Tash splutters, and I catch a glimmer of mirth in her eyes. ‘Maybe Vince has found them a bucket?’
‘I’ll have to message him and tell him about the knife method,’ I babble.
‘What?’
‘It’s happened before. The bathroom lock’s a bit sticky. He got trapped in there just after we’d moved in...’ I’m remembering it now, Vince hammering frantically on the door as if rats were leaping at him from the toilet.
‘Don’t do it,’ Tash commands.
‘But you can open it easily with a knife. I just need to tell him—’
‘No!’ She snatches my phone and places it face down between us. ‘Just let go of the responsibilities,’ she adds, ‘and think about yourself for a change. Let Vince sort it out.’
I sip my wine, trying to calm myself and figuring that she’s right. No one will die if the bathroom remains locked and there’s no oat milk and Vince’s book remains unfinished. While these things aren’tgreat– and my entire body prickles with unease at the thought of not doing what’s expected of me – I do accept that the world won’t end if I don’t attend to those tasks.
At least, it won’t endtonight.
And gradually, soothed by booze and being with my best friend in the world, I sense my panic abating – although it’s taking my every last shred of willpower not to message Vince:Stick the knife blade in the slot, waggle it then turn VERY SLOWLY to the right.
We head home to Tash’s Bethnal Green flat where, suddenly ravenous, I stuff my face with buttered crumpets and then tumble into the single bed in her cheery yellow spare room.
By now I’m thinking Vince must bewildwith worry. So why hasn’t he been calling me, after I hung up on him? He’s lost his phone, I decide, and now he’s pacing the streets, with Jarvis, calling my name and berating himself for making us move. And now, because Ireallydon’t want him to worry, I decide to try calling him once more.
Reaching to the bedside table, I pick up my phone and see that he’s messaged me. It was sent two minutes ago, when I was in Tash’s bathroom, feeling grateful that she always has the fluffiest towels, and a spare toothbrush for guests.
I stare at Vince’s message, wondering if my mind’s playing a trick, or if I’m dreaming.
But no, it seems I am 100 per cent awake as I read it again:Gail’s saying if it’s oat milk can you get the barista kind?
CHAPTER NINE
Vince
Vince wakes up so slick with sweat that, for an instant, he thinks something terrible has happened during the night.
He thinks he has turned into an otter.
Realising he must still be pissed, he wonders why night-time drunkenness (fun, liberating) feels so different from morning drunkenness (soiled and seedy like a pair of old underpants lying in a car park).
He rubs at his gummy eyes, remembering that Edie had been obsessed with otters for a while. He’d bought her a DVD of that movie,Ring of Bright Water, but of course it ended horribly with the otter being whacked with a shovel. That’s not an image he wants clouding his hungover brain.
Lying very still, Vince waits for his jumbled thoughts to slide into some kind of order. Kate’s the person who files things and looks after admin-type stuff around here. His book contracts, correspondence, household bills; she’s good at all that. Vince wouldn’t be able to tell you who supplies their gas if someone were to put a gun to his head. ‘The gas board?’ he’d squeak in terror. Now he needs Kate to attend to the administrative mix-up in his head: the scrappy recollections of last night, with an underlying note of paranoia.
‘Kate?’ he calls out. No response. Is she in a huff with him? At least he’s reassured now that he’s still a human and not a small, furry, water-loving mammal. So that’s one good thing. However, for some reason his right shoulder and upper arm are aching horribly, and he’s sweating so hard he can feel it seeping through his pores. He wants to stop it but of course he has no control over it. There’s no off switch for sweat.
Is this what it’s like to be menopausal, he wonders briefly? It’s not normally Vince who does the perspiring around here. For the past few months Kate’s been doing enough of that for both of them. She’s only forty-nine. He’d assumed she was too young for all that. Wasn’t the menopause something that happened tooldladies, like his mum and aunties, who’d chatted about seed catalogues and their varicose veins, and sat around wafting their faces once they’d hit a certain age? But apparently not. Kate had explained, rather tetchily, that she’s ‘in peri-peri-menopause’ or something like that. All Vince could think of was Nando’s. ‘That’s different,’ she’d snapped at him. ‘That’s spicy chicken.’ Whatever it is, she’s been complaining of hot flushes lately. So what’s with the corrugated vests?
‘Ribbed,’ she corrected him. ‘It’s just a nice soft layer for wearing under things.’ But Kate doesn’t just wear them ‘under things’. She also wears them in full view – not under anything – around the house, withleggings, when anyone could come to the door.
If that’s not bad enough, these vests were ordered from a flimsy magazine that fell out of the newspaper one weekend. His wife has started shopping from a catalogue like his nan used to! It’ll be ‘slacks’ next. Or those felted tartan slippers with a zip up the front. To think, she once splurged £150 on a sexy slip from Agent Provocateur.
On the rare occasions when they’re having sex, Vince tries to conjure up an image ofthatKate – the 1998 version in slippy black silk as opposed to a thermal base the colour of mushroom soup. But it’s like trying to progress beyond theuna taza de café por favorlevel of Duolingo Spanish. His brain can’t compute it. Instead – and he hates himself for this – whenever he and Kate are doing it, it’s Deborah he pictures in his mind. Deborah, who he’s fancied since 1982, bent over a kitchen table and clutching a spatula covered in cake mix with that long green dress hoicked up over her—
With a jolt, Vince realises he must have slipped back into a semi-conscious reverie. He rubs at his gummy eyes again and remembers now that there was a party here last night. The end of the evening is hazy, though. He vaguely recalls having a little lie-down on the bed, even though some of his guests were still here. He’d only planned to rest his eyes. But he must have dozed off and, at some point, undressed fully. At some point during all that, hadn’t he texted Kate about something? Something about milk, he figures, rubbing at his head. Next thing he knew, it was morning.
He checks the time – it’s a quarter to ten – and frowns at the space beside him where his wife should be.
‘Kate?’ he calls out again, uneasiness rising in him now. Uneasiness about... something. He’s not yet sure what it is.
