‘Happy. I mean, she cried and we had some terrible nights with
her. But mostly she was a cheerful little thing. Very curious, too.
Always trying to look out of her pushchair. She fell out once in the
town centre because I hadn’t strapped her in tight enough.’
‘She still is curious. Always looking over strangers’ shoulders to
see what they’re typing on their phones.’
Lena smiled and said, ‘Maybe people don’t change much from
cradle to grave.’
‘I don’t know,’ Tom said, hopefully, taking a sip of his tea.
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Lena turned a few more pages, smiling at the memories the photos evoked. It was nice for him to see this. A journey back to a
time when a photograph meant something.
‘So tell me what you were like,’ she said, looking up from the
book. ‘I can imagine a thoughtful little boy.’
‘I don’t know, actually. Never asked.’
‘You should! Babies always take after one side. Who knows what
you might end up with.’
To Lena, it was probably a throwaway comment. But for a
moment it derailed Tom.
‘Oh . . . yeah. Well I mean . . .’
‘Sorry,’ Lena said. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. It was presumptuous
of me.’
‘No. It’s just we . . . or I . . . We haven’t talked about it, really. I don’t think,’ he said, which was true. Kids was not a conversation
they’d had, except when nudged into non-committal maybe-one-days
by Laura, for whom family, marriage and moving away from London
was permanently front of mind. Besides, Tom didn’t think of himself
as especially parental. He struggled to imagine himself as the kind
of person who could shape the life of another.
But now, all of a sudden, he was thinking about it. Looking at
the baby photos and wondering what his and Esme’s child might
look like. How much of him it might inherit and how much of her.
‘Of course,’ Lena said. ‘You’re young and I am an old fool who
wants to be a grandmother one day.’
‘Well . . . maybe,’ Tom said.
‘They are a blessing, though. I will say that. Sometimes I wish
we’d had more. I suppose there’s always plenty of time until there
isn’t,’ she said, getting up from the table. ‘More tea?’
Tom was just about to say yes when they heard another set of
footsteps on the cold hardwood floor of the hallway. Esme shuffled
sleepily into the kitchen.
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‘What’s going on here then?’ she said, covering a yawn.
‘I’m reminiscing with Tom. I found him looking at some photos
on the stairs and thought I’d take us back in time. Tea?’
‘Please,’ Esme said.
‘You’re up early,’ Tom said.
‘I thought you were going to come back. I came to look for you.’
‘You were fast asleep.’
‘I know. But I can tell these things,’ she said. ‘Woman’s instinct.
Oh bloody hell,’ Esme said, noticing the photo albums. ‘Not these.’
‘Tom had never seen them.’
‘For a reason.’
‘They’re nice,’ Tom protested.
‘They’re embarrassing,’ she said, bringing the album towards her
at the table. ‘Oh Mum, why?’
‘He was interested. And these things are important,’ Lena said,
which was met with a quick, sharp stare from her daughter. ‘I think
I can hear your father. I’ll take him up his tea.’
Alone in the kitchen, Tom edged closer to Esme. She had picked
up the second album, this one chronicling her threes and fours. A
little girl with shoulder-length brown hair and a happy, enquiring
look about her. She wore a selection of dungarees (yellow, blue and
orange), with either wellington boots, sandals or trainers. Occasion-
al y they would come across a picture of the whole family. Usual y
these were taken either in the Midlands on a day out, or on an
English beach holiday – Tamas’s old blue Volvo estate almost always
in the background.
Tom liked looking at how the hairstyles and fashions changed.
gone again by Esme’s birthday in 1987. Every so often a friend would
appear, whom Esme would name and wonder what had become
of. Most were the kids of her parents’ friends who had drifted out
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of their life in the decades that passed, relegated to their far-too-infrequently updated Christmas card list.
‘Your parents must have photos,’ Esme said. ‘We should have a
look when we go up tomorrow.’
‘I’ve never seen them.’
‘Liar.’
‘I haven’t! They’ve got one of Sarah and one of me on top of the
telly. But that’s it.’
‘Well, they must exist. Your parents will have more than one
photo of you, Tom. Maybe even a video,’ she said, playfully nudging
him in the ribs. ‘Little Tommy running around.’
‘I was never Tommy.’
‘I bet you were. I’d love to see it.’
‘I wouldn’t.’
‘Oh, so that’s how it is then? All very well leafing through my
dodgy old photos but yours are off limits.’
‘Exactly.’
Esme turned the page onto a spread titled Benidorm ’88, which
began with a photo of a rental car, the inside of a Spanish apartment, and a swimming pool. Then Esme in arm bands and a My Little
Pony swimming costume, and Tamas sat on a deck chair with a
cigarette and a beer.
‘It’s nice, isn’t it? Looking back.’
‘It is,’ Tom said. ‘Do you ever . . .’ he began, trailing off.
‘What?’
‘Huh?’
‘Do I ever what?’
‘Oh, nothing.’
‘Come on,’ she said, trying to tickle him under his ribs.
‘Fine. I was going to ask if you ever wonder what it’d look like.
You know, if we had one.’
‘Oh,’ Esme said, silenced by him. ‘I don’t know, really. Do you?’
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‘Not really. But then this morning I sort of did. When I was on the stairs looking at those old photos. I thought about what it might
be like if we were three.’
Esme said nothing for a moment. She took Tom’s hand under
the table, linking her fingers through his.
‘It’s something I’ve thought about,’ Esme said, still staring at
the photo album, refusing to break her gaze. ‘I always wondered
if you—’ she continued, but was interrupted by the sound of a
loose-fitting slipper slapping loudly against the cold wooden floor
in the hallway.
‘Your father,’ Lena announced, marching into the kitchen, ‘has
decided that we should all go for a walk before you leave. The lake,
he says, and you two can go on to Tom’s from there. So showers
whenever you’re ready.’
‘Bloody hell, Mum,’ Esme said, unlinking her hand from Tom’s
and looking up at the c
lock on the microwave. ‘We’ve got to be on
the road by nine.’
‘Well you should hurry up then,’ Lena said. ‘By the way, that
timer is slow. I can’t work out how to change it.’
‘Well I need to wash my hair,’ Esme said, closing the album and
getting up from the kitchen table.
Tom wanted to go after her, grab her and say, ‘I do’. But she was
out and away before he could move. Later, he told himself, tell her later. He took out his phone, opened the news app and went back to his tea.
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CHAPTER TWELVE
10 – 11 pm
THE NIGHT THAT COULDN’T
CHANGE YOUR MIND
The applause was a relief. Even though Tom had been expecting it.
Weddings were always the easiest crowds: a bunch of merry drunks,
predisposed to happiness. Except for the one he’d played five or six
years ago, when the best man’s speech had given most guests reason
to believe that he and the bride had once slept together.
Tom unplugged his guitar, placed it back in the padded case he’d
thrown behind the DJ’s booth and climbed down from the small
riser that functioned as a stage. Esme was waiting for him. During
the song she had been stood at the back of the dancefloor watching.
Where she always was when she watched him play.
‘How was it?’ he asked.
‘Beautiful, Tom. Really lovely.’
‘Really? I thought I sounded a little flat,’ he said, prompting her
to find a flaw in his performance.
‘Well, I didn’t notice. And before you say anything about my
being tone deaf, neither could anyone else.’
‘I saw everyone slow dancing. It’s a shame we couldn’t.’
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‘I’ll survive,’ Esme said, draining her glass.
Before Tom could speak again he was interrupted by Sam,
Annabel’s new wife, who was a little drunk and immediately threw
her arms around him.
‘It was perfect, Tom!’ she cried theatrically, which Tom didn’t take much from because, being an extremely flamboyant actress-cum-drama tutor, Sam did pretty much everything theatrically. ‘Just
perfect. I was crying. Literally, mate, tears down my cheeks. Annie was the same. Tell him, Annie.’
‘I was,’ Annabel said. ‘It was really wonderful.’
Annabel hugged Tom and thanked him again, this time ‘for
everything’. Because as well as performing a slow, acoustic rendition
of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Landslide’ for their first dance, Tom had also
been Annabel’s best man, and the assembler of the wedding playlists.
He’d even given her away, too, after her parents had decided that they could not countenance their daughter’s decision to marry another
woman.
Tom excused himself from the little group to press play on the
laptop controlling the second of three mixes he had pieced together
for the evening. Immediately, the disco lights he had borrowed from
Mogs, one of his old covers band mates, began to swing around
the small upstairs function room of the Balham Bowls Club, half a
mile from Annabel and Sam’s flat, where they would later host an
after-party for their closest friends. Knowing it would be full of drink and probably a few people taking drugs, Tom had already decided
he wouldn’t go. He compared being the only sober person at a thing
like that to being a celibate at an orgy.
A pub-crowd-esque cheer greeted the first song. It was the start
of the eighties hour he’d put together. He loved to hear the reaction
to music he played or curated. That was one of the things he missed
most about playing live now that his work was almost entirely teach-
ing and composing.
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In the past, Tom would have been one of the first on the dance floor, kicking off the fun stage of a wedding with verve. But this time he wouldn’t be joining in on the parquet floor. Instead, he went to
find Esme, who was standing by the buffet table next to a silver foil
tray of sausage rolls, gently tapping her foot.
‘You love this song,’ he said to her.
‘It’s alright.’
‘Springsteen. We could . . .’ he said, nodding to the ten or so
people throwing their arms around like in the music video.
‘It’s okay,’ Esme said, taking a seat at a big round table, opposite
two bored kids stacking used party popper shells on top of each
other.
‘You look uncomfortable,’ she called over the blaring noise of
‘Dancing in the Dark’.
‘It’s the bloody suit.’
‘Let me guess. You hate wearing suits?’
Tom frowned and nodded childishly. Though if he was honest,
the suit was not so much the problem in and of itself. Instead he
was concerned by how much tighter it suddenly felt, and that after
years of being ‘naturally skinny’, he might be developing his first
paunch. Esme meanwhile looked beautiful in a floral dress that fitted
tight over her thighs that she’d joined three gym classes to reduce the size of, but which Tom hoped would remain. Her hair was flowing
freely, with light curls down to just below her shoulders. And she was wearing her purple horn-rimmed glasses for the first time at an event, after an eye infection stopped her from using contact lenses. She had
complained about it. But Tom always found the glasses quite sexy.
‘Third fucking time this year,’ he said.
‘You don’t have to wear it to Philly and Adam’s if you don’t want
to.’
‘And be literally the only man there in slacks and shirt?’
‘I wouldn’t mind.’
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‘I know you wouldn’t. It’s Philly I’m worried about. She’s probably got bouncers and a dress code,’ he said, referring to how Esme’s
friend had recently told her erstwhile bearded future brother-in-law
(and fiancé’s best man) that he was under no circumstances to arrive
at their wedding with any more than three millimetres of hair on
any part of his face, otherwise he would be excluded from the official photographs.
Tom and Esme sat there for a little while longer, until the song
ended and the next began, greeted by a cheer from the already drunk
dancers who would likely be pounding their feet against the floor
until closing time in a couple of hours.
They were often like this at weddings. A duo. Two of them set
against an institution they wanted nothing to do with, occasionally
fending off questions around when it would be ‘their time’. Because
of that, they never quite enjoyed the occasions. Or at least Esme
didn’t. Tom still found some joy in watching two people pledge their
lives to one another, then watching their friends drink and dance
and laugh.
‘It’s basically a load of admin so your friends can get pissed,’ Esme
had once said, when Laura questioned her over her vehement, and
quite pu
blic aversion to getting married.
‘Very nice,’ Laura said. ‘What about you, Tom?’
‘Well, I quite like weddings. But I only really see the good bits.’
‘See! Tom likes weddings. What about the official stuff?’ Laura asked. ‘You know, the certificate, the recognition of it all. You don’t have to have a big flouncy do,’ she said, obliquely referencing her
own very big flouncy do, complete with doves, ice sculptures (in
July) and, for no reason anyone could understand, a mariachi band
playing before dinner.
‘More admin. State sponsored, though,’ Esme said with a mis-
chievous smile, knowing how it would irritate her marriage-minded
friends.
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She had repeated these kinds of statements a hundred times over.
Especially during the peak of wedding conversations a couple of years
ago, when some of her friends spoke openly about what her wedding
to Tom might be like, as if trying to change her mind.
Tom’s friends, meanwhile, told him about the various bits of
wedmin they’d taken on, as though heroically bucking a system that
dictated women should care more about the particulars of the big
day than men. Mostly things like booking bands and cars. Rarely
flowers or favours.
But even now, when they were both well into their thirties, the
occasional wedding question might be thrown in front of them.
Most recently at a barbecue at Laura (again) and Aman’s house in
an outer London market town they were always overly keen to extol
the virtues of.
‘Are you two still on the anti-marriage bandwagon then?’ Laura
had asked, while bouncing their daughter Tallulah (or Toots) on her
knee and making horse noises.
‘I don’t see how there can be a bandwagon for not doing some-
thing. Surely it’s you who is on the marriage bandwagon.’
‘Yes fine, Esme,’ Laura said, taking the tone she did when trying
to castigate her friend’s argumentative intellectualism. ‘I’m just asking if you’ve changed your mind about it.’
‘No more than you have.’
‘Hmm,’ Laura said, with a look round at Aman that suggested a
change of heart about their marriage might not be entirely inconceiv-
able.
Of course, Esme and Tom had talked about marriage. Early in
their relationship she had voiced her objections to it: citing how
unnecessary it felt in a changing world; how religious ceremonies