by Robert Webb
‘That’s okay.’
He ignored the interruption. ‘But, just going with this – how come you were so keen to sleep with me “tonight” but not so very interested “tonight”?’
It wasn’t a stupid question, even though he was now behaving very stupidly. She leaned forward and the insight tumbled upon her as she spoke. She should have seen this coming. ‘Because I’m a different person now. But that isn’t the problem. The problem is that you’re a different person too.’
‘I’m sure that’s terribly significant but you’ll have to—’
‘You died, mate. And even though you don’t believe me, you’re now and forever someone who sat in a room and had to hear it. You’re different now. Right now, you don’t even like me, much less want to marry me.’
‘Oh crumbs, the wedding’s off! Never mind.’ Luke stood and affected a yawn. ‘Well, this has been fascinating but I’d like you to go.’
Kate persisted. ‘And I’m different too. Not just because in my head I’m older, but because I’ve only just seen how you treat people you don’t believe. And it isn’t very nice. If you really think I’m mad then you ought to be nicer to me than this.’
‘Right, yeah – I’m a crushing disappointment. That must be why, according to you, it took us eleven years to get married.’
Kate rose too. ‘That’s not why it took eleven years.’ She slowly crossed to pick up her coat.
‘Oh well, do tell! Don’t leave me hanging!’
She turned to him regretfully. ‘I was waiting, Luke. I was doing what any woman would do, given a bit of time and the sense she was born with. I was waiting for the bloke to grow up.’
It was an unkind remark but, she now realised, horribly true. The young Luke took it as a debating point. ‘I don’t see what gives you the right to … Hang on, can we just take a step back here? Can we just talk about the fucking INSANITY of what you’re saying? Apparently I should be nicer but, look … you don’t seem to be exhibiting any classic signs of mental illness so what are you doing? What’s your fucking game?’
Saddened and defeated, Kate put her coat on. It was useless – she had failed him again. But she refused to leave the room with him hectoring her like this. Just for the sake of her pride, she asked, ‘Do you know much about mental illness then, Luke?’
‘As a matter of fact, I do. In fact, my parents wanted me to be a—’
‘No,’ she interrupted. ‘Not both your parents. Just Richard. He wanted you to be a doctor, like him.’
Luke had his mouth open to reply but no sound came out. Kate realised she’d been going about this in completely the wrong way. It wasn’t a time-traveller’s knowledge of Luke’s future that was going to get through to him. It was a wife’s knowledge of his past.
She stood simply before him, her hands in her coat pockets. ‘I know how Richard felt because it was one of the first things he said to me when you took me home to meet your parents next summer.’
‘Took you … next … fucking …’
‘Katie, that’s not what a memory like yours is for.’
‘What’s it for, then?’
She went on. ‘It’s a lovely place – 12 Fleetwood Avenue. Big, proper detached house. I’d guessed you were well-to-do but I must say it came as a shock. First time I’d been in a house with two staircases. I didn’t know there were such things except off the telly. Lucky boy, growing up there. You were allowed to launch your Evel Knievel off the top of the back stairs but not the other one: the main one with the brass stair rods. And two gardens. Barbara made the front pretty and kept some herbs – rosemary and parsley and mint. You got your Lego spacemen to explore it like it was an alien planet with giant flowers. And round the back – a long lawn that Richard kept in check with his Flymo. You told me that when you were little it used to be your job to pick out any stones before he started mowing. Weekends and summer holidays. And then bring him a bottle of Batemans ale halfway through. You’d sit down together and he’d quiz you about the periodic table or get you to name all the bones in the human body. You almost always got the answers right. But then when you were a teenager you’d rather be down the bottom, talking to the big goldfish in the pond, thinking up stories. You’d named the fish – all boys, of course: Rodney and Del Boy, Hannibal and Murdoch.’
Luke looked like he had entered some kind of trance.
‘Luke, you told me these things. And I’m quite good at remembering, you see? One day you found Murdoch floating on the surface. You were upset and you walked back into the house and your mum had Radio 2 on in the kitchen. You remember what song was playing, right?’
He had taken half a step back and now his eyes were glazed with reverie. He said hoarsely, ‘Yes.’
‘You didn’t mention the dead fish to Barbara. You walked straight past her because you were fourteen and boys don’t cry. But you remember the song. It struck you that the song was sad all right, but was too cheap and shit to fit the occasion. You couldn’t believe that the world just carried on regardless, even though Murdoch had died.’
‘It was—’
She had to interrupt. ‘It was “Every Loser Wins” by Nick Berry.’
There followed a moment where the two of them could have burst out laughing as they contemplated the gravity and magnitude of ‘Every Loser Wins’ by Nick Berry. Kate wished, as Luke had wished before her, that this pivotal track had been Mozart’s Requiem or at least something a bit thoughtful by Sting. But the moment passed and Luke seemed to make a decision.
‘Okay, listen to me,’ he said steadily. ‘I don’t know who you are, or what you want, but I need you to get out. Now.’
‘Luke – just think! How could I know these things? And why would I say them? Why would I lie? What do I get out of this?’
‘HOW SHOULD I KNOW!?’ he yelled. ‘How should I know how your fucking sick brain works?’
‘I’ve thought about it. You could pretend that you’re having seizures. That would at least convince them to give you a scan or—’
‘GET OUT! JUST GET OUT!’ He made a sudden movement towards her and she put her hands up in surrender and backed away.
‘Okay! All right!’ she said. ‘Fucking hell, no need to blow a gasket! Jesus!’ Intending to leave, Kate instinctively checked her pockets for her phone and was exasperated for the eightieth time that day to find it missing. If she couldn’t help this idiotic boy, then what the hell was she doing here anyway? She turned to the door and then immediately spun back again. ‘Fuck it, I’m going dancing,’ she announced.
‘You’re what?’
‘I’m going out with the others. I’m going to Blossom and I’m going to score some drugs or get pissed and throw myself at the first bloke I see. You can stay here.’
Luke was poleaxed by this unnecessary order. ‘I … I fully intend to stay here.’
‘Good, then.’
‘Good.’
She opened the door and was halfway through it when he called her name. ‘Kate!’
‘What is it?’
Calmer now and slightly abashed, he approached and addressed his question to the doorframe. ‘Will you be all right?’
She thought of her recurring dream and how this was the assurance he gave her. You’re going to be all right. For a moment she couldn’t speak. ‘I mean …’ he went on, ‘tonight. Going out on your own.’
She managed a business-like nod. ‘Thanks, but I won’t be alone. I’ve got friends.’
Chapter 16
She heard them before she saw them. Kate rounded the corner onto Coney Street and approached the queue for Blossom. From near the front came the sound of Kes at full pitch. ‘No, no! You’re all too tuneful! It has to be one note! You in particular, Toby, are singing like a choirboy. It’s giving me an erection but it’s completely wrong!’
Kes’s robust, twentieth-century attitude to paedophile jokes would never change but this wasn’t the thing that caught Kate’s attention. She remembered this perverse project of his. Kes, bound f
or a performing career in West End musicals, was currently obsessed with the idea of becoming a millionaire impresario by mounting a series of productions where all the songs were sung on one note. Just one. In every other respect, the musicals would be the same: the production values would be high, the sets and costumes, starry cast and glitzy marketing would be exactly those which West End audiences had come to expect. But every word of every song would be sung on the same note. G sharp, to be precise. Because, according to Kes, it was ‘a criminally neglected note and easily one of the funniest’.
‘It will be magnificent,’ he was saying – not just to Toby and Amy but to at least a dozen freshers and regulars in the queue whom he had been leading in non-song. ‘To begin with, the stupid London audience will be baffled. Then, they will find it hilarious. Hysterically, dangerously so. Some of them will literally soil themselves and the ushers will have to dive in with mops and commodes. Towards the end of Act One, the good people of Shaftesbury Avenue will hate it. But then they will love it again. Then they will find “I Whistle a Happy Tune” being sung on G sharp intensely upsetting. But then transcendent! At the interval, most of them will leave. But then …’
From Kate’s perspective, this plan had not yet come to fruition. In fact, Kes would be pretty much over the idea within the next eight days. But she remembered the soundtrack to her Freshers’ Week featured large tracts of Oliver! And The King and I being spiritedly droned at the instigation of Keven Lloyd. The more people joined in, the funnier it became. But if you weren’t one of the people joining in, it sounded obnoxious and awful. The experience was not unlike being friends with Kes himself.
She found them in the queue, slipping her arm into Amy’s. She checked Kate’s expression and then just accepted the gesture with a smile and patted Kate’s hand without comment.
Here’s to the friends who don’t ask questions!
Kate felt immediately ashamed of the thought. Friends get to ask questions when they need to. Friends get to intrude. And their own friends let them.
Toby looked especially pleased to see Kate. ‘Save me, for God’s sake,’ he said.
Kate scratched her nose briefly and asked, ‘Save you?’
‘From this. From the enforced rehearsal of this man’s crazy dream.’
‘The exact musical doesn’t matter,’ Kes exclaimed. ‘But surely, on a night like this, we simply must do “Getting to Know You”.’
Amy gave Kate’s arm a rough squeeze. ‘We have been,’ she said quite loudly. ‘For example, I’ve just found out that Toby’s got a girlfriend back in Edinburgh that he plans to break up with by writing her a letter!’
‘Oh Toby!’ Kate exclaimed. ‘You can’t do it by letter!’ Kate knew perfectly well that the girlfriend at home was an imaginary character that Toby conjured whenever women he didn’t fancy came on to him. He really was tremendously fussy. And Amy, Kate realised, was leaning quite heavily on her arm.
‘I didn’t say that, Amy,’ Toby objected mildly. ‘I just said we’re thinking things over, y’know? Taking a spell.’
‘Very grown-up,’ Kate said.
Toby had been swaying slightly but suddenly found his balance. ‘I like to think so,’ he said to her. He looked away with a flicker of a frown as if he wished he could have thought of something wittier.
‘Right then, almost there!’ Kes bellowed. ‘One more song to mark the occasion of our very first visit – and very possibly last visit – to … what the hell is it called again?’
‘Blossom, y’student tosser!’ somebody called out. There was a genial chuckle from the regulars.
‘Thank you, member of the public!’ Kes replied, shitfaced. And then conspiratorially to his friends, ‘I love my public, you see. Love them.’
In they went, past the bouncer, through the unprepossessing door, up the steep, greasy staircase.
‘Mind your step there,’ said Toby. ‘It smells like the whole of York has thrown up on these stairs every night for two hundred years.’ Instinctively he offered Kate his hand but then withdrew it and immediately muttered, ‘Sorry.’
To her own surprise, Kate reached up and took it. ‘Thanks,’ she said.
Toby paused and now they were walking up the narrow staircase side by side. ‘Yup, I daresay you’re capable of walking up a flight of stairs unaided.’
Kate smiled to herself. ‘I probably would have managed. But it was nice of you anyway.’
‘You’re not one of those scary feminists then, Kate?’
‘Actually, Toby, I’m one of the scariest feminists you’ll ever meet.’
‘Oh Christ. Now I’m in trouble.’
‘Nah, I’m just kidding.’ Her smile faded as she thought of the times she had picked her husband’s THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE t-shirt up off the bedroom floor; the way – along with the rest of his laundry – she had washed it, dried it, folded it and put it back in his drawer only to find it on the floor again a couple of weeks later. She said, ‘Actually, I’m not sure the sisterhood would be entirely thrilled by some of my choices.’
Toby looked at her in surprise. ‘Well, I can’t say I’m in touch with the sisterhood but I’m sure it’s more forgiving than you think.’
‘We’ll see.’ It felt daring as she gave his hand a playful squeeze. By way of return he gently intensified his hold, the soft hug of his palm and fingers sending tingles of warmth up her arm and through her body.
Oblivious, Toby glanced behind them. ‘Well, they let us in so we seem to have cleared the dress code.’
Kate enjoyed the idea that dearest Blossom could have something as grand as a dress code. ‘We both look fabulous,’ she said.
‘You do.’ He peeked down at his naff waistcoat. ‘This thing has seen better days.’
They came to a halt as the queue bottlenecked for the coat-dumping broom cupboard. Kate gave Toby’s waistcoat a more detailed inspection than she had the first time around. She noticed a patch of cotton in a lighter blue. ‘Well, somebody loves it.’
He followed her gaze. ‘Aye, the moths got together in the wardrobe over the summer and gave it a good seeing to.’
‘Did your mum fix it up?’
Toby gave her a look of mock offence. ‘How dare you? All my own work, I’ll have you know.’
‘Really? You darn your own clothes?’
He looked genuinely surprised. ‘Most certainly. Who else should be doing it?’
Kate giggled. ‘Sorry.’
‘No, you’re all right. I’m not the only abandoned public school boy with a sewing kit in his trunk.’ But then as an afterthought he murmured, ‘Although there’s probably not many of us, truth to tell.’
And although Kate had been through this Blossom process many times – climbing the stairs, getting the green hand-stamp, dumping her coat, entering the wide, low-ceilinged room with the restaurant tables pushed to the edges – for the first time today she felt something was new. She felt, in fact, as though she was living in the present. She listened to Amy and Kes behind them, giving a rousing G sharp rendition from The King and I, and she kept Toby’s hand in hers as they made their way to the bar.
Getting to knoooow you,
Getting to know aaall abooooout you,
Getting to liiiike you,
Getting to hope you like me.
She danced like she was eight years old. Not eighteen. Eight. Even Kes couldn’t keep up with her, and he was by no means a retiring presence on the dance floor. Kate felt every cheesy beat the Blossom DJ sent her way as a call to life itself: spinning, jumping, headbanging, moshing, grooving, laughing, screaming, falling, dancing like a woman possessed. It should have frightened people but this was Blossom and her joy was unconquerable and infectious. After his second tequila shot, Toby too lost all inhibition – as well as his waistcoat and hairband. His dirty blond locks thrashed around his slim centre of gravity, the sweat of his white t-shirt clinging to him like a groupie to an unlikely sex-god. He and Kate were giving the world a brief refresher course
on the meaning of joy: by turns daft and flirtatious; decorous and chaotic; together and apart. But always keeping a space between them when they locked eye-contact that crackled with potential; as if getting too close would complete a circuit and the whole city would blow a fuse. Not since she caught Olga Bhukarin in a crafty shin-sweep and saw that silver medal in her grasp had Kate felt so sure that her body was in the right place doing the right thing. Amy pumped her fist in the air and laughed as Kes struck a rhythmic series of curious poses which threatened to put another dent in the panelled ceiling. Urban Cookie Collective threw out the pounding throb of their gift to the world.
‘We must meet this woman!’ Toby yelled to Kate.
‘What?’
‘We must meet this woman! She has not only the KEY but also the SECRET!’
‘I LOVE IT that she has both the KEY and the SECRET! I wonder what the difference is?!’
‘She doesn’t seem to give a shit!’
Kate laughed and moved closer to shout across Toby’s left ear. ‘Don’t go anywhere. I need a piss.’
He pretended to be confused. ‘What? You want to give me a kiss?’
‘No. I want a …’ She let her hands rest on his shoulders and they slowed down, losing the beat but swaying together. ‘Actually a kiss would be great,’ she said.
Toby’s courage deserted him and he tried to keep up the joke. ‘A piss would be great? Well, we all sometimes need—’
She kissed him. She reached up and pushed the fingers of one hand through his tangled hair; the other hand at his waist and squeezing to find a hip bone moving in time with her. She felt a strong hand round the small of her back as he gently lifted her into him. And under the taste of booze and tobacco – what was that? She nearly laughed as she identified the sweetness.
Strawberries. Fuck me, if this boy doesn’t taste of strawberries.
He kissed with feeling and self-control; half the passion was in what he held back. It was the sexiest kind of kiss. It was a promise.
They were snogging in the middle of the dance floor, getting occasionally jostled by their fellow boppers. They broke off and smiled at each other in discovery – she took his hand and led him to a corner.
