A Friend of the Family

by Lisa Jewell

  Sean pulled his bike up on to the pavement and listened to Millie with a growing sense of hope and affection. The greatest gift a woman could give a man, he suddenly realized, was to understand him.

  ‘… and in a way, I suppose, it’s a bit like my attitude towards your book. I have no idea what you’re going through – it’s something that exists entirely in your mind, like this baby exists entirely in my body. And I resent your book like you resent our baby. It’s getting in the way of us. And in a way, we’re both pregnant. It’s just really bad timing that we’re pregnant at the same time. So I was thinking – we need to make an effort to understand each other…’

  Oh God, he thought, she’s going to make me wear one of those strap-on bellies.

  ‘It’s my first scan next week.’

  ‘Scan?’

  ‘Uh-huh. You know – slimy stuff on belly, little ultrasound thingy, indecipherable image of baby on screen. The most exciting part of the pregnancy process for all happy young expectant parents.’

  ‘What do I… do I have to do anything?’

  ‘No – you just have to sit there and hold my hand and get all emotional when the nurse points out our child’s little fingers and toes. Possibly cry. That sort of thing. Right up your street, really.’

  That sounded reasonable enough to Sean.

  ‘OK,’ he said, ‘just tell me where and when.’

  ‘I’ve already e-mailed you the details. And in return, to complete this mutual-empathy exercise, I get to read your book.’

  Sean’s jaw dropped. ‘No!’ he said, without even thinking of the consequences.

  ‘What?’

  ‘No – no one reads my book. Not until it’s finished. No way.’

  ‘Sean – I’m not just anyone. I’m your girlfriend.’

  ‘Look, you can read the proofs. I’ll give you the first proofs, I promise. But you can’t read it before it’s finished. I’m serious.’

  ‘Look, I don’t know what this… superstition is, but this is more important than superstition. This is about us. About getting through this crisis. About understanding each other.’

  ‘But that’s exactly it, Millie – that’s exactly the problem. You don’t understand me. If you really understood me you would never ask me to do such a thing. Because there’s a big difference between me going and seeing a picture of the inside of your belly and you reading my book. One’s physical. The other cerebral. You want to come and watch me have a brain scan, go ahead. That wouldn’t bother me. I don’t mind you seeing my mind – I just don’t want you to see my thoughts…’

  ‘Right. That’s it…’

  Oh God, thought Sean, here we go.

  ‘Fuck you. Fuck the scan. Fuck your book. Fuck us. I’ve had enough. I’ve tried. I’ve tried so hard. I’ve spent a whole week trying to work out how to save this relationship so that this poor, defenceless little thing growing inside me stands some kind of a chance of having a happy upbringing with parents – you know, like you and I both had. But I can see now that I was wasting my time. You’re selfish, Sean – selfish to the very core of you. I thought there was hope for you. I thought maybe I’d underestimated you, that maybe somewhere underneath all the me-me-me there was someone who could share and compromise. But Tony was right: you have no idea how to share. You’re a nasty little boy who won’t share his toys and I don’t want a nasty little boy. I want a man. In fact, I don’t even want a man. I don’t want anyone. I want to be alone. Just me and the baby…’

  ‘Millie…’

  ‘What?! What, Sean?! I don’t want to listen to your shit any more. I always thought I was a good judge of character, but I got it so wrong with you. I really thought you were special. I really thought you were a decent, good human being. But you’re not. You’re an arsehole. And I’m a fool. Goodbye, Sean.’

  And then she hung up.

  Sean stood there for a few seconds, gawping at his mobile phone as if it might suddenly offer up a reasonable explanation for what had just happened. Millie had just finished with him. Millie, who’d come into his life and turned it upside down, who’d made him happier than he’d ever thought it was possible to be; Millie, whose beauty was intoxicating, whose body he’d worshipped, who he’d wanted to spend the rest of his life with. Millie of magical Bacchanalian nights at Paradise Paul’s, of drug-fuelled parties and country weekends, of twinkling mothball-scented junk shops, shiny truffle-perfumed Italian restaurants and 420-threadcount Egyptian-cotton bedsheets. Millie with the skin and the lips and the hair and the eyes. Millie, who made him feel like his life was one long Hollywood movie. Millie who he’d been so in love with it had almost felt like madness. That Millie. She’d dumped him.

  And the weirdest thing of all was that Sean didn’t care.

  He felt nothing. No heartbreak, no guilt, no sadness. Just a numb sort of awareness of his life moving on to another phase. He tucked his phone back into his trouser pocket, remounted his bike, and cycled slowly and circumspectly towards Beulah Hill.

  ‘The Way You Look Tonight’

  Ned looked at Sean with concern.

  ‘You all right?’

  Sean glanced at Gervase out of the corner of his eye and nodded. ‘Yeah, I’m fine. Why?’

  ‘Don’t know. You just look a bit edgy, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said, and took a large slurp from his lager. Gervase was still staring at him. He’d been looking at him funny ever since they’d arrived at the pub and sat down. If he was looking a ‘bit edgy’ then it was probably because a bloke with a tattoo of a cobweb on his neck was boring holes into the side of his face with his eyes.

  He turned back to look at the stage where Mum was standing under a pair of oscillating pink and blue spotlights singing ‘Do You Know The Way To San Jose?’. She looked brilliant and sounded amazing but there was a small part of him deep inside that felt embarrassed watching her singing, like he was twelve years old and being shown-up in front of his mates.

  ‘So, Sean,’ said Gervase, his face framed briefly by a perfectly spherical smoke ring he’d just blown out of his mouth, ‘how’s it hanging?’

  Yeah. Cool,’ he said.

  ‘And how’s your lovely bride-to-be?’

  ‘She’s cool. She’s good.’

  Gervase squinted at him and nodded inscrutably. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘that’s nice.’ He nodded again and Sean turned away, but Gervase kept staring at him and didn’t stop until Mum had finished singing her song – then he suddenly got to his feet, with his fag still hanging out of his mouth, and started clapping and whistling and cheering.

  Sean threw Ned a look and Ned shrugged. ‘He always does this,’ he whispered.

  The applause started to die away and Mum leant into her microphone. ‘OK, ladies and gentlemen. This is my favourite song,’ she said, ‘it was the first dance at my wedding about, ooh, a hundred years ago.’The audience laughed politely. ‘“The Way You Look Tonight”,’ she said and a hush came over the whole pub.

  Gervase leant in towards Sean and whispered authoritatively into his ear: ‘This is the most romantic fucking song ever written. Ever.’

  The spotlights stopped moving and darkened to purple and navy and Sean turned in his seat to watch her. And as he listened to the lyrics an unexpected thing happened to him. He started thinking about Millie. Images of her taken from the first two months of their relationship started flashing through his mind – shovelling rocket into her mouth the first time he’d seen her, standing on her huge stucco doorstep in an embroidered silk dressing-gown waiting for him to come back the first time he’d left the flat without her, lying curled up on her big antique bed with her cats, sitting at the bar at Paradise Paul’s drinking lager and winking at him across the room, sitting in his parents’ living room and petting Goldie, shouting across the rooftops from his balcony the night he proposed to her… And then another image came to him: her face that night in his bathroom when she first threw him her curveball – nervous and unsure, but hopeful. Hopeful t
hat Sean was going to be happy about it, embrace the idea, pick her up and spin her around. And instead he’d squashed her flat, like an annoying fly.

  And he hadn’t seen her smile again since.

  He gulped and felt something that felt scarily like tears start to erupt from somewhere deep down inside him. But it was too late to do anything about it. He turned slightly when he felt one escaping and sliding down the bridge of his nose. He wiped it away surreptitiously. And then he saw Gervase looking at him. Gervase threw him a questioning look and Sean turned away again. Mum finished the song and everyone applauded. Gervase leant into Sean again. ‘Told you,’ he said, ‘most romantic fucking song ever written.’ He tapped the side of his nose a couple of times and then got to his feet to start cheering over-effusively again.

  Sean got up to go to the toilet. All this unwanted attention from Gervase was making him feel claustrophobic and panicky. He strode through the pub, pushed open the toilet door and collapsed against the sink. He stared at himself in the mirror for a while. The overhead lighting was harsh fluorescent and he looked pale and old. There were shadows under his eyes and the glint of the occasional strand of silver in among his dark hair. He turned on the cold tap and ran the icy water over his hands for a while.

  ‘Did I just see some mortar falling out of your wall?’ Gervase was standing next to him, addressing his reflection.

  Sean jumped, clutched his heart. ‘Jesus. Fuck.’

  ‘Sorry, mate. Didn’t mean to make you jump. Thought you’d seen me come in.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Sorry about that. Just that, well – I couldn’t help but notice that you looked a bit upset out there. A bit cut up. “Way You Look Tonight” can do that to you sometimes. Made me think maybe the wall was starting to crumble.’

  ‘What wall?’

  ‘That wall we discussed the other night. The one you’ve built up around yourself. Remember?’

  Yeah. I remember. But I’ve still got no fucking idea what you’re talking about, mate. Sorry.’

  ‘Yes you have.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You know what I’m talking about. You didn’t last week. But you do now. What’s happened? Wanna talk about it?’

  ‘No. I don’t.’ He pulled some paper towels from the dispenser and started drying his hands roughly.

  And then Gervase gently pulled the paper away from him, threw it in the bin and held his hands. Sean immediately got that liquid feeling in his core again, like the steel girders that kept him upright were melting. ‘You should talk to someone, you know. It would make you feel better. You’re in a bad way.’ Gervase gazed into his eyes and Sean felt himself go limp. ‘Talk to me, Sean. You need help. I know you can’t talk to your family about things like this – I know how families work. You feel you owe it to your family to be chipper. You don’t want to worry them. So use me, eh? Talk to me. It won’t go any further. I am the very soul of discretion.

  ‘And I don’t know what it is,’ he said, dropping one of Sean’s hands and resting his own against his heart, ‘but I’m getting this very strange vibe that I might be of some assistance.’

  Sean looked at Gervase, looked into his impossible-to-read eyes and felt his brain suddenly start working in conjunction with his mouth. All the thoughts he’d kept to himself for weeks and weeks started to bubble up through his consciousness and emerge blinking into the light, and then he started talking.

  ‘Millie’s just dumped me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yeah – just now, just on the way over. On the phone. She dumped me.’

  ‘Fuck me. What happened?’

  And then Sean told him everything, from the first moment he set eyes on her to the night he proposed to her to the curveball and beyond. He told him about how trapped he felt and how scared he was and how she wanted him to let her read his book and how vulnerable that would make him feel, how he didn’t understand her and she didn’t understand him.

  And as he talked, Gervase just listened and nodded. He didn’t interrupt with questions, he didn’t even make eye-contact with Sean, just let him babble and babble – and it was one of the most liberating experiences of Sean’s life. He’d never been one for opening up to people – he liked to keep his thoughts and feelings to himself. It was safer that way. But there was something about Gervase, about his touch and his gaze and his presence, that made Sean feel like he could say anything. And he didn’t have any trouble finding the words – he was articulate and eloquent, expressing his emotions and feelings in a way that he could only dream about in his writing.

  He stopped talking as suddenly as he’d started and was aware of the resonant silence of the toilets. A tap was dripping loudly and the sound of Mum singing outside was a distant, ghostly echo. Gervase let go of his hand and looked at him.

  ‘You boys…’ he said, shaking his head slowly from side to side.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘nothing. Look. Sean. I don’t often give advice – well, not specific advice anyway. Usually because I can’t really relate to other people’s problems – I can just feel them, you know. But you – Jees. I don’t know what to say to you. I want to say so much. But I don’t know where to start. It’s just – look, sorry about this, mate.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This.’ Gervase picked up Sean’s hand again and suddenly forced it up against his chest. Sean could feel Gervase’s ribs, his nipple, the beating of his heart. And then he was overcome by the most intense, excruciating pain he’d ever experienced in his life. Not a physical pain but a sensation like all the sadness and misery in the world coming to rest in his soul, like hearing the worst news you’d ever heard, like losing everyone you love, like hell.

  Gervase stared into his eyes as he clamped his hand to his chest and Sean desperately tried to extricate himself from Gervase’s grasp, but he was paralysed. ‘Stop it,’ he managed to mutter through his gritted teeth. But Gervase just stared at him. And as he stared at him Sean felt tears again, not puny little soppy-song tears this time, but huge, painful tears that racked his whole body. And then he started sobbing like he hadn’t sobbed since he was four years old.

  Gervase finally pulled his hand away from his chest and all the pain immediately dissipated, leaving Sean with just a nagging sense of sadness and emptiness.

  He fell backwards against the wall and clutched his knees. ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry about that.’ Gervase pulled his Chesterfields out of his jeans pocket and lit one up.

  ‘What the fuck have you done to me?’

  ‘I was giving you an insight, mate.’

  ‘Insight? What the fuck are you talking about?’

  ‘I just gave you a glimpse into my soul.’

  ‘Your soul? But that was – that was hell.’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Sean stood up and stumbled towards the sink, where he splashed his tear-stained face with cold water.

  ‘It wasn’t my whole soul, though. Don’t feel too sorry for me. It was just a little corner of my soul.’ He took a big drag on his cigarette and looked at Sean. ‘The corner where my son lives.’

  ‘You have a son?’ Sean pulled another paper towel from the dispenser and dried his face off.

  Yeah. Charlie. He’s sixteen years old.’

  ‘You’ve lost me, mate. One minute you’re talking about me, the next you’re… you’re… Jesus Christ, whatever, and now you’re telling me about your son. What’s he got to do with anything?’

  ‘Everything, Sean. Everything. Look. When I was eighteen I met this girl, right. Her name was Kim. She was beautiful. Exquisite. Tiny little hands, she had. Sweetest face – like a little angel. She was seventeen. And she really loved me, you know. She was the first person I’d ever known in my life who really loved me like that. I was a bit of a Jack the Lad, then. Strutting around, you know, thinking I was the business. She wasn’t my only girl – I had a couple of others. I was eighteen
, you know? The world was full of beautiful women – I thought I owed it to them to keep myself available.

  ‘Now Kim – she didn’t know about the other girls. She was a sensitive little soul; it would have upset her. I think she thought I was all hers. So one day she comes to me and she’s smiling and she says she’s pregnant. Well, I just fucking flipped out. Just lost it. Could not deal with that – no way. Seen too many of my mates going down that path, tying themselves down with wives and kids, old before their times. So I bailed out. Just walked. Left the area and everything. And then one day, three years later, I was standing outside this launderette in Eltham and I hear this little voice – “Gervase?”– and I look down and there’s my little Kim. She’s pushing a pram with this kid in it. The cutest-looking kid I have ever seen in my life – jet-black hair, big blue eyes, grinning at me. My son.

  ‘“This is Charlie,” she says. “Say hello to Gervase, Charlie.” And this little kid who can hardly speak, you know, he’s only little, says, “Hello, Giraffe, hello.” Giraffe,’ He chuckled. ‘Well, I felt like I’d been kicked in the nuts, you know. I was magnetized by this little kid. My kid. But Kim was being, you know – cool. Not like she used to be. Lips all pursed-up, all efficient and busy-busy. Tells me she’s got to go. Her husband’s waiting for her at home. She’s only gone and married someone else. And my kid, this beautiful little kid, is being brought up by another man. Mick. What sort of a fucking stupid name is Mick? That killed me. So I says, “Look, Kim, any chance I could come and see you, you know? You and the kid?” She purses her lips up even tighter, like this, like a kitten’s arse. “No,” she says, “it’s not fair on the kid. Mick’s his dad now. Mick’s been his dad since he was six months old. You had your chance.” And then she walks off. And I’m left standing there watching my kid being wheeled away down Eltham High Street. And as I’m watching this kid, he turns around in his pram, turns right round and he grins at me – this big, beautiful, shit-eating grin. And he waves. Then they turned the corner. And that was it. The last time I saw him.