15
Tommy isn’t one of those hapless men who exists on bowls of cereal whenever his partner is away. He has several friends who fit this description: full-grown adults with whom he went to boarding school. Men who have somehow reached their fifties and can still barely boil an egg. They boast about it, affecting a ‘wife’s-away’ swagger as if maintaining a smooth-running home is baffling and actually beneath them. Briefly liberated, they allow the washing up to accumulate to gargantuan levels, to be attacked like an enemy battalion as ‘the wife’ drives home from her weekend in the Cotswolds with the girls.
Now Tommy looks around the living room, trying to reassure himself that everything is just so. At least, his and Lena’s version of just so – because this little 1960s flat has been furnished on a budget. ‘I needed to start afresh,’ she’d explained the first time he came here. ‘I couldn’t be surrounded by all the stuff Max and I had chosen together.’
Tommy admires her ingenuity and he loves this place, because it’s Lena’s. However, now he worries that it might appear a little shabby – studenty even – in the eyes of someone seeing it for the first time.
He re-plumps a tangerine cushion unnecessarily and picks a tiny speck of something off the candy-striped rug. Burrowing into the muddle under the sink, he manages to locate a duster and runs it over the extendable table where they sit to eat, and where Lena often works. While she does her copy writing mainly from home, as a manager at a high-end recruitment company Tommy is expected to be present in the office. Just as well, as it would be a squeeze for both of them to work in the flat.
Tommy straightens up the books on the over-crammed bookshelf. There are loads about society and politics and world affairs; brainy stuff of Lena’s that Tommy wouldn’t even pretend to understand (his taste is more pacy thrillers). He wonders what she’s doing now with her friends in the Highlands. He remembers visits up there when he was a child, to an aunt and uncle who had a terrifying housekeeper called Miss Maud. Lena has messaged Tommy to let him know they arrived safely, and that everything is wonderful. That was last night. He yearns to hear her voice, but she’s told him the signal is patchy, and he doesn’t want to be the pesky boyfriend constantly calling to remind her that he exists. But still, he misses her already.
Tommy checks the time on the cheap digital clock on the shelf, wondering if he should have told Lena what’s happening today when he messaged. But for some reason, he didn’t. He held the information back because he wasn’t sure how she’d react. And he doesn’t want anything to unsettle her on her trip. Anyway, there was no need to mention it because there’s nothing to tell! Absolutely nothing at all! Yet Tommy feels uncomfortable now, as if he has lied by omission. Which he has of course. This is Lena’s home, so of course he should have told her.
He worries now that if they speak while she’s away, and he tells her after the event, she’ll wonder why he didn’t mention it earlier. And then what will he tell her?
And now Tommy realises he is absent-mindedly polishing the flex of the wobbly desk lamp. He throws down the duster, marches to the living room window and rubs a smear off it with the cuff of his sweater sleeve.
Calm down, he tells himself. This is not a big deal, you great big idiot. Just calm down and get a grip on yourself.
Across town, lying flat out on his sofa, Joel replies to Shelley’s message from earlier.
Joel
Glad you’re having fun! Sounds amazing. All fine here don’t worry. Remember to take loads of pics!
Fin wanders into the living room and looks quizzically at the Christmas tree that’s leaning even more drunkenly than before. Then he glances over at his father, stretched out in a tracksuit and slippers, poking idly at his phone. At fifteen, Fin is starting to formulate some understanding of how a marriage works, and he’s noted a marked difference in his dad since his mum went away yesterday morning.
The main thing is, his dad is no longer hiding away upstairs in his studio. It’s like the re-wilding thing, Fin reckons, that happened during Covid. Goats venturing off mountains in Wales and wandering through towns, nibbling hedges. Deer strolling through an east London housing estate. Fin is a smart kid and he’s figured out that, if you remove the main controlling factor – traffic, society, his mum – then environments re-shape themselves and everything is different. It’s a little unsettling, especially his dad being downstairs so much. But now that he’sadjusted a little, Fin is finding this new state of affairs pretty interesting. It feels as if there might be cameras concealed around the house, filming a documentary entitled ‘Home Without Mum’.
‘All right, Fin?’ Finally his dad seems to notice that he’s there.
‘Yeah, I’m all right.’ Fin glances briefly at the parcels all arranged under the tree by his mum. They look so enticing with their gold ribbons and bows, and Fin is still young enough to be excited by presents. He has already fondled and rattled a fair few, trying to guess at their contents. ‘What’re you doing tonight again?’ he asks.
‘What?’ Joel sets his phone face down on the sofa. ‘Oh, um… I’m going out actually. Just to a boring gallery opening thing.’ As if he has only just remembered. ‘Why d’you ask?’
‘No reason!’ Fin says in an overly casual manner.
Joel peers at him suspiciously and sits up, tugging down the tracksuit bottoms which had ridden up over his calves. It’s not the kind of cheap tracksuit worn by local lads who hang around their nearest shopping centre. This is leisure wear, vastly expensive and bought by Joel in the hope that he might have the opportunity to wear itat leisurewith Carmel at some point. He is growing a little frustrated by these dive-in-dive-out-again sessions, and occasionally he wonders if that’s all he is to her: some kind of sex machine. Which is why he has built up tonight – ‘our sleepover’, as she mockingly called it – into such a monumental event.
‘So, what areyoudoing tonight?’ Joel asks, keen to switch the focus away from himself.
‘Nothing!’ Fin starts to leave the room, but Joel calls him back.
‘Hey, hang on a minute. You know I’ve told Martha that she needs to be in tonight, don’t you? To look after you. So if you go out you’ve got to let her know?—’
‘I don’t need looking after,’ Fin retorts.
‘Yeah, I know son.’ Joel’s tone softens and he pulls an it’s-not-me-it’s-your-mum face, despite Shelley currently being 500 miles away. ‘It’s just, I’d feel better, okay? I know it’s silly. Please humour your crazy old man…’
Fin grunts. ‘Yeah, okay.’ Then, frowning: ‘You were out last night as well.’
‘I know.’ Joel chuckles. ‘Two nights in a row. Just like the old days, heheh!’ Tension flickers in Fin’s pale blue eyes now, as if he’s afraid that his father might launch into the dancing-and-disco-biscuit routine that he subjected them to a few weeks ago.
‘You weren’t on about Martha babysitting me then,’ Fin reminds him and stalks out of the room.
Joel jumps off the sofa and scrambles after him. ‘No, but tonight I might end up staying out west. It’s such a pain getting home at that time?—’
‘At what time?’ Fin stares at him.
