In Real Life (21 page)

They're beginning to talk about redrafting and agent letters and Christmas.

Just then Paul hears footsteps echoing off the wet brickwork of the Manchester Museum archway and immediately convinces himself it's a mugger, coming for him. Paul is always imagining things like this. For instance: each night, last thing before bed, he'll need to go and double-check the front door to the flat is locked, otherwise he'll lie there waiting for masked men to burst in and hold Sarah and him hostage, forcing them to do lewd sexual acts, just for the fun of it.

As a precautionary measure, Paul takes out his phone and pretends to receive a phone call, hearing the
footsteps – they are definitely real footsteps – quicken behind him. He feels his heart quicken, too.

‘Hello,' Paul murmurs into his cracked, silent phone.

He's not very good at acting.

He doesn't know what to say next.

He pretends it's the doctor's surgery on the other end of the line, calling him back after a scan.

‘What a relief,' he says. ‘That's great news. Thanks so much for letting me know.'

But maybe talking on your iPhone isn't the best way to scare off a mugger.

It seems, suddenly, like the worst thing you could do.

‘Right, bye,' Paul says, picking up his pace, hearing the footsteps behind him getting louder and quicker, too.

Fuck, he thinks, unable to just turn round and look.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

He jams his tongue against the lump.

The lump is his talisman.

It's supposed to stop other bad things from happening to him.

So why isn't it helping now?

‘Scuse me, mate?' a hoarse voice behind him says. ‘Scuse me?'

Paul stops and turns round.

Why am I stopping? he thinks, tonguing the lump. Why am I turning round?

The man is wearing a dark blue coat with the hood pulled up, his face in shadow. ‘Let's have a quick look at that phone, mate,' he rasps.

This can't be happening.

‘Sorry,' Paul says, rooted to the spot.

‘Give us your fucking phone, mate, yeah?'

‘It's got a crack on it,' Paul says as he obediently hands the man his phone.

‘What's in there?' the man says, nodding at the laptop bag in Paul's left hand.

‘Oh, it's just . . .' Paul says. ‘It's just a really old, shit laptop.'

It's a top-of-the-range MacBook Pro.

It still has over a year left on its extended warranty.

‘Well, fucking give it us or I'll stab you up, yeah?'

Paul knows right then – for certain – that they are the only two human beings on this dark, whistling stretch of Oxford Road. The man isn't tall or particularly well built. He's about the same size as Paul. He has narrow eyes and a scab on the left side of his mouth. He isn't holding a knife. He's just holding Paul's phone.

‘I . . .' Paul says.

‘Fucking
give it us
,' the man hisses, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, his eyes darting up and down the empty street then back to Paul. ‘Give it us or I'll stab you up, you fucking bellend.'

So Paul hands the man his laptop, too, his beautiful, shiny MacBook Pro 13" with retina display and additional RAM.

The man turns and runs away with it.

Paul breathes out, dizzied from a sudden rush of adrenaline.

He might be sick.

He staggers across the pavement and rests himself against the cold, damp wall of the Manchester Museum, feeling pinpricks of rain on his neck and cheeks and forehead.

My novel, Paul thinks, as a strange, manic delight begins to bubble in his stomach.

My novel!

Immediately, he begins drafting a new email in his head:

Dear Julian, I'm sorry but my laptop's been stolen. It had absolutely everything on it. I'm so stupid. I'm such a fucking idiot. I should have backed things up externally. I know. But I didn't. And the one hard copy I had was in the bag too. Can you believe it? Which ultimately means, Julian, that my novel – which I'm afraid to say was actually becoming kind of amazing – I hate to tell you is now lost, completely, forever
.

LAUREN

2014

O
n the bus home I got a text from Carl, the guy I'd cancelled on:
How about tonight instead?
The bus stopped and more passengers got on. A woman asked if I was reading the paper on the seat next to me. I shook my head and she picked it up and sat down and opened it and started leafing through, her elbow digging softly in my ribs.

Dog of the Day!

162 die in factory blaze in Bangladesh!

Girl, 13, dies of ruptured stomach!

I could hear Ginny meowing behind the front door, before I'd even got it open. She wound around my legs, almost tripping me up as I went through to the
kitchen and opened the cupboard and found there were no packets of food left, just a box of those dry things she always turned her nose up at. So I took the rest of the lasagne out of the fridge, spooned some into her dish and then slid the rest onto a microwavable plate.

‘There you go, Garfield,' I said, putting her portion down on the floor.

She sniffed it, looked at me confused, sniffed it again, then began to lick the top of it.

I set ten minutes on the microwave, then went through to the living room and sat down on the sofa, turned on the TV, flicked through the channels, and fiddled with my phone.

I typed ‘Somalia' into Wikipedia.

Somalia
, I read,
(
Somali
: Soomaaliya;
Arabic
:
a
á¹£
-
á¹¢
Å«
m
ā
l
/s
Ó©
 
̍
ma
ː
li
ә
/
so-
mah
-lee-
ә
)
,
officially the
Federal Republic of Somalia
^[1]
(
Somali:
Jamhuuriyadda Federaalka Soomaaliya,
Arabic:
Jumhūriyyat a
á¹£
-
á¹¢
ūmāl al-Fiderāliyya
), is a country located in the Horn of Afr . . .

I let my eyes stray a little down the screen.

. . . has a population of around 10 million. About 85% of residents are
ethnic Somalis
,
^[3]
who have historically inhabited the northern part of the country. Ethnic minorities make up the remainder and are largely concentrated in the . . .

I skipped on further.

. . . succession of treaties with these kingdoms, the British and Italians gained control of parts of the coast
and established the colonies of
British Somaliland
and
Italian Somaliland
.
^[17][18]
In the interior,
Muhammad Abdullah Hassan
's
Dervish State
successfully repelled the British Empire four times and forced it to retreat to the coastal region,
^[19]
The Dervishes were finally defeated in 1920 by British airpower.
^[20]
Italy acquired full control of the northeastern and southern parts of the area after successfully waging the so-called
Campaign of the Sultanates
against the ruling
Majeerteen Sultanate
and
Sultanate of Hobyo
.
^[18]
Italian occupation lasted until 1941, yielding to British military administration. Northern Somalia would remain a protectorate, while southern Somalia became a
United Nations Trusteeship
in 1949. In 1960, the two regions united to form the independent
Somali Republic
under a civilian government.
^[21]
Mohamed Siad Barre
seized power in 1969 and established the
Somali Democratic Republic
. In 1991, Barre's government collapsed as the
Somali Civil War
broke out . . .

What's wrong with me? I thought.

It felt worse, somehow, to read the article without really processing it correctly than to not read it at all, so I closed it and put my phone as far away from me as I could without standing, right on the other arm of the sofa, face down.

I closed my eyes and focused on the movement of breath in and out of my lungs and the sofa beneath me and my hands in my lap and my whirring brain and my slightly full bladder and a pin-prick itch on my left shoulderblade and the aching arches of my feet and
something that felt like a spot about to happen on my chin if I chewed my lip a certain way.

I opened my eyes, picked up my phone, and replied to Carl's text.

IAN

2014

‘
B
e good,' Carol says on Friday morning, squeezing me tight. ‘Don't do anything I wouldn't do.' We're standing in the car park. It's so early it's still dark.