‘What did you and Jack argue over?’
‘He was upsetting Sarah,’ I say. ‘His self-destructive behaviour had reached a point where he’d crossed the line into wallowing. She asked me if I’d mind trying to get through to him, and it didn’t go so well.’
My speech pattern sounds unnaturally fast, as if I’m a child on stage, rushing to get my rehearsed line out before I forget it and screw up the play. It strikes me that I’ve been lying about Jack O’Mara to different people for different reasons for almost as long as I’ve known him. Even if only by omission.
Oscar tastes his wine as he watches me pull the stew I’ve prepared out of the oven.
‘Perhaps a change of scene would do him good,’ he says, his voice unreadable.
I nod. ‘A holiday might be an idea.’
He loosens his tie and pops his top button. ‘I was thinking of something a bit more long term. A new start.’ He breaks off, watching me carefully. ‘A new city. I mean, everywhere has a local radio station, right?’
What’s the collective noun for bats, I wonder? A hoard? A plague? And then it comes to me. A colony. I have a colony of bats behind my ribcage, their claws hooked over my bones as they hang upside down, and the mention of Jack making a fresh start somewhere outside of London has them fussing and stretching their eerie paper-thin wings. It makes me queasy. Would it be for the best if Jack were to leave? Where would he go? And would Sarah go with him? The thought of losing them makes me swallow a mouthful of wine rather than the sip I’d intended.
‘It’d be too tricky for Sarah to leave London with her job,’ I say mildly, pulling bowls from the cupboard.
He watches me, sipping his wine. ‘There’re trains. She could stay in London.’
Oscar has never voiced an overtly negative opinion of Jack, and I sense that he’s stopping himself short of it now. I know full well there are trains, and they could commute to see each other if they lived in different cities. I just don’t want them to.
‘It’s a thought,’ I say, hoping it’s a thought neither of them ever has. Is that selfish? I can see merit in the idea of Jack kick-starting his life somewhere without any of the negative connotations dogging him here: the accident, his stalled career. These days I think I’m one of those negatives too. Our friendship is brittle, fire-damaged; as I look back on it I can’t discern if it’s ever been as genuine as I thought it was. It appears real, but it’s been built for purpose because we both love Sarah. Oscar holds his tongue; there’s an unusual atmosphere between us tonight, a weight in the air, a storm warning.
‘How was your day?’ I ask, smiling, at least on the outside.
‘Noisy,’ he sighs. ‘Pressured. Peter’s still away so I’m doing most of his job as well as my own.’
I sometimes wonder if banking is Oscar’s true vocation. There’s a cut and thrust to it that isn’t his natural vibe, although perhaps I underestimate his chameleon-like ability to switch character the moment he snaps his red braces over his shoulders in the mornings. Who is the real Oscar? My bare-chested Thai love or the starched city shirt? If you’d asked me a year ago, I’d have said the former without hesitation, but now I’m not so sure. Despite the pressures, there’s no doubt he enjoys what he does. He starts early and stays late, and he’s never happier than on the nights when he’s landed a deal. What will I say in five years or ten? Will he have been so sucked in and chewed up by the corporate world that I can no longer see my Robinson Crusoe? I hope not, for him even more so than for myself.
‘Why don’t you go and jump in the shower?’ I take the lid off the stew and add a little more wine, then slide it back in the oven for a few more minutes. ‘This can wait a bit longer.’
At the end of the evening, I walk through the flat and turn out the lights before I join Oscar in bed. I linger in the hallway, my finger on the switch of the table lamp that bathes the bowl of peonies in a creamy glow. They’re stunning, but already a petal has fallen from one of the blooms and landed on the wooden floorboards. That’s the thing about flowers, isn’t it? They’re lush and extravagant and demand your attention, and you think they’re the most exquisite thing, but then in the shortest time they’re not very lovely at all. They wilt and they turn the water brown, and soon you can’t hold on to them any longer.
I head into the bedroom and slide naked between the covers and into Oscar’s open arms, pressing my lips against his chest.
2013
* * *
New Year’s Resolutions
For the last few years I’ve started my resolutions with a wish for my first job in publishing.
Officially, I don’t need to put that this year, although I will secretly express a desire to move into something slightly more taxing than replying to teenage girls about boys and how to plait their hair like Katniss Everdeen. It’s not that I don’t enjoy it; it’s more that our readership is relatively modest and I can’t see how I’m ever going to progress there. Plus I don’t even like Justin Bieber.
Technically, I should write down finding somewhere else to live as a resolution, because I’ve been living with Oscar for six months now and it was only ever supposed to be a temporary arrangement. But I don’t want to live anywhere else, and he doesn’t want me to go, so I’m not going to. We seem to have leapfrogged several conventional stages in our relationship, but it’s been that way for us from the very first moment he spoke to me in Thailand. Who’s to say what’s right and wrong with love, anyway? This isn’t romance by numbers, it’s real life. Yes, I find his adoration overwhelming sometimes; he wears his heart on his sleeve with my name scored through it. He still asks me to marry him at least once a week, and although I know he’s ninety per cent kidding, I think he’d book the church if I shocked him and said yes. He’s a gift giver and a considerate lover and a steady ship.
So I don’t really know what my New Year’s resolution is. Just try not to fall overboard, I guess.
8 February
Laurie
‘Are you sure the recipe said to put the whole bottle of rum in?’ I splutter a little into the glass teacup of punch Sarah has just passed me to taste. ‘I think it’s taken the roof off my mouth.’
She laughs wickedly. ‘I might have adulterated it a tiny bit.’
‘Well, at least everyone will be too pissed to notice if it’s not a very good party,’ I say, surveying the flat. Oscar has been away in Brussels for most of this week with work, which has left me free to spend my evenings getting everything surprise-birthday-party perfect. He’s twenty-nine tomorrow. I’ve carefully packed away anything of his mother’s that looks expensive or breakable, cooked and frozen Delia-worthy canapés, and Sarah and I have spent most of this afternoon rearranging the furniture to maximize on space. We’re lucky to live in the garden flat; we can always let people spill out there if it gets too full. Hopefully not though, as it’s freezing and the weather forecast mentioned the possibility of snow later.
‘It’ll be brilliant,’ she says over her shoulder as she heads for the loo. ‘You’ve bagged the coolest DJ in town, after all.’ I can’t quite tell if she’s being sarcastic or not.