Andrew felt a pang of something between embarrassment and affection.
Thanks, TA. In all honesty, part of my being so rubbish at all this, hence why I’m asking for advice, is because I’m not exactly a people person. But it just feels a bit different with her. In a good way. It’s been a very long time since I had someone in my life like this, and it’s been really nice. But there’s still a nagging doubt that I should just leave things as they are.
BamBam67: I can understand that.
TinkerAl: Yeah, me too.
BroadGaugeJim: Ditto. I’m not the biggest people person myself. Sometimes it’s just easier to go it alone in life. No dramas that way.
Andrew went to the kitchen and put the kettle on (just a single tea, this time), thinking about what BroadGauge had said. He knew that he was comforted by how much control he had with this simple little life of his. It was consistent and unspectacular and he had absolutely no desire to jeopardize that. But there were moments—when he saw groups of friends sitting in neat, symmetrical rows on pub benches, or couples holding hands in the street, and he felt a wave of embarrassment that he, a forty-two-year-old man, hadn’t exchanged so much as a cup of tea with an acquaintance or a flirtatious smile with someone on a train in years—that he scared himself with how intense the feeling of longing was. Because maybe, actually, he did want to find people to be close to, to make friends and perhaps even find someone to spend the rest of his life with. He’d gotten adept at sweeping that feeling away as quickly as he could, telling himself that it would only lead to unhappiness. But what if he let it grow—nourished it, in fact? Maybe that was the only way forward. The past was the past and maybe this time, once and for all, he could stop it from dictating his life.
He sipped his tea and replied to BroadGauge.
I don’t know, BG, I thought maybe I was too stuck in my ways, but maybe not! Anyway, perhaps we should get back to train chat, eh? I appreciate the help, though. Opening up like this isn’t really my forte. Feels a bit unnatural, like going for a poo with your coat on. (He decided on balance to delete this last line before posting.)
TinkerAl: Well, let us know how you get on, mate!
BroadGaugeJim: Absolutely!
BamBam67: Indeed!
* * *
—
Despite his newfound determination to get out of his comfort zone, to be part of Peggy’s world and vice versa, Andrew was all too aware that honesty was something of a given when it came to friendship, and as far as Peggy knew he was a happily married father of two, living in relative luxury. He briefly considered the idea of Diane running away to Australia with a surfing instructor, taking the kids with her. But even then, say he managed to convince Peggy it was all just too painful ever to talk about; ten years down the line he still wouldn’t be able to show her a picture of the kids, let alone explain why he hadn’t been out to visit them. His only option was to hope they could get to a point where he could tell her the truth and pray that, somehow, against all odds, she’d accept it.
But his attempts to try to properly cement their friendship got off to a tricky start. Andrew had spent a frustrating Tuesday afternoon working his way through the contacts on an old Nokia phone he’d recovered from a property search, none of his calls being answered. As he plucked up the courage to call a contact saved as “Big Bazza,” he decided to craft what he hoped was a funny e-mail to Peggy. He crowbarred in some in-jokes and generally tried to come across as charming and irreverent, signing off by suggesting they should run away to the pub “right bloody now!!”
Andrew had never before experienced regret quite as potent as he did immediately after hitting “send.” He was wondering whether he had time to locate a hammer and smash up the building’s power supply, or his own face, when Peggy’s response arrived.
“Ha, yeah.”
Oh.
A second message arrived. Here it was—the moment where she saw quite how brilliant and hilarious he was.
“By the way, I finally tracked down the will executor of that bloke who died on Fenham Road. Do you think ‘I want nothing to do with that bastard’ counts as a ‘formal revocation of duty’?”
This was going to be harder than he thought. He knew he was being impatient, but what if Peggy decided she’d suddenly had enough for some reason and quit the job and moved away? What made things worse was that as each day passed he was increasingly aware of how much she was starting to mean to him, and the more he realized this the more ridiculous his behavior became. How the hell was he supposed to seem like someone Peggy wanted to spend time with when he sat there worrying himself into a state of panic that he was looking at her left eye more than her right and, for reasons that were hopelessly unclear, talking to her for a very long time about soup?
What he really should just do was casually inquire if Peggy wanted to meet outside of work. If she didn’t want to, then that was fine. He’d get the message that it was just a work friendship situation and that would be that. So the only thing for it was to be very calm and confident and ask her very directly if, perhaps, and fine if not, of course, she wanted to do something one evening, or at the weekend. On balance, he realized the Beckenham & West Wickham Vintage Toy Train Show was probably an ambitious opening gambit, but a drink, say, or dinner, that was what he should go for. And, just so there could be no backing out, he decided to set himself a deadline—Thursday that week seemed as good as any—where he had to ask her by the time they left work. He just hoped she could deal with him being weird until he’d worked up the courage.
There was, he admitted, a very, very slight chance that he was overthinking things.
* * *
—
Inevitably, by the time Thursday afternoon arrived he still hadn’t asked her. In retrospect he might have decided that delaying things by a day or so was preferable to making his move as they sorted through rubbish in a dead man’s home, but at the time it really felt like it was now or never.
Derek Albrighton had lived to the age of eighty-four before his heart stopped beating. His flat was right on the borough’s boundary edge—one street across and he would’ve been dealt with by another team. The coroner had sounded unusually grumpy when she’d called Andrew and asked him to investigate.
“No obvious next of kin. Neighbors called the police after they’d not seen him for a couple of days. The attending officers were about as useful as a mudguard on a tortoise, as per. Would be great to get this one sorted as soon as poss, Andrew. I’m on holiday soon and I’ve got paperwork up to my ears.”
Derek’s flat was one of those places you felt could never get warm no matter how much you heated it. It was tidy, on the whole, apart from the dull white powder that was spread out on the kitchen linoleum, with footprints in it, as if it were pavement covered in a thin layer of snow.
“It’s flour,” Peggy said. “Either that or rat poison. Did I mention I’m a crap cook? Ah, but what have we here?” She reached for a large biscuit tin that was sitting on top of the microwave. She cooed as she removed the lid, beckoning Andrew over to show him the still-pristine Victoria sponge that was inside.
“Shame he didn’t get to eat it after all the effort he clearly went to,” Andrew said.
“A tragedy,” Peggy said, reverently replacing the lid, as if it were a time capsule they were about to bury. Andrew decided to try out a lean against the kitchen counter, one leg crossed behind the other, an eyebrow raised in what he hoped suggested an irreverent take on early-years Roger Moore Bond.
“So, you a big fan of . . . cake, then?” he said. Unfortunately, or, perhaps not, Peggy was busying herself with some paperwork she’d found and was only half paying attention.
“Yeah, course, who isn’t?” she said. “I wouldn’t trust anyone who says they aren’t a fan of cake, to be honest. It’s like those people who say they don’t like Christmas. Get over yourself, of course you do. What else do
n’t you like? Wine and sex and bloody . . . ten-pin bowling.”
Andrew winced. This wasn’t going well. For one thing, he hated ten-pin bowling.
“Nothing here, no phonebook or anything either,” Peggy said, shuffling the bits of paper newsreader-style. “Bedroom?”
“Bedroom. Sure thing . . . you,” Andrew said. He tapped out a little rhythm on the countertop to show how devil-may-care he was—how music ran through his soul—pausing only very briefly to deal with the massive coughing fit he was suffering as a result of his jaunty drumming’s disturbing yet more flour. Peggy was looking at him with a mixture of suspicion and confusion, like a cat that’s seen itself in the mirror.
The bedroom was dominated by a surprisingly plush double bed, with purple satin sheets and brass headboard—incongruous next to the tattered blinds, worn carpet and cheap chest of drawers at the foot of the bed. On top sat an ancient-looking TV and VHS machine. Andrew and Peggy knelt at either side of the bed and began checking under the mattress.
“I was thinking,” Andrew said, emboldened slightly by the fact Peggy couldn’t see him, “you know that pub we went to after your first property inspection?”
“Uh-huh,” Peggy said.
“That was nice, wasn’t it?”
“Not sure I’d say nice, but there was beer there and that always feels like a plus in a pub.”
“Ha . . . yeahhh.”
Not there then.
“I didn’t see what the food was like,” he said. “Do you . . . have a favorite sort of cuisine, for, you know, when you’re out?”
Cuisine?
“Hang on,” Peggy said. “I’ve got something.”
Andrew edged around to the foot of the bed.
“Oh,” Peggy said. “It’s just a receipt. For some socks.”
Andrew was starting to feel desperate. He was really going to have to say something now before he bottled it. “So I was just, you know . . . wondering-if-you-fancied-going-for-dinner-or-something-after-work-sometime-soon.” As he went for another casual lean his elbow pushed a button on the television, which began to turn itself on with a series of clunks and whines, sounds that seemed to entirely encapsulate the 1980s. Moments later, the room was filled with the unmistakable sounds of sex. Andrew spun around to see a middle-aged woman on the screen in nothing but a pair of high heels being taken from behind by a man naked apart from a white baseball cap.
“Oh my god,” Peggy said.
“Oh my god,” the man in the baseball cap answered.
“You like that, don’t ya, ya dirty sod?” the woman grunted, rhetorically, it would seem. As Andrew backed away to fully take in the horror, he trod on something. It was a video case—the cover of which featured a shot of the couple on-screen in midflow. Red block capitals announced the film’s title: IT’S QUIM UP NORTH!
Andrew slowly rotated the case so that Peggy could see. She had already been crying silently with laughter, but this, apparently, was the final straw, and she let out a loud, gleeful cackle. After a moment Andrew began edging toward the TV as if he were going back to a lit firework, weight on his back foot, one hand covering his face, jabbing randomly at the buttons until he hit “pause” and a grotesque tableau shuddered on the screen.
In the end they managed to compose themselves enough to finish the rest of their search with the requisite solemnity. It was Andrew who found a tattered documents folder in a drawer that had a phone number for a “Cousin Jean” written on the flap.
“Well I for one am not calling Cousin Jean,” Peggy said.
“It does seem a bit strange after . . . that,” Andrew said.
Peggy shook her head, bewildered. “I was going to suggest we should get a coin and toss for it, but that seems a horribly inappropriate thing to say now.”
Andrew snorted. “I can’t quite work out what to think about Derek Albrighton.”
“Well it’s clear to me that the bloke had life absolutely figured out,” Peggy said.
Andrew raised his eyebrows.
“Oh come on,” Peggy said. “If I get to eighty-four and my day consists of baking a cake and celebrating that achievement with a wank, then I’ll be pretty bloody happy.”
* * *
—
“You two look pleased with yourselves,” Keith said when they arrived back at the office.
“Thick as thieves,” Meredith said, clacking a pen between her top and bottom teeth.
“Bit like you two at Cameron’s the other night,” Peggy said calmly, which shut them up. She hung her coat on the back of her chair and winked at Andrew. He grinned back goofily. Peggy might not have had time to answer his question about dinner—randy Derek Albrighton had put paid to that—but it had been such a fun walk back to the office that he couldn’t feel too despondent. Cameron chose that moment to amble out of his office and, in an uncharacteristically solemn voice, ask them to join him in the break-out area. Ever since the disastrous dinner party he’d carried himself with the air of a well-meaning schoolteacher who’d let his students bring in a game on the last day of term, only for them to spray Silly String all over the place and write rude words on their desks. The five of them sat in a semicircle and Cameron steepled his fingers against his chin.
“I’ve been mulling over whether to actually say anything, guys, but I’ve decided I’d like to talk to you all about what happened last week at my house. Before I speak, would any of you like to say anything?” The water cooler hummed. A strip light overhead flickered. Outside, a vehicle announced that it was reversing.
“Okay,” Cameron said. “Well, what I wanted to say to you was that—and, believe me, I hate to say this—I was really rather disappointed”—his voice cracked, and he had to stop and gather himself—“disappointed with you all. What with two of you running off early and two of you disappearing upstairs. What should have been a nice evening for all of us to bond ended up having the opposite outcome. I mean, talk about low-hanging fruit, guys.” He waited for this to sink in. Andrew hadn’t realized he’d taken it this badly. “However,” Cameron continued. “I very much believe in second chances, so let’s give this another go and see how we get on, okay, team? Meredith has kindly volunteered to host the next evening. Andrew, you can be next.”
Andrew instantly pictured the stain on his kitchen wall, the battered old sofa and the distinct lack of a family there, and bit down hard on his cheeks.
Cameron kept them for further blather about budgets and targets, then decided to regale them with a spectacularly dull anecdote about he and Clara losing each other in the supermarket, before finally they were all allowed to go back to their desks. Not long after, Peggy sent Andrew an e-mail. “I don’t know about you, but all I was thinking about during that was whether they ever made It’s Quim Up North 2.”
“Would you need to have seen the first one to understand the sequel?” Andrew replied.
A minute later he received two messages at once. The first was from Peggy: “Ha! Quite possibly. Oh, and I forgot to say: Yes to dinner. Where are we going?”
The second was a text from an unknown number: How many letters am I going to have to send you before you grow some balls and reply? Or are you too busy thinking about what you’ll spend Sally’s money on?
— CHAPTER 13 —
It took Andrew six attempts to dial Carl’s number without hanging up before it connected. He hadn’t thought about what he was going to say. He just knew he had to stop this.
“Hello, Cynergy?” A hollow sense of friendliness in the voice.
“It’s Andrew.”
A pause.
“Oh. You finally decided to call then.”
“These letters. Please—please just stop sending them,” Andrew said.
“The truth hurts, doesn’t it.” A statement, not a question.
“What do you want me to say?” Andrew said.
“How about an apology. It was you that made her ill. You did this.” Carl’s voice was shaking already. “Can’t you see that? She spent the last twenty years trying to make things right, and you never let her. You were too stubborn to forgive her, and her heart was a fucking wreck because of you.”
“That’s not true,” Andrew said, unsure of the words even as he said them.
“You’re pathetic, you know that? God, I just keep imagining what Sally would be thinking now—how much she’d regret what she’d done. I bet she’d—”
“Okay, okay—you can have the money. I never asked for it in the first place. As soon as I get it I’ll transfer it over, but you have to promise to just . . . leave me alone.”
He heard Carl sniff and clear his throat. “I’m glad you’ve come to your senses. I will ‘leave you alone,’ as you put it. But I’ll be in touch again when I know you’ve got the money, you can be sure of that.” Then the line went dead.
* * *
—
Andrew made some beans on toast and logged on to the subforum, eager to forget about his conversation with Carl.
I’m after a bit of restaurant advice, chaps, he wrote. Somewhere nice but not TOO expensive. Think LNER 0-6-0T “585” J50 Class rather than LNER 0-6-0 “5444” J15. Within minutes the subforum had come up trumps with several suggestions. Eventually, he settled on an Italian restaurant that was trendy enough not to put pound signs on the menu but not so fancy that the meals were described in a Tuscan mountain dialect.
The next morning they were at a property inspection and Andrew reminded Peggy of the plan. “There’s no rush, obviously, but just—whenever you’ve got a mo—maybe ping me over some dates for when you’re free for our dinner thing,” he said, as casually as possible, even throwing in a yawn for good measure. Peggy looked up from the Tupperware box containing the last will and testament of Charles Edwards, which she’d just discovered under the kitchen sink.
How Not to Die Alone Page 13
