Half Plus Seven (27 page)

All I could think of was the waterfalls.

‘Mum?'

‘What is it, Charlie?'

‘Can we go now?'

‘Yes, Charlie, yes we can.'

Chapter 25

Her full lips were mouthing the shapes of words grasped from and exhaled into the air of a cafe bistro decorated in a non-ironic homage to the ‘great shows and performances of the musical theatre'. I was listening intently but wasn't hearing a word she was saying. I tuned back in.

‘…so he said you're meant to weigh parcels on the franking machine before you stick them in the postage bag and when he said it I was 99 per cent certain he was staring at my breasts.'

For starters, breasts were not Christy's thing. If I wanted to remain on-message for the inevitable ‘favourite part of the turkey' question from bawdy Barry in the projected future life of Christy McDare, I'd have to answer I was most definitely a leg man and always had been, gazing reassuringly over the cracker-strewn table at her black eyes, tired but happy in equal measure at the inaugural Christmas celebration with our beautiful but sleep-depriving first-born. (It is worth noting that this is a medium-term projection. Barry would be killed off in a longer-term vision with his place at the table and my mother's side taken by the impotent but kind-hearted head of a sustainable fishing company. My mother loved the sea).

It was perhaps unfair on Christy to judge her breasts in the current context of the voluptuous cane-carrying centrepieces of the framed Broadway posters that lined the walls.

‘Bill…'

‘Sorry…'

‘Are you here? Helloooo,' she waved her thin arms in front of my face as if she were trying to set off a smoke alarm. A bobble from her cardigan fell into my tea. It was too milky anyway.

‘Yes, I am most definitely here, if a little tired. It was so hot in my room last night I barely slept.' And not hot how I'd like. These sweats. Still.

‘That house is freeeezing,' she said, chattering the ee's. She'd had the pleasure of visiting number 35 for a fundraising evening Craig and Connie insisted on for that fucking community garden. I'd boarded up the hole with a Tesco value box before the hippy hordes arrived. I should have expected this would have sparked off a one-sided debate about the corporate rape of the local high street. I'd only wanted to save Christy from the ignominy of peeing in front of a public gallery. I was certain a bucket in the back yard would have been better than the provisions the crusties were used to.

‘Yeah, yeah it is. Craig and Connie don't believe in burning fossil fuels.'

‘And I see your tired, and raise you a teenage nightmare's nightmares.'

‘Still bad?'

‘Still bad.' Her sad eyes betrayed her breezy attitude. I shot it out there.

‘How long can this go on for?' The theme from
Les Misérables
hummed low in the background.

‘What? Our lunch hour?'

‘No, Chris. Bringing up your brother on your own.' I'm not sure what the hell I was fishing for here. Was I implying they both move into Craig and Connie's and we set up a free love commune? I very much doubt it.

‘Well, what else do you suggest, Bill?' She clung to her coffee cup.

‘What about trying to find your dad?' She spat her latte all over the table. This was fast becoming a theme of my dining experiences.

‘I'll take it by your reaction that you think there's as much chance of finding Lord Lucan riding Shergar?'

‘What the fuck, Bill?'

I'd snookered her with a pop culture reference once again.

The waiter, an impossibly camp man in his late-40s with a neat moustache and tight pants, broke in and mopped the coffee up. His presence extenuated the silence between us.

‘I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking.'

‘It's fine.'

It wasn't.

‘It's just—'

‘I know exactly what it is, Bill.'

I wish she'd tell me because I didn't.

‘Oh.'

‘Because of the way things worked out for you, you have this ideal of the family unit up on some pedestal. Well, you know what? It just doesn't exist. Not for any of us.' She took a sharp sip of coffee.

I thought about what she'd said. Maybe she was right.

‘You know what? I wish my dad wasn't missing and my mum wasn't dead and my brother didn't wake up screaming in the middle of the night but that's my lot,' she said.

‘Your dad is missing?!'

‘Yes, Bill, my dad is missing.'

‘Christ, I just thought you weren't in touch.'

‘We're not.'

Smart arse.

‘Clearly, but I thought you knew where he was, roughly.'

‘We don't.'

This was news to me. I'd assumed Christy's dad was at arm's length in a halfway house somewhere, not actually MIA.

I tried to pick up where she'd left off.

‘Well, okay, I wish my dad wasn't dead and my mum wasn't shacked up with a walking mid-life crisis and that I could take a dump in my house without looking down and seeing a relative stranger making a Cup-a-Soup, but we don't live in a perfect world…'

‘Because if we did Morgan & Schwarz would only be open two days a week and pay a seven figure sum…'

‘And Pete would actually have had sex…'

‘And Jill wouldn't be so bat shit crazy…'

‘And Trent wouldn't be such a sex pest…'

‘And Carol would occasionally swear…'

‘And Miles wouldn't be so silently terrifying…'

We fell to the table laughing. A grandmother with tattooed-on make-up and tight blonde curls peered over her teacup at us from the adjacent table.

The opening bars of ‘Beauty School Dropout' kicked in.

‘Christy, I'm sorry.' I swallowed. I put my hands together, lowered them onto the table and edged them towards her. Were it not for the hum of the waiter whistling show tunes, time could have been standing still.

‘I'm sorry too, Bill.'

My hands were an island swimming solo in a sea of glass-covered ticket stubs and theatre flyers. I looked down at them. Her hands touched the table top. They slid slowly towards mine. We touched. The dial turned down on the background buzz. Punters passed by in a slo-mo blur.

I genuinely have no idea how long we sat there for or if we said anything at all.

‘Oh, and before you get back to your desk, I've got a message for you,' Christy said.

‘Fire away.'

‘It's from the man from the Transition Town group,' she said.

‘Tell him I'm not here.'

‘He's not on the phone now.'

‘Well, he'll call back another time I'm sure.'

‘Bill, that was the eighth time he's called for you this week. Can you just call him back, please? He's getting more than a bit tetchy with me on the phone now.'

‘Sure I will do. Just not now. I'm busy. Really busy.'

‘Deadline stuff?'

‘You could say that.'

Saving the planet from climate change was going to have to wait. What good was saving the world if all the people left had broken hearts?

Chapter 26

‘We found love in a hopeless place, we found a-love in a hope-less place'.

The music played loud and fast.

‘Come on, people, let's crank the resistance up half a turn. Half a turn. You can do this, people. Now we're going to sprint for one whole minute in five-four-three-two-one-sprint people!'

A collective grunt sprung up from the group. In a new addition to the Morgan & Schwarz employee benefits package, alongside the charge card, dental plan and option on a week in a gîte in the south of France, we now had our own in-house personal trainer. His name was Andrei and he was an early 20-something Armenian, built like a brick outhouse with all of the charisma. Perhaps I was being harsh. A spin class was perhaps a difficult forum for the complex facets of a personality to reveal themselves. Particularly when the poor fuck was herding out-of-shape PRs to improved cardiovascular levels. It was a million miles away from being Madonna's yoga guru, but them's the breaks, Andrei. At least you're the fuck out of Yerevan.

‘Halfway there, people. You can do this.'

‘In a hope-less place, we found a-love in a hopeless place.'

‘I want to see those wheels turning, people.' Andrei weaved between the static bikes, clapping and cajoling. He stopped next to Pete.

‘Come on, Peter, you have an iron will. You are my main man, Peter.'

Following in the great tradition of all the best motivators, Andrei's attention served to galvanise Pete and push his body to previously unforeseen heights. As with everything he set his mind to, Pete had taken the spin class very seriously indeed. He was dressed more than appropriately for the gym, the only slight problem being that the gym he'd dressed for seemed to be located in 1980s Miami: Lycra shorts, headband, sweat bands and a luminous yellow vest lest the bike take off and he be faced with traffic at dusk.

In his slipstream rode Jill, resplendent in a lilac velour tracksuit. A
Hello Kitty
towel draped from her handlebars. Sweat congealed in her curls as she tried to keep pace with the beat. She took a long, needy swig from her water bottle.

‘In a hope-less place'

‘Pssst…'

‘
less place,'

‘
Pssst… Jill,' I hissed.

She looked over her left shoulder to me, coating Pete in salt water as she turned.

‘What?'

She had her war face on.

‘Can I have a drop of your water please?' Like an anarchic Boy Scout, I was ill-prepared.

‘No.'

‘Oh come on, I'm dying here.'

‘I wouldn't piss on you if you were.'

She turned the bottle upside down and poured the remaining liquid over her head. It was reassuring to know that even as I tried to change, Jill steadfastly remained a grade A sociopath.

My previous perspiratory pursuits were the by-product of illicit drugs and explicit sex. On the wagon, a bead was permanently etched on my temple. On the bike, it purged from my being like a wet sock being wrung dry.

Andrei brushed between me and Christy. Yes, she was there. Yes, she looked fucking great in Lycra. He looked at my red face and took obvious inspiration.

‘Remember, there are only two rules, people. Rule number one is—' He smiled wryly to himself. ‘You must sweat more than me.' Considering the Armenian's apparent lack of awareness of antiperspirant, compliance with this regulation was going to take Tour De France levels of effort.

Andrei held up the fingers of his left hand like Churchill. A frayed leather shag band sat on his wrist, his face sterner now.

‘And rule number two, people—' His eyes stared fiercely ahead like he was recalling some wartime atrocity from his broken Eastern European home. ‘You must remember to…' He stalked through the bikes like a boot camp instructor.

‘…you must remember to… SMILE, people!' He broke into laughter. Christy, previously a blur to my left, turned to me, her legs slowing now, and took Andrei's advice in my direction.

Melt.

I needed to concentrate on the imaginary road.

Compose.

This was not the situation for a full-on hard-on.

It took quite extraordinary powers of imagination to transport to the cliff-cutting roads of the Cote D'Azur when flanked in all directions by a pungent collection of my colleagues.

Pete steadfastly turned the pedals over and over, grunting and grinding his way onwards to Andrei's acceptance. The outriders of our deviant diamond formation were Trent and Carol. Trent was sulking. I'd revved him up this morning with rumours of a new peroxide-blonde Bosnian PT by the name of Llana, with hot abs and a pressing need for a visa. He'd hogged the changing room mirror pre-session, spending a good half hour plucking his chest hair and applying body bronzer.

When we entered the gym and his hungry eyes set upon a 16 stone Armenian, his face was like a scene from
The Crying Game
. The effort he put in over the ensuing half hour was in direct proportion to his disappointment. He burnt far more calories shooting me a ‘fuck you' look. If his bike hadn't been static he'd have toppled over.

Carol, on the other hand, was as diligent as ever. Her application had been honed over the years through a series of athletic endeavours for countless charitable causes. She had her own JustGiving domain and had mastered the pathos required for an email to almost apologetically push colleagues into a tax deductible donation. We joked around budget time that stopping Carol running half-marathons was as pertinent a fiscal policy for the chancellor to consider as lowering the higher rate tax band or raising the stamp duty threshold. She cycled onwards, resplendent today in a ‘10k for Cassie' tee; not the quickest, not the slowest, ever-moving onwards, oblivious to the sped-up R & B that played loud in the foreground.