made its way giddily towards Paul and Caroline. Paul put out his hand and the dog wagged its tail. He waited for Caroline to greet the dog – she’d bought the pair as puppies about two years ago and called them her ‘husband substitutes’. She fussed them like babies and talked about them constantly as though they were human beings – but she did not seem to notice that the dog was there. Instead her gaze rested upon Paul, her body lean and erect, her stomach, he could see, held in tautly.
He lowered his gaze into Beau’s scalp and let the realisation sink in that he wasn’t the only person moving on.
Once again, Adrian’s flat slapped him fully around the chops when he arrived home alone a few hours later. The sun had fallen behind the horizon and he hadn’t left any lights on so the four rooms of his home were dark and shadowy. The cat appeared at his feet like a murky phantom. He leaned to stroke her, more out of a sense of altruism than anything else. She leaned into his touch needily and he sighed. He switched on some table lamps but his flat still felt dank and lonely. He poured himself a glass of wine from the end of a bottle he’d opened the night before and he took it and Jane’s mobile phone out into his back yard (he could not call the eight-foot square of concrete outside the kitchen door a garden, however many potted plants he put out there).
There was still some warmth in the air, but because his yard got only two hours of sunshine each day it felt damp and mossy out here. He thought for a moment of the house in Islington, the soft sun-kissed garden with its flora and greenery, its children’s clutter and gambolling dogs. Then he thought of Susie’s house in Hove, the sweet Arts and Crafts cottage just off the main road full of the furniture they’d bought together in their student years from what used, in those days, to be called flea markets and junk shops: the bits of 1960s and ’70s tat that were now worth hundreds of pounds. He thought of his odd moody son and his fragile air of entitlement and of beautiful Otis and his bee-stung lips. He pictured Susie in her scruffy gardening clothes and Caroline in her sexy floral dress with her new young lover. And the others: little Beau with his warm, malleable body; cocky Cat and her insatiable appetite for everything; and cool, inscrutable Pearl with her focus and her commitment. They had all belonged to him once: the houses, the wives, the children. And yet now he had nothing. A crap flat, a weird cat, a stranger’s phone. For nearly five decades he had lived with an unshakeable belief in the decisions he made. Every morning for almost forty-eight years he had woken up and thought:
I am where I want to be right now
. And now he was not. He did not want to be in this flat, with this cat and this phone and this feeling of cold dread. He’d made a bad choice somewhere along the line but he didn’t know where.
He drank some wine and stared at the cat and drank some more wine. Then he switched on Jane’s phone, just as he’d done every few days for the past two months, and sat bolt upright when he saw a little envelope icon showing on the screen. And the words:
You have 1 new message
.
He clicked on the icon and a message came up.
‘Hello its Mum. Just checkin in. I havent heard from you in a while. Give us a call if you can.’
The feeling of cold dread dissipated for just one moment as he read these words. He put down his glass of wine and formed a response.
Nine
The woman was called Jean and had a thick West Country accent and sounded as though she had no teeth. She lived around the corner from Adrian in Tufnell Park and said she’d be happy to meet him for a coffee. ‘There’s a place by the station. Does proper porridge. Can’t remember what it’s called now.’
Adrian walked a full circle around the station at Tufnell Park before he found the place she’d described, a putrid-looking place he’d seen a thousand times before
He lowered his gaze into Beau’s scalp and let the realisation sink in that he wasn’t the only person moving on.
Once again, Adrian’s flat slapped him fully around the chops when he arrived home alone a few hours later. The sun had fallen behind the horizon and he hadn’t left any lights on so the four rooms of his home were dark and shadowy. The cat appeared at his feet like a murky phantom. He leaned to stroke her, more out of a sense of altruism than anything else. She leaned into his touch needily and he sighed. He switched on some table lamps but his flat still felt dank and lonely. He poured himself a glass of wine from the end of a bottle he’d opened the night before and he took it and Jane’s mobile phone out into his back yard (he could not call the eight-foot square of concrete outside the kitchen door a garden, however many potted plants he put out there).
There was still some warmth in the air, but because his yard got only two hours of sunshine each day it felt damp and mossy out here. He thought for a moment of the house in Islington, the soft sun-kissed garden with its flora and greenery, its children’s clutter and gambolling dogs. Then he thought of Susie’s house in Hove, the sweet Arts and Crafts cottage just off the main road full of the furniture they’d bought together in their student years from what used, in those days, to be called flea markets and junk shops: the bits of 1960s and ’70s tat that were now worth hundreds of pounds. He thought of his odd moody son and his fragile air of entitlement and of beautiful Otis and his bee-stung lips. He pictured Susie in her scruffy gardening clothes and Caroline in her sexy floral dress with her new young lover. And the others: little Beau with his warm, malleable body; cocky Cat and her insatiable appetite for everything; and cool, inscrutable Pearl with her focus and her commitment. They had all belonged to him once: the houses, the wives, the children. And yet now he had nothing. A crap flat, a weird cat, a stranger’s phone. For nearly five decades he had lived with an unshakeable belief in the decisions he made. Every morning for almost forty-eight years he had woken up and thought:
I am where I want to be right now
. And now he was not. He did not want to be in this flat, with this cat and this phone and this feeling of cold dread. He’d made a bad choice somewhere along the line but he didn’t know where.
He drank some wine and stared at the cat and drank some more wine. Then he switched on Jane’s phone, just as he’d done every few days for the past two months, and sat bolt upright when he saw a little envelope icon showing on the screen. And the words:
You have 1 new message
.
He clicked on the icon and a message came up.
‘Hello its Mum. Just checkin in. I havent heard from you in a while. Give us a call if you can.’
The feeling of cold dread dissipated for just one moment as he read these words. He put down his glass of wine and formed a response.
Nine
The woman was called Jean and had a thick West Country accent and sounded as though she had no teeth. She lived around the corner from Adrian in Tufnell Park and said she’d be happy to meet him for a coffee. ‘There’s a place by the station. Does proper porridge. Can’t remember what it’s called now.’
Adrian walked a full circle around the station at Tufnell Park before he found the place she’d described, a putrid-looking place he’d seen a thousand times before
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