Life and Soul of the Party (8 page)

Vicky nodded. ‘But things are going well?’

‘Couldn’t be better. Things are different.’

‘Different how?’

‘It’s hard to say exactly. It’s more him that’s changed than me. It’s like . . . I don’t know . . . he’s finally grown up.’ I paused. ‘I know how this looks. You think it’s like watching the first five minutes of a disaster film where you’re just waiting for something to go wrong. I know why you feel like that. If I hadn’t seen the way he is now, or heard first-hand the things that he has been saying to me, well I’d be waiting for it all to go wrong too. I mean he’s not exactly what you’d call a safe bet. He’s Paul. The original scourge of womankind. If the tables were turned I wouldn’t think twice about advising the two of you to run for the hills. But like I said, he’s changed. And I like what I see now. I like it more than ever.’

Vicky smiled warmly. ‘Then I’m thrilled for you.’

‘Me too,’ said Laura.

‘Really?’

‘Absolutely.’

Hearing my friends say this made me feel genuinely relieved. Things were going to be good this time. Us getting back together wasn’t going to be the disaster everyone thought. This really would be my happy ever after.

It was just after eleven and I was outside having a cigarette and sharing my opinion on the big news with Vicky. Since Paul and Melissa had dropped their bombshell we had all been grinning like idiots, wishing them well and reassuring them everything really would be okay.

‘It just makes me feel a bit weird,’ I explained. ‘The idea of the two of them getting back together . . . I don’t know . . . it’s not going to work, is it? Paul’s not right for her and she’s not right for him and the whole thing is just going to blow up in their faces.’

Vicky nodded. ‘I know what you mean. Sometimes I look at our friends’ lives, not just Melissa and Paul’s, and I can’t help but think that—’

‘– you’re glad you’re not them?’

‘No,’ said Vicky quickly. ‘That’s an awful thing to say. I love them to bits.’

‘I’m not saying you don’t.’

‘Good.’

‘It’s just that I feel a bit mean for saying it, that’s all.’

‘You haven’t actually said anything yet. Maybe you should start with Cooper and Laura. They’re always good for a laugh.’

‘I don’t understand what they’re doing,’ continued Vicky. ‘They’ve been together ages and he’s absolutely mad about her and yet I always get the feeling that Laura’s not all that bothered.’

‘You haven’t told her that he’s going to propose, have you?’

‘No, of course not. But I’ve got a horrible feeling that she’s going to turn him down. I just wish that if she wasn’t serious about him she’d let him go so he could find someone who would really appreciate him.’

I laughed. ‘Maybe you should put yourself forward as a candidate.’

‘Trust you to twist things around like that! Don’t get me wrong, I love Laura, but I worry that they’re not right for each other. And I worry that they’re going to miss out on what they really want by being with each other.’

‘They’ll be fine. Once you get to our age you don’t split up unless things are really, really bad. None of us can face the idea of going back to the beginning because we’ve all travelled too far to where we are to make it worth the effort.’

Vicky shot me another disapproving look. ‘So you’re saying they’ll stay together out of laziness?’

‘I wouldn’t call it laziness exactly. Maybe realism would be a better word.’

‘Realism?’

‘Or pragmatism. Anything that basically means accepting the first truth of being in your thirties: that you can’t always get what you want but that what you’ve got is always going to be better than nothing.’

‘Is that why we’ve lasted as long as we have? Pragmatism?’

‘No.’

‘Then why are we still together?’

‘How am I supposed to answer that without giving you the ammunition to make my life a misery? No thanks. I’ll keep schtum.’

‘You can have a free pass,’ said Vicky. ‘Say what you like without fear of me having a go.’

‘Like that free pass you gave me when you asked me if I thought you were turning into your mother?’ I shook my head. ‘Never again.’

‘A real free pass this time. No retribution whatsoever.’

‘No, thanks,’ I replied having mulled over her proposition for all of half a second. ‘I think we’re on safer ground talking about Melissa and Paul.’

By the time I ended my marathon phone conversation with my sister it was just after eleven. And of the many things that she said to me the one thing that she was adamant about was that I was making a big mistake even thinking about calling Paul tonight. Time and time again she kept coming back to it until she almost convinced me that she was right. Calling Paul wasn’t just a bad idea. It was the worst idea that I had ever had. But as I started getting ready for bed, taking off my make-up and brushing my teeth, I found myself taking one last look at my mobile lying on the table in the hallway to see if I’d missed any calls and before I’d even fully realised what I was doing I had dialled his number.

‘Hello?’

I could hear music and talking in the background as though he was at a party or out at a bar somewhere in town.

‘It’s me, Hannah,’ I said thinking how odd it was hearing his voice after being apart these past few weeks. ‘I really need to talk to you.’

There was a long silence – the sound of someone clearly caught off guard.

‘It’s really late,’ he said eventually. ‘Can’t it wait?’

‘No, it can’t,’ I replied. ‘I need to talk to you right now. I wouldn’t ask if it didn’t mean a lot to me, Paul. You know that.’ I could feel myself starting to cry. ‘Please, I’m asking just this one thing. This one thing and then I swear on my life you’ll never have to do this again.’

‘If it’s so important,’ he sighed, ‘why don’t you just tell me now and get it over with?’

‘I can’t,’ I explained. ‘I need to see you in person.’

‘Look, Hannah,’ he began, ‘I’m really sorry but I think you ought to know that I’m seeing someone, okay? So if this is about you and me getting back together it’s not going to happen.’

This was hardly big news. I couldn’t imagine Paul staying on his own for long. I briefly wondered who it might be but it was too miserable a thought.

‘It’s not about getting back together, I promise you. Look, if you give me twenty minutes to get ready and drive over to wherever you are we can talk and you can go right back to your friends, okay? I just need a few minutes of your time. I’m begging you, please.’

There was one last long silence.

‘Five minutes,’ he said. ‘Five minutes and then I’m gone.’

It was nearly half past eleven and Charlotte and I were standing in the hallway reminiscing about our time at Northbridge Primary when Cameron came up and asked where the spare tea towels were as someone had spilt red wine on the sofa. At the mention of the words ‘red wine’ in conjunction with ‘sofa’ Charlotte sprung to life as if she was a doctor on
ER
and ordered Cameron to look for soda water while she disappeared to assess the damage.

Now seemed as good a time as any to go to the loo and I joined the queue outside the bathroom upstairs, thinking about my earlier conversation with Chris. As close as Melissa and I were, sometimes I couldn’t even begin to understand how she coped with everything going on in her life. The lack of money, flat-sharing with strangers, and especially her latest saga with Paul. All fine and part of life in general when you’re in your twenties but enough to make me feel sick with tension at the thought of doing it at our time of life.

Not many people know this, but in my entire adult life (starting from the age of seventeen with my very first boyfriend) I’d never actually been single. Not even for a day. When I had first admitted this to Chris he thought I was joking so I gave him a detailed breakdown of my entire relationship CV right on the spot: eight years, three boyfriends, no gaps (but with some minimal overlapping caused by my extricating myself from the guy I was sort of seeing – Alex Deedman – in order to go out with boyfriend number three – Chris Cooper). Though I’d tried to explain to him that my lack of singleness hadn’t been a deliberate strategy, I was afraid Chris would assume my actions made me a cliché of feminine neediness. I’d even contemplated redrawing my CV with a few invented periods of singleness scattered in for good luck but hated the thought of lying to him, even about something so small.

Emerging from the loo some time later I headed downstairs in search of Chris. On my way to the front living room I spotted Chris’s friend Tony. He was holding the hand of a pretty girl with dark brown wavy hair that came down past her shoulders. Looking at her face for a moment I thought I saw a flash of recognition on her face, even though I was sure we hadn’t met before.

‘Long time no see. Have you just turned up?’

Tony flashed me his trademark big grin. ‘We weren’t going to come ’cos Polly wasn’t feeling great, but then I got to thinking how I hadn’t seen some of this crowd in ages and so with a bit of cajoling she valiantly made the effort. How are you, anyway? You’re looking good. Where’s the old man tonight?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine.’ I smiled at Tony’s friend.

Tony suddenly came to life. ‘Sorry, Vicks,’ he apologised. He turned to Polly. ‘You remember Chris, don’t you? He was the one cooking at Cooper’s barbecue last summer.’

‘I think I know the one you’re on about,’ said Polly amiably. ‘The one who told the Elephant Man story?’

‘Yeah,’ replied Tony. ‘That’s the one. Well, this is Vicky, my mate Chris’s wife. And this,’ continued Tony gesturing to the girl, ‘is Polly Matthews, my girlfriend, best mate and,’ cheesily, ‘the light of my life.’

Tony and I were friends from back in our early twenties when we’d lived in a houseshare in Rusholme during my final year at university. One Saturday afternoon Tony had got it into his head to get his nose pierced. Rather than getting it done properly however, he opted to get it done on the cheap by a goth girl he fancied two doors down from us who owned her own home-piercing kit. Within hours of putting the stud in his nose the whole side of his face swelled up to the size of a football, thereby earning him the nickname ‘Elephant Man Tony’.

Tony was one of those people to whom this type of thing was always happening and I delighted in telling the stories of his misfortunes to pretty much anyone who would listen, even more so when the person in question was female. So when Tony introduced me to his new girlfriend, Polly, at Cooper and Laura’s barbecue last summer it was almost inevitable that the ‘Elephant Man’ story would get an airing.

‘I can’t believe you went through all that pain just for a girl,’ said Polly, laughing as I finished the story.

‘That’s not the half of it,’ replied Tony. ‘I didn’t even get a look in with the goth girl. She ended up going out with Chris’s mate Paul about a fortnight after that. Turns out she was into guys with normal-shaped heads.’

For a moment or two I felt bad for making Tony look so hopeless in front of his new lady friend and so to balance things out at bit I shared a few stories with Polly that showed him in a slightly better light. Eventually even Tony grew tired of being the centre of attention so he moved on to an altogether different conversation with Cooper, leaving me to entertain Polly (who didn’t know anyone else at the party) on my own.

We talked for nearly an hour about pretty much anything at all that came to mind. I kept telling her that she shouldn’t feel trapped and even advised her to find someone more exciting to talk to. She replied she had no intention of going anywhere now that she was in with a man who was cooking the burgers.

The conversation only came to a close when I realised that I’d cooked all of the food that was in my charge and people started to call me over to join them and eat.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’d better go. It was really nice talking to you.’

‘You too,’ she replied. ‘Maybe I’ll see you later.’

‘Yeah,’ I replied. ‘That would be nice.’

I didn’t really think anything more about the encounter. Yes, I’ll admit that I was aware of how attractive she was (it was hard not to given that she had more than a touch of the Natalie Imbruglias about her – the dark hair, the tanned skin, the big Bambi-like eyes) but at that point in time that was it. To me she was just a mate’s girlfriend, and that was all. I had no intention of anything else happening, not even on a subconscious level. I was a married man. I had a wife and a kid. And as far as I was concerned that was the end of the story.

Around one in the morning, as people were beginning to go home, I’d disappeared inside the house to use the toilet: my bladder was bursting after having over-indulged on the crates of Stella that Cooper and I had brought back from a recent duty-free trip to Calais. As I came out of the loo into the darkness of the upstairs hallway I was surprised to see Polly standing to one side as though she had been waiting for me.

‘I just wanted to thank you for making my evening so entertaining,’ she said. ‘I would’ve been lost without you.’

‘No problem. It’s always nice to wheel out Tony’s Elephant Man story to someone new. You and Tony should come round for dinner at ours some time.’

‘That would be lovely,’ she replied. ‘I’ll get Tony to sort something out.’ She reached out her arms as though she was going to hug me goodbye and although I thought it was a little over familiar given that she was my mate’s girlfriend and I’d only known her five seconds I decided to go with the flow and open my arms to embrace her.

The moment our bodies were pressed against each other, I quickly became aware that this was no ordinary platonic embrace. This was something else. And I was standing on one side of a line which, were I to cross it, would inevitably lead to trouble. But rather than take a step backwards and place myself in a position of safety, I took a step forwards, putting myself well within the danger zone. I felt as if I couldn’t help myself. She was young, pretty and for some reason known only to herself she wanted me. I just didn’t think I was in any sort of position to refuse. I bent my head down and leaned in towards Polly’s open lip-glossed lips. I had no idea how long we kissed for, minutes, seconds, none of it really mattered now that I was on the wrong side of the line. I was kissing someone who wasn’t Vicky and in doing so I was betraying not only my wife but also a good friend of mine and, rather than feeling guilty, I felt thoroughly exhilarated. And when I broke off from the kiss it wasn’t because I was scared of being caught (even though I was) or because I’d come to my senses (as I definitely hadn’t) but rather because in that single kiss I’d got everything that my ego required: confirmation that I still had what it took to pull girls who looked like Polly.