How We Met (17 page)

They never did get to the bottom of it.

God, she missed her. Often it was not during the big events, the important times that she did, but during odd, seemingly insignificant times, like now, like sitting in a new hotel with a batty old woman who kept belching when the mood took her. Liv would have thought that was hilarious. She wanted to tell Liv about Mrs Durham and her amazing guttural belching. She’d wanted to tell her, the other week, how she’d gone out again wearing odd shoes, or the fact that Billy could point to his nose if you said ‘nose’ now.

Sometimes, she forgot she was gone at all, only to email her and remember that [email protected] didn’t exist any more. ‘She no longer had an earthly presence’ – that’s what was said at the funeral. So where was she? Where had she gone? Where was everything she’d said and felt and laughed at?

Mia wondered when she had turned into this person who only looked back. She had read a feature recently, something in one of the Sunday supplements that she made herself read from time to time, just so her brain didn’t dissolve. It was an interview with some poet, a female African poet (she’d put a Post-it note on her fridge to remind her to buy her anthology some time), who was saying how she thought that as a young person we look forward, and as an old person we look back – and it’s only in middle age that we sort of have peripheral vision. And so, Mia was old already. At twenty-nine, she felt as old as Mrs D.

After they’d finished their tea and scones, Mia put Mrs Durham on the bus and took her home. Then she went to pick up Billy from nursery and she fastened him into his buggy and, as she was walking home with him down the hill, she got that feeling in her stomach again, that terrifying feeling: how easy, how simple it would be just to let go. Everything over. Gone.

It was at least a month after she’d narrowly escaped taking Sara Moussaka’s crown to become Mia Moussaka that Mia saw Fraser again. The Christmas holidays had been and gone and Mia had spent them at home in Chesham, feeling depressed, not to mention mortified.

She’d thought, hoped, it was a date. She’d planned her outfit for
WEEKS
and he’d just seen it as an opportunity to get fresh with his mate?

Good old Mia, up for a laugh, up for a snog. Well, he could bugger off. She was not going to be his shag buddy. Shag buddy had never been on her agenda.

The worst thing was, she couldn’t talk to Anna and Liv about it, she was far too embarrassed. They’d already ribbed her incessantly about her and Fraser’s little shopping trips to Asda.

‘Shopping again? Yeah,
course
you are, Woodhouse.
Getting jiggy in George more like, fondling in the freezer
aisle,
HEAV
Y
PETTING
IN
THE
POULTRY
SECTION?
’ Their ‘hilarious’ puns knew no bounds.

Of course, she’d tut and roll her eyes, but secretly, she’d suspected they had a point. Maybe Fraser did fancy her back? Surely he felt the sexual chemistry too? Jesus Christ, it was electric! Those journeys back in the taxi, the only thing stopping their hands touching being two industrial bags of rice, were becoming more than she could bear.

But whereas she’d dared to dream they might have a future together, that they might have something special, he clearly just saw her as his mate, whom he possibly wouldn’t kick out of his bed if they had fallen into it, on occasions (which thankfully they hadn’t. At least she had spared herself that humiliation).

The most galling thing was that it had taken them so long to get to this point. Or at least ‘the point’ at which Mia thought they were. They were now in the second term of the second year. They’d met on day three of the first year, not at some glamorous Fresher’s Ball, but when Mia had leapt on him, hypnotized and tasting of raw onion. A baptism of fire, to say the least.

After that, when her friends had taken great delight in pointing out her
victim all over campus, she’d been so mortified (she was beginning to see a pattern emerging here) that she’d avoided Fraser for much of the first year. It had become a running joke between her, Liv and Anna . ‘Duck, Mia!’ They’d laugh. ‘There’s that bloke you attacked.’ Once, their eyes had locked in the queue for the bar in the Student Union and she’d literally blanked him, stared right through him.

He probably thought she was mental.

Mia had lost count of the number of times someone had said to her, ‘
Aren’t you that girl from Fresher’s Week who snogged that bloke hypnotized?’ She always claimed complete amnesia, but feared she’d never live it down. She was fully prepared to spend her entire undergraduate life avoiding the bloke with the wavy dark hair and the beautiful blue eyes. Then, one day just before the end of the summer term of the first year, they ended up in a lift together. She remembered thinking it was the stuff of romcoms starring Cameron Diaz, except she didn’t have legs up to her armpits to compensate for her hilarious, ditsy adorableness. Or even the hilarious, ditsy adorableness. Just a penchant for assaulting strangers.

‘Sorry, but aren’t you …?’ Fraser started.

Mia narrowed her eyes at him.

‘That girl,’ he carried on, encouragingly. He was smiling. A wide, infectious smile and Mia felt a bit better. He can’t have been that offended, then.

She still didn’t come clean. ‘Sorry, what girl?’

‘That girl from Fresher’s Week,’ said Fraser. He
did
have gorgeous eyes; such a beautiful shape. ‘You know, the one …’

‘Nope. Sorry,’ she said, slowly shaking her head. This was impressive. Maybe she should have done drama instead of media studies. ‘I don’t mean to be rude but I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

The lift stopped and they’d both got out, Fraser standing with his hands on his hips, surveying her. It made her giggle.

‘Fuck,’ he said eventually. ‘You really were under, weren’t you?’

Mia left it a good few seconds for the penny to drop, as it were.

‘Oh!’ she said eventually, slapping a hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, God,
SHIT.
You’re that bloke …!’

‘Yes.’ She’d been pleased to see that he was still grinning and nodding his head enthusiastically. ‘I’m that lucky bloke.’

Had he just said ‘lucky’?

The profuse apologies had gone on for some time: she wasn’t a complete mentalist, or a man-eater or a bunny-boiler. She’d never done anything like that in her life. In fact, she did, normally, try to strike up a conversation with someone before sticking her tongue down their throat and, God, she didn’t even know his name!

‘Fraser,’ he said.

Fraser. She liked that. Very sort of understatedly cool.

‘Well, I’m Mia,’ she said.

‘Hello, Mia,’ he said. ‘Normally, I tend to know girls’ names before we share saliva but you know, that’s fine … Er, I don’t suppose you fancy going for a coffee?’

Obviously the coffee turned into a beer then into another beer, then into a bus into town where they went to the Sugarhouse to get monumentally lorded and dance up and down to Pulp and the Soup Dragons.

And Mia did feel free. She did feel free to do what she wanted, any old time. This Fraser Morgan character seemed to make her feel like that. She could really be herself with him. He was unaffected and silly and fun but also deep; they could really talk about stuff, which was more than she could say for any other bloke she’d ever met.

So that was that. They became friends. Fraser introduced Mia to Norm and his girlfriend Melody and Mia introduced Fraser to Anna and Liv.

In the second year, they moved from halls into houses: Fraser, Norm and Melody into South Road and Liv, Anna and Mia into Station Road – a stone’s throw away from one another. There were others, of course, including Si and Andy from the band, but they were the hardcore six, and gradually, they became inseparable. Mia had always aspired to be part of a ‘gang’ and she loved it, thrived off it. She felt as if she belonged.

And over time, she’d thought she and Fraser had got something special and that perhaps he thought the same too. But she’d got that wrong, and now she figured she could go one of two ways: fall out with him and never see him again, or suck it up and get on with being mates.

Since she liked hanging around with him – fuck it, she
loved
hanging around with him –
she decided on the latter. It was a stupid idea to go getting a boyfriend at university, anyway, as cute as Melody and Norm were together, one cushion-buying twosome was enough for any group of friends. No, she should be footloose and fancy-free. She should experience life.

That way, things would be far simpler. That way she wouldn’t get hurt.

Fraser watched on as Norm, fuchsia in the face, grimacing and spluttering, struggled to finish his last set of sit-ups. To be honest, he felt thoroughly uncomfortable. I mean, what was he supposed to do with himself? Cheer him on? That seemed a bit embarrassing. Join in? That was even more so. Instead he took this opportunity to smoke a quick fag, to stand there in his running gear and take in the glorious view over Parliament Hill, as well as a whole lot of carbon monoxide into his lungs.

It had been like this all morning. Fraser had been more than happy to run around Hampstead Heath with Norm – it was something he did on his own, anyway. However, ten minutes in, Norm had suddenly flung himself to the ground and started to incorporate sets of sit-ups, or ‘ab crunches’ as he now called them, and Fraser felt this was a step too far. He’d seen the groups of Hampstead ladies with their yoga mats of a morning on the Heath and he wanted nothing to do with ‘group exercise’ in any form. His weekly salsa class was as much as he could take.

Norm had come down from Lancaster to stay with Fraser for the weekend and, although it had never been articulated, they both knew this was a compensatory weekend for the disaster that was Vegas, a sort of second attempt at their light-hearted ‘lads on tour’ mini-break.

After Fraser had finally found Norm, back at the hotel after that awful, horrible day that saw him lose it in the middle of the Las Vegas strip, he’d completely broken down. Norm had had to basically hold him on the bed in a bear hug to stop him escaping again, and then as good as rock him to sleep. They were best friends; they’d
known one another since they were eight years old; they’d been through everything together – heartbreak,
disappointment, the band, the break-up of the band, and a funeral they should never have had to go to – and yet
there was an unspoken thing between them now, that
that day in Vegas was the heaviest things had ever got, that they’d reached an altogether different plane.

So now, they needed to – what was it? – ‘regroup’, to have ‘a laugh’. Yeah, a good old Fraser and Norm knees-up! Bloody hell, thought Fraser as he lay down on the long grass and watched the clouds as they tumbled towards the city down below, am I even capable of that any more? Or have I become one of those sad liabilities of a friend, who can’t even have a beer without turning dark and twisted?

He sincerely hoped not, and had planned two days of boozy lunches, possibly a spot of jammin’, him on guitar, Norm on drums, like old times back at 5 South Road – perhaps they could finish that song they’d started. Or even just an afternoon on Super Mario Five because, sod it, they needed to regress. But Norm had other ideas. Fraser should have known the minute he declined a beer on arrival:

‘Can’t, brother. I’m on a health kick …’

Fraser had sniggered. Since when did Norm call him ‘brother’? That sounded worryingly like steroid, pumped-up talk to him. But from his straight face, Fraser knew instantly that to Norm this was no laughing matter. He had pulled out ‘get a six-pack’ from the hat, from Liv’s List that day back in March, and he was taking it very seriously. That much was obvious from the second Fraser saw him.

Barely in the door, Fraser had made Norm lift up his T-shirt to confirm what he suspected was indeed a greatly reduced version of the famous Normanton gut, the beginnings of definition around his normally barrel-like belly.

‘Jesus, mate.’ He took him by the chin. ‘And is that your jaw line I see?’

Norm had promptly slapped him about the head.

They’d gone inside, Norm to grill Fraser on the running routes around Kentish Town and to bang on about his new ‘Hunter Gatherer’ diet. (‘You know, human beings don’t need farmed produce, Frase. And that includes legumes. Do you think the cavemen ate anything other than berries and vegetables and meat?’)

Fraser tried to muster an appropriately enthusiastic response. ‘Dunno,’ he said eventually. ‘But what’s a legume when it’s at home?’

He’d ribbed Norm all afternoon but, deep down, he
was disappointed that this was not going to be the weekend he’d envisaged. And also, there was something about the way Norm was SO obsessed with getting his six-pack by July, so obsessed by Liv’s List, full stop, that was starting to bug him.

‘Oh, man.’ Fraser stubbed his cigarette out, just at the point that Norm collapsed, panting, clutching his knees to his chest in agony, and gasping, ‘That was proper
evil
.’

‘Another twenty, son. On yer back!’ Fraser joked, lightly kicking his friend in the side.

‘You bastard,’ said Norm, straightening out as if he was about to start again.

Fraser rolled his eyes ‘No, but the thing is, Norm,’ he had his hands on his hips and his head cocked to the side in a pseudo-matronly fashion, ‘nobody’s actually making you. You don’t have to do any more sit-ups, or any sit-ups at all for that matter. This is not an army assault course, mate, I thought we were just going for a jog?’

Norm sat up, looked momentarily a bit hurt, then laughed and got up. ‘Come on then, let’s carry on.’

They ran for a bit; it was gearing up to be another day in what was, so far, a week-long heat wave, and Fraser was sweating profusely already, regretting that mid-run fag now and wishing he’d put some socks on with his trainers.