The Trouble with Henry and Zoe Read online

  On the way to work this morning I stopped at the post office and dropped off a parcel wrapped in brown paper; the last of my halfway decent handbags. Lucky bargain hunters up and down the country are stepping out in my Kurt Geigers, Alex McQueens and strappy Pedro Garcías. They are carrying their keys and lippy in my cast-off Mulberry, Moschino and Max goddamn Mara handbags. But the proceeds will pay for hiking boots, a backpack and a whole bunch of tickets, so fair exchange. No one at work knows I’m planning on travelling, but I’m going to have to tell them soon. As of next week I have three more ends of the month before I board my plane to I don’t know where.

  Vicky and Rachel are going out for dim sum tonight, but I don’t get paid for a week so I’ll be having spaghetti hoops. Again. And I kind of like it. Not so much the Heinz product as the disciplined frugality. I’ve realized that getting there – on that plane to somewhere – is an important part of this adventure. And there is something satisfying about this minor act of self-denial. About this compactualization.

  What would they think if they could see me now, sitting on the bed tented under my duvet with a pair of scissors, a bottle opener and a Paterson tank? Or Henry? That he’d had a lucky escape, probably. All day I’ve been wondering whether I shouldn’t have let him walk me home – it’s been a while since anyone has. I still have one hundred and seven days until the cabin crew close the doors. And God knows this bed feels awfully big some nights. Most nights. Less so, however, when you’re cocooned inside a heavy duvet.

  You don’t need a darkroom to develop film. You need a dark space for five minutes, that’s all – just long enough to transfer the film from your camera into the developing tank – a canister about the size of a cocktail shaker, or an urn, maybe. You can buy bags, like the things magicians use for storing rabbits and flowers and silk handkerchiefs, but Alex didn’t buy one of those. Everything else, but not a black bag. His plan was to tape black card to the windows in the study (nursery), to somehow seal the gaps between the door and the frame. But he never did, didn’t develop a single roll after I mocked him and his approach.

  At widows’ counselling they talk about having a ‘bright place’. Somewhere you can return to in your mind, a happy memory of you and your dearly departed. Many of the women recalled their weddings, honeymoons, proposals, the births of their children. We didn’t have those. Maybe that’s why their grief seemed so much more real than my own. I’ve done the groups, the books, the blogs, the forums. Online I lied, claiming we had been married two years, but while the sympathy felt deeper and more sincere, it was more than offset by my feelings of guilt and fraudulence. In the counselling group we were told to bring a notebook; I couldn’t even get that right. Twelve women in my group, with floral, pink, patterned pads and me with the only black book out of the dozen – as if I were trying too hard to play the part. We wrote down memories good and bad, promises to ourselves, permission to smile, acceptance of what has gone, our bright places. On the third session I wrote in my book: I will not come back here – and I kept my promise. My notebook is now filled with numbers, destinations and scribbled pictures of cats, crocodiles and penguins.

  Once you have removed the film from your camera, you go to your dark place and open the film canister. You can buy specially designed gadgets but a tin opener will do. Next you snip the corners off the leading edge of the film and – with nothing but your fingers to guide you – you feed all 1.4 metres into your Paterson tank. Screw on the lid and you’re ready to go downstairs and add your chemicals. The first roll took me more than half an hour of fiddling underneath my blanket, and a part of me hoped I would get it wrong. If I exposed the film, then I wouldn’t have to see the last pictures Alex took on his silly German camera. Of course there were no pictures of him; Alex was behind the camera. Instead there were twenty-one shots of shopfronts, litter, knackered fences, crooked goalposts – urban decay, I suppose. But instead of being interesting they were obvious, and cold and bland. At the end of the roll were three photographs of me, sitting on a bench on the common, unaware of the camera (or pretending to be, I don’t remember) and staring into space. Whether I was happy or not, only that girl knows.

  Inside my Paterson tank now are another twenty-four black and white pictures of strangers and shadows and textures. There are pictures of Rachel having her hair cut, and of Henry, looking out over the Thames. Maybe he was drumming up the courage to ask what I was doing this weekend. If I could have looked inside his head, if I’d known what was coming, maybe I’d have answered differently. But I didn’t know, any more than the girl on that bench knew what was going to happen to Alex.

  Henry

  For My Sins

  I’ve never met a Kirstine, never even heard the name before tonight, and my mouth insists on autocorrecting its phonetics. So far, I’ve called her Kirsten, Kristy and Christine. She laughs it off with the learned tolerance of the unusually tall, small and named. Fortunately, Kirstine is a talker, so the opportunities to mispronounce her tricky syllables have been limited. She’s bright, confident and has it all mapped out.

  ‘. . . and then, maybe a year after that, I should get promoted to junior director. Probably not a bad time to have a baby. Haha! Don’t panic, we only just met. But seriously, babies are on my agenda, and if I get them out before I transition into the upper tier, then it shouldn’t have too big an impact on my momentum. Maybe take ten months off then . . .’

  She has kale in her teeth. I’d never had kale until I came to London, but there must be a surfeit of the stuff somewhere, because I can’t seem to open a menu lately without finding it in at least two places. Three, if you include Kirstine’s teeth. I’m not sure what the protocol is here: if I tell her she’ll be embarrassed now, but if I don’t she’ll only be embarrassed later. But I already know I won’t be sticking around for ‘later’, so I fill up our glasses and let her keep talking. She has good teeth, there’s a small chip on her left incisor, but they are otherwise white, straight and, from where I’m sitting, in good repair.

  A waiter brings our desserts, and Kirstine – like she has done for the starters and the main course – takes out her phone to photograph her food and upload it onto Facebook.

  ‘You on?’ says Kirstine, tapping her phone with a highly polished fingernail.

  ‘I’m a digital recluse,’ I say, and Kirstine laughs quite convincingly for exactly two seconds.

  I was never a social media enthusiast, but it became quickly and dramatically less entertaining after I left April on our wedding day. So no more Facebook, which could be considered a silver lining if it means I no longer have to look at pictures of my friend’s puddings.

  ‘You lost your hair,’ says Kirstine, miming the haircut from my profile picture. The last cut my mother gave me, in fact.

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘And I’ve looked everywhere.’

  ‘Shame,’ says Kirstine, either ignoring or entirely missing my poor attempt at wit. ‘It was nice. So . . . hairdressing?’

  ‘For my sins.’

  For my sins? As far as I know, I’ve never dropped this particular dollop of conversational grout before, and I’m only using it now because I cannot think of a single original thing to say. But as I replay my words, it does strike me that they are uncomfortably appropriate.

  ‘Pay well, does it?’

  ‘Not unless you own your own salon,’ I say.

  ‘And do you?’

  ‘Er . . . no.’

  ‘Oh.’

  If it weren’t for my Fridays fixing teeth, I don’t know how I’d survive down here. Move in with a bunch of Australians, I suppose, buy less meat, drink less wine, go on fewer dates. Which – with the exception of the Australians – may be no bad thing. It’s occurred to me several times in the last few months how it would play out if one of my hairdressing clients turned up at the dental surgery, or vice versa. It’s not illegal, of course, to cut hair and fill teeth, but some might consider it odd. As far as I can see, I would have two options: claim I have a tw
in, or flat denial. But I’m not overly concerned. When I’m cutting hair my clients tend to see me in reflection while concentrating on their own, and when I’m fixing teeth they stare at the ceiling and I’m wearing a mask. Besides all of that, I work at a posh clinic and a fairly grotty salon, so the chances of crossover are somewhat minimized. Even so, if I ever do find myself on a third date, or a fourth, or a twenty-fourth, then it’s going to come up, and one revelation leads to another leads to You did what! Somehow, though, I don’t think Kirstine and I are going to make it to date twenty-four. I’d be surprised, in fact, if we make it to ten o’clock.

  ‘So . . .’ I say, ‘how’s the sticky toffee pudding?’

  ‘Yum. And the cheese board?’

  ‘Great. Brie-liant, in fact!’ And I wonder how hard it would be to bite out my own tongue.

  At the dental practice we employ two receptionists, two hygienists and five dental nurses, all but one are women, half of whom are single, all of whom can send a text message blindfolded. I hear variations of the same story every week. If a date is going badly, they slip their phone out of a pocket, or purse or from under a thigh and, under cover of the table, they send a pre-typed text to their designated rescuer. Two seconds later your phone rings and the person on the other end informs you your cat has escaped, house burned down, granny exploded. I don’t have a rescuer, so I eat my cheese, and wait for a waiter to pass within screaming distance so I can ask for the check.

  Kirstine’s phone rings.

  ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘it’s my . . . do you mind?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Hi,’ she says into the phone. ‘Is everything okay? No,’ – Kirstine holds a hand to her lips – ‘you’re kidding . . . both legs! . . . That’s awful . . . No, not at all, I’ll be there as quick as I can.’

  Zoe

  Just For Tonight

  Invention is the one we all talk about, but Necessity is the mother of an entire brood, including Desperation, Humility and Pragmatism. How else to explain my presence behind this narrow length of sticky timber? I’m pretty confident that if I were to wander into this pub off the high street, I’d never make it through the door, let alone all the way to the bar. More likely, I’d glance around, rapidly taking in the tatty décor and scowling faces, then pretend my phone had just rung, hold it to my ear with a look saying Gotta take this, then back out of the door and stride off looking for somewhere less authentic. Yet here I am, pulling pints and slinging peanuts.

  The regulars are lovely, actually, even if they do look like the cast from some BBC2 crime drama set in Victorian Lahndan Tahn. Half of them would have your wallet given the chance, but they would spend your money behind the bar, buying drinks for their friends, and you too, if you happened to stick around. Plus, big bonus, no one knows my boyfriend died. People make tasteless jokes in front of me, they tease me about being single, ask ‘Who died?’ when I’m in a bad mood and snap at me when the cloud is over them. They treat me like a normal person. And as therapy goes, it beats the biscuits off the old widows’ support group where, anyway, I felt like such a bloody imposter.

  Even so, I’m still not convinced this is where I’d choose to spend my wages, which, by the way, are paid in cash at the end of every shift. And without which, I could forget about travelling in September. But besides the tax-free top-up, the Duck and Cover is also a welcome distraction; the locals have accepted me as one of their own – the ‘token posh bird’, according to Winston, the landlord. He struggles with the concept that it’s not appropriate to pat me on the bottom (‘I’m a product of me time, Duchess’), but he means well, and we’re making progress.

  What else I get out of the Duck and Cover is a free meal every shift. ‘Anything off the menu, sweetheart.’ Legend has it that this stained piece of card once featured such exotic items as halloumi cheese, Cajun chicken and ‘them pies with just the lids’, but after a sudden influx of ‘ponces, puffs and prima donnas’, the chef (Winston’s nephew, Gary) reverted to the standard fare of bulk-bought burgers and steak ‘n’ kidney with a full casing of pastry. The Duck and Cover does a fine trade with home-grown custom, thank you very much. And while the ‘trendy types’ are more than welcome, Winston – ‘to be quite frank, Princess’ – doesn’t need the earache if your romaine lettuce is a little limp.

  The burgers are a long long way from wonderful, but with cheese, bacon and a ton of mustard, they’re passable. And the chips are pretty bloody good. With a side of coleslaw, my Saturday night supper must come to fifteen hundred calories, and is generally enough to keep me going until the following evening, when I’ll have a bowl of soup and a slice of toast. Lord knows what it’s doing to my cholesterol, but I’m cycling about eighty miles a week and I’ve dropped a dress size since Christmas. You won’t find it recommended by the NHS anytime soon, but it works for me.

  Winston starts on the music round (‘For which band did Stuart Sutcliffe play bass guitar? That’s Stuart Sutcliffe.’), which means I have about seven more minutes to finish my supper before the pub quizzers drop their biros and run for the bar. Me and Winston will serve in the region of fifty drinks in a ten-minute window during which we really could use an extra pair of hands, but Janice has phoned in sick and there’s no one else to cover her shift. It’s a slog, but the upside is I won’t have to listen to Janice catalogue every wrong her boyfriend has committed in the last seven days. Besides, when the rush is over everyone will return to their quiz sheets and I’ll have precious little to do except polish the glassware. Silly night for a pub quiz, if you ask me, but Winston has found that a midweek quiz attracts too many ‘bleeding students, graduates and whatnot, no offence, love’. Winston’s theory is that having built up that huge loan attending university, the effing eggheads can’t handle losing to teams of builders, plumbers, cashiers and market traders – which tends to generate all kinds of unnecessary agro and split lips. So it’s rubber burgers, a Saturday night quiz, and everyone’s happy, darling.

  I’m struggling with a particularly tough mouthful when Henry walks through the door. He hesitates, taking in the décor, the locals, the ‘Which artist wrote “Islands in the Stream”?’, before spotting me, almost choking on my Duck and Cover burger.

  There’s nothing else for it, so I turn my back and cough a mouthful of burger into the bin. Please God, don’t let him notice. It’s bad enough that I’m wearing knackered jeans and a t-shirt so old it’s forgotten what colour it’s supposed to be. It occurs to me that I might have ketchup around my mouth, so I duck behind the counter and give my lips a quick once over with a licked finger.

  And what the hell is he doing here anyway?

  ‘Hello stranger,’ I say, dialling up the nonchalance as I pop up from behind the bar. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I was in the . . . you know, neighbourhood,’ he says apologetically, and whether it’s deliberate or not, his awkwardness is gently endearing. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘Of course not. But . . .’ I lean over the bar, going through a small pantomime of looking for something on the other side, ‘didn’t you have a date?’

  Henry smiles sheepishly. ‘She er . . . photographed her food.’

  And damn it if I don’t laugh so hard I snort. ‘Hah! You should have brought her here, no one photographs the food here.’

  ‘Sorry,’ says Henry, pointing at my half-eaten burger, ‘was I interrupting your supper?’

  ‘What, that? No. I mean, I was, but I’m a bit, you know . . .’ I pat my stomach.

  Henry slides up onto a stool, then leans forwards and whispers: ‘Aretha Franklin.’

  ‘I peg your pardon?’

  He nods towards the tables of scribbling quizzers. ‘Which soul sister contributed to the soundtracks of both Bridget Jones movies?’

  ‘Aretha?’

  ‘Franklin. “Respect” in the first, “Think” in the second. I think.’

  ‘Very philosophical.’

  Henry laughs. ‘So . . . am I allowed to buy you a
drink?’

  ‘God yes. I’ll have a large red, please.’

  Winston gives his staff one free drink a night, and I’d finished mine by the end of the science and nature round. I pour a very generous measure of the most recently opened red, and tilt my glass towards Henry before taking a sip.

  ‘Any chance I could have one of those?’ he says, raising an invisible glass.

  ‘Sorry, manners, Zoe!’

  ‘Is it that good?’

  I shake my head. ‘No, but it gets better if you drink enough.’

  ‘Best make it a bottle then.’

  And as I pull the cork, it’s as if someone has fired a starter’s pistol. The sound of fifty chairs sliding simultaneously backwards sets my teeth on edge as I brace myself for the onslaught.

  ‘Good luck,’ says Henry, taking the bottle and a glass to a table in the corner.

  Imagine a zombie apocalypse in which the insatiable dead have retained enough of their civilized nature that they are prepared to pay before taking a bite out of your frontal lobe. That’s the half-time rush at the Duck and Cover quiz night; fifty thirsty punters, leaning over the bar, glass-eyed and frenzied, shouting orders, waving money in your face and giving you every impression that if they can just catch hold of your wrist, you will never see your arm again. Fending the buggers off is hard work, requiring concentration, coordination and stamina. I don’t know what I look like at the end of this short ordeal, but it’s a look you won’t see on the front of Cosmopolitan any time soon.

  As the undead traipse back to their tables, Henry returns to his stool. I place an empty glass on the bar, and Henry fills it silently. He waits until I’ve taken a good drink before speaking.