promotional staff at the door – and scans the room for his friend. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find him. The new Norm has a brand-new hairstyle: a trendy, side-flick thing that Fraser thinks makes him look like he did when he was twelve – but the place is shrouded in dry ice and heaving with similarly coiffed trendies; hordes of twenty-something media types, the guest-listed ‘opinion-formers’ of London, out for another night on the freebie party circuit, and everyone seems to be melding into one.

He pushes on through the crowds, holding his fourth bottle of Smirnoff Ice above his head and pulling the cape that keeps slipping off his shoulders – did these things only come in one size?