Life and Soul of the Party

by Mike Gayle

  Brushing my teeth at the sink going over the entire evening again in my head I was startled by an abrupt knock on the front door. My heart began pounding at the thought that perhaps I had after all let in some random nutter from the street. Fuelled by anger and tiredness I called out in no uncertain terms that whoever was knocking should leave the building straight away as I was already on the phone to the police. The second I heard the voice on the other side, however, I put down the phone and opened my front door, sure that my mind was playing tricks on me. But it wasn’t. It really had been Paul’s voice and now he was standing right in front of me. One look at the sadness in his eyes told me why he had come.

  ‘I want to talk about our baby,’ he said. ‘I want to talk about our baby that never was.’

  Two Months Later

  Chris and Vicky’s Anniversary Party

  August 2006

  Melissa

  It was just after nine on the morning of Chris and Vicky’s anniversary dinner and I was flitting around the flat doing several things at once badly to get ready to go into town. As well as finishing off my make-up in the mirror near the bedroom door, I was also trying to locate the matching shoe to the one I had in my hand, plug in the charger for my mobile phone and chat to Billy, who was sitting patiently on the edge of the bed watching me with a bemused grin. Without any warning he stood up and kissed me.

  ‘What was that for?’

  ‘That wasn’t exactly the reaction I was looking for. I was hoping for something a little more . . . I don’t know . . . effusive.’

  ‘I’m just suspicious of your motivation, that’s all.’ I eyed him with mock suspicion.

  Billy whispered in my ear in a pseudo-Barry White voice: ‘I think you’ll find, Ms Vickery, that you’re all the motivation I need.’

  The cheesiness of the line had me doubled over with laughter.

  ‘Too cheesy?’

  ‘Like gone-off Stilton!’

  I carried on with my make-up but Billy still had that same bemused look on his face.

  ‘So you like your men to be a bit less effusive with their compliments, is that it?’

  ‘And which men would these be?’

  ‘All men. Everywhere. You have no idea how great you are, have you?’

  I pretended to continue with my eyelashes while wondering what he was going to say next.

  ‘I’ve embarrassed you haven’t I? Admit it, Mel, you have no idea how to take a compliment.’

  ‘Look, mate.’ I waved my mascara brush menacingly. ‘Some of us just aren’t used to them, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, you really should be.’

  I looked at him through the mirror on the wardrobe door. ‘I love you,’ I said quietly. ‘I’ve never said it before but I just want you to know.’

  ‘I know,’ he replied. ‘And what’s really funny is that I probably knew before you did yourself.’

  Hannah

  Paul and I were in bed together when I turned to him and said ‘So tell me again, what’s the name of the restaurant where Chris and Vicky’s thing is going to be tonight?’

  ‘La Galleria.’

  ‘I thought that was the one. I was telling some friends at work and they were saying how amazing the food is. Apparently it’s quite pricey though.’

  ‘Chris said the starters alone are enough to break the bank.’

  I laughed. ‘Do you think we’ll be flashing the cash like that when we’re celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Paul grinning. ‘If you’re lucky.’

  It was hard to believe that Paul and I were now married. Especially given the casual manner in which he asked me.

  ‘What do you think about getting married?’ He asked a few days after Laura’s party.

  ‘I think it’s a bad idea,’ I replied, thinking that he was joking. Paul rolled over on his side away from me and only then did I realise that he was serious.

  ‘Why would you even think of such a thing?’ I asked, still unable to believe what he was suggesting.

  ‘Because we’re having a kid,’ replied Paul, ‘and call me old fashioned but I like the idea.’

  I was sceptical about Paul’s reasoning. Paul hadn’t said much about Laura’s party other than that it had been ‘good to catch up with a few people’. Not wanting to make a big deal out of things I hadn’t asked about Melissa specifically even though I knew that she would be there. But when this proposal came out of the blue I began to wonder whether perhaps his impulse to get married had more to do with seeing Melissa with her new younger boyfriend than it had with him wanting to spend the rest of his life with me.

  ‘There are a lot of things wrong with us making a commitment to each other just because there’s a baby on the way. A piece of paper isn’t going to make any difference if things start to fall apart.’

  A week passed and Paul continued to pester me, stressing the practical and financial implications for our baby should anything happen to us in the future. Gradually, possibly more for pragmatic reasons than romantic ones, I came round to the idea but with certain conditions. It was to be a register office wedding. No ring. No friends. No family. Just us, the words we wanted to say, and the requisite number of witnesses to make the whole thing legal. When it was done, we would keep it to ourselves so that it would always be our wedding and nobody else’s.

  So one rainy Tuesday afternoon at the register office on Lloyd Street, following on from a second marriage between a publican and a nursery nurse twenty years his junior, wearing our normal everyday clothes Paul and I made our vows. Paul promised to look after me always and try his best to be the man who would make me proud, while I vowed to be both his friend and lover for as long as we both continued to live. The two security guards had clapped when Paul and I kissed and after they had witnessed the signing of the register had hung around, even though they hadn’t needed to, curious as to how our wedding had come about. They’d laughed when I’d told them that we were going to keep our wedding news to ourselves, but then a few moments later (having had time to mull the idea over) the chubbier of the two told me that he thought it was a good idea. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘at the end of the day what goes on in a marriage is nobody else’s business but your own.’ After the register office we went for something to eat at an upmarket pizza place on Clarence Street and whiled away the afternoon eating and talking. I can’t say that this had exactly been my dream scenario when I was a little girl but I was a grown woman now and although things were far more complicated than I ever could have imagined as a child, the truth was it all felt right.

  Melissa

  Billy and I spent the best part of the morning looking in what felt like every shop in Manchester city centre for a present for Chris and Vicky before settling on vouchers for his and hers facials at a beauty salon in town. After a slight detour to the university library to pick up some books to help me with my dissertation, we had lunch at Pizza Express on South Street and because it was a beautiful day – one of those days when you feel sorry for anyone who has to be inside working – we decided not to go home and spent the rest of the afternoon sitting outside Manto on Canal Street. Armed with drinks and nothing pressing to do we sat outside enjoying the sun, people-watching and talking about things that made us smile. At around four as the sun began to hide away behind the clouds we decided it was time to make plans for the evening ahead. Billy would go back to his place to get ready, then come round to mine just before seven so that we could get a cab into town together and be at the restaurant for half past. Arriving home I’d not even kicked off my shoes when Creepy Susie called from the living room. The last thing I wanted to do was get embroiled in a fully fledged conversation with her, but I reluctantly poked my head round the door.

  ‘Hi, Susie, everything okay?’

  Susie’s face was the very picture of worry. ‘Sort of,’ she replied, looking up from the sofa. ‘I was just wondering . . . have you got a minute? It’s just that I’ve got some news that I’d
like to share with you.’

  Having no choice I warily entered the living room and sat down in the armchair next to the TV. In the short space of time before she put me out of my misery I ran through a couple of possible scenarios for what Susie’s so-called ‘news’ might be. My first choice was the arrival of an extraordinarily large gas bill. Susie and I had run the central heating in the flat almost solidly throughout the winter and had been sending in badly estimated readings until a couple of weeks ago when a meter reader finally came round and took an official reading. This could only mean trouble and I wondered whether we’d been landed with the kind of crippling bill that would require extra shifts at Blue-Bar for the rest of the year in order to pay it off.

  My second choice for the bad news was to do with a rise in my monthly rent. Even before I’d moved in I’d been well aware that Susie was asking less than the going rate for a room in Chorlton and had been wondering ever since when she might cotton on to this fact. At the beginning of the new academic year I’d even earmarked a small portion of my student loan to cover this possibility but that emergency fund had long since been eaten away by a whole string of more pressing emergencies (buying text books that were always on loan in the library, replacing lost bus passes and paying back Paul some money I had borrowed from him over the summer).

  Given a choice, I preferred the rent-rise scenario, if only because I couldn’t work out how I’d manage to finish off all of my course work and work practically full-time at Blue-Bar to cover the gas bill while still having time for frivolities like eating and sleeping.

  Susie was still looking at me expectantly and so I said: ‘Fire away. I’m all ears.’

  ‘It’s about Steve.’

  Immediately my stomach went into freefall because I knew exactly what was coming next.

  Susie’s big news had nothing to do with gas bills or rent rises . . . it was about love. The clues were all there. Susie and Steve had been together for two years. Susie had been saying for ages now how much she wanted to stop living like a student (which was both ironic and insulting given that Susie worked in a bank and had never actually been to university). But the biggest clue was the fact that for the past few months Steve had practically become a third flatmate. The only reason I hadn’t complained about his omnipresence was because I thought it would prevent the very thing that was about to happen.

  ‘What about Steve?’ I asked carefully.

  ‘Well, the thing is Steve and I have been talking—’

  ‘—and you want me to move out so that he can move in?’ I made things easier for her.

  Susie nodded sheepishly. ‘We’ve been together ages and he’s practically here all the time anyway. You do understand, don’t you?’

  I nodded calmly even though what I really wanted to do was go on a rampage in Susie’s bedroom and amputate the limbs from every single one of her teddy bears and cuddly toys.

  ‘How long have I got?’

  ‘Oh, there’s no rush.’

  I could see she was lying. From the moment of making the decision to let Steve move in, Susie had spent day and night dreaming about a life of domestic bliss.

  ‘How long do you think you’ll need?’ asked Susie.

  I sighed. ‘It’s been a while since I had to room hunt. How about the month after next? That’ll be the end of October.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ Susie did not even bother to hide her disappointment. ‘That long? I was sort of hoping . . .’

  ‘Fine,’ I said flatly, ‘I’ll be out by the end of the month. Is that okay?’

  ‘Oh that’s perfect,’ beamed Susie. ‘I can’t tell you how nervous I’ve been about telling you. You really have been so understanding.’ She fixed me with an odd stare. ‘It’s quite funny actually, the only reason I even thought about Steve moving in was because of you.’

  ‘Me? What did I do?’

  Susie seemed unsure how I might react to what she had to say. ‘I hope you don’t mind . . . it’s just that a couple of weeks ago I came across that old shoe box of yours with all your photos in it. You’d left it on the coffee table. You’d obviously been looking at them the night before and left the lid off.’

  I cast my mind back to the night in question. It had been the Tuesday that Billy had been away visiting his grandparents in Chester and Susie had stayed over at Steve’s. With nothing to do and the rare opportunity to have the flat to myself I’d stayed in and drunk half a bottle of red whilst watching a documentary about kids with cancer. I’d sobbed from the moment it had started right through to the credits at the end. The kids had been so brave. The parents had been so brave. What problems did I have compared to them? That’s when I’d dug out the shoebox with old photos of me and Paul. Ones taken before things had fallen apart. I know I shouldn’t have done it, especially with things so good between me and Billy. I knew no good could come of it but I just couldn’t help myself. I’d flicked through all the pictures of the two of us searching for the one in which we looked most happy. It had been a close call between one in the garden at Laura and Cooper’s barbecue (Paul was lifting me in the air while I was screaming with laughter) and another of us kissing underneath a large spring of thyme in lieu of mistletoe at Chris and Vicky’s one Christmas. I’d stared at the photos for hours before falling asleep on the sofa. When I woke up in the middle of the night I’d dragged myself to bed leaving the photos and the open bottle of red behind.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying,’ said Susie, ‘but you looked ever so happy in those pictures. Really bright and bubbly. And because of that I thought to myself maybe it’s time Steve and I moved things on a bit.’ Susie pulled her ‘sad face’, then stood up and walked over to me with her arms open for a hug. I allowed her to embrace me.

  ‘I’ll really miss you,’ said Susie. ‘You aren’t just a flatmate: you are my best friend too.’

  This was just too much to take. It wasn’t enough that Susie had a leering boyfriend, a steady job, a mortgage and a flat in a nice part of south Manchester. No, now, she wanted to add the indignity of indignities of pretending that we were friends? I was too annoyed for restraint.

  ‘Do you know what, Susie?’ I said extricating myself from her embrace. ‘I know this is going to make me sound like an embittered old hag, and on behalf of my conscience – which I know will be troubled by what I’m about to do – I apologise, but if I thought for even a fraction of a second that I really was your best friend I’d have to end it all now.’ I headed out of the room slamming the door behind me with all the fury of a petulant teenager, then surprised myself by picking up my phone and calling not Vicky, Cooper or even Paul but Billy. And that was a real shock. I was turning to someone other than my closest friends for comfort. I was relying on someone I hadn’t known an entire lifetime. It felt perfect, normal even, and the way things should be. Within half an hour of talking to him, listening to him tell me how it wasn’t anything to worry about, assuring me that I would find something better and promising to take time off work to help me find somewhere, I was calm. Calmer than I had been in a long, long time.

  Vicky

  It was just after five and I was sitting on the loo with the lid down staring blankly at the pregnancy-testing kit in my hand when I heard Chris at the door.

  ‘Are you all right in there, babe?’

  I looked from the kit to the door and back again.

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine. I think I probably ate something funny at lunch today.’

  ‘Do you feel really ill?’

  ‘No, just a bit queasy.’

  ‘Do you want me to get you something? There might be a couple of paracetamol in the drawer in the kitchen if that’s any use?’

  ‘No, it’s not that bad.’

  ‘Good. It won’t stop you from enjoying tonight, will it? I think we could both do with a proper drink.’

  I had to take a few moments to compose myself and get the pitch of my voice right before I replied.

  ‘Sounds great. I won’t be long, honestly. Jus
t give me a few minutes to sort myself and I’ll be out, okay?’

  ‘No problem,’ said Chris. ‘Your mum, sister and Daniel have just arrived. I’ll settle them with a cup of tea until you’re ready.’

  Twenty-four hours had elapsed since I had first begun to suspect that I might be pregnant. I knew it was far too early to get excited but I couldn’t help myself: my period had been due on Wednesday and was still nowhere to be seen.

  It had been Chris’s idea that we should start trying for a brother or sister for William. Until he’d raised the subject I’d been sure that I only ever wanted one child and Chris had always assured me that he felt the same. But a few weeks after Laura’s leaving do Chris surprised me with a weekend in Paris and had even arranged for his parents to look after William while we were away. We had the most amazing time and he kept saying he had neglected us and wanted to make things right. We got talking about the future and what we wanted from it and while we were sitting in a cafe in Montmartre he just came out with it. ‘I know we’ve always said that we only want the one, but maybe we ought to try for another baby. What do you think?’

  I didn’t have a moment’s hesitation. ‘I think that’s the best idea I’ve ever heard, and weird because I’ve been thinking the same. I love William so much . . . how incredible would it be for us to give him a brother or sister?’

  I stopped taking my pill the very next day and even though it had been such a short time trying, and even though I knew it was more than likely a false alarm, I wanted to be pregnant so badly that the idea that the test might be negative was unbearable. I didn’t want to let Chris down.

  I’d bought the kit from the big Superdrug near Piccadilly rather than Boots in Chorlton so there would be less chance of me bumping into anyone I knew. I’d told Chris that I was nipping into town to get William’s feet measured for a new pair of shoes and he’d barely looked up from his newspaper. With my cover story in place I’d taken William into town on the bus and made our way through the busy Saturday morning crowds to Superdrug. For good luck I’d selected the same brand of test kit that had predicted William’s arrival. Throwing a few other items into my basket as camouflage (handcream, cotton buds, fragranced panty liners and a small bar of Green and Blacks dark chocolate) I’d made my way to the till and paid, scrutinising the face of the teenage Saturday girl serving me for any signs of recognition. But there was none. She failed to raise even so much as an eyebrow over the pregnancy test – it must be part of their training. Then we had a wander around the Arndale Centre and a drink in the BHS cafe before going home. I sent William in search of his father while I hurried upstairs and hid the test kit at the bottom of my wardrobe, where it had sat in its plastic carrier bag for several hours, slowly burning a hole in my brain.