The Love Shack (26 page)

She laughs and shouts, ‘I know!’ before teasing me: ‘I take it you paid her for that?’

‘I’m irresistible to all women, Gemma, I thought you knew. But, yeah, the fiver helped.’

We head towards our destination, the courtyard of Our Lady and St Nicholas Church, a secret corner that tonight belongs to us. I can hear Gemma breathing as we step into the garden, a lush green carpet flanked by extravagant architecture.

In the days when I worked in the city, I’d come here at lunchtime and laze in the sun with a cold beer from Ma Boyles Oyster Bar. It’s great in the daytime, but its real magic is after dark, when it becomes a floodlit lagoon of calm.

Gemma lets go of my hand and walks towards the Blitz commemoration at the front of the church, the statue of a boy running up a spiral staircase, his mother reaching out.

She runs her fingers across its cast-iron curves as moonlight shimmers in her eyes. I urgently want to kiss her. But she drops her bag on the grass and flops down on her back. I lie next to her and reach for her hand as the sky swells above us.

‘They do this in
Twilight
,’ she tells me. ‘I just realised and thought you must think I was being corny.’

‘I’ve managed to never see
Twilight
,’ I remind her. ‘I still think you’re corny though.’

I roll over on my side and kiss her, her face in my hands. We lie there until our clothes are damp and there are grass stains on our knees. And until the words I’ve said over and over, supposedly in jest, rise into my head again.

I know that if I say them, she’ll grin and tell me to bugger off, a joke in which I’ve been complicit for years.

But tonight, I need to repeat them until the truth is unavoidably clear: Gemma, I want to marry you. And I’m for real.

Chapter 40

Gemma

I’m aware of my phone beeping in my back pocket but don’t want to ruin the moment by reaching for it. Then a lightning bolt flashes through my mind: what if it’s Alex again? If it is, and I don’t delete it now, there’s every chance that at the first moment I take my phone out, Dan will see his name.

Dan opens his mouth to say something and it beeps again. I cannot ignore it. ‘Sorry!’ I cry, sitting up so I’m out of his line of sight as I look at the phone.

It’s from Belinda.

DNT NO WOT 2 DO!

I’ve noticed that she employs her own version of textspeak when communicating via mobile. I have no idea if she’s trying to be down with the kids, but you’d need to be an Enigma-codebreaker to work out what she’s on about. I scroll down.

THINK AM FALLING 4 JAMES. BUT CAN’T BCOS OF BOOK! PUBLISHERS WILL HIT ROOF! ARRGH! ADVICE REQUIRD PLS.

I look at it, wide-eyed.

‘What is it?’ Dan asks.

I’m about to respond, when another text arrives.

WD APPRECIATE YR DISCRETION. I.E. DO NT DISCUSS WITH DAN.

‘Sorry,’ I tell him. ‘It’s just a minor emergency. Nothing important. Do you mind if I reply?’

He hesitates. ‘Go ahead.’

I lean over and, making sure he’s gazing at the stars and not my message box, start typing.

Are you with him now? If so, enjoy the evening then consider your options tomorrow. Will have a proper chat with you as soon as poss. X

I turn back to Dan.

‘Right! I’m all yours,’ I grin.

He looks at me oddly for a minute, as if he’s got something he needs to get off his chest.

‘What is it?’ I ask.

‘I . . . nothing,’ he says finally, standing up and offering me his hand.

Our walking tour across the city continues, a Famous Five-style adventure that takes in cathedral graveyards, Liverpool One, Bold Street. We end up in Fleet Street, at Motel Bar, a quirky little place dotted with arty neon and Americana.

We buy scotch and soda and sit at the bar. ‘I miss the city on nights like this,’ I say, leaning woozily into his arms.

A few seconds later, he’s looking at me strangely again.

‘So when are you going to marry me?’ he asks, draining his Scotch.

I laugh. ‘You’d get a bloody big shock one day if I said, “Oh, okay, go on then”.’

He looks strained as he replies, ‘You’re right, I probably would. How did that even become our standing joke anyway?’

‘We were eating chips on the beach in Cornwall,’ I remind him. ‘I’d let you dip yours into my ketchup and you said, “I might have to ask you to marry me for that” or words to that effect.’

‘I knew you were something special right from the beginning,’ he jokes.

‘No, you bloody didn’t,’ I contradict him. ‘You disappeared out of my life for six whole weeks. You’re lucky I’m still speaking to you at all, frankly.’

When she brings it up tonight, I deal with it in the same way as always. With the brutal honesty and regret I’ve felt ever since.

‘It was the worst decision I ever made. And that’s why I’m never going to let you out of my sight again.’

She looks at her drink. Then she raises her eyelashes and leans in to kiss me on the lips, drunkenly, softly. ‘I know.’

Chapter 41

Dan

The morning after that big night out with the Emerson Lisbon gang, I woke up thinking of Gemma. I had fur on my tongue and dehydration in my bones and it was 11.15 a.m. and I was still moderately trashed. But! The existence of Gemma Johnston was going to make everything all right again.

I’d enjoyed the night before enormously. I can’t deny I was concerned that getting serious with someone might change all this, because even though I’d only known her a few days, there was no doubt that that was happening. But overwhelmingly, I wanted to be with her, to feel her skin beneath my fingers, to bury my head into her neck.

I was poised to text her when the doorbell rang. I waited, hoping that Jesse would answer. It rang again. I dragged my corpse of a body out of bed, threw on my jeans and stumbled to the door.

There he was. The man whose absence had planted a chip on my shoulder the size of a container ship and who, despite my determination not to give a toss, I was queasily happy to see.

Dad was wearing a suit that no doubt cost more than I’d spent on my entire wardrobe. Yet the clothes and the man never looked as if they belonged together; it was like looking at a bin man driving a special edition Bugatti.

The five o’clock shadow and yard-brush hair never bothered the women who surrounded him; there were scores of them. I was constantly being told that he had ‘something about him’, that he had
charisma
, and if I’m honest with myself, I hung on his every word just as the others did.

‘Son, how are you? Good night out? You look a bit chemically inconvenienced,’ he grinned, throwing his arms around me.

He was inside my flat before I could work out how he’d got there.

‘I didn’t even know you were back, Dad.’

‘It’s a flying visit,’ he replied, stretching out on the sofa. Even the way he sat reminded everyone how big his personality was: arms out, foot crossed over the knee, effectively claiming as much space as he could. ‘I’m returning to New York tonight. Sorry I didn’t give you any warning. Hope you haven’t got a woman in here?’ he glanced round the place.

I was suddenly glad Gemma wasn’t present.

I took a hot, groggy shower while he disappeared into the kitchen and started cobbling together a fry-up with the provisions he’d brought with him (he’d always been a better cook than Mum). ‘A man needs a full stomach before making any big decisions,’ he said cryptically as I sat at the table and picked up my fork.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ll come to that. Let’s have some father and son time first.’

Half an hour passed before we got to the crux of the matter, underlining that he was in charge. Before then, he asked about my job, my volunteer work and Mum. Unlike her, he’s always been disconcertingly relaxed on the subject of their marriage, which he discussed with the same happy-go-lucky shrug with which one might recall an ill-advised one-night stand. We talked about me mainly, a con trick he’s always managed to pull off: for an ego-maniac he puts on a good show of being interested.

‘Son, I’ll get to the point,’ he said finally. ‘There’s an opening at my firm in acquisitions. Well paid. Excellent prospects. Awesome boss,’ he grinned. ‘And that’s before we get on to the office in downtown Manhattan.’

I looked at him blankly. ‘And, of course, the once-in-a lifetime opportunity to work with your old man.’

Comprehension slammed into my brain. ‘You mean you want
me
to take this job?’

He smiled, then laughed. ‘Why not? You’ve got an Economics degree. You’re a smart kid.’

‘But . . . I live here. I’ve got a job here. I’ve got the Chapterhouse Centre.’

‘Which pays sod all.’ He caught my expression. ‘Not that it doesn’t sound interesting. I mean, it does. I can see why someone like you might want to do it. You’re a helper,’ he said, as if this was an affliction on a par with a persistent fungal infection.

At this stage, he wasn’t winning me over.

‘Son, let me level with you.’ He began clearing away the plates. ‘I’ve been thinking lately about the fact that we haven’t had much of a relationship.’ He’d said this before, as if every so often guilt pronged at him, like he’d stood on a piece of Lego with no socks on. ‘And I thought: I want to do something for Dan. I want to spend time with him. I don’t want us to live these separate lives and—’

‘You could just respond to some emails. You don’t need to go as far as inviting me to work in New York.’

He sat down and leaned forward in the chair. ‘A young guy like you and New York – you’re made for each other. I’m actually jealous.’ He appeared to mean it. And the flash of excitement in his eyes was infectious. ‘You, me, Manhattan. If we can make it there, we can make it anywhere,’ he trilled, laughing. ‘Come on, Danny. What do you say?’

I protested, but the truth was if he’d asked me three weeks earlier I wouldn’t have hesitated. I’d been to New York once and, like every other twenty-something man, convinced myself it was my spiritual home.

Yet I did hesitate. Not because I thought then that I’d met the woman of my dreams and that I was destined to spend the rest of my life with her. At that stage, I couldn’t have articulated that much.

I knew she was something special, but special enough to turn down an opportunity like this? I wasn’t clever enough to realise that she was. After a long discussion, I told him I would think about it.

‘Not too long. Your flight’s the day after tomorrow.’

‘I can’t go the day after tomorrow. I’ve got a job. A flat. A . . .’ Did I have a girlfriend? I had no idea. Not that he’d have cared.

He threw an airline ticket on the table, grabbed his coat and left with three words lingering in the air, along with the aroma of leftover sausage fat: ‘See you Stateside.’

I can’t remember actively making the decision to go. It was as if I sleepwalked through the next forty-eight hours, propelled by Dad’s insistence that I couldn’t turn down an opportunity like this, which, on paper, was hard to argue with.

Jesse went apeshit when I said I was going, despite the fact that I promised to continue paying two months’ rent. And Chris Deayton wasn’t overly impressed when I handed in my notice at Emerson Lisbon either – though, as I’d predicted, I was put on immediate gardening leave so I was free to leave the country.

I drove my stuff to Mum’s to face the inevitable fallout. Actually, that’s not strictly fair. She recognised why I’d be tempted by New York, but worried about me putting so much at stake on one of my dad’s whims, rightly, as it turned out.

More than anything though, was this: I kept thinking about Gemma. She’d texted a couple of times during the day and I’d been deliberately elusive. I had no idea how I was going to tell her. Doing it by text would’ve given me a prime slot in the wankers’ hall of fame, no matter how short the time I’d known her.

I had to go round, explain face-to-face. Part of me, I think, wanted to take one look at her and decide I couldn’t go through with it.

Once everything was ready, I got the bus to Lark Lane and went to her apartment for the first and last time. I stood outside this big old house and rang the bell to her ground-floor flat.

As I waited for a response, it began raining – that fine, misty rain that seeps into your core – as a realisation grew inside me.

I was making an almighty fuck-up.

Maybe.

The rain swelled and thunder cracked above. And, in the absence of being able to make a considered, intelligent decision – or any decision at all – I opted to do this the
Dice Man
way: if she opened the door now, I would stay and make a go of things with her.

I waited on the doorstep for an hour. But she never came.

Considering its size and location, everything about my dad’s apartment, except the postcard view, was oddly uninspiring – like a corporate hotel that invests more in its trouser presses than creating an atmosphere.

He wasn’t there when I arrived, but he’d arranged for a key to be left with the concierge. I dumped my bag in the spare room, climbed onto the bed and tried to sleep away my misery about what I’d left behind.

The clatter of a fumbled key woke me in the early hours, followed by shrieking laughter, smashing glasses and the vapid throb of music.

I tried to slide back to sleep, but was instead dragged out and paraded by my father in front of seven or eight of his friends. The women wore expensive clothes and had expensive faces. The men were chain-smoking, noisy wannabes who gazed at my dad like he was a cross between Vito Corleone and Santa.

Cringingly, Dad offered me cocaine. When I declined, he laughed, called me an old woman and told me to cheer up.

Obviously, it wasn’t his fault I was uncheerupable, but he didn’t particularly help that night by making it clear that I was failing on all counts. Failing to talk politics or take drugs with the grown-ups, failing to dazzle with my sparkling personality, a quality he valued above virtually everything.

The last thing I remember before escaping to bed was rereading a text from Gemma saying she’d tried to phone me but couldn’t get through. My head swam as I read it. I thought about phoning her. Yet, no matter how much I regretted my decision the second I got on the plane, I was here now – and besides, it was stupid o’clock in England. So instead, I sent a vague response and slipped into a disturbed sleep, plagued with nightmares and regrets. Which basically set the tone for the next six weeks.