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‘Tess?’
‘I’ve got to go,’ I lied. ‘I’m just about to get on the Tube, I’m late for something.’
‘For what? Get on a plane and come to New York.’
‘I’ve got to go,’ I repeated. She didn’t need to know the only place I had to be was in bed with a six-pack of Wotsits but I just didn’t have an answer for her that wasn’t hysterical sobbing and I didn’t think anyone fancied sitting opposite a crazy person on the Tube. Well, not any more than usual.
‘I think you should call him,’ she said. ‘I think you should pick up the phone and say, “enough of this radio silence, you wankpaddle, we need to talk.”’
‘OK, really going now,’ I told her, blocking out all her arguments. ‘I’ll talk to you later. Love you.’
I dropped my phone back in my bag, wincing at a regrettable thunk as it hit my camera.
The camera Charlie had given me.
It was funny to think about it now, but if he hadn’t given me this camera, I might never have gone to Milan. And if I’d never gone to Milan, he and I might be together. Amy would still be in London and none of this would be happening.
It was Amyisms like ‘get on a plane and come to New York’ that made me miss him the most. Before, I would have gone over to his flat and told him all about my day, he would have made fun of Ess, we would both have laughed and then one of us would have made a cup of tea and put the telly on and everything would have been fine. With Amy all the way in New York and Paige so wrapped up in her work and her love life, I’d been feeling so alone. Which was silly, really, when one of my best friends in the whole world only lived half an hour down the road.
I stood in front of the turnstiles of the Central Line, trying not to get in everyone’s way while I thought hard and fast. Everyone was so keen for me to take charge, swing my balls around, show everyone who I was and take what I wanted in life. Maybe they were right. Maybe it was about time I did something I’d been thinking about but too afraid to act on for months. Amy was right.
What harm could come from saying hello?
The rain had stopped by the time I got to Charlie’s flat.
All the way over on the Tube, I’d run over every single scenario of how my first attempt at ball swinging might turn out and each one was worse than the last. What if Charlie was still so angry with me he didn’t even open the door? What if he did open the door but he shouted at me? What if he had a girlfriend and she was there and he had told her what a terrible person I was and she was a Brazilian jujitsu fighter and she killed me with her bare hands? All entirely possible.
I was scared. I hadn’t been this nervous to talk to Charlie since our media studies seminar in the first semester of university. I filled my mind with happy memories, laughing, smiling, cheerful Charlie. Not the face of the miserable, angry man I’d watched ride the train out of Milan. The first man that evening who told me he didn’t want to see me again. Unfortunately, not the last. Really, even by my standards, that was an incredibly poor twenty-four hours for me.
It was almost seven by the time I had forced myself down his street and even if Arsenal had played, he would be home by now. It was the best time to catch him. Unless Arsenal had lost. Oh God, I thought, grabbing hold of the railing beside me, what if they had lost? That was the only possible thing more dangerous to my health than a Brazilian jujitsu-fighting girlfriend. I scrambled in my bag for my phone, pulled up the app that still had a place on my home screen and madly flicked through the fixtures. They didn’t play every Sunday, did they? I hoped against hope that this was one of their weeks off.
‘Tess?’
I looked up and there he was in front of me. Red shirt, striped scarf, copper curly hair that looked just like mine, only considerably shorter, soaked from being out in the rain all afternoon.
‘Did you win?’ I asked, frozen to the spot, phone still in my hand.
‘We drew,’ he said, not moving. ‘One-one.’
I slipped my phone carefully back inside my bag, painfully aware of the four feet of space between us.
‘That’s better than losing,’ I said.
Charlie pulled out his house keys and I stepped aside so he could open the door. He turned to look at me again, blinking as if to make sure I really was there.
‘Yeah,’ he said, holding the door open and nodding me inside. ‘You coming in or are you just going to stand there like a lemon?’
‘I’ll come in,’ I said, skittling through the door and letting a little smile grow on my face.
So far, no violence, so good.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_7528db8e-ae8c-54d2-89c9-7baea87270fd)
‘Look at you,’ Charlie said, throwing the soggy scarf onto his blue sofa, his keys into the bowl on the bookcase and marching straight into the kitchen to put the kettle on. I immediately picked up the wet scarf and laid it on the radiator. Nothing had changed. His flat was exactly the same as the last time I’d been here.
‘Look at you,’ I echoed, not sure what else to say. The whole way there I’d run over what I would say to him in my head but I couldn’t find the right words. I figured I’d know when I saw him but I was absolutely none the wiser. If anything, now I was inside his flat, all warm and cosy and familiar, I was more confused than ever.
‘No, really.’ He ducked out of the kitchen, all six feet three of him, and smiled. I felt my stomach fall to the floor and smiled back. ‘Look at the state of you.’
My smile didn’t last very long.
‘Are you wearing denim dungarees?’ he asked, trying not to laugh. ‘And what has happened to your hair? It’s massive.’
‘It’s raining,’ I said defensively, pulling my hair back into a cack-handed ponytail and wrapping a hair tie around the split ends. ‘I got caught in it. And yes, I’m wearing dungarees, only we call them overalls now and they’re very trendy.’
‘You look like a giant toddler who’s come round to fix my toilet,’ he replied. ‘Why are you covered in paint?’
‘It’s make-up,’ I muttered, scratching at the multicoloured smears on my clothes and wondering if he had noticed the extra pounds I’d picked up in Italy. Amy said you couldn’t tell, but I could. Why had I come over without sorting myself out first? What a bloody rookie mistake. ‘I was working.’
Charlie cocked an eyebrow. ‘As what?’
‘Photographer’s assistant,’ I replied. ‘We were doing a shoot for a magazine.’
He nodded slowly. ‘Better than a magician’s assistant, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Milk and sugar?’
‘The usual.’ I sat down on the edge of his settee and tried not to read too much into the fact he was asking how I wanted my tea when he’d been making me tea almost every day for the last ten years.
‘Two cows of milk and three sugars it is then,’ he replied, disappearing into the kitchen. Phew. He hadn’t forgotten, he was just being weird. Brilliant. ‘I haven’t got any biscuits so if that’s all you’ve come for, you might as well go now.’
‘How can you not have any biscuits?’ I shouted, still searching his flat for evidence of what he had been up to for the last one hundred and thirty-seven days and coming up with nothing but a well-thumbed copy of GQ. Even for a slow reader like Charlie, that hadn’t taken almost five months. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
How could nothing have changed in five months? The same books sat on his coffee table, the same pair of trainers lay at the side of the door and the same dusty red Netflix envelope was wedged between his Blu-ray player and the PlayStation. My entire life had been turned upside down and he hadn’t even sent his DVDs back. How was that possible?
‘Health kick,’ he said, emerging from the kitchen with two mugs in his hands. The same mugs. His mug and my mug. ‘No biscuits, no sweets, no chocolate.’
‘Are you dying?’ I asked, only half joking.
‘Just trying to take better care of myself.’ He held my mug out to me and went to sit down on the sofa. Just before his bum made contact he shot back up and perched himself decidedly on the armchair he never used instead. ‘Can’t live on biscuits forever.’
‘That’s a lie and you know it,’ I said, wrapping my hands around my mug, even though it was far too hot. ‘Biscuits are the staff of life.’
‘Isn’t that bread?’ He pinched his shoulders together and fell silent, the awkwardness of the moment finally winning out over our terribly English desire to drink tea and pretend nothing was wrong.
I stared into my mug and tried to remember the last time I’d been so tongue-tied around Charlie. It hadn’t been this bad since the first week of university when I’d watched him playing a Smiths’ song on his guitar outside our halls of residence. A verse and a chorus of Morrissey’s finest and, just like that, I lost the power of speech.
‘So …’ He broke the silence, pulling off his Converse and kicking them underneath his uncomfortable chair. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Not much,’ I said in a voice much squeakier than I had intended. ‘I’ve been running my toddler plumbing company and Amy’s in New York. She’s working for Al Bennett – you know, the man I was taking photos of in Hawaii? She’s his Vice President of Special Projects, isn’t that amazing?’
‘What kind of projects?’ he asked, puzzled. ‘Is he building a house out of Dairylea Triangles?’
‘No, he’s opening these clothes stores, these boutiques.’ I held my tea in one hand and waved the other around as I tried to explain. ‘And starting a clothing line and, you know, she’s got loads of experience in—’
‘I don’t really care, if I’m honest,’ he said, interrupting. ‘I meant, what’s going on with you?’
I opened my mouth to answer but nothing came out. Instead, I held on to my scorching hot cup of tea and sat in silence.
‘Why are you here?’ he went on. ‘It’s been months since, er, since I saw you. Why did you come today?’
Pulling on the end of my ponytail, I sipped my tea and focused on the Netflix DVD, wondering if he even knew it was still there.
‘Why not?’ I asked quietly.
Now it was Charlie’s turn not to have an answer.
He was sat right on the edge of his chair, his white-socked toes curled underneath each other, clenching and unclenching every other second. I waited another minute, watching him watch me, not saying a word, before I gave up.
‘Do you want me to go?’ I asked, then stood up to leave. At least if I offered, he wouldn’t feel like he was kicking me out. ‘I’ll just go. I shouldn’t—’
‘No.’ He jumped to his feet. ‘Sit down, stay. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s fine.’ I grabbed my bag and swung it onto my shoulder, my camera smacking me in the shoulder blade to remind me what an imbecile I was. ‘I’ll go. I should have called or not come or got run over on the way or something. My mistake.’
‘Tess, stop.’ As I made for the door Charlie grabbed hold of my dungarees by the shoulder strap and my mug flew out of my hand. It bounced off the blue cushions and clattered onto the floor, breaking into three large chunks as it landed. ‘Just stop.’
‘Oh balls, I’m sorry,’ I whispered, as I bent down to pick up the pieces. ‘I’m so sorry, Charlie.’
‘I know,’ he said, yanking me by my shoulder strap until I stood up to face him. ‘So am I, I’m sorry.’
Chewing my bottom lip so hard I thought I might break the skin, I turned towards my friend.
‘Come here, you daft cow.’ He wrapped his arms around my shoulders, pressed his lips against the top of my head and sighed. I felt one hundred and thirty-seven days fall away from the calendar as I buried my face in his armpit, greedily breathing in his teenage boy deodorant, smiling and ignoring the tickling in my ears and lump in my throat.
‘Your hair smells like a wet dog,’ he said, squeezing me tightly.
‘I know.’ My voice was muffled by his damp football shirt and smiles. ‘It’s a new thing I’m trying. All the rage in Milan.’
‘I’m glad you’re here.’ He squeezed my shoulders once more and then let me go. Without the weight of his arms around me, I felt so light I worried I might float away. ‘I’ve been feeling like shit for months.’
I’d never been so happy to hear that someone I loved had been miserable because of me.
‘I wanted to say something but the longer I left it, the more I felt like a dickhead,’ he said, avoiding the broken mug and throwing himself onto the settee, arms and legs all over the place. I sat down next to him, our denim-clad knees just touching, just barely. ‘And then you went quiet and I thought it was too late.’
‘You didn’t answer any of my texts,’ I said, working very hard to resist the urge to clean up the broken mug. Now was not the time. ‘I didn’t think you would want to be friends again.’
‘I didn’t.’ He leaned back against the settee and closed his eyes. ‘I was so angry with you, Tess. I don’t think I’ve ever been so angry about anything. But, you know, feelings go away eventually.’
I pursed my lips and cocked my head thoughtfully. Did they? Just like that?
‘I should have been honest with you,’ I said slowly. The peace between us felt fragile and every word out of my mouth seemed heavy and dangerous. ‘About you know, about the other situation.’
Nick. Nick Nick Nick Nick Nick.
Charlie took a deep breath and let it out, hard and heavy.
‘Yeah, maybe,’ he said. ‘But I understand.’
‘You do?’ I really hoped he had more to say on the subject because I definitely didn’t.
‘Yeah, I understand.’ Charlie wiped the palms of his hands over his face and I realized what he meant. Just because he said he could understand it didn’t mean he had to like it. ‘You were confused and you were going through some stuff and I didn’t exactly help, did I? Then you go off on an adventure and you meet this …’
He paused to take another deep breath while I held mine.
‘You meet this bloke …’ He kicked the ‘k’ out hard. ‘And it’s exciting and fun and it is what it is. We’ve all done it.’
And by ‘done it’ what he actually meant was that what he’d done was ‘shag your awful flatmate without telling you’, but in this instance I was prepared to give him a pass.
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ he said with a shrug. ‘We’ve been friends a long time, Tess. I should have called you and I didn’t, more because of hurt pride than anything else. It was stupid. I was stupid and I’m sorry.’
I chewed the inside of my cheeks, admittedly a little confused. In my heart of hearts I had to admit it stung that he wasn’t crying himself to sleep over me, just a little bit. I’d nursed my agonizing, unrequited crush on Charlie for the best part of a decade. He got over me in less than six months.
‘I just want to be mates again,’ he said. ‘And Paige told me that, well, she told me you and this bloke were the real thing.’
‘Paige?’ I turned to look at him so fast my ponytail whipped around and whacked me in the chops. ‘My Paige?’
‘Yeah, when we were working on the Peritos pitch,’ he explained. ‘And I suppose, while I’m being the bigger man, I’m glad you’ve met someone. Not to be a girl about it but, you know, maybe me and you weren’t meant to be.’
‘Maybe.’
Even now, when I knew he was right, it was hard to say.
Charlie rolled his eyes and smiled, looking just like my Charlie, the one I’d been in love with for so long, and my heart began to beat just a little bit faster. The last time I had been in his flat, I thought, running a hand over the settee, the last time we’d been sat here together …
‘So can we call a truce?’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Go back to how things were before: Tess and Charlie versus the world?’
Ten years I’d waited for Charlie to tell me that he loved me, and as soon as he did, I went and fell in love with someone else. Brilliant bloody timing, Brookes.
‘I suppose so,’ I said, taking his hand in mine and shaking it hard, sad for what could have been, happy for what was – and still confused, but more than anything else, relieved. ‘I need someone to watch the last five episodes of Breaking Bad with me, I’ve been too scared to watch it on my own.’
‘Your bloke not into television or something?’ he asked, his face looking like he had tasted something bitter. ‘Because you know how I feel about people who don’t like telly.’
‘He actually hasn’t got one,’ I admitted. ‘But that doesn’t really matter, given that we’re not together.’
Now it was Charlie’s turn to look confused.
‘I told you,’ I reminded him. ‘Remember when you told me to piss off and I said I wanted to make things right and you asked if it was because he’d dumped me?’
Ah, happy memories.
