The Two of Us (16 page)

‘Not interrupting anything, am I?’ says Frank, wedging himself back into place.

I begin to answer but the air is forced from my lungs as I am once again compressed into the corner of the sofa.

‘Glass,’ he says, reaching across Ivy and topping my Merlot with Pinot Noir until the meniscus bulges over the rim.

There wasn’t as much sex on TV when I was a young boy living with my parents, but whenever there was, Dad would jump up as if his chair had been electrified and change
the channel. Later, when I reached my teens, he would simply leave the room, tutting and muttering and not returning until the filthy business was completed. And awkward as it was, it has nothing
on watching a movie romp in the company of my pregnant girlfriend and her hulking great brother. Frank’s strategy for dealing with embarrassing sex scenes is to deliver a running commentary
in a variety of comedy voices and regional accents.

Hello! Someone’s feeling frisky! Is that a banana in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me? Ha ha ha. Allow me to help you with those, love . . . Oo, pink lacy ones, saucy. And
they’re off! Badddoinggg! Shall we adjourn to the kitchen table? Never mind the dishes, we’ll pop to Ikea tomorrow. Get a hotdog, ha ha. Look at his face! Looks like he’s
struggling with a crossword. One up, four letters, begins with a B, ends in K . . . B-O-N-K! Cheers, darling, how was it for you? Ha ha ha ha!

And all the way through this excruciating one-man show, I’m waiting,
praying
, for Ivy to tell him to just shut the hell up, but she says not a word. And now, as I sneak a sideways
glance at her, I see why. Squashed between us like a wilted flower, Ivy is still sitting but her chin has dropped onto her chest. I lift her head as gently as possible and see that her eyes are
fully closed. A delicate snore escapes her open mouth.

Frank has the remote and I ask him to turn down the volume, drawing his attention to his sleeping sister.

‘Ah, bless,’ he says, stroking Ivy’s cheek with the back of his index finger. ‘Right,’ he says, pointing the remote at the TV. ‘Shall we turn this shit
off?’

I assume Frank means the TV, and that he is ready to call it a night. But instead he speed-flips through umpteen programmes until he finds a Chuck Norris movie on some obscure satellite
channel.

‘Bit of Chuck?’ he asks.

Living with a pregnant girlfriend, it’s not often (in the way it’s not often that Hell holds a snowman-making competition) that I get to drink too much and watch old action flicks on
the telly. So why not? I let Frank refill my glass, then I take hold of Ivy’s sleeping hand and settle back into my tiny corner of the sofa. It’s not what I planned (what is?), but as
cold Friday nights go, it could be a whole lot worse. Even so, I was up at six thirty this morning, and after this afternoon’s meeting, beer with Joe and wine with Frank, the day has had its
way with me. Chuck Norris has kicked, punched, knifed and choked to death barely fifty villains before my own eyes begin to close. I tell Frank I’m calling it a day, and rouse Ivy on the
third attempt. Frank volunteers to wash the dishes; Ivy dries and I – determined not to be outdone – insist on putting everything away. There really isn’t room for three people
behind the breakfast bar (particularly when one of them is the size of Frank), and it’s a miracle that nothing gets broken during the entire awkward routine.

Dishes cleaned, dried and stowed, we say our good nights. Frank gives me a buddy punch on the shoulder before giving Ivy a protracted bear hug. He kisses his big sister on the side of her head
and tells her he loves her. Ivy tells Frank she loves him too before reaching up on tiptoes to give him a final bedtime smacker. Which is all very coochy-coo for the pair of them, but it’s
kind of taken the wind from the sails of my own love boat. If I tell Ivy I love her now, it’s going to look like I’m simply joining in for fear of being left out.

Friday nights have become baby-book nights. The book is snappily titled
Countdown to Your Baby: A week-by-week guide to your changing body and your little one’s
development.
Every week we read a new chapter; this week it’s chapter 19 and it’s Ivy’s turn to read. She tells me that nerves are forming, connecting our babies’
brains to their muscles and organs. The babies have as many nerves as an adult now, and our newly wired-up babies might jump in response to a shock.

‘Like their uncle turning up unexpectedly?’

‘Shut up and listen,’ says Ivy.

‘I had a flower in my teeth,’ I tell her. ‘And a candle. Not in my teeth, on the table.’

Ivy holds a shushing finger to her lips. ‘Frank told me.’

She continues reading. The placenta is fully formed but still growing. Tooth buds are forming inside the babies’ gums. They have tongues. The babies are covered in downy hairs and a waxy
substance, which keeps their skin supple. Our babies will be with us in just eighteen weeks, and whilst they are doing just fine for fur, wax and tooth buds, they still don’t have names.

‘How about Angus?’

‘Bit Scottish,’ says Ivy.

‘Hamish, then.’

Ivy laughs. ‘I like Agatha.’

‘And if it’s a boy?’

‘How about Dashiell?’

‘That’s a name?’

‘He wrote
The Maltese Falcon
.’

‘Aggy and Dash,’ I say. ‘I actually like it.’

Ivy grimaces. ‘I think I hate it.’

‘What’s Frank’s boy called again?’

‘Freddy,’ she says, sighing. And that’s that moment killed.

‘What’s going on with him and . . .?’

‘Lois. Frank’s moved out.’

‘What happened?’

‘Nothing, just . . . stuff.’

‘Did he cheat on her?’

‘No.’

‘She cheated on him?’

‘Shh, will you. He’s in the other room.’

‘I’m just asking who did the dirty,’ I say in a stage whisper.

‘You don’t have to look so
amused
. It’s just really sad. You should have seen them when they met . . . they were . . . made for each other. Everyone said so.’
Ivy exhales slowly, shaking her head. ‘It’s tragic, just . . . just tragic.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to . . . you know.’

Ivy smiles at me. ‘I guess that’s just how life goes sometimes. Things change, people change.’ And she says it with such sincerity and apparent introspection that I experience
a tickle of paranoia, as if, at some level, the sentiment also applies to us. I make a note to (paraphrasing Esther) fart less and buy flowers more.

‘How long is he going to be here?’ I ask.

‘Not for long.’

‘How long is that, then?’

Ivy shrugs. ‘He’s my brother.’

‘He’s a nice guy, don’t get me wrong, but that sofa ain’t big enough for the three of us.’ It’s meant to sound jocular, but I’m a bit pissed and it
comes out with too much spin on it. ‘We’re going to need a bigger boat,’ I say, trying to lighten the mood.

‘You can always sit in the armchair,’ Ivy says.

Not in my own, I can’t.

It’s true, Ivy does have an armchair. A piece of junkshop thrift that she personally sanded, glued, filled, varnished and reupholstered with rose-printed velvet. None of which make it any
more comfortable – it’s like trying to relax on a skeleton draped with a floral blanket. My armchair on the other hand, is a chocolate-brown recliner with magazine pouch, and it’s
stuffed with enough padding to stop a runaway train. You could drop a baby from a third-floor window onto that chair and the little bundle of joy would bounce once then drift off to sleep.
We’ve discussed this, of course, but according to Ivy my chair clashes with her rug, curtains and sofa. ‘Leather goes with everything,’ I told her. And – thinking she was
being cute, I’m sure – Ivy said, ‘Then it’ll go just fine in the spare room, won’t it?’ I let it go, because that’s what you do, isn’t it. You
compromise, bend, accommodate, let stuff go. Which is what I should do now, but (blame Frank) I’ve drunk too much wine for that.

‘Not in my own,’ I say out loud

Ivy looks at me –
this again –
as if I’ve just disappointed her.

The spare room is next to ours, and through the thin walls we can hear Frank stumbling and clattering about. Judging by the sudden cacophony of gunfire, explosions and screaming, Frank has just
switched on my 42-inch HD TV. So now it’s my turn to do the look of exasperation.

Ivy gets out of bed, thumps on the wall and shouts, ‘Volume!’ The sound halves, leaving it merely loud. Ivy hits the wall a second time. ‘More!’

‘Sorry!’ bellows Frank.

The volume drops again so that it’s now nothing more than an irritating bass rumble through the plasterboard.

‘You didn’t answer my question,’ I say. ‘How long is not long?’

Ivy climbs back into bed. ‘I don’t know. A week, a couple of weeks, maybe.’

‘It’s Christmas in three sodding weeks.’

‘Fine, he’ll be out before Christmas.’

‘Fine,’ I say.

Ivy turns out her light. And neither of us says
I love you.

After the Chuck Norris film finished, I heard Frank get out of bed and begin rummaging around. It sounded like he was assembling flat-pack furniture, and it was only when I
heard more gunfire and the throb of a familiar, muscular engine, that I realized he had found and plugged in my Xbox and was playing
Grand Theft Auto.
Ivy, of course, was deep asleep and
sawing wood. After
Grand Theft Auto
, Frank plugged in a shoot ’em up I couldn’t identify, and after that I’m pretty sure it was
Resident Evil
. I don’t know
what time I fell asleep but it wasn’t before two, and as I eventually drifted off my mind was stuck in a scratchy, nagging loop: Ivy and surprise guests, first the babies (
it’s
okay
) and now Frank. My sleep was infested with banal stress dreams (locked doors, lost keys, a squeaking chair), and when I wake a little before seven a.m., it’s almost a relief.
It’s still dark beyond the curtains, but the clock on Ivy’s side of the bed casts enough light to illuminate her face. She looks like she’s smiling in her sleep, but it might just
be that her face is squashed against the pillow. I kiss her cheek, slide out of bed, pull on a pair of jogging bottoms and a T-shirt and creep out of the room.

I’m sitting on the sofa, sipping a coffee and reading the chapter where Ivy abandoned
Catch-22
, when Frank shambles into the room in his boxer shorts. And he really is a specimen:
heavy bones, thickly muscled, coated in a layer of hard fat and thick fur. When we visited the Lees in Bristol, Ivy called her brother a gibbon, and the half-naked reality is only a small
evolutionary step forward – as he stands before me now, yawning and scratching his armpit, Frank looks like something that’s just rolled out of a cave instead of a bedroom.

‘Morning, matey,’ he says loudly, and I hold a finger to my lips, point down the corridor to where Ivy is, hopefully, still sleeping.

Frank makes a
silly me
shrug-and-grimace, and goes about fixing himself a coffee from the cafetiere. He plods over to the sofa and plonks himself down beside me, crossing his legs
underneath himself, one big hairy knee pressed firmly against my thigh. His boxer shorts are agape at the fly and I can see more than I want to through the parted material.

‘Morning,’ he says again in a stage whisper. ‘Sleep well?’

‘Not entirely,’ I tell him.

Frank nods as if this is of no real interest to him. ‘What you reading?’ he says, reaching across me to pick up the novel from the arm of the sofa. I close my eyes as his torso fills
my vision, and a hair of some description tickles my cheek.

When I open my eyes again, Frank is inspecting the cover of
Catch-22.
‘Classic,’ he says, laughing. ‘Major Major Major Major.’ But I don’t get the
joke.

Frank sips his coffee, scratches his belly, stretches expansively.

‘You not cold?’ I ask him. Hopefully.

‘Never feel it,’ he says, rubbing a hand over his thatched chest. ‘Tell you what, though, I am Hank Marvin.’

My mind flashes onto the four expensive sausages I bought last night, for breakfast this morning. ‘There’s cereal in the cupboard,’ I tell him. ‘Help yourself.’

‘Might just do that,’ he says, jumping up from the sofa and landing with a thud on the floorboards.

‘Cupboard above the sink,’ I tell him. ‘Bowls to the left, spoons in the drawer to your right.’

Frank selects a box of Bran Flakes and pours a gigantic pile into a bowl. He farts, doesn’t comment.

‘Want some?’ he asks, rattling the Bran Flakes at me.

‘Not hungry,’ I tell him, which is only partially true. I’m waiting for Ivy to get up so I can make very-expensive-sausage sandwiches.

Frank pulls open the fridge. ‘Milk, milk, milk,’ he says. ‘Got any full-fat?’

‘Only skimmed, I’m afraid.’

Frank sighs. ‘Fair enou— hold on, snags! Now we’re talking; do you mind?’ he says, slapping the sausages down on the counter.

‘Actu—’

Ivy walks into the room, yawning, rubbing her eyes. ‘Morning, boys.’

‘Morning, sis. Fancy a couple of sausages?’

‘Amazing,’ says Ivy. ‘Frying pan’s in the cupboard next to the dishwasher.’

‘Dishwasher? Would have been useful information last night, don’t you think?’

‘It’s more of a dish smasher, these days. Stopped using it after it broke my favourite mug.’

‘There’s coffee in the thing,’ I say.

‘Not any more there isn’t,’ says Frank. ‘Shall I make more?’

‘You’re a star,’ Ivy says to her brother.

I nearly say something to put the record straight, but the words taste petty in my mouth and I turn them into a long, noisy yawn. Ivy joins me on the sofa. She kisses me on the cheek and winks
– a small thing just between us, and it says she is sorry and she forgives me and aren’t we both silly and I’m still her number-one guy. ‘Not eating?’ she says.

I shake my head. ‘Going for a run.’

‘If you can wait half an hour, I’ll come with,’ says Frank.

He’s cooking the sausages now and the smell of them sizzling in the pan is maddening. I look at Ivy with a conspiratorial, pleading expression and she returns it with a complicit smile and
nods her head towards the door.