‘Yeah, cool,’ Tom said. ‘You going to be down here working on it then?’
I nodded.
‘In a few weeks. I’m building everything in my workshop up at home but I’ll be coming down to install it, obviously. It’s going to be cool – the sign’s up already, Camp Bell on Norville Street? It’s a brother and sister who own it.’
‘I think I’ve seen it.’ He winced at a nasty tackle on the TV. ‘You should come and stay next time you’re down here. I’m really glad it’s working out for you, Ad. You’d have been miserable if you’d stuck with the law.’
‘Is that a cry for help?’ I asked, stretching my long legs out alongside the table. ‘Because you can leave at any time.’
He laughed, resting his elbows on the table. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Maddie’s company is doing really well. Maybe I’ll take a sabbatical and let her be the man of the house for a while.’
‘Like she isn’t already,’ I replied before nicking a handful of his crisps.
Tom looked happy and I was pleased to see it. We’d been friends for a long time, ever since university. It was Tom who I turned to when I realized my heart wasn’t in it and it was Tom who helped me work out my next steps. When my brother was busy taking the piss and I was too afraid to tell my parents, he was the one who reminded me it was my life I was wasting. I was pleased to see him finally getting it together with a decent girl – his ex and I had never seen eye to eye. It’s not like I was happy when he found out she was cheating on him, but I was downright ecstatic when he packed her in and started going out with Maddie. Good looking, funny, and not afraid of a pint, she was a winner in my book.
‘It’s good, things are good,’ Tom said, a huge smile on his face that made me think of Liv. Every time she crossed my mind it was a punch in the gut. ‘Even better since she moved in, to be honest. I wish we’d done it months ago.’
‘That’s brilliant.’ I offered him a vague smile and then returned my attention to the game. ‘I can’t see how anyone’s going to get anything out of this, the way they’re playing.’
‘How are things with Liv?’ he asked, polishing off the rest of his crisps and rolling the empty packet into a long, narrow tube. Weirdo. ‘How was the holiday?’
‘Holiday was good,’ I replied. I sat behind Tom at his dad’s funeral. I went to the hospital with him when his mum had her thankfully minor heart attack and he came in the ambulance with me when the dodgy fake Viagra I bought on our boys’ trip to Ibiza ended in a six-hour erection and a very painful draining procedure but, for some reason, I was finding this incredibly difficult to talk about.
I clucked my tongue against the roof of my mouth and looked over his shoulder at a couple trying each other’s food in a booth by the window. ‘And we are. Taking. A. Uh …’
I paused, pouting my bottom lip. Tom took a sip of his pint with raised eyebrows.
‘Come on, Adam, you can do it, use your words.’
‘We’re taking a bit of a break,’ I said quickly. As soon as the words were out, I realized how ridiculous they would sound to Tom. ‘It’s nothing serious. A time-out, that’s all.’
‘Nothing serious?’ Tom looked as though I’d just told him I had cancer of the puppy and it was terminal. ‘You broke up with her? Or she broke up with you? Adam, why haven’t you said anything?’
‘We haven’t broken up,’ I said, trying to play everything much cooler than I really was. ‘We’re taking a break. I suggested it, she agreed it was a good idea, it’s no big deal.’ We just hadn’t spoken since. That was fine, that was normal. Right?
‘I don’t want to be an arsehole,’ he replied, presumably because he was about to be an arsehole. ‘But there’s not a woman on earth who thinks it’s a “good idea” when their boyfriend suggests they take a relationship sabbatical. I know what Mads would say if I told her I wanted to take a break.’
I responded with the best argument I had. A shrug. It was just as well I’d given up as a lawyer.
‘Are you thinking about knocking it on the head?’ Tom asked, a look of abject horror pasted on his face. ‘You’re not seeing anyone else, are you?’
‘God, no,’ I answered immediately. There was no grey area with cheating as far as Tom was concerned. Chris referred to seeing one woman before breaking up with another as ‘taking the car for a test drive’, but for my best friend it was an entirely black-and-white situation.
‘We’re taking some time off from each other, definitely not breaking up. To be totally up front with you, I was planning to propose and it sort of went wrong.’
Tom sucked the air in through his teeth.
‘She said no?’
Why was that everyone’s first assumption?
‘I didn’t actually get the chance to ask her.’
‘What stopped you?’ he asked, a look of disbelief on his face. ‘Pirates? Snakes? Pirate snakes?’
‘I was about to do it,’ I began, momentarily distracted by the idea of snakes in pirate hats. ‘And then, well, there were some logistical problems. Then I started thinking about everything. How getting married is a big deal, you know? And how Liv’s great but what if I can’t take care of things properly.’
‘Oh god.’ Tom looked around and leaned over to rest his arm on my shoulder. ‘Is something not working right? Was it that tablet you took in Ibiza?’
‘Not like that, you cock,’ I said, shoving him back across his side of the table. ‘Everything is fine in that department, thank you. I mean, in general. Like I said, work isn’t that steady, I’m hardly bringing home a small fortune and yeah, I know I’ve got the house and she’ll always have a job, people will always need a vet, but right before I did it, I had this vision of everything going to shit.’
He kept his eyes on the table and knitted his brows together. Tom had great eyebrows. I wondered whether or not he tweezed. But there are some questions a man couldn’t ask even his best friend.
‘How so?’
‘What if my work dries up?’ I replied. ‘Working on the bar is brilliant but this is my first proper job in six years. I don’t know when I’ll get my next commission. I could go back to law if I’d finished my BPTC but I didn’t. And what happens if we have kids? I know Liv wants a family, and now Cassie’s got a baby Liv’s definitely going to want one, isn’t she? What if she wants to pack in work once she’s had it and I’m not making enough money? I’m not Chris; I can’t afford to support a wife and a child. What happens if I get ill? What happens—’
‘What happens if you get hit by a bus?’ he countered. ‘What happens if zombies attack? What happens if Liv realizes she’s really a man and decides to get gender-reassignment surgery? You, sir, are being ridiculous.’
‘You’re being ridiculous,’ I countered. Liv would never get gender-reassignment surgery. She had to be the only vet on earth who is terrified of going through any kind of medical procedure herself. The drama we went through when the dentist said she had to have her wisdom teeth out. But she’d looked so cute with her big chipmunk cheeks afterwards. ‘It’s sensible. It’s the opposite of ridiculous.’
‘Ad, Liv isn’t Cassie and you’re not Chris, thank god,’ he said. I drank down half my pint in one gulp. ‘Have you been talking to him about this? Because this sounds a lot more like your brother than it does you.’
‘I don’t want to let anyone down,’ I said, pushing my pint back and forth in front of me, condensation leaving trails along the shiny wooden table. ‘I know my mum and dad were really cool about me changing careers but it still felt like shit. I can’t do that again.’
Tom shook his head and sighed.
‘And breaking up with your girlfriend who you were about to propose to feels amazing?’
‘We’re not broken up,’ I said quietly. ‘We’re on a break.’
The awkward silence was broken by a cheer from the bar: Arsenal had scored in the ninetieth minute.
‘And none of this occurred to you before you bought an engagement ring?’ Tom asked, comp
letely ignoring the game. That’s how good a friend he was.
‘Didn’t buy one,’ I said. ‘My nan left me hers, I was going to give her that.’
And instead of sparkling on Liv’s finger, it was hiding in the bottom of a vase on my mantelpiece.
‘No one can see the future.’ Tom’s chair creaked under his six-foot frame. He would look great in a Tom Ford suit and he could probably afford one as well. Rebecca had been barking up the wrong tree. ‘I can’t tell you what’s going to happen six months from now, but I do know if anything was going to happen to me, I’d want Maddie there when the shit hits the fan. If you don’t feel that way about Liv, then maybe you’re doing the right thing.’
I stared at the toes of my trainers for a moment then looked over at Tom’s fancy, grown-up lace-ups. He was right, they were nice.
‘But if you’re on the verge of cocking up a perfectly good relationship because you’re scared, you need to do something about it.’
‘OK,’ I said, entirely noncommittal.
‘Silly question,’ he said, waiting until I had the balls to make eye contact again. ‘But have you talked to Liv about any of this?’
‘Uh, not as such,’ I admitted. ‘Or, you know, at all.’
Tom didn’t say a word.
‘She hasn’t been in touch with me!’ I said, defensively. ‘And I don’t really know what to say. That’s why I said I wanted a break, not a break-up. I didn’t want her to think I was definitely knocking it on the head.’
‘She’s such a lucky girl,’ Tom said, finishing up his pint. ‘For fuck’s sake, Adam. Finish your pint then go and say you’re sorry. Or at least bloody well tell her what you just told me. If you’re incredibly lucky, she’ll take you back without too much suffering.’
‘I don’t know, she’s got her dad’s sixty-fifth birthday party tonight.’ I was making excuses when I knew full well that he was right. ‘I don’t think she’d want to see me right now.’
‘Now is exactly when she needs to see you,’ he argued. ‘Surely you’re invited to said party? Surely her parents are expecting to see you there?’
‘Of course I’m invited,’ I replied. Now who was being dense? ‘Her parents love me. Everyone’s going – Mum and Dad, Chris and Cassie, I think …’
Tom stared at me, eyebrows raised.
‘What?’
‘Have you told your mum and dad and Chris and Cassie that you’re not going to your girlfriend’s dad’s big birthday party?’ he asked.
‘Oh. Fuck.’
‘Present for her dad, flowers for her mum and I’d recommend kneepads for all the grovelling you’re going to be doing,’ Tom suggested. ‘Keep that ring handy as well, you might have to bring out the big guns.’
I pulled my phone out of my pocket to check the time. It was only two fifteen, the party didn’t start until six. It was a good two-hour drive back to Long Harrington but I could definitely still get over to Liv’s before it all kicked off.
‘I’ve got to go.’ I stood quickly, dramatically knocking my chair over and then awkwardly picking it up.
‘Agreed,’ he said, standing up to give me a hug. ‘Let me know how it goes. Call me if you want.’
‘I will,’ I promised, patting myself down; phone, my wallet and keys, all present and correct. ‘Thanks, I mean it.’
‘No worries,’ he replied, standing up and following me out of the pub. He pulled his own phone out of his pocket and I saw he had a photo of Maddie as his wallpaper. I had Liv and me as mine, dancing at Chris and Cassie’s wedding, looking so happy and so stupidly in love. ‘Now piss off.’
‘Tom, can I ask you one question.’ I stood directly in front of him, eye to eye.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Anything.’
Smoothing my hands over my face, I squinted into the sunlight outside the bar.
‘I want you to be honest.’
‘When am I not?’
‘Do you think my eyebrows are too bushy?’
‘On second thought,’ he said, clipping me round the back of the head as we left the pub, ‘leave Liv alone. She’s a nice girl, she deserves better.’
8
My parents had never been ones for a big celebration. Major milestones passed the family by, celebrated with nothing more elaborate than a Viennetta and a bottle of Marks and Spencer’s own-brand sparkling wine. And only if the Viennetta was on offer. Mum and Dad’s idea of a wild time was opening a packet of Fox’s Crinkle Crunch and watching some Michael McIntyre or, if they were feeling terribly controversial, fifteen minutes of Graham Norton.
When I demanded a thirteenth birthday party, hot on the heels of Abi’s impossibly extravagant bat mitzvah, they did the best that they could. Five girls from my class in our living room, a Take That birthday cake, Dad playing DJ with my tape deck and Mum hovering in the doorway with a bin bag and a Dustbuster. Not so much as a crumb of that cake touched the carpet. It was better than a kick in the tits, but not exactly what I’d been dreaming about, especially compared to Abi’s live band, ice cream sundae bar and light-up dance floor. And so, given my birthday party was still the pinnacle of their entertaining career, I was naturally suspicious when my dad announced he was putting on a ‘proper do’ for his sixty-fifth birthday in the upstairs room in the pub and inviting half the village.
‘Olivia!’
Jeanette Riley, owner of the local newsagents and Persian cat enthusiast, greeted me with an over-familiar hug as I attempted to slink into the party. I thought I was early, but from the looks of it the half of the village that had been invited had brought the other half as their plus one. I wasn’t entirely surprised; my dad had lived here his entire life. He knew everyone and everyone knew him, a fact that had often come back to haunt me as a teenager. The last thing I wanted was to spend the evening making small talk with every Tom, Dick and Jeanette, knowing they would all ask about Adam and I had no idea what to tell them. It was Saturday and I still hadn’t heard from him. It was beginning to look more and more like things were over and I refused to believe there was a woman on earth who wanted to spend her first weekend as a potentially single thirty-something nodding and smiling over cheese and pineapple on a stick with the woman who refused to sell her Cosmo until she was twenty-one because it was ‘full of nothing but smut’ when she could be eyeball deep in Häagen-Dazs, watching Dirty Dancing and sobbing into her cat like a proper spinster.
‘Olivia Addison, don’t you look lovely,’ Mrs Riley said, eyeing my outfit as though she didn’t quite believe what she was saying.
‘Hello, Mrs Riley,’ I said, returning her once-over. I don’t care what anyone says, there is an age when you’re too old for hot pants. ‘How are you?’
‘I haven’t seen you outside of that vet’s in a dog’s age,’ she replied, ignoring my question and planting her fists on her hips. ‘Must be a relief to get out of those pyjamas you wear all day.’
‘They’re scrubs,’ I explained, allowing her to lead me directly to the bar without argument. ‘You’re be surprised, they’re very comfortable.’
I’d given up wearing proper clothes to work as soon as I found out you didn’t need to iron scrubs, it just made sense.
‘Comfort isn’t everything though, is it?’ she asked. ‘My eldest is the same, you know. Never thinking about how she looks, always running around, dressed like a man.’
‘Not really any point dressing up for what I do,’ I replied. ‘I hate being uncomfortable, don’t you?’
‘Hmm, your dad and your granddad always wore suits to work,’ she said, flicking her eyes up and down my polka-dot dress once more. ‘Now, would you mind having a quick look at this picture of my Hermione? She’s got some runny stuff in the corner of her eye and I can’t decide if it’s just runny or there’s an infection. I took it earlier, since I knew I’d be seeing you.’
‘Well, it’s hard to tell from a photo,’ I started but it was too late, her phone was pressed up against my nose before I could finish my sentence. ‘It would be b
etter if you could bring her in.’
‘I’m sure it’s nothing,’ Mrs Riley said, waving her smudged phone screen back and forth, two inches from my face. ‘Just have a look. What do you think?’
‘I think bring her in on Monday,’ I replied as politely as I could. ‘And I’ll have a look at her for you.’
Slowly putting her tiny phone back into her giant handbag, Mrs Riley treated me to a long and accusatory scowl.
‘Your granddad always had time to look out for his friends.’ She squinted at me through her elaborate eye make-up. ‘He wouldn’t have had a poor old woman with bad hips trek all the way down to his office just for a cat’s runny eye.’
Jeanette Riley was forty-seven.
‘I can always come to you,’ I suggested with a bright smile. ‘Give us a call and we’ll set up an appointment.’
‘It’s a racket,’ she muttered, walking away. ‘That’s what it is. You’ll want an arm and a leg, all to look at a runny eye. It’s criminal, that’s what it is.’
‘You all right there?’ Abi emerged from the ladies while I stood at the bar, nodding and smiling politely to thin air. ‘You look like you’re about to cut someone.’
‘I’ve been here less than a minute and I’ve already been accused of running a pet protection racket,’ I explained. ‘This is why I stopped leaving the house, isn’t it?’
‘It’s funny,’ she replied, straightening my necklace. ‘No one ever asks me to diagnose their pet’s problems.’
‘That’s because the last time someone did, you told them it looked like their dog had herpes,’ I reminded her. ‘And then you told them to fuck off.’
‘What did they expect?’ she asked, ordering two glasses of wine from the barmaid. ‘I was at a christening.’
‘I know,’ I replied. ‘It was the vicar.’
‘Eh …’ Abi rested her elbows on the bar and checked out the guests as they swarmed from one end of the room to the other. ‘This is an awfully fancy do for the village. Is it really your dad’s birthday party or is he actually about to help us all ascend to the next reality? Is the punch safe to drink?’