and sensitive ever to ask that question, so Cyd didn’t have to say – Oh, I’m a waitress right now, so Siobhan didn’t have to get embarrassed and neither did Cyd, they could just get on with each other in that easy, seemingly natural way that only women can manage.
They began talking to each other about not knowing what to wear at these things, and Marty put a conspiratorial arm around my shoulder. His face was far heavier than I remembered it. He had the leaden, vaguely disappointed air of a man who, after years of dreaming, had finally landed his own talk show only to discover that he couldn’t attract anyone who was worth talking to.
‘A word?’ he said, crouching down by my side.
Here it comes, I thought. Now he wants me back. Now he’s seen how well Eamon’s doing, he wants me back on the show.
‘I want you to do me a favour,’ Marty said.
‘What’s that, Marty?’
He leaned closer.
‘I want you to be my best man,’ he said.
Even Marty, I thought.
Even Marty dreams of getting it right, of finding the one, of discovering the whole world in another human being. Just like everyone else.
‘Hey, Harry,’ said Eamon, watching the weather girl cross the room, adjusting his weight as a ridge of high pressure passed through his underpants. ‘Guess who I’m shagging tonight?’
Well, perhaps not quite everyone.
* * *
There were too many lights on in the house. There were lights upstairs. There were lights downstairs. There were lights blazing everywhere at a time when there should have been just one faint glow coming from the living room.
And there was music pouring out of my home – loud, booming bass lines and those skittering drum machines that sounded like the aural equivalent of a heart attack. New music. Terrible new music blasting from my stereo.
‘What’s going on?’ I said, as if we had come to the wrong place, as if there had been some mistake.
There was someone in the darkness of the small front garden. No, there were a few of them. A boy and a girl necking just outside the open front door. And another boy lurking by the dustbin, being sick all over his Tommy Hilfiger anorak and his YSL trousers.
I went inside the house while Cyd paid the cab driver.
It was a party. A teenage party. All over my home there were youths in Polo gear snogging, shagging, drinking, dancing and being sick. Especially being sick. There was another couple puking their stupid guts up in the back garden.
In the living room Pat was in his pyjamas swaying to the music at one end of the sofa, while at the other end Sally was being groped by some fat boy. Pat grinned at me – isn’t this fun? – as I surveyed the damage – lager cans with their contents spilled on the parquet floor and cigarettes stubbed out on their rims, scraps of takeaway pizza smeared on the furniture and God knows what stains on the beds upstairs.
There were maybe a dozen of them in all. But it felt like the Mongol Hordes had moved in. Worse than that – it was like one of those grotesque commercials for crisps or soft drinks or chinos, full of young people having the time of their life. Except that they were having the time of their life in my living room.
‘Sally,’ I said, ‘what the fuck is going on?’
‘Harry,’ she said, and there were tears of joy in her eyes. ‘It’s Steve.’
She indicated the slack-jawed youth on top of her. He squinted at me with his cretinous porky eyes, eyes with nothing behind them but hormonal overload and nine cans of lager.
‘He packed it that old slapper Yasmin McGinty,’ Sally said. ‘He’s come back to me. Ain’t it fantastic?’
‘Are you crazy?’ I said. ‘Are you crazy or stupid? Which is it, Sally?’
‘Oh, Harry,’ she said, all disappointed. ‘I thought you would understand. You of all people.’
The music suddenly died. Cyd stood there with the plug in her hands.
‘Time to clean up this mess,’ she told the room. ‘Get rubbish sacks and cleaning stuff. Try looking under the sink.’
Steve climbed off Sally, adjusting his monstrous trousers, sneering at the grown-ups who had crashed his party.
‘I’m out of here,’ he said, as though he came from Beverly Hills instead of Muswell Hill.
Cyd moved swiftly across the room and clasped his nose between her thumb and forefinger.
‘You’re out of here when I tell you, elephant boy,’ she said, making him yelp as she lifted him up on his toes. ‘And it won’t be until you clean up this mess. Not until then, got it?’
‘Okay, okay!’ he bleated, his fake American bravado melting in the face of the real thing.
I took Pat up to bed, turfing out a couple mating in the bathroom, while Cyd organised the cleaning detail. By the time I had read Pat a story and got him to settle down, Sally and Steve and their spotty friends were meekly cleaning the floors and the tables.
‘Where did you learn to do that?’ I asked Cyd.
‘Texas,’ she said.
It turned out that they were quite useless at housework, just as I imagine they will be useless at everything else they attempt in their brainless, designer-labelled lives.
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