The Little Things (15 page)

‘You wouldn’t want to increase it?’

‘That’s as far as our budget stretches,’ I say firmly.

‘Ok-ay-eee,’ he replies, as if we’d have more of a chance bartering in chocolate coins.

As I end the call, Dan puts his arm around me and I relax into him, breathing in the faint aroma of his aftershave (which I love) and the clean, salty scent of his skin (which I love even
more).

When we first got together, I worried about Dan’s looks and the baggage I feared came with them. Without a hint of exaggeration, he is jaw-droppingly gorgeous. A big man, he’s
physically commanding and athletic, with a tiny scar on his cheek that does nothing to detract from an incandescent smile that makes him appear younger than twenty-nine. His hair is thick, treacle
brown, and short. Always short. Anything over three weeks’ growth irritates the hell out of him.

If the truth be told, I worried a lot about Dan when we first got together. About what the catch could be. In my early twenties, I’d gravitated towards men you’d describe as
‘bad news’, having developed a perverse assumption that to be interesting, men had to be flawed, the loopier the better.

I’m about to steal a kiss when my phone rings again. I hold my breath.

‘Gem? It’s Rich. M’lady . . . I bring news!’

‘Okay.’ I can hear my heart over the seagulls. Dan raises his eyebrows expectantly.

‘And . . . it’s . . .’ there’s clearly a drum roll happening in Rich’s head ‘. . . not good.’

‘Oh. They said no?’

‘Like I said, it’s
blindingly
popular. And what with the schools and the—’

‘Did they say what they would accept?’

‘Doesn’t work like that, hon. If you want to make another offer, feel free. Though, between you and me, you’ll have to do a
lot
better. So. Go and have a chat with
Hubbie . . .’

‘We’re not married.’

‘. . . and once you’ve crunched your numbers, reviewed your situation, re-evaluated and revised, come back to Rich and we’ll see what we can do.’

I end the call and Dan squeezes my hand for moral support as I fill him in despondently. ‘We could go another £2k higher, couldn’t we?’ he says. ‘At a
push.’

‘That’d leave us with no money to spend on decorating it how we want.’

‘Yeah, but it’s already lovely as it is. Obviously, I’d be devastated not to dust off my Black and Decker, but I’d cope,’ he smiles.

A thought tugs at my brain. ‘Dan, I think we need to go higher. I’m going to add my savings. It’s not much but the more we can edge it up, the better.’

‘I’ve got a little too – and there’s some Premium Bonds I could sell that Grandma bought me years ago.’

Over the next hour, we perform such a thorough scrape-around for cash, I’ve virtually organised a car-boot sale to flog my knickers.

Rich is not exactly bowled over. ‘You can’t do any better? I’m saying this because I
like
you guys and I think this house is made for you. But that’s not going
to cut the mustard. At best it’ll curdle the mustard. And this is blindingly popular mustard.’

He returns my call three and a half minutes later to say the answer is no.

‘I can sell my car, and downgrade it to something cheaper,’ I tell Dan, stifling the urge to weep.

‘You could downgrade to the bus like me.’

‘We need one car in the household, it wouldn’t be practical otherwise,’ I insist, attempting to conceal my alarm.

I phone Rich back to add five grand to our offer and wait for his return call as I drive us back to Liverpool, savouring the beautiful interior of my automobile while I can. The clock ticks
painfully towards 5 p.m.

‘I can’t bear this. He said he’d come back to me today and it’s now six minutes to five. They close then.’

‘So there’s still six minutes,’ Dan says calmly. Dan is always calm. It drives me mad sometimes, but mostly I’ve found this to be a positive quality in a boyfriend
– particularly, in my experience, following hairdressing crises.

‘Listen, Gemma,’ he goes on, ‘try not to be devastated if we can’t make this work. There’ll be other houses.’

‘Not on the evidence of what we’ve seen so far. I’d be uncheer-upable if it’s a no.’

‘Oh, I’d think of a way to cheer you up.’

‘Impossible.’

‘Will you marry me?’

‘Bugger off,’ I tut, ‘I’m being serious.’ The ‘will you marry me’ quip has been trotted out regularly ever since I confided in Dan that I’d rather
chew off my own arm than end up like my parents – just for the sake of a big dress. He laughs as we turn into Liverpool city centre and the phone rings. I pull over to answer.

‘Rich?’

‘Nope, Spiderman.’ I hesitate. ‘Pah, gotcha! No, you were actually right first time. It is Rich. Rich Cummins. From Pritchards estate agents.’

‘Yes, I know.’

Dan reaches over and clutches my hand. He feels warm and safe and I know that, whatever happens, the house of our dreams or not, as long as we’re together we’re always going to be
all right.

‘Before we get onto the offer, might I ask whether one of you had a go on that rocking horse while you were there?’

I hold my breath. ‘Oh Rich, I’m so sorry – I meant to say earlier that I’d pay for the damage.’

‘Oh no, it’s okay. It was actually already broken. I was just meant to warn you about it, that’s all – everyone seems to want to have a go. Anyway, the offer . .
.’

A glint of light sparkles in Dan’s eyes as Rich delivers the verdict.

‘Sorry, Gem. Not even close. It’s time to look for another house.’

Dan

We tramp up the stairs to our apartment, having stopped off for a takeaway and wine – in which Gemma was fully complicit despite her recent, self-imposed mandate banning
midweek drinking.

The flat is in a new block, an urban stalagmite that’s joined the others on Liverpool’s burgeoning skyline a few years ago. Although it only has one bedroom, I was sucked in by the
slick bathroom, state-of-the-art fridge with built-in ice-maker and a burning lack of desire to traipse around dozens of other places. It was the first place I saw and it’s served us well. I
never imagined when I signed the lease nearly five years ago that I’d still be here, although what I thought the alternative might be I couldn’t tell you.

It wasn’t long before I stopped noticing the slick bathroom, of course – though the ice-maker justifiably remains a conversation piece. But I only registered how slack my flatmate
Jesse and I had been with the dusters when I first thought about inviting Gemma back for a highly presumptuous coffee. Which brings me to the other reason I remain steadfastly attached to this
place: it was the setting of the best date in the history of dates, anytime, ever. Our third.

As I lay in bed feeling the twists of her hair between my fingers, I couldn’t recall ever feeling quite so exhilarated. Okay, that sounds a bit weird, as if I’d just had a hard
session in the gym, so I’ll keep things simple. Even then, after I’d known her only days, she made my chest feel like it was going to burst open every time I looked at her.

You’d think that might have augured something big right there: the fact that we’d both end up falling in love for the first time in our lives. But the only future I was planning with
her at that precise moment in time involved getting overheated under the duvet again at some point in the next twenty minutes.

Despite the flat being mine to begin with, when Jesse moved out and Gemma moved in, indecently soon after we’d met, she made it feel like a home for reasons that went beyond the
co-ordinated cushions that came with her.

In lots of ways, we shouldn’t work together. I’m a ‘bleeding heart liberal’ (her words) and she’s a card-carrying fascist i.e. she reads
Mail Online
, even
if it’s only for the sidebar of shame.

I was privately educated, went to Cambridge and had a glittering career as
A Disappointment
(at least to one parent). She went to a middle-of-the-road state school and dazzled her
family. I read Louis de Bernières and
The English Patient
and go to sleep each night feeling enriched and relaxed. She reads Lee Child and Luther and goes to sleep with a
bread-knife under the bed, just in case.

‘This is the crappiest takeaway I’ve ever tasted,’ Gemma says, throwing down her fork on a chicken chow mein that looks like it’s been fished out of a sludge pipe.

‘That cannot possibly be true,’ I say, topping up her glass. ‘We have had some truly crappy takeaways.’

I shove my dish on the coffee table and pull her towards me, tucking her hair behind her ear. It’s only when I register the wobble in her lip that I realise just how much this house
business has got to her.

‘We could always do something else with the money we’ve saved up. Go travelling or something,’ I say, though I have no idea where it came from. I’d never even thought of
it before – and I already know she toured south-east Asia with two friends in her gap year after university.

‘I’ve done all that, Dan,’ she sighs. ‘I’m twenty-nine now, not eighteen.’

I squeeze her closer into me, wanting to make her feel better but at a loss as to how. I decide to pay a visit to the florist tomorrow. Life became far easier the day I worked out that flowers,
particularly
outside
the traditional birthdays or anniversaries, are not in fact the pointless waste of money I’d assumed they were for the last twenty-odd years.

We stay up late, watching a vacuous action film that I pretend not to enjoy, before going to bed and making passionate but mildly clumsy, wine-drunk love. She falls asleep with her head on my
chest, but I can’t bring myself to move her, even if I know I’ll wake up with a crick in my neck. For a few hours I fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.

It’s at 4.30 a.m. that, aware of a series of explosive coughs about five centimetres from my ear, my eyes spring open.

‘Oh sorry, did I wake you?’ The cough mysteriously disappears.

‘It’s okay,’ I mumble, about to turn over when she props herself up on an elbow. I close my eyes.

‘Well, now you’re awake . . .’

‘I’m not awake.’

‘Clearly you are or you wouldn’t be talking to me.’

‘I’ll be asleep again in seven seconds,’ I yawn.

‘Okay. But can I ask you something?’

‘Is it: “Darling, why on earth can’t you get to sleep?”!’ I ask.

‘Sorry! It’s really important though.’

She reaches over to turn on the bedroom light. Her hair is mussed up on the top like Russell Brand’s and she has a smudge of mascara under her eye. I suppress a smile. ‘Go
on.’

‘It’s about Pebble Cottage. I’ve had an idea. I reckon we’re about another five grand short of making an offer they couldn’t refuse.’

‘Gemma, you’ve already planned on selling your car, my Premium Bonds and half the furniture. The only thing left is our bodies. You’d do all right, but I don’t think
I’d raise more than a fiver.’

I expect her to make a joke about being certain that someone would have me in the right part of town, but she doesn’t. This is a worrying development.

‘I’m talking about something completely different. Changing tack. I’m talking about reducing our outgoings drastically to free up a lump sum of capital. I’m talking about
getting rid of the flat.’

‘What?’

‘If we didn’t have any rent to pay, not to mention bills, we’d save up that amount in . . . I don’t know, five months. Think about it.’

‘Yes, but there’s a vital flaw in your cunning plan, Baldrick,’ I tell her. ‘And it’s that we need the flat. You know, to live in.’

‘I was coming to that.’ Only she doesn’t say anything.

‘Go on then.’

Her mouth starts to twitch at the side and I can tell she’s gauging my reaction before she’s managed to even spit it out. She sits up straight, defiant, and looks me in the eye.
‘We can go and live with your mother.’

I laugh. I laugh quite a lot. In fact, I almost fall off the bed.

Then I realise she isn’t joining in. ‘You’re not serious.’ And when she edges closer and puts her arm on mine, leaning in to kiss me, ‘Don’t be trying to use
your feminine wiles on me. They won’t work.’

‘Dan,’ she fake-murmurs. ‘Do it for me.’

‘You can bugger right off.’

‘Okay, okay,’ she says, sitting up again. ‘Just hear me out. I know it wouldn’t be ideal. I know you vowed when you moved out when you were seventeen—’

‘Sixteen.’

‘Sixteen, that you’d never live there again, but it’s not like you don’t love your mum. She’s great.’

I flash her a look. ‘Well, yeah. She’s my mum so she’s great by default, but here’s the difference – she’s
not
great to live with. Whose mum is, once
you’re no longer a kid?’

‘It wouldn’t be that bad.’

‘I’d prefer to live with Genghis Khan.’

‘Her house is enormous . . .’

‘You’re not listening to me.’

‘Your grandma lives there too and she’s gorgeous.’

‘Is my voice like a dog whistle? Inaudible to human beings?’

‘It’s on the right side of Cheshire, so totally commutable.’

‘It takes ages to drive from there to Liverpool – and I don’t even have a car.’

‘With no rent to pay, you could get a cheap one. It’d only be for six months.’

‘You said five.’

‘Six months tops.’

‘You said—’

‘Oh come on, Dan. I’m not asking you to do this for me, I’m asking you to do this for
us
. You want the house, don’t you?’

‘Gemma, that house will not still be on the market in six months’ time. You heard what the estate agent said.’

‘I know, but it might be in
two
. It takes a few months for a house sale to happen – with all the surveys and legal work. So if we moved out now and started saving really
hard, we could make an offer after a couple of months with a view to completing the sale a few months after that. Only then would we need to hand over the full amount of money.’

‘What if it’s gone by then?’

‘It won’t be. But if, for argument’s sake, it was – we’d simply have some extra cash under our belt, which will put us in a stronger position to buy somewhere
else.’