Page 49 of We All Live Here
“You charged outside in your PJs and pretty much told me to get lost just for looking at your tree. Which is sick, by the way. You need to have it taken down.”
Lila closes her eyes. “Can we not? Can I just have one hour where there isn’t something I have to sort out that’s going to cost me money? Unless you’re about to tell me that Gene’s living in that too.”
There is a slight atmosphere, and she cannot work out whether it is friendly or spiky. The one thing it is not is relaxing. It is possible he senses this, because he pauses for a moment, then leans forward in his chair and puts his beer down. “You look very nice by the way. I’m saying that in a non-date, friendly, asexual, age-appropriate manner.”
Lila is not so embittered that she cannot recognize an olive branch when she sees one. “You’re very kind. And also a terrible liar. I haven’t washed my hair in two days and I haven’t got any makeup on.”
“Well, like I said, makeup isn’t really one of my interests. Hey, c’mon. Sorry if I therapized you. I’m not very good at small-talk, in case youhadn’t guessed. Though I can try if it helps.” He sits up. “Nice…décor in here?”
She follows his gaze. “I actually like old pubs,” she says. “The ones where everything is still stained with nicotine and the stale smell of spilled drinks. I like things where you can see the history.”
He nods.
“I don’t know if you’ve seen the two old bathrooms in our house, but I really like them too, even though everyone keeps telling me we need to rip them out and modernize. They’re not fashionable, but they’re quirky. I don’t like this thing where we have to keep moving on and moving up all the time.”
He’s still watching her.
“Oh, God, you’re not going to therapize that, are you?”
He shakes his head. “No. Although I hope you appreciate how hard I’m having to resist it. I don’t like new stuff either. When I had my kitchen put in my flat, me and my sister spent an hour kicking the cupboards just so they wouldn’t look new.”
“Are you serious?”
“They were wooden doors but with this terrible immaculate laminate paint on them. I just needed them to look a bit scuffed and dented to feel at home.”
“Yes! It used to drive Dan mad, all the scuffs and chaos of our house. I used to buy battered old chairs from charity shops, or weird old pictures with faces I liked, and he couldn’t stand it. He now lives in a minimalist paradise with approximately two pieces of perfect furniture in every room.”
“He’d get on well with my ex-fiancée. She needed everything to match. At one point we had two cream sofas, a cream marble coffee-table, and cream curtains. I used to feel like I had to shower before I dared walk into the living room.”
“You were engaged?” She doesn’t mean to sound as surprised as shedoes. He just doesn’t seem like someone who would get engaged, let alone to someone with cream sofas.
“Briefly. She didn’t appreciate the whole breakdown thing so much. And then I left the City and she realized I wasn’t going to make money anymore so…two strikes and I was out.” He takes another swig of his beer. “Oh, and there was the whole business of her shagging my work colleague.”
“Oh. Jesus. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. We were totally ill-matched. It just didn’t show till things got tough.”
“I used to think Dan and I were pretty well-matched.”
Neither of them says anything for a minute. Lila stares at her Diet Coke.
“You can love someone and still not be compatible,” he says.
“Or maybe compatible but just…not love someone anymore?”
He thinks for a minute. “That too. It’s dangerously close to therapy-speak. Want another Coke?”
They talk for another forty minutes before the call comes. She likes listening, realizes it’s rare that she gets to hear someone else talk about their life. It’s oddly restful to hear about someone else’s complications and mistakes. He tells her how he used to work on the Foreign Exchange, about liquidity and volatility and hedging, and how he finally got engaged after he woke up to find his girlfriend had scrawled “Do it or forget it” in lipstick on his windscreen. “Maybe, with hindsight, not the healthiest way to go into a marriage.” And then had come the breakdown, and a short stay in rehab. He relays all this with the calm, wry tone of someone discussing events that had happened to someone he has never met. She wonders whether to prod him a bit—she’s a little bit captivated by the demanding girlfriend with the lipstick—when the phone rings. It’s Violet.
“Mum, you need to come home.”
She looks up at him, one hand pressed to her ear, and rolls her eyes. Of course they wouldn’t let her have two hours to herself. Of course not. “Violet, I’m just having a drink with a friend. I’m allowed to have a—”
Violet’s voice is urgent. “No. You need to come. Bill put a photo of him and Grandma’s wedding day on the sideboard in the living room and then Gene put a picture of him and Grandma attheirwedding next to it, and when Bill saw it he started shouting and Gene said, well, he thought Grandma looked happier in his one and then Bill chased him out in the garden with a chopping thing and Gene fell over the concrete bits and now he’s lying on the ground saying he can’t get up and Bill won’t come out of his room.”
Lila stares into the middle distance. She may have counted to ten, or ten thousand, she can’t remember. She takes a deep breath. “Okay, sweetheart. I’ll be right home.”
It is as if she has been allowed a tiny window into a different life, then had it slammed abruptly in her face. Possibly by someone blowing a raspberry.
