Nine Uses For An Ex-Boyfriend (26 page)

Hope had hit the W section of her contacts when she saw Wilson’s number, though she could have sworn she’d deleted him from her phone. Actually, she couldn’t even remember putting his number into her phone in the first
place,
but there it was, and hadn’t Wilson mentioned that he was also closely acquainted with a grunting teenage boy?

Hope’s finger hovered. Did she really have the balls to phone him up and throw herself on his tender mercy, when his mercy was usually the absolute opposite of tender?

The sounds of ancient warcraft were clearly audible from the lounge and anything had to be better than Jeremy cooped up indoors playing violent computer games, and Wilson could say no if he wanted to, and well, it was worth the longest of long shots …

Wilson answered just as Hope thought the call was going to roll to voicemail and she’d have to leave a garbled message.

Still, his ‘Hello? Hope?’ sounded surprised and a little forbidding.

‘Hi,’ she squeaked. ‘Is this a bad time?’

It wasn’t, or Wilson said it wasn’t, though it sounded like a football match was going on in the background.

‘I called to thank you for the photos,’ Hope said, although she really hadn’t, much to her shame. She should have phoned to thank him for sending the photos anyway. After half-term, she’d have to remember to get Blue Class to make Wilson a thank-you card. ‘The kids were really excited and they’ve chosen their favourites, and they’re going to be part of a special nature display on the headmaster’s notice board.’

‘Good,’ Wilson said. ‘Email me the numbers from the contact sheets, I’ll get them printed up for you. Probably end of the week. Is that all right?’

‘Well, it’s half-term, so no rush.’ Hope bit her lip and tried to rehearse what she needed to ask in the three seconds before Wilson said:

‘Great. So anything else …?’

He was usually hard to talk to, but even worse on the phone. ‘So … you know you said that your nephew worked with you …?’

‘I’d hardly call it “work”. More like flounces about and argues with me every time I ask him to do something,’ Wilson said dryly. ‘Fancy taking him off my hands for an afternoon? Not sure you can motivate him with the promise of stickers, but it might work with lager and crisps.’

Hope picked up a flyer for the posh pizza place that she only ordered from just after payday. Once this call was over, she was so treating herself to a huge Quattro Formaggi thin crust with extra toppings.

‘I think I might have mentioned it, but I actually have a surly teenager of my own for this week,’ she began cautiously. ‘My little brother, Jeremy, and he’s not so much surly as fifteen and angst-ridden.’ She hoped that Jeremy couldn’t hear her pithy summing-up of his character. ‘And the thing is, he was going to spend tomorrow and Tuesday with Jack, except that’s kind of not really going to happen now.’

‘Oh, why not?’ Wilson asked in surprise.

‘We decided to spend some time apart.’ It hurt to even say that much, like a nagging toothache that she’d only just got under control, then forgotten about, and bitten on something hard so the raw throb was rearing up all over again. ‘Well, it’s complicated, and I don’t want to bore you with all the details.’

‘And this surly younger brother can’t be left unattended?’

Hope was so grateful that Wilson didn’t probe the subject of her and Jack any further that she immediately launched into a long account of Jeremy’s disastrous trip to Covent Garden, which was a little disloyal of her, especially as, ‘He’s not that surly. Not all the time, and he can also be really sweet, and I’ve been roped into this two-day drama workshop, and I wondered if maybe your nephew could show him round town or something,’ she finished weakly, because why would Wilson’s nephew want to get stuck playing guide for some kid he didn’t know when he was meant to be working, and what was it about Wilson that
made
Hope yammer and yammer until she felt short of breath?

‘I need Alfie at the studio Monday and Tuesday,’ Wilson said, and he didn’t even sound the slightest bit apologetic, but why should he? ‘Doing a big two-day shoot for one of the Sunday supplements and he needs to shift his scrawny arse and do some work for once.’

‘Well, I figured it was worth a try,’ Hope said brightly, though she felt distinctly un-bright. ‘And really, thanks again for the photos.’

She was all set to ring off and ask Jeremy if he’d like to come to the drama workshop with her, if she paid him fifty quid to sit quietly in the corner with a book, when Wilson coughed. ‘This shoot I’m doing … it’s ten new bands recreating classic shots of old bands, like The Beatles on the zebra crossing outside Abbey Road Studios, and that Who shot with Pete Townshend in the Union Jack jacket.’

‘That sounds like a lot to get through,’ Hope said politely. ‘No wonder you need Alfie around.’

‘The thing is, I could probably do with an extra pair of hands. Is your brother any good at making tea?’

Hope thought back to the milky abomination Jeremy had presented her with a couple of hours ago. ‘He’s a champion tea-brewer.’

‘It’s an early start. He has to be at the studio at eight sharp, and if he doesn’t get in my way and doesn’t annoy me by asking anyone for their autograph, I might have him back on Tuesday, too.’

‘He’ll be as good as gold, I promise,’ Hope assured Wilson fervently. ‘Thank you so much. He said he’d be all right here but I don’t think it’s healthy for him to spend so much time playing computer games, and he’s had a pretty rotten time in London so far. It’ll mean …’

‘Just as long as you’re not sticking me with a younger version of Alfie,’ Wilson warned her. ‘And I’ve never heard
of
half of these bands and Alfie just sneered when he saw the list, so maybe – Jeremy, is it?’

‘Jez,’ Hope said firmly.

‘Well, maybe he can fill in some of the blanks for me.’

Wilson made Hope write down a list of the bands, and she promised that Jeremy would be on his absolute best behaviour and if he wasn’t, she’d come and pick him up immediately. Then the football-match background noise increased in intensity and volume and Wilson said he had to go.

‘Thanks again,’ Hope bleated inadequately. ‘You’ve been so kind with the photos and now this … You have to let me make it up to you.’

‘You don’t have to do that,’ Wilson said rather stiffly. ‘I’m sure you’d do the same for me.’

Hope wasn’t too sure about that. Unless Wilson knew a six-year-old who was having trouble tying their shoelaces or needed help with their two-times table. Once she’d rung off, she decided that if Jeremy didn’t make a complete nuisance of himself and Wilson didn’t put the fear of God into him, then maybe she’d invite Wilson and Alfie round for dinner on Friday night, as a little farewell send-off for Jeremy. Then she remembered what had happened the last time she threw a dinner party and shuddered. Taking them out for a curry would work just as well.

GETTING JEREMY UP
at six thirty was almost as bad as trying to get Jack up for eight o’clock. Though Jack never spent ages in the bathroom applying eyeliner and using almost an entire tube of Hope’s Frizz-Ease serum on his hair.

Hope had ironed his favourite black T-shirt, which was identical to all his other black T-shirts, and though he’d done a very undignified jig when Hope had told him about Wilson’s offer and shown him the list of bands, this morning he was sullen and jumpy. He’d even told Hope to ‘piss off’ when she tried to make him eat some breakfast before they left the house to make the journey to Kentish Town.

Sitting uncomfortably between a joiner’s yard and a shabby office complex that looked as if it hadn’t had a paint job since the 1970s was a five-storey, red-brick building with huge lead-glass windows and an engraved keystone over the heavy metal door giving the year of construction as 1897. Wilson’s studio was on the fourth floor. Although it was ten to eight and Jeremy wanted to lurk for ten minutes, ‘because we can’t turn up on time. It’s so lame,’ Hope ignored him and pressed the buzzer. As they climbed up the stairs, Jeremy’s face was ashen rather than ruddy. ‘It’s very exciting,’ she told him. ‘Making tea for all those bands.’

‘Whatever.’

‘And think of the bragging rights when you go back to school next week,’ she insisted, as they reached the fourth floor.

‘Like, anyone will even believe me!’ Jeremy snapped, as they stepped through the open door into the studio, which was a huge stark white space. One wall was almost entirely made up of windows so the studio was full of natural light. It was also full of activity.

There were several scruffy young men manhandling lights, ladders and huge cable spools. Caterers were assembling a substantial breakfast buffet on a trestle table, and beyond them in an alcove that led to a small dressing room was a bevy of girls unpacking clothes and arranging them on rails.

‘I thought it was just going to be this Wilson bloke and that Alfie.’ Jeremy turned accusing eyes on his sister. ‘You never said there’d be so many people.’

‘I didn’t know myself.’ Hope looked around the cavernous space and tried to spot Wilson when a tall, lanky youth detached himself from the throng and loped over.

‘Jez, right?’ he grunted. ‘Alfie. We’re about to hang the backdrop. It’s white. Are your hands clean?’

They were spotless because Hope had stood over Jeremy and made him go to town with a bar of soap and a nailbrush, so Jeremy grunted in the affirmative and trotted off with Alfie without even a backward glance at Hope or a goodbye. Now Hope knew what it felt like to be one of those mothers who couldn’t let go on the first day of the school year.

‘Ring and let me know how you’re getting on,’ she called after Jeremy, who finally turned round and gave her a positively demonic glare.

Hope didn’t hear from Jeremy for the rest of the day, so she supposed that he was getting on all right. Or else he wasn’t getting on and had already been fired and was too scared to tell her.

She eventually got a text from him at six:
working l8. W wll drv me back 2 urs
. Instead of occupying her alone-time by crying or phoning Jack and begging him to come home,
Hope
did her workshop homework and wrote a short dramatic scene that would make full use of thirty six-year-olds but not tax their tiny brains. Then she did have a little cry when she retrieved a pair of Jack’s socks that had ended up under the bed. But before the little cry could upgrade to a big ugly cry she dutifully called both her grandmas for a catch-up, but mostly listened to them complain about their various ailments and by then it was eight o’clock and Jeremy still wasn’t home and hadn’t replied to the seven text messages she’d sent him.

There was nothing to do but try Jack’s mobile, which insisted ‘this number is temporarily unavailable’. Then she called his work extension to see if he was still at the office, but he wasn’t, and Hope even contemplated calling Susie to see if he was there, though she didn’t know what she wanted to say to him. Didn’t know what she could say to him that would make him change his mind. There wasn’t much else Hope could do except let the pain roll over her, but then Lauren called to see how she was holding up. ‘I’m barely holding up,’ Hope told her but it took another hour to describe in detail all the ways that she was barely holding up and when Lauren finally rang off Hope realised it was half past nine. She was just about to put on her shoes so she could drive down to the studio to retrieve Jeremy and give Wilson a stern lecture on child-labour laws, when there was a ring on the bell.

As she opened the door she heard a car horn beep and saw Wilson drive away but she was more interested in the blissed-out expression on Jeremy’s face. He hadn’t looked that happy since Christmas 1998 when he’d received all four Teletubbies and a blue tricycle with a bell.

‘How did it go?’ she asked, as she shut the door behind him.

‘It was a-maaa-zing,’ came the reply. ‘It was, like, the most awesome day of my whole entire life. God, I’ve got so much to tell you!’

Jeremy talked for over an hour, pausing only to demolish a packet of Penguins and drink two mugs of tea. He’d spent the day fetching and carrying and lugging, had learned all about light meters and Coloramas, and he’d hung out with five bands ‘and they weren’t at all up themselves’. And despite Wilson’s ban on Jeremy having his photo taken in close proximity to any musician, Jeremy showed Hope a fistful of Polaroids of him snuggling up to all five bands, all taken by Wilson as he supposedly tested out the lighting.