These Days of Ours (37 page)

‘Ta.’ Charlie’s ineptness at identifying flirtation hadn’t improved.

A hand raised out of the crowd. ‘Kate!’ Angus pushed towards them through the room, which was filling up with a crackling urgency, as if they were all well-dressed refugees from some
calamity out on the streets.

Just as Charlie was spirited away by his succubus, Kate leaned in to say, ‘Break a leg!’

Ducking his head, Charlie winced, gave a tight smile. With a lightning bolt of insight, Kate recognised that look. She knew what lay between them: hurt.

I hurt him
.

‘You,’ said Angus, ‘look utterly delicious.’ He kissed her cheek, tentative, but with a hint of ownership as if he could go further but chose not to.

‘Fibber.’ The floral wrap dress which looked so good on the mannequin bit into soft parts of Kate. ‘I look every second of my thirty-eight years and ten months but I appreciate
the compliment.’

Thin-ness, the holy grail of modern life, is not for everybody. The new look, pared down Angus was diminished and hungry looking. Even his outrageous hair had calmed down to a tidy shape as if
too busy fantasising about sausage rolls to party.

This close, Angus smelled of shampoo and raw good health. Kate couldn’t shake the notion that he was in fancy dress, that he would unzip his pale suit and the real Angus would step out,
belly wobbling, cigar ash all over an inherited waistcoat.

‘Dinner?’ With his Santa cheeks trimmed away, Angus was handsome in the pink and white English manner. He still had the power to move Kate, to shrink the rest of the room.
‘Later?’

‘I’d love that, but only if I choose the venue. That wholefood establishment felt a little too like church for my liking.’ Angus didn’t laugh. Angus didn’t laugh as
often or as heartily as he used to. But Kate liked him and desired him and she nurtured hopes that this pious macrobiotic Angus was a transitional phase. The raw material was still the same; at
some point the ‘true’ Angus must break free and grab a doughnut. ‘I’ll ask Mum and Mary to babysit.’ Kate was in need of a beginning and Angus had been dangling just
that for months.

Up on the screen, a terrifying apparition with a perm and an arch expression spoke with Mum’s voice. Or, rather, how Mum would sound if she was English and upper class. And bonkers.
‘I didn’t actually read Charlie’s, Charles’s, Charlie’s book. It’s terrible long and I’m a busy woman. It’s probably ever so good.’

Laughter rose tinnily from the room. Leon, pressing buttons, blew a kiss down at Becca. Mum, pleased with her contribution, hoisted a blini to her lips.

‘No, darling contessa, I won’t let you do that to yourself.’ Angus tugged at Mum’s wrist. ‘Those are sheer useless calories you are contemplating.’

‘Feck
off
,’ growled Mum. ‘The useless ones are me favourites.’ Angus removed his hand, smartly. He turned to Kate, gesturing at her champagne. ‘For my sake,
for your liver’s sake, darling, make that your last one, yes?’ He bent to eye her, nose to nose. ‘I want the real Kate. I want authenticity.’

Please
, thought Kate,
don’t start talking about your juice business.

‘When my new juice business is up and running, I’ll make sobriety trendy. Imagine that.’

Becca, who didn’t seem to like what she was imagining, sighed. She was still unable to forgive Angus for confiscating her crackling when she cooked him roast pork. ‘Just because
you’re the poster boy for clean living doesn’t mean we’ll all become puritans.’

‘Although,’ said Flo, ‘you
should
give up smoking, Mummy.’

‘You
smoke
?’ said Mum and Aunty Marjorie in horrified unison.

‘The child is correct,’ intoned Angus sadly. ‘Your body deserves respect, Becca,’ said the man Kate had once found asleep in a skip. ‘Once I get you reprobates
juicing, we’ll all live an extra ten years.’

‘And what bloody tedious years they’ll be.’ Becca raised her glass with mock solemnity.

‘Your health isn’t something to joke about.’ Angus sounded more saddened than annoyed.

‘What you need, Angus,’ said Becca, ‘is a nice cheeseburger.’

‘I’m practically vegan.’ Angus was pious, as if announcing a new pope.

Mum scoffed, with the timbre of an expert; she’d been scoffing at fads since the sixties. ‘You’ll be raving about antiageing superfoods next. They say broccoli is a superfood.
Broccoli!’ Mum seemed outraged by broccoli’s promotion. ‘It’s just feckin’ broccoli.’

‘Allow me,’ said Angus, ‘to explain the science behind it.’

‘There’s no science to broccoli.’ Mum was robust. ‘It’s like saying there’s a philosophy to carrots.’

Over their heads, a gigantic Flo was shyly saying, ‘It’s, like, the best book ever. Definitely better than Shakespeare.’

Leon’s skilfully edited compilation was warming up the room as Charlie stood at the podium, raking through his notes and knocking back a glass of wine provided by his PR handmaidens.

Taking Song, complete with her copy of
BLOKE
, Kate moved to gain a better view of an actor she vaguely recognised saying, ‘Books are the new rock ’n’roll.’ Through
the ether, she sensed Charlie’s sphincter tightening at that comment.

Resting her lips on Song’s head, Kate closed her eyes, the better to evoke the jolt of recognition that had shaken her earlier. The specific tilt of Charlie’s head, the air of being
forced at gunpoint to speak to her, the soft bruised look in his eye – it all whisked her down a wormhole to her fifth birthday party.

Charlie had exhibited these same behaviours then, when he overheard the mums’ stage whispers about his torn shorts and his odd socks.

Charlie had been hurt, then. He was hurt now.
I hurt him.

Replaying ‘that’ night, words stood out in her memory. Cheat. Shitty.

But they’re true.
Kate defended herself to herself. Charlie was another woman’s boyfriend yet he’d been naked in her bed.

Song slapped the book. ‘Boo!’

‘Yes, sweetie. Boo! Book. Book. Can you say
book
?’

Burning to communicate, Song brought her palm down again on Charlie’s author photo. ‘Boo!’ she yelled.

The congregation shifted. Through an avenue of backs, Anna caught Kate’s eye and began to move towards her. If she hadn’t been hemmed in by bodies Kate would have fled. Anna, sinewy
in a jumpsuit, brought out a guilt so intense that Kate feared it was visible on her face.

As Anna glided through the crush, glass aloft, Kate faced that guilt squarely;
I went into that bedroom in full knowledge of Anna’s existence
. She was as much to blame as Charlie.
It took two, as the saying went, to tango.

‘Hey you!’ Anna showed all her teeth as Mary, way over their heads, said, ‘You’ll want to read it again the minute you finish the last page.’ ‘This is unreal!
There’s fucking
celebs
here!’

‘Is Charlie OK? He seems a bit shredded.’

‘Oh,
him
. He’s been shitting himself all week. I said it’s a party, babes. What’s so scary about a party?’

‘Well . . .’
Lots
. ‘Are you chuffed with the dedication?’

‘What’s a dedication?’ Anna put her shoulders up to her ears, in a parody of embarrassment. ‘To be honest, babes, I haven’t read the book.’ She shook her
head, eyes lazily closing. ‘It’s too long.’

‘And there are no pictures.’

‘Exactly.’ Anna guffawed, then looked Kate up and down. ‘I never realised you and Charlie . . .’

‘What?’ Blood rushed to Kate’s face.

‘You know,’ said Anna. ‘You were together. Back in caveman days.’ She paused. ‘Before I was born.’

‘We went out for a while,’ said Kate. ‘Before he married Becca.’ Reduced, it sounded so trivial.

‘I can’t imagine it.’ Anna held Kate’s gaze.

‘Me neither,’ said Kate.

That’s all it takes for me to deny him
. Kate’s need for Charlie hadn’t diminished but, since Dad’s death, she was practised at needing people whom she
couldn’t have.

Her own clumsiness appalled her: she’d shamed Charlie, thrown him out like a degenerate for doing something she’d wanted too.

As Anna dived back into the melee, Kate hugged Song so hard the baby squeaked. Song made everything bearable. Not that it was the child’s job to ‘cure’ Kate’s loneliness:
Song’s only job was to be Song.

‘We’re ready,’ said Kate, into Song’s circle of a face. ‘Aren’t we, baby?’

Kate was ready for a man to tread dirt on her hoovered carpets, disarrange the towels in her bathroom and muss up her bedclothes.

Above all, he must muss up Kate.

That it couldn’t be Charlie was a caveat she accepted.
I embrace it!
she told herself. This felt unlike the other times she’d indoctrinated herself to face facts. She was
ready for second best.

Second best could be good enough. Second best was the dress Kate could afford, not the one-off couture piece she slavered over in
Vogue
. It was the tasty, satisfying slice of Victoria
Sponge ordered after somebody else bought the last towering wedge of gateau. Kate’s best shoes pinched; her second best leather ballet pumps were as comfortable as slippers on her feet.

Finding – or being found by – Song had used up all Kate’s cosmic luck. Nobody wins the lottery twice. Time for the understudy to step up.

An actress shook her bracelets on the screen. ‘This book should be a movie!’

‘Angus!’ Kate saw him scanning the room for her. As he closed in, she said, excited, ‘Fish and chips! After the party. Yeah?’

‘But, darling, the batter is made with—’ Angus bit his tongue. ‘Just this once, you rascal. We do have something to celebrate. I had an offer. For Astor House.’

Kate laughed, then stared. ‘Seriously?’

‘It’s time.’

Even though slimline, teetotal Angus was out of step with the club’s core values, Kate couldn’t imagine the place without him. Or he without the club.

‘Running a members’ club isn’t the best lifestyle if a man wants to settle down.’

Kate saw Flo approaching through the scrum, her face at elbow height. ‘Is that what you want? To settle down, I mean.’

‘I do.’ Angus was so intent he looked sad. ‘If you do. I cleaned up for you, Kate.’

‘You cleaned up for
you
, Angus.’

‘It’s all for you.’ Angus opened his arms and let them drop again. ‘All of it.’

Kate was Angus’s best; Angus was Kate’s second best. Could it work with such imbalance at the centre? She imagined a vegan wedding reception.

‘I know,’ she whispered.

A tug at her sleeve and Flo said rapidly, ‘Mum said to say she’s really sorry.’

‘What for?’ frowned Kate.

Uninterested now she’d discharged her duty, Flo shrugged.

Kate turned to Angus to say, ‘I
really
don’t like the sound of that,’ but he was stooping to check his pedometer.

On a raised dais, Charlie was ready at the lectern, a secular priest about to address his flock, as behind him on the screen Kate’s face loomed, a giant moon, hair uncombed, pink with
discomfort.

Is that what I look like?
Kate wondered why nobody had ever told her the end of her nose wiggled when she spoke.
My voice sounds like a squeaky supermarket trolley.
Thankfully,
nobody seemed to be taking much notice of her platitudes, least of all Charlie.

From the foot of the dais, Becca’s stare cut through the party.

Holding Song like a shield, Kate felt a nibble of foreboding. Angus nudged her. ‘Fame at last.’

The gigantic Kate, nose wobbling, was finishing up. ‘I’ve never read anything quite like it before and I can’t wait for his next book.’

‘How do famous people cope with seeing themselves all the time?’ giggled Kate, relieved that her turn was over.

But giant Kate was still talking, still
booming
.

‘Dear Charlie.’

‘Ooh,’ said Angus. ‘There’s more.’

Outlined dark against the brightness of the screen, Charlie turned to stare at it.

‘Thank you for your letter. I’m sorry for taking twenty years to reply but there were a few problems with the delivery service.’

The room swelled and shrank in Kate’s vision. She blinked and steadied herself.

‘The only letter I read was your second one.’ The lips on the screen kept moving. The words kept tumbling. Kate found Becca’s beseeching eyes.

So this is what Becca’s sorry for
.

The chatter in the room barely slackened, although a few puzzled looks were exchanged. A figure sitting on the edge of the podium, legs dangling, leaned over to poke Charlie in the calf. Kate
saw Anna’s face; it was confused, ready to be either mollified or to explode.

‘It’s time to be honest. I love you, Charlie Garland. I can’t see that ever ending.’

As if struck, Kate closed her eyes and turned her face away.

Her alter ego had its audience in the palm of her hand. There were stifled giggles, a hissed
Is this a stunt?
but the gathering grew quiet.

‘Darling,’ said Angus. He was tense, quick. ‘Listen.’ He wasn’t angry.
Angus
should
be angry!
All this wasted love flying around, landing in the wrong
laps. Kate had been about to saddle Angus with a ready made family just to assuage her feelings of isolation. She’d been prepared to sacrifice him on the altar of ‘fitting in’.
‘I’m sorry, Angus,’ said Kate as she turned to hurtle through the press of bodies.

‘Is that her?’ she heard.

‘Kate!’ Angus grabbed her arm.

‘No! Just no.’ Kate shook him off, unable to look at his face. More hurt. With the smell of burning bridges in her nostrils she propelled herself and Song through the double doors
and down the steps she’d tripped up so thoughtlessly an hour earlier.

Before the doors swung shut behind her, Kate heard herself say, from the screen, ‘We moved on, as they say. But I still love you, Charlie.’

Hard practicalities nipped at Kate’s heels. She had no cash. Song’s bag was with Mary. A taxi turned the corner of the street. Throwing out her hand, Kate hoped the driver
wouldn’t mind stopping at a cashpoint.
Even if he does mind
, she thought,
we’ll be a few streets away from this apocalypse before he chucks me out.