Lauren listened to a boiled sweet clacking against her mum’s teeth as – Lauren imagined – she tried to wrestle the smile off her face. Lauren’s mum had never really liked Paul.
‘Oh dear,’ she said finally. ‘Oh love, I’m sorry to hear that. Has he done something? He’s done something, hasn’t he?’
‘No,’ said Lauren quickly, feeling that same tight, choking, collar-y feeling she got whenever they tried to talk about Paul. ‘It’s me. I just . . . I don’t know, I don’t think I’m happy any more.’
‘Well, you can always come and stay with me if you need a little time to think things over. Or you know, just for a break.’
‘That’s what I was hoping you’d say,’ Lauren said.
She was calling from the train station.
She’d already bought her ticket.
IAN
2014
Carol isn’t there to meet me at the platform, so I drag my things through the busy departures hall and down a not-working escalator. Outside it’s pissing down. I roll a fag beneath the glass lip of the entrance and watch the black cabs pulling in and out of the rank as I smoke it.
This is the first time I’ve come to visit since she moved here for university, over ten years ago. I’m sorry, Carol, I think. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long. I’m sorry for being such a selfish dickhead all the time. Now please let me come and live in your spare room for a while.
On the phone, we didn’t talk about how long I might be staying.
I’m hoping for a month or two.
Just as I’m stubbing my fag out, a faded red Corsa pulls into one of the slots in the short-stay car park, just a few metres away. The door yawns open and there she is: Carol, except with weird glasses and shorter hair.
‘Ian!’ she calls, waving at me even though I’ve already spotted her.
I wave back, feeling my mouth pull itself into a grin.
I begin carrying things over from the pile on the kerb, slinging them two at a time into the boot. First my rucksack and holdall. Then my guitar case and a bin bag. Then my taped-up cardboard box and another, smaller rucksack.
‘Is that everything?’ Carol asks.
Yep, I nod.
It’s everything I own in the world.
There’s no radio playing in the car so I listen instead to the sound of an empty Fanta Zero can rattling around in my footwell as we drive out of the city centre, past boarded-up shop fronts with bits of unimaginative graffiti sprayed on them. For some reason, I’d imagined things would look different here. I want to touch the buttons on the stereo, but I must be careful not to piss Carol off. I must remain on my best behaviour.
‘What’s with the beard?’ she says, not taking her eyes off the road. ‘Makes you look about fifty.’
‘I’ve just . . . not shaved,’ I say.
‘You need a haircut, too.’
‘I know,’ I say.
I hold myself back from saying how strange her new short hair looks.
‘Thanks for all this, by the way,’ I say, just as she flicks the indicator and we turn a sharp left.
‘Don’t mention it,’ she says.
So I don’t. I rest my forehead against the window and watch the wet black streets flick past as we drive in the direction of her flat, wherever it is, somewhere on the outskirts of Manchester.
‘It’s not the Hilton,’ she says outside the front door, up on the third floor of a converted redbrick house. The winding communal staircase smells of damp and take-away dinners, and the light above my head is fluttering like a moth. From somewhere down the hall comes the muffled hum of Sunday night telly.
‘I’m sure it’s great,’ I say, as she turns the key and then leads me down a grim once-white corridor with institutional carpet and no pictures on the walls. There’s an odd, sour smell coming from somewhere, too.
‘Have you got a cat?’ I ask.
‘No,’ she says. ‘How come?’
‘Never mind.’
She pushes open the door to a box room at the far end of the corridor.
‘Wow,’ I say. ‘It’s perfect.’
It looks like the kind of room you might decide to end your life in. Blank white walls, threadbare carpet, a tiny, steel-framed single bed. I drop my bags in the doorway and walk towards the single-glazed window on the wall opposite. A view of the car park and the recycling bins and, beyond that, another large redbrick house. From where I’m standing I can see all the way in: into its brightly lit, expensive-looking living room. I try to will my body out through the window and over the car park towards it.
‘Are you sure it’s okay?’ Carol asks from the hallway. ‘I’ve not really got round to doing it up yet.’
‘It’s great,’ I say.
The only other thing in the room is a large brown wardrobe, the gloss flaking off it in long translucent splinters. As I touch it with my finger, I feel something like a candle go out inside me.
A little later, we sit facing each other at the two-seater kitchen table. Carol watches me eat my beans on toast like I might try and spoon it out the window if she left me alone. It’s only just gone ten in the evening but my eyes have already started to buzz and sting at the edges.
The salt shaker in the middle of the table is in the shape of a little white ghost-person, its arms outstretched, but the pepper is just a thing from Morrisons.
‘What happened to his friend?’ I ask, pointing at the shaker person with my knife.
‘They must’ve had an argument,’ Carol says, ‘because one night she jumped off the table and committed suicide.’
‘Oh dear,’ I say.
I try to think of something else to say.
‘How’s Martin?’ I say.
Martin is Carol’s boyfriend. They’ve been together for years now, but he still refuses to move in with her. I only ever see Martin occasionally, at Christmases and family parties, but I really don’t like him. Martin makes me feel uncomfortable and useless and like I’ll never quite fully grow up; he’s physically bigger and makes lots of money and speaks, sometimes, in a fake Cockney accent.
‘He’s alright,’ Carol says, picking at a bobble of cotton on her cardigan. There are small creases around the edges of her mouth when she talks; little lines I’ve not seen before. ‘He’s on a lads’ holiday at the moment, actually.’
‘Nice,’ I say.
‘So
