by Lisa Jewell
Adrian had often imagined visiting pubs with his sons once they’d grown into adults. Luke had been a burly, ruggerish little boy, and Adrian had pictured the pair of them ambling in together, two pints on the table, maybe a football match to pass comment on, a new job or girlfriend to chat about, a relaxed young man with his relaxed old dad, side by side, chips off the old block et cetera.
Instead it was like coming to the pub with a young Kenneth Williams. The interior of the pub that Adrian had chosen for their afternoon’s drinking was clearly not to Luke’s taste and he looked as though he thought he was in imminent danger of either physical attack or flea bites.
“So, son . . .” He said it on purpose and registered Luke’s involuntary shudder with a wry smile. “What’s going on?”
“It’s not going to work like that,” said Luke. “You’re not just going to sit there and say: ‘What’s up?’ and suddenly I’m going to say: ‘Oh, Daddy! I’m so glad you asked! Finally I can open up and lay my soul bare!’”
“Fine. Well. Then how is it going to work?”
“I don’t know,” he muttered. “You tell me. This was your idea, after all.”
“Well, actually it was your mum’s idea.”
“Whatever. The two of you. But not me. I was perfectly happy as I was.”
“That’s not the impression I was getting. From your mother.”
He shrugged and picked up his gin and tonic.
“And for what it’s worth,” Adrian continued, “I was perfectly happy as I was, too.”
“Yeah. Right. You’ve been in a state of unbridled existential bliss since Maya died. We couldn’t help noticing.”
“Nasty, Luke.”
“Yeah, well, let’s not make out that I’m the only one with an attitude problem round here.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You. You used to be the best dad in the world. Before Maya died.”
Adrian felt something like a mule-kick to his solar plexus. The words were both soft, like words a toddler might have chosen, and hard as steel. Every bit of him ached as they sank in.
“Oh,” he said. “God.”
“Yeah,” said Luke. “I know. And it’s not your fault. Obviously it’s not your fault. You didn’t kill her. But, I don’t know. It’s like the old you died with her.”
“In what way? I mean, I thought . . .”
“I know. You thought you were doing OK. I know you’ve got your, your Board of Harmony. That you never forget anything. But remembering things is not the same as caring about them.”
“Jesus Christ. Of course I care! How can you suggest that I don’t? All I bloody do is care!”
Luke sighed and his cheeks twitched and hollowed as he considered his next point. “No. You don’t. If you cared you’d notice that Cat is stress-eating because she’s so unhappy. You’d notice that Pearl has no life and no friends and everyone thinks she’s weird. You’d notice that Otis is miserable and retreating into himself. You’d notice that I—” He stopped. “Nothing.” His jaw set hard and his cheeks twitched again.
“How the hell am I supposed to know those things if nobody bloody well tells me?” said Adrian. “I take Cat out for lunch every single week. And yes, she does eat a lot but she seems happy enough to me. I have Otis and Pearl to stay every week and they seem fine. I mean, yes, Pearl’s probably over-focused on sports, and Otis is a bit monosyllabic. I had noticed these things. But I hadn’t worried about them. Kids are kids. They go through phases. Moods. It’s normal.”
“There is nothing normal about our family, Dad. I mean, what were you thinking? How did you think it was going to be OK just to keep building families and then leaving them? You know something—and you’re going to totally hate me for saying this—but I’m glad you and Maya didn’t get the chance to have a baby. Because seriously, Dad, that would have just been a joke.”
Adrian sat very still in the wake of these words. He felt his hands ball up into fists but decided not to say anything.
“You don’t know anything about me, Dad. All the stuff you’d know if you hadn’t fucked off when I was nine. Fucked off and had more boys. Better boys. With a better woman. And lived in a better house . . .”
Adrian attempted to cut in but Luke stopped him. “No,” he said, “you wanted me, now you’ve got me. Tell me something about myself, Dad. Tell me something that only a father would know.”
“Oh Jesus, Luke . . .”
“Seriously. How hard could it be? Like, what was the name of my last girlfriend?”
Adrian sighed. “I have no idea, Luke.”
“Scarlett. We went out for six weeks. Split up a year ago.”
Adrian nodded.
“So,” said Luke, “ask me what happened. Ask me why I’ve been single for so long. Assuming you have any interest.”
Adrian sighed again. “What happened? With you and Scarlett?”
“I dumped her,” he said, leaning into the back of his chair and eyeing Adrian triumphantly. “Because I was still in love with someone else.”
“Right. And who was that?”
“It was an unattainable woman. It was somebody else’s woman. It was a woman I wanted more than I’ve wanted anything in my life and I couldn’t have her. And since I lost her I have had no interest in anybody else.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. Wow. I’ve spent the last year of my life trying to function with a broken heart. Not just broken, but fucking smashed.” He looked down into his lap and Adrian saw his lip quiver. He wanted, suddenly, to touch his son. To hold him. Here they finally shared common ground. Months of heartbreak. Adrian knew what that felt like. “Let me get you a fresh drink,” he said, getting to his feet. “Another G and T?”
Luke looked up from his lap. For a moment his dead eyes sparkled. “No,” he said, “I’ll have a pint.”
“Pint of . . . ?”
“I don’t know.” Luke attempted a smile. “Whatever you’re having.”
“Good man,” said Adrian, squeezing his son’s bony shoulder, “good man.”
13
The following weekend Adrian left Luke behind in his flat with precise instructions about feeding the cat, taking phone messages, locking the doors and disposing of rubbish, packed a small bag and headed to Caroline’s to spend the weekend with his three youngest children.
It had been a strange week. Despite their rapprochement in the pub on Saturday afternoon, relations between Adrian and his eldest child remained strained. Luke and he were so completely different. Whereas he was rough and ready, Luke was vain and preeny. Whereas he liked to rise early and spend his mornings listening to the radio and eating toast, Luke liked to spend his fast asleep until precisely five minutes before it was time to leave, whereupon he would start shouting crossly about missing shoes and hair products. Luke had a horrible habit, also, of eyeing him fully from head to toe every morning when he stood to leave the house, half opening his mouth as though about to pass comment on something he’d found displeasing, and then shutting it again. Luke was fussy too, constantly rewashing things in the kitchen that had sat in drawers being perfectly clean for weeks. And sniffing things. Everything. Tea towels. Tubs of butter. The insides of mugs.
“Why do you keep smelling everything?” Adrian had asked eventually.
“I don’t know,” Luke had replied vaguely. “There’s just this smell. In here. This whole flat. It just sort of . . . whiffs.”
Whiffs, Adrian had thought disconsolately. All that money on private school, and that’s what he got for it. A big posh, jobless streak of attitude who used the word whiffs.
On Thursday night he had opened a bottle of wine and attempted to reopen the channels that had closed so quickly after their chat in the pub. “So,” he’d said, “this girl. The one who broke your heart. What was she like?”
Luke, sta
ring blankly at the TV, had said simply, without looking in his direction, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
So it was with a sense of escape and liberation that Adrian left the flat that Saturday morning. The fine start to summer had dripped away into damp disappointment. The sky was limp and grubby and the pavement was full of old puddles from the previous night’s downpour. But he was looking forward to a weekend in Islington: the leafy views from the narrow sash windows; the creak and bang of his children moving from room to room and charging up and down the stairs; the click and scrabble of Caroline’s funny little dogs. Yes, he was even looking forward to the dogs.
Cat greeted him at the door. He was taken aback as ever by the sheer abundance of her. She had put on weight again and had crossed the line now from plumptious to unkempt, highlighted by denim hot pants and a black bandeau top that clearly came from her slimmer days. She hugged him tight and led him to his room for the weekend. Not Caroline’s room. He understood why. It had been their room, where they had slept together, made love, made babies. And now, he assumed, it was the room where Caroline had sex with her toy-boy lover. He was to sleep in the study on a pullout bed thing, on the same floor as Cat and Otis. Otis was on the swivel chair in the study doing something on the PC that he clearly didn’t want anyone to see as he rapidly switched screens when he heard them come in.
“Hello, handsome,” said Adrian, scruffing his son’s hair.
“Hi,” Otis replied dully.
There was a time, he thought, when Otis would have been jumping about like a spaniel at the prospect of his precious dad coming to spend the weekend. Now his presence barely registered.
“Where are Pearl and Beau?”
“Pearl’s skating. Beau’s with them.”
“Them?”
“Mum and Paul.”
“Oh,” said Adrian. “Right. When are they coming back?”
Otis shrugged. “Soon, I guess. They were out pretty early.”
“And what have you been up to then, all alone?”
“Just on the computer. That kind of thing.”
Adrian nodded, but felt quietly discomfited.
Cat stood in the doorway, one bare foot balanced on the other, and said, “He’s an addict. That’s all he ever wants to do.”
“Not when he’s with me,” said Adrian.
“Yeah, well, there’s probably more to do when he’s with you. Round here it’s all skating skating skating.”
“Yeah,” said Otis, without turning around, “and Paul Paul Paul.”
“Come on,” said Cat, “let’s go down and you can make me a coffee. And make him a smoothie.” She nodded at Otis, who allowed himself a smile and logged off the PC.
In the basement kitchen his daughter sat herself on a bar stool and watched him as he knocked old coffee grounds out of the coffeemaker. “So,” she said, “how’s it going with Mr. High Maintenance?”
“Jesus,” he said, smiling. “I had no idea. He used to be so much fun.”
“Yeah. He took a diva pill.”
“What’s that all about?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I dunno. Some girl. And that posh-boy school you and Mum sent him to didn’t help much.”
Adrian sighed. The private school had been Susie’s idea. She’d thought they’d be better placed to deal with Luke’s high-octane personality and superior intelligence. Easygoing, model-student Cat had gone to the local comprehensive and still had a chip on her shoulder about it.
“I pity the woman who takes him on,” he said, spooning fresh coffee into the machine.
“I don’t think such a woman exists.”
There was a commotion at the door and the dogs began to bark and clatter up the wooden stairs.
“I won’t come in,” they heard Caroline shout down the stairs, “but here’s two more for you! Bye! See you tomorrow night!” The door slammed shut and the dogs stopped barking and Pearl and Beau ran down the stairs, both launching themselves into Adrian’s arms with delight. Adrian made smoothies for all three children and handed them out at the dining table by the garden doors. He passed Cat her cappuccino and added a sugar to his own double espresso and sat at the kitchen counter, surveying the scene. So this was it, he thought. This was what he had missed every Saturday morning for the past four years. This is how it looked, the life he’d left behind. Pearl with cheeks still crimson from her training, Otis still in his pajamas at eleven a.m., Beau with a large pink circle around his mouth from the smoothie, kicking his legs under the table and smiling to himself. This was it.
He looked at Cat, adding sugar to her cappuccino, texting someone with the other hand, her enormous breasts barely contained by the skimpy jersey top, her black hair tumbling down around her olive face. And then he looked around the room, this family room he’d designed himself, from what had once been four dank basement rooms. He’d designed it for this, for exactly this, for lazy Saturday mornings, for smoothies and cappuccinos, children and their things in every corner; he’d designed it, built it, filled it with charming clutter and idiosyncratic personalizing touches. And then he’d left.
Beau had still been a baby.
He felt a lump pass up and down inside his throat.
If Maya were still alive he would still believe he’d done the right thing. But without her, doubt flowed through every vein in his body.
He opened his mouth to say the thing that was there, on the tip of his tongue, desperate to be released. Would you all like it if Daddy moved back in? With Mummy? And then he looked at his children again and he shut it.
14
Luke heard the front door bang shut in his father’s wake and watched from the window as Adrian strode away from the house and towards the high street. He tutted at the state of him. He looked so old, so thin, so scruffy. Honestly, if he stood too long on a street corner someone would eventually throw money at him. Luke pulled his silk dressing gown around his own thin body and headed for the bathroom. It was nice, so nice, finally to have some space. This flat was doing his head in. There were no corners, nowhere to hide. His bedroom was a joke. Bunk beds! Bunk beds at twenty-three! And having no separate living space, the kitchen and the living room all squashed into one twelve-foot square. Luke had been happy living at home with his mum because the two of them never had to be in the same space together.
Luke peered at himself in the bathroom mirror. He examined his facial hair growth. He was growing a beard. It was coming in slightly dark and vaguely curly and he wasn’t sure he liked it. He’d seen a guy the other day who looked a bit like him and he’d had a smooth, dark-blond beard and it had looked really cool. Luke was starting to look more like a tugboat captain than the cool city hipster he’d been hoping for. He sighed and decided to leave it two more days and if it didn’t look any better, he’d shave it off.
It took him a further hour to shower and iron a shirt and some trousers and dress himself. And then twenty minutes to do his hair. He had tricky hair. It curled in places. Which could be a curse. Or a gift. Depending on how he’d slept on it. And the humidity. Today it was a curse.
Once he’d got the hair right, he spent a good fifteen minutes staring disconsolately at the contents of his father’s kitchen and his fridge. He was hungry, kind of, but couldn’t decide what he fancied. What he really wanted was a fresh-out-of-the-oven chocolate croissant from Prêt à Manger. The one on North Street in Brighton where his friend Jake worked. But that wasn’t going to happen. His dad had left him with a dried-out wholemeal loaf and some rank jam. There was cereal too, for the kids. Some heinous organic stuff with “all natural sugars.” But no fresh milk. There was a packet of eggs, but Luke couldn’t be arsed to cook anything. Eventually he settled on a packet of Quavers and an overripe banana, which he ate at the counter, staring blankly through the window at the street outside.
And it was only then that his aloneness here really hit
him. Properly. The sensation lifted his spirits momentarily, like a surge of fresh air. He poured himself a glass of grape juice and then he flipped open the lid of his dad’s laptop and logged straight on to Facebook, straight into a world that hadn’t changed, even when his had, beyond all recognition. There they were, all his friends, just as he’d left them a week ago when he’d moved away; posting from pubs and bars he used to go to, their arms around the shoulders of people he knew, smiling as if he were still there. His gut clenched with envy. He hadn’t appreciated it when that was his life; he’d mooched about and moaned and gone to the pub under duress, talked to these people out of a sense of duty. He’d always felt there was somewhere else he was supposed to be, other friends he should be hanging out with, some amazing life he was supposed to be living. And now that he was living a different life, the one he’d left behind glittered in his wake like dropped diamonds.
Charlotte Evans had posted on his timeline. “Hey, gorgeous. Where’ve you gone to? Bumped into Austin last night and he told me you’ve moved to the smoke????”
Luke sighed. Of all the people to have noticed that he’d left town, Charlotte was the last one he wanted to open up a communication with. They’d dated on and off for a year or so back in 2010. She was hot beyond belief. He’d thought he was in love with her for one crazy week when the sun was shining. And then he’d cooled off and finally pulled himself out of it three months later than would have been ideal and she’d screamed and pounded his chest and called him names that left dark blots on his psyche even to this day. She’d got over it eventually, told him she’d like to be friends and he’d said, basically, Whatever, and she showed up at the pub sometimes and posted stuff on his timeline and tagged him on photos she posted of herself posing half-dressed. It was just one of those things, one of the many scourges of modern technology. It was so much harder to shake people off. He thought about ignoring the comment, but then sighed and thought: Throw her a bone, maybe she’ll run off a cliff with it. He typed in: “Yes. Mum and Dad staged an intervention. I’m here until further notice.”
