Love Nest

by Julia Llewellyn

  ‘No. But the chances are around fifty per cent. Much higher than with normal IVF. And we can freeze any surplus eggs, so if it doesn’t work the first time, we can try again.’

  ‘Does Bridget understand what it involves?’

  ‘More or less,’ Gemma lied. ‘She’s looking into it.’ She flung her arms round Alex’s shoulders. ‘Thank you, darling. Thank you so, so, so much.’

  He kissed her back, placing both his hands on her bony dancer’s bottom. Gemma wasn’t in the mood: she felt too emotionally exhausted for sex and she wanted to be online delving into the pros and cons of home birth. But, sticking to her rules, she wiggled responsively, placing her hand on the fly of his trousers.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, leading him by the hand towards the bedroom with the funny layout that nobody wanted, but which – right now – she was too happy to care about.

  5

  In the spare bedroom of his plush rented flat in Belsize Park, Nick Crex was lying back against piles of pillows, a notebook on his knee and a pen in his mouth. He’d been working on a song all day and the chorus had only just fallen into place. A chorus that was fine. But not a classic. And Nick hated producing anything that wasn’t of the very highest standard.

  Not ideal when the label was putting on huge pressure for the second album to be delivered. Studio time was booked for next week and Andrew, the Vertical Blinds’ manager, had instructed him several times that he’d better come up with some ‘fucking magic’ by then. But so far he had only two songs that were anything like good enough. It was bugging him. His ambition was to write a song like ‘Imagine’ that made your brain ache at its simplicity.

  There was a gentle tap on the door. Kylie stuck her head round. As usual, she was dressed in her green velour tracksuit and her Ugg boots, which she always changed into when she got home from her job at the beauty salon. She smiled at him, her huge blue eyes creasing into her pink, plump face.

  ‘Tea’s almost done. It’s sausages and chips. Your favourite. Then afterwards I thought we could watch a DVD.’

  ‘I’ve got to finish this song.’

  ‘You’ve been in here all day. You need a break.’

  ‘I’ve got to finish this song. You watch something.’

  There was a tiny pause and then she said, ‘OK. I’ll give you a shout when tea’s ready.’

  The door shut. His phone bleeped in his pocket. He pulled it out. It was a text from Ian.

  Going to premier party in Docklands. Wanna join us?

  Nick was tempted. Usually he enjoyed a party. But if he didn’t corral the chords that were running untethered around his brain, he wouldn’t be able to relax. Plus, there was the question of Kylie. It would be tricky going without her, but if they went out together she stayed glued to his side, too shy to talk to anyone new, too aware that she was too small, too plump, too – somehow – ordinary to be a rock star’s girlfriend. But if he did go alone, she’d still be texting him hourly, asking when he’d be back.

  She’d always been up for a laugh back in Burnley, but London seemed to have stolen her mojo, made her shy almost to the point of agoraphobia. She’d found a job as a nail technician, but she’d made no effort to get to know the other girls in the salon.

  For Christ’s sake, Nick thought, staring out of the window at the dark communal garden. He had to summon the nerve to tell her it was over. He’d tried to confide his desire to end it to Ian, who was his best mate in the band, but he hadn’t understood, saying, ‘Yeah, mate, there’s so much totty you’re missing out on by not being single.’

  But it wasn’t just about missing out on the totty, it was about moving away from his roots, roots which Kylie kept him attached to. Nick’s thoughts moved on to the estate agent who’d shown him Flat 15. She wasn’t immediately sexy in the way Kylie was. But she had an untouchable aura, which of course made you want to grab her, rough her up a bit. She’d smellt great too – mysterious and spicy. Kylie smelled like an air freshener.

  He’d see her again tomorrow at the flat, where he’d arranged a second viewing. Nick smiled. He still couldn’t quite believe that he – a boy from a small, dead-end northern town – could find himself in the position of buying a flat in the middle of London, as if it was a litre of milk off the supermarket shelf. But then who could have believed that the band would have taken off like it had?

  After all, only two years ago they’d been playing in the back rooms of pubs to their mums and two old men. Nick had been working for a small office supplies firm, writing songs on his PC when he should have been doing spreadsheets, living in a tiny studio flat with Kylie, in the same tower block as Mum. But then the band had been spotted – first by Andrew, who’d become their manager, then by the A&R guy from Prang Records.

  Before they knew it, they’d been recording their demo, then they’d got the contract for the two albums, then their first single, ‘Mercury River’, had gone nuclear on the downloads and was being played non-stop on the radio, and suddenly – within the space of a year – they were the hottest band on the planet. Well, OK, maybe planet was an exaggeration, but they were the biggest in Britain and planning to take on America soon.

  And suddenly his Lloyds Savers, which had only ever had about £25 in it before, had climbed into quadruple figures. Then quintuple. And then one day there was nearly a million pounds sitting there. Andrew took him aside for a word.

  ‘You need to do something with that money. Not just leave it, especially when interest rates are so pathetic. Or jizz it away on drugs and cars, which is what the others will do. Get a financial adviser. Invest it. Then you’ll have something to fall back on long after the party’s over.’

  Nick had found a financial adviser called Charles, who’d told him to get into property while the market was low. So Nick had started to look at property on the internet, in the furtive way most men looked at porn. And he’d begun to conceive an escape plan from Kylie.

  Kylie. Nick thought back to the first time he’d seen her, across the room at the George IV. He was seventeen, she was sixteen, flicking back her blonde hair and laughing at someone’s joke. Fantastic tits complemented by a low-cut T-shirt. A short skirt showing off shapely if rather short pins. Pretty face, if a little chubby. Too much make-up – but all Burnley girls wore too much make-up. It didn’t detract. She was gorgeous. She was also, as Nick discovered, his mate Shane’s new girlfriend. But Nick wanted her, so Nick was going to have her.

  It took a couple of months. At first Kylie ignored his glowering looks and barely responded to the few comments he tossed in her direction. Nick realized he was going to have to work a bit harder than normal to get her. He didn’t mind, it was fun to have a challenge. One night he’d toss a compliment in her direction, the next time he saw her he’d ignore her completely.

  Worked a treat. When he waited at the bar he could feel her eyes boring into the back of his neck, then when he arrived at the table with drinks she’d pointedly ignore him. It went on for about a month, until one evening when they were in the pub and Shane said, ‘Guess what, guys? Me and Kylie have some news.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ they all chorused. Kylie blushed and looked down, then looked up and caught Nick’s eye.

  ‘Well, go on, tell them, Kyles.’

  ‘No, you tell ‘em.’

  ‘All right, I will. We’re engaged.’

  ‘Oh, wow!’ Shrieks from the girls, handshakes from the boys. Nick set his lips in contemptuous amusement as Kylie held out her left hand and everyone admired the ring from H. Samuel. ‘Ooh, look at that diamond! You’re so lucky.’ In the flurry of congratulations, Kylie got up and headed towards the toilets. Nick stood up too. When she came out he was waiting in the dingy little corridor outside, next to the cigarette machine.

  ‘Congratulations,’ he said.

  She jumped theatrically and laid a hand on her chest. ‘You frightened me!’

  ‘Sorry.’ He smiled. ‘I hope you’ll be very happy.’

  ‘And what’s it to you, Nic
k?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’ He pulled her to him and kissed her hard on the lips, just like he’d seen Clark Gable do in that film his mum watched all the time. For a second she responded passionately, then she pushed him away.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Something you’ve wanted for a long time.’

  ‘You cheeky wanker! I’m engaged.’

  ‘Why are you kissing your fiancé’s mate, then?’

  The moment was so electric, they could both have been dressed in head-to-toe nylon. Then she flounced back to the bar, waggling her arse provocatively.

  That was seven years ago, Nick thought. Seven years during which many tears had been shed, voices raised, insults exchanged across the street, rather unconvincing death threats made by Shane Vranch. Seven years during which he and Kylie had initially been blissful, when he’d written poems to her and they’d done things like dance barefoot in the moonlight on the North York Moors. Nick had always sensed he was special. A romantic. His relationship with Kylie sat perfectly with that feeling.

  After they got their flat, life was slightly less bohemian. Still, they were happy enough, eating curries in front of obscure foreign DVDs he insisted they watched and going on cheap holidays to Spain, which had been only a qualified success as Nick couldn’t swim and the sun disagreed with his pale skin. But still they’d had a laugh drinking cheap sangria in seedy bars off the beaten track, looking at white adobe churches in quiet squares.

  Then the third phase, when the band was beginning to get its act together and habits of Kylie’s he’d always found endearing, like burning the toast, began to irritate him. They squabbled about the fact that he spent so much time with the band, that he didn’t really want to look for a new place to live because he had other things on his mind, that he couldn’t make her cousin’s wedding because it coincided with a gig, that he wouldn’t even discuss getting married even though loads of their friends were settling down and Shane Vranch was a dad now.

  Things were getting really tense when the band was spotted and contracts signed. He didn’t consult Kylie, he just quit his day job and announced he was moving to London, leaving the decision of whether she should follow entirely up to her. Inwardly, Nick was torn – he couldn’t imagine life anywhere, let alone London, without her. But at the same time he was beginning to feel that a girlfriend with a curly blonde perm and a fondness for This Morning was not the kind of girlfriend he should have. He was pretty sure she wouldn’t come – she was devoted to her family and loved being near the Moors. Once things were long-distance Nick hoped he’d meet someone else.

  But to his surprise, Kylie said she was coming.

  ‘What about your job? Your mum? Your sisters?’

  ‘There are beauty salons in London, aren’t there? There are phones. Trains. I love you, Nicky. I want to be with you.’

  And like an idiot, he’d gone along with it. It was Nick’s darkest secret, but for all his wearing of mascara and covering his arms in mystic tattoos, he was actually a bit of a coward. A childhood spent cowering in front of the TV while Mum and Dad screamed at each other in the bedroom had left him with a hatred of confrontation. Before Kylie, he’d never dumped anyone directly, he’d just stopped calling and ignored them when he’d bumped into them. They got the message, even if they didn’t like it very much. Now he both hoped and feared Kylie would quickly get homesick and hurry back to Burnley, but eight months had passed and – although she was miserable in the south – she was showing no sign of upping sticks.

  Hence his secret viewing. It was pathetic, but the only way he knew of getting the message across that he’d outgrown her was to move into a new place and not provide her with the keys.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t love her any more, because in a way he did. Kylie was warm and soft; she knew exactly how he liked his tea and how many fillings he had and that he was afraid of dogs. She had a dragon tattoo, matching his, on her left arm and she adored Jammie Dodgers. She washed his underpants and bought him new socks. There was nobody kinder, nobody more understanding of his moods. But as a rock star’s girlfriend, she was simply all wrong.

  It wasn’t just Nick who sensed this. Andrew was putting pressure on him too.

  ‘You mustn’t tell anyone you have a long-term girlfriend,’ he said, as soon as they started to hit the big time. ‘It doesn’t go with your maverick image.’ He didn’t have a problem with the other boys. They were all having it off with models, starlets, reality TV stars. Jack, the lead singer, was having a heavily publicized on-off thing with Myrelle St Angelo, who was the model of the moment. Their days were a round of drugs and private jets. But all Kylie wanted was a pint in the local followed by an evening in front of the telly.

  Nick hadn’t been entirely faithful – there’d been a handful of one-night stands on tour; you’d have to be a robot not to succumb to the temptation. But essentially he was a monogamist. He wanted to be in a couple, but just a smarter one.

  Once again, an image of the estate agent’s face passed through his mind. She was the kind of woman he ought to have at his side. Haughty. Cool. Clearly well bred.

  A plan began to formulate.

  ‘Nicky!’

  ‘Coming.’

  Tea was on the oak table in the huge sepulchral dining room. Kylie had said they should turn it into a den, but Nick refused and insisted they ate there as often as possible.

  ‘Looks good,’ he said, suddenly realizing how hungry he was.

  She blushed happily. ‘Well, it’s your favourite, ducks.’

  A bottle of white wine was opened. Drinking wine was a new thing for both of them – really they preferred lager, but Nick had decided that was no longer acceptable. The sausages were delicious and the chips were fat and greasy. Nick was fussy about food. He hated all veg except carrots, all fruit except apples, and loathed sauces. Dinners with the Prang execs were an ordeal, as they always ordered things like sashimi and oysters. He would toy with them and then stop the limo on the way home for a MaccyDs.

  He knew he had to work on making his palate more sophisticated, but the prospect of anything outside his comfort zone made him gag.

  ‘Did you get anywhere with the song?’ Kylie asked.

  ‘Not really, it’s bloody hard.’

  ‘Poor you, love,’ she smiled. There was a pause. Trying to sound relaxed, she continued. ‘I spoke to Becky. Apparently Ian says you’re going to be touring America later this year.’

  Nick paused too, before saying, ‘Did she? Yeah, well, that is the plan.’

  ‘I’ve always wanted to go to America. New York. The shopping’s meant to be brilliant.’

  That familiar feeling of being slowly suffocated. ‘I don’t know if we’ll go to New York. Nothing’s certain yet.’

  Kylie didn’t react. ‘I was thinking maybe we could go by ourselves some time. For a weekend. Becky and Ian went a couple of weeks ago for her birthday. Drank champagne all the way. They said it was amazing.’ Her voice softened. ‘It would be good for us to get some time alone together.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Nick said, feeling like the most evil man in the world.

  The following morning, Kylie was up early and out of the flat by eight. Nick rose an hour later and took the Tube to Farringdon, revelling in the stares of an office worker, a young woman, in a shiny grey suit. Brazenly he stared back at her. Immediately she looked away. Nick grinned. He could see her puzzling – is it him? No, it can’t be. That was the joy of being the lead guitarist/songwriter. You got all the perks of wealth and fame, but you could still travel more or less anonymously on the tube. As lead singer, Jack couldn’t step outside his front door without a volley of paparazzi bulbs exploding.

  But without Nick, Jack would be nothing. Nick wrote the songs, and the songs – despite what Jack’s groupies might argue – were what made the Vertical Blinds so hot. They were also what brought in the money. All right, the other guys were doing fine, but Nick got the royalties every time
their songs were played on the radio and a way bigger percentage than the rest of them every time a disc was sold or downloaded. Hence his ability to pay cash for that amazing flat and still have plenty left over to buy his mum a house.

  Like last time, Lucinda was waiting by the front door. If anything, she was sexier than he’d remembered: in a dove grey trouser-suit, her hair tied back in a neat bun. Her cheekbones seemed almost to point through her skin, heralding her genetic superiority. She was so sleek and glossy, like a racehorse. Kylie – well, Kylie was like a pit pony in comparison: cute, amiable but uninspiring.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘How nice to see you again.’

  Nick didn’t quite know how to respond to this. ‘Yeah,’ he muttered.

  ‘Shall we go in?’

  Just like Lucinda, the flat was even better than he remembered. To own something like that would be the apex of his dreams. But one of Nick’s rules of life was always to play it cool. Show eagerness and Lucinda would be off spinning a line about how many buyers were after it, the stiff competition, blah-di-blah, maybe he should put in an offer straight away or risk losing the place by morning. He looked around in silence and – unlike last time – she kept her comments to a minimum. At the end, he said, ‘I’m going to have to have a think about this.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said and then suddenly deciding it was time to change tack, he added, ‘I like your suit. Very Katharine Hepburn.’

  ‘You didn’t strike me as a Hepburn fan.’ She looked amused.

  ‘Why not?’ Snooty cow. Still, she had a point. One of the advantages of having a mother addicted to black and white movies, he guessed.

  ‘Well, you know. You’re in a band and…’

  ‘Have you ever seen us?’

  ‘What? Your band? No! I’m not that into music.’

  Not that into music? Nick just couldn’t understand how anyone could say that – it was like saying I’m not that into eating to stay alive, I’m not that into washing (actually Nick hadn’t been that into washing for a big chunk of his teens, but whatever). Not that into breathing, into having a beating heart. Kylie loved music. It had been one of the things that had oiled their early years together, going to gigs, making up obscure playlists, tuning in to far-away radio stations. Some of her favourites were a bit dodgy, but she was always open to new stuff and had, in fact, introduced Nick to quite a few bands who’d become his greatest influences. But he banished such thoughts.