As I lay in bed feeling the twists of her hair between my fingers, I couldn’t recall ever feeling quite so exhilarated. Okay, that sounds a bit weird, as if I’d just had a hard session in the gym, so I’ll keep things simple. Even then, after I’d known her only days, she made my chest feel like it was going to burst open every time I looked at her.
You’d think that might have augured something big right there: the fact that we’d both end up falling in love for the first time in our lives. But the only future I was planning with her at that precise moment in time involved getting overheated under the duvet again at some point in the next twenty minutes.
Despite the flat being mine to begin with, when Jesse moved out and Gemma moved in, indecently soon after we’d met, she made it feel like a home for reasons that went beyond the co-ordinated cushions that came with her.
In lots of ways, we shouldn’t work together. I’m a ‘bleeding heart liberal’ (her words) and she’s a card-carrying fascist i.e. she reads
Mail Online
, even if it’s only for the sidebar of shame.
I was privately educated, went to Cambridge and had a glittering career as
A Disappointment
(at least to one parent). She went to a middle-of-the-road state school and dazzled her family. I read Louis de Bernières and
The English Patient
and go to sleep each night feeling enriched and relaxed. She reads Lee Child and Luther and goes to sleep with a bread-knife under the bed, just in case.
‘This is the crappiest takeaway I’ve ever tasted,’ Gemma says, throwing down her fork on a chicken chow mein that looks like it’s been fished out of a sludge pipe.
‘That cannot possibly be true,’ I say, topping up her glass. ‘We have had some truly crappy takeaways.’
I shove my dish on the coffee table and pull her towards me, tucking her hair behind her ear. It’s only when I register the wobble in her lip that I realise just how much this house business has got to her.
‘We could always do something else with the money we’ve saved up. Go travelling or something,’ I say, though I have no idea where it came from. I’d never even thought of it before – and I already know she toured south-east Asia with two friends in her gap year after university.
‘I’ve done all that, Dan,’ she sighs. ‘I’m twenty-nine now, not eighteen.’
I squeeze her closer into me, wanting to make her feel better but at a loss as to how. I decide to pay a visit to the florist tomorrow. Life became far easier the day I worked out that flowers, particularly
outside
the traditional birthdays or anniversaries, are not in fact the pointless waste of money I’d assumed they were for the last twenty-odd years.
We stay up late, watching a vacuous action film that I pretend not to enjoy, before going to bed and making passionate but mildly clumsy, wine-drunk love. She falls asleep with her head on my chest, but I can’t bring myself to move her, even if I know I’ll wake up with a crick in my neck. For a few hours I fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.
It’s at 4.30 a.m. that, aware of a series of explosive coughs about five centimetres from my ear, my eyes spring open.
‘Oh sorry, did I wake you?’ The cough mysteriously disappears.
‘It’s okay,’ I mumble, about to turn over when she props herself up on an elbow. I close my eyes.
‘Well, now you’re awake . . .’
‘I’m not awake.’
‘Clearly you are or you wouldn’t be talking to me.’
‘I’ll be asleep again in seven seconds,’ I yawn.
‘Okay. But can I ask you something?’
‘Is it: “Darling, why on earth can’t you get to sleep?”!’ I ask.
‘Sorry! It’s really important though.’
She reaches over to turn on the bedroom light. Her hair is mussed up on the top like Russell Brand’s and she has a smudge of mascara under her eye. I suppress a smile. ‘Go on.’
‘It’s about Pebble Cottage. I’ve had an idea. I reckon we’re about another five grand short of making an offer they couldn’t refuse.’
‘Gemma, you’ve already planned on selling your car, my Premium Bonds and half the furniture. The only thing left is our bodies. You’d do all right, but I don’t think I’d raise more than a fiver.’
I expect her to make a joke about being certain that someone would have me in the right part of town, but she doesn’t. This is a worrying development.
‘I’m talking about something completely different. Changing tack. I’m talking about reducing our outgoings drastically to free up a lump sum of capital. I’m talking about getting rid of the flat.’
‘What?’
‘If we didn’t have any rent to pay, not to mention bills, we’d save up that amount in . . . I don’t know, five months. Think about it.’
‘Yes, but there’s a vital flaw in your cunning plan, Baldrick,’ I tell her. ‘And it’s that we need the flat. You know, to live in.’
‘I was coming to that.’ Only she doesn’t say anything.
‘Go on then.’
Her mouth starts to twitch at the side and I can tell she’s gauging my reaction before she’s managed to even spit it out. She sits up straight, defiant, and looks me in the eye. ‘We can go and live with your mother.’
I laugh. I laugh quite a lot. In fact, I almost fall off the bed.
Then I realise she isn’t joining in. ‘You’re not serious.’ And when she edges closer and puts her arm on mine, leaning in to kiss me, ‘Don’t be trying to use your feminine wiles on me. They won’t work.’
‘Dan,’ she fake-murmurs. ‘Do it for me.’
‘You can bugger right off.’
‘Okay, okay,’ she says, sitting up again. ‘Just hear me out. I know it wouldn’t be ideal. I know you vowed when you moved out when you were seventeen—’
‘Sixteen.’
‘Sixteen, that you’d never live there again, but it’s not like you don’t love your mum. She’s great.’
I flash her a look. ‘Well, yeah. She’s my mum so she’s great by default, but here’s the difference – she’s
not
great to live with. Whose mum is, once you’re no longer a kid?’
‘It wouldn’t be that bad.’
‘I’d prefer to live with Genghis Khan.’
‘Her house is enormous . . .’
‘You’re not listening to me.’
‘Your grandma lives there too and she’s gorgeous.’
‘Is my voice like a dog whistle? Inaudible to human beings?’
‘It’s on the right side of Cheshire, so totally commutable.’
‘It takes ages to drive from there to Liverpool – and I don’t even have a car.’
‘With no rent to pay, you could get a cheap one. It’d only be for six months.’
‘You said five.’
‘Six months tops.’
‘You said—’
‘Oh come on, Dan. I’m not asking you to do this for me, I’m asking you to do this for
us
. You want the house, don’t you?’
‘Gemma, that house will not still be on the market in six months’ time. You heard what the estate agent said.’
‘I know, but it might be in
two
. It takes a few months for a house sale to happen – with all the surveys and legal work. So if we moved out now and started saving really hard, we could make an offer after a couple of months with a view to completing the sale a few months after that. Only then would we need to hand over the full amount of money.’
‘What if it’s gone by then?’
‘It won’t be. But if, for argument’s sake, it was – we’d simply have some extra cash under our belt, which will put us in a stronger position to buy somewhere else.’
‘You’ve hated everywhere else.’
She shakes her head. ‘It’s not going to happen. I’ve got a good feeling about it.’
‘I’m sorry, Gemma,’ I say assertively. ‘It’s absolutely out of the question. There is no way you’re going to change my mind. I’m a hundred per cent against the idea.’
By 7.35 a.m. we’ve handed in our notice on the flat.
Chapter 4
Gemma
I drive to work with adrenalin pumping through my body for reasons that go beyond the fact that I got beeped at traffic lights while fantasizing about free-standing oak kitchen units with a Belfast sink and vintage taps.
I’m tired but wired, my head buzzing as I pull into my allotted space outside Wilburn House, the northern headquarters of Austin Blythe, the advertising agency where I work. The building is a former stately home, complete with shrubbery clipped to within an inch of its life, a Grecian-style outdoor pool (in which nobody, to my knowledge, has ever dared swim) and humungous, phallic gates, which my friend Sadie says is a convenient warning to those who enter that the place is run by pricks.
‘You know that bottle of Peach Schnapps I got from a client at Christmas?’ Sadie greets me as she types feverishly at the desk opposite mine. ‘It’s still in my drawer and I’m currently feeling a need to stick a straw in it and suck until I’m unconscious.’
The room in which Sadie and I work isn’t huge – there are just eight desks – but it’s perfectly formed: they upgrade the interior here more often than I do my bikini line. At the moment, it’s all Danish-designed chairs, monochrome desks and, in a bid to underline how cutting-edge we are, a selection of outlandishly-coloured bean bags arranged in a circle under the window in an area officially named the ‘Think Tank’ (and unofficially the ‘Wank Tank’).
‘Good morning!’ I say brightly.
‘Not by anyone’s definition is it a good morning,’ she mutters. ‘We’ve had a meeting sprung on us at ten, we need to chase up the visuals we should’ve had a week ago, and we need to complete something resembling an advertising campaign before we see Sebastian this afternoon.’
There is a peculiar way things work in advertising that is virtually unique to this profession, with the exception of police work and the writing of West End musicals: we have partners.
Sadie and I have had this conjugal arrangement for six years, since the day we started. As art director, she does the pictures; as copy writer, I do the words – although the reality is rarely that defined. Think Cagney and Lacey without the guns, Lennon and McCartney without the guitars, Ant and Dec without the six-figure salaries.
People assume that, because the average television advertisement is less than twenty seconds long, my bit doesn’t involve much. I’m convinced my mum thinks I jot something on a fag packet, then spend the rest of the day filing my nails.
In reality, a vast amount of work goes into creating what viewers see on screen: research, brainstorming, endless fine-tuning with account managers, creative directors, motion graphics specialists – and fighting off the ‘traffic managers’, whose job it is to organise our workload i.e. pile as much on us as possible.
Today, we’re putting the finishing touches on the ideas Sadie and I have worked up for a new condom campaign, before presenting it to Sebastian Boniface – Austin Blythe’s brand new, hot-shot creative director.
‘Why don’t I get some coffee first,’ I suggest, taking out my purse.
She looks at me like I need some strong pills and a session of electric shock therapy. ‘We haven’t got time for coffee!’
‘Deep breaths,’ I wink, heading to the staff canteen, or
The Playhouse
as they’ve rebranded it. I wait in the line as Shirley, our long-standing dinner lady, has her daily battle with the cappuccino machine before setting down a cup in front of me that looks very like she’s pumped it out of a can of Gillette shaving foam.
I glance up into the car park and spot the man himself, Sebastian, getting out of his classic car. I couldn’t tell you what it is, except that it’s a convertible, expensive-looking and so vividly red that if it was a lipstick shade it’d be called ‘floozie’s knickers’. He clicks the lock and caresses the bonnet with his fingers in the same mildly erotic manner you see on soft porn movies or adverts for leather sofas.
I pick up the coffees, register that the clock has hit 9 a.m. and step outside to make a crucially important phone call – to Rich.
‘So basically, you can’t afford the house now, but you will in a couple of months?’ he concludes, after I’ve brought him up to speed on my grand plan.
‘Exactly.’
‘There’s absolutely
no way
this house will still be on the market then,’ he tells me stoutly. ‘It’s
blindingly
popular and—’
‘Rich,’ I interrupt. ‘You told me it’d been up for sale for a while. Is it
really
blindingly popular?’
‘Yes! But for one reason or another things haven’t progressed as we would’ve liked.’
My skin prickles with suspicion. ‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’
‘Course not!’
‘It hasn’t got dry rot or rising damp or electrics that were rewired by a chimpanzee?’
‘Don’t be daft. Full disclosure these days, Gem. All I’m saying is – yes, properties take longer to sell now than a few years ago. But waiting a couple of months before you put in an offer . . . don’t get your hopes up is my advice.’
‘If we can get the money together before then, we’ll act sooner. How long exactly has it been on the market? Did you say a couple of months?’
‘Arhoehr,’ he coughs.
‘Eh?’ I repeat.
He sighs. ‘It first went on the market two years ago, but the seller’s chain fell through, so they took it off for ages. When it went back on, it got a buyer early on, but their mortgage offer was retracted, so it came off the market again for a few months. It went back on last week.’
‘So that’s why I’ve only just seen it on Rightmove.’
‘Precisely. They got totally fed up of the whole thing. But this time they’re certain.’
‘So am I.’
‘Good luck with that saving then. Just don’t take too long, will you?’
By the time I’ve returned to my desk, Sadie is glaring at her to-do list as if her head might cave in. I thrust a coffee in her hand and place a hazelnut cookie – her favourite – on her desk.
‘Thanks, Gem,’ she says. ‘Oh God, sorry, I haven’t even asked you about the house you went to look at yesterday. Any good?’
‘We’re putting in an offer.’
Her eyes widen. ‘Wow. Dan must’ve had the shock of his life.’
‘It wasn’t just me who didn’t like the others, you know. He felt as strongly as I did that they were all rubbish.’ She picks up her biscuit. ‘Anyway, it’s over our budget, but the plan is to go and live with Dan’s mum for a few months to save up some money. Assuming she’ll have us.’