The Starter Home

by Bryony Fraser

  ‘Perfect,’ said Iffy. ‘Give me your booze, and come in out of that bitter May cold.’

  Two hours after arriving, both Jack and I were many, many cocktails in. Subconsciously – at least on my part – we hadn’t stayed in the same room all evening; I’d drift out from the lounge into the hall, only to hear Jack’s voice and realise he’d just come into that space. But suddenly I found him at my elbow, as I was pouring myself another gin and bitter lemon.

  ‘Could you find a spare one of those for a parched partygoer?’

  I laughed, full of gin-fuelled merriment, and sloshed some into a second plastic cup.

  A new voice behind us said, ‘Are you two the divorcing pair who still live together?’ I turned around to see Lottie, my least favourite of Iffy’s friends. He’d gone to med school with her and somehow hadn’t shaken her off in the last decade. He said she was good fun and meant no harm; I thought she used Iffy to get herself into gay bars so she could perv at men who, pretty much by definition, had declared they weren’t into her right now, thanks.

  Jack slung an arm round my neck and I felt his hesitation at where his hand should fall – gravity would put it almost on my breast, so he kept moving it until it came back around my chest to the shoulder closest to him. We stood facing Lottie, in an awkward headlock position.

  ‘That’s us,’ Jack said, tightening his arm in his discomfort, ‘the Happy Divorcées.’

  I choked a little, and Jack lowered his arm, pulling me into a more familiar hug.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, bristling at Lottie’s sneering expression. ‘So busy having a great time that we forget to keep fighting.’ Lottie pouted at me. Jack lowered his arm to my waist and pulled me tighter. I tried not to think about how good it felt.

  ‘Riiiiiiight,’ said Lottie. She gave us a brittle smile. ‘Good for you two, I guess.’ Bored, she wandered off, but Jack didn’t remove his arm, and I didn’t pull away. She’d given us the opportunity it seemed we’d both been waiting for.

  ‘This is good gin,’ Jack said.

  I didn’t say anything; just let some enormous invisible weight fall from my shoulders that I’d been carrying for the last six months, and tipped my head back against his chest.

  ‘Really good,’ he said.

  We stayed like that for another hour, chatting to people as they came into the kitchen, mixing more drinks, neither of us mentioning Jack’s arm, or my face, which I could only imagine was like the cat who’d tumbled into a tank of cream. By midnight, everything had a vaguely rosy glow, and I was suggesting we get a taxi home, god knows if we’d make a Tube now anyway. Jack stumbled in the hallway as we hugged Iffy goodbye, and Iffy and I had to slightly carry him into the back of the taxi.

  ‘He ok?’ shouted the taxi driver. ‘This guy ok in my car?’

  ‘He’s fine,’ I said. ‘Just take us home, please.’

  I didn’t have Iffy to help at the other end and despite the fact that Jack had kept my promise and not thrown up in the car, the taxi driver refused to help me with him. As a result it took some time to get Jack into the flat.

  I wrapped one of his arms around my shoulder as we made it towards the main door; I propped him against the wall while I rooted around for my keys, feeling only fractionally less drunk than Jack. By the time I’d finally managed to open it, Jack had slid silently down into the front garden and was trying to pull some blue tarpaulin over himself as a blanket. It took me another ten minutes to pull him upright, get through our own front door too, and stagger into the living room. We landed, sweaty and panting, on the sofa, side by side and entirely horizontal. Jack at last seemed to come to.

  ‘I had a nice time tonight,’ he said clearly, as if we had taken a sober carriage ride home filled with polite conversation.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Do you think I can see you again, some time?’

  ‘How about tomorrow morning, between the kettle and the toaster?’

  ‘Are you propositioning me, Ms Lewis?’

  I blinked at him. He leant forwards and kissed me. Suddenly, I was kissing him back too, and his hands were in my hair, and it was fireworks, and all I wanted was to throw out the bed rota and both of us to tumble into it together and not come out for a month. I’d forgotten what a fantastic kisser he was. His hand pushed into my hair, slid down my neck, and sat gently inside the back of my collar, stroking up and down, up and down. I pushed closer to him, lifting one leg over his thigh, touching my hand to his chest.

  There was something holding me back, though: memories of these last few months, the bloodiness of getting this far, our terrible unhappiness. His New York trip. Some tiny whispered suggestion that this wasn’t the best idea.

  I pulled away, and saw Jack’s dilated pupils and slight smile curdle to shock as he saw my own face.

  ‘Jack—’

  ‘It’s fine. I get it. I’m too drunk.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Oh thank god, I thought you were going to stop us kissing.’ He leant forwards again.

  ‘No, wait. I mean it isn’t because you’re drunk.’

  ‘Good, because I’m definitely not, anyway.’

  ‘This just isn’t a good idea, is it? This isn’t what we both wanted when we were sober, was it?’

  And then he looked at me, with such a heartbreaking expression that I wondered if I didn’t have the same expression on my face. I watched him put his head on the arm of the sofa and close his eyes, a painful wince on his face. I waited for him to speak again.

  The terrible silence stretched out.

  Jack let out a gentle snore.

  I rolled my eyes, laid him down properly on the sofa and pulled his shoes off, put a blanket over him and placed a pint of water on the coffee table next to him.

  It wasn’t going to happen. Gin and parties and drunken kisses? That wasn’t fixing something. That was breaking it even more.

  In the morning, Jack could barely stir himself from the sofa. I was woken by soft sounds from the TV – tinny squeaks and muffled voices, the sound turned down to the lowest volume. My mouth felt like it was coated with something from a bus engine, and my brain had been removed, shaken inside out, and stuffed back in by a child with knuckledusters on, but I was alive. And more to the point, I hadn’t kissed my almost-ex-husband. Or rather, hadn’t continued kissing. Even if I’d wanted to. Which I didn’t. And I definitely also hadn’t stayed up until 4 a.m. thinking about it. So … great.

  Still in bed, I scrolled through various sites to see if there were any incriminating photos from last night anywhere. I was in the clear, but on Instagram I came across three photos of Kat’s office night out, featuring Chuck and Kat looking very cosy indeed: his arm around her shoulder, his head tipped to touch her head, both of them dipping straws into something murky in a giant martini glass. I’d been planning to do something, anything, since he threw me out of their office. This revolting display only turned my resolve to pure iron. But until this hangover shifted, I had no hope of making any kind of plan.

  I set down two cups of coffee and shifted Jack’s feet off the sofa so there was room for me to sit down next to him. We drank them in silence, watching the TV together. By the time Iffy came round with bacon sandwiches for all of us, we still hadn’t spoken. Once he’d finished his sandwich, licked his fingers and chugged down an entire can of Coke in one go, Iffy looked at us and narrowed his eyes.

  ‘Jesus, was the party that bad?’

  ‘The party was great. But you do remember trying to get him into the taxi, don’t you?’ I said, gesturing to Jack but still not able to look at him.

  ‘I remember the taxi … but … my spidey senses are telling me something else happened. Did you fight the taxi driver? Did you fight each other?’

  At that moment, Jack became fascinated by Hollyoaks and I started picking my toes.

  ‘Riiiiiiight. I see. Well, you are welcome for the bacon sandwiches.’

  We both mumbled our thank yous.

  ‘And I will be on my wa
y. Much as you guys are unbelievable fun right now, my night seems to have been even wilder than yours. So now that my salt and fat levels have been topped up, I’m going to hibernate until the internet is devoured by melting arctic glaciers and any incriminating photographs have been erased from human existence.’

  ‘That bad?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve got an ache in one leg and I’m genuinely too scared to look in case I got a tattoo last night.’

  I took his hand. ‘I’ll be thinking of you. How the hell do you look so well, though?’

  He smiled. ‘Part of the job, isn’t it? Can’t be cruising the wards looking like death, can I?’ Before I could stop him, he was back out the door, and the atmosphere was crushing once again. You’d think if you kept encountering something so heavy and difficult, your body would gradually strengthen and adjust, but the reality was the exact opposite. It just kept on being impossible in these situations, the air too thick to breathe, silence too dense to wade through. I can’t remember the last time we’d been that drunk. Or the last time Jack had tried to kiss me. And I’d said no. I really regretted saying that.

  The sensible part of me, the one saying I needed to get out into the fresh air right now with a bottle of water and a bag of fruit, was reminding me that no one ever benefits from drunken erroneous make-out sessions.

  The other part of me, the one with my comfy cardigan on, and the sofa blanket – purchased for just such emergencies – wrapped around me absolutely perfectly, and the knowledge we had a full Friday Night Lights box-set we could power through for the rest of the day … That part of me didn’t regret the kiss at all.

  The trouble was, there was no separating those two parts. I was stuck with my regret, and would just have to try to smother it with my triumph at making one, single, solitary, good adult decision. I just wished, a bit, a little, it hadn’t had to be this one.

  I got up, rinsed out my coffee cup, picked up some water and an apple, and headed out the door. I was two streets away before I realised I still had my slippers on.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Two years earlier

  Jack was down on one knee.

  He’d been fine a moment before. He’d been standing next to her on the bridge, they’d been talking; she’d only turned around for a moment to look at the lights on the Southbank and then when she looked back Jack had gone. Only he hadn’t gone gone, he’d just somehow ended up on one knee on the woven metal planking of the bridge, the flat and level bridge, un-moved by earthquakes or blistering gusts of wind. Had he dropped something? But he was looking up, was looking at Zoe’s face, and it didn’t look like he was about to say, ‘Shit, my Oyster card just fell in the Thames.’

  Zoe put up a hand as if to ward him off.

  ‘Zoe.’

  She stepped back. She saw a few people had stopped a little way distant, and were watching them, smiling.

  ‘It’s been a hard year or so for us both. With my parents splitting up, and your workload, and selling Henderson’s to Gillett, and hundreds of other things I’ve probably forgotten because I’m so nervous.’ The bystanders chuckled softly. Jack spoke up a little. ‘But I’ve also probably not even noticed those other difficulties, because you’ve been by my side.’ Someone in the growing crowd aaah-ed. ‘Every single day I wake up with you, I’m grateful for the day we met. I’m grateful for your kindness, for your sense of humour, for your good sense, your ambition for us both, for the way you get on with my mum …’ The crowd chuckled again. ‘I want to spend every single day with you for the rest of our lives. Zoe …’ Jack pulled a small box from his coat pocket. ‘Will you marry me?’ The crowd cheered, but not fully, not yet.

  Zoe thought, What, every single day? Forever? And what the living fuck was he doing down on one knee in front of this group of people who were probably videoing it before they put it on Facebook captioned ‘look at this couple we saw in London’ before the tabloids scraped it and Jack and Zoe would have to appear on their lifestyle page under a banner heading of ‘The Cutest Thing You’ve Ever Seen on the Golden Jubilee Bridge’ although really it wasn’t that cute. It’s not like he’d released doves or puppies or a golden helium balloon for every day they’d been together. And hadn’t Jack not wanted to get married either? She was almost hyperventilating. Stop. Stop.

  Then she heard the expectant silence as the bunch of fifteen or so strangers waited, and she saw Jack’s happy, open, loving face, and she swallowed her rage and her disappointment and her confusion. She knew that she loved Jack back, and so she said, ‘Yes!’ and did the happy face that everyone was expecting, getting down too and kissing him as the crowd went wild.

  Zoe suggested a drink at the bar of the BFI, since they were on the Southbank; she wanted to get away from everyone watching them.

  They wound their way in and out of the crowds to the cinema, Zoe barely able to believe what had just happened. When they got to the bar, Jack ordered a bottle of champagne, telling the smiling woman behind the bar, ‘We’ve just got engaged,’ to which she said ‘Congratulations!’ as Zoe did that happy face again. Zoe picked up the champagne and two glasses as quickly as she could, and carried them off to a distant bench seat in one corner, Jack following her. She was foaming the fizz into the glasses and knocking one back before Jack had even taken his coat off and sat down beside her.

  ‘Hey, wait for me!’

  Zoe topped up her glass. ‘Sorry. Sorry.’

  Jack snuggled against her, his thigh pressing against hers. ‘You ok?’

  ‘Yeah! Yeah, I just … I wasn’t expecting that.’

  ‘I wanted to surprise you. I’ve been thinking about it a lot.’

  ‘Apparently so.’

  ‘Was it a bad surprise?’

  Zoe took another swig of champagne, and said quickly, ‘No.’

  She thought again of his face, looking up at her, lit up with hope and all the neon of London. ‘Of course it wasn’t a bad surprise.’ She picked up the champagne bottle, pretending to examine the label so she didn’t have to look at Jack. ‘I just thought … I thought we’d agreed not to get married.’

  ‘We’d talked about it. But that was ages ago. I know we didn’t want to get married then – we’d hardly been together long enough. But all the stuff we’ve been through. And seeing Mum, and Dad … You said yourself how different Mum says we are to them. Zo, you’re the most important thing in my life. I enjoy every moment we’re together.’

  Yeah, Zoe couldn’t help but think, she’d also enjoyed that documentary on the South American convent, but she wasn’t about to go off and join it. Then she thought, Or am I?

  ‘And these last few months, I look at you every day and think, I don’t ever want to be with anyone else. Ever.’ He leant in and put his hand gently against her cheek. ‘I love you so much, Zo. You make my life better in every single way.’

  She nearly cried then, partly because she felt the same, and partly because she felt the complete opposite. Jack made her life better every day; he made her better, and she loved him. But the thought that the correct response to that was to change everything, to stand up in front of a crowd and declare your love publicly and sign a document that may as well be written on rice paper for all the permanence it had when you looked at divorce rates, and swear you’ll never ever ever want anyone else, or change your feelings, or choose a different path to the one you’re on in your late twenties …

  So she kissed him. They kissed for a long time, before Jack pulled away with a ‘Mmmoh!’ and reached into his coat pocket again, pulling out the little box. ‘In all the excitement, I was worried I’d drop it. Do you want to open it?’

  No, thought Zoe. Nope nope nope nope nope. ‘You do it,’ she said, putting her happy face on. Jack smiled at her. He popped open the box and lifted the lid to reveal a small gold ring with a sapphire stone. Just what Zoe would have picked if she was buying an unexpectedly expensive piece of jewellery for herself.

  ‘Wow. That’s … that’s really nice.’

&
nbsp; ‘Do you like it? It’s the stone from Mum’s old ring, but she made me promise to have the ring bit melted down and remade.’

  ‘It’s your mum’s?’ Zoe felt tearful again. Linda had given them this?

  ‘Just the stone. I designed the ring. One of my friends from college actually made it. Susie? Do you remember her? So I gave her the design, then she had her friend look at it too, and they made a couple of suggestions, and here we are. With Mum’s stone. For you. Am I babbling? It feels like I am. Am I?’

  Zoe took the ring from its deep blue velvet box and slipped it onto the top knuckle of her finger. ‘It’s … really lovely, Jack. It’s beautiful. Thank you.’

  Jack’s shoulders dropped. ‘Oh thank god. I can’t tell you how terrified I’ve been that you wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘So what did your mum say? When you told her you were proposing?’

  ‘No, she doesn’t know. But when we went out there, when she said goodbye at the airport, she gave me this box. Told me about redoing the ring for you. I hadn’t said anything, but she … she must have just known.’ He smiled at her.

  Zoe thought of Linda saying, I see how different you two are to me and Graham, and realised she must have been hoping even then that things would play out this way.

  ‘Does it fit?’

  Rather than pushing it down to the bottom of her finger, Zoe twirled it round and round the top knuckle. When she looked at Jack, she saw something like fear flicker in his face.

  ‘I never thought you’d do something so public. I felt … it was a lot of pressure.’

  Jack’s voice was tight. ‘So you didn’t actually want to say yes?’

  ‘Jack, I love you so much—’

  ‘You just don’t want to marry me.’

  ‘No, I—’ don’t want to marry you, Zoe thought. I don’t want to marry anyone. I just want to live with you and keep having this great time and agree to forget this whole evening, and if we make it to however many thousands of years it is to our sapphire anniversary then I can have this remade yet again into an enormous knuckleduster and I’ll sport it proudly. She took another swig. Her head was beginning to feel bubbly and her coat was too warm. She pulled it off and laid it next to Jack’s. Two coats, side by side, comfy and matching and content. Was it a disaster if they got married? She might not want to, but she did want Jack. She knew that. Plus, the whole thing would make Mum, and Linda, so happy. Kat and Ava and Esther would be excited for her too, and Iffy would take them out to supper and talk about all the ways he’d make all their ideas better, and they’d have a great time with more champagne, and cocktail ideas that they’d have to try out there and then, and maybe all their unmarried friends – some of whom were actually engaged, now she thought about it – could just come along to a wedding for them now, instead of a sapphire anniversary party in however many years … And maybe she’d just get used to it; she wouldn’t have to think about it every day, would she? It’s not like she’d have to call Jack ‘Husband’ from then on, and ditch her job to make sure his meat-gravy-and-veg were on the table every night? Was it? Was it?