Turning Thirty (35 page)

Take it easy,

Love always

Matt xxx

PS In your last e-mail you asked for some advice culled from my experience of the front line of thirtydom that might be useful to you as you turn twenty-five. I racked my brain for ages and the best I could come up with was this:

1) Don't take anything for granted because when it's gone it's always too late.

2) Look after your mates – and they will look after you.

3) The only thing in life that gets easier the older you get is the ability to fall asleep in the middle of a conversation.

4) Never move back in with your parents – it's always a bad idea.

5) And, finally, don't go to the pub unless there's somewhere to sit down. But basically it's all just common sense.

Mike Gayle is the author of ten bestselling novels and has contributed to a variety of magazines including
FHM
,
Sunday Times Style
and
Cosmopolitan
.

 

My Legendary Girlfriend

Mr Commitment

Dinner for Two

His 'n' Hers

Brand New Friend

Wish You Were Here

Life and Soul of the Party

The Importance of being a Bachelor

Men at Work (Quick Read)

The Stag and Hen Weekend

 

The To-Do List

 

Has Matt Beckford's life improved a decade on? Here is a taster from TURNING FORTY (publication date 6 June 2013), the follow-up to the hugely successful TURNING THIRTY.

Wiping my hand against the steamed up window of the taxi I press my nose up against the cold glass to get a better look at the worn but sturdy facade of my destination: 88 Hampton Street, the three-bed Victorian terrace that my parents have called home for over forty years.

It looks exactly the way I left it following my last visit at Easter, same windows, curtains, and front door and even though I haven't lived here in decades, it still feels like coming home.

The cabbie waves the receipt I've requested (more out of habit than a desire to keep my expense records up to date) under my nose and I hand him a twenty-pound note and unload my bags on to the pavement. A smart young couple I don't recognise carefully navigate their neon coloured state-of-the art pram around me and up the path to the house to the left of my parents' that will forever be known to me as the O'Reillys'. I watch surreptitiously as they open their front door and manoeuvre the pram inside. I feel envious. A happy couple, a young baby, and a family home: all the staging posts of adult life ticked off one after the other. Next to them I'm a walking cautionary tale.

The cabbie is holding out my change. There was a time when I wouldn't have given the handful of shrapnel he was proffering a second glance. Not any more. I have to make every penny count. I scoop up the change and funnel it deep into the pocket of my jeans. As I head up the icy front path I spot my mum's Capodimonte figurines collection on the windowsill. Despite my current gloomy state of mind the tramp on a bench, the cobbler mending a boot and the Edwardian lady posing with an umbrella actually manage to bring a smile to my face. I've lost count of how many times my siblings and I accidentally broke off the odd limb only to have my dad Evo-stick them back together. Ugly and damaged as they are it's reassuring to see them again. In a city that feels increasingly alien it's an apt reminder that there are still a few things in my home town that thankfully will never change.

I take a deep breath to bolster my spirits as a sharp gust of October wind sends a shudder through me. Everything's going to change once I open this door. Nothing will ever be the same again. Maybe I should've called to let them know I was coming up after all. I tried a couple of times but didn't get much further than staring at their number on the screen of my phone. For a moment I seriously consider running after the taxi and getting him to drop me back at the station but then the front door opens to reveal my dad, disconcertingly dressed in a thick brown cardigan, jeans and market stall trainers.

‘All right, Dad?'

His face lights up. ‘Matthew! What are you doing here? I was hoping you were the postman. Your sister ordered me a new pair of slippers off the internet. I could really do with them coming today. You haven't seen him, have you?'

‘No, Dad.'

‘Ah, well,' he shrugs, ‘maybe later. To what do we owe the pleasure?'

‘Just passing through, Pop. Thought I'd swing by and say hello.'

Dad makes a great show of leaning to one side to get a better view of my bags. ‘For someone who's just swinging by you you've got a heck of a lot of stuff with you.'

‘You know me, Pop. I'm like the Boy Scouts. I like to be prepared.'

He looks back up the path. ‘Where's Lauren?'

‘Back in London.'

‘You didn't bring her with you?'

‘She had to work.'

Dad looks disappointed. Despite Lauren's innate poshness they really hit it off on our first visit to the UK. It wasn't just that she was easy on the eye (though Dad never could resist a pretty face) it was that she made such an effort to make Dad feel comfortable. He couldn't stand being too formal and the fact that Lauren mucked in getting dinner ready with the rest of the family increased her standing with him more than a million perfectly selected Christmas and birthday gifts could ever have done.

‘You should bring her with you next time,' says Dad forlornly. ‘Your mother would love to see more of her.'

I hope this might be an end to his questioning but as I open my mouth to suggest that he might actually let his first born son inside the house rather than interrogating me on the doorstep like a rogue double-glazing salesman, he sparks up with another.

‘Where's the motor?'

‘It's gone. I gave it up, Dad.' I mentally picture the pristine basalt black Porsche 911 Turbo that was my pride and joy. It almost brings a tear to my eye. ‘I came up by train.'

Dad's disappointment once again becomes apparent. ‘That's a shame. It was a lovely little number you had there! So what's that company of yours giving you next then? I bet it's a cracker! I can't believe some of the flash cars they've let you have!'

‘That's more to do with them than me. They gave me an allowance and I topped it up out of my wages. Thought a nice car would compensate for the fact that I'd part-traded my soul. As for the new motor, there won't be one.'

‘How come? Won't you need one? I suppose not given how often you're gallivanting around the world these days. You're barely ever in this country.'

‘It's a long story, Pop, I'll fill you in another time. Are you going to let me in or do I have to tell Mum you made me stand out here so all the neighbours can see our business?'

‘Your mum's not here,' says Dad, putting his huge hand in mine, ‘but come in if you must.' We shake hands awkwardly but it doesn't feel like near enough contact. I give him a one-armed hug and he tolerates it with the grace of someone who, while loathing the awkwardness of physical exchanges, has at least learned to appreciate the sentiment behind them.

Dad insists on carrying my bags and then ushers me into the kitchen. He runs the tap and fills the kettle.

‘Still not much of a tea drinker?' he asks setting down the kettle on its stand and flicking the switch.

‘I have one now and again,' I reply, ‘but I'm more of a coffee man these days. Can't make it through the day without at least half a dozen.'

‘Don't touch the stuff myself,' says Dad. ‘But I'm pretty sure your mother's got some in for guests.' He begins searching in the nearest cupboard, which even I know is where Mum keeps her baking stuff, canned goods and pasta. Mum still clearly does everything domestic.

‘Try the next one along,' I suggest.

Dad snorts that he knows his own ‘bloody kitchen' better than I ever will. Once it becomes clear that he's looking in the wrong place he simply mutters, ‘Well of course I chose the wrong cupboard, you were distracting me!'

‘There you go,' he says, setting down a jar on the counter. ‘Will that satisfy you and your fancy London ways?'

Just the sight of the jar of supermarket own brand instant coffee causes me to reminisce fondly about the seven hundred quid titanium silver gaggia bean-to-cup coffee machine sitting on the granite counter in my kitchen back in London. ‘That'll do nicely, Pop.'

I sit down at the kitchen table and flick through a local free newspaper next to the fruit bowl. ‘So how have you been, Pop?'

‘Oh, you know me,' he says. ‘I'm fine in myself.'

I raise a sceptical eyebrow which is about as much as I'll ever raise to my dad. Four years ago Dad had a heart attack. Things had been dodgy for a while and every time my phone rang I was convinced it would be one of my family calling to let me know the worst, but he pulled through in the end. The drugs seemed to sort out the problem for the interim and eventually he was lined up for a bypass operation, which seemed to have done the trick. To look at him now you'd never guess he'd been through this but to this day I still can't take an unexpected late night call from a member of my family without a split-second replay of that whole nightmare.

‘Anyway,' continues Dad, ‘it's your mother who's the one to worry about. I'm always telling her to slow down but she won't listen. Now that your sister's moved closer she's always volunteering us for babysitting duties even though it's a good forty minutes in the car.'

My kid sister, Yvonne, and her family moved to Worcester from Plymouth the previous summer for her paediatrician husband Oliver's job. Since then nearly every conversation with Mum begins with an update on how big my newest niece, Evie, is getting and how, despite being only seven months old, Mum's convinced that she'll be walking soon because ‘all Beckfords walk before their first birthday', or an update on Evie's brothers, two-year-old Peter and three-and-a half year-old Jake.

Dad pulls out an envelope of photos from behind the radio on the kitchen counter and gives me a running commentary as he shuffles through them. As befits my father's skills with a digital camera at least half of them appear to have been taken within a split second of each other, with only the slightest variation between them, but there are a few, like the one in my hands of a just-woken-up Evie smiling at Yvonne, which even I can't help getting lost in. In the end Dad and I end up so engrossed in the photos that we don't hear Mum's keys in the front door. So when I look up and see her laden down with shopping bags and she says, ‘Matthew! What are you doing home?' I'm taken so much by surprise that without getting my brain into gear I say the first words that spring to my lips which happen to be the unexpurgated truth. ‘It's me and Lauren, Mum, we're getting a divorce.'