31 Dream Street (7 page)

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘Well, that’s exactly it. The only way I would feel comfortable about asking them to move out is to ensure that they have somewhere else to go, someone else to be with. The only way I could ask them to leave would be if I knew that they were all…’

‘Happy?’

‘
Yes
. Exactly. That they were all happy. And I don’t really know anything about the people I live with, beyond what brand of breakfast cereal they eat in the mornings. I don’t like asking people questions. It makes me feel uncomfortable. But unless I can find out more about my tenants I don’t stand a chance of satisfying their needs. And in your capacity as a naturally curious person, I wondered if you might be able to help me, or at least
advise
me on ways to
access
the inner workings of their minds.’

‘You want me to teach you how to be nosy?’

‘Well, yes, I suppose…’

‘Well, it’s easy. You just have to ask loads of questions.’

‘Oh, God. What sort of questions?’

‘I don’t know. Just ask them how they are. What they’re up to. What their plans are.’

‘Really,’ he winced. ‘But won’t they just think I’m being terribly interfering?’

‘No, of course they won’t. People
love
being asked about themselves.’

‘Do they? I don’t.’

‘No, well, not everyone. But most people. And I could help, too, if you like.’

‘You could?’

‘Mm-hmm. I could get talking to them. Nose around. You know?’

Toby looked at her in awe. ‘You’d do that for me?’

‘Of course I would. I told you. I’m desperately nosy.

She smiled then, as the idea caught her imagination. She’d spent three years watching these people across the road, three years wondering what they were like, who they were, what they did and why they were there, and now she was being asked to find out. Officially.

‘Well, if you were really happy to do that, then, wow, that would be amazing. And in fact, it’s my birthday next week, my thirty-ninth, and I’d been thinking I might invite a few people to the pub and, maybe, if I did that you might like to come along, too. Give you a chance to…’

‘Be nosy?’

‘Yes,’ he smiled. ‘And your, er, boyfriend? Husband?’

Leah threw him a questioning look.

‘The doctor. The Asian chap?’

‘Oh. Amitabh. My
ex
-boyfriend. We split up.’

‘Oh. Hell. Sorry. I er…’

‘And he’s a nurse, not a doctor.’

‘Oh. Right. I was just about to say, you must ask him along, too. But, obviously, ah… I really had no idea.’

‘Really. Honestly. It’s fine. We split up last week. I suggested that we get married and he suddenly went all Indian on me. Said his parents would disown him. So, that’s that.’

‘I’m very sorry to hear that.’

‘Yes, well,’ Leah shrugged, holding back her tears so as not to embarrass Toby. ‘Shit happens. I’m trying to be philosophical about it.’

‘Yes, yes, best way to be. Totally.’

It fell silent then for a moment. Leah glanced up at Toby. He was staring wistfully out of the window, looking pensive. ‘OK, now,’ she said, smiling, ‘
that
was a perfect opportunity for you to practise being nosy. A curious person would want to know more about my break-up.’

Toby stared at her, blankly.

‘So – ask me some questions.’

‘What sort of questions?’

‘Questions about the break-up.’

‘Well, yes, but you’ve just told me why you broke up. What else is there to ask?’

‘Well, for example, you could ask me how long we’d been together.’

‘Right. OK. So, how long had you been together?’

‘No! Not like that. You need to sound genuinely interested. Say: “Oh, no, that’s awful. How long had you been together?”’

Toby flushed and cleared his throat. ‘Erm, oh dear, poor you, how long had you been together?’

‘Nearly three years.’

Toby nodded.

‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘Ask me more questions. Ask me how we met.’

‘So – how did you meet?’

‘We met at his cousin’s wedding.’

‘Right. I see.’

‘I was a colleague of the bride. I think she only invited me because someone else dropped out.’

Toby nodded awkwardly.

‘Go on,’ she said, encouragingly.

He cleared his throat. ‘And, er, was he nice?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he was. Very nice. But obviously not as nice as I thought he was.’

‘And what are your plans now?’

‘Well, Am’s moved into nurses’ accommodation and I’ll have to find somewhere else to live.’

‘And, er, how do you feel about that?’

‘I feel very annoyed, very sad and very nervous.’ She paused then as her bottom lip trembled and her smile started to crack. She blinked away some tears and laughed. And then, she couldn’t resist it, she picked up her napkin and brushed the chocolate off his chin.

‘There, you see,’ she said, forcing a brittle smile, ‘it’s easy, isn’t it? Being nosy.’

‘Yes, I suppose.’

‘So – do you think you can do it? Do you think you can get to know your tenants?’

Toby nodded. ‘Yes. I really think I can.’

11

Joanne was in the kitchen. She was wearing a pair of jeans that were cut slightly too high up her waist, a red jersey polo neck, small gold earrings and very sensible flat leather shoes. Her hair was cut into a short layered bob and held back on one side by a glittery hair slide which looked incongruously girlie against her prematurely middle-aged outfit. Her lipstick was slightly off-centre and a not very pretty shade of coral. She looked shocked to see Toby in the kitchen and almost turned to leave, only stopping to acknowledge his presence when he said hello to her.

‘How are you?’ he ventured, cautiously.

‘Fine, thanks,’ she muttered, as she filled the kettle from the tap. He waited for her to ask him how he was, or at the very least to offer him a cup of tea, but she did neither. Instead she hummed gently under her breath and stared out of the window while the kettle boiled noisily. Toby glanced at her back. She was very small. Very narrow. Her waist looked like you could get your hands to meet around it and her shoulders were barely the width of a telephone directory.

‘So, Joanne.’ He paused, not quite sure how to continue, but knowing that he had to. ‘How long have you been living here now?’

She spun round. ‘What –’ she said, pointing at the floor, ‘
here
?’

‘Er, yes,’ said Toby. ‘You know. In this house.’

‘Oh, right. God. I’m not sure.’ She pursed her lips and stared up at the ceiling.

Toby waited, a bag of flour suspended in his left hand, wondering whether she was working out how long she’d lived here or if she was just staring at a damp patch.

‘Two years and eight months,’ she said finally.

‘Right.’

‘And twenty days.’

‘Right,’ repeated Toby.

‘I moved in on the fourth of May 2002. It was sunny.’

‘Was it?’ he said, rubbing his chin, as if trying to remember the day itself.

‘Yes. I moved from south-east London. They had a march. It was for marijuana. There were people dressed up as cannabis leaves walking down my road. I was glad to be leaving.’

Toby laughed, relieved that Joanne had injected some levity into the stilted conversation, but she just stared at him blankly. ‘Why d’you ask?’

‘I don’t really know,’ he said, reaching for the sieve. ‘I was just wondering.’ The kitchen fell silent except for the sound of a teaspoon going round and round in Joanne’s mug.

‘And how are you finding it?’

‘What?’

‘The house. Living here. Are you happy?’

‘Well,’ she shrugged, stirring her teabag slowly now, ‘yes. It’s all fine. I have no complaints. Why?’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Is there a problem you wish to discuss?’

‘God, no, not at all. I was just thinking that I hadn’t really spoken to you for a few months and I just wanted to make sure that you were doing OK. That’s all.’

‘Right,’ she nodded tersely and squeezed her teabag against the side of her mug.

‘And how’s work?’

‘Fine.’ She dropped the teabag into the pedal bin.

‘Are you still, you know, still doing the old acting?’ Toby had broken into a light sweat.

‘No,’ she said, dropping the teaspoon into the dishwasher basket.

‘And the role? The one you were researching, did that, er…?’

‘No. It fell through.’

‘Oh, dear. That’s a bit of a shame. Anything else in the pipeline?’

‘There is no pipeline.’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Oh. OK. So you’re just…?’

‘Just what?’

‘I don’t know. You’re working, though, are you?’

‘Yes.’ She picked up her mug. ‘I’m working.’

Toby nodded, slightly manically. ‘Good,’ he managed, as she wafted past him and into the hallway, leaving the flowery scent of Earl Grey tea in her wake. ‘Good.’

12

Toby was glad not to be a teenager in the twenty-first century – it all seemed so stifling, so conformist. Young girls all looked the same to Toby these days. They all had the same strip of stomach showing between the same jersey top and low-slung jeans, their belly buttons all studded with the same flashy gems. They all wore their long hair in the same side-parted style, their lips sticky with the same glossy gel, their complexions the same shade of Balearic brown all year round. And there was something about modern bras that rendered all young girls’ bosoms into the shape of pudding tins, attached, bam-bam, to their fronts, somehow unrelated to their bodies, like they could be unscrewed at the end of the day and put in a drawer.

Toby, like most men, loved nothing more than a little light porn, a few minutes of harmless thrusting and fellating shot at close range and poured down the virtual tubes and wires of the Internet into his bedroom. But he didn’t want real girls to look like that. He wanted real girls to have wobbly bits and breasts that were unexpected shapes. He liked variety in his women. He liked character. He liked PJ Harvey. He liked Willow from
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
. He liked that tall DJ girl with the DJ husband whose father was Johnny Ball. He
actually thought that Cherie Blair was a very attractive woman, though he’d never yet found anyone to agree with him. And his all-time best-ever pin-up, since his teenage years, was Jamie Lee Curtis. He didn’t have a type. He knew what he liked when he saw it. But kids today – it was all so generic. It was all so boring.

And that, when it was all boiled down to its essence, was the main problem with Con. He was boring. He added nothing to the mix in the house. His youth could have been a fizzing plop of seltzer into the still water of this thirty-something house; instead he lurked at the bottom like a dull penny.

‘Hello, Con,’ Toby opened, coming upon him eating a Big Mac in the front room.

‘Hiya.’ Con glanced up and looked at him in surprise.

‘Good day at work?’

Con shrugged. ‘Nothing special.’

‘See anyone famous?’

Con had once shared the lift with Cate Blanchett. Cate Blanchett was quite high up on Toby’s list of quirky, desirable women, so this fact had lodged itself firmly into his consciousness when he’d overheard Con sharing it with Ruby a few months back.

Con smiled. ‘Nah. Not today. Saw that gay bloke coming in the other day, though, you know?’

‘Which one?’

‘That posh one. Can’t remember his name. He was in a film with Madonna.’

The only film starring Madonna that Toby could bring to mind at that moment was
Dick Tracy
, but he
was sure that Con couldn’t have been referring to Warren Beatty, who was, as far as he knew, neither posh nor gay.

‘So,’ he said after a moment, ‘do you think you’ll stay at Condé Nast for much longer? Is there any promise of a… of any
career progression
, at all?’

Con laughed and wiped a fleck of ketchup off his chin. ‘Er… no. Definitely not. Unless I want to be post-room manager. Which I don’t.’

‘But what about the publications? The magazines. Surely there must be possibilities there?’

He laughed again. ‘Not for the likes of me there aren’t. It’s like one of those fucked-up dreams, that place. On one side you’ve got reality – that’s us lot in the post room, the caterers, the cleaners – then on the other side you’ve got this whole other world, these posh people, my age, live in Chelsea, don’t know what day of the week it is, kind of floating round, like, you know…
oblivious
. They’re the ones that get the proper jobs there. The careers. We’re just there to make sure they get their letters and their lunch.’

‘Oh,’ said Toby, ‘I see. So, if you don’t want to be the post-room manager and you don’t think there are any other opportunities there, what’s your game plan? What’s next?’

‘My PPL.’

‘Your what?’

‘My private pilot’s licence.’

‘You’re going to learn to
fly
?’

‘Yeah. Why not?’

‘God, well, isn’t that very expensive?’

‘Can be,’ he shrugged. ‘But I’ve been looking into it. If I go to South Africa it’s a third of what it would cost here. I’ve been saving since I started work, and I’ve worked out that I only need another eighteen months at Condé Nast to earn what I need. Then I’moff. Get my licence. Go to the Caribbean. Chartered flights. Island-hopping. The good life. Oh, man…’

‘Right, so, er…’

‘I tell you what, if it hadn’t been for Nigel writing to you and me getting this room, and the, you know, the great deal on the rent, there’s no way I’d have been able to think about learning to fly. I would never of been able to afford it. That was a good day that was, the day we met.’

He smiled at Toby, a lovely warm smile full of gratitude and Toby felt his ribs crunching together as his chest slowly deflated. He sighed quietly. This was exactly what he’d always wanted. This is what this house was for. It was for allowing people to follow their dreams. His main criterion for choosing house mates was that they should benefit in some positive, constructive way from having tiny outgoings. The only exception to this rule had been Ruby, whom he’ doffered a room to on the grounds that he wanted to have sex with her. He’ doffered Con a room because he felt sorry for him, because his mum had abandoned him, because he had no fixed abode and was about to lose his job and end up on the streets. And now, a year later, Con had a
dream, too. He wanted to fly planes. And Toby should have been delighted. Instead he felt trapped.