‘I was talking to your mum about the summer.’
‘Right. Okay. Me and my mates have been doing exactly that as well. There’s a festival in Croatia we were talking about going to. And Reading, of course. Everyone’s going to that.’
Laura fixed Alex with an expression she hoped was defiant, but must have been imploring. His appetite for the fight had clearly passed.
‘You know, it’s late – you’ve got that homework to finish. No hurry. Let’s talk about this next week, huh?’
Ethan had his head in the fridge now, foraging. ‘Sure.’
‘You take care, okay?’
‘See you, Dad.’
Alex didn’t look at Laura as he left, and when she turned back from closing the front door, leaning weakly against it, Ethan was halfway up the stairs, headphones back on. She wished he would stay downstairs, take the headphones off and talk to her. She knew there was a girlfriend, Saskia. She didn’t know how serious it was. She didn’t know what to do. Buy him condoms? She couldn’t bear the thought of it – her baby. And sex in general. It was so far from her consciousness. She might never have sex again. The thought of her beautiful boy … She shook her head. No wonder he didn’t want to talk to her.
12
The counsellor had said they should have lots of pictures of Carrie. As many as they wanted. There she was, framed in most rooms of the house, smiling out at them from windowsills and chests of drawers. The kids had those montage frames with dozens of Carries. Bea often spoke to her as she passed them in the morning, and sometimes she kissed one.
Nick had the pictures out because the counsellor had said he should. One day they might not hurt. They still did now, though. Mostly he tried not to look at them, not when he was trying to get through the business of the day. Looking at them was for wallowing and, most of the time, he couldn’t let himself do that.
He was carrying a load of small-people laundry upstairs when the pink sparkly dress snared him.
Carrie in a pink sparkly dress, cut low in the front, with little flouncy sleeves on her shoulders. He’d met her at that party, back when he’d liked parties. Well, back when he hadn’t hated parties. It was the summer between his second and third year at university, and he was interning all week with a local law firm, his dad’s idea, and going to twenty-firsts almost every weekend, criss-crossing the country by train, coach or cadged lift to don black tie (slightly oversized, purchased at Oxfam, to his mother’s dismay) and drink lukewarm wine in a white nylon marquee. They were a shoal in black wool, him and his mates. Saturday travel, Sunday hangover, repeat. He’d almost missed this one – Cumbria was bloody miles away, and even with his railcard, the train fare had felt eye-watering. A weekend at home, sleeping all day, had seemed more appealing. His mate Simon had persuaded him, found him a seat in a beaten-up Fiat, and an actual bed in another mate’s house only a few miles from where Steve’s party was taking place. Supposing he hadn’t?
Occasionally, long after he and Carrie were together, he’d be gripped by a weird retrospective fear of something that hadn’t happened. What if he hadn’t gone? What if he’d missed her? What if, having skipped the twenty-first, he was somehow still invited to Steve’s wedding, six or seven years later, had met her there, and it was too late, because she was with someone else, and maybe he was too. Would you know, instantly, what a mistake those two other relationships had been? Would you know she was the one you were supposed to be with? Or would you just smile at her in passing, think what a pretty girl Steve’s kid sister was, have a casual chat on the edge of the dance-floor and go on with your life?
It seemed unimaginable. He had gone, thought Cumbria was staggeringly beautiful. Changed in a pub toilet, been handed a glass of something alcoholic. And there she was.
He’d never thought he’d be one of those blokes, the kind who are struck by a thunderbolt young and don’t look anywhere else. Who just know: This is my person. A year before, one of his more laddish mates had done exactly that – come back from Interrailing with a soppy grin and a suddenly serious girlfriend. Nick had been nonplussed by his transformation. Judged him, a little.
He’d been having a sort of a fling with a girl at uni. Nothing serious for either of them. Certainly no declarations or promises had been made. She wasn’t invited to this party, and neither of them had minded that or fretted about absences or separations. He liked her well enough, and he certainly liked sleeping with her, but he didn’t think about her when he wasn’t with her. The last fling had been like that, too, and the several before that. It had always been thus. Most had petered out without scenes or recriminations. There’d been remarkably little drama.
This was different. Instantly, inexplicably, vastly different. He suddenly sensed all the drama in the air. He thought immediately of the friend he’d judged last summer and wanted to ring him, say he was sorry, that he got it now.
For at least an hour, he just watched her. His mates came and went, and he half paid attention to what they were saying, moving around the room so that he could always see her. It was everything about her and nothing in particular. It was her smile. The way she moved in her pink sparkly dress. The ease with which she chatted to everyone. Her dancing – face tilted upwards, eyes closed, hands high above her head, like she was alone in her bedroom. It was the peculiar, unfamiliar sureness that she was there for him.
‘Are you ever gonna talk to me or are you just gonna stare at me, d’you think?’
She had her hands on her hips, her head on one side. Nick had no idea where she had come from, and where his mates had faded away to, but she was right in front of him. He could feel his cheeks colour, betraying him.
‘You make me sound like a weirdo.’
‘Are you a weirdo?’
‘Nope.’ He racked his brain for witty banter. He was good at it. Except with her, apparently.
‘Steve says you’re Nick.’
‘You asked him?’
Did she wink? ‘Caught me.’ Her confidence was audacious.
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. I said, “Steve, who’s that weirdo staring at me so I can get Dad to chuck him out?”’
Nick must have glanced over her shoulder, looking for the dad, just for a moment, but it was long enough for her to win the point. She laughed. It was a glorious sound. He’d been watching her laugh for an hour but now he could hear it too, and it was even better than he’d been imagining. If you hadn’t felt like this, it sounded ludicrous and fanciful. But if you had, you knew. That was it. He never questioned it, not once, after that night. He was going to be with Carrie.
When he’d got home, twenty-four hours later, he’d hugged his mum in the kitchen, harder than normal. She’d wrinkled her nose, told him he smelt like a brewery in a farmyard, but hugged him back, of course. Then she’d drawn away to study him. ‘You look very happy, son.’
‘I am.’
‘Good night?’ She’d done that clever thing she always did – turned slightly away from him, busying herself making a cup of tea – so it was somehow easier for him to speak.
‘Amazing night.’ He saw her mouth curl into a smile, and an eyebrow rose just slightly.