Top Financial Solutions. Why he’d never come up with a ‘top solution’ to his little brother’s financial problems, Fraser would never know).
Fraser was a dutiful son – i.e. he did the bare minimum, visiting them in their spotless ex-council house in Bury every few months, where he’d sit and read the paper whilst Liv talked to Mike about his job in the world of tap fittings and to Carol about her gallstones, but they weren’t close. They didn’t really know each other. In fact, if Carol Morgan were honest, she’d lost her youngest son the day he went to university, when his friends and his girlfriend became his family.
But that was before grief dismantled Fraser, ripped him open then hurtled through him like a freight train, making him furious and self-destructive and self-pitying. That was the worst. After his mother had to pick him up from Manchester Royal Infirmary, where he was admitted with a broken ankle after being so drunk he had fallen down a fire escape at a club in Manchester, Fraser knew the game was up. There was no room for his teenage self, full of misplaced pride and embarrassment. He needed her again like he had when he was a blond, corkscrew-haired five-year-old, and he’d curled up in her arms that night and cried like one.
So, in a strange way, the actual anniversaries were doable. At least everyone was there. But this – the day after – was worse, because what now? Where now? Life still carried on, but the phone stopped ringing, and when the specialness had gone, what did he have left? Except himself. And he was a mess. He couldn’t settle anywhere; his flat scared the shit out of him, a place he just rattled around in, wandering from one room to another, in some state of intoxication most of the time. He had told himself, countless times, he’d use this time alone to learn to cook, because Liv was a fabulous cook, but eventually got bored of buying lemon grass only to stop off at the Bull on the way back and leave it there. the Bull in Kentish Town must have the biggest stock of lemon grass in north London.
He couldn’t watch TV any more, couldn’t concentrate on films – something he and Liv had loved to do; daft comedies were their favourite, cuddling up on a Sunday to watch Meet the Fockers. Nowadays, he’d totally lost the ability to look at a screen for any length of time and, sometimes, although he never admitted this to anyone, he went to bed at 8 p.m. because he couldn’t deal with any more day.
Then there was the job, or excuse for one, really, since life as a freelance sound engineer – holding a fluffy mike whilst some geezer did a piece to camera about local history, or a party political broadcast – didn’t actually require much skill, and it was a far cry from being a sound engineer for bands, too, wasn’t it? Let’s face it. That dream, along with his dream to be an actual rock star himself had shifted, as he moved through his teens to his twenties, from a dead cert to still doable if he really pulled his finger out, to now, aged thirty, simply a comforting fantasy he liked to indulge in occasionally.
The worst thing was, it had been over a year now, he should really have pulled himself together. But life had become one big long promise to himself that tomorrow would be different. Tomorrow he’d get it together. Sometimes he wondered if his grief was becoming a habit rather than a need, but it didn’t matter because now he was breathless with it – the emptiness – as if he’d woken up entombed in concrete.
‘Fancy a tea? Bacon sandwich?’ Fraser could hear Mia’s voice and he could see her but couldn’t really compute what she was saying; it was all muffled as if he were looking at her through a glass screen, and yet he was so glad she was here, suddenly overcome with gratitude in fact because it occurred to him – what the hell would he have done with himself today if she wasn’t? For a second he wanted to reach over and grab onto her legs. He shook the feeling away.
Billy was sucking on a bottle of milk now, not very enthusiastically, and Mia took it off him for a second to shake it, so he started wailing, a cry that turned into a raspy scream. It reminded Fraser of something and he was aware of his heart pounding as though it might leap right out of his chest. Mia gave Billy the bottle back and he immediately stopped crying. Fraser could still see his little flushed cheeks sucking greedily and happily, and yet he could still hear something. He could still hear a terrible noise.
‘Oh, God, Frase. Oh, shit …’
It wasn’t until Mia had her arms tight around him, that he realized the noise was coming from him.
FOUR
Mia got Fraser up and out of the flat as soon as possible – which in reality, Fraser had noted with some amusement, took about an hour, half of that trying to get an incensed Billy into his snowsuit. ‘Told you I lived with Mussolini,’ Mia shouted over the racket, whilst Fraser looked on, gobsmacked. She was right. Bloody hell. How could such a small thing make so much noise? Did Mia really have to do this every day, just to get out of the door? In the months that followed Liv’s death they’d spent a lot of time together – first when Mia was pregnant and then those difficult months after Billy was born, but he didn’t have a clue about the day-to-day, the reality of which now shocked him.
Still, Billy looks like I feel, thought Fraser.
‘Can I do that now, please?’ he said. ‘Roll onto my back and scream whilst someone puts me into a straightjacket?’
They went directly into town to the Sunbury Café. It was bitingly cold, the sky sharp and blue as stained glass. The Sunbury Café – housed in one of Lancaster’s sandstone Georgian houses down a cobbled alley – was where they used to go as students. They’d have millionaire’s shortbread and cappuccinos, sit out the back on the terrace on wrought-iron chairs, like they were ladies who lunched, not poverty-stricken students, discussing the big topics of the day (back when talking was just for the fun of it): whether Phillip Schofield dyed his hair, whether Prince Harry was the love-child of James Hewitt, but also marriage, kids, what order they’d do everything in.
Even though Mia liked to think of her style as ‘thrown together arty’ (although admittedly, of late, it was more single mum on benefits), she was a traditionalist at heart and had said yes to both, in the right order. Liv had said yes to marriage but definitely no to kids, ‘Over my dead body!’ How those phrases came back to them now.
Mia had loved those times, when everything was hypothetical, when it felt like life was a game and they could press ‘reset’ at any time. These days, of course, it all felt so real.
Mia walked back towards the terrace from the café, carrying a large black coffee for Fraser and a cappuccino for herself and eyed him in a motherly way. This was the thing: she had no problem feeling naturally maternal towards her friends; it was just her son she sometimes struggled with.
Fraser was all wrapped up in his parka like a duvet and was pushing Billy back and forth in his buggy – a bit too hard if Mia was the sort to be pernickety, which she wasn’t – trying to get him off to sleep, and Mia thought what a cute dad he’d make and whether, if Liv had still been around, he might even have changed her mind and they might have made a baby together by now.
‘So basically, I’m a mess,’ he said suddenly. It took Mia by surprise. Fraser wasn’t one for outbursts of self-awareness, it was all going on inside with him, all being secretly brooded about.
She put the coffee down in front of him.
‘Um, yeah, I’d say so. But that’s OK, that’s workable with.’
He smiled, weakly.
‘Can I come clean about something?’ he said.
Mia sat down.
‘You’re in love with me.
