Wake Up Happy Every Day (26 page)

It’s as rare to find a woman who is unabashed about her appetite, as it is to find a bloke who announces to his office that he ‘watched Amateur Cumshot Compilation 3 on RedTube last night. What a movie that is. A classic.’

You do meet those kinds of blokes from time to time, but not too often thank God.

And I’ve never understood the fear of food. Because food is not porn. Being embarrassed about eating is being embarrassed about living, isn’t it?

And yet, bizarrely, there is one food group that women are not afraid of or embarrassed by. Cake. Take it from me, local government offices are mostly about flexi-time and cake. Cake comes in for birthdays, for house moves, for news of engagements, births, weddings, christenings, driving tests, kids making the cross-country team or passing grade one piano. There is no news too small that it can’t be celebrated with chocolate brownies for the whole office.

Obviously though, I’m not such an idiot as to ever say any of this out loud to the women I work with. No, I eat their cakes, I bring in my own cakes. I watch them fill the minutes between slices of cake with crispbreads and low-calorie soups and I say nothing.

Anyway, that lunchtime, Sarah has pie and chips and then she has pudding. Black Forest gateau. And she doesn’t apologise once. By the end of that lunch I’m already a little bit in love. And when we come back to the office she looks up at the sign over the automatic doors of our building and says, ‘Council business used to go on in Town Halls, now it goes on in Hives. It’s depressing really.’ And she had me then. Completely.

And over the next few weeks we go out to lunch a few times. And I tell her about accidental drift. How I trained as a teacher but quickly discovered that to be a high-school English teacher in modern Britain is to be a bad comedian in a hostile club. You have to deliver your terrible material six times a day to a crowd that would rather be somewhere else. And the heckling is vicious and it never ever stops. So I left, drifted through offices, shops, factories and warehouses before washing up at the council.

She just nods. ‘My sister’s a teacher,’ she says. ‘She’s looking to get out.’

And that’s something I did learn in my year and a bit of teaching. Teachers – they all want to leave school. No one hates school like a teacher does. No one feels like setting fire to the bogs more than the staff. When I was working in schools a teacher in Hampshire killed a kid, battered him to death with a chair in design technology. When we heard about it my head of department said, ‘One for our team.’ There was a slightly more cheery atmos in the staffroom that day. It was then I knew I had to leave. The council was a safe haven. Sarah nods. She gets it.

We go to the movies. We go to the theatre. We go to the bleeding ballet. We have dinner. We kiss politely afterwards. I meet some of her many friends. I go to Sunday dinner at her parents.

Then one weekend Russell flies into London to acquire something, or liquidate something. And we go to the dog track. It’s the most fashionable night out that year. He bets a ton a race. And mostly wins. He has a system. Of course he does. Russell always has a system. And it works. And he leaves £4K up. Most of which he gives to waitresses as tips. He buys £100 bottles of Krug. He talks brightly, wittily. He’s a hurricane of energy and charm. He calls everyone sweetheart. He shines. At least, that’s what I think.

When he gets a cab home, Sarah sighs and says, ‘Thank God, he’s gone. I know he’s your oldest friend and everything, but I’m sorry, he is a complete arse.’

I tell her not to be sorry. To think nothing of it.

That’s the night we go to bed. We go straight to bed, we don’t even pause for drinks. We’re both of us more than ready for it. And it’s uncomplicated and fun. She sets to with an appetite – as you might expect. You know those things men and women do to and with each other? Turns out she knows them all and she loves them all. And she’s happy to wait while I learn them. While I play catch-up. I wasn’t exactly a virgin, but there were certainly gaps in my personal development. Gaps which Sarah identifies and makes sure I address. With her support I go from developing to outstanding pretty quickly. I think I do anyway.

She’s a laugh. She really is.

On the Monday after that first night I stop off at Greggs and buy every cake in the shop for my delighted co-workers.

And six or seven months on, we’re in bed at hers. A lazy Sunday, Adele on the iThing.

Sarah says, ‘So . . .’

And I say, ‘So . . . what?’

And she says, ‘So . . . we’re going out now, right? You are my boyfriend?’

And I say, ‘It certainly looks like it.’

And she says, ‘Good.’

And then, later, at the Shoulder of Mutton where we often go for Sunday lunch, Sarah starts again ‘So . . .’

And I laugh and say, ‘So . . . what?’

And she says, ‘So . . . I want you to move in. And I want a baby.’

I laugh and she laughs. And she says, ‘I’m going to have sticky toffee pudding and custard. Oh and, actually, Nicky, I’m not joking.’

And I say, ‘Ah.’

And she says, ‘Ah? Ah?’

And then she orders pudding. I don’t have any dessert. I have a whisky. The house double, which is very good value.

And back at her house she says, ‘Nicky, if you have regular sex with a thirty-eight-year-old woman, then you need to expect to have these conversations.’

And she tells me that if I’m not into it I have to let her know right now because she’ll have time to get over me, to fall out of love with me. And then she’ll need time to meet someone else and fall in love with them, to trust them enough to want to have a baby with them, and then time to get pregnant by them.

But actually I only really hear the bit where she says she’ll have to fall out of love with me, because that means she’s in love with me now, right? I seek and get clarification. It is, indeed, right. Right. And then she tells me I’m an idiot.

And that afternoon there is more music – Dusty Springfield this time – and there’s more whisky and we make a start on a baby. And, eventually, just when we’re about to do the calculations about IVF and whether we could re-mortgage the house to pay for it, we make Scarlett.

Babies turn out to be more complicated than love. Love is a cinch by comparison.

At first it all seems easy. At first it just seems like a happily endless stream of cake-buying obligations. I’m moving in with Sarah – there’s cake. Sarah’s pregnant – there’s cake. We’re getting married. A rush job. But time for cake, naturally.

We’ve had the first scan – cake. Second scan – cake. Third scan – cake. Maternity leave – cake. And suddenly there’s a baby. A real-live girl-child who slides out with ridiculously little trouble or trauma. A girl as pinkly slippery as a young salmon.

We call her Scarlett. Yes, it is a lovely name, thank you. And how is she? She’s gorgeous, thank you. Beautiful. Happy. Smiley. Strong-willed though. She’s her mother’s daughter right enough. Oh and yes, she’s hemiplegic. Cerebral palsy. According to our Dr Joshi she has a neuromuscular mobility impairment stemming from an upper motor lesion in the brain as well as the corticospinal tract of the motor cortex. This damage impairs the ability of some nerve receptors in the spine to properly receive gamma amino fluid leading to hypertonia in the muscles signalled by those damaged nerves. Determined googling would seem to confirm Dr Joshi’s diagnosis.

No cake.

And then Sarah goes back to work. Should mean cake surely? Then she gets a new job at the uni. That should be cake too, right? Senior Lecturer in Management, which means more money plus she has the holidays and can be at home a lot more. In the normal world, the one we’ve left behind, this would definitely mean cake. Double cake. Cake overload. Cake frenzy. Cake apocalypse. Only we don’t feel much like cake any more.

And Scarlett walks, eventually, though with a pronounced limp – or dynamic equinus as we call it in the trade – but she doesn’t start talking and so we stop too. Silence comes into our house like a thief. A professional burglar who knows where all the good stuff is kept and removes it a piece at a time so that it takes us a while to notice. And meanwhile sympathy waits on us outside like a policeman, ready to escort us everywhere, making sure we don’t get into trouble. I think sometimes that the sympathy might be worse than the silence. The policeman worse than the thief. Police and thieves. Neither are good. Neither are anything like cake.

Twenty-eight

JESUS

Jesus is in Lilith with Sarah and she is parading for him in a variety of $5,000 dresses. The best dresses. But don’t think of it as a shopping trip, he tells her. Think of it as a school assignment. Today Sarah must speak Spanish only.

He thinks Sarah looks good, he can feel the air fizzing around them. He’ll do it today. Today is a good day for it. But the time must be right. He must make sure she’s in the right mood. A good salesman must be a psychologist, a storyteller, a lover. He must seduce and he must enchant.

They are cool the English ladies, he’s heard that, but after three hours downtown in all the Latino boutiques he is certain that Sarah looks at him with a little extra heat in her eyes. A little more light.

And now here in Lilith the spark between Sarah and Jesus is making all the store clerks smile. And they don’t smile easy these chicks. They are in a universe way beyond cool. But this handsome young man, this rich older lady learning Spanish for him, is like a kind of fairy tale maybe. Or a story from the entertainment papers. Even this kind of rinky-dink boutique clerk is warmed up by this. And for Jesus it feels good to be looked at like he’s someone.

He makes sure they all know who is boss. No. No. Not this one. Something not quite right – neckline is wrong. And then at last – yes, yes, perfecto – that one, yes. Does you right, does you justice, brings out the azul of your eyes – the azul of your eyes and your beautiful, beautiful chichis. The girls in the shop all cover their mouths and giggle at that. Jesus includes them all in his widest smile.

‘Sarah. She has beautiful . . .’ He makes a shape with his hands. ‘Amazing chichis, yes?’ He is outrageous, but Jesus knows that women like that. A salesman must perform. He must captivate. Sarah blushes, but everyone can see she likes the fooling around. Likes to be seen as a sex symbol. Who can resist that? And the chicks in the store, they all agree, yes, she has beautiful breasts. Amazing chichis.

And later, in Latin Grill Express, Jesus makes sure to compliment her accent, her vocabulary, to express admiration for the way her chichis looked in the last dress all over again, then Sarah asks about his plans for work, what he will do when they all leave. She says he must be keen to get back to his studies, and he knows he must tell her about his business plans right now. His heart dances hard in his chest and he knows that the time is right. A salesman must know the exact time to close.

‘Tees,’ he says

Sarah frowns. ‘Tees?’

‘Yeh. T-shirts.’ And he explains: high-quality American-made tees with a distinctive logo. That is his plan. That is the business to be in. To be the best in. High-grade tees with an awesome logo.

‘It’s the logo that counts,’ Jesus says. ‘Look at Superdry.’ The riches from rags story of Superdry is a fable to Jesus. A legend about how to get on and get up, but he says the time is right for a new contender. Like Mary says, ‘There’s always room for a Pepsi.’ By which she means any business has room for two giants at any one time.

‘The cheapest. And the best,’ said Sarah.

‘Exact. You get me.’

And he goes on to tell her how maybe some markets even have room for four mega corps. Two trying to be the cheapest. Two trying to be the best.

‘And people have to wear clothes. You can’t digitise T-shirts.’

He claps his hands together. ‘Sí.’

So then he takes a breath, makes his face all serious and asks. And she sits and takes a sip of her drink. She closes her eyes. She makes a show of thinking hard and serious. And he gets that. He knows that she needs to do that, to look like it’s a big decision.

And then she says no.

She says no. He can’t believe it. After everything.

She says, ‘Let me tell you why I’m out.’ Like she is from one of those shows where tycoons crap all over the dreams of the little guys. Like she’s a dragon in her shitty stinking den. And she asks him if he would have taken a bank manager to Lilith, if he would have told Donald Trump or the manager of the Chase Manhattan Bank that they had amazing chichis? Like that is relevant to anything.

She tells him that she thinks, yes, tees probably are a good business to be in, relatively easy access to the market, fewer barriers to entry for small-time operators than most industries, but she doesn’t trust him to run an effective company. She doesn’t think he’ll take advice. She reminds him of the time they all went out and got ripped that night they first met. How he didn’t listen to her.

She goes on to say that she is happy to pay for services, like the Spanish lessons, but she couldn’t invest in a business on the scale he’s asking. It would make her too anxious and she has too much anxiety in her life already. And she tells him some bullshit story about lending her sister money to pay her divorce lawyer and her sister getting back with her husband and spending the money on a new car. And how her sister and her don’t really talk much any more.