Wake Up Happy Every Day (15 page)

‘Tell me what I should do, Cap’n.’

It’s amazing. It’s almost as if Megan has been waiting for this question. She makes a show of stopping to think but it’s clear she has it all worked out.

‘You should cancel your flights. You should go to grad school – which will allow you a visa to stay as long as the course lasts, and, right now, you should let me make margaritas to celebrate.’

‘But won’t there be tiresome bureaucracy?’

‘In making margaritas?’

‘No, you spoon, in cancelling flights, finding a course, registering on it, getting a visa. That all sounds like a major ballache.’

‘OK. You do margaritas. I’ll do tiresome bureaucracy.’

‘Deal. And Megs?’

‘Yes?’

‘You’re very good to me.’

‘You got that right, Miss Dawson.’

And so, even though it’s late Saturday afternoon, Megan manages to rouse some friendly professor and get a verbal contract off him to accept Lorna on a Masters programme. Nineteenth-century English Literature. A programme that specialises in women novelists.

‘Goody,’ said Lorna. ‘Bustles, corsets, urchins and the evils of drink. Can hardly wait.’

Megan smiles. ‘Knew you’d be pleased.’

‘Though of course I was really hoping to do a Masters in ventriloquism. Or taxidermy.’

Megan ignores her. She’s busy getting stuck into some tetchy email to-ing and fro-ing with United Airlines, punctuated with quick phone shout-outs to various relatives. The end result of which is that Lorna’s ticket is given gratis to an Eli Brookbank, an old friend of Megan’s father, who has always wanted to visit Duxford, Cambridgeshire, where his poppa had been stationed in the war, but who has never had the wherewithal.

She even manages to get through to a snippy woman at the end of an immigration hotline who is, in the end, forced to agree that getting a new visa is probably going to be a formality given how solvent Lorna now is and the contribution she is therefore going to be making to reducing the US balance of payments deficit.

‘Bet immigration still make me cry,’ says Lorna.

‘Yeah probably,’ says Megan. ‘But it’s just part of the process, right?’

Immigration had managed to make Lorna cry three times on the way over. At Manchester, at Philadelphia and at Oakland she’d been aggressively challenged about her intentions. It had been suggested that she was going to look for work. Even her faithful accordian had been cited as evidence that she might be intending to busk thus depriving good ole American street entertainers of their due.

It’s when Megan begins treking around Gumtree, hunting for new places to live ‘just to see what’s out there’, that Lorna starts to feel restive.

While grad-school courses were being organised and immigration gatekeepers sweet-talked, Lorna had had a tense conversation with her mother which had ended with a tired-sounding ‘whatever you think best, dear’. This had, naturally, made her feel like shit. Which is what it was supposed to do of course.

And it’s now that Jez calls.

She makes him work for it this time at least. Settles into monosyllabic near-silence while he chatters nervously about this and that. She likes that he’s uncertain and wrong-footed. This clumsiness on the phone is quite sweet actually. It reminds her that a lot that is irritating about Jez is just because he isn’t really a grown-up. Over the last couple of weeks there have been cheery texts which she’s been scrupulous in ignoring. There have been a few slurred late-night messages too. But now he sounds both eager to impress and bashful somehow. Still, it comes as a surprise to Lorna when she finds herself agreeing to go over. How, exactly, has that happened?

Knowing that Megan will be a bit parental about it, Lorna chooses not to have that conversation with her. Instead she leaves Megs looking over spacious, light, characterful apartments within walking distance of the UC Berkeley campus, while she showers and tries to decide what to wear. What is the most nonchalant outfit? The one that says effortlessly, casually hot in a language that Jez can understand. In the end it’s her reliable midnight-blue, one hundred per cent viscose, spot-print tunic dress, cinched in at the waist with a grosgrain ribbon tie. Yeah, the soft open neckline definitely says feminine, elegant and thoroughly contemporary. It also says come and see what’s under here, boy, if you think you’re up to it. But says it in a whisper rather than a brazen yell. She teams it with simple back leggings. Perfect.

It’s as she’s rummaging around the closet for shoes that are also feminine, elegant and contemporary while suggesting – but not screaming – possible wantoness, that Megan comes in.

She’s proper pissed. Even from where Lorna is, on her knees rooting through the jumble of footwear – thank Christ she wasn’t having to pack after all – even with her back to her, Lorna can tell she’s pissed. Pissed drunk and pissed mad. Here we go. Lorna stands, straightens her shoulders, waits for the inevitable lecture. There is a long silence and in the end it’s Lorna who feels compelled to break it.

She holds up both her hands. ‘I know, mate. I know.’

‘You’re so fucking dumb sometimes.’

This is too much, but still Lorna tries to keep everything as light as possible. Aims for joshing.

‘Well if you haven’t got anything nice to say . . .’ At which point, she spots them. Victorian-style lace-up boots. Plain black heels, that are high but not too whory. Boots she’s had for ever and forgotten all about. The absolute very thing. She bends down to get them and, as she stands up again, Megan crosses the room in two quick steps and slaps her hard across the face.

Lorna staggers to the side with the force of it and then puts her hand up to her stinging cheek. It hurts but it also feels unreal, an impossible thing. Megan has belted her?

She raises her head and looks at her flatmate through eyes that are wet with hot sudden tears. Through her blurry vision she can see that Megan has taken a step backwards and is standing with her mouth now a little o, her hands clasped before her chest in what looks like a prayer. She is breathing hard and shallow. She looks like she is going to have a panic attack. She’s bricking it. Absolutely bricking it.
Lorna meanwhile feels calm. She feels that how she acts now is going to be pivotal to the future direction of her life. Lorna has never been in a fight. Not even any hair-pulling in the playground at St Thomas Junior and Infants. She sees that Megan is struggling to speak.

‘Oh shit. Oh shit. Lorna. I’m really, really sorry. Oh my God.’

‘Sssh,’ says Lorna. ‘Sssh.’ And then she hits her as hard as she can with her closed fist.

It is a wild, wide, swinging punch. Later she thinks that Linwood would have been underwhelmed by the technique, but he might have been impressed with the power, the speed and the accuracy. What would have caused him real despair was the way his favourite student left herself wide open.

Lorna’s fist connects with Megan right on her cheekbone, just beneath her left eye and she goes down immediately. Poleaxed, thinks Lorna. And she wonders vaguely where the expression comes from. What, exactly, is a poleaxe? And then she feels a wave of pain begin in her fingers and travel all the way up her right arm. Begin and not stop. She looks at the back of her hand. A red flush is spreading across the knuckles. She thinks about that phrase too, that commonplace. I know it like the back of my hand. But how well do any of us know the backs of our hands? They’re not places we examine, or even look at much. Of all the parts of the body, the backs of our hands might be the places we know least of all.

Megan is lying still, half in and half out of the bedroom. Armitage Shanks’s anxious little head appears. He puts a tentative paw on Megan’s shoulder. Megs doesn’t move. What if I’ve killed her? Lorna thinks
.
But she doesn’t go over and check right away. First she examines her cheek in the mirror. There’s no mark any more. Megan’s slap has left no imprint at all. And now Lorna discovers she’s not angry any longer. Now Lorna can begin to worry about Megan, who still hasn’t moved. She turns from the mirror and steps over Megan’s legs so that she can get into the hall, and kneels down by her head. She picks Armitage Shanks up and cuddles him.
Oh Christ, what if I really have killed her?

Just then Megan groans, comes to, turns to the side and quietly, almost delicately, pukes. Lorna releases Armitage and strokes Megan’s hair. Megan sits up, Lorna wraps her arms around her. They stay like that for a while, until it gets too awkward and cramped for Lorna. She stands up and holds out her hands. Megan takes them and hauls herself upright. They stand facing each other, hands loosely clasped. Megan’s eyes are downcast, her lip trembling. She looks so utterly abject that Lorna wants to laugh. It’s just too much. She draws her friend into a hug. Ignores the whiff of vomit and booze and sweat. Ignores Megan’s generalised clamminess and holds her tightly to her.

‘You dodo,’ says Lorna. ‘You total loon.’

‘You’ll be late for Jez,’ Megan says after a bit, her voice small. Lorna feels momentarily irritated again. But it passes and Lorna realises that she can’t be arsed to go all the way across town just for Jez. Maybe she’s cured? Maybe Jez is sort of like hiccups and she just needed to be surprised out of him.

‘Fuck the Fuckweasel,’ she says. ‘Let’s look at those apartments you found.’

Megan says, ‘We should talk about this. Properly. Soon.’

And Lorna laughs. ‘That’s my girl,’ she says. ‘The old Megan is back. But, you know, we so
don’t
have to talk. Talking is not really the English way.’ Punching, she thinks. Punching turns out to be the English way. Even for lazy, unathletic pacifists like her. But she doesn’t feel any need to say this. Instead she breaks the embrace, finds her phone and texts Jez. ‘Not coming. Just don’t fancy it. Sorry.’

‘Tea,’ she says. ‘That’s what we need.’

‘Right. A cup of tea solves everything,’ says Megan, drily. The quarter-sized mark under her eye is purpling by the second. That is going to be one heck of a shiner.

‘You know it, girl,’ says Lorna.

Sixteen

NICKY

Why I don’t see my dad. It starts with a row about inheritance tax and ends with me deciding not to have anything to do with the old sod any more. And it’s not even my row actually. Sarah’s row.

We’re at my dad’s for the monthly Sunday dinner. Five of us. Sarah and I with Scarlett – who is just three months old then – my dad and one of the apparently endless supply of women who always pop in and out of his life. He’s always managed to find ladies to take care of him. Kitty, I think this one was called, but they all tend to be the same type. Well-preserved, well-groomed ladies of indeterminate age. Serious women gone carefully blonde. The widows and divorcees of small town big cheeses. Women who are invariably magistrates.

Women quite like my mum in other words. Or what my mum might have become had she not had the effrontery to widow her own small town big cheese.

On this occasion we have lamb shanks and my dad remarks – mildly enough, but apropos of absolutely fuck all – that he doesn’t see why the state should have all his hard-earned pounds sterling after he’s gone.

And Sarah replies – also mildly enough – that that’s all very well, Daniel, but your pounds sterling aren’t really hard earned are they?

And he is genuinely put out and asks her what she means, and Sarah tells him that luck has played a massive part. He was lucky to be born in the time he was, in the place he was.

‘Think about it,’ she says. ‘You were raised by a generation that had been through two world wars and a depression and who were determined that their own children should never suffer like that.’ And she lists all my dad’s advantages. He was, what, seven, when the 1944 Education Act was passed which gave him the chance to go to grammar school. He was, what, eleven, when the NHS was created. And on it goes. How he benefited from full employment, from final-salary pension schemes, from being able to buy houses cheap and sell them dear. How the cost of the mortgages was eroded by inflation. How his Brookman’s Park house was worth getting on for a million, not because he was a shrewd speculator but because of the haphazard vagaries of an economic system that values real estate much higher in the south-east of England than anywhere else.

‘I’ve worked for what I’ve got. I’ve worked bloody hard.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you have, Daniel,’ though she doesn’t sound sure. ‘But can you really say that you’ve worked harder than an ex-miner who lives in a council house in Rochdale and so has nothing to leave his kids when he passes on?’

She goes on to say that she thinks inheritance tax should be raised. At the moment it’s forty per cent of any estate over £250,000 and in Sarah’s opinion it should be more like seventy-five.

‘Why not one hundred per cent?’ snorts my father.

‘Actually, why not one hundred per cent?’ muses Sarah. And she goes on to advance other ideas. For example, there’s her idea about how to deal with the homeless problem.

‘Basically, anyone with more than one house should be asked to choose which one they want to live in, and we – the state – should be able to take the others and redistribute them to people who need them.’

Which is when my dad calls her infantile and says even the Khmer Rouge didn’t try anything so stupid and, in any case, we will change our tune when we see how much money we need to support a retarded child.