The A-Z of Us (5 page)

‘You wouldn't know anywhere good in Greece, would you?'

I looked up. This happened to me a lot. As soon as people heard I was a travel writer, they'd start asking me where they should travel. Many of my fellow travel writers refused, like Hollywood stars declining autographs, ‘I'm sorry, I don't do that, it's too messy,' they'd say. ‘You'll end up blaming me if you have a shit time.' But I liked helping people.

I don't consider myself a miracle healer, but I know that holidays are important to people. Doesn't everyone dream of their next holiday? Isn't this dream sometimes enough to get you through the day, the week, the year? And when you've finally booked, isn't the countdown delicious, waiting, anticipating, purchasing dozens of things you'll never need? Isn't there both hate and love in the bittersweet return? Isn't there a final redemption to be had, basking in the glow that lasts for weeks afterwards?

‘Greece in September is perfect,' I heard myself saying. ‘You could do the southern mainland, the Pelóponnisos with some amazing ancient sites like Tiryns, Sparta and the epic theatre at Epidhavros… or maybe a more relaxed option like Paxos…'

I stopped. Suddenly I didn't want to talk to Vincent Henderson any more. I wanted things back to the way they were – a cheap flat where I slept and did laundry, a travel writing trip on the horizon, and the possibility of an imminent visit to Molly's loft for sex. I decided to cash in my travel advice.

‘Look, I can get you all the details. I just need a bit more time on the flat…'

Vincent Henderson shook his head, sadly.

‘Sorry son. You're out by Monday.'

I sat in Paddington Starbucks and watched the rain streak down the windows. I felt calmer here. Paddington Starbucks was my neutral zone, a 1920s Tangiers or 1960s West Berlin, disconnected from the hostile state in which it was located. In this coffee shop, with its standardized décor, multilingual menu board and international clientele,
I could be anywhere from Buenos Aires to Manhattan. Except for the summer rain that fell outside, in dark, dull drops. This, I thought, could only be London. The ragged reproachful London rain.

Where was Molly? I should never have asked her to take a break from her vast computer screen on the fifteenth floor of the Paddington Tower, where she collated and analyzed company data from firms in northern England. She was an investment specialist, a mergers and acquisitions maestro. One of the numerous things I admired about her was the way she seemed to waste very little of her time.

In many ways, I couldn't believe my luck. Whilst fellow travel writers complained constantly of their girlfriends/boyfriends, wives/husbands who didn't understand why they had to be away so much, who always wanted to travel with them, who on their return always wanted to talk seriously about their relationships and ‘The Future', Molly didn't like travelling (more so since her divorce), and she had no desire to talk about ‘our relationship', or where it was ‘going'.

‘It's fun, isn't it?' was her cheerful refrain, one that I echoed wholeheartedly.

Occasionally people (my mother) asked me if I ever thought about marriage, as if turning thirty-one was a trap-door you fell through into a pit marked ‘Matrimony'. I would laugh it off, pointing out that Molly had recently come out of a divorce and quite understandably showed no inclination towards making our relationship any more permanent.

And besides, who was ready for marriage in this day
and age? Getting hitched had long ceased to be the major life aim of civilized people, coming way down the list after:

Making serious money.

Buying serious property.

Having seriously sexy relationship with people of

various ages and nationalities.

In some ways, I reckoned, my generation had come to perceive marriage as the equivalent of nipple piercing, tofu or clubbing. Some people were into it, some weren't. No big deal.

I wasn't like Gemma, who'd rushed to tie the knot a year ago, at the youthful age of twenty-eight. In many ways, I admired her – she'd decided what she wanted, and went out and got it. Husband, house, children imminent. I respected her choices, and she, for the most part, resisted the temptation to encourage me to follow the same path.

‘Thirty-five is the new thirty,' she told me from time to time, quoting from one of the numerous women's magazines her husband gave her subscriptions to each Christmas.

Over a second semi-skimmed latte, I considered my options. I needed somewhere to stay until I found another flat. The most obvious thing was to ask Molly, but this was risky – she'd made it clear when we started dating that she considered her expensive loft apartment in Clerkenwell her own place – separate from boyfriends, work colleagues and even family, ‘a haven, an oasis in the
urban jungle'. On the odd occasion I stayed the night, waking long after she'd departed for work, I would find a note saying ‘Busy tonight, C U soon' on the kitchen table, next to my toothbrush which had been removed from the bathroom and pointed precisely towards the exit.

I could, of course, call Gemma. After all, she was the only one of my friends to have a five-bedroom, four-storey house in London. The problem was, she was in the middle of renovating it, according to her own design drawn up at the age of twelve, and funded by Raj's weighty bank balance. I'd been only once, a few months ago with Molly, when the place had resembled a bomb-site, only without the charm. There was no chance they'd finished it, but a couple of bedrooms might be inhabitable. It would only be for a few days.

The sad thing was, I didn't feel like calling Gemma. This was partly because I was now dating her sister, and things had been a little clumsy and awkward since Molly and I started seeing each other. But mainly it was because of her husband.

I'd tried to like Raj, ever since Gemma brought him to dinner that first time, red-faced, a little breathless with excitement and nerves. I was careful to tell her while Raj was in the toilet that I thought he was wonderful, because I knew that's what she wanted to hear.

I was still trying to like Raj, because I knew Raj was good for Gemma, offering her the security she'd been craving ever since her father died. It was just that Raj and I were so different. Raj was naturally conservative, having followed a well-signposted route direct from Oxford to the City (pick up a nice £100,000 signing-on bonus when
you pass Go). Raj, in turn, would never understand why I loved to travel, why I lived in a dingy flat next to a mainline railway station, and ‘how on earth' Molly and I managed to keep our relationship going, considering how little we saw of each other and our lack of official commitment to one another.

And Raj was clearly and visibly jealous of my friendship with his wife, even though I'd known Gemma for almost twelve years, since our first weekend at Sheffield University.

One day soon, I'd have to talk to Raj, to clear the air between us. I wanted the old Gemma back. I wanted to feel light with her again. I wanted to feel protective, and practical, I wanted to put up shelves and drive her to the supermarket. I wanted to laugh with her, and I wanted Raj to laugh with us.

‘Hey, Hopalong. What's up?'

I looked up. Molly was standing over me, like a schoolteacher checking work, but no teacher ever looked this good, her shoulder-length brown hair pulled back in a coquettish pony tail. She was wearing a dark skirt suit, and her knee-high black leather boots with the small heels that never failed to make my loins stir.

‘Hey. Thanks for coming.'

‘I've got twelve minutes, buster. Sunderland's calling.'

I noted her smile, photographing it instantly in my mind, but to my surprise it didn't make me feel better. I fought my instinct to tell her about my Choronì article, Father Norton of Stockport, and Martin Foster's threat to my career. I wasn't sure how she'd react. She would be sympathetic, I knew, but it would put a significant dent in
the fading aura of coolness I'd just about managed to maintain over the past eight months.

I decided to be matter-of-fact.

‘I'm getting thrown out of my flat. The bastard landlord's selling.'

She sipped her double espresso and chuckled.

‘Wow. That's a relief. It's a dump. You should get somewhere nicer.'

‘Thanks, Molly.'

‘Sorry. But you know I hate that place. When do you have to be out?'

‘The weekend.'

‘Oh. Shit. Unlucky.'

Her phone rang. She glanced at the number display and turned it off. This made me feel better. I was more important than work.

‘Okay, Cowboy,' she murmured, more softly. ‘What are you going to do?'

I loved the way Molly was so energetic, so headfirst. I had a sudden urge to take her in my arms and kiss her.

‘I'm not too sure,' I replied, hoping in that instant that she'd offer to let me come to her Clerkenwell loft for takeaways and hot sex. When she remained silent, still smiling, still sipping her coffee (she looked great sipping coffee), I decided to try a new tactic.

‘I was wondering about asking Gemma…' I remarked, coyly. I knew this was manipulative on my part, but small manipulations, ruses and gambits are the fabric of every relationship, aren't they? I was banking on my suspicion that even though Molly seemed to have no problem with
my close friendship with her sister, she would still rather I didn't spend my nights at Gemma's house.

I had used ‘The Gemma Ploy' before, with previous girlfriends – to bind them more closely to me – even though I had no inkling of desire for Gemma, not even in my darkest, loneliest hours of the night. Any such suggestion, from myself or others, made me shudder. It was unthinkable. It would be incest.

‘I thought you hated going there because of Raj?' Molly said, finishing her double espresso.

‘No. I'm just a shallow person with too little patience.'

‘You forgot to mention your tendency towards self-pity.'

‘Thanks, Molly.'

‘Well there's only one thing for it,' said my beautiful girlfriend, brightly.

‘What's that?' I looked up hopefully. She was going to say it; she was going to invite me to stay.

‘Your parents. It's your dad's birthday and you said last week how much they were dying to see you.'

My parents came to collect me. They arrived at 9 a.m., which meant they had departed Cambridge at seven-thirty in the morning, on a Saturday. I was relieved – at least I would now be looked after. But I was also a little ashamed – I was thirty-one and still reliant on my mum and dad.

I knew they'd be early, so I'd woken before seven, hobbling down to the news-stand at the station to buy the
Daily Times
. The retraction was smaller than I'd feared, just a paragraph in the travel section at the bottom of page three explaining that the article on Choronì was erroneous and written by a freelancer who no longer worked for the paper. It was possible most people would miss it, if they weren't in the business. Unfortunately, the people who usually commissioned me were all in the business.

I waited for my parents in the upstairs window, like my grandmother used to sit in her room at the nursing home. It had always made me sad, how lonely she looked, gazing down in hope and expectation. But she'd been eighty-seven. She, at least, had had an excuse for being on her own.

When I opened the door my parents hurried to me, excited and animated. To my relief, it seemed clear they'd not read the
Daily Times
retraction.

‘So much traffic,' chirped my mother, putting her arms around me. I pulled away slightly.

‘How's the ankle?' my father asked, shaking my hand.

‘Getting better.'

‘How did you do it again?'

‘Slipped, getting off a bus in Venezuela.'

‘A fall from grace?' my father smiled, pleased as always with a clerical quip.

‘Yeah, Dad. Something like that.'

They packed my possessions – the futon, the books, my four framed photographs from Antarctica and Vietnam – into the back of the small Peugeot 306. I tried to help, but my mother insisted I sat and rested my foot. I felt like a child once more, watching my parents prepare for a holiday. I was never allowed to help; they had their system and I'd only get in the way.

I went to the toilet one last time, wondering if I'd miss this flat where I'd spent three years of my life. I doubted it. I pulled down the map of the London Underground from the hallway and crumpled it into the bin, where it languished alongside the bottles of luxury hotel shampoo.

‘It's just like packing him up for university, isn't it John?' remarked my mother brightly.

‘I think he's got even less stuff this time,' declared my father, slamming the back of the car firmly and locking it, twice, before taking my arm to help me into the front seat.

‘I'll take the crutches, I'll take the crutches,' shrilled my mother. I handed her the crutches and buckled myself into the front seat. Suddenly I wished I'd never called them. It felt so familiar, this suffocating bustle. I looked
around, afraid that someone would see me being cosseted by my mother, but the only passers-by were a group of Japanese tourists in matching yellow raincoats. They seemed sympathetic (the Japanese all lived with their parents until marriage, didn't they?).

The Peugeot pulled away from the dingy flat. I watched the grey front door disappear in the wing mirror. One more landmark removed.

‘Ah, London,' my father said, overtaking a red double-decker bus.

‘So many people,' said my mother fearfully, staring out of the passenger window as if seeing more than ten people together in public for the first time in her life. I followed her gaze – to me the streets around Paddington seemed comparatively quiet.

‘Did you get the
Daily Times
today?' I asked, as innocently as I could.