In Real Life (28 page)

He considers just taking a picture of it
flaccid
, and sending that to Alison instead.

No.

He zips himself away and sits back down on the lid of the toilet, holding his throbbing head in his hands, eyes closed, death metal skulls dripping and swirling as he feels the train slow down, pull into a station, then start up again.

He opens his eyes, and presses call, his heart hammering.

‘Hello?' Alison sounds different to usual. She sounds far away and angry.

‘It's me,' Paul says.

‘What do you want?'

Paul can hear laughter and cars beeping. She must be outside somewhere.

‘I don't know. I thought maybe . . .'

‘Fuck off, Paul.'

She hangs up.

Paul stands, unlocks the cubicle, and makes his way back down the woozy, rickety carriage to his seat. Oh great. Someone's thrown his coffee away. He sits back
down, fiddles with his phone, plugs it in to charge, fiddles with it again. He opens Facebook and scrolls through his newsfeed, looking for a post from Alison, wondering where she was, what she was doing when he called her. He scrolls for a long time without coming across any of her updates – she's usually so frequent – and then he realises. He searches for her name. Opens her profile, which seems weirdly blank, all of her thousands of statuses and photos now missing.

Add Friend
, it says.

He finds Sarah in the living room, curled in front of a
Grand Designs
omnibus. What a surprise. It's evening now. It's raining hard, drumming against the windows, and his head is fucking killing him still and he feels very tender and emotional and easily damaged.

‘Hi,' he says from the doorway.

‘Hi,' Sarah says, not turning round.

He comes and sits next to her on the sofa.

‘Can we turn that off for a moment?' he says.

‘Can it wait till the adverts?' she says.

‘You've seen this one before,' he says quietly, but he doesn't push it any further.

He just presses his knees together, his head throbbing, and waits the seven and a bit minutes for the next ad break, when Sarah finally picks up the remote and mutes the TV and turns to face him.

She looks so tired.

‘What? What's so important, then?'

Paul attempts to collect his thoughts.

He closes his eyes, sees melting skulls, opens them again, sees Sarah's tired, blinking face.

‘I was wondering . . .' he says, feeling his throat close up with emotion as he says it. ‘I was wondering if you'd marry me?'

LAUREN

2005

T
he plan changed. It was almost the same (Michael, London, uncle, spare room, etc.), only now Lauren would no longer be taking part in it. Instead she promised she'd come and see him – very,
very
soon – kissed him frantically on the doorstep and waved so hard as his taxi backed out of the drive it made her wrist click. Then, as soon as he was gone, she felt a huge, tingling wave of relief.

They were due at the hospital in an hour.

‘Want anything to eat?' Anne asked when Lauren looked in on her from the doorway to the living room.

‘I should be asking you that,' Lauren said.

*   *   *

In the study a few minutes later, as the computer dialled and beeped, she paced the room breathlessly, gasping in the dusty air and trying to out-walk the suspicion that she'd not been a good enough daughter, that she was
still
not being a good enough daughter, that she should go back into the living room right now and apologise for the countless times she'd been a moody, stroppy bitch.

There were two new items in her Hotmail inbox: one from Emily (who was now working as a live-in chef at a snowboarding resort in Whistler), and one from a theatre mailing list, which she'd signed up for back in her first year and then never bothered to cancel.

She clicked compose.

Dear Ian
, she wrote.
I miss you
.

Pause.

I've had some bad news actually and I really need to talk to someone about it
.

Pause.

I'm sorry about what happened. I think I made a mistake with Michael
.

Pause.

Please give me a call if you get this
, followed by her phone number.

Then she selected all and pressed delete.

In the hospital car park Anne leaned in to pay the taxi driver, then took Lauren's arm and led them both around the side of A&E, where they had gone that time for stitches, what seemed like years ago now, and down a
path towards the MacGregor unit. The buildings were painted a bland, municipal cream with sarcastically bright red trim.

They entered a small lobby, and Anne gave her name to the friendly, familiar nurse at reception, then they both took a seat.

Out of all the scattered magazines on the coffee table in the corner, Lauren selected the one least likely to have anything sad in it.

It was for ages 9+, with a bright pink cover, and was called
Princess World
.

She leafed through, trying to find something funny or distracting to point at, past the word search on the back page (
Can you find the words Bad Daughter?
), then just closed the magazine and rolled it in to a tight, hard tube and clutched it in her lap.

‘Mrs Cross?' another smiling nurse asked, a short while later.

They both followed her down a long, disinfectant-scented corridor, through a set of double doors, and into a large beige room full of padded chairs, each containing a person hooked up to a softly whirring machine.

The nurse led them to a free chair in the corner, which Anne sat down in, while Lauren dragged a plastic chair over from the far wall. There was a window, facing onto the car park, and hung next to it, an inoffensive, abstract print; just overlapping pastel-coloured triangles on an inoffensive, pastel-coloured background.

First they had to take a blood sample.

The nurse took a sterilised needle from a packet, as Anne began to roll up her sleeve, revealing a forearm as thin as a child's.

Remember when you had that blood test, Lauren?

Remember how dizzy and sick you felt, and how you almost fainted?

Well, what happened next?

That's right
.

Your mum held your hand
.

Your mum looked after you
.

Because now it's your turn
.

You must ignore your fluttering stomach and fight the urge to run away, and instead reach across and take your mum's free hand and give it a big old squeeze, just like that
.

Anne smiled when she did it, squeezed back.

‘Don't worry,' she whispered. ‘You can look away if you want. I'll tell you when it's over.'

‘No, it's okay,' Lauren said, taking a deep, shivery breath. ‘I can handle it.'

IAN

2015

I
give myself a final look-over in the full-length mirror in Mum's room. I'm wearing my smart trousers, and my smart shirt, my smart shoes, and a slightly-too-big-for-me blazer that used to be Dad's.

As I walk out of my room and down the stairs, I think again about Lauren's reply. It just said:
Are you going to David and Jenny's wedding?

She'd not even written hi at the top or her name at the bottom.

I read it again.

Are you going to David and Jenny's wedding?

And then I looked back through all my unread Facebook messages and found amongst them two invites, one to ‘Dave-O's Wicked Stag Do!!!' (which I'd
already missed, thank god) and one to Dave and Jenny's wedding (just the reception bit).

Maybe
, I replied.
Are you?

I'd wanted to write more, but found myself matching the tone of her email. I didn't sign my name, either.

And then I waited two days, pacing around the house, puffing on my e-cig, before a reply finally arrived which just said:
Maybe
.

That's it.

That's all I have to go on.

I've borrowed another hundred and twenty quid off Carol for my train fare and a night in a Travelodge, and I've been trying not to think about the other people who are almost definitely going to be at the reception, too; who are almost definitely going to ask me where I disappeared off to, and why I'd not replied to any of their calls or messages or emails or anything.

Before I leave, I stick my head in the living room.

‘Very nice,' Mum says. ‘Very smart.'

She smiles up at me from the sofa, the
Radio Times
open in her lap.

‘Go on then, give me a twirl.'

So I go into the middle of the room and turn in a slow circle.

‘I look like a dickhead,' I say.

‘You look lovely,' she says.

I sit down next to her.

‘Do you know someone called Daniel Leicester?' she says.

Daniel Leicester is a person I haven't thought about
in over twenty years; a tall, sporty blond boy from the year above who never really liked me. I guess I never really liked him either.

‘Only to say hi to,' I say.

‘Carol's gone for a drink with him. Is he nice?'

‘Yeah, I think so.'

‘I'm worried she's making another mistake.'

I don't know what to say, so I keep my mouth shut.

‘You okay?' Mum says. ‘You seem . . .'

As I wait for her to finish the sentence, I look down at her lap, at the
Radio Times
, at a picture of a smiling young woman whose name I don't know.

‘What are you thinking about?' Mum says.

‘I'm okay,' I say.

‘I am proud of you, you know. Despite what you think.'

‘Why? I've not done anything.'

I want to explain. I want to tell her about Lauren and Dalisay and why I've been acting so quiet since I got here, but I don't know quite how to turn it into words. I'm a bad son. I am not okay. The lady in the
Radio Times
is smiling at me.

‘I want to tell you that things get easier,' Mum says. ‘But I think you also maybe need to lower your expectations a bit, love. Do you understand what I'm saying?'

She reaches across and squeezes my fingers.

‘I'm okay,' I say again.

By the time my taxi drops me off in front of the sports club, it looks like the reception is in full swing. The
car park is swarming with people in light grey suits and shiny purple dresses, talking and smoking and texting. I don't recognise anyone, not yet. I feel extremely sober as I weave through them towards the entrance. I follow the sound of a live band doing a ropey cover of ‘Club Tropicana', down a long corridor, past trophy cabinets and notice boards for five-a-side football events and then, outside a large set of double-doors, I stop.

I take a deep blast on my e-cig, then push the doors open and step into the dark, noisy hall. There's a crammed bar at one end and a dance floor and stage at the other. The wedding band are dressed in corny white suits and there's flashing purple and pink lights everywhere, and purple and pink tablecloths and flowers. I make my way around the edge of the room, towards the bar. Right at the edge of the scrum, I see Paul. He's hanging back, fiddling with his phone.

I tap him on the shoulder and he looks up, startled, then smiles; a huge, toothy grin which catches me completely off guard.

‘Alright, mate!' he says. ‘Fucking hell!'

I feel myself smiling, too.

‘How's things?'

‘Alright,' I say. ‘You?'

‘Not bad. Not bad. Well,
actually
, they're pretty fucking terrible to be honest. But . . . you know . . . whatever.'

He laughs at this and I try to join in.

There's something funny about his eyes. His pupils
are massive: completely dilated. Which is when I realise. He's fucked. He's battered. He's completely off his head.

‘I broke up with Sarah,' he says, as if I should know who Sarah is.

‘Right, sorry,' I say.

‘Are you married?'

There are bits of froth at the corners of his mouth and the veins are all standing out on his neck.

I shake my head.

I wonder if I should go and get him a glass of water.

‘Great to see you, anyway, mate,' he slurs, lurching in to give me a hug, and when he does, he smells strongly of a sharp, chemical sweat.

‘You, too,' I say.

‘Do you want this?' he says, offering me his half-empty bottle of Grolsch. ‘I paid about six quid for it and now I don't even want it.'

‘Cheers,' I say.

‘I'm just going off to the . . .' he says, pointing at the double doors, his mouth chewing and gurning. ‘But I'll see you in a bit, yeah?'

I nod and he stumbles off.

I swig the Grolsch, which has gone warm and flat. I chug it down, as quickly as I can, then I push myself into the crush of men at the bar and let myself get slowly jostled towards the front. When it's eventually my turn to be served, I ask for a shot of dark rum and another bottle of Grolsch and I hand the barman a tenner and get almost nothing back in change. I take
another deep blast on my e-cig, neck the rum in one, then elbow my way out of the crowd again.

Come on, I think. Where are you?

I move over to the corner and watch the band, who are approaching the final chorus of ‘American Pie' now. And when they finish, everyone cheers and the singer announces that they'll be back in twenty minutes, and the dance floor thins out as people head to the bar and to the car park to smoke.

Which is when I see her, leaning against the opposite wall, talking to a tall red-haired girl in a salmon-pink blazer. She's wearing a dark blue dress, and her hair is piled up on top of her head and it's much darker and shinier than I ever remember it being.

I manage to get almost completely across the hall, just a few feet away, hovering around at the periphery of their conversation, and still she doesn't notice me. Up this close, I can see the tiny little lines and crags that, I imagine, my face also didn't used to have.