A Friend of the Family (17 page)

‘No, I guess not. I can’t stand clutter.’

‘So – how much of your furniture did you get from Ikea? Honestly? –’

‘Er… all of it?’

‘Oh, Tony.’

‘Well – it’s nice stuff and it all goes together.’

‘It matches, you mean?’

‘Yeah. It matches.’

‘Tony, furniture is not supposed to
match.
It’s supposed to
evolve
and inspire and communicate. It’s supposed to tell people about
you –
about who you are.’

‘Well, maybe it does. Maybe I’m a matching kind of a guy.’

‘So – your pants and socks, do they…?’

Tony laughed. ‘On occasion,’ he said, ‘but never by design. But look,’ he said as a rather exciting thought
occurred to him, ‘my flat. I’ve never really done anything to it and it’s a really nice place. It’s got a lot of potential. Would you ever consider a commission in the wilds of south London?’

‘Where do you live?’

‘Anerley.’

‘Anerley – where the hell’s that?!’

‘Other side of Crystal Palace Park. Not far from my mum and dad.’

‘Hmm, I’ll think about it. I’d need to see some pictures, though, before I drag myself all the way out to Twin Peaks… Oh, hello, pud.’

‘Sorry?’

‘My cat’s just walked into my room. Hello, beautiful…’

‘You’ve got a cat?’

‘I’ve got
four
cats, actually. I told you didn’t I? Classic singleton. I’ve been preparing myself with all the essential accoutrements for my inevitable lonely destiny. Even had a gay best friend lined up until Sean came along with his engagement rings and his rubber-busting sperm.’

Tony laughed again. ‘So,’ he said, ‘if single thirtysomething women have cats and gay best friends, what do single men have?’

‘Very good question,’ said Millie. ‘Sports cars and female best friends, I suppose.’

‘Shit,’ said Tony, slapping his forehead, ‘you got me. On both counts.’

‘Yes, but it doesn’t count, because you’re not single.’

‘Yes I am.’

‘Er – then who is that very nice blonde woman with the amazing legs who goes everywhere with you?’

Oh yes. He’d forgotten about her.

Ness.

The very thought sent a chill running through him. He’d done everything he could to avoid Ness over the past couple of weeks. There’d been a lot of migraines and late nights at the office and family commitments. He should just finish it with Ness, Tony was aware of that. He should sit down with her like a grown-up and hold her hand and look her in the eye and say, ‘Ness, you’re a really great girl, and we’ve had some really good times, but…’ and then deal with the consequences. But he just couldn’t do it. He was, he supposed, subconsciously waiting for her to do something wrong so that he could pounce upon it as a perfectly acceptable excuse to dump her. But she never did. It was dawning upon Tony very slowly that Ness was actually perfect. She was the perfect girlfriend. But Ness had one big fault. A huge unsurmountable fault.

She wasn’t Millie.

‘Fuck,’ said Millie.

‘What?’

‘The front door just went. He’s back,’ she whispered. ‘I have to go now.’

‘Oh,’ said Tony, deflating. ‘OK.’

‘Thank you so much for the chat. It’s been really lovely.’

‘Don’t mention it. It’s been a pleasure.’

‘You’ve really calmed me down. I don’t know what I’d have done without you. Thank you.’

‘Any time. Any time at all. Just promise me one thing.’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t let him get away with it. OK?’

‘Oh trust me, Tony. He’s not getting away with anything. Shit. He’s coming. Sleep tight, Tony.’

‘Yes – you too. Sleep tight.’But it was too late. She’d already hung up.

Tony switched off his phone and it felt a little like switching off a life-support machine. He tried to imagine what was happening in Millie’s bedroom right now. Was Millie shouting at Sean, throwing pillows at him? Or was she crying again, was Sean comforting her? He wished it could be him. He’d smooth her hair and mop her tears and tell her that everything would be all right, that they’d be the best mum and dad in the world. And then he’d slip under the sheets with her and spoon her back and tell her stories all night long about how great their life was going to be.

He sighed and clutched the phone to his chest while he stared up through the glass again. He stared at the moon until it slipped out of view and was replaced by the early-morning sun and by the time he went to bed it was broad daylight and he’d eaten nearly half a pound of cheese.

Paradise Paul’s without Millie in it, Sean soon realized, was just a poky, overcrowded basement bar full of braying, coked-up tossers. Paul barely gave him a second glance and Millie’s friends seemed like unreachable strangers without her there to bond him to them. To compensate for his sense of distance from everyone, Sean
drank roughly half a bottle of rum, had three very large lines of coke and didn’t get back to Millie’s until 4.30 a.m.

On the sofa in the living room were a spare duvet, three of the cats and a large handwritten note that said ‘Your Bed’.

‘Yeah, right,’ he muttered to himself.

He petted the cats, picked up the note and tiptoed towards the bedroom. Millie was curled up on her side, her fourth and favourite cat pressed into the crook of her legs. The cat looked up superciliously when he heard Sean enter, and eyed him disdainfully as if to say, ‘If you think you’re coming anywhere near my beloved, slumbering mistress, you’ve got another think coming.’

He ignored the cat and trod softly towards the bed. Millie’s hair was half over her face and her bare arm gleamed olive in the light from the hallway. He looked at her lovely mouth all pursed up like a little girl’s and for a brief second he felt something like a paternal twinge as he imagined what it would be like if Millie had a little girl. Would she inherit her mother’s snub nose, her good-enough-to-eat skin, that plump, stubborn little mouth? He imagined himself walking into a nursery after a night out, looking at his beautiful dusky-skinned daughter, adjusting her blanket, wondering what she was dreaming about. Yes, he thought, he could envisage that. He smiled fondly and reached out with one hand to brush the hair off Millie’s smooth cheek.

‘Fuck off.’

His hand retracted and he turned and left the room.

Duplicity City

‘Tone, it’s me.’

‘Sean!’ Tony wasn’t used to receiving phone calls from his younger brother and especially not at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning.

‘Look. I can’t talk long. I’m on my mobile, just going down the shops to get some cranberry juice for Millie.’

‘Oh. Right.’

‘Look. I need to talk to you. Something’s happened.’

Oh God, thought Tony, Duplicity City, here we come.

‘Now this is top secret, right. You’ve got to promise not to tell anyone. Not Mum, not anyone.’

‘OK.’

‘Millie’s pregnant.’

Tony mustered all his limited powers of artistic expression to sound surprised by the news.

‘Yeah. It’s a bit of a shock, really. Not planned or anything – well, obviously not planned. I mean we’ve only been together a few weeks. But the problem is, she wants to keep it.’

‘Problem?’ said Tony.

‘Yeah. I mean, I understand why, I really do. She’s thirty-six and she’s at that age, you know. And I want
to be really happy about it and be all New Man and understanding. But I can’t.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m not ready. I’m not ready to share her. I’m not ready to give up my freedom. I’m not ready for her to change.’

‘Change?’

‘Yeah. You know, not drinking, not smoking, not wanting to go out. We had this great lifestyle and it was all new and fresh and now it’s like living with bloody Geri Halliwell or something. All she wants to do is stay in and sleep and now I feel like a freak when I’ve had a few drinks. You know, there is nothing more self-conscious-making than hanging out with a sober person when you’re bladdered and… well, I really pissed her off last night.’

‘Christ – I’m not surprised, if that’s your attitude. What happened?’

‘Well, I wanted to go out after dinner and she said she was tired and wanted to go home. So I told her how that made me feel and she stormed off. Just like that. So I went out anyway…’

‘What – you let her go home on her own?’

‘Yeah. I know. I’m a cunt. But I was just feeling so…
powerless.
I know it sounds pathetic, but I just felt like if I’d gone home with her it would have been winning.’

‘What would have been winning?’

‘The baby. The baby would have won.’

‘Sean, this isn’t a competition, you know. That’s your child she’s carrying.’

‘I know. I know it is. But I don’t know it. It’s not growing inside
me,
you see. It’s
her
baby. You know, if it had been planned, if we’d been together a couple of years and deliberately stopped using contraception and then she’d got pregnant, that would be different. We’d have done it together. I could handle that. But this – this just feels like an alien has taken up residence inside my girlfriend. Like it’s nothing to do with me. At all. Do you know what I mean?’

And in a funny way, Tony did know what he meant. But there was no chance he was going to say that to his brother. He was on Millie’s side. All the way. ‘Look, Sean,’ he said, ‘I know this is probably all a real shock to you and the last thing you expected. But you proposed to Millie – don’t forget that. You made the ultimate commitment to her already and has it occurred to you that maybe
she’s
scared too? Eh? That maybe she’s shocked. That maybe she’d have preferred to wait?’

‘Well, she did say that she’d have been happier if it had happened in a couple of years.’

‘Exactly. Look. You’ve got an incredible woman there. She’s way too good for you and you know it. She’s pregnant. You’re the father. You’re a grown man, so stop being a wanker, buy her some flowers and start dealing with it. Because if you really can’t cope with it you’d be better off walking away now while she’s still got some options.’

‘What?’

‘I mean – if you don’t want her with your baby then leave her. At least that way she can decide to have an
abortion if that’s what she wants, and get on with her life. But if you’re just going to hang around making her miserable and making her feel guilty for something that isn’t her fault then you’re not doing her any favours. Either face up to it or walk away from it. OK?’

‘Yeah,’ said Sean, realization dawning in his voice, ‘you’re right. I know you are. It’s just really hard. I mean, I think the world of Millie. I don’t want to lose her. But I’m just so confused and even though I know what I
should
be doing I still find it really hard. Fuck, Tone…’

‘I’m serious, Sean. You’re just going to have to grow up. Make your decision, one way or the other.’

Yeah. Yeah. Look. I’m just at the cash desk. I’m going to have to go now. But thanks, Tone. I’m really going to try and deal with this now.’

‘You’ve got some serious thinking to do.’

‘I have. I will. Thank you. Thanks for listening. And remember. Not a word to anyone. Yeah?’

Yeah. Oh – just one thing. Just out of interest. Why did you call me? I’m not saying I’m not glad that you did. But you don’t normally call me for advice.’

‘Well, I don’t normally need it, I suppose. And besides, you’re my big brother – who else would I call?’

Tony put the phone down after Sean had hung up and stared at his feet for a while feeling guilty, duplicitous and exulted, all at the same time.

Purple Sofas, Mojitos and Leopardskin Mobile Cases

On Monday night at eight o’clock, Ned found himself in a very noisy, almost entirely purple wine bar just off Oxford Street. He was sure at first that he must have got the wrong address or the wrong place. It was full of curvy sofas, chrome lighting and the sort of people he’d spent his three years in Sydney trying to avoid. Men with gelled hair wearing shirts and ties that were the same colour. Girls in tight trousers and asymmetric lycra tops. People who looked like they worked in the lower echelons of media. Dim lighting. Loud music. Expensive cocktails. The antithesis in every way of everything that Carly liked. Carly liked pubs and caffs and places that served beer with funny names and at least four varieties of Walkers crisps. Places where you could get a seat and hear yourself think. Surely she was doing this all back to front, thought Ned. Surely you were supposed to start off with the loud purple-sofa places and work your way down to the old-man pubs as you approached your thirties.

He scoured the place for Carly, but she was nowhere to be seen so he ordered himself a vastly overpriced bottle of beer and tried to find somewhere to sit. He
was about to perch himself on the corner of an enormous purple sofa when a slightly orange girl with a sheet of dyed blonde hair and wearing a fuchsia halter-neck threw him a ‘My life would be perfect if you didn’t exist’ look and said, ‘You can’t sit there.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You. Can’t. Sit. There.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s taken.’And then she turned away in a manner that suggested that she felt she’d already sacrificed enough of her precious life to dealing with him. It hadn’t, patently, occurred to her that he might not follow her instructions.

And she was right, of course. Ned picked up his bottle of beer and slunk away, feeling like he had head-lice and yellow teeth.

Imagine, he thought as he tried to find a corner to hide in, if you were the sort of bloke who actually
fancied
girls like that, the sheet-of-blonde-hair girls, the you-bore-me girls, the high-maintenance, you-expect-me-to-get-on-a-te girls. How soul-destroying to have to spend your life trying to please someone who was impossible to please just so you could go out with something pretty on your arm.

He fiddled with his hair while he waited. It was extraordinarily hot in here and his beard itched. And his hair, too, come to that. He had a sudden urge to comb his entire body.

His eye was caught then, by a cute-looking girl walking into the bar. She had blonde-ish wavy hair to her shoulders,
rosy cheeks, a red coat, a rucksack and buckle-up shoes, like an enormous four-year-old. She stopped at the threshold and pulled off her stripy gloves, finger by finger, while her eyes scanned the room. And then her eyes fell upon Ned and she beamed at him. And then Ned realized. It was
Carly!
He put down his beer and headed towards her.