by Holly Miller
“How do you mean?”
“Does he have a job? He always seems a bit . . .”
“What?”
“. . . vagrant.”
I like that about Joel, the raw appeal of imperfection. “Does it matter?”
“Oh, you have such a soft spot for him.”
“I do not.”
“Whatever. I approve. You could do far worse.”
“Thanks, Dot. You can go now.”
“Fine. But can you please not stay here watching him sleep until midnight?”
“I promise I won’t.”
She demonstrates her faith in me by banging the door hard on her way out, giving me a double thumbs-up through the window.
Joel stirs, so I head over to his table, Murphy at my side.
“We’re about to close,” I tell him gently.
He blinks as he looks up and around. “Sorry?”
“You dropped off there.”
For a moment or two he stares at me before jerking into a sitting position, swearing softly. “Sorry. That’s embarrassing.”
“Not at all. Happens all the time.”
“It does?”
I hesitate, then smile. “No, but . . . it’s fine. Really.”
“Oh, and you’re trying to go home.” He scrambles to his feet, slides his notebook into his pocket, picks up his espresso cup and plate.
“I’ll take it.”
“No, please, let me—”
In the next second, the cup and plate have shattered on the floor, like the shells of dropped eggs.
Joel shuts his eyes briefly, then looks at me and winces. “It’s customers like me who really make this job, isn’t it?”
“It’s fine.” I laugh, not wanting to admit that, in fact, it is. “You go. I’ll clear it up.”
He ignores me and bends down, starts collecting fragments. I tell Murphy to stay where he is, then join Joel on the floor to help.
We pick up the remaining shards, fingertips occasionally brushing. I find myself trying not to look at him while my heartbeat goes bananas.
Ceramic cleared, we get to our feet as a drumroll of thunder sounds from outside. The sky has ripened now, and the clouds are plum-purple.
“Can I pay you for the breakage?”
“Not at all. It was my fault.”
Joel does something to my stomach with his eyes. “Listen, sorry you’ve had to throw me out.”
“Oh, that’s okay. I had to do the same with a couple who were on a first date once.”
He seems surprised. “Bored each other to sleep?”
I laugh. “No. They were just so . . . absorbed in each other, they didn’t notice everyone else had left.”
I can see him thinking this over. “Absorbed in . . . scintillating conversation?”
“Not exactly. I sort of had to prize them apart.”
“Ah, the joy of youth.”
“Afraid not. They were midfifties, easily.”
Now he laughs too. “Strangely, I don’t feel as bad now.”
I grin. “Good.”
By the door, Joel stops to fuss Murphy for a couple of moments more, then says good-bye and leaves. I watch him walk away and cross the road, swept along with the stormy air.
As he reaches the opposite pavement, he glances back over his shoulder. I look quickly down, scrub hard at a table that’s already gleaming.
10.
Joel
We’re gathered in the fug of Dad’s steamed-up kitchen, preparing Sunday lunch. My niece Amber is thundering through the house in a dinosaur costume, which, due to its impressive tail, has reduced her spatial awareness to approximately zero.
“Well, it’s getting ridiculous, if you ask me,” Dad’s saying to Doug, like I’m nowhere to be seen.
“Nobody did ask you,” I point out.
Doug kicked off today’s Morgan family spat by asking if I’d managed to find a job yet. When I didn’t reply, he simply carried on talking to Dad about it, as if I’d got up and left the room.
“Unemployment’s at the root of all your problems, I’m sure.” Dad peers at me over the rim of his glasses, carrot and peeler in hand. “The sooner you go back, the better.”
Not another quicksand of a conversation about how I couldn’t carry on. About how bad I felt at the surgery that final morning. (They don’t know the extent of it: that I’d been drinking heavily again, was hungover and incompetent, sleep-deprived and sad.) The time to go had come.
It visits me like voltage sometimes, how much I miss it. Like when I’m walking my pack of dogs in the park. Or if I pass a cat, sprawled out and sun-drunk on a garden wall. If I smell disinfectant (synonymous, always, with long hours at the surgery). Or when I spend time with Kieran, laughing the way we used to.
“They’re not holding my job open, Dad. I left.”
He tuts. “What a waste of a degree.”
It’s not his words that slice me open so much as his disdain. Fortunately, a six-year-old stegosaurus is approaching at speed. “Uncle—Joel—you’re—it!” Amber squeals, ramming the spikes of her spine against my shins.
I beam at her, delighted. “It’s as if you knew.”
“Bad luck,” jeers Doug, from over by the sink, slow-witted as a snail.
“Back in a minute. Just got to deal with a dinosaur.” I wipe my hands on a tea towel, hurtle into the fray with my best Mesozoic-era roar.
* * *
• • •
Later, Tamsin comes and leans against the fridge while I’m washing up.
Her husband Neil’s on drying. He doesn’t really do chitchat, but he’s amenable and thoughtful in a way that makes me happy he married my sister.
“Heard Dad giving you a hard time earlier,” she says, nibbling a fingernail.
“Nothing new there.”
“He doesn’t mean it, you know.”
Three years my junior, my sister’s almost a whole foot shorter than me. Like Doug, she’s red-haired, though she has a vast glossy shock of it that strangers frequently approach her to rave about. (I’d wager this doesn’t happen too often to Doug and his buzz cut.)
She seems tired today, distracted. More like me than herself.
“Thanks for being nice,” I say, “but he absolutely does.”
“He just worries.” (Subtext: We all do.)
“Points for the dinosaur costume, by the way.”
Tamsin rolls her eyes but smiles. “She wore it for a party last week and now it’s her new favorite thing. Still, it livened up our trip to the shops yesterday. We like to be a bit eccentric in this family, don’t we?”
Well, yes, we do. “True.”
“Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask. What was with the To Let sign outside your place a few weeks back? You’re not moving, are you?”
Steve and Hayley left last night, and I couldn’t think of a good way to apologize for having been such a lousy friend and neighbor. So I lay low for the evening. Failed to answer the final knock on my door.
“No,” I tell her. “Steve and Hayley.”
“Something you said?”
“Probably.” I concentrate on removing every last scrap of gravy from the jug.
I sense her taking me in. “Okay. Well, we’re heading off.”
“Already? Sure you don’t want to stay? Any minute now Dad’s bound to ask why I haven’t got a girlfriend.”
Normally this is the kind of lame quip that would make Tamsin laugh. But when I look up, the light’s worked loose from her eyes. “I just . . . let’s just say . . .”
“We’re not pregnant,” Neil says quietly, dropping the tea towel. He reaches out for my sister’s hand. “We just found out.”
I feel their pain strike the back of my throat. “Sorry.”
Tamsin nods. “I told Dad and Do
ug I’ve got a headache.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll get our stuff.” Neil leaves the room, patting me on the back as he goes.
“Don’t forget our dinosaur,” Tamsin calls after him. Her voice is parchment-thin.
“I’m sorry, Tam,” I manage, once we’re alone.
She nods, tips her head back against the fridge. “God. I want this so badly, Joel.”
I remember the day Amber was born. I raced up to the hospital, spent the afternoon staring down at my brand-new niece in her little cot. I was puffed up with pride, thinking, My sister’s made a baby. Look, everyone—an actual living human!
“I mean, at what point . . . at what point do you . . . ?” She heaves out a breath. “It’s been five years. Five.”
“It’ll happen for you,” I say quietly.
“You can’t know that.”
But I do. I know because I dreamed it just two months ago. Tamsin in hospital, me at her side, holding her hand. And next to the bed, the best part of all. A baby boy, Harry, asleep in a cot.
She doesn’t know it yet, but he’s coming next Christmas.
I grab her hand, give it a squeeze. “Yeah, I do. Hang in there, Tam, please. I promise it’ll all work out.”
* * *
• • •
Washing-up done, I take a few steps down Dad’s back-garden path. It’s mid-October, and the air is thick with an autumn chill. A grubby chasm of cloud is squatting over the nearby houses, spitting drizzle.
Mum loved this garden, called it her sanctuary. I miss her every day.
She passed away from breast cancer when I was thirteen. I dreamed about it four years ahead of time, one awful icebound night in November.
The dream struck me with fear in a way I’d never known. I told no one what I’d seen: I was terrified of scaring Mum, enraging Dad. Breaking up our family. Would I be blamed? Was I causing these things to happen? I became almost mute: wouldn’t speak, refused to smile. How could I be happy, knowing what I knew? The color had been washed from my world. I feared falling asleep, grew almost allergic to shutting my eyes.
She finally told us at Christmas three years later. We were lined up on the sofa like a row of errant toddlers. I’ll never forget the expression on her face. Because she wasn’t looking at Dad, who was standing stiffly by, emotions already fenced off. Or at Tamsin, who was weeping. Or at Doug, so quiet he was barely breathing. She was looking at me, because she knew I already knew. Why? her eyes implored me. Why didn’t you tell me?
Not giving her every last damn chance to live remains the biggest regret of my life.
* * *
• • •
Behind me, the back door slams. Doug.
“Hello, little brother.” Calling me that is my younger brother’s private joke that only he finds funny. He congratulates himself with a swig of beer.
I resist the urge to comment on his jumper. I’m sure he probably thinks of it as golfing apparel, despite never having swung a club in his life.
From out of nowhere, Doug produces a packet of fags. I stare at him sparking up. “What are you—”
“I tell you what.” He drags, then exhales. “It’s actually kind of exciting, trying not to get caught.” He glances over his shoulder toward the living room window. His wife Lou’s in there with their kids, Bella and Buddy, trying to persuade them off the iPad and toward Dad’s game of Boggle.
Doug takes a couple of furtive steps left, so he’s shielded by the crab apple tree.
I have to laugh. “You are tragic.” My own breath looks like smoke in the frigid air.
“Yep. Lou and I don’t have much fun these days. My life is essentially work, gym, TV, sleep. Talk about dull.”
An uneventful life, I think, not without a pang of jealousy. Don’t knock it. “So you’re a smoker with a gym membership,” I remark conversationally. “Kind of a bad investment, wouldn’t you say?”
He ignores me. Takes another drag, eyes narrowing. “Speaking of fun.”
I wait. Doug’s definition of fun is almost never the same as mine.
“This ‘anxiety’ of yours . . .” He gives the word air quotes, just to demonstrate his manliness. “Lou’s talking about going on holiday next year. Fuerteventura. The kids’ first time abroad.”
I breathe through a couple of minor palpitations. “Nice.”
“Yeah, one of those all-inclusive places.”
A thought cartwheels my way. “What—with kids’ clubs? Swimming pools and stuff?”
Doug shrugs. “Probably.”
“You should get Bella involved. Lou said she’s a proper little fish.”
Doug snorts. “Okay, well, cheers for the parenting advice. Anyway, the whole thing depends on whether you’re planning to turn up at the airport, waving your arms above your head and ordering us not to get on the plane.”
Well, I would if his plane was going down. Fortunately for Doug, it’s unlikely. I happen to know his chances of dying in a commercial jet crash are about one in eleven million.
Still, I reckon I deserve a little more credit. It’s doubtful I’d be that blatant, unless it was a hands-down emergency. Yes, I come out with weird warnings, strange bits of advice, but I’ve tried to be subtle, over the years. Like when I steered Doug gently clear of a pub brawl that would have fractured his jaw. Advised Lou against a trip to a dodgy dentist, her fated trigger for months of chronic neck pain. Intercepted them both before they got mugged in town. (I reported the guy in question, though the most I could actually lay claim to was “witnessing suspicious behavior,” the irony of which did not escape me.)
“Maybe a holiday is what you need,” Doug says. “When was the last time you went anywhere?”
I fail to reply. Who admits, in this Instagram age with the world at our fingertips, that they’ve never once left the UK?
“Oh, I know,” Doug says. “Magaluf, 2003.”
(I’d lied, of course. Told my family I’d gone abroad with the lads I’d met in my first year of uni. In fact, I moved into my second-year house-share early, then eavesdropped on their stories when they eventually joined me. Repeated them to Doug like they were my own.)
Doug shakes his head. “A lads’ holiday at uni and nothing since. And you say I’m tragic.”
“I’m happy here.” By which I mean it’s good to know I can get somewhere fast if I dream something heart-stopping and need to intervene.
“Oh, yeah. You do seem really happy, Joel.” Doug’s eyebrows draw together as he drags on his fag again. “You know what you need? A good—”
“All right,” I cut in, before he can say it. I shove my hands in my pockets. Stamp my feet against the cold.
“It’s not natural. Going for so long without a girlfriend.”
Unwittingly, he’s reminded me of my conversation with Callie last week about speed-dating. I remember taking in the loop of her handwriting as she scribbled down my order. How her hair slipped free from its knot, flew with her breath as she spoke. The earrings she was wearing, a pair of birds in sterling silver.
But most of all I remember the lodestone pull of her eyes. It was so powerful, I almost leaned forward to suggest we try a date of our own sometime. But at the last moment I righted myself. Turned quickly, walked away. For fear of her reading my mind. For fear of what it meant.
Because I’ve guarded against feelings like this for almost an entire decade. And now they’re jumping me without warning, robbing me of my vigilance.
“You’re talking about sex, not a girlfriend,” I say to Doug.
Doug snorts, as if there’s next to no chance of either. “There are tablets you can take, you know. Just buy them online if you’re embarrassed.”
I know he’s referring to my supposed anxiety. But I can’t resist the urge to goad him. “Bit young for the little blue diamonds, aren’t you?”
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He goes very still for a moment. Puffs out his chest. “I mean it, Joel, about the holiday. This will be our first time abroad, with the kids. You do anything to mess that up, we’re done. I have to put my family first.”
I swallow and nod, serious now. I just want to keep you all safe.
“Mum’s been gone twenty-two years, mate. It’s time to grow up.” He claps me on the shoulder. Passes me his lit cigarette. Goes back inside.
I stare at the spot of grass where the rabbit hutches used to be. For so many years, this house was alive with animals. Dogs and rabbits, guinea pigs and ducks. But Dad let them all go naturally after Mum died. And now the place only really feels animated when there are dinosaurs doing laps of it.
The pain of losing Mum was worse than anything I’ve known. If my own life depended on it, I’m not sure I could go through that again.
I stay where I am for a couple of moments, my stomach a clenched fist of regrets.
11.
Callie
Several weeks on from my eviction and, with the help of Mum and Dad, I’ve finally moved into my new flat. I feel slightly guilty—I’ve got too many belongings really, enough boxes filled with knickknacks to warrant three pairs of hands. But they seem happy to overlook all my clutter. I think they’re privately pleased I asked for their help.
They leave at about six thirty so Mum can make it home for her book club. Then Dad returns a couple of hours later with Murphy in the back of the car.
I meet him out on the darkened street, beneath a sky salted with stars. We thought it best to carry out a clandestine handover, under cover of nightfall.
“Thanks for everything, Dad.”
“No worries, darling.” He passes me Murphy’s lead. “You know we’re more than happy to lend a hand.”
“I feel a bit old for all this, really,” I confess, the cold air making my breath opaque. “It’s like you’re moving me into university digs all over again.”
Dad smiles. “Come on. You’re never too old to need your parents.”
