The Accidental Life of Greg Millar (4 page)

BOOK: The Accidental Life of Greg Millar
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4.

Q
uickly, we become inseparable, or at least as inseparable as work and his children allow. We speak over the phone enough times a day for Sebastian to start calling him Lover Boy. We meet for brunch whenever we can and go out most evenings. It feels like an orange disc of effervescent Vitamin C has been dropped into the still water that was my life.

On any given night, I never know where we’ll end up: bowling, shopping, art gallery openings. Bars, bingo, clubs. The airport. Church. He’s up for anything as long as there’s adventure and fun to be had. In fact, he’s making me realise that adventure and fun are to be had pretty much anywhere. He seems to know everyone. And if he doesn’t, he gets to. He lives life like it might be snatched from him at any moment.

Today, he has persuaded me to ‘work from home’.

‘This is
not
work!’ I call over the sound of the wind.

‘Don’t worry! We’ll work,’ he shouts from where he’s sitting beside me on the floor of a plane. I say plane with great generosity. This thing is so tiny that when I first saw it, I did an about-turn. But Greg turned me back. Now that I’m inside and at four thousand metres, it feels like a death box with a basic lack of doors, and wings that seem too small to keep anything in the air.

‘OK, let’s go,’ my skydiving buddy says into my ear – this stranger I’m entrusting my life to.

We scooch across the floor, tied together.

I glare at Greg. ‘I can’t believe you talked me into this.’

He blows me a kiss.

And now my legs are dangling out of the plane and I’m trying to concentrate on the instructions my ‘buddy’ is calling into my ear, when he eases my head back onto his shoulder then tips me forward –
Oh, Christ
– out into the sky. And we’re falling, plummeting through clouds on our stomachs with the wind roaring in our ears and the earth rising up to meet us. He pulls my arms out and reminds me to bend my legs. I think of all those people you see on TV who seem to be falling
slowly
. A silent scream rises inside me.

A sudden jolt up and a gigantic wedgie inform me that the chute has opened. The instant floaty silence makes me realise that my scream was not, in fact, silent.

‘You OK?’ my buddy asks.

‘Fine,’ I say, dying – my scream was peppered with rapid-fire ‘fucks’.

But now it’s all lovely and peaceful like the world is on pause. And I wonder if this is what it’s like being in the womb – only with air, and not wet, obviously. I could stay like this forever. We spiral down like a leaf. I even take the controls for a while.

Too soon, and with surprising ease, we land.

‘So, will you do it again?’ my buddy asks.

I nod enthusiastically and then look up. Here he comes, his orange chute open – the guy who is not killing me after all, but bringing me back to life.

We
do
work. In my apartment, he pulls a chair up beside me at the table. I look at him and laugh.

‘You’re like a teenager in a library who fancies a girl studying there.’

He points at me. ‘That’s
exactly
what I’m like.’

I kiss him, then open my laptop and start to work, but today it doesn’t feel like work. The ideas come pouring out. I look at Greg tapping away on his keyboard.

‘Is
this
how you’re such a great writer? You
live
?’

He raises his eyebrows. ‘Oh, so I’m a great writer, am I? You kept
that
quiet.’

I smile. ‘Wouldn’t want you getting too cocky,’ I joke.

‘Too late, I’m in love with myself now.’

‘Actually, you know what? Crap writer. Really crap. Abysmal.’

‘Still cocky.’ He presses my nose. ‘Have we done enough work now?’ he asks like a child who’s tired of homework.

I smile and close my computer. ‘We’ve done enough work.’ I’ve never been so productive.

‘Great, because I have evil plans for you.’ He lifts me up and carries me to bed. Where his evil plans send me into orbit.

Afterwards, in the shower, he washes me – not in a romantic, sensual Hollywood manner – he scrubs me with a soapy facecloth like I’m a kid. He even lifts my arms up to clean under them. I can’t stop laughing.

‘You’re
filthy
,’ he says.


You’re
filthy,’ I counter, referring, with a warm glow, to his bedroom antics.

I raise my chin as he scrubs under my neck, my body shaking with contained laughter. Behind my ears is particularly funny.

‘Haven’t I
told
you not to play in mud?’ he continues.

‘Admittedly, you have,’ I say, laughing again.

‘You’ve been a naughty girl, Lucy Arigho.’ He slaps me lightly on the ass with the cloth.

‘I
have
been naughty. No more playing in mud for me.’

He narrows his eyes like he’s considering that in all seriousness. ‘On second thoughts, I
do
like cleaning you.’

‘Weirdo.’
Who’d have thought I needed a weirdo in my life?

‘Flattery will get you everywhere.’

Sometimes I wonder if we’re seeing too much of each other. But then, when Greg’s not with me, everything is flatter, buzzless, slower. At weekends, when he’s with his children, I see friends, shop, visit art galleries. But whatever I do without him seems like filling time. Not that I expect to be included in his family life. I’ve seen enough TV to know that lone parents are careful about introducing new partners to their children; I respect that.

I haven’t told anyone. Fint knows, of course. And Sebastian, sleuth that he is. Apart from that, no one. I don’t want to jinx it, just live it. But then Greg asks me to the book launch of a friend and we get snapped together for a social column. I imagine my dad opening his Saturday newspaper and seeing his daughter smiling out, a stranger’s arm around her. He wouldn’t say anything, but I know he’d be hurt that I hadn’t told him. We’re supposed to be a team, Dad and I. I’ve always been good enough for my father, the person who encouraged my quirky sketches and convinced my mother I could make a career out of my talent. And so, I need to talk to him before Saturday. Unfortunately, my mother is Information Control. She’ll want – no,
expect
the news first. And I’ve learned to avoid upsetting her whenever I can.

Always one for the practical gift, my mother, so I arrive armed with smoked salmon. I’m smuggling in a giant bar of Fruit & Nut for Dad who is, as usual, on strict rations. Mum answers the door in her Alpen apron, wearing a navy pullover and a tweed calf-length skirt. No jewellery. Sensible shoes.

We’ve never been easy with each other, Mum and I. A cup of tea gives us something to do. She does the kettle bit. Me, the cups and saucers. Always saucers in our house. We make the usual small talk – my sister, Grace, and her children feature strongly. When Mum offers the recipe for the apple tart she has heating in the oven, I know we’re running out of topics.

So I come out with it. ‘I’m seeing Greg Millar.’

‘Who?’ she asks, setting her cup back at the centre of its saucer.

‘Greg Millar.’

‘From college?’ The oven timer pings. She ignores it.

‘No, Mum, there was no Greg Millar in college. He’s an author.’

‘Oh.’ She thinks for a second. Squints. ‘Have I heard of him?’

I shrug.

She puts a finger to her mouth, looks up for a few seconds, then back at me. ‘No, doesn’t ring a bell. What kind of books does he write?’

‘Crime novels. He’s pretty popular.’

‘I’m sure he is, dear. So. How long have you been’ – she roots around for the appropriate phrase – ‘seeing him?’

‘A few weeks.’ Thinking of him makes me smile.

‘Early days, then,’ she says, bursting my bubble.

‘It’s not serious. It’s just, I thought you should know, in cas
e
. . 
. I don’t know . . . you hear it from someone else, or something.’

‘Sure, who would we hear it from?’ She looks over at Dad as if to say, ‘We never go out.’

He doesn’t see her, sitting, as he is, in his armchair, behind the paper. His favourite spot.

‘Do you want me to get the tart?’ I ask.

‘Oh. Yes, Lucy, please. And cut a slice for yourself and your father.’

‘Did someone say apple tart?’ His head pops up.

I smile at him.

He gets up, drops the newspaper onto the chair, stretches and makes his way to the table. He’s quiet until I hand him his slice. Then he looks at me.

‘So, it’s not serious, is it?’

I
knew
he’d be listening. ‘Nah,’ I say, smiling again.

‘This looks good, Mum,’ he says, scooping up two quick
dessertspoons
of whipped cream and landing them onto the tart, then flattening the heap with the back of the spoon.

Watching him, she frowns.

‘D’you know, Lucy,’ he says, ‘that people have a habit of saying that things aren’t serious when that’s exactly what they are?’

I lift my eyebrows innocently. ‘Well, it’s not, Dad.’

‘Don’t ever commit a crime, love; you’d never get away with it.’

I make a face at him.

‘How did you meet him?’ asks my mother.

‘Work.’

‘I’m not surprised. You do little else.’

I’ve had a lifetime of learning when not to reply to her. This is what I do now.

‘Is he good to you?’ she asks.

‘Yes. He is.’

‘Does he make you laugh?’ asks Dad.

I start to smile, thinking of the way Greg mimics Matt. He squats down, comes right up to me, then looks up and asks me to dance. He gets the voice, the mannerisms just right.

‘Oh dear,’ says Dad. ‘I think we’ve lost her.’

‘I hardly know him.’

‘I believe you,’ he says, looking like he doesn’t. ‘So, how often do you see each other?’

‘A good bit.’

‘Every day?’

‘Pretty much.’ He has a way of getting information out of me; the good cop approach.

‘Ah,’ he says, in a case-dismissed tone.

We’re silent. The ticking of the kitchen clock reminds me of afternoons spent at this table trying to interest myself in the life cycle of the earthworm.

Suddenly, he points his fork at me. ‘Didn’t he write
A Time t
o Die
?’

BOOK: The Accidental Life of Greg Millar
6.72Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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