Daniel looked around and nodded. ‘It looks great, Mum.’ And it did. His mother had always prided herself on a pristine home. A pristine, very floral and chintzy home.
I shouldn’t have left.
‘No! No, it doesn’t!’ she insisted. ‘Because Henry is gone! I never got around to doing the car. I left Henry out by the bin and I thought I’d do it tomorrow, and then that became the day after and the day after, and the truth is, I couldn’t really be arsed, so he sat out there for maybe a week, and today I needed to vacuum the house, and I went to get him and he’s gone.’
Daniel stood up and went towards the front door. He felt his frustration at having had to leave his date leaking into how he was talking to his mother. He hated that version of himself: even as a teenager he’d talked to both of his parents with respect. That was how he was raised.
‘I’m sure he’s not, Mum. Where would he have gone?’
‘Stolen! I bet he’s been stolen!’
Daniel put his shoes back on and went outside to look by the bins, and when he couldn’t see the hoover there, he looked in the bin.
‘You’re not looking anywhere I haven’t already!’ His mother sank down to sit on the doorstep. ‘Oh, Danny,’ she said, her bottom lip wobbling again. ‘Right before he met you at the pub, on the day he … on that day, we had such a big fight. He said no way was I to buy a new hoover, and I thought he was being a tight bastard, and got mad. And he’ll think … well, I’ll bet he thinks I’ve done it on purpose!’
Daniel wandered back over to his mum. ‘He doesn’t think that, Mum. He doesn’t think anything. He’s …’
‘Oh, I know he’s dead. But he’s here. Watching over us all. And he’ll be all crossed arms and big angry scowl thinking I “lost” –’ his mother made air quotes in front of her face ‘– Henry, and with him gone I thought I’d get away with it.’
‘Mum, your husband has died and your hoover smelled bad. I think you’re allowed a new one.’
‘So you don’t believe me either!’
‘Either?’
‘First your father, and now you!’ She pulled a tissue from the pocket of her dress and blew her nose. She was back to talking hysterically, her words all tumbling over each other. ‘Well, I’m telling you, Henry was out here by the bins, and now he isn’t. He’s been stolen and it wasn’t my fault.’
Daniel dropped down on the outdoor step beside his mother. He didn’t say anything, but knocked his knee against hers as a sign of solidarity. She was officially nuts, but he didn’t mind. He was half in love with a woman he’d never met and wrote to via the newspaper because he thought his dad would like it. He could understand his mother feeling strongly about the vacuum cleaner on his dead dad’s behalf too.
He hoped he hadn’t upset Nadia. He hoped that maybe she hadn’t even turned up at all, and so had no idea he’d stood her up. It would have sucked if he’d stayed there, though, and been the one to have been stood up. But he’d rather that than her, waiting, alone, thinking he didn’t care.
After a while, his mother said, ‘I miss the miserable bugger.’
Daniel smiled. ‘I know, Mum. Me too.’
‘I wake up in the middle of the night and think he’s gone for a wee, and I wait for him to come back to bed. And then I remember.’
‘I know.’
‘And I feel … angry. I’m so mad at him for dying.’
‘I know,’ Daniel said sadly.
‘I want to scream and shout at somebody. But at who? The bloody scrap man who probably nicked the hoover?’
‘Ahhhh,’ said Daniel. ‘The scrap man. Yes. If Henry was out here for a week that would make sense.’
‘Yeah,’ his mum said.
Daniel reached out his arm to give her a squeeze.
‘I know it’s awful. You don’t deserve this. You don’t deserve to be without him.’
He didn’t realize until his voice cracked that he was crying too. Big tears rolled down his face, matching his mother’s. She’d stopped crying until she looked up at her son, and the pair of them sat in the late evening sun, partly laughing at their big display of emotion, and partly continuing to sob, mother and son united in the grief of missing the man of their lives, wondering how they might carry on without him.
Daniel was glad he’d come after all. It was just the two of them now. They were a team. They needed each other.
28
Nadia
‘Anyone sitting here?’
Nadia looked up to see a tall, red-headed man with a crooked smile. He was gesturing at the seat beside her. Nadia’s second wine glass was empty and the bar had filled up around her. The spot beside her was the only empty seat. How long had she been sitting there? Long enough to drink two large glasses of white wine, she realized.
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Nadia, remembering her manners.
‘Yes, somebody is sitting there?’
‘No. Nobody is sitting there. Yes. Yes, you can sit there.’
The man was insistent with his eye contact and held Nadia’s gaze. She swallowed, hard. She was a little bit drunk – she’d been so excited about the date that she hadn’t eaten properly since breakfast, so the booze had gone straight to her head. Something in the air shifted. The man stood in front of her, looking, for a beat too long. It snapped Nadia out of her daydream and into the present.
‘Are you waiting for somebody?’ he asked, settling in next to her.
‘I was,’ she said. She cleared her throat, aware that she sounded a little croaky. ‘But they can’t make it,’ she added, louder.
‘And now the lady drinks alone?’
‘And now the lady drinks alone,’ Nadia repeated. Wow. She had slurred that sentence a little – her speech was definitely impaired. She should go home. Or at least eat something.
‘That’s such a shame,’ he said, and Nadia smiled weakly. She could feel his eyes on her, but she wasn’t in the mood. She didn’t want to play cat-and-mouse games with a stranger at a bar – she wanted to mope and feel sorry for herself and lament how terrible all men were because they got your hopes up and then trashed them in the gutter.
‘This might seem very forward of me, but – do you want another drink? I have half an hour before my buddy gets here.’
Nadia looked at him – this man sat beside her, where her date should have been.
‘You’re asking me for a drink?’ she said. ‘Just like that?’
‘Just like what?’
‘You’re gonna sit down next to a woman you don’t know and offer to buy her a drink, like a Nora Ephron movie?’ Nadia wasn’t flirting, but there was a definite recklessness to her. Two drinks and one missed connection was enough to make her feel like she didn’t have to be polite, or coy, or nice. She didn’t have to contort to make herself likeable. She was mad as hell. After two drinks she’d gone from devastated to distraught to angry and now, she realized, she had zero fucks to give. All men were the same, she thought: destined to screw her over. What did she have to lose by entering into battle with this one?
‘I don’t know who that is, but yes. Call it a radical social experiment where one lone man tries to see if it’s possible to meet a woman without the aid of a dating app. Apparently in the olden days that’s how it used to happen, you know. Men and woman would just have a conversation, out, in public, and if they liked that conversation they’d keep having a conversation, until they decided they’d like another conversation on another day, and maybe another one after that. Experimental times.’
‘How do you not know who Nora Ephron is?’ Nadia replied. ‘She defined an era. Our whole generation grew up on her.’
‘I’ll have to educate myself,’ he said.
‘Start with You’ve Got Mail, and once you understand her genius, read Heartburn.’
‘You’ve Got Mail! I’ve heard of that!’
‘I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address …’
‘Pencils? You say that like it�
��s romantic.’
‘Oh, but it is,’ Nadia said. Was she being charming? She thought she was being acerbic, but the man’s eyes sparkled at her.
‘I’m Eddie,’ he said, reaching out a hand to shake hers.
‘Hello,’ she said.
Eddie smiled. ‘It would be typical for you to tell me your name now,’ he said.
‘Nadia.’
‘And what do you do, Nadia?’
‘I work in artificial intelligence.’
‘Beautiful and clever, I see.’
Nadia raised an eyebrow. ‘My robots have more original pick-up lines than that.’
‘I told you, we’re going old school tonight.’
‘The oldies are the goodies?’
‘The goodies are the goodies,’ he repeated, which didn’t quite make sense, but the way he said it made Nadia nervous. ‘So, same again?’ he pressed, nodding his head towards her empty glass. Nadia shrugged.
‘Sure,’ she said. She surprised herself with her answer.
When the barman delivered two more glasses of wine, he said: ‘Your buddy opened a tab on his card. Do you want me to put these on there? Or do you want to take his card for him and give me a new one, or …?’
Nadia could feel Eddie’s eyes on her. ‘No, no,’ she said, tempting as it was to order a bottle of whatever was most expensive and charge it to the man who had stood her up. She didn’t even know his name! ‘Ah,’ she added. ‘Actually, maybe I could take it for him?’
The barman shrugged. ‘Sure,’ he said. He reached back and got the card. Nadia figured at least she could see what name was embossed on it. She took it off the barman. It said D E WEISSMAN – not a name that meant anything to her.
Eddie whipped out his bank card in the time it took Nadia to reach under the bench for her bag. ‘Allow me,’ he said. ‘We’ll start a tab on this one,’ he said to the barman.
Nadia slipped D E Weissman’s card into her bag.
‘Thank you,’ Nadia said, knowing full well she shouldn’t have another drink without eating something – but doing it anyway. She was here, she looked good, and a funny man was interested in her. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to wait with him until his friend came? A little flirting was making her feel good – like she wasn’t wholly repulsive to all of mankind. Yes. She’d stay for half an hour, just for one more, if only to remind herself that she was fine.
Okay, she was tricking herself into thinking she was fine, but genuine okayness was sure to follow, wasn’t it?
‘Cheers,’ said Eddie, motioning at her with his glass, and Nadia raised hers in the air to meet it.
‘Here’s to doing it the old-fashioned way,’ she said, sounding a lot more confident than she felt.
She really wasn’t going to stay long.
29
Nadia
Nadia’s alarm went off at 6 a.m. She’d set her phone to go off automatically every day, since she kept getting drunk the night before and forgetting, but she hadn’t remembered to turn it off as she went to bed last night, distracted as she was by Eddie kissing behind her ear, down her neck, gently and slowly making his way to her front, to her breasts, her stomach, to her—
‘Shit.’
She hit the alarm off. Her head hurt. Eddie didn’t move. He slept on his front with his head turned away from her, lightly snoring with every inhale. Nadia sat up and blinked slowly, rubbing at her eyes. It was light outside, but not as light as it had been. The days are getting shorter, she thought, her hangover evidently making her grumpy and partial to depressing sayings her grandmother used to utter. It was hardly the bleak midwinter. It just felt that way, in her head.
She looked over at the man beside her. How the hell had that happened? And then it came back to her. A dare. A bet. A challenge that she’d lost, and drank a shot for. Tequila, she thought, bile rising in her throat at the memory of it. She couldn’t remember how long she had stayed for, or why Eddie’s friend hadn’t arrived. She picked up her phone to a text from Gaby: Glad you’re having fun! it said. The only message Nadia had sent before that was, GETTING VERY DRUNK QUITE HANDSOME. Gaby wouldn’t have known that she didn’t mean Train Guy. She meant … oh god. This guy.
She padded to the bathroom and ran the shower. Memories continued to come back to her in pieces: her hand on Eddie’s arm as she laughed, Eddie’s hand on her upper thigh as he whispered something, another round being ordered, and then another. She hadn’t meant to sleep with him. Hadn’t meant to let it all go that far.
Oh god, she thought, filled with regret. Oh god, oh god, oh god.
She peed – a radioactive pee, as dark as her head felt – and turned to run a shower. She could smell the alcohol evaporating as she stood under water so hot it was almost scalding, slowly waking up.
‘Morning, beautiful.’
Eddie pulled back the shower curtain, letting in the cold air. Nadia instinctively covered her boobs and crossed her legs, which was weird considering some of the things Eddie had seen last night.
‘I’ll take a piss and then climb in,’ he said, leaning across with puckered lips. Nadia didn’t know what to do. She leaned to meet him and their lips pecked. He smiled in response and disappeared again.
Nadia listened to him pee and – wait. Could she smell it too? Could she smell his piss? Eddie was whistling to himself, almost cheerfully, and Nadia wondered how he could function. Maybe her headache was as much of an emotional one as a drink-enforced one – she remembered, now, that Train Guy had stood her up, and her tummy sank all over again. That bastard.
Her water ran cold as Eddie flushed the toilet. Nadia turned around to wash her face, thinking maybe the cold water would close her pores (wasn’t that a good thing? Helpful for clear skin?) and then there was another shot of air behind her and Eddie hugged her from behind. She could smell his morning breath.
‘Last night was amazing,’ he said.
Nadia didn’t know what to say. She wanted to say, Excuse me, do you mind? Can I shower alone? You’re being horribly presumptuous.
But instead she smiled weakly and said, ‘I’ll get you a toothbrush.’
Barely rinsing off – she’d wonder all day why her head felt itchy, and then remember that she hadn’t washed out the conditioner properly – she inched past Eddie’s wet body.
‘Hey,’ he said, grabbing her in a moist embrace. ‘Come here.’
He was acting like her boyfriend. Like they’d been together weeks or months, not like they’d just met last night – literally, not even twelve hours ago. Nadia didn’t know the polite way to tell him not to be so clingy, not least when, to his credit, he’d done a superb job of being a gentleman and making sure she came again and again the night before, her pleasure as much centre-stage as his own. That was a low barrier for a lover, and yet true nonetheless. Nadia had slept with many a man who didn’t seem to care less if she came or not – and most certainly performed with the idea that sex was over once he had come. Eddie had been generous and thoughtful, at least. On reflection, he couldn’t possibly have been as drunk as she was.
‘Hmmmm,’ she said, barely grazing his cheek with her lips and ducking out.
As she got dressed in her bedroom he appeared in the doorway, naked and dripping.
‘I think you took the only towel,’ he said. Nadia’s jaw dropped. He was hard, and it was obviously an invitation. He reached for the damp towel she’d discarded on the bed.
‘I’ll just use this,’ he said, leaning over provocatively. He held her eye and Nadia looked at his crotch and he loved that she was looking but she hated that she was. She pulled her eyes away and busied herself in the mirror. She picked up and put down several pots: moisturizer and eye cream and primer, everything designed to make her look more human than she felt. Eddie dried himself off behind her, and then executed his most shocking, perverted act of the morning: he began politely making the bed.
Oh god, thought Nadia. I’ve managed to have a one-night stand with the nicest man in the world. It was lovely that Ed
die was being so thoughtful and kind but in absolutely no way did she want anything to do with him. Train Guy had been the last straw. Nope. That was it. She was taking a break from men, and focusing all the energy she could otherwise have given her love life on work. She’d resume romantic hopefulness after Christmas, or maybe after her next birthday. She didn’t have the stamina for it right now. She was done. Finished. No more sexy romance love-time for Nadia.
She just had to politely extract herself from the topless man in her bedroom first.
‘Which direction are you heading in?’
‘Huh?’ she said. ‘Me?’
Eddie smiled. ‘No, the other woman I made scream my name last night. Yes, you.’
‘Oh. Erm.’ Nadia was stalling. She couldn’t bear to think they’d ride into work together. That wasn’t what this was. She’d made a mistake. Unforgivable, really. If this was the other way around and she had slept with a man who was being arcticly cold, she’d pitch a fit and blame the patriarchy. This was an embarrassing double standard. It wasn’t like she’d deliberately used Eddie as a confidence boost last night, it was just things that things had got out of hand. And they were both adults. Casual sex could happen. That was okay, right?
‘Northern line to London Bridge,’ she said, weakly.
‘Great,’ Eddie replied. ‘That’s the direction I’m headed too.’
Nadia winced and forced a smile in response. ‘Great,’ she said, meaning exactly the opposite.
30
Daniel
Daniel didn’t know what else to do aside from making sure he was on the 7.30 through Angel. He needed her to be on that train. When she was, he’d promised himself that he would march right up to her and say, ‘I’m sorry. My dad died a few months ago and my mother was very upset and I didn’t want to leave. But I had to. I’m all she’s got. My name is Daniel and it is me who has been writing to you. You don’t have to forgive me for standing you up, but please: all I ask is that you give me a second chance at a first impression.’ That’s what he was going to say.
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