The Two of Us Read online

  ‘Who? What? When? W—’

  ‘When! When d’I get to meet her?’

  Good question.

  After my last girlfriend, Kate, walked out on me, I did what any recently humiliated idiot would do. I slept with the receptionist at work. Pippa had an endearing but amusing habit of lisping ‘Bounthy bounthy’ whenever she went on top. Which was quite often. Which . . . I told El. I know, I know – but he’s my oldest friend and I couldn’t resist. Well, the indiscretion has come back to punish me, because her name has lodged where so little else will – firmly in El’s head. Unless my next girlfriend is a trampolinist called Pippa, it would probably be a mistake to introduce her to him.

  El looks at me: Well?

  ‘Soon,’ I say.

  El narrows his eyes. ‘Sh. . . she d. . . d. . . d. . .’

  ‘Can you spell it?’ I ask, remembering what Phil told me about how to tease the words from El with various ‘cueing’ techniques. ‘Or spell how it sounds?’

  The tendons on El’s skinny neck stand taut with effort as he galvanizes himself for another attempt. ‘Duh. . . d. . . u. . .’

  ‘D-U?’

  El nods. ‘Mmm. . .’ He twists his neck far to the left, his lips working mutely as if trying to snatch the next letter from the air, ‘P . . . D . . .’

  ‘D-U-M-P-D?’

  El swings his hands together, connecting just enough to consider it a clap. ‘She d. . . dumped you. . . f. . . figured y’out. Ha ha ha.’

  ‘How’s that funny?’

  ‘S’pose it’s not really,’ he says, suddenly straight-faced. ‘Sad, tragic, pred. . . pred. . .’

  ‘Predictable?’

  El jabs a finger at me like a game-show host pointing out a winning contestant.

  ‘I hate to burst your miserable bubble,’ I say, ‘but Ivy has not dumped me.’

  ‘Ye. . . ye. . . y. . .’

  I know what the bastard’s driving at, but I’m damned if I’m going to make it any easier for him.

  ‘Fuck it,’ says El. ‘D’you think you cn carry me?’

  I doubt El ever achieved his teenage goal of reaching five-foot-six, and he was skinny before the Huntington’s began eroding him. He can’t weigh much more than one of my 10-year-old nieces.

  ‘I’m pretty sure I could throw you clean out of the window,’ I tell him.

  El contemplates this. ‘B. . . be quicker,’ he says.

  The house El shares with Phil ranges over five floors. The front door sits atop a short flight of tiled steps leading to the drive and the busy road that runs past the house. El wants ‘f. . . fresh air’, so I pick him up, carry him down three dozen steps and set him gently down on the threshold. It turns out he’s lighter than he looks, but the effort has my arms tingling.

  After some initial difficulty, El removes a packet of cigarettes and a lighter from his pocket. ‘L. . . light one f’me,’ he says.

  I do as I’m asked and pass the burning Marlboro to El. ‘You don’t smoke,’ I tell him.

  El holds up evidence to the contrary and blows smoke in my direction. The traffic here is relentless, so the face full of smoke amounts to little more than an insult in the cloud of pollution that surrounds us on this balmy August evening.

  ‘Well, you didn’t three weeks ago.’

  El inhales deeply, holds the full-tar smoke in his lungs, widens and then crosses his eyes. I wait for him to turn green, cough, splutter – like they do in the movies – but El merely opens his mouth and lets the smoke slowly escape his lungs. ‘W. . . wan’ one?’

  ‘No, thank you, filthy habit.’

  ‘Thass what Phil says,’ he grins. ‘But they do make y’look c. . . f. . . cool as f. . . fuck.’

  ‘That they do,’ I tell him.

  Pollution aside, it’s pleasant sitting on the steps and watching the folk and traffic move by at approximately the same pace. El is on his third fag when we see Phil shuffling back to the flat. He shakes his head when he sees us, then flicks me a small wave.

  ‘Boys,’ he says, mounting the steps. ‘Having a party?’ And he tuts as he collects El’s butts and folds them into a paper tissue.

  ‘Thank you, d. . . darling,’ says El.

  ‘You’re most unwelcome,’ says Phil, sitting between us and plucking the cigarette from El’s fingers. He takes a drag and passes the cigarette back to El. ‘Filthy fucking habit.’

  ‘All the b. . . b. . . bess ones are,’ says El, winking at me.

  ‘True enough,’ says Phil.

  ‘What’s brought all this’ – I waft cigarette smoke away from my face – ‘on, anyway?’

  Phil looks at the ground and shakes his head again.

  ‘Member that S. . . Smiths song?’ says El.

  ‘“Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want”?’ offers Phil with a sly smile.

  ‘“Bigmouth Strikes Again”?’ I try.

  ‘Pair of f. . . fuckig jokers. N. . . no. “What D. . . Di. . . Diff. . . fuckit!’

  ‘I know,’ says Phil, gently. He takes the Marlboro from El and takes a deep pull before passing it back. ‘“What Difference Does It Make?”.’

  And, God, do I wish I smoked. ‘So,’ I say. ‘How was the pub?’

  ‘Crowded, noisy and yet somehow still bereft of atmosphere,’ says Phil.

  ‘Sh. . . sh. . . shoulda gone t. . . to the p. . . b. . . p. . . puff pub.’

  ‘I did,’ says Phil.

  ‘S. . . s. . . s. . .’

  ‘Good God,’ says Phil. ‘It’s bad enough having the pip-squeak take the piss with every other breath. But waiting for him to spit it out like this . . . I swear to God, it’s like waiting for a bloody firing squad to pull the trigger.’

  ‘S. . . s. . .’ and the mischievous look in El’s eye would appear to confirm that whatever he is struggling (although you really never know with El) to say, it’s got a barb on it. ‘Suck any cock?’

  ‘I hate to disappoint you, dear heart, but the only thing to pass my lips was a rather thin Merlot.’

  El shrugs petulantly. Earlier this year he invested a considerable amount of breath and effort in trying to convince Phil to find a new boyfriend. As well as the physical symptoms, Huntington’s disease subtracts character and personality, it wears down logic and reason and social inhibition in its victims. Add to this that El has always revelled in the inappropriate, and the result can be sad, funny and deeply confusing. But there was more to El’s dispassionate matchmaking than his disease or his devilment. He understands that he is dying, and that before the end comes he will be diminished beyond recognition. The problem, as El sees it, is that he could last another ten years, by which time Phil will be well into his fifties – hence various nonsense like El ‘dumping’ Phil and enrolling him on dating websites ‘w. . . w. . . while he’s still y. . . young ’nough to find som’ne else.’ As romantic gestures go, it’s about the best I have ever witnessed.

  ‘F. . . Fisher got dumped,’ says El.

  Phil cocks an eyebrow.

  ‘No Fisher did not,’ I say.

  ‘Yet,’ says El, without even a hint of difficulty.

  Chapter 3

  I’m half asleep on Esther’s sofa when my mobile rings and snaps me rudely back to reality – well, to Columbo: Sex and the Married Detective, which is as near to life as I’m in the mood for this Thursday.

  I haven’t organized my friends into a strict hierarchy since I was in the second year of high school, but if I were inclined to it’s hard to imagine Esther anywhere outside of the top three. We’ve lived above and below each other for over five years, we exchange Christmas, birthday and Easter presents, and we share the same taste in daytime television, which, considering my job means a lot of free daytime, is no small consideration. My 63-year-old downstairs neighbour is not really one for going to the pub, drinking eight pints and chatting up the girls, but she always has a good selection of biscuits. Esther’s husband, Nino, retires in November, and soon after that they are exchanging the noises, smells and threats
of Brixton for the serenity of the Italian countryside. I don’t imagine they will miss Brixton one bit. But I’ll miss them, Esther in particular, and I will miss her deeply. Without her I’d have gone crazy this past week.

  It’s been around ninety-six hours since I last saw Ivy. We’ve talked briefly and sent occasional texts establishing little more than we were either recently awake, or soon to be asleep. I tell Ivy I miss her, and she tells me ‘you too’, but it seems more like a courtesy than an actual fact. She was working Monday and Tuesday, but when I suggested we meet up on Wednesday, Ivy was ‘catching up with friends’. Today she has ‘things to do’. More important and appealing things than me, it seems. Esther has supplied hot drinks and sage-ish advice, from suggesting Ivy is married, to Ivy is on her period. Her latest theory (we’d been watching reruns of Spooks) is that Ivy works for MI6 (‘Well, sweetheart, someone has to’).

  I pull my still-ringing phone from my pocket. And somehow I knew it would be Ivy, just as surely as I know this is the call where she tells me it’s over. I mouth the word ‘Ivy’ to Esther, even though I have yet to answer the phone so there is no good reason to whisper. Esther hits pause on the remote, and begins the process of extracting herself from the sofa. It’s a slow process and I’m worried Ivy will get bored and hang up, so I place the flat of my foot against Esther’s broad backside and push her to a full stand. ‘Thank you, love,’ she says. ‘And good luck.’

  I answer the call.

  ‘Hiya,’ I say with a drummed-up lightness that sounds as manufactured as the phone I’m speaking into. ‘Happy Thursday!’ I add, stupidly.

  ‘Hey,’ says Ivy.

  This is the first time she has initiated contact in the last four days, and to judge by the enthusiasm in her voice, it’s about the last thing she wanted to do today.

  ‘How’s things?’ I ask.

  ‘Oh . . . you know.’

  No, I don’t, I have no sodding clue whatsoever. Or maybe I do and I’m just too thick-headed to get the message. Ivy doesn’t clarify, so I dive into the silence. ‘Well, it’s rock ’n’ roll in Brixton,’ I chirp.

  ‘Rock ’n’ roll?’

  ‘Me and Esther,’ I say. ‘Columbo, Murder She Wrote,

  Quincy and a packet of custard creams.’

  ‘Right,’ says Ivy.

  ‘We must have drunk five pints of Earl Grey,’ I say, and the sound of my voice makes me want to bite my tongue out.

  ‘What you doing tomorrow?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing at all.’

  ‘Want to do breakfast?’ says Ivy.

  And my heart swells, it blooms, it does a cheeky little jig. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, definitely, you bet. Your place or mine? Ha, that sounds a bit . . . mind you, I can be there in under an hour if I leave now. I could pick up some saus—’

  ‘No,’ says Ivy. ‘I mean breakfast, I mean tomorrow.’

  ‘Right . . . yes, of course.’

  ‘We . . . we need to talk,’ she says, and inside my chest someone snips the strings that keep my heart suspended behind my ribs. Cut loose, the organ drops and rolls into a place just behind my belly button where it lies heavy like a stone.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I know.’

  We arrange to meet at a café in Wimbledon at ten thirty tomorrow morning. I feel sick.

  Esther invites me to stay for supper, but I’d be lousy company and I have zero appetite. Instead I drift about my flat, moving from room to room, periodically finding myself staring from a window, looking through the television, regarding my reflection and various other acts of pathetic melancholia. For the last five minutes I’ve been sitting on the foot of my bed, staring at a framed James Bond poster (For Your Eyes Only). Despite my protestations that it was a Christmas present from Esther, Ivy gave me a pretty good ribbing about it. At the time I took it as a lighthearted, ‘aren’t you just adorable’ teasing. But maybe she simply found it sad. Unless, of course, Ivy really does work for the Intelligence Service, in which case she almost certainly found it highly amusing. The thing is, someone does have to work for MI6, and being a make-up artist is perfect – perfect – cover: you work irregular hours so no one questions your erratic schedule; you frequently need to work abroad; you have close access to the rich and famous; you can easily collect hair for DNA sampling. Added to that, Ivy is super keen on yoga, which probably comes in handy for negotiating those laser beam things that are used to protect Fabergé eggs, big diamonds and microfilm. And let’s not forget her scars – Ivy says she fell through a coffee table, but who knows the real story?

  But even if Ivy is a spy, it still doesn’t mean I’m not getting dumped, does it, Commander Bond?

  Oh, you’re dumped, all right, says 007. Your licence is well and truly revoked.

  Whatever happens tomorrow at breakfast, at least we’ll reach a conclusion and I can be done with this pitiful moping.

  I sleep badly.

  It takes for ever to drop off, and when I do, I dream that various Bond villains – Scaramanga, Odd Job, Blofeld, Jaws – are pursuing me through the maze from The Shining. That shrill harridan with the knife in her shoe, she closes to within lethal kicking distance and I wake up, heart banging. I go for a pee, drink approximately the same volume of water that I’ve just expelled, then return to bed, toss and turn for twenty minutes, then find myself once again in the dream maze trying to escape the inevitable.

  At six forty-four I give up, get out of bed and inspect my face in the bathroom mirror. The sun is already up and it is not pulling its punches. Purple shadows have pooled beneath my eyes, the left of which has developed an intermittent twitch. About six weeks ago I had a misunderstanding with a barber who ended up clippering my hair down to the wood; it is now just long enough to stick up at five different angles, which is, of course, exactly what it’s doing this morning. Added to all of this I seem to have grown a new forehead wrinkle. I look like shit.

  I spend a long time in the shower; I floss, brush my teeth, exfoliate, shave, moisturize, clip my finger- and toenails, and trim the hairs from my nostrils.

  It’s still only seven thirty-two and I am drooped with fatigue. The phrase ‘polished turd’ comes to mind as I catch my distorted reflection on the side of the kettle. I’ve never had a problem with instant coffee, it delivers on all it promises, but after spending only two nights here, Ivy marched down to the local department store to buy a cafetiere and a bag of ‘proper coffee’. By eight fifteen, I’ve drunk an entire pot of the stuff and it’s done nothing but supercharge the butterflies in my belly. I try on sixteen combinations of what is essentially the same outfit and end up wearing the first shirt and the first pair of jeans I chose. I wear my best socks and boxer shorts because, hey, I’m an optimist. Also, after three weeks of more sex than I could wish for, I have now had six days of nothing, and if there is even an outside chance of getting lucky, I don’t want to compromise that possibility with a pair of baggy underpants.

  As the pigeon flies, Ivy lives about five miles west-south-west. By tube, however, the journey takes around twenty-five minutes and three different trains, travelling first north, then west, then south. And as William Fisher flies, you can add on another fifteen minutes for over-shooting your stop at Earl’s Court and then having to double back because you were so engrossed in cleaning your fingernails with a corner of your tube ticket. A ticket that is now so creased and bent out of shape that it gets jammed in the turnstile at Wimbledon and I have to plead with the surly fucking guard to let me through. It’s all very metaphoric.

  I’m still forty-five minutes early, so I grab an espresso at the coffee shop outside the station, which kills all of three and a half minutes. The café where I’m meeting Ivy is in Wimbledon Village, a brisk ten-minute walk from the station up a steep hill. And over the course of those ten minutes, it’s as if you have left the city and strolled into an exclusive enclave deep in the stockbroker belt. The average house price in ‘The Village’ must be somewhere in the seven-figure bracket, plus there is a collectio
n of ostentatious-bordering-on-obscene mansions that must – in addition to their gyms, swimming pools, studies, libraries, cellars, triple garages, conservatories and endless en suite bathrooms – have an additional nought on the end of the price tag. Aside from the residential properties, there are a handful of expensive clothes shops, a couple of art galleries, a stable, a smattering of jewellers and chichi knick-knack mongers, a few delis, and a disproportionate number of expensive restaurants and coffee shops. It may be only five miles from Brixton, but it’s in a different universe.

  It’s been a miserable summer, raining more often than not, and the pavements are wet and puddled with last night’s downpour. It’s cloudy but hot today, humid as hell and pregnant with the threat of thunder. When I mount the summit of Wimbledon Hill Road, I’m hot, bedraggled and sweat-soaked. And one thing is clear, if I am going to reclaim Ivy’s heart I’m not going to do it in this shirt with spreading sweat stains at the armpits.

  I veer into a designer clothes shop that is so achingly cool even the mannequins appear to sneer at me. The guy – I’m pretty sure he’s a guy – behind the counter raises his head from an iPad. There is an almost imperceptible nod, a muttered syllable that could be ‘hey’, a hint of a smile. It’s possible he’s being friendly, but it’s hard to be sure. I need to get out of here fast; it’s as clear as the sweat at my armpits that I don’t belong and the fact is aggravating my already jangling nerves.

  ‘Shirt,’ I say, then I pull at the fabric of my own as if the concept of a shirt is one that might require clarification.

  The guy rotates his head in the direction of a rail hung with said items.

  I select the least gaudy shirt from the rail and ask the shop assistant for permission to try it on. The changing ‘room’ has the same dimensions and as much light as the inside of a wardrobe, so I am forced back into the glare of the shop proper to look at myself in a mirror. The shirt is pinker than I’d like, and – I see now for the first time – is shot through with fine silvery threads that catch the light as I stand squinting at my reflection. I can imagine this shirt looking good on someone else, someone in a band maybe, or presenting an arts show on BBC2, or maybe on someone standing behind the counter of an achingly cool clothes shop. But – despite standing in front of a perfectly good mirror – I can’t quite see it on me.