The Time of My Life
Cecelia Ahern

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2011

This edition published by Harper 2016

Copyright © Cecelia Ahern 2011

Cover design by Heike Schüssler © HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

Cecelia Ahern asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780007350452

Ebook Edition © May 2016 ISBN: 9780007432837

Version: 2019-04-30

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Praise for Cecelia Ahern

‘Cecelia Ahern’s novels are like a box of emeralds … they are, one and all, dazzling gems’

Adriana Trigiani, author of The Shoemaker’s Wife

‘Beautiful and unexpected … both thought-provoking and life-affirming’

Sunday Express

‘Intricate and emotional … really completely lovely’

Grazia

‘A wry, dark drama’

Daily Mail

‘Life-affirming, warm and wise’

Good Housekeeping

‘Cecelia Ahern is an undisputed master when it comes to writing about relationships … Moving, real and exquisitely crafted.’

Heat

‘Exceptional … both heartbreaking and uplifting’

Daily Express

‘Both moving and thought-provoking’

Irish Independent

‘An exquisitely crafted and poignant tale about finding the beauty that lies within the ordinary. Make space for it in your life’

Heat

‘An unusual and satisfying novel’

Woman

‘Ahern cleverly and thoughtfully turns the tables, providing thought-provoking life lessons.’

Sunday Express

‘An intriguing, heartfelt novel, which makes you think about the value of life’

Glamour

‘Insightful and true’

Irish Independent

‘Ahern demonstrates a sure and subtle understanding of the human condition and the pleasures and pains in relationships’

Barry Forshaw

‘Utterly irresistible … I devoured it in one sitting’

Marian Keyes

‘The legendary Ahern will keep you guessing … a classic’

Company

For my precious girl, Robin

‘You used to be much more … “muchier”.

You’ve lost your muchness.’

The Mad Hatter to Alice in the film of

Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Praise for Cecelia Ahern

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Let’s Hear from you

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Cecelia Ahern

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

Dear Lucy Silchester,

You have an appointment for Monday 30 May.

I didn’t read the rest. I didn’t need to, I knew who it was from. I could tell as soon as I arrived home from work to my studio apartment and saw it lying on the floor, halfway from the front door to the kitchen, on the burned part of the carpet where the Christmas tree had fallen – and landed – two years ago and the lights had singed the carpet hairs. The carpet was a cheap old thing chosen by my penny-pinching landlord, a grey worn industrial yarn that looked as though more feet had trodden over it than the apparently ‘lucky’ testicles of the bull mosaic in Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele II in Milan. You’d find a similar kind of fabric in my office building – a more appropriate location as it was never intended to be walked on barefoot, made only for the steady stream of on-foot shiny leather-shoe traffic moving from cubicle to photocopier, photocopier to coffee machine, coffee machine to emergency exit stairwell for a sneaky smoke, ironically the only location which failed to alert the fire alarm. I had been a part of the effort to find the smoking spot and each time the enemy had located us, we began efforts to find a new safe house. The current place was easy to find – hundreds of butts in piles on the ground to mark the spot, their lives sucked out of them by their users in panicked distressed frenzy, their souls floating around the insides of lungs while their outsides were dropped, stamped on and deserted. It was a place more worshipped than any other in the building, more than the coffee machine, more than the exit doors at six p.m., most certainly more than the chair before the desk of Edna Larson – the boss lady – who ate good intentions like a broken dispenser that swallowed your coins but failed to spit out the bar of chocolate.

The letter lay there on that dirty singed floor. A cream woven envelope with grand George Street font declaring my name in certain no-doubt-about-it black ink, and beside it, a gold embossed stamp, three swirls joined together.

The triple spirals of life. I knew what it was because I’d received two similar letters already and I’d Googled the symbol. I’d failed to make an appointment for either of the requests to meet. I’d also failed to phone the number supplied to rearrange or cancel. I’d ignored it, swept it under the rug – or would have if the Christmas tree lights hadn’t set fire to the shagpile that used to be there – and forgotten about it. But I hadn’t really forgotten about it. You never forget about things you’ve done that you know you shouldn’t have done. They hang around your mind, linger like a thief casing a joint for a future job. You see them there, dramatically lurking nearby in striped monochrome, leaping behind postboxes as soon as your head whips around to confront them. Or it’s a familiar face in a crowd that you glimpse but then lose sight of. An annoying Where’s Wally? forever locked away and hidden in every thought in your conscience. The bad thing that you did, always there to let you know.

A month on from ignoring the second letter and this one had arrived with another rescheduled appointment, and no mention of my previous failures to respond. It was like my mother – its polite failure to acknowledge my shortcomings was making me feel even worse.

I held the fancy paper at the corner between my thumb and forefinger and tilted my head to read it as it flopped to the side. The cat had pissed on it again. Ironic really. I didn’t blame him. My illegally owning a pet in a high-rise apartment block in the middle of the city and holding down a full-time job meant the cat had no opportunity to go outside to relieve himself. In an attempt to rid myself of my guilt I had put framed photographs of the outside world around the apartment: the grass, the sea, a postbox, pebbles, traffic, a park, a collection of other cats, and Gene Kelly. The latter obviously to service my needs but I hoped the others would dispel any longing he had to go outside. Or to breathe fresh air, to make friends, to fall in love. Or to sing and dance.

As I was out five days a week from eight a.m. often to eight p.m. and sometimes didn’t come home at all, I had trained him to ‘eliminate’, as the cat trainer had phrased it, on paper so he would get used to using his litter box. And this letter, the only piece of paper left lying on the floor, was surely just a confusion to him. I watched him move self-consciously around the edge of the room. He knew it was wrong. It was lurking in his mind, the thing he’d done that he knew he shouldn’t have done.

I hate cats but I liked this cat. I named him Mr Pan after Peter, the well-known flying young boy. Mr Pan is neither a boy who will never age nor, oddly enough, does he possess the ability to fly, but there is a strange resemblance and it seemed appropriate at the time. I found him in a skip down an alleyway one night, purring as though in deep distress. Or perhaps that was me. What I was doing down there shall remain private but it was raining hard, I was wearing a beige trenchcoat and after mourning the loss of a perfect boyfriend over too many tequilas, I was doing my best to channel Audrey Hepburn by chasing the animal and calling out ‘Cat!’ in a clear and unique, yet distressed tone. Turned out it was a day-old kitten and it’d been born a hermaphrodite. Its mother or owner, or both, had shunned it. Though the vet informed me that the kitten had more male than female anatomy, naming him felt as though I alone took the responsibility of choosing his sex. I thought of my broken heart and my being passed up for a promotion because my boss had an inkling I was pregnant – though it was after the holidays and my annual gorge-fest had been a wild boar short of a Tudor banquet – I’d been through a particularly horrific month of stomach cramps; a street bum had groped me late one night on the train; and when I had enforced my opinion at work I’d been called a bitch by my male counterparts and so I decided life would be easier for the cat as a male. But I think I made the wrong decision. Occasionally I call him Samantha or Mary or something feminine and he looks up with what I can only describe as thanks before sloping off to sit in one of my shoes and gaze wistfully at the stiletto and the world he’s been deprived of. But I digress. Back to the letter.

I would have to attend the appointment this time. There was no way around it. I couldn’t ignore it; I didn’t want to irritate its sender any further.

So who was the sender?

I held the drying page by the corner and again tilted my head to read the flopped paper.

Dear Lucy Silchester,

You have an appointment for Monday 30 May.

Yours sincerely,

Life

Life. Why of course.

My life needed me. It was going through a tough time and I hadn’t been paying enough attention to it. I’d taken my eye off the ball, I’d busied myself with other things: friends’ lives, work issues, my deteriorating and ever needy car, that kind of thing. I’d completely and utterly ignored my life. And now it had written to me, summoned me, and there was only one thing for it. I had to go and meet with it face to face.

CHAPTER TWO

I’d heard about this kind of thing happening which is why I wasn’t making a great dramatic deal about it. I generally don’t become overexcited about things anyway, I’m just not one of those people. I’m not easily surprised by things either. I think it’s because I expect that anything can happen. That makes me sound like a believer and I’m not necessarily that either. I’ll phrase it better: I just accept things that happen. All things. So my life writing to me, though unusual, wasn’t surprising; it was more of an inconvenience. I knew that it would demand much of my attention for the foreseeable future and if that was an easy thing for me then I wouldn’t have received the letters in the first place.

I beat the ice from the fridge-freezer with a knife and retrieved a cottage pie with my blue hand. While I waited for the microwave to ping I ate a slice of toast. Then a yoghurt. It still wasn’t ready so I licked the lid. I decided that the arrival of the letter gave me permission to open a bottle of €3.99 Pinot Grigio. I stabbed the remainder of the ice from the fridge-freezer while Mr Pan ran to hide in a pink heart-decorated wellington boot still covered in dried muck from a summer music festival three years ago. I removed a wine bottle I’d forgotten to take from the freezer which was now a frozen solid block of alcohol and I replaced it with the new bottle. I wouldn’t forget this one. I mustn’t. It was the last bottle left in the wine-cellar-stroke-corner-cupboard-under-the-cookie-jar. Which reminded me of cookies. I also ate a double chocolate chip cookie while I waited. Then the microwave pinged. I emptied the pie onto the plate, a big unappetising messy pile of mush, still cold in the middle but I hadn’t the patience to put it back in and wait thirty seconds more. I stood at the counter to eat and poked at the warm parts around the edges.

I used to cook. I used to cook almost every night. The nights I didn’t, my then boyfriend cooked. We enjoyed it. We owned a large apartment in a converted bread factory with floor-to-ceiling steel grid windows and original exposed brickwork on most walls. We had an open-plan kitchen-cum-dining-room and almost every weekend we had friends around for dinner. Blake loved cooking, he loved entertaining, he loved the idea of all of our friends, even family, joining us. He loved the sound of ten to fifteen people laughing, talking, eating, debating. He loved the smells, the steam, the oohs and aahs of delight. He’d stand at the kitchen island and tell a word-perfect story while dicing an onion, splashing the red wine into a beef bourguignon, or flambéing a baked alaska. He never measured anything, he always got the balance just right. He got the balance of everything just right. He was a food and travel writer, he loved going everywhere and tasting everything. He was adventurous. At weekends we never sat still, we climbed this mountain and that mountain, during summers we’d go to countries I’d never heard of. We jumped out of an airplane twice, we’d both bungee jumped three times. He was perfect.

And, he died.

Just joking, he’s perfectly fine. Alive and well. Cruel joke I know but I laughed. No, he’s not dead. He’s still alive. Still perfect.

But I left him.

He has a television show now. He’d signed the deal when we were still together. It’s on a travel channel we both used to watch all the time, and now and then I switch over and watch him walking the Great Wall of China or sitting in a boat in Thailand eating pad thai; and always, after his word-perfect review, in his perfect clothes – even after a week of climbing mountains, shitting in woods and not showering – he looks into the camera with his perfect face and he’ll say, ‘Wish you were here.’ That’s the name of the show. He told me in the weeks and months that followed our traumatic break-up, while he was crying down the phone, that he’d named it for me, that every time he said it he was talking to me and only me and never ever to anybody else. He wanted me back. He called me every day. Then every two days. Eventually it was once a week and I knew he’d been grappling with the phone for days trying to wait for that one moment to speak to me. Eventually he stopped calling and he’d send me emails. Long detailed emails about where he’d been, about how he felt without me, so depressing and so lonely I couldn’t read them any more. I stopped replying to him. Then his emails got shorter. Less emotional, less detailed, always asking me to meet him though, always asking for us to get back together. I was tempted, don’t get me wrong, he was a perfect man, and having a perfect, handsome man want you is sometimes enough to make you want him back, but that was in the weak moments of my own loneliness. I didn’t want him. It wasn’t that I’d met anybody else either, I told him that time and time again though perhaps it would have been easier if I’d pretended I had because then he could have moved on. I didn’t want anybody else. I didn’t really want anyone. I wanted to just stop for a while. I wanted to stop doing things and stop moving. I just wanted to be on my own.

I left my job, got a new one at an appliance company for half the salary. We sold the apartment. I rented this studio apartment, a quarter of the size of any other home I’d owned. I found a cat. Some would say I stole it but nevertheless, he/she is mine now. I visit my family when held at gunpoint, I go out with the same friends on nights that he’s not there – my ex-boyfriend, not the cat – which is more often now that he’s travelling so much. I don’t miss him and when I do miss him, I switch on the TV and I get enough dosage of him to feel content again. I don’t miss my job. I miss the money a little bit when I see something in the shops or in a magazine that I want, but then I leave the shop or I turn the page and I get over it. I don’t miss the travelling. I don’t miss the dinner parties.

And I’m not unhappy.

I’m not.

Okay, I lied.

He left me.

CHAPTER THREE

I was halfway through the bottle of wine by the time I built up the – not courage, I didn’t need courage, I wasn’t afraid – I needed to care. It took half a bottle of wine to care about returning a call to my life, and so I dialled the number listed on the letter. I took a bite of a chocolate bar while I waited for the phone to connect. It was answered on the first ring. It didn’t give me time to chew, never mind swallow my chocolate.

‘Oh, sorry,’ I said with a stuffed mouth. ‘I’ve chocolate in my mouth.’

‘That’s okay dear, take your time,’ an upbeat older woman with a smooth American-pie Southern accent said perkily. I chewed quickly, swallowed and washed it down with some wine. Then I retched.

I cleared my throat. ‘Finished.’

‘What was it?’

‘Galaxy.’

‘Bubble or caramel?’

‘Bubble.’

‘Mmm, my favourite. How can I help you?’

‘I received a letter about an appointment on Monday. My name is Lucy Silchester.’

‘Yes, Ms Silchester, I have you in the system. How does nine a.m. suit?’

‘Oh well, actually that’s not why I’m calling. You see, I can’t make the appointment, I’m working that day.’

I waited for her to say, Oh silly us, asking you to come on a work day, let’s cancel the entire thing, but she didn’t.

‘Well, I guess we can work around you. What time do you finish?’

‘Six.’

‘How about seven p.m.?’

‘I can’t because it’s my friend’s birthday and we’re going for dinner.’

‘What about your lunch break? Would a lunch meeting suit you?’

‘I’ve to bring my car to the garage.’

‘So, just to summarise, you can’t make the appointment because you’ve work in the day, you’re bringing your car to the garage on your lunch break and you’ve dinner with friends in the evening.’

‘Yes.’ I frowned. ‘Are you writing that down?’ I heard tapping in the background. This bothered me; they had summoned me, not the other way around. They were going to have to find a time.

‘You know, sweetheart,’ she said in her long Southern drawl – I could almost see the apple pie slithering from her lips and landing on her keyboard, then her keyboard hissing and going alight, and my summons being forever wiped from the memory. ‘You’re obviously not familiar with this system.’ She took a breath and I jumped in before the boiling apples had a chance to drip again.

‘Are people usually?’

I’d knocked her off her train of thought.

‘Pardon me?’

‘When you contact people, when life summons people to meet with it,’ I emphasised, ‘are people usually familiar with the procedure?’

‘Well,’ the longest sing-song that sounded like way-eell, ‘some are and some aren’t, I suppose, but that’s what I’m here for. How’s about I make it easier for you by arranging for him to come to you? He’d do that if I asked.’

I thought about that, then suddenly, ‘Him?’

She chuckled. ‘That catches people out too.’

‘Are they always hims?’

‘No, not always, sometimes they’re hers.’

‘Under what circumstances are they men?’

‘Oh, it’s just hit or miss, sweetheart, there ain’t no reason for it. Just like you and me being born what we are. Will that be a problem for you?’

I thought about it. Couldn’t see why it would. ‘No.’

‘So what time would you like him to visit you?’ She tapped some more.

‘Visit me? No!’ I shouted down the phone. Mr Pan jumped, opened his eyes, looked around and closed them again. ‘Sorry for shouting,’ I composed myself. ‘He can’t come here.’

‘But I thought you said that wouldn’t be a problem for you.’

‘I meant it’s not a problem that he’s a man. I thought you were asking if that would be a problem.’

She laughed. ‘But why would I ask you that?’

‘I don’t know. Sometimes health spas ask that too, you know, in case you don’t want a male masseuse …’

She chuckled. ‘Well, I can guarantee he won’t be massaging any part of your anatomy.’

She made anatomy sound dirty. I shuddered.

‘Well, tell him I’m very sorry but he can’t come here.’ I looked around at my dismal studio flat that I always felt quite cosy in. It was a place for me, my own personal hovel; it was not for entertaining guests, lovers, neighbours, family members or even emergency services when the rug caught fire, it was just for me. And Mr Pan.

I was huddled up by the arm of the couch and a few steps behind me was the end of my double bed. To my right was a kitchen countertop, to my left the windows and beside the bed was a bathroom. That was about the size of it. Not that the size bothered me, or embarrassed me. It was more the state of it. My floor had become the wardrobe. I liked to think of my scattered belongings as stepping stones, my yellow brick road … that kind of thing. The contents of my previous top-dollar penthouse wardrobe were bigger than the new studio apartment itself and so my too many pairs of shoes had found their home along the windowsill, my long coats and full-length dresses hung on hangers at the right- and left-hand ends of the curtain pole and I slid them open and closed as the sun and moon requested just like regular curtains. The carpet was as I have already described, the couch monopolised the small living area reaching from windowsill to kitchen counter, which meant you couldn’t walk around it but had to climb over the back to sit on it. My life could not visit me in this mess. I was aware of the irony.

‘My carpets are being cleaned,’ I said, then I sighed as if it was just such a nuisance that I couldn’t bear to think about it. It wasn’t a lie. My carpets very much needed to be cleaned.

‘Well, can I recommend Magic Carpet Cleaners,’ she said brightly, as though suddenly jumping to commercial hour. ‘My husband,’ ma husbaand, ‘is a devil for shining his boots in the living room and Magic Carpet Cleaners get that black polish right out, you wouldn’t believe. He snores too. Unless I fall asleep before him I get none the rest of the night so I watch those infomercials and one night I saw a man shining his shoes on a white carpet, just like my husband and that’s what caught my attention. Was like the company was made just for me. They took the stain right out, so I had to go out and get me some. Magic Carpet Cleaners, write it down.’

She was so intense I found myself wanting to invest in black shoe polish in order to test these magical cleaning infomercial people and I scrambled for a pen, which in accordance with the Pen Legislation Act of Since the Beginning of Time was not anywhere in sight when I needed it. With marker in hand I looked around for something to write on. I couldn’t find any paper so I wrote on the carpet, which seemed appropriate.

‘Why don’t you just tell me when you can come see him, save us the back and forth.’

My mother had called a special meeting of the family to gather on Saturday.

‘You know what, I know that this is so important, being summoned by my life and all, and despite having an important family gathering on Saturday, I’d really love to meet with him then.’

‘Oh,’ ewwww, ‘sweetheart, I will make a special note that you were willing to miss that special day with your loved ones to meet with him but I think that you should take that time to be with your family. God only knows how long you’ve got ’em for and we’ll see you the following day. Sunday. How does that grab you?’

I groaned. But not out loud, it was inside, deep within, a long agonised painful sound from a painful agonised place deep inside. And so the date was set. Sunday, we would meet, our paths would collide and everything I’d considered to be secure and anchored would suddenly slip and slide and change beyond belief. That’s what I’d read would happen in a magazine interview with a woman who had met with her life. They provided before and after photos of her for the benefit of the uneducated reader who couldn’t access picture images in their mind. Interestingly, before she’d met her life, her hair hadn’t been blowdried, but it was after; she had no make-up or spray tan on before, but had after; she wore leggings and a Mickey Mouse T-shirt before and was photographed in harsh lighting, but wore a softly draped asymmetric dress afterwards in a perfectly lit studio kitchen where a tall vase of artistically placed lemons and limes showed how life had apparently made her more attracted to citric flavours. She wore glasses before meeting with life, she wore contacts afterwards. I wondered who had changed her more; the magazine or her life.

In just under a week’s time I was going to meet my life. And my life was a man. But why me? I felt my life was going just fine. I felt fine. Everything in my life was absolutely fine.

Then I lay back on the couch and studied the curtain pole to decide what to wear.

CHAPTER FOUR

On the fateful Saturday that I’d been dreading ever since the day before I even heard about it, I pulled up to the electric gates of my parents’ home in my 1984 Volkswagen Beetle that had backfired all the way up the exclusive estate, attracting a few unhealthy glares from the sensitive rich people. I didn’t grow up in the house I was waiting outside and so it didn’t feel like a return to home. It didn’t even feel like my parents’ home. It was a house that they lived in when they weren’t in their holiday house, that they lived in when they weren’t in their domestic house. The fact that I was waiting outside, pending permission to be granted, detached me from it even more. I had friends who drove straight up driveways, knew passwords and alarm codes, or used their own keys to visit their parents. I didn’t even know where the coffee mugs were kept. The big gates had the desired effect, designed to keep out vagrants and deviants – and daughters – though the deterrent for me was being trapped inside. A burglar would climb over them to get into the house, I would scale them to get out. As though picking up on my mood, my car, who I named Sebastian after my grandfather who was never without a cigar in his hand and as a result developed a hacking cough that eventually sent him to his grave, seemed to run out of steam as soon as it realised where we were going. The route to my parents’ house was a tricky system of windy narrow roads in Glendalough that dipped and rose, twisted and turned around one giant mansion after another. Sebastian stopped and spluttered. I wound down my window and pressed the intercom.

‘Hello, you’ve reached the Silchesters’ Home for the sexually deviant, how can we fulfil your needs?’ came a breathy male voice down the line.

‘Father, stop messing about.’

There was an explosion of laughter through the speaker, causing two power-walking Botoxed blondes to end their secret nattering and whip their high pony-tails around to stare. I smiled at them but as soon as they saw me, a brown unimportant thing in a junk of metal, they looked away and shook their VPL-free tight little Lycra-covered raisin bottoms forward again.

The gates made a shuddering sound, unstuck themselves and then parted.

‘Okay, Sebastian, let’s go.’ The car jerked forward, knowing what lay in its wake: a two-hour wait beside a bunch of pretentious automobiles he had nothing in common with. How similar our lives would be. The long gravelled driveway gave way to a car park with a water fountain of an open-mouthed lion spewing up murky water. I parked away from Father’s bottle green Jaguar XJ and his 1960 Morgan +4 which he called his ‘weekend car’, and which he drove wearing his weekend attire of vintage leather gloves and goggles as though he were Dick Van Dyke in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He also wore clothes with these items, in case the image was more disturbing than intended. Beside Father’s cars was my mum’s black SUV. She had specifically asked for something that would require minimum driving effort on her part, and she had parking sensors covering so many angles that if a car drove by three lanes away on a motorway it beeped to signal its proximity. On the other side of the gravelled area was my eldest brother Riley’s Aston Martin and my brother Philip’s – the middle child’s – family Range Rover that had been pimped up with all the upgrades including television screens in the backs of the headrests for the kids to watch on their ten-minute drive from ballet to basketball practice.

‘Leave the engine running, I’ll be out in two hours max,’ I said, then patted Sebastian on the head.

I looked up at the house. I don’t know what era it was, but it was not ‘Georgewardian’ as I had joked at the Schuberts’ Christmas party much to my brothers’ amusement, my father’s disgust and my mother’s pride. The house was striking, it was originally built as a manor by Lord Somebody who later gambled away his fortune and it was sold to somebody else who wrote a famous book and therefore we were required by law to place a brass plaque with his name outside the gates for literary geeks but mostly for passing power-walkers with raisin bottoms to look at and frown at because they didn’t have a brass plaque outside their own houses. Famous Literary Writer had an illicit relationship with a male Depressed Poet who built an East Wing in order to get away on his own. The house had an impressive library containing communications from Lord Somebody to Lady Whatever, then more sweet talk from Lord Somebody to Lady Secret while he was married to Lady Whatever, and original writings from Famous Literary Writer which were framed and hanging on the walls. Depressed Poet’s works stood unprotected on the shelf beside a world atlas and Coco Chanel’s life story. He didn’t sell well, not even after he died. After a well-documented tumultuous affair, Famous Literary Writer drank all his money away and the house was sold to a well-to-do German family who brewed beer in Bavaria and used it as their holiday home. While here, they also added on a very impressive west wing and a tennis court, which from the evidence of their faded black-and-white photographs their overweight and seemingly unhappy sailor-suited son Bernhard did not like to avail of. It was also possible to find an original bottle of the family beer in a walnut cabinet in the Silchester bar. The memories and traces of these other lives were palpable in the house and I often wondered what exactly it was Mum and Father would leave behind apart from Ralph Lauren’s latest interiors.

Two animals which I still couldn’t identify greeted me with scowls at the base of the stone steps leading to the front door. They looked like lions but they had horns and two legs twisted together in what could only be described as a debilitating stance that made me think that hundreds of years of staring at the fountain had left them desperate for the toilet. Unless Ralph Lauren was going through a dark phase, my money was on the drunk writer or the depressed poet to have chosen them.

The door opened and my brother Riley grinned out at me like a Cheshire cat.

‘You’re late.’

‘And you’re disgusting,’ I referred to the intercom exchange.

He laughed.

I trudged up the steps and passed over the threshold into the black and white marble-floored hall with double-height ceiling where a chandelier the size of my flat dripped down.

‘What, no gift?’ he said, giving me a hug longer than I wanted just to annoy me.

I groaned. He was joking but I knew he meant it. My family belonged to a very serious religion called the Church of Social Etiquette. The heads of their church were People. As in, every action acted and word spoken was done on the basis of what would ‘People’ think? Part of that etiquette required you to bring a gift to a person’s house even if that person was family and you were just calling by. But we didn’t just do calling by. We did arranged visits, made appointments, spent weeks, months even, trying to rally the troops.

‘What did you bring?’ I asked him.

‘A bottle of Father’s favourite red wine.’

‘Suck-up.’

‘Only because I want to drink it.’

‘He won’t open it. He’d rather wait until everyone he loves is long dead and buried before he even thinks about sitting in a locked room to open it himself. Bet you ten, actually twenty,’ I needed petrol money, ‘he won’t open it.’

‘Your understanding of him is almost touching but I have faith in him. It’s a deal.’ He held out his hand.

‘What did you get Mum?’ I looked around the entrance hall to see what I could swipe for a gift.

‘A candle and bath oil but before you make a thing about it, I found it in my apartment.’

‘Because I bought it for what’s-her-name, that girl you dumped who laughed like a dolphin.’

‘You got Vanessa a gift?’

We were walking through the endless spaces of the house, room after room of seating areas and fireplaces. Couches we were never allowed to sit on, coffee tables we couldn’t put our drinks on.

‘As a consolation prize for going out with you.’

‘She can’t have appreciated it much.’

‘Bitch.’

‘Yeah, dolphin-laughing bitch,’ he agreed, and we smiled.

We reached the final room in the back of the house. Once Lady Somebody’s drawing room and then Depressed Poet’s rhyming room, it was now Mr and Mrs Silchester’s entertainment room: a walnut built-in bar with beer on tap and a smoky mirror on the back wall. In the glass case along the bar stood the original German beer from the 1800s with a black-and-white photo of the Altenhofen family posing on the front steps of the house. The room had plush salmon-toned carpets that your feet sank into, tall leather-upholstered chairs at a cocktail bar and smaller leather chairs dotted around walnut tables. Its main feature was a bay window which overlooked the valley below and the rolling hills beyond. The garden was three acres of rose gardens, a walled garden and an outside swimming pool with fresh water. The double doors from the bar were open and gigantic limestone slabs led down to a water feature in the centre of the lawn. To the side of the fountain and beside the rush of the babbling brook a table had been set up with white table linen, crystal and silverware. In my family there was no such thing as informality. It was such a wonderful picture. Shame I’d have to ruin it.

My mother was floating around the table in a white tweed Chanel to-the-knee number and monochrome flats, swatting away the wasps that threatened to invade her garden party. There wasn’t a hair out of place on her blonde head, she held the same small smile on rose pink lips regardless of what was going on in the world or in her life or in the room. Pimped-up Range-Rover-owner-slash-reconstructive-plastic-surgeon-slash-closet-boob-job-surgeon and middle child Philip was already seated at the table talking to my grandmother who was sitting poised as usual in a floral garden-party dress, back poker straight, her hair scraped tightly in a bun, her cheeks and lips an appropriate rouge, pearls around her neck, her hands clasped in her lap and her legs joined at the ankles, no doubt as learned at finishing school. She sat quietly, not looking at Philip and probably not listening either while she surveyed my mother’s work with her ever disapproving eye.

I looked down at my dress and smoothed it.

‘You look great,’ Riley said, looking away and trying to make me feel that he wasn’t just attempting to fill me with confidence. ‘I think she’s got something to tell us.’

‘That she’s not our real mother.’

‘Oh, you don’t mean that,’ I heard a voice behind me.

‘Edith,’ I said, before I’d turned around. Edith had been a housekeeper for Mum and Father for thirty years. She’d been there for as long as I could remember and brought us up more than any of the fourteen nannies who had been employed to take care of us throughout our lives. She had a vase in one hand and a gigantic bouquet of flowers in the other. She placed the vase down and held her arms out to embrace me. ‘Oh Edith, they’re lovely flowers.’

‘Yes, they are, aren’t they? I just bought them fresh today, I went to that new market down by …’ she stopped, looked at me suspiciously. ‘Oh, no. No, you don’t.’ She moved the flowers away from me. ‘No, Lucy. You can’t have them. Last time you took the cake I’d made for dessert.’

‘I know, that was a mistake and I’ll never do it again,’ I said sombrely, then added, ‘because she keeps asking me to make it again. Ah, come on Edith, just let me see them, they’re beautiful, really beautiful.’ I batted my eyelashes.

Edith resigned herself to fate and I lifted the flowers from her arms.

‘Mum will love them. Thanks,’ I smiled cheekily.

She fought a smile; even when we were kids she’d found it hard to give out to us. ‘You deserve what’s coming to you now, that’s all I can say.’ Then she returned in the direction of the kitchen, while dread filled inside me to the point of bursting. Riley led the way and I struggled to walk down the wide steps with the bouquet which took two of my strides next to Riley’s one. He was down ahead of me and Mum almost lit up like a firework at the sight of her precious son making his way to her.

‘Lucy, sweetheart, they’re beautiful, you shouldn’t have,’ Mum said, taking the flowers from me and over-exaggerating her thanks as though she’d just been handed the Miss World title.

I kissed my grandmother on the cheek. She acknowledged it slightly with a small nod of her head but didn’t move.

‘Hi, Lucy,’ Philip stood to kiss me on the cheek.

‘We’ll have to stop meeting like this,’ I said to him quietly, and he laughed.

I wanted to ask Philip about the kids, I knew that I should, but Philip was one of those people who actually took the enquiry way too far and would go into the verbal diarrhoea of every single thing his children had said and done since I’d seen them last. I loved his children, I really did, but I just didn’t care so much for what they’d eaten for breakfast that morning, though I’m pretty sure it was something to do with organic mangoes and dehydrated dates.

‘I should put these in water,’ Mum said, still admiring the flowers for my benefit though the moment had long since past.

‘I’ll do it for you,’ I jumped at the chance. ‘I saw the perfect vase for them inside.’

Riley shook his head incredulously behind her back.

‘Thank you,’ Mum said, as though I’d just offered to pay her bills for her lifetime. She looked at me adoringly. ‘You look different, did you do something with your hair?’

My hand went immediately to my chestnut mane. ‘Em. I slept with wet hair last night.’

Riley laughed.

‘Oh. Well, it’s lovely,’ she said.

‘That will give you a cold,’ my grandmother said.

‘It didn’t.’

‘It can.’

‘But it didn’t.’

Silence.

I left, and tottered over the grass in my heels to get to the stone steps. I gave up and kicked off my shoes; the stone under my feet was warm from the sun. Edith had moved the vase from the bar but I was happy about that; another errand to waste more time. I calculated in my head that from my late arrival to the flower/vase errand I had passed twenty minutes of the dreaded two-hour stay.

‘Edith,’ I called half-heartedly for nobody’s benefit but my own, moving from room to room, moving further away from the kitchen where I knew she would be based. There were five large rooms facing the back garden. One from Drunken Literary Writer’s time, two from the main original part of the house and then another two from the German beer family. Once I had walked through all of the rooms which were connected by oversized double doors, I stepped out in the hallway and looped my way back round. Across the hallway I could see the massive walnut double doors to my father’s office were open. It was where Famous Literary Writer had penned his famous novel. It was where my father went through endless mounds of paperwork. Sometimes I even wondered if there was anything printed on the paper or if he just liked the feel of it, if it was some nervous disposition that meant he must look at and touch and turn paper.

Father and I have the best relationship. Sometimes our thoughts are so similar it’s almost as if we’re the same person. When people see us they are blown away by our bond, by the respect he holds for me, by the admiration I hold for him. Often he’d take days off work just to pick me up from my apartment and take me off on an adventure. It was the same when I was a child, the only daughter in the family, he spoiled me. Daddy’s girl, everybody called me. He’d phone me during the day just to see how I was, send me flowers and Valentine’s cards so I didn’t feel lonely. He really was a special guy. We really did have a special bond. Sometimes he’d take me to a barley field on a windy day and I’d wear a floaty dress and we’d run around in slow motion and he’d become the tickle monster and try to catch me, chasing me around and around until I’d fall down on the barley which would be all around me, waving back and forth in the breeze. How we’d laugh.

Okay, I lied.

That was probably obvious from the slow-motion barley-field image. I pushed it too much there. In truth, he can barely stand me nor I him. But we do stand each other, just about enough, somewhere on the cusp of standing each other for the sake of world peace.

He must have known I was outside his office but he didn’t look up, just turned another mysterious page. He’d kept those pages far from our grasp all of our lives, so much so that I’d become obsessed about discovering what was on them. When I was ten years old I finally managed to sneak into his office one night when he’d forgotten to lock the door, and when I saw the papers, with my heart pounding manically in my chest, I couldn’t understand a word that was written on them. Law talk. He’s a High Court judge and the older I got the more I came to understand how regarded he was as a leading expert on Irish criminal law. He’d presided over murder and rape trials since his appointment to the High Court twenty years ago. He was a real bag of laughs. His old-school views on many things had been nothing short of controversial; at times, if he hadn’t been my father, I’d have taken to the streets in protest – or maybe that was because he was my father. His parents were academics, his father a university professor, his mother – the floral-dress-wearing old woman in the back garden – was a scientist. Though apart from creating tension in every room she walked into I don’t know exactly what she got up to. Something to do with maggots in soil in certain climates. Father’s a European Universities Debating Champion, graduate of Trinity College Dublin and the Honourable Society of King’s Inns whose motto is ‘Nolumus Mutari’ meaning ‘We Shall Not Be Changed’ and that right there says a lot about him. All I know about my father is what the plaques on his office walls declare to the world. I used to think that everything else about him was a great big mystery that I would someday figure out, that I would unlock a secret and suddenly he would all make sense; and that in the end of his days – he an old man and me a responsible beautiful career woman with a stunning husband, longer legs than I’d ever had before and the world at my feet – we’d try to make up for lost time. Now I realise there is no mystery, he is the way he is, and we dislike each other because there isn’t a part of either of us which can even begin to understand a minuscule part of the other.

I watched him from the doorway in his panelled office, head down, glasses low on his nose reading papers. Walls of books filled the room and the smell of dust, leather and cigar smoke was thick even though he’d stopped smoking ten years ago. I felt a tiny rush of warmth for him, because all of a sudden he looked old. Or at least older. And older people were like babies; something about their demeanour made you love them despite their ignorant selfish personalities. I’d been standing there for a while taking the place in and pondering this sudden feeling of warmth, and it seemed unnatural to just walk away without saying anything so I cleared my throat, then decided to do an awkward knuckle rap on his open door, a manoeuvre which caused the cellophane wrapped around the flowers to rustle loudly. He still didn’t look up. I stepped inside.

I waited patiently. Then impatiently. Then I wanted to throw the flowers at his head. Then I wanted to pick each flower, petal by petal, and flick them in his face. What began as a mild innate happiness to see my father then turned to the usual feelings of frustration and anger. He just made things so difficult all of the time, always a barrier, always uncomfortable.

‘Hi,’ I said and I sounded like a seven-year-old again.

He didn’t look up. Instead he finished reading the page, turned it and finished reading that one too. It may only have been one minute but it felt like five. He finally looked up, took his glasses off and looked down at my bare feet.

‘I brought these flowers for you and Mum. I was looking for a vase.’ It was probably the closest thing to Dirty Dancing’s ‘I carried a watermelon’ that I’d ever said.

Silence. ‘There isn’t one in here.’ In my head I heard him say, You fucking fool, though he would never actually swear, he was one of those people who said “ruddy” which annoyed me to no end.

‘I know that, I just thought I’d say hi while I was on my way.’

‘Are you staying for lunch?’

I tried to figure out how to take that. He either wanted me to stay for lunch or he didn’t. It must have meant something, all his sentences were coded and usually had undertones implicating me of being an imbecile. I searched for the meaning and then for what could be the possible follow-up. Couldn’t figure it out. So I said, ‘Yes.’

‘I will see you at lunch.’

Which meant, Why would you disturb me in my office with a ridiculous ‘hi’ in your bare feet when I am due to see you at lunch any minute from now, you ruddy fool. He put his glasses back on and continued reading his papers. Again I wanted to fling the flowers at his head, one by one, just ping them off his forehead, but out of respect for Edith’s bouquet I turned and walked out of there, my feet making a squeaky sound as they stuck to the floor. When I got to the kitchen I dumped the flowers in the sink, picked at some food, and went back outside. Father was there already greeting his sons. Firm handshakes, deep voices, a few renditions of ‘We are men’; then they gorged on a couple of pheasant legs, clinked pewtered jugs, groped a boob or two, wiped their drooling mouths and burped – or at least I imagined them do that – and then they sat.

‘You didn’t greet Lucy, sweetheart, she was finding a vase for the beautiful flowers she gave us.’ Mum smiled at me again as if I alone was all that was good in the world. She was good at doing that.

‘I saw her in the house.’

‘Oh, that’s lovely,’ Mum said studying me again. ‘Did you find a vase?’

I looked at Edith who was placing bread rolls on the table. ‘Yes, I did. The one in the kitchen beside the bin.’ I smiled at her sweetly, knowing she would understand this to mean I had placed them in the bin, which I hadn’t, but I liked teasing her.

‘Where your dinner is,’ Edith smiled back sweetly and mum looked confused. ‘Wine?’ Edith looked over my head, to everybody else but me.

‘No, I can’t, I’m driving,’ I responded anyway, ‘but Riley’s going to have a glass of the red he brought for Father.’

‘Riley is driving,’ Father said, not addressing anyone in particular.

‘He could have a small drop.’

‘People who drink and drive should be locked up,’ he snapped.

‘You didn’t mind him having a glass last week,’ I tried not to be confrontational but it wasn’t really working.

‘Last week a young boy wasn’t thrown through the windscreen of a car because the ruddy driver had too much to drink.’

‘Riley,’ I gasped, ‘tell me you didn’t?’

It was in poor taste, I know, but I think I kind of wanted it to be, for Father’s sake, so he began a conversation with his mother as though I had never spoken. Riley shook his head incredulously, whether at my inappropriate humour, or because he’d failed to wet his lips with Father’s precious wine, I wasn’t sure but either way he lost the bet. Riley reached into his pocket and handed me a twenty-euro note. Father looked at the transaction disapprovingly.

‘I owed her money,’ Riley explained.

Nobody at the table believed I could possibly have loaned anybody any money so it all backfired on me. Again.

‘So,’ Mum began, as soon as Edith had finished setting up and we were all settled. She looked at me. ‘Aoife McMorrow married Will Wilson last week.’

‘Ah, I’m so delighted for her,’ I said enthusiastically, stuffing a bread roll into my mouth. ‘Who’s Aoife McMorrow?’

Riley laughed.

‘She was in your tap-dance class.’ Mum looked at me, utterly surprised I’d forgotten my time-step acquaintance from when I was six years old. ‘And Laura McDonald had a little girl.’

‘Ee-I-ee-I-oh,’ I said.

Riley and Philip laughed. No one else did. Mum tried to but didn’t get it.

‘I met her mother at the organic fair yesterday and she showed me a photo of the baby. Beeeauuuutiful baby. You’d eat her. Married and a mother all in one year, imagine that.’

I smiled tightly. I felt Riley’s intense stare urging me to be calm.

‘The baby was ten pounds, Lucy, ten pounds, can you believe it?’

‘Jackson was nine pounds two ounces,’ Philip said. ‘Luke was eight pounds four and Jemima was eight pounds six.’

We all looked at him and pretended to be interested, then he went back to eating his bread.

‘It’s a lovely thing,’ Mum said looking at me and scrunching her face up and hunching her shoulders. ‘Motherhood.’

She was looking at me like that for too long.

‘I was married by the time I was twenty,’ my grandmother said as though it was some major feat. Then she stopped buttering her bread and looked me dead in the eye. ‘I finished university when I was twenty-four and had three children by the time I was twenty-seven.’

I nodded as if in awe. I’d heard it all before. ‘Hope they sent you a medal.’

‘Medal?’

‘It’s just an expression. For doing something … amazing.’ I tried to hold back on the bitter sarcastic tone that was just dying to get out. It was on the sidelines warming up, begging me to let it go on as a substitute for politeness and tolerance.

‘Not amazing, just the right thing, Lucy.’

Mum came to my defence. ‘Sometimes girls have babies in their late twenties now.’

‘But she’s thirty.’

‘Not for a few weeks,’ I replied, pasting on a smile. Sarcasm took its training top off, got ready to run on to the pitch.

‘Well, if you think you can have a baby in a fortnight you’ve a lot to learn,’ Grandmother said, biting into her bread.

‘Sometimes they’re older these days,’ Mum said.

My grandmother tutted.

‘They have careers now, you see,’ Mum continued.

‘She doesn’t have one. And what precisely do you imagine I was doing in the laboratory? Baking bread?’

Mum was put out. She had baked the bread on the table. She always baked the bread, everyone knew that, especially my grandmother.

‘Not breastfeeding anyway,’ I mumbled, but it didn’t matter, everybody heard me and they were all looking at me, and they weren’t all happy looks. I couldn’t help it, the substitutes were on the pitch. I felt the need to explain my comment. ‘It’s just that Father doesn’t strike me as a breastfed man.’ If Riley’s eyes could have widened any more they would have popped out of his head. He couldn’t help it, whatever laugh he’d been trying to keep in came out as a bizarre-sounding splurge of happy air. Father picked up his newspaper and cut himself off from the unfavourable conversation. He rustled it open in the same shuddering motion that I’m sure his spine was doing. We’d lost him, he was gone. Lost behind more paper.

‘I’ll check the starters,’ Mum said quietly and gracefully slid from the table.

I didn’t inherit Mum’s gracefulness. In fact Riley did. Suave and sophisticated, he oozed charm and even though he’s my brother I know he’s a real catch at thirty-five. He’d followed Father into the legal profession and was apparently one of our finest criminal lawyers. I’d overheard that being said about him; I hadn’t experienced his talents first-hand, not yet anyway but I wasn’t ruling it out. It gave me a warm and tingly feeling thinking my brother held a get-out-of-jail-free card for me. He was often seen on the news going in and out of court with men with tracksuit tops over their heads and handcuffed to police officers, and many was an embarrassing time when I’d silenced public places to shout proudly at the TV, ‘There’s my brother!’ and when I’d received glares of anger, I’d have to point out it wasn’t the man with the tracksuit top over his head accused of doing inhumane things but the dashing one in the fancy suit beside him but by then nobody cared. I believed Riley had the world at his feet; he wasn’t under any pressure to get married, partly because he’s a man and there are bizarre double standards in my house and partly because my mother has an unusual crush on him which means no woman is good enough for him. She never nagged or moaned but had a very distinct way of pointing out a woman’s flaws in the hope of planting the seed of doubt in Riley’s mind forever. She would have had more success if she’d simply used a flash card of a vagina when he was a child and then shook her head and tutted. She’s excited he’s living it up in a swanky bachelor pad in the city and she visits him on the odd weekend when she gets the opportunity to fulfil some sort of odd thrill. I think if he was gay she’d love him even more, no women to be in competition with and homosexuals are so cool now. I heard her say that once.

Mum returned with a tray of lobster cocktails and after a shellfish episode at lunch in the Horgans’ home in Kinsale, which involved me, a tiger prawn and a fire brigade, she also carried a melon cocktail for me.

I looked at my watch. Riley caught me.

‘Don’t leave us in any more suspense, Mum, what have you got to tell us?’ he said, in his perfect way that brought everyone back from their heads to the table. He had that ability, to bring people together.

‘I won’t have one, I don’t like lobster,’ Grandmother said, pushing the plate away in mid-air before it had even reached the table.

Mum looked a little disheartened then remembered why we were all there and then looked at Father. Father kept reading his newspaper, unaware that his lobster had even been planted before him. Mum sat down, excited. ‘Okay, I’ll tell them,’ she said, as if that was ever under dispute. ‘Well, as you all know, it’s our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary this July.’ She gave us all a where has the time gone by look. ‘And as a way of celebrating, your father and I …’ she looked around us all, eyes twinkling, ‘have decided to renew our vows!’ Her excitement overtook her voice for the last three words and ended in a hysterical high-pitched shriek. Even Father lowered the paper to look at her, then noticed the lobster, folded away the paper and started eating it.

‘Wow,’ I said.

Many of my friends had gotten married in the last two years. There seemed to be an epidemic sweeping – as soon as one married, a whole load were engaged and sauntering down the aisle like puffed-up peacocks. I had seen reasonable, modern women be reduced to obsessive maniacs hell bent on traditions and stereotypes they’d spent all their working lives trying to fight – I had been a part of many of these rituals in unflattering, cheap off-coloured dresses, but this was different. This was my mother and this meant it would be monumentally, cataclysmically worse.

‘Philip darling, Daddy would love it if you would be his best man.’ Philip’s face reddened and he seemed to grow a few feet in his chair. He bowed his head silently, the honour so great he couldn’t speak. ‘Riley darling, would you give me away?’

Riley beamed. ‘I’ve been trying to get rid of you for years.’

Everybody laughed including my grandmother who loved a joke at my mother’s expense. I swallowed, because I knew it was coming. I knew it. Then she looked at me and all I could see was a mouth, a big smiling mouth taking over her whole entire face as if her lips had eaten her eyes and her nose. ‘Sweetheart, would you be my bridesmaid? Maybe we could do that with your hair again, it’s so lovely.’

‘She’ll get a cold,’ my grandmother said.

‘But she didn’t get one last night.’

‘But do you want to run the risk of her having one?’

‘We could get nice handkerchiefs made up in the same fabric as her dress, just in case.’

‘Not if it’s anything like the fabric of your first wedding dress.’

And there it was, the end of my life as I knew it.

I looked at my watch.

‘It’s such a pity you have to go soon, we have so much to plan. Do you think you could come back tomorrow and we could go through everything?’ Mum asked, excited and desperate both at the same time.

And here came the dilemma. Life or my family. Both were as bad as each other.

‘I can’t,’ I said, which was greeted by a long silence. Silchesters didn’t say no to invitations, it was considered rude. You moved around appointments and went to hell and back in order to attend every single thing that you were invited to, you hired lookalikes and embarked on time travel to uphold every single promise that had been made by you and even by somebody else without your knowledge.

‘Why not, dear?’ Mum’s eyes tried to look concerned, but screeched, You have betrayed me.

‘Well, perhaps I can come over, but I have an appointment at noon and I don’t know how long it will go on for.’

‘An appointment with whom?’ Mum asked.

Well, I was going to have to tell them sooner or later.

‘I have an appointment with my life.’ I said it matter-of-factly, expecting them not to have a clue what I was talking about. I waited for them to question and judge, and planned how to explain it was just a random thing that happened to people like jury duty, and that they didn’t have to worry, that my life was fine, absolutely fine.

‘Oh,’ Mum said in a high-pitched yelp. ‘Oh my goodness, well I cannot believe that.’ She looked around the rest at the table. ‘Well, it’s such a surprise, isn’t it? We are all so surprised. My goodness. What a surprise.’

I looked at Riley first. He was looking awkward, eyes down on the table, while he ran his finger over the prongs of a fork and softly spiked it with each one in a meditative state. Then I looked at Philip; his cheeks had slightly pinked. My grandmother was looking away as though there was a bad smell in the air and it was my mother’s fault but there was nothing new about that. I couldn’t look at my father.

‘You already know.’

Mum’s face went red. ‘Do I?’

‘You all know.’

Mum slouched in her chair, devastated.

‘How do you all know?’ My voice was raised. Silchesters didn’t raise their voices.

Nobody would answer.

‘Riley?’

Riley finally looked up and gave a small smile. ‘We had to sign off on it, Lucy, that’s all, just to give our personal approval to it going ahead.’

‘You what?! You knew about this?’

‘It’s not his fault, sweetheart, he had nothing to do with it, I asked him to get involved. There had to be a minimum of two signatures.’

‘Who else signed?’ I asked looking around at them. ‘Did you all sign?’

‘Don’t raise your voice, young lady,’ my grandmother said.

I wanted to throw Mum’s bread at her head or mush lobster cocktail down her throat and perhaps that was obvious because Philip appealed to everybody for calm. I didn’t hear how the conversation ended because I was racing up the garden – walking fast, not running, Silchesters didn’t run away – and getting as far away from them as possible. Of course I hadn’t left without excusing myself from the table, I can’t remember exactly what I’d said, I’d mumbled something about being late for an appointment and politely abandoned them. It was only when I closed the front door behind me, raced down the steps, and landed on the gravel that I realised I had left my shoes on the back lawn. I hobbled over the stones, biting the inside of my mouth to stop my need to scream, and drove Sebastian at his top speed down the driveway and to the gate. Sebastian backfired along the way as a kind of good riddance, however that’s when my great escape ended because I reached the electric gates and was trapped. I lowered my window and pressed the intercom.

‘Lucy,’ Riley said, ‘come on, don’t be angry.’

‘Let me out,’ I said, refusing to look the intercom in the eye.

‘She did it for you.’

‘Don’t pretend you had nothing to do with this.’

‘Okay fine. We. We did it for you.’

‘Why? I’m fine. Everything is fine.’

‘That’s what you keep saying.’

‘Because that’s what I keep meaning,’ I snapped back. ‘Now open the gate.’

CHAPTER FIVE

Sunday. It had loomed over me all weekend like that giant gorilla over that building in that film and finally it had plucked me into its evil clutches. I’d had a night full of various ‘me meeting life’ scenarios. Some had gone well, others not so well, one was entirely in song and dance. I had every conversation imaginable with life – in that weird dream way that made absolutely no sense when you woke – and now that I was awake, I was exhausted. I pressed my eyelids together again, squeezed them tight and forced myself to have a dirty dream about the cute guy on the train. It didn’t happen, Life kept bursting in on us like a judgemental parent catching a naughty teen. Sleep wouldn’t come, my head had already woken up and was planning things; smart things to say, quick retorts, witty comebacks, intelligent insights, ways to cancel the meeting without seeming insulting, but mostly it was planning my wardrobe. On that note, I opened my eyes and sat up. Mr Pan stirred in his bed and watched me.

‘Morning, Hilary,’ I said and he purred.

What did I want to say to my life about myself? That I was an intelligent, witty, charming, desirable, smart woman with a great sense of style. I wanted my life to know that I had it all together, that everything was under control. I surveyed my dresses on the curtain pole. I had pulled them all across to block out the sunlight. I looked at my shoes below them on the windowsill. Then I looked out the window to check the weather, back to the shoes, back to the dresses. I wasn’t feeling any of it; this was a job for the wardrobe. I leaned over and opened the wardrobe door and before it had fully opened, it hit the edge of the bed. It didn’t matter, I could see in just enough. The bulb inside the wardrobe had blown about a year ago and so I reached for the torch beside my bed and shone it inside. I was thinking, trouser suit, skinny fit, black tuxedo jacket, a touch of eighties revival shoulder pad; black vest; heels, 85mm. It said to me, Jennifer Aniston recent Grazia cover but it would hopefully say to Life, easy-going, relaxed but that I took my life seriously, suit-wearing-serious. It also said, someone has died and I’m going to their funeral, but I was hoping Life wouldn’t be thinking about death. I left Mr Pan sitting in a peep-toe double platform watching Gene Kelly in a sailor suit in On the Town with promises I’d take him outside in a few days. From the elevator I heard my next-door neighbour’s front door close. I pounded on the button to close the door, but I was caught. A trainer appeared through the crack in the closing doors and there she was.

‘Almost got away,’ she smiled. The doors slid open and the buggy was revealed. She manoeuvred it into the confined space and I was almost knocked back out into the corridor by the overloaded baby bag over her shoulder. ‘I swear it just takes me longer and longer to get out of the apartment every day,’ she said, wiping her shiny forehead.

I smiled at her, confused as to why she was talking to me – we never talked – then looked above her to watch the numbers light up as we moved down.

‘Did he disturb you last night?’

I looked into her buggy. ‘No.’

She looked shocked. ‘I was up half the night with him screaming the place down. I was sure I’d have the building banging on my door. He’s teething, the poor thing, his cheeks are flaming red.’

I looked down again. Didn’t say anything.

She yawned. ‘Still, at least the weather is nice this summer, nothing worse than being cooped up inside with a baby.’

‘Yeah,’ I said when the doors finally opened. ‘Have a good day,’ and I ran out ahead of her before she took the conversation outside.

I probably could have walked to the offices where I was due to meet Life but I got a taxi because the cute guy wouldn’t be on the train at this hour and I couldn’t rely on Sebastian to get me anywhere after yesterday’s trip up the mountains. Apart from that I wasn’t too sure where I was going and there was nothing worse than meeting your life with blistered feet and sweaty armpits. The building was visible from a mile away, it was a horrendous construction, a brown oppressive square high-rise block on stilts with steel windows, a giveaway to the age of the building when Lego architecture in the sixties was acceptable. As it was Sunday the building was deserted and the car park beneath the block was empty apart from one lonely car with a punctured wheel. The one that couldn’t get away. The security booth was unoccupied, the barrier was up. No one cared if the entire thing was airlifted and brought to another planet, it was so ugly and desolate. Once inside, the building smelled of damp and vanilla air freshener. A reception desk dominated the small lobby with a desk so high I could just make out the tip of a back-combed bouffant hair-sprayed head. As I neared I discovered that what I’d thought was air freshener was actually perfume. She sat painting thick nails with blood-red varnish, layering it so thickly it was gloopy. She was watching Columbo on a small TV monitor on the desk.

‘Just one more thing,’ I could hear Columbo say.

‘Here we go,’ she chuckled, not looking at me but acknowledging me. ‘He knows he did it already, you can tell.’ It was the American-pie woman I’d spoken to on the phone. While Columbo asked the murderer for his autograph for his wife she finally turned to me. ‘So what can I do you for?’

‘We spoke on the phone this week, my name is Lucy Silchester and I have an appointment with Life.’ I gave a high-pitched laugh.

‘Oh yes, I remember now. Lucy Silchester. Did you call that carpet-cleaning company yet?’

‘Oh … no, not yet.’

‘Well, here you go, I can’t recommend it no more than I already did.’ She placed the business card on the desk and slid it toward me. I wasn’t sure if she had brought it especially for me or if she was so enthusiastic about the company that she carried a suitcase of cards around with her to hand out to passers-by. ‘You promise me you’ll call now, won’t you?’

Amused by her persistence, I agreed.

‘I’ll just let him know you’re here.’ She picked up the phone. ‘Lucy’s here to see you.’ I strained my ear to hear his voice but I couldn’t make anything out. ‘Yes indeedy, I’ll send her on up.’ Then to me, ‘Take the elevator and go up to the tenth floor. Take a right, then a left, you’ll see him then.’

I made to leave then paused. ‘What’s he like?’

‘Oh, don’t you worry – you’re not scared, are you?’

‘No,’ I waved my hand dismissively. ‘Why would I be scared?’ Then I gave that same laugh that told everyone within a five-mile radius that I was scared, and made my way to the elevator.

I had ten floors to prepare myself for my grand entrance. I fixed my hair, my posture, my lips all pursed in a sexy but I-didn’t-know-it way; my stance was perfect, a few fingers of one hand tucked into my pocket. It all said exactly what I wanted to say about me but then the doors parted and I was faced with a ripped leather chair with a tattered women’s magazine missing its cover and a wooden door in a wall of glass with uneven Roman blinds. When I went through the door I was faced with a room the size of a football pitch filled with a maze of cubicles separated by grey partition walls. Tiny desks, old computers, tattered chairs, photos of people’s kids, dogs and cats pinned around the desks, personalised mouse pads, pens with pink furry things stuck on top, holiday photos as screen savers, birthday cards, random cuddly toys and multicoloured mugs that said things that weren’t funny. All those things people do to make their squalid little square foot feel like home. It looked exactly like my own office and it immediately made me want to pretend to photocopy something to waste some time.

I made my way down the maze of desks, looking left and right wondering what on earth I’d find, trying to keep the same cool friendly look while inside I was frustrated that my big meeting with Life was in this shithole. And suddenly there he was. My life. Tucked behind a grotty desk, head down scribbling on a ratty notepad with a pen that by the looks of his constant scribbles on a pad, wouldn’t work. He wore a wrinkled grey suit, a grey shirt and a grey tie with the triple spirals of life embossed on it. His hair was black and peppered with a little grey and was dishevelled, his face had a few days of stubble. He looked up, saw me, put down the pen, stood up, then wiped his hands on his suit leaving damp wrinkled marks. He had black rings around his eyes, his eyes were bloodshot, he sniffled and he looked like he hadn’t slept for years.

‘Are you …?’ I did a little playful smiley thing.

‘Yeah,’ he said blandly. ‘You’re Lucy,’ he held out his hand. ‘Hi.’

I bounced over to him, long strides, pretending to be oh so excited by the moment. I reached out and shook his hand, gave him the biggest smile I could possibly muster, wanting to please him so much, wanting to prove to him that I was fine, that everything was absolutely fine. His handshake was limp. His skin was clammy. His hand quickly slid away from mine like a snake slithering out of my grasp.

‘So,’ I said, overenthusiastically, sitting down. ‘We finally meet,’ I said mysteriously, trying to catch his eye. ‘How are you?’ I could tell I sounded over the top. The room was too big, too empty, too bland, too depressing for my tone but I couldn’t stop.

He looked at me. ‘How do you think I am?’

He said it rudely. Very rudely, in fact. I was taken by surprise. I didn’t know what to say. This wasn’t how people spoke to each other. Where was the pretence that we liked each other, that we were both happy to be there, that we’d meet again? I looked around hoping that nobody was listening.

‘There’s no one here,’ he said. ‘No one works on Sundays. They have lives.’

I fought my instinct to snap back. ‘But don’t other people’s lives work in this building too?’

‘No.’ He looked at me as though I were stupid. ‘I just rent this space. I don’t know what they do,’ he referred to the empty desks.

Again, I was taken aback. This was not how it was supposed to go.

He rubbed his face tiredly. ‘I didn’t mean to come across as rude.’

‘Well you did.’

‘Well I’m sorry.’ He said it without any amount of sincerity.

‘No you’re not.’

Silence.

‘Look …’ He leaned forward and I really didn’t mean to, but I leaned back. He had bad breath. It was a bit of an awkward moment. He sighed, then continued, ‘Imagine you had a friend who was there for you all the time and you were there for them, but they stopped being there for you as much as they used to which you can understand a little because people have things to do, but then they’re around less and less no matter how much you try to reach out to them. Then suddenly one day – nothing – they’re gone. Just like that. Then you write to them, and you’re ignored and then you write to them again and you’re ignored and finally you write to them again for a third time and they barely even want to make the appointment, they’re so busy with their job, their friends and their car. How would you feel?’

‘Look, I assume you’re referring to me in that little hypothesis but it’s ridiculous.’ I laughed. ‘Clearly it’s not the same thing. I would never treat a friend that way.’

He gave a wry smile. ‘But you would do that to your life.’

I opened my mouth but nothing came out.

‘So let’s just get started,’ he said, pressing the power button on the computer.

Nothing happened. We sat in an awkward awful tense atmosphere while he became frustrated with the computer. He pressed the power button over and over again, tested the socket, unplugged it, plugged it in again.

‘Just check the—’

‘I don’t need your help, thank you. Please take your hands off the—’

‘Let me just—’

‘Get your hands off the—’

‘… twiddle the connection here—’

‘I’d appreciate it if you’d just—’

‘There.’

I sat back. The computer made a whirring noise.

He took a slow breath. ‘Thank you.’

He didn’t mean it.

‘Where did you get that computer – 1980?’

‘Yeah, about the same time as you got that jacket,’ he said, eyes on the monitor.

‘That’s just childish.’ I pulled my jacket in tighter around me. I folded my arms, crossed my legs, looked away. This was a nightmare, this was worse than I ever could have imagined. My life was an absolute bastard with a chip on his shoulder.

‘What did you imagine this would be?’ he asked, finally breaking the silence.

‘I didn’t know what this would be,’ I said, still in a huff.

‘But you must have imagined something.’

I shrugged, then thought of one of the images I’d had of me and Life in a canoe somewhere picturesque, him rowing, me reading from a book of poetry in a pretty sun hat and a Cavali dress I’d seen in a magazine that I couldn’t afford – the magazine as well as the dress. I thought of me in a magazine doing my interview about Life with blowdried hair, a full face of make-up, contact lenses, a draped asymmetric dress, good lighting. Maybe even a vase of lemons and limes beside me. I sighed and finally looked at him again. ‘I thought it would be like a therapy session. You’d ask me about my job, my family, if I’m happy, that kind of thing.’

‘Have you ever been to a therapy session?’

‘No.’

He looked at me intensely.

I sighed. ‘Yes. Once. When I quit my job. It was around the time I dumped my boyfriend and bought a new apartment.’

He didn’t blink. ‘You were fired. Your boyfriend left you and you’re renting a studio flat.’

I gave him a weak smile. ‘Just testing you.’

‘It would help the whole process if you didn’t lie to me.’

‘They’re not lies if the end result is the same.’

He lit up a little, if that was possible for him. He undimmed anyway.

‘Tell me how that works.’

‘Okay, so if I was to say that I won the lottery then that would be a barefaced lie because I’d clearly have no money but I would have to live my life as if I was a millionaire which would be complicated to say the least, but if I say I quit my job it doesn’t matter because I no longer work there so I don’t have to keep up the pretence of going there every day. If I say I bought a new apartment, it’s not a lie because the fact is I don’t live in the old one any more and I’m living in a new one.’

‘And the last thing you said.’

‘What thing?’

‘About your boyfriend.’

‘It’s the same thing.’ To my surprise, I struggled saying it because I knew he wanted me to say it. ‘Saying that … I dumped him is the same thing as saying … you know … the other way around …’

‘That he left you.’

‘Well, yeah.’

‘Because …’

‘Because the outcome is still the same.’

‘Which is …’

‘That we’re not together.’ And on that note, my eyes filled up. I hated my eyes, the deceiving bastards. Mortified is not the word. I can’t remember the last time I cried over Blake, I was so over him I couldn’t even begin to explain it but it was like when someone asks you if there’s something wrong over and over again, and usually after a while something is wrong – you’re angry and you want to physically hurt them. The same thing was happening now, because he was making me say all those words, making me say them out loud in a method of trying to fool me into admitting something he thought I hadn’t dealt with; it was as though it was working and I was feeling sad for that person that he thought I was. But I wasn’t that person. I was fine. Everything was fine.

I wiped my eyes roughly before any tears fell. ‘I’m not sad,’ I said angrily.

‘Okay.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Okay,’ he shrugged. ‘So tell me about your job.’

‘I love my job,’ I began. ‘It gives me an enormous sense of satisfaction. I love working with people, the communication with the public, the innovative business environment. I feel like I’m doing something worthwhile, helping people, connecting with people, that I can direct them onto the right path, make sure that they are guided. Of course the enormous plus—’

‘Sorry to interrupt you. Can we just clarify what it is that you do?’

‘Yes.’

He looked down and read, ‘You translate instruction manuals for your company?’

‘Yes.’

‘And this company makes fridges, cookers, ovens, that kind of thing.’

‘Yes, they are the largest appliance-manufacturing firm in Europe.’

‘Okay, carry on.’

‘Thank you. Where was I? Of course, the enormous plus side to my work is the people I work with. They are the kind of people who inspire and motivate me to reach further and higher not just in my field of employment but in my life.’

‘Okay.’ He rubbed his forehead. It was flaky. ‘These people that you work with are the people you refer to, in private, as Graham the Cock, Quentin aka Twitch, Louise the Nosy Bitch, Mary the Mouse, Steve the Sausage and Edna Fish Face.’

I kept a straight face. I was quite impressed by my imaginative nicknames. ‘Yes.’

He sighed. ‘Lucy, you’re lying again, aren’t you.’

‘Not really. They do make me want to be a better person – better than them. They do make me want to reach further and higher in my office so that I can get away from them. See? Not a lie. Same outcome.’

He sat back and studied me, ran his hand across his stubble and I could hear the scratching sound.

‘Okay you want to hear the absolute truth about that job or about any job?’ I offered. ‘Fine. Here it is. I’m not one of those people who lives and breathes their job, I don’t take it so seriously that I want to stay longer than I’m paid for or want to socialise with the people I spend most of my waking hours with and would never choose to say more than two words to in the real world. I’ve stayed in that job for two and a half years because I like that gym membership is included, even if the gym equipment is crap and the room stinks to high heaven of smelly jockstraps, it saves me money on going elsewhere. I like that I get to use the languages I spent years finessing. I don’t have many friends who speak German, Italian, French, Dutch and Spanish with me.’ I tried to impress him with that.

‘You don’t speak Spanish.’

‘Yes, I know that, killjoy, but my employers don’t,’ I snapped.

‘What happens when they find out? Will you get fired – again – in a similar spectacular style?’

I ignored him and continued my spiel. ‘I don’t use the vomit word “passion” that I hear so many people use these days when they talk about their work, as if that alone will get you through the day. I do the job I’m paid to do. I’m not a workaholic.’

‘You don’t have the dedication.’

‘Are you advocating workaholicism?’

‘I’m just saying it takes a certain amount of consistency, you know, the ability to throw yourself wholly into something.’

‘What about alcoholics? Do you admire them too? How about I become one of them and you can be proud of my consistency?’

‘We’ve moved away from that analogy now,’ he said, irritated. ‘How about we just say straight out that you lack focus, consistency and dedication?’

That hurt. ‘Give me an example.’ I folded my arms.

He tapped a few keys on the keyboard, read for a while.

‘Someone at work suffered a heart attack so you pretended to the paramedics that you were his next of kin so that you could go in the ambulance and leave work early.’

‘It was a suspected heart attack and I was worried about him.’

‘You told the ambulance driver to let you off at the end of your block.’

‘The man had an anxiety attack, he was fine five minutes later.’

‘You’re half-assed, you waste time, you never finish anything that’s not a bottle of wine or a bar of chocolate. You change your mind all of the time. You can’t commit.’

Okay so that finally got to me. Partly because it was just rude but mostly because he was completely correct. ‘I was in a relationship for five years, how is that a problem with commitment?’

‘He left you three years ago.’

‘So I’m taking time to be with myself. Get to know myself and all that crap.’

‘Do you know yourself yet?’

‘Of course. I like myself so much I’m planning to spend the rest of my life with me.’

He smiled. ‘Or at least fifteen minutes more.’

I looked at the clock. ‘We have forty-five minutes left.’

‘You’ll leave early. You always do.’

I swallowed. ‘So?’

‘So nothing. I was just pointing it out. Would you like some examples?’ He tapped the keyboard before I had time to answer. ‘Christmas dinner in your parents’ house. You left before dessert. Didn’t even make main course the year before, a new record.’

‘I’d a party to go to.’

‘Which you left early.’

My mouth fell open. ‘Nobody even noticed.’

‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong. Again. It was noted.’

‘Noted by who?’

‘By whom,’ he corrected and pressed the down button over and over. I wanted to move to the edge of my seat but I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. I sat quietly looking around the office, pretending I didn’t care. And because I was pretending I didn’t care, I realised that meant I did.

Finally he stopped tapping.

My head whipped around to face him.

He smiled. Then he pressed the down button again.

‘This is ridiculous.’

‘I’m sorry, am I boring you?’

‘Actually, yes.’

‘Well, now you know how I feel.’ He stopped tapping. ‘Melanie.’

My best friend. ‘What about her?’

‘She was the girl who was peeved about your leaving early.’

‘Nobody says “peeved”.’

‘Quote, “I wish for once she could just stay until the end.” Unquote.’

I was a bit annoyed about that, I’m sure I could think of plenty of times I had stayed till the end.

‘Her twenty-first,’ he said.

‘What about it?’

‘The last time you stayed until the end of one of her parties. In fact, they couldn’t get rid of you, could they? You slept overnight.’

Tap, tap, tap.

‘With her cousin.’

Tap.

‘Bobby.’

I groaned. ‘She didn’t care about that.’

Tap tap tap.

‘Quote, “How could she do this to me on my birthday? My grandparents are here, everybody knows. I’m mortified.” Unquote.’

‘She didn’t tell me that.’

He just shrugged.

‘Why is this a big deal? Why are we talking about this?’

‘Because they are.’

Tap tap tap.

‘“I’m sorry she left, Mum, want me to go talk to her?” That’s Riley, your brother.’

‘Yeah, I get it.’

‘“No, sweetheart, I’m sure she’s got somewhere more important to be.” Unquote. You left your family lunch yesterday thirty-two minutes ahead of time in a rather dramatic fashion.’

‘Yesterday was different.’

‘Why was it different?’

‘Because they betrayed me.’

‘How did they do that?’

‘By signing off on my life audit.’

He smiled, ‘Now that’s a good analogy. But if they hadn’t, you wouldn’t be here, with me.’

‘Yes, and look how swell it’s all going.’

Silence.

‘So let’s cut to the chase. This meeting is about me leaving dinners and parties early.’ That wasn’t so bad, I could deal with that, I would just explain why I left each event, where I was going afterwards. This whole thing could be over sooner than I thought.

He started laughing. ‘Hell, no. I just got sidetracked.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We don’t have much time to cover anything. Shall we arrange to meet again?’

‘We’ve got thirty minutes left.’

‘No more than five going by your usual exit strategy.’

‘Get on with it,’ I said.

‘Okay.’ He leaned forward. ‘So what are you doing?’

‘What do you mean, what am I doing? I’m sitting here, wasting my time talking to you, is what I’m doing.’

For the next part he didn’t need notes, he just stared straight into me. ‘You get up at seven a.m. every morning except Saturdays and Sundays when you arise at one p.m.’

‘So?’

‘You have a nutrition bar from your corner cupboard, a cappuccino from Starbucks at the end of your block, you buy the newspaper, sometimes you drive, sometimes you take the train to work, you do the crossword. You arrive at work between nine and nine thirty, you don’t get started on anything until ten. You take a cigarette and coffee break at eleven, even though you don’t smoke but think it’s unfair that smokers receive extra breaks. You take an hour lunch break at one p.m. You sit alone, you do the crossword. You are always late back to your desk. It takes you until two thirty to begin work again but for the afternoon you are diligent and complete your work. You finish at six p.m.’

‘Why are you telling me things that I already know?’ I spoke like I didn’t care but in truth it was disturbing to listen to. It was disturbing to know that all the little things I did in secret were being noted by somebody, and being logged in a computer for some stressed-out office nerd to read like I was some sort of solitaire game.

‘You go to the gym every day after work. You’re supposed to jog for twenty minutes but always stop at seventeen, you work out for thirty minutes more. You sometimes meet friends for dinner, you would always rather be at home, you always leave early. You go to bed, you do the crossword. You get up at seven a.m.’

He left a silence.

‘You see a theme emerging?’

‘I’m prone to solving crosswords? So what? What’s your point?’

He sat back then, studied me again with his tired unblinking eyes.

‘No. What’s yours?’

I swallowed a large dry lump that had formed in my throat. ‘Well, that’s very profound.’

‘Not really. It’s just a question. Okay, why don’t I speak in a way that you understand. Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to leave here in thirty minutes, exactly on time at the end of our meeting, then you’re going to try to forget everything we’ve talked about. You will succeed. I will be reduced to an annoying frustrating little man who made you waste a few hours of your Sunday and you’ll go back to living your life exactly the way you were.’

He stopped. I waited for more, but there wasn’t anything. I was confused. He couldn’t possibly believe that. Then I got it. ‘That’s a lie.’

‘It’s not a lie if the outcome is exactly the same.’

I didn’t want to ask but I had to. ‘And what’s the outcome?’

‘You’ll be as alone and as bored and as unhappy as you were before you met me, but this time it will be worse because this time you’ll know it. You’ll know it every second of every day.’

And on that note, I grabbed my bag and left. With exactly thirty minutes to go, just like he’d said.

CHAPTER SIX

Silchesters don’t cry. It was what my father had told me when I was five years old and I’d fallen off my bike after taking the stabilisers off for the first time. He had been beside me, guiding me along the driveway of our home, though he was further away than I’d have liked but I didn’t want to tell him that because I knew he would be disappointed. Even at five I knew that. I didn’t hurt myself, I was more in shock over the feel of the hard tarmac as my knee slammed down on it and as the bicycle got crushed between my legs. I’d held out my arms to him for help but in the end I got to my feet by myself under his instructions. I still remember his voice. Move the bike away from your leg. Now stand up, don’t make that noise, Lucy, stand up. I’d stood up, hunched as though my leg needed amputation, until I was told to stand up straight. I’d wanted a hug but I didn’t say so, knew that asking for and wanting one would be wrong in his eyes, but knowing in my heart that it wasn’t. It was just the way he was and that’s what I always understood. Even at five years old. Apart from the time Blake left me and when Life reminded me about it, I rarely cried and rarely felt the need to.

In the end it had all ended so quickly. We were together for five years, we had a sociable, fun, busy life together. We had talked about marriage and all of those things and while we weren’t remotely ready to do any of them yet, the understanding was that we would eventually. To each other. When we grew up. But in the process of growing up, I lost him. Somewhere along the way. Not over one day, it happened gradually, he disappeared a little more and more every day. Not his presence, we were always together but I felt like he was going somewhere, even when we were in the same room. Then he sat me down and we had the chat. And that was it. Well, the chat came after an important conversation.

He’d just signed the deal to do his new travel show at that time so he’d started travelling on his own, I suppose it was kind of practice, or that’s what I thought it had been at the time but maybe it was something more. Maybe he was searching for something he just couldn’t find in our converted bread-factory apartment. Sometimes now I think he was seeing somebody else but I have absolutely no reason other than paranoia to back that up. He had been on a trip to Finland and when he returned you’d swear he’d just walked on the moon or had a religious experience. He wouldn’t stop talking about the calm, the quiet, the peace, how much he was at one with whatever the hell else could survive in minus forty degrees. He kept telling me how I had no idea, I couldn’t possibly understand what he was talking about. I told him I could understand. I understood the calmness, the clarity, the contentment in life when you have that perfect moment. Yes I did, I understood. I didn’t use the same words when he was describing it, my eyes didn’t light up to a pure icy blue as if I was seeing the gates of heaven, but yes I understood those feelings.

‘Lucy, you don’t understand, believe me you do not understand.’

‘What do you mean, “you” do not understand? What’s so different about me to other people that I couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like to have a moment of fucking contentment? You don’t have to go to Kathmandu to find inner peace, you know, some of us have it right here in the city. In a bubble bath. With a book. And a glass of wine.’

And then followed the chat. Not immediately after, it may have been a few days, it may have been a few weeks. But whatever it was, it was afterwards. It had given me enough time to digest that he felt I was a different type of person from him, one who didn’t understand the depths of him. I had never felt that before. I had always known we were different, but I didn’t know that he knew that. It sounds like a small detail but actually when really thought about, it became everything. When I travelled, I travelled to see new places; when he travelled, he travelled to find new parts of himself. I guess when you’re trying to find all the parts of yourself, it’s difficult to be with someone who’s already fully intact.

Then here’s where we did a stupid thing, and he walked me into a scenario that I wish I could change every day of my life. Obviously, I was upset. I was very upset, I was so upset I turned to religion – the Silchester religion of worrying about what People would think. He told me that if it made me feel any better we could tell people that I left him. Now, in my current reasonable-ish state I don’t know why I would have agreed to that. But I did. It helped me after the break-up, it gave me a strength that I needed while having those conversations with friends and family so I could say, ‘It just wasn’t working, I had to leave him.’ Because when I said that, there were fewer questions. If I’d told them he left me, there would be endless amounts of pity, of trying to figure it all out on my behalf, what I did wrong, how was it my fault, then them being afraid to talk about it when they met him or saw him with a new girlfriend. My dumping him was to make everything easier. Only it wasn’t easier because he had left me and I had to listen to every little thing about him and pretend it didn’t hurt, and then see him on his TV show and pretend it didn’t hurt and whenever I got angry at him I had to listen to how I had no reason to be angry and how hurt he might be, the poor thing, and I was trapped in this big fat lie.

Because I ended up carrying around this big secret that nobody knew about, this big ball of hurt that had turned to anger, which often turned to pity, then loneliness because I never had those necessary conversations to help me get over it properly, I felt alone in my secret reality. So in the initial stages I carried that hurt and anger and pity around with me and due to circumstances I may reveal at a later date, got fired from my respectable job that paid well, but to be able to tell people why I got fired I’d have to tell them why I got fired and I couldn’t do that because after so much time it would just frankly be weird to admit a lie of that magnitude, so I told everyone I quit and then the rest of my life fell into its own new place following a bunch of big fat lies. And they were big fat lies no matter how much the outcome was still the same.

That is all that I will admit to because, as it turned out, I felt happy with how my life had settled. If Life had tried to meet with me two years ago, I would have understood, because I felt like I was falling but not now, not any more. I’d fallen from a great height and was wedged into what some may assume was a rather precarious place that could easily snap and break and send me falling again, but I was very happy, cosy even, and everything was fine, absolutely fine.

When I reached the lobby of the depressing Lego building, American Pie was gone. I left the chocolate bar I’d brought for her on the counter, the one she said she liked when we spoke on the phone, and exited the building and tried to forget about the frustrating little man who wasted a few hours of my Sunday. But I couldn’t. That frustrating little man represented my life and for once I just couldn’t forget it. Right in that moment I had no distractions to take my mind off it – no car to fix, no email to send, no paperwork to fax, no family member to call, no friend’s problem to delve into – and I was experiencing a mild feeling of anxiety. My life had just told me that I was going to be alone and miserable. I don’t know what you’re supposed to do with that information, I really don’t. He didn’t tell me how I could not be alone and miserable and all I wanted to do was fight the reality, like patients who have received news of an illness and feel in denial about it, because you might be diagnosed but you still don’t feel the symptoms. I saw a café at the next corner and found the solution. I like coffee, it makes me happy in the small way that things you like can lift you, so I figured a café would mean I was in company, and the coffee would mean I was with something that made me happy. No more alone and miserable. Inside was full, with the exception of one small table. I squeezed by the tables, chatter loud in the air. I was happy about that, other voices would take my mind off my own. I ordered a coffee and sat back, satisfied that I could eavesdrop on other people’s conversations. I needed to stop thinking about it. My life was fine, absolutely fine. I was a single woman with a job who was happy, I needed a distraction. Any kind of distraction. The café door opened, the bell rang and half the café automatically looked up. Then the straight males went back to their conversations and the remainder continued gawking because in walked the most beautiful man I had ever seen in the flesh. He scanned the café and then headed in my direction.

‘Hi,’ gorgeous man smiled, resting his hands on the chair opposite me. ‘Are you alone?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Is anybody sitting here? The café’s full, do you mind if I join you?’

There was actually a free seat behind me but I wasn’t going to point that out. The man had a beautiful face, perfectly proportioned nose and lips and eyes and a jawline you could grate cheese on. I thought about my family signing off on Life’s intervention, I just couldn’t figure it out; why on earth Life had come to me, there were plenty of people who were unhappy after relationships ended, surely this wasn’t an emergency case. I had moved on, I was living my life. I wasn’t afraid to meet new people. I wasn’t stuck in the past. What did they think was wrong with me?

‘No problem,’ I said, then drained my cup as he sat down. ‘In fact, you can have the table to yourself, I’m just leaving to see my boyfriend.’

He looked disappointed but nodded his thanks.

Okay, I lied.

But in only a few hours from then, the outcome would be the same.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘We were up at four thirty this morning,’ he panted, beads of sweat trickling down the sides of his face and getting lost in his suntanned stubble-lined jaw. ‘The trail from the hostel to Machu Picchu has taken about one and a half hours. We were told to wake up that early so that we could leave Wiñay Wayna by five thirty to get to Machu Picchu before sunrise.’ He was wearing a navy blue T-shirt, the sleeves were tight around his biceps, sweat marks were on his chest, on his back, under his arms. He wore beige combat shorts and walking boots, his legs were tanned and muscular like the rest of his body. There was a long shot of him walking the trail and I paused the TV.

Mr Pan jumped onto the couch beside me. ‘Hi, Mary.’

He purred.

‘He’s doing the Inca Trail today. We were supposed to do that one together. Let’s see who else he’s doing it with now …’ I studied the girls in the long shot. She wasn’t there. I pressed play again.

‘As you can see the trail contours around this mountainside and drops into cloud forest before coming to an almost vertical flight of fifty steps leading up to the final pass at Intipunku, which means Sun Gate.’ Lots of shots of him panting, shots of scenery, close-ups on him, his walking shoes, his rucksack, the back of his head and the view before him, the reflection in his sunglasses. All of them were new, nothing I’d bought him. ‘And here we are,’ he smiled at the camera, big white perfect teeth. He looked off into the distance, took off his glasses to reveal his beautiful eyes and his face changed. ‘Wow.’

I paused it on his face. Studied him and smiled. Knew that it was for real, that it hadn’t been filmed twenty times already for his best look, knew that he was in heaven right there, right then and in a funny way I felt like I was experiencing it with him. Just like we used to do together, years ago. The camera panned and then I could see what he could see, the whole of Machu Picchu spread out before us.

‘There it is, Machu Picchu in all its glory. A fantastic sight. Beautiful,’ he said, taking it all in. There was a wider shot of him assessing the view. I paused the TV again and studied the girls around him. She wasn’t there. I pressed play again. It cut to later, he had wiped the sweat from his face, had changed his T-shirt to a fresher version of the same one, was sitting down and looked rested, had caught his breath for the final wrap-up scene. He gave his little summary of his journey and then, ‘Remember that happiness is a way of travel, it’s not a destination.’ Then he smiled, those teeth, those eyes, that hair, those arms and hands – I remember them all around me, sleeping beside me, showering with me, cooking for me, touching me, kissing me. Dumping me. ‘Wish you were here,’ he said with a wink, and he was gone and the credits took the place of his face.

‘Me too,’ I whispered. I swallowed a hard dry lump of nothing that had stuck in my throat. Had that awful sick feeling in my stomach, and the pain in my heart that came when the credits finished and it hit me that he was gone. I waited for the initial pain to go and then I paused the credits and searched. Her name was still there. I used my laptop to go on Facebook and check her status. Single.

I was psychotic and I knew it but I also knew that most of the time my paranoia was correct, and that most of the time it wasn’t paranoia, it was gut instinct and most of the time that was correct. But it had been almost three years and they hadn’t, by the looks of it, gotten together. I didn’t even know how present she’d be in his life as a production assistant; I didn’t know how TV shows worked, but when he’d first signed the deal to do the show we went to meet with the team. I’d met her and I got a feeling about her. That was all, one of those girlfriend feelings that you get about other girls. Then when we broke up I got a huge feeling about her, and those feelings had manifested into something so massive it was bordering on obsessive. But I couldn’t help it. Her name was Jenna. Jenna was a bitch. And every time I heard the name Jenna I thought of her and immediately hated the poor unrelated person named Jenna. She was from Australia and I hated everyone from Australia. It was a very weird thing that had taken over me, I didn’t even know her and I’d previously liked Australia, but I’d created this persona around her, this dislike for her and her country and anything, however minuscule, that I knew about her.

Just to taunt myself I imagined them having sex on the top of the mountain as soon as the camera was turned off and I wondered who he’d camped out with all those nights in that tiny little tent, in those close overcrowded little hostels. All of the environments he was in were too close for him to share with another woman, especially Jenna, especially the character that had grown in my mind. She would crawl into his tent in the dead of night and reveal her naked self to him, he would try to fight his urges but he wouldn’t be able to because he was a man and he was all pumped up from the walk up the mountain, and being in touch with nature made him even hornier. Every time I watched an episode, I pictured them together. I didn’t even know what a production assistant did but I Googled it to find out. I didn’t know if she was a set PA or an office PA; a big difference because it either meant she was with him all the time or their paths rarely crossed. Occasionally I looked through the other names on the credits to make sure someone else hadn’t slipped in that could also be sleeping with him on location, but I had investigated them through the power of Google and surmised that Jenna, the bitch from Australia, was the only woman he would go for.

My mobile rang, and took me out of my latest daydream. It was Riley again. Since lunch the previous day I had had nine missed calls from Riley and two from Mum. Silchesters didn’t ignore people, make a drama or cause a fuss, so I had texted them both that I was unavailable to speak and that I’d call them back as soon as I could. It wasn’t a lie. I just didn’t know how to be with them. I couldn’t be angry with them because as concerned family members they were only trying to help, but I couldn’t entertain mindless chit-chat because I was genuinely hurt, flabbergasted even, that they felt I was in such dire need of help that they couldn’t come directly to me to tell me. I had always done my best not to reveal anything about myself to my family, even to Riley. Despite him being my accomplice during family gatherings, he was not my best friend; he was my brother and there were things that brothers didn’t need or want to know.

I ignored the call and as soon as it stopped I immediately sent a polite text about how I was currently out with friends. He texted back straight away.

–Then u left ur tv on cos I’m outside ur door.

I leaped up, Mr Pan did too but he didn’t follow me. His courage always gave out when we got to the bathroom door. He nipped in there to defend me from behind the wash basket.

‘Riley?’ I called through the door.

‘Yes.’

I sighed. ‘You can’t come in.’

‘Okay. Can you come out?’

I unlocked the door, barely opened it so he couldn’t see inside and slid out to him. He tried to look in. I closed the door.

‘Have you got company?’

‘Yes. A hot naked man with a large erection is lying on my bed waiting for me, if you want to come in.’

‘Lucy.’ He had a pained expression.

‘I’m only joking.’

‘So there’s no one there?’

‘No, there is.’ It wasn’t a lie. Mr Pan was waiting for me.

‘Sorry. Is it … you know?’

‘Life? No. I met him in his office earlier today.’

‘Him?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Weird.’

‘Yeah.’

‘How did it go?’

‘Yeah, good. He was nice, just wanted to check in and have a chat, that kind of thing, I probably won’t have to meet him again.’

‘Really?’

‘Don’t sound so surprised,’ I snapped.

‘Okay.’ He shifted his weight to his other foot. ‘So everything’s okay?’

‘Yeah, he was a bit confused as to why he had to meet me at all really.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, it’s just like one of those random breath tests only it’s a random life test. They picked me completely at random, unfortunately for me.’

‘Oh. Okay …’

I let the silence hang.

‘Well, I’m here because I found these.’ He took a pair of shoes out from behind his back. ‘I’m checking around the kingdom to see who they fit.’

I smiled.

‘May I?’ He got down on bended knee, lifted my foot, saw I had odd socks on and visibly tried hard not to comment. He removed my sock and slid my foot into the shoe. He looked at me in mock surprise.

‘Now do we live incestuously ever after?’ I asked.

He frowned, then leaned against the door frame and stared at me.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘What, Riley? You didn’t just come here to give me my shoes.’

‘Nothing,’ he repeated. ‘Just …’ He looked like he was going to say something serious. ‘It’s just that I met someone who used to work with you a few years ago in Quinn and Downing and he just said a few things to me …’ He studied me. I tried to look confused, not fearful as I felt, and he changed tack. ‘Anyway, he was probably wrong.’ He cleared his throat.

‘Who was it?’ I asked coolly.

‘Gavin Lisadel.’ He studied me intensely some more.

I rolled my eyes. ‘The biggest drama queen I’ve ever worked for.’ In truth a perfectly reputable guy. ‘I’ve heard he’s coming out with all kinds of weird stories about me. Don’t worry, whatever it is, it’s a lie. I heard he’s been cheating on his wife with a man for years, so you know …’ He was a happily married family man as far as I knew. I had just destroyed Gavin’s perfect image in less than one minute but I didn’t care, he had destroyed mine too, not that it had ever been perfect and even if he had, he probably wasn’t lying. Then I felt bad about what I’d said so I added quickly, ‘But everyone really likes him and he’s really good at his job.’

Riley nodded, still not convinced but he changed the mood. ‘I still can’t believe you said Father wasn’t the breastfed kind.’ He started laughing, then threw his head back and laughed even louder.

Eventually I joined in. ‘Well? Do you think she’d have bothered? Old wrinkly tits?’

He shook his head, disgusted by the thought.

The door opposite me opened and a friendly apologetic face popped out. ‘Hi, Lucy, I’m really sorry, do you mind keeping it down a little? I’ve just— oh hi,’ she said, noticing Riley.

‘Sorry,’ Riley apologised. ‘I’m just leaving.’

‘No, it’s rude of me to ask, it’s just that I’ve got …’ She pointed her thumb back into the apartment but didn’t say anything. ‘You look so alike. Are you Lucy’s brother?’ she asked, studying him.

‘I am. Riley.’ He reached out his hand and they shook, which was weird because I couldn’t even remember my neighbour’s name; I’d forgotten it the moment we met and it seemed rude as the time went by to ask so I just never addressed her, there was a lot of hey and hi and hello you and I had a strong suspicion it was Ruth but I’d never had the full confidence to go for it.

‘I’m Claire.’

And it was just as well.

‘Hi, Claire.’

Riley was giving her one of his best cute but sweet but strong and masculine, you-can-trust-me, flirtatious looks, which freaked me out but Claire wasn’t completely delusional, she untangled herself from his web of silent promises, and quickly said her goodbyes.

‘Must be losing your touch, Riley.’

He looked at me, serious again.

‘Don’t worry, it happens to us all.’

‘No, not that …’

‘What, Riley?’

‘Nothing.’ He aborted the thought, and made his way to the elevator.

‘Thanks for the shoes,’ I said more gently.

He didn’t turn around, just lifted his arm up in a salute and disappeared into the elevator. Just before I closed my door I heard my neighbour – whose name I’d already forgotten – open her door and quickly say, ‘If you ever want to come in for a coffee or anything, just come straight over. No notice needed, I’m always here.’

‘Oh. Okay.’ It felt awkward. It had been at least a year since I’d met her and apart from the chat in the elevator it was the longest sentence either of us had ever said to one another. She used to never speak when I saw her. Probably spending all that time cooped up inside had made her desperate to talk to anyone, including me.

‘Thanks. Eh … likewise.’ Then I couldn’t think of anything to say so I closed the door.

Only I never wanted her to call over for a coffee and I never wanted Riley to come into the apartment. He’d never been in before, none of my family had. None of my friends had either. It was my space. But it was becoming an eyesore even to me. The carpet had to be cleaned. I would clean it myself without telling the landlord because I didn’t want him checking it and seeing the burns and then charging me for the damage. I searched for where I’d written the company name on the carpet and grabbed the phone and quickly dialled directory enquiries before I changed my mind. I knew something monumental was happening. I was doing something that needed to be done and I felt the burden of it every step of the way. As they connected me and the phone rang, I began to think of hanging up. It wasn’t just the phone call; it was having to follow through that bothered me. I’d have to stay in from work one day, I’d have to wait for some stranger to arrive hours after he’d promised and then I’d have to show him all the personal private stains that I wanted removed. How humiliating. It rang and rang, and then it sounded like it was about to be answered or go to an answer phone when it went through another bout of ringing. I was about to hang up and abort the situation when a man answered.

‘Hello?’

It was noisy. Pub noisy. I had to move the phone away from my ear.

‘Sorry, just be a minute,’ the voice shouted and I wanted to shout back that it was okay, that I’d got the wrong number, partly because I’d changed my mind – I didn’t want the hassle of a stranger in my home – and partly because I was beginning to think I had genuinely been connected to the wrong number. I searched for the business card I’d been given by American Pie to see if it matched the number on my screen. But the phone wasn’t by his ear to hear me explain, it was being rubbed against his body or dozens of other bodies as he made his way to somewhere quieter.

‘Just a minute,’ he shouted again.

‘Actually it’s okay,’ I yelled despite being in a silent room. But he was gone again.

Finally there was silence, I could hear footsteps, then laughter in the distance, then, ‘Hello? Are you still there?’

I fell back on the couch. ‘Yes, hi.’

‘Sorry about that, who’s this?’

‘Em, actually this is going to annoy you seeing all you had to do to get outside but I think I’ve got the wrong number.’

‘After all that,’ he laughed.

‘Yep, sorry.’ I climbed over the back of the couch and was in the kitchen. I looked in the fridge. Nothing to eat as usual.

He went quiet, then I heard a match and he inhaled. ‘Sorry, bad habit. My sister said if I took up smoking I’d meet someone.’

‘I pretend I’m a smoker at work to get more breaks.’ I was surprised I’d said it out loud.

‘What if they find you not smoking?’

‘If someone’s there, then I smoke.’

He laughed. ‘That’s a long way to go for a break.’

‘I’ll do anything for a break.’

‘Like talk to wrong numbers?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Want to tell me your name or does that break the wrong-number code of ethics?’

‘I’ve no problem at all telling a complete stranger my name. It’s Gertrude.’

‘That’s a lovely name, Gertrude.’ I could hear the smile in his voice.

‘Why, thank you.’

‘I’m Giuseppe.’

‘Nice to meet you, Giuseppe. How’s Pinocchio doing?’

‘Ah, you know, telling fibs and bragging about being unattached.’

‘He’s always at it.’ Then I realised that despite it being more comfortable than a phone conversation with my own father, this was weird. ‘Well, I’d better let you get back to the pub.’

‘Actually I’m at an Aslan gig.’

‘I love Aslan.’

‘We’re in Vicar Street, you should come.’

‘Who’s “we”?’

‘Me and Tom.’

‘Well, I would go but Tom and I had a falling-out and it would just be awkward if I showed up.’

‘Even if he apologised?’

‘Believe me, he’ll never apologise.’

‘Tom’s always putting his foot in his mouth, just ignore him. I have a spare ticket, I can leave it for you at the ticket desk.’

His familiarity intrigued me. ‘I could be a toothless married woman with ten kids and an eye patch.’

‘Christ, are you a woman?’

I laughed.

‘So are you coming?’

‘Do you always ask wrong numbers out?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Do they ever say yes?’

‘Once, and I got a toothless married woman with ten kids and an eye patch.’

‘Have they sung “Down on Me”?’

‘They haven’t started yet. Is that your favourite?’

‘Yep.’ I opened the freezer. Chicken curry or cottage pie. The chicken curry was a week out of date; the cottage pie would be out of date tomorrow. I reached for the chicken curry and stabbed the film with a fork.

‘Have you ever heard them live?’

‘No, but it’s on my list of things to do.’

‘What else is on your list?’

‘Eat dinner.’

‘You aim high, I like it. Want to tell me your real name now?’

‘Nope. Want to tell me yours?’

‘Don.’

‘Don what?’

‘Lockwood.’

My heart did a funny thing. I froze. Mr Pan noticed my mood change and jumped up and looked around for what he needed to defend me against, or hide from.

‘Hello?’ he said. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Did you say Don Lockwood?’ I asked slowly.

‘Yes, why?’

I gasped. ‘Are you joking?’

‘Nope. Born and bred. Actually that’s a lie, they called me Jacinta, then they found out I was a boy. It’s much easier to tell the difference now, I assure you. Why, is this not a wrong number after all?’

I was pacing the kitchen, no longer interested in my chicken curry. I didn’t believe in signs because I couldn’t sign read but it was just an unbelievably exciting coincidence. ‘Don Lockwood … wait for it … is the name of Gene Kelly’s character in Singin’ in the Rain.’

‘I see.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you are a fan of either Gene Kelly and/or of this movie so this is very exciting news to you.’

‘Only the biggest.’ I laughed. ‘Don’t tell me no one’s ever said that to you before.’

‘I can safely say, no one under the age of eighty-five has ever said it to me before.’

‘Not even any of your wrong numbers?’

‘Not even them.’

‘How old are you?’ I asked, suddenly afraid I was having a conversation with a fifteen-year-old and that the police were on their way.

‘I’m thirty-five and three-quarters.’

‘I can’t believe in all of your thirty-five and three-quarters years no one has ever said that to you before.’

‘Because most of the people I meet aren’t one hundred years old like you.’

‘I’m not going to be one hundred for at least two weeks.’

‘Ah. I see. Thirty? Forty? Fifty?’

‘Thirty.’

‘It’s all downhill from there, believe me.’

And he went silent, and I went silent and then it wasn’t natural any more and we were just two strangers on a wrong number who both wanted to hang up.

I got in there first. ‘It was nice talking to you, Don. Thanks for the offer of the ticket.’

‘Bye, toothless married woman,’ he said and we both laughed. I hung up and caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror and I looked like my mother, just a face full of a smile. It faded fast at the realisation that I’d just spoken to an absolute stranger on the phone. Maybe they were right, maybe I was losing it. I went to bed early and at twelve thirty my phone rang, waking me in fright. I looked at the number flashing and didn’t recognise it, so I ignored it and waited for it to stop so I could go back to sleep. A few seconds later the phone rang again. I answered it, hoping it wasn’t bad news. All I could hear was noise, screams and shouts. I moved it away from my ear, then heard the music, then heard the singing, then recognised the song. He was calling me, Don Lockwood was calling me, so I could hear my favourite song.

‘If you think your life’s a waste of time, if you think your time’s a waste of life, come over to this land, take a look around. Is this a tragic situation, or a massive demonstration, where do we hide?’

I lay back on the bed and listened to the song, then when it was finished, I stayed on the line to speak to him. As soon as the next song started, he hung up.

I smiled. Then texted him.

–Thanks.

He texted back straight away.

–One less thing on your list. Nite.

I stared at those words for a long time then added his number into my phone. Don Lockwood. Just seeing it there made me smile.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I was standing on the fire escape, secret smoking location number three of the year after the disabled toilet on the second floor and the cleaning staff service room. Two other people were there too; a man and a woman but they weren’t there together and none of us spoke. It wasn’t like the smoking section outside a club or pub where everybody spoke to everybody, united by the happiness of being out on a social occasion. This was work and the only reason we were all here, apart from needing to feed the nicotine fix, was to get away from talking to people. We had come here to have a break from thoughts and the hard work that came with the constant interaction with idiots. Or at least people we considered idiots because they were not mind readers and we had to, patiently, use polite words to explain things that we were thinking when really inside we were fighting the urge to take their heads in our hands and softly and repeatedly thud their foreheads off the wall. But there was no such politeness here; we were shutting off our brains, deliberately ignoring each other and satisfied by our right to do so, concentrating only on breathing in and blowing out smoke. Only I wasn’t. I hadn’t stopped thinking, and I wasn’t smoking.

I heard the door open behind me. I didn’t bother turning around, I didn’t care if location number three had been found and we had all been caught. What was another misdemeanour on my current rap sheet? But the other two did care and they hid their cigarettes in their closed and quickly yellowing palms, forgetting the rising smoke would give the game away, and they both quickly turned to see who had stumbled upon their lair. They didn’t appear too concerned by who they saw but they didn’t relax either which meant it wasn’t the boss but it wasn’t someone they knew. The man took a final long drag of his cigarette and quickly left, the scare of the close call enough to ruin his nicotine thrill. The woman stayed where she was, but eyed the new guest up and down as she had done with me when I joined them. I still didn’t turn around to see who it was, partly because I didn’t care who it was, but mostly because I knew who it was.

‘Hi,’ he said, standing so close to me our shoulders rubbed.

‘I’m not talking to you,’ I said, staring straight ahead. The woman sensed something juicy and settled down to suck on the remainder of her cigarette.

‘I told you it was going to be harder than you thought,’ he said gently. ‘But don’t worry, we’ll get there.’

‘Will we now,’ I said. ‘Excuse me,’ I turned to the lady, ‘would you mind if I borrowed a cigarette, please?’

‘I think she means can she take it. She can’t give it back once it’s smoked,’ Life added for me.

She looked at me as though she’d rather sell her favourite grandmother but she gave me one anyway because that’s what people do, they’re mostly polite, even when they’re feeling rude inside.

I inhaled. Then I coughed.

‘You don’t smoke,’ he said.

I inhaled again in his face, then tried to stifle the cough that immediately came after.

‘Why don’t you just tell me why you’re so angry?’

‘Why?’ I finally turned to him. ‘Are you demented? You know bloody well why. You made a fool of me in there. You made me look like a … like a …’

‘Liar, by any chance?’

‘Look, I had a plan. I had it all under control. You were just supposed to sit there and observe, that’s what you said.’

‘I never said that.’

‘Somebody said that.’

‘No, you assumed.’

I silently fumed.

‘So tell me, what was the great plan? You were going to lie again and all of a sudden like the great genius you are, learn Spanish overnight?’

‘I have a great aptitude for learning, that’s what my French teacher said,’ I huffed.

‘And your civics teacher said “could do better”.’ He looked away. ‘I did the right thing.’

Silence. The smoker sniffed.

‘Okay, so I should have told the truth, but there has to be another way of doing this. You can’t just bulldoze your way into my life and try to fix every little lie that I’ve ever told. What are you going to do when you meet my parents? Come out with every little fib and give them a heart attack? Are you going to tell them that instead of a study group, I had a house party the night they went to my Aunt Julie’s fortieth and that their darling nephew Colin shagged a girl in their bed and Fiona streaked across the lawn for the last bit of hash and that no, I’m sorry, it wasn’t vegetable soup on the floor like I said it was, it was Melanie’s vomit and I shouldn’t have let the dog eat it? And by the way, Lucy can’t speak Spanish.’ I gasped for air.

He was taken aback. ‘Even your parents think you can speak Spanish?’

‘They paid for a summer there, what else was I meant to tell them?’ I snapped.

‘The truth? Does that ever occur to you?’

‘That I was a podium dancer in a night club instead of doing the job they set up for me at a hotel reception?’

‘Maybe not, then.’

‘I mean, where does the big reveal begin and end? One minute you’re buying light bulbs and the next minute you’re telling my father I think he needs to get off his high horse and stop being a pretentious little shit. You need to have a little sensitivity about this, you’re supposed to be helping me make things better, not putting me in the unemployment line and ending what little relationship I already have with my family. We need to have a plan.’

He was silent for a while, I could see he was mulling it over and I waited for one of his analogies but none came. Instead he said, ‘You’re right. I’m sorry.’

I pretended to keel over the banister but he and the smoker pulled me back, thinking I was serious.

‘Thanks,’ I said to her, a little embarrassed, and she quite wisely found that an appropriate time to leave.

‘But I’m not sorry for what I did, just the way that I went about it. We’ll work on another strategy for the future.’

I respected his fairness, his ability to admit when he was wrong. So I took another drag of the cigarette and then put it out, as a mark of respect. But he wasn’t finished and I examined the crushed smouldering cigarette to see if I could pick it up again and continue smoking.

‘I couldn’t just sit there and listen to you lie again, Lucy, and I’m never going to be able to do that so whatever strategy we work out, it has to involve you not lying again. It gives me heartburn.’

‘My lying gives you heartburn?’

‘Right there.’ He rubbed the centre of his chest.

‘Oh. Well, I’m sorry about that.’

He winced and rubbed it again. ‘Your nose just grew, Pinocchio.’

I shoved him playfully. ‘Why don’t you just let me tell people the truth? In my own time, that is.’

‘I don’t think there’s enough time in the world to allow that to happen.’

‘Well, I’m not going to gather the troops and admit everything all at once but I’ll do it. I’ll do it when the time is right. How about we agree that I just won’t tell any more lies from now on, and you do your little accompanying, observing thing if you have to.’

‘How will you stop yourself from lying?’

‘I think I know how not to lie if I don’t want to,’ I said, insulted. ‘It’s not as if I have a problem.’

‘What is it about the wrong-number guy that makes you tell the truth?’

‘Who?’

‘You know who. See, you’ve just done it again,’ he said, amused. ‘Your first reaction is to deny any knowledge of anything.’

I ignored his insight. ‘I told him not to call me any more.’

‘Why? Did you call and he was engaged?’

Though he was pleased with his joke, I ignored it. ‘Nah. It was just too weird.’

‘That’s a pity.’

‘Yeah,’ I said vaguely, not sure if it was pitiful. I held out my hand. ‘So have we got a deal? I don’t lie, you observe?’

He thought about it. ‘I want to add to it.’

I dropped my hand. ‘Of course you do.’

‘Every time you lie, I reveal a truth.’ He held out his hand. ‘Deal?’

I thought about it; I didn’t like it. I couldn’t truthfully promise that I would never lie again, all I could do was try, and I couldn’t trust him to reveal any amount of truth in my life, but if I agreed to the deal then at least it put the ball in my court and he wouldn’t be charging around my life like a bull in a china shop. ‘Fine. It’s a deal.’ We shook on it.

It was tense when I got back to the office. The others couldn’t figure out whether to be angry with me or not, just as they couldn’t figure out whether to be angry with Steve or not so we just worked in silence, no doubt putting aside any issues that needed discussion with one another in the newly created when everything gets back to normal tray beside the inbox and the outbox. Life faced me from the opposite desk, which was acceptable because I bet there wasn’t a soul in the room, apart from Edna, who could remember the name of the guy who worked there. He’d been knocked out in round one early last year when I had nothing to do with him from where I sat in the corner right beneath the air-conditioning vent and my sole task every day was to try keep warm and do everything to stop Graham from staring at my nipples. Needless to say, Augusto Fernández’s quite earnest promise that he would do all in his power to give Steve his job back was nonsense, and so Steve’s desk stood empty. If Life had chosen to sit at that desk, however, that would have caused a stir. It would have been too raw, too painful. Life looked through his computer all day, tap-tap-tapping and making notes, watching me, observing how I spoke to the others which was at an all-time low seeing as nobody was willing to communicate.

Then I started to think about what he’d said. About the wrong number, about Don Lockwood, about why I didn’t lie to him. I don’t know why I didn’t lie to him but the most obvious answer was because I didn’t know him, he was a complete stranger to me and the truth didn’t matter with him.

The truth didn’t matter. Why did it with everybody else?

I picked up my phone and went through my photos; I stopped at the one of his eyes, studied them, zoomed in and out of them one by one like an obsessive stalker, saw the flecks of aqua, almost green, in the blue, then I set it as my screen saver. It looked pretty impressive when I placed my phone on the desk and they were staring up at me.

‘What are you smiling at?’ Life asked me, and his sudden voice made me jump.

‘What? Jesus, you scared me. Don’t creep up on me like that.’

‘I was sitting right here, what were you doing?’

‘Oh,’ I was about to say nothing, when I looked down at the screen saver. I didn’t want to lie. ‘Just looking at photographs.’

Satisfied I was telling the truth, Life decided to take a break and headed off to the kitchen. Graham’s eyes followed him across the room; then he looked around at everyone else to make sure they were staying put at their desks, stood up and followed Life into the kitchen. I watched the door, waiting for one of them to come out but when five minutes had passed I began to worry. Life had been in the kitchen too long with Graham the Cock, I hoped he hadn’t fallen prey to one of his offers of a dalliance, a thought which I knew couldn’t be true but made me queasy. I stood at the filing cabinet which Louise had strategically placed by the kitchen door, opened a drawer and pretended to look for a file while eavesdropping.

‘So she lied about the Spanish,’ Graham said.

‘Yep,’ Life said, sounding like he was eating, and he was scraping something. A yoghurt pot, I deducted. That was Louise’s, she was on WeightWatchers and snacked all day on yoghurts which had more sugar in them than a doughnut.

‘Well, well, well. And she lied about smoking.’

‘Yep,’ he said again. Scrape, scrape, scrape.

‘You know that I smoke,’ Graham said.

‘No, I didn’t know that.’ And it sounded like he didn’t care much either.

‘We sometimes go out there together, me and Lucy, to the private place,’ Graham said, keeping his voice low, not because he was talking about the private smoking place but in that way that men did when they were talking about sexual things they had done, or more usually wished they’d done.

‘The fire escape,’ Life said, keeping his voice at normal level, which told anyone who wasn’t Graham that he didn’t want to lower his tone of voice or subject of conversation.

‘I was thinking that she might have a thing for me. That pretending to be a smoker was just a way to get close to me.’ Graham gave a naughty little chuckle, forgetting about the fact that it was always he who followed me.

‘You think?’ Scrape, scrape.

‘Well, it’s hard to get close in here, with this lot. What do you think? Has she ever mentioned anything to you about me? Or she wouldn’t have to say it, you’d just know, wouldn’t you? Go on, you can tell me.’

‘Yeah, I pretty much know everything,’ Life said and I was annoyed that Cock knew he was my life. It was enough that he tried to come on to me, never mind trying to sweet-talk my life as well.

‘So what do you think? Does she want some?’

‘Want some?’ The scraping stopped. The yoghurt had been demolished, the integrity insulted.

‘She’s turned me down a few times, I won’t lie to you, but the thing is I’m married and for a girl like Lucy, that’s not her thing. But I still feel there’s something … Has she told you anything about me?’

I heard a squeak – the bin lid rising; heard the plastic bag rustle as something was dumped – the yoghurt pot; heard a clink in the sink – the spoon. Then heard a long sigh – my life.

‘Graham, I can safely say that Lucy wants to like you and occasionally sees glimpses of a nice guy but deep down, deep, deep down she thinks you’re an absolute asshole.’

I smiled, closed the file drawer and swiftly returned to my desk. I knew then that though he’d stabbed me in the back just that morning, by the afternoon, he had my back. The office, namely Graham, was even quieter that afternoon and I wasn’t fired that day. Lying in bed that night I knew Life was awake because he wasn’t snoring. I was running through everything that had happened that day and all that had been said; between me, Life and everybody else stuck in between. I eventually came to one conclusion.

‘You planned all that, didn’t you?’ I asked to the dark empty room.

‘Planned what?’

‘You deliberately went in and told Edna the truth in a way that would make me come up with the idea to tell the truth myself.’

‘Sounds like you’re analysing everything too much, Lucy.’

‘Am I right?’

Silence.

‘Yes.’

‘What else are you planning?’

He never answered me. It was just as well.

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