The Love Shack (15 page)

I can’t help thinking I preferred it that way.

The next hour and a half is spent with a full-scale evaluation of my financial situation in which I’m forced to confess every hire-purchase agreement I’ve ever taken out and every bank charge I’ve ever been thumped with – not to mention the life insurance, savings and investments I’ve failed to acquire.

‘Should I even ask about a pension?’ Gemma says, semi-apologetically, as we reach the final page.

‘There’s no pension, Gemma,’ I say, through gritted teeth. ‘I work in a job that just about allows me to put food on the table at the end of every month.’ I say this with what I hope is the air of a solid working man’s dignity, as if I spend my days down a coal-mine in order to feed my twelve kids and still leave a little for the wife to pop in her petticoat pocket.

She goes to say something then stops herself. ‘I know,’ she concedes. ‘Right. You just need to read this through now and then sign at the bottom.’

I flick through the pages and reach the one that lists, finally, our incomes. And there it is, for all to see: the fact that my girlfriend earns more than me.

If I were a better man, I’d say this was the twenty-first century and it doesn’t matter. And of course it doesn’t. As she’s said previously, on many occasions, my qualifications could’ve got me a job earning several times more than my current salary. I only don’t earn as much because I chose to do something worthy with my life. But, right now, worthy sucks.

‘Sorry if this has been painful,’ she adds, taking my hand. And as she looks in my eyes, I feel stupid and sulky and regret showing it.

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘At least you’ve not had to go out and buy yet another new car, I suppose,’ she says.

This is true. Though Mum must think I was born yesterday if I fell for the idea that it was ‘sheer coincidence’ that she’d chosen now to buy herself a new VW Golf, on top of the Porsche.

She knows there is no way I’d have accepted a car as a gift. And although I still feel very uncomfortable – because we all know that’s exactly what it is, temporary or not – I can’t deny it’s got me out of a hole.

Gemma puts down the papers and places her hands on either side of my face. Then she kisses me and everything feels a bit better. A bit warmer. A bit nicer altogether.

‘How about some squeaking?’ she whispers, sliding her hand around my neck and wriggling into me.

‘I’d love to squeak with you.’

‘DANNY!’

I leap back from Gemma and look her in the eyes as she says, ‘I thought your mum was out?’

‘She is. It’s Grandma,’ I say, grabbing a cushion to cover my crotch as I limp towards the door.

‘Oh God, I forgot – her curtain rail needs fixing, the one in the living room. Your mum was going to call someone out but I told her that’d be silly when you like doing that sort of stuff,’ Gemma says in a rush.

Gemma knows full well that this is stretching the definition of ‘like’ beyond all recognition. Equally, to deny it would be to undermine my sense of manhood.

‘I’ll go and look for a screwdriver,’ I mutter.

Grandma’s skin smells of chlorine when I reach her annexe with the most pathetic excuse for a toolkit I’ve ever seen from Mum’s garage.

‘Nice swim?’ I ask.

‘Lovely, thanks. I didn’t think DIY was your cup of tea.’

‘Now I’m getting a new house I thought I’d practise on yours first,’ I tell her. ‘Don’t blame me if I demolish the place, will you?’

‘Oh, don’t do that, Danny,’ she says. ‘I’d have to move into the main house – and I don’t think my stomach’s up to your mum’s cooking.’

I examine the curtain rail and am relieved to see that it looks fairly straightforward. She takes a tea pot over to her table and sits down. ‘Why don’t you come and have a cuppa first? The curtain rail can wait.’

I sit down next to her and take a bite out of a biscuit as she sips her tea and breaks into a cough. ‘You okay?’ I ask.

She nods. ‘Been a bit under the weather lately. I’m sure it’s nothing.’ She reaches over and curls her fingers through the handle of her tea cup, raising it to her mouth again. ‘Hey, do you know what I was thinking about earlier? Do you remember that time when you were a little boy and your grandad and I took you swimming in Bala Lake in Wales?’

Everyone has a stand-out childhood memory, one that flickers to the front of your brain when asked to
think happy thoughts.

‘Oh yes. Grandad kept dunking me in.’

She laughs, her eyes smiling. ‘He was a bugger, wasn’t he? You were only about eight but he didn’t let up. Poor little thing.’

‘I don’t think it did me any harm.’

She lowers her blue eyes. ‘You know, I must’ve been swimming thousands of times; I couldn’t count how many. But that day was my favourite.’

‘Mine too, Grandma.’

‘I think about it all the time, the three of us splashing into the water. My man on one side, my lovely grandson on the other.’

She pauses for a moment, soaking in the memory. ‘I do miss him. He’d be so proud of you. The way you help people. The fine young man you’ve turned into. The special woman you’ve chosen to be with.’

‘We should go back to Bala Lake one day, you and me.’

She shakes her head. ‘You must go with Gemma. I should be giving all this sort of thing up really. Your mum’s right – I’m an old, infirm woman.’

‘Grandma,’ I remind her, ‘you’ve been saying that since you were forty-five.’

Chapter 20

Gemma

Since the day I saw Alex in Manchester, he’s repeatedly slipped into my thoughts, uninvited. It’s inevitable really, given how large he once loomed in my life, even if I keep reminding myself that it was a hell of a long time ago.

I was fifteen when we first met and the most socially artless, introverted teenager you could come across. I blushed when spoken to – not just by boys, but anyone: teachers, shop assistants, even the postman could elicit a mild reddening and he was about sixty-three and had a glass eye with a chip in it.

In my head, I felt sure this wasn’t the Real Me. The person I hoped deep down would be actually quite funny and sort of cool – someone who could conjure up a razor-sharp reply to anything. And though these qualities still elude me more than I’d like, it took meeting Alex to make me realise that someone vaguely
all right
might exist within me.

Our paths crossed at a party held by my friend Selena’s older cousin after her mum and dad had gone to Spain for the week. It qualified as the most devastatingly boring party in the history of teenage parties.

There were about sixteen guests. Selena’s cousin was in a state of high neurosis about spillages on the living-room carpet and her dad’s stereo getting scratched. Nobody smoked, nobody took drugs, nobody made a sex tape on the bathroom floor. We all just sat around making polite conversation as we sipped the ‘Bastard Sangria’ Selena’s cousin claimed would get us rolling drunk, but which tasted suspiciously like Vimto. I’d been to wilder parties that involved playing Pass the Parcel.

Despite this, I was still uncomfortable about the prospect of having to talk to someone other than Selena. I could feel my blood pressure rise every time she went to the bathroom and left me alone. So when Alex – with his skinny black jeans and easy smile – struck up conversation, I should’ve gone into meltdown. Except, oddly, fortuitously, I managed to hold it together.

‘Wild party, eh?’ he leaned in and whispered.

‘Hope no one calls the police,’ I replied, suppressing a smile.

‘Yep, if it’s raided they might seize all those bottles of Tango in the kitchen.’

He was flirtatious, cool and way too confident for someone his age. He smelled of peppermint and fresh tobacco and soap, which was the most exotic combination I’d ever come across.

Yet, somehow, despite being instantly dazzled by him, I felt strangely at ease. He had this kind of magic that made the person I wanted to be appear out of nowhere. And he seemed to like her.

His father was a civil engineer who’d worked all over the world, latterly in San Francisco, where Alex had lived for two years. Now he was back in England and here to stay.

I remember the moment my dad came to collect me that night, when I ran back inside to get my coat and Alex grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the kitchen. I thought he was going to kiss me. I thought I would die on the spot. Instead, he thrust a piece of paper into my hand and said, quite simply, ‘Phone me.’

Our love affair exploded after that. We spent every free moment together, revising in the park when it was sunny, whiling away hours in my bedroom as – to my shame – my friends became strangers.

I lost my virginity with him at 9.30 one morning after his parents had gone to work. We’d planned it in advance, down to the bus I’d take to get to his place. In the event, it wasn’t heavy with passion and lust – we were both too nervous – but it was gentle, loving and absolutely perfect. That moment, that rite of passage, would be ours forever, no matter what happened afterwards.

In the year and a half we were together, that peculiar intensity of first love never dwindled. I’d have done absolutely anything for him. And I know he felt the same about me.

So when he came to my house on a dark February night, held my hand and told me about his father’s new job in Kenya – the one that meant he’d be moving 4,000 miles away – I honestly felt like my world had come to an end.

I grieved for him after he went, there’s no other way to describe it. In fact, I rather dramatically convinced myself that this was worse than a death because it was long, drawn-out and devoid of any prospect of closure.

We stayed in touch for six months or so and I emailed every day. But with only an internet café in Nairobi at his disposal, his responses were intermittent, no matter how long – and loving – they were when they arrived.

It couldn’t have gone on. It would’ve been madness. But I can honestly say that telling him on the phone we needed to end it constituted one of the hardest things I’d ever done.

I’ve told myself over the years that, had Alex and I not been ripped apart while still in the throes of young love, we’d have drifted apart anyway. Logic tells me that’s true. And so does experience. Everyone else I know is
not
still with their teenage boyfriend, no matter how strongly they once felt.

Besides all that, had our love story not been ill-fated, I wouldn’t have met Dan, wouldn’t have had the happiest four years of my life and wouldn’t be about to buy a beautiful house with him.

All things happen for a reason, as they say. And that’s not something I’m ever going to forget.

I head to work the following day determined to focus on the campaign presentation for the Bang condom ad, even if I’m far from confident about it.

The only positive thing I can say about the three options we’ll be presenting tomorrow is that none feature the Archbishop of Canterbury. I can’t put my finger on why they don’t work for me – not the ‘sexy’ one at an office party, nor the ‘outrageous’ one involving animated blob-shaped characters having a threesome – except to say this: they’re all trying way too hard.

I make a mental note to ask Sadie if she thinks we should persuade Sebastian to rethink this, when she bursts through the door, stumbles to her desk and throws herself down.

‘Oh. My. God.’ My eyes widen. ‘Oh. My. Bloody. God. Help me, Gemma. God help me . . .’

I frown. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Shhh!’ Her eyes dart around. ‘Ladies!’

She coughs, announces loudly that she’s going to powder her nose, as if she’s Veronica Lake and it’s 1942, and disappears through the double doors, but not before throwing me another meaningful look, apparently designed to indicate that I should follow. When I get there, she is squatting to peer under the space below each cubicle door.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ I ask incredulously. ‘Nobody’s here. Calm down. It can’t be that bad.’

‘It is.’

‘Have you killed somebody?’

‘No.’

‘Then it’s not that bad.’

‘You won’t think that when you know what it is.’

I cross my arms and lean on the sink. ‘Hit me with it.’

She bites her hand, splutters out the next words, as if she’s trying to spit out a slug. ‘I’ve totalled Sebastian’s car.’

‘What?’

She nods. ‘I was reversing mine in the car park and I honestly don’t know what happened except that I heard this hideous scraping sound and at first I thought, Shit, I’ve hit a bollard!’ She hasn’t paused for breath yet. ‘So I started moving to try and get away from it, but it wouldn’t budge. So I moved the other way, and the sound got worse, then I realised it wasn’t a bollard – it was Sebastian’s car. Only, the more I tried to move, the deeper I seemed to scrape into it and . . . oh God, it looks like something off
Scrapheap Challenge
!’

I listen silently, processing this garbled information, and come to the conclusion that this does sound bad. Very bad.

‘It doesn’t sound
too
disastrous,’ I manage. It’s very clear I am no Alastair Campbell.

‘Of course it does!’

‘What I mean is, you can’t have been going at high speed. If it’s just one of the panels, he can get that fixed.’ I remind myself of how old his car looked. And how expensive. ‘His insurance will cover it,’ I babble, failing in the battle between optimism and delusion. ‘Or yours. You’d lose your No Claims and everything, but—’

‘I can’t tell him it was me!’

‘But . . . you’ve got to, Sadie.’

‘Gemma,’ she growls, ‘insurance or not, he loves that car. I bet he goes to bed wanking about that car. If he finds out it’s me, my career will be over.’

‘You are exaggerating,’ I insist flimsily. ‘Let me go out and have a look at it. I bet it’s not as terrible as you think.’

‘Don’t go out there! If people see you they’ll put two and two together and know that I’m responsible.’

Something occurs to me. ‘Isn’t your car dented?’

‘There are no dents, but I’ve got red paint all over my bumper. I’ve had to drive it down the road and dump it behind a bush in a lay-by. Oh God, this is like a scene in
The Fugitive
.’