Charlotte Street, Page 2

  Talking of which …

  ‘Right, we’ve got Żubr or Żywiec – take your pick!’ said Dev, holding up the bottles. I wasn’t sure I could pronounce either of them so pointed at the one with the least letters.

  ‘Or I think I’ve got some Lech somewhere,’ he said, pronouncing it ‘Letch’ and then giggling. Dev knows it’s pronounced ‘Leck’, because he asked Pawel, but he prefers saying ‘Letch’ because it means he can giggle afterwards.

  ‘Żubr is fine,’ I said – something I’d never said before – and he flipped the lid and passed it over.

  I caught sight of myself in the mirror behind him.

  I looked tired.

  Sometimes I look at myself and think, Is this it?, and then I think, Yes, it is. This is literally the best you will ever look. Tomorrow, you will look just a little bit worse, and this is how it will go, for ever. You should definitely buy some Berocca.

  I have the haircut of the mid-thirties man. Until recently, I wore cool, ironic T-shirts, until I realised the real irony was they made me look less cool.

  I’m too old to experiment with my hair, see, but too young to have found the style I’ll take to the grave. You know the one I mean – the one we’re all headed for, if we’re lucky enough to have any left by then. Flat and dulled and sitting on every man in an oversized shirt at an all-inclusive holiday resort breakfast buffet, surrounded by unpleasant children and a passive aggressive wife who have worked together in single-minded unity to quash his ambitions the way they have quashed his hairstyle.

  I say that like I’m any better, or that my ambitions are heroic and worthy. I am a man between styles, is all, and there are millions of me. I’m at that awkward stage between the man of his twenties and the man of his forties. A stage I have come to call ‘the man in his thirties’.

  I sometimes wonder what the caption at the bottom of my Vanity Fair shoot would say, the day I wrote the cover story and they decided to make a big deal of me:

  Hair by Angela at Toni & Guy, near Angel tube, even though her fingers smell of nicotine and she says ‘axe’ instead of ‘ask’.

  Smell: Lynx Africa (for men). £2.76, Tesco Metro, Charing Cross.

  Watch: Swatch (‘It was an impulse buy at Geneva airport,’ he confides, laughing lightly, and picking at his salade niçoise. ‘Our plane was three hours delayed and I’d already bought a Toblerone!’)

  Clothes: Model’s own (with thanks to Topman VIP 10% discount card, available free to literally everyone in the world).

  But I’m not that bad. A Spanish model I met at a Spanish bar on Hanway Street and once even had a passable date with said I looked ‘very English’, which I took to mean like Errol Flynn, even though later I found out he was Australian.

  ‘What. A. Day,’ said Dev, sighing a little too heavily for a man who can’t really have had that much of a day. ‘You? Yours?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘You know, not bad,’ by which I meant the opposite.

  It had been bad from the moment I’d got up this morning. The milk had been off, but how’s that different from normal, and the postman had slammed and clattered our letterbox, but the real kicker was when, with a grim tightening of my stomach, I’d flicked my laptop on, and headed for Facebook, and even though I knew something like this would eventually happen, I saw those words, the words I knew would come.

  … is having the time of her life.

  Seven words.

  A status update.

  And next to it, Sarah’s name, so easily clickable.

  And so I’d clicked it. And there she was. Having the time of her life.

  Stop, I’d thought. Enough now. Get up, have a shower.

  So I’d clicked on her photos.

  She was in Andorra. With Gary. Having the time of her fucking life.

  I’d snapped the laptop shut.

  Didn’t she care that I’d see this? Didn’t she realise that this would go straight to my screen, straight to my stomach? These photos … these snapshots … taken from the point of view and angle I used to see her from. But now it’s not me behind the camera. It’s not me capturing the moment. These memories aren’t mine. So I don’t want them. I don’t want to see her, tanned and happy and sleeveless. I don’t want to see her across a table with a cocktail and a look of joy and love and laughter on her face. I don’t want to search for and take in the tiny, pointless, hurtful details – they’d shared a Margherita, the curls of her hair had lightened in the sun, she’d stopped wearing the necklace I gave her – I didn’t want any of it. But I’d opened up the laptop again and I’d looked again anyway, pored over them, took in everything. I hadn’t been able to help it. Sarah was having the time of her life, and I was … well. What?

  I’d looked to see what my last update had been.

  Jason Priestley is … eating some soup.

  Jesus. What a catch. Hey, Sarah, I know you’re off having the time of your life and all, but let’s not forget that only last Wednesday I was eating some soup.

  Why didn’t I just delete her? Take her out of the equation? Make the Internet safe again? Same reason there was still a picture of her in my wallet. The one of her on her first day at work – all big blue eyes and Louis Vuitton. I’d not been strong enough to rip it up or bin it. It seemed so … final. Like giving up, or something. But here’s the thing: deep down, I knew one day she’d delete me. And then that really would be it, and it wouldn’t be my decision, and then I’d be screwed. Part of me hoped that she wouldn’t – that somewhere, in that bag of hers, the one full of make-up and Grazia and Kleenex, somewhere in that bag would be a photo of me …

  And yeah, there’s that hope again.

  But then one day it’ll be cruelly and casually crushed and I’ll be forgotten, probably just before she decides that her and Gary should move in together, or her and Gary should get hitched, or her and Gary should make another, tiny Gary, which they’ll call Gary, and who’ll look exactly like bloody Gary.

  I’ll probably be sitting there, on my own, when she finally deletes me. In a grey room with a Paddington duvet above a videogame shop next to that place that everyone thought was a brothel but wasn’t. A momentary afterthought, if that. Staring at a screen that informs me I can no longer obsess over her life. That I’m no longer deemed worthy of seeing her photos, seeing who her friends are, finding out when she’s hungover, or sleepy, or late for work. That she’s no longer interested in finding out when I’m eating soup.

  My life.

  Deleted.

  Misery.

  Still. Could be worse.

  We could have run out of Żubr.

  An hour later, and we’d run out of Żubr.

  Dev had suggested the Den – a tiny Irish pub next to the tool hire shop, halfway down to King’s Cross – and I’d said yeah, why not. You never know. I might have the time of my life.

  ‘Ah, listen,’ said Dev, waving one hand in the air. ‘Who wants to go to Andorra anyway? What’s so good about Andorra?’

  The Pogues were on and we were now a little drunk.

  ‘The scenery. The tax free shopping. The fact that it has two heads of State, those being the King of France and a Spanish bishop.’

  A pause.

  ‘You’ve been on Wikipedia, haven’t you?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Is there a King of France?’ asked Dev.

  ‘President, then, I can’t remember. All I know is it’s somewhere you go and have the time of your life. With a man called Gary, just before you have a pride of little Garys – all of whom will look like tiny thuggish babies – and then you buy a boat and make cheese in the country.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Dev.

  ‘Sarah.’

  ‘Is she having tiny thuggish babies?’

  ‘Probably,’ I slurred. ‘Probably right now she’s just popped another one out. They’ll take over the world, her thuggish babies. They’ll spread and multiply, like in Arachnophobia. They’ll stick to people’s faces and pound them wi
th their little fists.’

  Dev considered my wise words.

  ‘You didn’t used to be like this,’ he said. ‘Where did you go? Who’s this grumpy man?’

  ‘It is me,’ I said. ‘I am Mr Grumpy. I called home last week and Mum was like, “You never come back to Durham, why do you never come home to Durham?”.’

  ‘So why do you never go back to Durham?’

  ‘Because it’s a reminder, isn’t it? Of going backwards. Anyway, Sarah doesn’t have that problem. She’s gonna have tiny thuggish babies.’

  ‘I don’t think she’ll have thuggish babies. I thought Gary was, like, an investment banker?’

  ‘Doesn’t mean he’s not gonna have thuggish babies,’ I said, pointing my finger in the air to show I would not accept any form of contradiction on this. ‘He’s exactly the type of man to have a thuggish baby. A little skinhead one. Who’s always shouting.’

  ‘But that’s just a baby,’ said Dev.

  ‘Whatever,’ I said. ‘Just don’t feed one of them after midnight.’

  There was a brief silence. An AC/DC track came on. My favourite. ‘Back In Black’ – the finest rock song of its time. I was momentarily cheered.

  ‘Let’s have another pint,’ I said. ‘A Żubr! Or a Zyborg!’

  But Dev was looking at me, very seriously now.

  ‘You should delete her,’ he said, flatly. ‘Just delete her. Be done with it. Leave Mr Grumpy behind, because Mr Grumpy is in danger of becoming Mr Dick. I’m no expert, but I’m sure that’s what they’d say on This Morning, if you phoned up and asked one of those old women who solve problems.’

  I nodded.

  ‘I know,’ I said, sadly.

  ‘These are 2000 calories!’ said Dev. ‘2000! I read about it in the paper!’

  ‘You read about it in my paper,’ I said. After several pints in the Den, we’d had the ‘one we came for’ and stopped at Oz’s for a kebab on the way home. ‘I’m the one who showed it to you and said, “Read this! It says kebabs are 2000 calories!”’

  ‘Wherever I read it, I’m just saying, 2000 calories is a lot of calories for a kebab. But they’re good for you, too.’

  ‘How are they good for you?’

  ‘They line your stomach with fat, so that when the apocalypse comes, you are better prepared. We’ll survive longer. Tubby people will inherit the earth!’

  Dev made a little ‘yahoo!’ sound, but then started coughing on his chilli sauce. He’s a little obsessed with the apocalypse, through years of roaming post-apocalyptic landscapes, scavenging for objects and fighting giant beetles on videogames, which he genuinely regards as his ‘important training’.

  Right now, he was having trouble getting the key into the door. You’d lose points for that in an apocalypse. You’d also lose points for wearing glasses, but they’re an important part of Dev. He has an IQ of around 146 according not just to a psychiatrist when he was four but also to some interactive quiz he did on the telly, which makes me proud of him when I’m drunk, though you’d never think it was anywhere close to 146 to speak to him. He has applied for four of the however-many-series of The Apprentice there’ve been, but for some reason they are yet to reply satisfactorily to this part-owner of a very minor second-hand videogame shop on the Caledonian Road, which I would find funny, if I didn’t know this actually broke his heart.

  It’d be easy to argue that Dev was defined at fourteen. His interests, his way with girls, even his look. See, when Dev was fourteen, his grandfather died, and that had a huge impact on his life. Not because it was emotionally traumatic, though of course it was, but because Dev’s dad doesn’t like to see money wasted. And the year before, Dev had started to notice he wasn’t like the other kids. Just small things – not being able to see a sign, not being able to read a clock, and persistently and with great flair falling out of his bed. He was short-sighted.

  His dad is a businessman. His dad thought, why pay for frames, when a pair of frames were clearly so nearly ready and available for no money whatsoever?

  And so Dev had been given his granddad’s frames. His granddad’s. Literally three days after the funeral. Re-lensed, obviously, but by his dad’s mate, on the Whitechapel Road, and with cheap, scuffable plastic. Dev went through the next four years ridiculed by all and sundry for having a young boy’s face and an old man’s pair of specs, like a toddler wearing his mum’s sunglasses. He tried to grow a moustache to compensate, but that just made him look like a miniature military dictator.

  And he’d never bought a new pair. Why should he? He’d found his look. And these days, it was working to his advantage. At university, at least at first, it had been considered odd, these thick black frames on a weird new kid, but they were a comfort blanket in year one, an eccentricity or quirk in year two and, he hoped, a chick magnet in year three.

  (They weren’t.)

  But later, when you added them to the hair he couldn’t be bothered to get cut and the T-shirts he either got for free or bought from eBay for a pound and a penny, these glasses screamed confidence. These glasses screamed … well, they screamed ‘Dev’.

  Foreign girls, who couldn’t understand him but liked bright jackets, thought he looked cool.

  ‘Come on!’ he said, finally through the door and slamming the banister with his fist as we stumbled upstairs. ‘I know what’ll cheer you up.’

  In the flat, Dev threw his kebab onto the table and made for the kitchen, where he started to go through cupboards and loudly shift stuff about.

  I wandered into my bedroom and picked up my laptop and made a determined face.

  Maybe I should do it, I thought. Just delete her. Move on. Forget about things. Be the grown-up. It’d be easy. And then I could turn on my computer without that low, dull ache. That anticipation of maybe seeing something bad. I could get on with my life.

  I heard Dev shout, ‘Aha!’, as I fired up the Internet.

  ‘Found it, Jase! Prime bottle of Jezynowka! Blackberry brandy! How’s about we hook up the N64 and drink Jezynowka and play GoldenEye ‘til dawn?’

  But I wasn’t listening. Not really. I was only guessing at what he was saying. He could have been knocking over vases and composing racist songs for all I knew, because I was transfixed, and shocked, and I don’t know what else, by what I saw on the screen.

  One word this time.

  One word that kicked me in the teeth and stamped on my hope and made fun of my family.

  ‘Jase?’ said Dev, suddenly there, in my doorway. ‘D’you want to be James Bond or Natalia?’

  But I didn’t look round.

  My eyes were pricked with tears and I could feel every hair on my body, because all I could see were the words ‘Sarah Bennett is …’ and then that last one, that killer, that complete and absolute bastard of a word.

  TWO

  Or ‘Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid’

  Engaged.

  That was the word, since you ask.

  Engaged.

  Sarah was engaged to Gary. Gary was engaged to Sarah. Sarah and Gary were engaged to one another.

  I didn’t stay up ‘til dawn playing GoldenEye with Dev after that. I just sat there, numbed by shock and Jezynowka, in a cold room that now reeked of blackberry, and clicked refresh and refresh and refresh as the congratulations poured in.

  Hurray! wrote Steve, which is typical of Steve, and Yahoo! wrote Jess, which is just like her, and About time! wrote Anna.

  Really, Anna? About time, is it? They’ve been together six months, Anna. I was with Sarah for four years. But you never thought we should get married, did you? What was it about me you didn’t like? Was it my clothes? Was it my job? Was it that time I spilled red wine all over your table and some of it got on your shoes and you called me a twat and then I was sick?

  Yes, it was probably that.

  Couldn’t happen to a nicer couple! wrote Ben, and that one really hurt, because Ben was my friend, Sarah, not yours. You got custody, of course – you ended up with all of them �
� but only because I was too ashamed and scared to look any of them in the eye any more.

  I swigged the brandy from the bottle and read on, each yelp of excitement and each congratulatory pronouncement and each OH MY GOD and extra, unnecessary exclamation mark a jab in the heart and a poke in the eye.

  What about me? I wanted to shout. Is no one thinking of me? How come when Sarah writes that she’s engaged you all go mental, but when I eat some soup suddenly no one’s got anything to say?

  I knew then I had to delete her. Make a statement. Let her know this was not good, not okay.

  But doing it now would look churlish, childish, immature.

  And besides, then I wouldn’t be able to look at her photos.

  Oh, Christ. There it is. The ring.

  He must’ve proposed right there, at that table, after a couple of cocktails on a sleeveless Andorran night with a bad Margherita.

  Margherita! Not even a Meat Feast! What, I suppose you guys are doing healthy eating now, are you? Going to Pilates classes and drinking vitamin-enhanced smoothies? Yeah, I bet you are.

  I wouldn’t have proposed like that, Gary. I’d have made it special. I’d have hidden the ring in a champagne flute, or – you know – abseiled out of a hot air balloon and into a football stadium, and proposed right there and then, down on bended knee and broadcast on a big screen for all to see. Because I’ve got class, Gary. And yes, Gary, I was going to propose to her, actually. I didn’t, but I was going to. One day. I had it all planned. Or, not planned exactly, but I’d planned to make plans. Plans were very much part of my plan. And even though I never did, and even though I now never can, let me tell you this with no reservations whatsoever, Gary: my plans would not have involved a boring pizza and a bright blue cocktail.

  Oh, God. She looks so happy.

  I swigged at my blackberry brandy and made a V-sign at the screen.

  And then I got up and rattled about in the kitchen and found another bottle.

  It was far too early and I tasted of blackberries.

  But something was buzzing near my face, and it wouldn’t stop.