Page 30 of One Night With You

We clink our glasses against one another and in the gentle lull as we sip I look around his front room.

‘This is a beautiful house,’ I say. ‘Really.’

‘It’d have to be, for the amount of time I’m in it.’ He chuckles.

‘If you’re trying to pull on my heartstrings, JP, it’s working.’ I grin. ‘Do you want me to bust you out of this popsicle joint?’

‘Do I!’ he hoots.

‘Caribbean do you?’ I offer. ‘Or are you more a winter sun kind of a man? Maybe Switzerland? The mountains?’

‘You could pull me down over the snow in a big carriage,’ he quips.

‘I’m sure we could load you up on the back of a snowmobile,’ I retort.

‘A snowmobile?’

I pull out my phone and google an image to show him.

‘I see,’ he says, squinting at the screen. ‘I think you’ve got a deal then. You’ll just have to give me a king’s chair to get on the plane, but I shouldn’t imagine that will be a problem. There’s not much to me anymore.’

He’s not wrong. He’s not frail, not like a gust of wind would blow him over, but there’s no denying he’s not the strapping army man he showed us photos of. He must have been six foot back in the day, and strong enough to heave anyone he wanted over his shoulder. Now he moves slowly – purposefully, but slowly – with a walker most of the time, and even when he was pouring the port, I had half a mind to offer to do it for him. But I didn’t because, already, I knew it’d piss him off. He’s no less strong-willed for being old, and quite rightly too.

‘How are you finding Manchester, then?’ he asks, once we’ve listed all the different places we could run away to together. ‘It’s no London Town, is it? Not that I ever really cared for London. All that hustle and bustle. Everyone needs a fag and half a shandy, take a minute to calm down.’

‘Yeah, I wanted to enjoy the hustle and bustle,’ I admit. ‘But to be honest, it ended up not being for me. Manchester is more my speed. My parents are across in Whaley Bridge – I think I said? – but that’s a bitquietfor me. Manchester is proving quite the place to be, actually. Good restaurants, nice bars. Not that I have much time for that with my course. It’s go-go-go most of the time.’

‘Shelley liked a good restaurant.’ He nods, appreciating my point. ‘Every year on our anniversary we’d have carbonara at a little Italian place she used to love. Garlic bread, pudding after, a nice little jug of red wine. It was our treat.’

‘I’m partial to an Italian myself,’ I say. ‘And not to brag, but I can whip up quite the carbonara. I don’t even use cream – just eggs and parmesan cheese, the proper Italian way. I could make it for you one day, if you like.’

He nods. ‘My appetite isn’t what it used to be,’ he concedes. ‘But if it means having your cracking company again, how could I say no?’

‘Shall we have it this afternoon?’ I offer. ‘For tea? What time do you normally eat?’

I laugh when he says 5 p.m. ‘So you keep toddler hours then?’ I tease. ‘Up at dawn, bed at 7 p.m.?’

‘Yes, actually,’ he says, proudly. ‘Nothing good happens after dark anyway. Anything that does is asking for trouble. And sometimes that trouble can be the good kind, but mostly it’s the bad kind.’ He sighs. ‘Regardless, trouble is trouble. I know that much to be true.’

‘Oh, I can get on board with that theory,’ I chortle. ‘Absolutely.’

‘Go on then,’ he challenges. ‘Thrill this little old man’s life with a story or two.’

‘Absolutely not,’ I say. ‘I don’t want you to think any less of me.’

‘Come off it,’ he scoffs. ‘Try me.’

‘Well,’ I begin, with a sigh. ‘I don’t want to be boring when I sayboy problems.This is a post-feminist era: I’d like to be able to talk about more than some idiot who almost broke my heart.’

‘Be as feminist as you want,’ JP counters. ‘You’ll still have a heart to almost break. You know, I get why you want all equal rights and whatnot, but don’t let it make you hard. William had a girlfriend – awful woman she was. Got cross when he held doors open for her, things like that. Like manners could ever be rude. Being rigid like that – that’s what’ll cause a feminist to break. You’ve got to learn to bend, instead. Like tree branches in the wind. Work with what you’ve got, not against it.’

‘I wasn’t expecting to get into feminist theory with you, JP,’ I say.

‘No,’ he concedes. ‘And to be fair I’m not much into it. I’d rather you tell me some more about this wally that hurt you. Or about one who didn’t. If you don’t mind.’

‘I don’t mind,’ I say. ‘I’m over it. Ancient history can’t hurt us, can it?’

JP doesn’t reply to that. As soon as I’ve said it, I know it’s not technically true. Our history informs our present, which informs our future. Weareour histories – whether we choose to repeat it or rectify it.

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