Life and Soul of the Party (27 page)

I was making Naomi breakfast when I heard the front door slam shut signalling that Chris had left the flat.

‘How did he seem today?’

‘Okay, I think,’ I replied as the eggs frying in the pan in front of me began to spit. ‘It’s hard to tell with Chris these days. There’s a lot of stuff going on with him and Vicky.’ I looked at Naomi. ‘If you were Vicky do you think you would take him back?’

‘I don’t know.’

She gave me a comforting half smile and returned to her newspaper. When the eggs were done I slipped them on to two plates already piled up with bacon, beans and white bread. It was Naomi’s favourite breakfast and represented one of the things that I really liked about her: her lack of fussiness about food. Unlike Laura she didn’t bang on about calories or fat content, cholesterol or the evils of hydrogenated fats.

‘Mmm, that smells lovely. I can’t tell you how much I love bacon.’

‘You don’t have to. The drool at the corner of your mouth says it all.’

‘Very funny. Do you know. Coop, this is all but perfect apart from . . .’

‘A lukewarm mug of tea?’ I reached across to the kitchen surface and picked up the waiting mug of tea. ‘Here’s one I made earlier that was steaming hot and is now . . .’

‘Absolutely perfect,’ said Naomi taking a sip. She smiled. ‘You do know that as long as you’re making lukewarm tea and fry-ups like this I am never going to let you out of my clutches?’

‘I wouldn’t have it any other way.’

For a relationship that had started as the result of an ill-conceived blind date, I was positively amazed by how well we were getting on. Naomi really understood me. Wanted the same things as I did. We were heading in the same direction. And because all my insecurities seemed to have disappeared, I no longer felt as though I had to play the grown-up all the time. For the first time in my life I was in an equal partnership. All this would have been perfect if Laura had stayed on the other side of the world. The fact that she had been seeing someone else while she had been out there had helped things considerably. Picturing her in the arms of another bloke meant that I could feel justified in hating her. And if I hated her then I couldn’t be feeling anything else.

But then Paul had died and it had completely knocked my world off its axis, churning up my insides into one big mess. I hadn’t fully understood this until the moment I got Laura’s call that she was home some months after the funeral. Just hearing her voice brought everything to the surface. At the time I’d kidded myself that the anger I felt towards Laura was to do with her selfishness. But over time I realised that my anger had nothing to do with Laura’s behaviour and everything to do with the fact that, in some way that I couldn’t quite pinpoint, I was still in love with her. This moment of self-realisation hurt. It really hurt. Partly because I had always thought that I was better than that – still being in love with an ex long after the two of you are supposed to have moved on is the biggest cliché in the book – and partly because of what this new knowledge might mean for me and Naomi. Could I carry on seeing her knowing how I felt about Laura? Would it simply be a matter of time before Laura and I eventually got back together?

I didn’t know the answer nor did I want to know. The best way that I could remain in a state of blissful ignorance was to avoid Laura altogether. My plan had worked up to a point. I hadn’t seen her since she had turned up to collect the rest of her things. And in the meantime I had become closer and closer to Naomi, so that I was almost convinced that what I felt for her was bigger and more intense than anything I had ever felt for Laura. But I needed to be sure. And the only way to do that would be to see Laura face to face and talk things through – something that I had been putting off. But now that Melissa’s party was finally here there was nowhere left to hide. Unless I wanted to make my peace with Laura in front of all of our friends and my new girlfriend, the only option was to try to see her some time today.

‘So what are you going to do while I’m in town?’ asked Naomi setting her knife and fork down on her empty plate. ‘You can’t sit here all afternoon on your own. Why don’t you join my sister and me? She won’t mind, honest, she’s your biggest fan.’

‘I’m her biggest fan too.’

‘So, you’ll come then?’

‘Thanks, but no thanks. I’ve got a lot of stuff I’ve been meaning to do and I think today is the day to get it done.’

I was willing my phone to deliver a reply from Billy when Laura came into the room. Her blond hair was tied back in a ponytail and she was wearing a long slouchy grey jumper that I knew for a fact used to be Cooper’s, matched with faded blue tracksuit bottoms. This was Laura’s official lounging-around-the-flat outfit. It had come out every weekend since we had moved in together and for as long as she wore it you could guarantee she wouldn’t be venturing outside.

‘So you’ve done it then? Sent the dreaded text?’

I nodded. ‘And I wish I hadn’t now. This is torture. I sent it fifty-five minutes ago and he still hasn’t replied.’

‘Maybe he’s taking a nap.’

‘Next to his delightfully young, thin and pretty girlfriend.’

Laura laughed. ‘I’m telling you he’s single.’

‘But you don’t even know him.’

‘I don’t need to,’ smiled Laura. ‘I can just feel it in my water.’

‘Well, I guarantee that the predictive skills of your water are off course this time. I know for sure that he’s got a girlfriend. I just know it. I mean he was mad about that girl I told you about long before he ever met me.’

‘Didn’t you say that she wasn’t interested in him?’

‘But that was ages ago. You know how things change.’

‘Okay, so maybe they have hooked up but she probably dumped him and he’s been licking his wounds ever since.’

I smiled in spite of myself. I liked the idea of Billy, however unlikely, being single and sort of sad. I liked the idea that I might be the one to cheer him up. I looked over at my phone lying dormant on the table. I just knew that he wasn’t going to reply to my text. ‘This is ridiculous. I’m thirty-six years old and yet I’m still acting like a lovelorn teenager.’ I turned off my phone.

‘And when you’re eighty-six, and still living in this flat with me you’ll be exactly the same,’ replied Laura. ‘Face the facts, babe, no amount of time or experience is going to change that.’

I detected a slight cloud pass over Laura’s face and guessed it had to do with Cooper. Like most warring former couples they both had their grievances and both were too proud to admit to each other that they might be wrong. Laura believed that Cooper had started it with his refusal to speak to her when she called him on her arrival back in the UK. Cooper believed that Laura had inflamed the situation a few days later by refusing to speak to him when he called her at her parents’ house in Bristol to make amends. Since then, with the exception of a minor shouting match back in November on the day Laura finally moved her stuff out of the house, they had yet to say a word to each other, civil or otherwise.

‘So how are you feeling about tonight?’

‘About the prospect of coming face to face with Cooper and his new girlfriend? I’m fine.’ She paused. ‘Do you think they’re right for each other?’

‘They seem okay to me.’

‘I know that but, you know, do you think they’ll go the distance?’

‘None of us has got a crystal ball. If I did I’d be looking into it right now trying to see what Billy’s up to.’

‘You’re right. We’re far too old for this. I’m going to make myself a coffee, do you want one?’

I declined her offer and she got up and went to the kitchen leaving me to return to the notepad I’d been using to write down a list of the remaining things we needed to do for the party. Only one item had a tick against it: ‘Send text message inviting Billy to party.’

‘Once I’ve had breakfast I am completely at your disposal,’ Laura called from the kitchen. ‘Feel free to order me about any way you like. Any post yet?’

‘I heard it drop through the letterbox a while ago but I was too busy willing my phone to do something to go and get it.’

Checking that my Saturday morning ensemble – faded hooded blue sweatshirt combined with red-checked over-sized men’s pyjama bottoms and cow-print socks – was okay for a journey on which I might encounter people from the neighbouring flats, I made my way out to the communal hallway.

Lying directly underneath the letterbox was a large heap of post which I sorted into three piles. The guys upstairs had a few bills and a reminder from the TV licensing people; the trendy couple on the middle floor had bills, bank statements and stack of credit-card applications; Laura and I had a couple of official-looking letters, a gas bill, a promotional offer from Habitat and a handful of letters that had their original address blacked out with marker pen and replaced with our current one.

‘Anything good?’ asked Laura as I returned to the flat.

‘Same old same old really.’

‘Anything for you?’

‘Just bills, circulars and some stuff that Susie forwarded.’ I flicked through my post plucking out anything that wasn’t a bill. The first letter in a plain white envelope was from my university asking me if I wanted to sign up for the alumni newsletter. The second letter in a brown envelope was from the police relating to a statement that I had given them back in October when I had spotted a group of kids breaking into a car round the corner from us. They had arrested a number of suspects in relation to the crime and requested that I be available the following Wednesday in order to view them in a police line-up. The third letter was in a white A5-sized envelope and even though Susie had covered over the original address I could still just about make out the handwriting. I didn’t recognise it but it looked feminine. I was intrigued. I opened it up and was surprised to find that the only thing inside was a photograph of a smiling baby. A baby girl – fair hair, grey-green eyes and wearing a pale yellow polka-dot sleep suit. I checked inside the envelope again. It was empty. I turned over the photograph and in the same handwriting as on the front of the envelope were the words: Bethany Georgina Bannister. I turned it over again and stared at the baby. There was no doubting her parentage. The shape of the eyes and the chin were unmistakable.

‘What is it?’ asked Laura, glancing up at me. ‘Are you all right?’

I handed her the photograph and her eyes widened just as mine had done. ‘Is this from who I think it’s from?

I nodded. ‘It’s definitely a picture of Paul and Hannah’s baby.’

It was just after midday when Chris, William and I arrived at Pizza Hut for lunch. The restaurant was heaving with parents and their offspring and the staff appeared rushed off their feet.

‘I knew we should have gone somewhere else. It’s always busy in here.’

‘It’ll be fine,’ said Chris. ‘Anyway, we’re here now.’

‘But we could be waiting for who knows how long?’

‘And what if we do? William had an ice cream not ten minutes ago, you hate pizza and I’m not that hungry anyway.’

Chris was right. It wasn’t really as though any of us were hungry. I wondered what was really bothering me and was inundated with potential answers. There was the fact that I was standing when I wanted to sit down. There was the fact that every day this week I’d woken up feeling nauseous and was having to guzzle Pepto-Bismol like it was going out of fashion. And there was the fact that I was shattered because William had woken me up at twenty to five to ask me where foxes go in the daytime and then refused to go back to sleep.

But what was unsettling me above all else was that despite already having endured the kind of disheartening, misery-inducing and all-over crappy beginning to a day that would normally see me spiralling towards the black clouds of depression, I couldn’t help but notice that I was actually happy.

From the moment that Chris arrived and got William ready while I made myself a quick breakfast, I was happy. All the time William was playing monsters with Chris while I got dressed without any interruptions, I was happy. I was happy even though it had been raining when we left and William had insisted on going to the local park rather than Tumble Jungle. And now, as we stood in a crowded pizza restaurant – the kind I had always vowed that I would never set foot in before I had children – waiting for a table that might never materialise I realised that even this hadn’t taken the shine off the happiness I felt at being in the company of the two people that I loved the most.

A young girl in her late teens, with tied-back hair beneath a Pizza Hut baseball cap, came over and smiled. ‘Sorry for the wait. We’re just preparing a place for you.’ One of her colleagues gave her the nod and she led us to our table.

The waitress quickly set out our cutlery and asked us if we wanted anything to drink. We ordered and said we wanted the ‘all you can eat’ buffet and once we’d got our drinks we stood up to get our food (three slices of ham and pineapple for William, two slices of cheese and tomato and some potato salad for Chris and pasta salad for me).

William picked up a slice of ham and pineapple only marginally smaller than his head and said: ‘I love pizza.’

‘Really? I’d never have guessed.’

William nodded. ‘Do you like pizza. Daddy?’

‘I love pizza.’

‘Do you love pizza more than you love Mummy?’

I was pleased to see that Chris was wearing the same ‘where do these questions come from?’ expression on his face as me.

‘No, sweetie, I don’t love pizza more than I love Mummy,’ he said. ‘I love Mummy much more.’

It was all I could do not to burst into tears.

I walked the few dozen yards into Grange Road and came to a halt outside the house that I had shared with Paul all those years ago. Everything about it was different from how I remembered. The outside woodwork was freshly painted and the front door had changed from dark green to brick red; the once neglected tiny front garden had been tamed and the privet hedge carefully trimmed. What surprised me most, however, was the ‘For Sale’ board in the front garden with a small ‘Sold’ sign fixed diagonally across it.