The Importance of Being a Bachelor (14 page)

‘I can’t do it,’ he said quietly. ‘Cass. I can’t.’

There was a long silence. Cassie let go of his hand. He tried to read her face but it was inscrutable.

‘I know you must be disappointed,’ he began. ‘I know you must think it’s unfair but—’

‘My sister’s pregnant again,’ said Cassie, talking over him. ‘She called me at work yesterday morning to tell me. It’s going to be a June baby apparently.’

Luke’s instinct for self-preservation told him to say nothing but his conscience wouldn’t allow the silence to continue.

‘We should send her and Mark a bottle of champagne or something to celebrate,’ he said quietly, aware that his innocent comment was about to be torn to shreds.

‘Should we?’ said Cassie. ‘Are we really happy for them?’ Tears started to roll down her cheeks. ‘I’m not sure I am because when she told me the news I cried. And they weren’t tears of joy, Luke, they were tears of jealousy. I was so jealous of her. My own sister. I was so completely and utterly jealous that all I felt was rage.’

Imagining what would drive Cassie to feel jealous of a sister she loved more than life itself brought home to Luke just how much she wanted children. This wasn’t a whim, or a yielding to peer pressure, but a real want, a desire that had become central to her being.

‘Look,’ began Luke. ‘I know you must feel like I don’t love you enough. Or that I don’t trust you enough. Or even that I don’t care how you feel. But that’s not true. I love you with my whole heart and I’d trust you with my life, Cass, I would. And I do appreciate what having a kid must mean to you. You love your family more than anything. You love my family like they’re your own. Family means everything to you just as it does to me. And it’s because family means so much to me that I’m sitting here telling you all this. If I started a family with you it would feel like I was giving up on Megan, the family that I’ve left behind, and I just can’t do that to her.’

‘But it doesn’t have to be that way!’ Cassie stood up, trying to wipe the tears from her face. ‘I’m not asking you to give up on Megan. I’m asking you to start a family with me.’

‘I know, I know. But if I start a family with you, to me it would be exactly like giving up on Megan! She’ll be nearly eight now, you know. Can you imagine how it must feel to be eight and not have a dad around? She must feel that I don’t love her. She must feel like I didn’t care about her at all! And how could I ever prove her wrong if I start all over again with someone new? How could I ever look her in the eye and tell her that she meant the world to me when I’ve been playing happy families somewhere else? I won’t do that to her, Cass. I can’t.’

‘Where’s the logic in that?’

In the dim light of his bedroom Adam could just make out the outline of a man leaning over him. The man was saying something but through the drunken fog of confusion clouding his brain, Adam couldn’t quite work out what. He glanced over at the clock on his bedside table: it was seven thirty a.m. The man slowly came into focus as though Adam was looking through the lens of a camera. It was his dad. He was holding a tray of food: a plate of sausages, bacon, fried eggs, and tinned tomatoes with a mug of tea next to it. The volume suddenly kicked in. Dad was saying: ‘I thought you might fancy a spot of breakfast. I’ll leave it down here, shall I?’ Adam looked at his dad, at the food and at the clock again. He attempted a quick calculation, subtracting the time that he had gone to bed having stayed up late watching DVDs (three thirty-five a.m.) away from the current time (seven thirty-one a.m.) and after several stalled attempts worked out that he had been asleep for approximately three hours and fifty-six minutes in total. He looked at his dad again. His face was like that of a child: open and eager to please. Adam uttered a gruff ‘Cheers!’ in his dad’s direction which appeared to do the job: Dad grinned from ear to ear, put the tray down on the floor, then left the room closing the door behind him and returning Adam to a world of darkness and mild nausea.

Having his dad as a house guest for this past month had been pretty much the stuff of nightmares. Within days Dad had abandoned any illusion of formality and transformed himself from father figure to housemate. With a swiftness that took Adam by surprise Dad’s twenty-year-old (formerly royal blue now pale grey) bath towel became a permanent fixture in the bathroom; meals of the ‘meat and two veg’ variety kept making an appearance in Adam’s fridge with handwritten notes attached to them (‘microwave for two minutes and thirty seconds’); and, most alarmingly, Dad (who had at one point seemed genuinely scared of Adam’s vast array of remote controls) had taken up permanent residence in front of his widescreen TV. Of course Adam loved his dad. Of course he didn’t want anything bad to happen to him and of course he wanted him to feel at home, but he didn’t seem to be making any plans to patch things up with his mum or move into a place of his own. In fact he appeared to be bedding in for the long haul and now Adam wanted his old life back and he wanted it back now.

When he finally rose some time after midday he felt bad about not eating the breakfast that he had stepped over on his way out of the room and guilty that his dad had had to spend another day alone and so still only wearing his boxers he wandered into the living room for a chat.

‘Hey Dad, how’s your day been?’

‘I’ve been thinking about our arrangement here,’ said Dad, ignoring Adam’s question. ‘I must insist on paying my way.’

‘Er . . .’ Adam was confused.

‘I wouldn’t want people saying I’m freeloading.’

‘I’m not saying you’re freeloading, Dad.’

‘I know you’re not,’ snapped Dad. ‘What I’m saying is this: it doesn’t look good. I’m your dad. If anyone should be looking after anyone it should be me looking after you. Never let it be said that George Bachelor doesn’t pay his way.’

If Dad was referring to himself in the third person, there would be little point in standing in his way.

‘Of course you pay your way, Dad. That’s not an issue. Now tell me what it was exactly that you had in mind?’

‘Well I was thinking just before you came in that you and I ought to go shopping.’

‘Shopping?’

‘Yes, shopping for food. You do eat, don’t you?’

‘Not really.’

‘When do you normally do your weekly shop?’

‘I don’t really do a weekly shop, Dad. I sort of buy stuff when I need it.’

Dad shook his head in disbelief as if Adam had revealed that he liked to spend his spare time setting fire to ten-pound notes.

‘That’s no way to do shopping, son. No way at all. Next you’ll be telling me that you buy your milk from the newsagent’s round the corner.’

‘I do,’ said Adam. ‘It’s easier that way.’

‘Easier? Easier? I bet you any money that it’s at least ten to fifteen pence more expensive in there than in the supermarket! You young people, none of you have got the common sense you were born with.’ With great difficulty (given the low nature of the sofa) Dad stood up and gave Adam a look indicating that he was ready for action. ‘Come on then, get your coat.’

‘Why am I going to need my coat?’

‘Because I’m taking you shopping.’

While Adam had shopped in the big Somerfield on Wilbraham Road plenty of times before, one thing he had never done (mainly because he was usually still in bed fast asleep) was go shopping in the big Somerfield on Wilbraham Road at one o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. For some reason it appeared that this was the exact time when everybody from good-for-nothing students to overburdened young mums decided that they needed a couple of things to tide them over for the weekend and descended on the store en masse. Adam had never seen the store so packed. It was like being at a rock concert without any of the benefits of actually being at a rock concert. Adam suggested several times that they turn back and try shopping some other time but his dad had looked so disappointed that he felt he had no choice but to carry on.

Fifteen minutes, a frantic search for a pound coin and several dodgy trolleys later they were in the pasta and tinned vegetable aisle discussing tinned carrots.

‘Will you eat them?’ Dad asked.

Adam looked at the tin of Somerfield’s own-brand tinned carrots unable to hide his look of disgust. ‘No, Dad, I will not eat them.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I don’t eat tinned carrots.’

‘But you said that about the tinned mushrooms and the tinned new potatoes.’

‘That’s because I don’t eat tinned mushrooms or tinned potatoes either.’

Dad peered into Adam’s side of the trolley. ‘And yet you’ll eat tinned kidney beans? Where’s the logic in that?’

Adam joined his father in peering at the tinned kidney beans in the trolley. Did he have a point? Was there really no difference between tinned kidney beans and tinned carrots? Adam was pretty sure that there was but he wasn’t sure what. Other than the fact that in this day and age people like him didn’t – with the exception of tinned pulses – eat any kind of tinned vegetables. Tinned vegetables were the territory of a different generation altogether,

‘And what about tinned tomatoes?’ added Dad as if reading his son’s mind. ‘They’re in your trolley.’

‘Everybody eats tinned tomatoes,’ protested Adam. ‘And anyway, tomatoes are a fruit not a vegetable.’

Dad shrugged and dropped the tin of carrots into the trolley while Adam wondered what he had done to deserve this: not only sharing his home with his dad but arguing with him about tinned vegetables. One way or another, he thought, as he trailed after his dad like a schoolboy, he was going to have to get his parents back together and he was going to have to make it happen now. He typed out a message to both Luke and Russell: ‘Emergency pow-wow re: Mum and Dad. Tonight in the Beech, 7.30 p.m. NO EXCUSES!!!’

‘I’ve just got stuff on my mind that’s all.’

It was twenty minutes past seven as Adam walked into the front bar of the Beech and spotted Luke. He waved in Luke’s direction to see if he was all right for a drink but he seemed to be lost in a world of his own so he ordered himself a solitary pint and made his way over to Luke’s table.

‘All right?’ asked Adam, taking a seat opposite his brother.

‘Yeah, fine,’ replied Luke, who patently wasn’t. ‘You?’

Adam laughed. ‘As good as I can be with a sixty-eight-year-old man as a housemate. Do you know what he said before I went out tonight? He asked me to spare a couple of hours next week to offer some input on a cooking rota and two-week meal planner that he had drawn up. I tell you Luke, I feel like he’s made up his mind that he might as well put his roots down with me!’ Adam expected a laugh or at the very least a grin but there was nothing. It was as if Luke hadn’t heard a single thing that Adam had said.

In a bid to reserve all parent-related conversation until Russell decided to turn up, Adam tried to make conversation but Luke was so unresponsive that in the end Adam concluded he’d better ask the one question he was pretty sure Luke didn’t want him to ask.

‘How’s Cassie?’

‘She’s fine.’

Now that he had got his brother speaking in whole (if brief) sentences Adam kept up the momentum. ‘How’s she getting on at work? I remember she had a big presentation coming up. How did it go?’

‘OK, I think,’ said Luke. ‘To be truthful I don’t really remember.’

Adam opened his mouth, about to ask further follow-up questions concerning Cassie’s sister and family, but he was tired of being the only person at the table making an effort. Luke and Cassie, he concluded, must have had some sort of tiff, that much was obvious. He wished he had the guts to tell his brother to grow up. Luke had it all: a great job, a nice home and above all a proper, fully functioning relationship with an amazing girl. What could he possibly have to be down about?

‘Look,’ said Adam, aware that they were entering uncharted conversational waters, ‘by all means tell me to mind my own business if I’m overstepping the mark here but is everything OK with you and Cassie? It’s just that—’

‘She’s moved out,’ said Luke. His eyes briefly flitted up to Adam’s for a response and then back down to the table. ‘It’s only temporary. A few weeks. It’ll all be sorted soon. We both need a little time, a little space to sort ourselves out. It’s just . . . I don’t know, we’re in a tricky position. She wants to have kids.’

‘And you don’t?’

Luke nodded.

‘Because of what happened with you and Jayne or is there something else?’

‘It’s Megan,’ confessed Luke. ‘I know it’s going to sound mad but it just feels wrong to even consider starting another family let alone going ahead and doing it.’

Adam nodded. He had never imagined that Luke’s problem might be this serious. ‘It doesn’t sound mad at all, mate,’ he said, recalling how messed up his brother had been after he had stopped seeing Megan. It had been awful. The worst thing he had ever seen happen to his brother. Even though the whole family had pulled together to support him there had been moments when Adam had felt as though Luke might never recover. ‘Megan is your kid. She’s your family. I can understand why the idea of moving on like that would make you feel like you were giving up on her.’

‘You know, Ad,’ he began, ‘there are times when it’s all I can do to get through the day, I miss her so much. But I just hold on to the thought that one day she’ll be old enough to come and find me. And she will, I know she will. And I’ll be able to tell her my side of the story and we can reset the clock and start from scratch and we’ll never have to worry about the past again.’