‘Edinburgh?’
‘Yeah. Or anywhere, really. Somewhere new. I wanted a clean
break. I told Annabel—’
‘We remember. You’ve made similar plans about fifty times,’ Pod
said.
‘Fine. But this time they were more serious.’
‘Really?’ he said, disbelieving.
‘Yes. I’d look at flats online and everything.’
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‘Mate. I look at flats online all the fucking time. It doesn’t mean I’m going to move to these places.’
‘The point is, I was going to get out. Now I’m still here and I’m
with Esme, and I’m—’
‘Happy?’
‘I was going to say committed. But . . .’
‘Fuck commitment for now. Are you happy, Tom? With Esme?’
Tom stopped for a moment and thought. The answer was obvious.
‘Well, yeah. I am.’
‘And you love her, right?’
Rather than answering, Tom nodded. In the almost twenty years
they’d known each other, the subject of actual, proper love had
never come up. Even when Neil was telling them about his plans to
propose to his university girlfriend (they broke up three weeks after
graduation).
‘Okay. So what’s the fucking problem?’ Neil said, continuing
with his liberal swearing. ‘You’re happy, you’re in love, she loves you back. And here you are wondering if you made the wrong decision
by staying in London instead of buggering off to the arse end of
nowhere.’
‘Neil. Edinburgh is not the arse end of nowhere.’
‘You know what I mean. The point is, why the second thoughts?’
‘Because it’s me, isn’t it? When am I ever properly sure about
anything?’
‘Literally never. But for once in your life it looks like you’ve made
a genuinely good decision.’
Neil took a swig from his beer as Annabel took her seat back at
the table, still exhaling her last mouthful of cigarette smoke with a
sidelong glare at the barman, who she apparently blamed for the
recent smoking ban.
‘Still no sign then?’ she said.
‘Not yet. She’ll be here,’ Tom said, thinking that he’d perhaps
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been too casual about the evening. Meeting some friends. Would be great if you could come along. He hadn’t made it sound like an actual plan.
‘What are you talking about, anyway?’
‘We were talking about Murray here, and this Esme. And how
he should actually go for it instead of having second thoughts about
the whole thing.’
‘I’m not having—’
‘Seriously?’ Annabel said.
‘I’m not.’
‘Tom.’
‘It’s fine,’ he said, taking a sip from his Diet Coke and staring
down at the light cast by the candle across the stained wooden table.
‘He said you might’ve had a point. That it was too soon.’
‘I think I did have a point.’
‘And I disagree,’ Neil said. ‘This is the happiest he’s been in bloody ages. Why not just go for it?’
‘Fine. If that’s what you think,’ Annabel said. ‘But I’ll still worry
that it’s too soon.’
‘I am still here, you know,’ Tom said.
‘Okay,’ Annabel said firmly. ‘One question. Does she know yet?’
As soon as she said it, Tom fell silent. Instead of answering
immediately, he started going back mentally through the moments
he could’ve said something but had chosen not to. Most recently
at the reverse fixture of this evening: meeting her friends for a Thai meal in Soho.
That time Tom had been late. Which was bad because, unlike
everyone else at the table, he had absolutely no excuse to be, having
worked at home for most of the day (save for an hour-long lesson
in the plush living room of a wealthy Primrose Hill family, who
had bought their uninterested son a guitar Tom could only dream
of being able to afford).
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When he eventually arrived at the restaurant, Esme and her friends were sat around the table, already deep in conversation. For
a moment he waited in the doorway, watching them while they
couldn’t see him. In the rush to get ready, Tom had masked his nerv-
ousness about doing this. The whole thing felt very adult. Something
real people without big problems in their lives did. He wasn’t sure if he was cut out for that kind of thing; if it was for him.
Tom collected himself and started towards the table. He hit pause
on his iPod in time to hear a high-pitched voice call, ‘Here he is!’
‘Cara,’ Esme said, like a school teacher admonishing a child.
‘Give him a minute.’
‘How’d you even know what he looks like?’ the man next to Cara
asked.
‘Facebook,’ she said, at which everyone else groaned. ‘What?
Everyone does it. I bet you all bloody have.’
‘Absolutely not!’ another girl said. She was wearing Thai fisher-
man’s trousers and had braided hair. Tom guessed that this was Philly, who Esme mentioned had recently returned from a year travel ing
around South East Asia and was taking her time getting over it (and
herself).
‘Come on,’ Cara said, and the group lapsed into lightly argu-
mentative chatter about the rights and wrongs of Facebook stalking
(as well as who’d done it). Tom was relieved that their attention had
been diverted. He looked over at Esme on the far side of the table.
Perhaps sensing his discomfort, she got up, took him by the arm
and led him to their seats.
‘Sorry I’m late, Es,’ he whispered as they took their place, watched
by her friends like they were bride and groom entering their wedding
reception. ‘It sounds ridiculous but I had literally no idea what to
wear.’
‘You only have three shirts.’
‘Exactly. I didn’t know which one of the three to wear.’
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‘You look great,’ she said, holding his hand. ‘You always look great.’
Esme went around the table so that Tom could meet each of
her closest friends and their partners one by one, which was fine
except that by the time he was introduced to friend Y he had already
forgotten friend X’s name.
Of the eight, those he remembered were the ones that appeared
most frequently in Esme’s stories and anecdotes. Laura, her flatmate,
he already knew. Then there was Jam, short for Jamilla – a half-
Kenyan girl Esme had met at university.
‘Jam likes to live in places that are about to be gentrified so she
can complain about gentrification when it happens. While still enjoy-
ing her nice coffee and freshly baked bread,’ was Esme’s unsparingly
honest description of one of her closest friends.
And Martin, Esme’s best male friend, who Tom was pleased to
discover was an overweight man with long, dank hair, who chose
to wear walking boots, cargo trousers and a Simpsons T-shirt to a
nice restaurant.
The first direct question came just as he poured himself a glass of
water from a bottle so heavy he almost dropped it.
‘So what part of Camden is it you live in, Tom?’ Jamilla said.
‘Near the lock. It’s a studio. Not much, really.’
‘I know someone who lives near there. Says it’s nice but touristy.’
‘That’s about right. Though I don’t go out much during the day
so I can pretty much avoid the day trippers.’
‘How long have you been in London?’
‘Nearly four years. I’m originally from Lowestoft.’
‘Is that in Wales?’ a voice asked from the end of the table. Tom
was about to answer when Martin fielded the question for him, with
the wearisome, patronising voice Tom would go on to learn he used
for everything and everyone.
‘East, Philly. By the coast.’
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‘Wales is by the coast,’ came the reply.
‘And Esme says you’re a musician?’ Jamilla said, pulling Tom’s
attention back towards her.
‘Yeah. That sounds pretty cool,’ another girl, either Sophie, Chloe
or Siobhan, added.
‘It probably sounds cooler than it is. Mostly I teach.’
‘So you’re a music teacher?’ she said.
‘Well, sort of,’ he said. ‘I do a bit for the school near me. Lessons
and that sort of thing. But I’m not, like, a teacher teacher.’
‘Oh,’ the girl said, sounding slightly confused.
‘Otherwise it’s private stuff for rich kids, and I play in a couple
of bands.’
‘Any we’ve heard of?’ Laura chimed in. As ever, her tone when
asking questions was never quite kind. For a while, Tom thought this
was something to do with him. But eventually he realised that she
was completely unable to leave her day job behind. To the point that
she could make the most innocuous question cause genuine panic
in whoever she was talking to.
‘Probably not,’ Tom said, desperate to move the conversation
away from himself, which he knew would be hard, given that the sole
reason for the dinner was to meet and get to know him. ‘A couple
of wedding bands. Sometimes in the summer I fill in for an Oasis
tribute act called Supersonic.’
‘Fuck, I think I’ve seen them,’ Cara interrupted. ‘Some corporate
do a couple of years ago. Are you Noel?’
‘Nah, the other one. It probably wasn’t me anyway. I only do a
few gigs a year when one of the usual guys can’t make it. The Noel
and the Liam are pretty much the only ones who do every gig. They
have the right haircuts.’
‘No one knows who the others are anyway.’
‘Exactly. It’s easy work – I just have to wear a polo shirt and refuse to smile for an hour or so.’
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The few who were listening to him laughed, which lifted Tom’s confidence a little. But he was happy to hear another conversation quickly bubble up and begin to dominate the table, this time
between Philly and Laura, who was silencing the gap-year stories
with a diatribe about how she could never do the gap-year thing
‘because of all the hostels’.
Eventually, just as Tom was beginning to settle into the evening,
came the question he had been dreading. The one he knew how to
answer, but always hated nonetheless. He had hoped that no one
had noticed. But they were too polite for that. And so came the first
time he would lie to this new group of potential friends.
‘God. Sorry, Tom. I’ve just seen that you haven’t been topped up.
Red or white?’ Jamilla said.
‘Oh neither. Thanks.’
‘I can get you a beer if you’d rather?’ Martin said, holding up a
bottle of Singha.
‘No, it’s fine. Thanks,’ he said, nervously. ‘I’m on these tablets.
Can’t drink with them. Just a Coke for me.’
‘You know you can actually drink with most tablets,’ Laura
insisted. ‘It’s a common misconception. Doctors just tell you not to
in case you throw them back up.’
‘I’d rather not risk it. Coke’s fine.’
Even as he said it, Tom was convinced that everyone had seen
through him; certain his flimsy, clumsy, off-the-cuff excuse gave away the lie instantly. It was months, maybe even a year, since he’d last had to lie like that. He was out of practice. He tried to dry his clammy
palms on his jeans and was about to escape to the bathrooms when
Esme leant over and said, ‘You didn’t tell me you were on tablets.’
‘I’m not,’ he whispered back. ‘It’s easier than saying I don’t drink.
People think you’re weird.’
‘They don’t,’ Esme said. ‘My friends are nice.’
‘Please. I’ve had it before. As soon as you tell someone you don’t
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drink they always ask something stupid like “How do you have fun then?” I just can’t be bothered with it.’
‘Okay,’ Esme said, sensing the frustration in his voice and return-
ing to a conversation with – or rather a rant from – Laura about the
recent promotion of Gordon Brown to Prime Minister.
Tom, meanwhile, took a breath and settled himself, feeling that
he’d got to the edge of something and just about managed to avoid
falling off. And that was where he stayed for the rest of the even-
ing – one minute the centre of attention, the next quietly observing
the offer from Jamil a to go on to a pub around the corner. At which
point, he found himself back on the ledge again.
‘That was alright, wasn’t it?’ Tom said, as they walked towards
Tottenham Court Road Tube station.
‘Fine, Tom.’
‘And I came across well?’ he said, asking himself as much as
Esme.
‘You were good. But this wasn’t about you impressing my friends.
It was about them impressing you.’
‘I know. But they all know each other so well. I think that—’
‘What was the drinking thing about?’ she said abruptly.
‘What drinking thing?’
‘The tablets excuse. You’re not on tablets. Why not just say that
you don’t drink?’
‘I told you. People think—’
‘But you haven’t told me, have you?’ Esme said, releasing his hand
as they began to climb the grotty steps down to the Tube, stepping
over trampled, sodden copies of the Evening Standard. ‘All you’ve ever said is that you don’t drink because you don’t like the way it
makes you feel.’
‘Es.’
‘Actually no. Once you told me it’s that you don’t like the taste
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of beer or wine. And if that’s true, then fine. But last month you had a non-alcoholic lager thing. So I really don’t know where I am
with you on this.’
He said nothing. Instead he cursed himself for not being careful
enough. This kind of thing required continuity.
‘Why tell people you’re on tablets, T
om?’ she said. ‘Why lie?’
He was about to answer when he saw the Tube train’s lights illu-
minate the black hole of the tunnel. Seconds later came the rumble
of carriages on rails and the ugly, piercing shriek of brakes, and the fuzzy voice of the announcer asking them to ‘stand clear of the doors, please, stand clear of the doors.’ They were staying at his that night, heading north to Camden Town.
Tom was grateful for the interruption. The forced break in a
conversation that was headed only one way. He gathered his thoughts
as Esme got on the train ahead of him, finding two seats between
a fat, sleeping man in a pin-striped suit and two young boys eating
foul-smelling burritos from foil wrappers.
Esme sat down heavily, the weight of the day and the evening
seeming to finally take its toll on her legs. He sat next to her, placing the battered brown leather satchel he took with him everywhere
in the gap between his calves and the fan heater, blowing musty
warm air into the carriage. As the doors slid shut, Tom said nothing,
hoping that Esme would move on.
‘No one thinks anything if someone doesn’t want to drink,’ she
said, as the train pulled away. Her tone had softened. Gone was the
exasperation, the vague anger and irritation. In its place a certain
sympathy, a kindness and acceptance.
‘I know,’ Tom said.
‘So why the tablets thing? Or the taste thing? If something hap-
pened you can tell me. We’ve all had bad experiences.’
‘I know.’
‘Tom, you have to give me something more than “I know”.’
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Before he answered, Tom hesitated. Here it was again. The old question of how much of himself to give? What to offer her? This
time informed by the fact that he had to say something.
‘It was,’ he said.
‘Was what?’
‘A bad experience. A couple, really.’
‘What, like throwing up? Blacking out?’
‘Sort of . . . actually . . . well, both really,’ he stammered. ‘I mean, that kind of thing,’ Tom said, his palms sweaty again, his heart
swol en to the size of a basketbal , pushing on his ribcage and throat.
‘And that’s what made you stop?’
‘Yeah . . . I think so. It made me realise, you know? That it’s . . .
not for me.’
Esme said nothing when he finished speaking and they pulled
into Euston. As if she was letting the words settle like thick snow
on cold pavement. The few seconds of silence seemed to last hours.