Page 29 of Our Stop

‘Yeah, but Jimmy was shagging his girlfriend, and she asked us not to press any charges, remember? She was scared he’d find out?’ Jeremy had had several girlfriends that year, not so much because he was a cad, but more because he really did have that much love to give. He could charm a lamppost and believe everything he said, as he said it.

They’d all piled into the house after a delayed train to Charlbury from Paddington after work, starving and tearing into the pizza in the oven that had gone both soggy and crusty at the same time after being reheated, because Terrence still didn’t understand how the Aga worked.

‘I’m from a backstreet terrace in Manchester!’ he said, as way of apology. ‘I only learned what heated floors were two years ago!’

They’d made their way down the road to the pub, and easy banter and memories were stirred up in record time, juxtaposed with the new lives they all lived, all married or fathers and in Terrence’s case, millionaires too. In the years Daniel had known his ‘group’, he’d always felt at home. There was a shorthand between them that had only got shorter since doing shots as freshers and competing over who could list the most obscure band. They could have drifted apart in their late twenties, when life got busy and more complicated than they were used to. But it hadn’t. They’d gone the distance together. They were as tight as ever, even if they all lived in different places now. They didn’t see each other enough, but when they did get together it was like being in university halls all over again.

‘How you doing, you know – after your dad?’ Dean had said on the train, not long after they’d boarded. Daniel had vague recollections of them being at the funeral, but he’d been in no state to string sentences together.

Daniel told them all the truth.

‘I was a mess,’ he’d said, ‘but I’m doing all the right things to get through it and feel pretty okay now. The doc gave me some pills and I go and talk to someone about my head and see my mum a bit more in case she’s lonely.’

‘Fucking hell, yeah,’ Jonny had said. ‘I’ve only been married eighteen months but fuck me, if anything happened to Tilly I don’t know how I’d get up in the morning.’

‘We’re here for you, pal,’ Dean said, raising his beer can towards him so that all of them saluted the memory of Mr Weissman, silently saying a prayer that it hadn’t been them to lose their father. It was a strange rite of passage to pass through first: Terrence had been the first to get married, and Jeremy the first to become a dad, but Daniel was the first to have lost a parent.

He felt better just for being with the people who made him feel safe. The ones who’d seen him pull an all-nighter because he left essays until the last minute and the ones whose sisters he’d snogged when they’d come to visit and the ones who’d got so drunk with him the night of their graduation ceremony that they’d all ended up in the hospital while Taz got his stomach pumped, eating McDonald’s and sobering up as they talked about what they wanted for their lives. For all of them, the answer was the same: to lead better lives than their parents had. They’d all managed it.

Daniel got up to go to the loo, and Dean said, ‘Your round on the way back, mate!’ Daniel flipped up his middle finger at him good-naturedly as he walked to the Gents. He peed and noted in the mirror as he washed his hands how bright-eyed he looked. He was still buzzing about his latest advert getting published so fast. He was able to enjoy being where he was, in the moment, with his mates, because he knew that right now she could be reading his reply and that at half seven on Monday morning something brilliant could happen. Would happen – he could feel it. Life was good. He could honestly say, for the first time in ages, that he felt positive about what was coming next. About the future.

He stood beside a couple at the bar of the country pub as he waited to put in an order for the next round. It was hard not to eavesdrop, really, and it sounded like their first mini-break. The first mini-break is, as Daniel and his friends had long concluded, a relationship rite of passage, especially for young professionals from a city where house-shares were the norm. The first mini-break was normally the first time you’d get totally uninterrupted time together, with sex that didn’t have to be quiet in case the person in the room next door heard, or saw you nip to the loo in the buff in the middle of the night. Daniel thought about his first weekend away with his ex, Sarah. He’d planned a whole schedule around what he thought would be romantic – a country hotel, afternoons in a rowing boat on the lake, champagne in the room on arrival. As it turned out they’d had a horrible fight on the train ride there and then erroneously assumed there’d be a line of cabs waiting at the station to take them to where they were staying, but there weren’t. They’d stood in the drizzle that would later make rowing on the lake a write-off for forty-five minutes until a car they’d ordered from the number stuck to the information board arrived. They’d made the best of it, each trying to put on a brave face. But they’d both been a little crestfallen that it hadn’t all rolled out as perfectly as they’d imagined. Was it strange to imagine going away with Nadia? They could even come here, to this exact pub, and after sharing a bottle of red wine by the fire he could tell her, a little tipsily, that he’d come here right after he’d written to her again and he’d promised himself there and then that he’d come back, and with her. He looked over his shoulder at his buddies. He wanted what they all had – happy marriages that meant they had somebody to share the highs with, and hold the hand of when things were less good. He loved all of their wives – even Rashida, who could be a bit bossy, a bit strident – and he was so excited to one day introduce his person to them all too.

‘So she wrote back,’ Daniel heard a man’s voice say, ‘and it was this cocky and funny and kind of provocative answer, and they’ve gone back and forth a bit, and now everyone is waiting to see if they go out. I don’t know –’ he paused to take a sip of his wine ‘– I think it’s one of those things where everyone is like, “She wrote back! They have to get married now!” Or whatever. Because it’s like a movie or something, you know?’

Daniel cocked his head and tried to listen to what the woman said in response. He was so sure they were talking about him, and about Nadia. About her note to him. Was that egotistical of him? But surely there weren’t a string of people writing letters to each other in the newspaper. Maybe he was imagining things because he was excited by the day. That must be it.

‘What can I get for you, mate?’ the barman asked, and Daniel held up one hand and two fingers to signal seven pints, and said, ‘Seven of the Abbot’s, please, mate.’

Daniel craned his neck to continue to listen to the couple. ‘Well, if it were me,’ the woman was saying, ‘I’d want a big romantic gesture like that. Like, if you meet somebody that way …’ And then Daniel couldn’t hear what she said after that.Well, he thought.Even if they’re not talking about us, that’s still worth remembering. Big romantic gesture. That’s like Romeo said. Got it.A shudder went down his spine. He’d thought of him and Nadia as anus.

He delivered the booze to the table and Jeremy was in the middle of a story about his new kid, his second, and how his penis was like a tiny sprinkle system and they’d had to buy a Penis teepee.

‘I’m not kidding,’ he was saying. ‘It’s a tiny teepee that you put over the kid’s dick, so when he pisses himself as you change him it doesn’t go all over you!’ It was the kind of Dad Talk Daniel couldn’t contribute to, not being one himself, but it was nice to be a part of. He was just happy. Happy to be here and be alive and have the whole promise of a future in front of him. Nadia’s face drifted into his mind and the lads continued to play ‘dad one-upmanship’ with their various anecdotes.

And then he chastised himself:Fucking hell mate, try having a date first.

He finished off his pint and tuned back in to the rest of the group, telling himself that was enough fantasizing for now. Somebody asked if they should hop in a cab and go down to Soho Farmhouse for a nightcap because Terrence and Dean had membership so could get everybody in, but the idea was sunk by the rest of the group who decided to head back to the house.

‘Okay, fine,’ Terrence said. ‘But I swear to god, she’ll kill me if you smoke in the house so just … well, fucking don’t, okay?’

Rowdily, they stumbled out of the pub and into the last scraps of country summer light. Jonny and Dean both pulled packets of cigarettes from their jean pockets and promptly sparked up.

17

Nadia

‘I’m just saying,’ said Nadia, ‘that you seem a bit distant, is all. Like, whatever it is, you can tell me.’

They were sat at breakfast in the courtyard of the club, handsome waiters buzzing around them and the promise of poached eggs with hollandaise sauce on the way.

‘I. Am. Not. Hiding. Anything,’ she said, enunciating every syllable. ‘Don’t crowd me, okay? If I want to talk, I’ll talk!’

She said it shiftily – not mad, or angry – she was like a teenager who didn’t have the words for her feelings yet. But the feelings were most definitely there.

Nadia couldn’t figure it out. She’d waited all weekend to say something, thinking every time she caught Emma’s mind wandering off halfway through the conversation, or noting how she obsessively checked her phone, that surely it would be the last time. Nadia gave Emma imaginary chance after imaginary chance, but she kept using them up. Nadia had gone from being slightly irked to totally outraged to now genuinely concerned about Emma’s behaviour. It was like she’d had bad news she didn’t want to share, or was waiting for bad news to come. Nadia’s own funk had lifted enough to be aware of the company she was in, and the company she was in was undoubtedly in pain.

‘It’s only because I’m worried,’ Nadia said. ‘I thought I was the broken one this weekend. But I feel like you need some TLC too.’

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