The Importance of Being a Bachelor (23 page)

‘I wouldn’t call it a “ban” exactly so much as a veto . . . but if you want to call it a ban then by all means feel free to knock yourself out.’

Russell couldn’t believe it. ‘So you’re trying to tell me that I’m not allowed to talk to Cassie?’

‘Are you trying to tell me you’re planning to see her again?’

‘Of course I’m not planning it! I’m not stupid. But I did say that if she needed to talk to anyone then she could talk to me. She’s coming out of the end of a long relationship, Ange! All I’m doing is trying to be a mate to her.’

‘Well I don’t want you to be and anyway this is all academic. She won’t want you hanging about reminding her of Luke, will she? Plus, she’ll have her girl mates to do all of the crying and wailing stuff with. But if she does call just tell her you’re busy.’

Angie reached up and kissed Russell as if to underscore two contradictory messages: a) that she was being light-hearted and b) that she wasn’t being light-hearted at all and meant every single word. Either way it was clear from the kiss that as far as Angie was concerned that really was the end of the discussion. The fact that she was waiting for him to kiss her back was her way of asking if he was in agreement with everything that she had said. He of course wasn’t in agreement with anything, let alone everything, but as her lips hovered millimetres away from his own he didn’t have the strength to carry on the debate and so he kissed her back, convinced that as long as he did his best to stay out of trouble everything would work out fine.

‘You are amazing.’

It was early evening on the following Monday, roughly a month into Adam’s new relationship with Steph, and Adam was lying on his sofa like a lovelorn teenager rereading the last hour’s worth of text messages from his beloved who was away until the following Sunday evening on a training course in Oxford.

Text message to Adam:
What are you doing? S xxx

Text message to Steph:
Am trying to read that book I picked up from your bookshelf last week:
Love in the Time of Cholera
. Not exactly fast paced is it? How’s the course going? Ad xxx

Text message to Adam:
Course is OK. People nice. Am missing you though. What manner of madness has possessed you to read
Love in the Time of Cholera
? You’ll hate it. S xxx

Text message to Steph:
Because it reminds me of you in that it’s boring, long-winded and is yellow at the edges!

Text message to Adam:
Ha! That is so mean!

Text message to Steph:
I know! But seriously I am reading book because of you. Now that we are officially dating I feel I ought to put some effort into making myself appear as clever as you are. The last thing you need is for all your mates to think you’ve got so desperate that you’ve started dating down! Really wish you were here! A x

Text message to Adam:
Ahhh! How sweet! I wish I were here too! And what do you mean exactly by ‘dating down’? There’s only one of us dating down here mate and that’s you! Seriously, though, could not be prouder of you. Can’t wait to show you off to my friends!

As Adam finished rereading Steph’s final text a huge grin somehow bolted itself to his face and was refusing to budge. In a deliberate attempt to get rid of it he thought about the piles of invoices at work, but still it remained; then he thought about the fact that the night before last some yob had smashed not just one but both of his wing mirrors and how astronomical the quote had been to get the work done at his local dealership and still it remained; finally he pulled out all the stops and thought about the fact that he hadn’t been to the gym because of all the time he’d been spending with Steph and how his midriff was feeling a little bit ‘looser’ than normal undoubtedly because of all the food he’d been eating with Steph and still the grin remained. There was no doubt about it. This grin was staying put.

Nothing had been the same since their kiss on the night of their first date. Waking up fully clothed in her arms underneath a duvet on her sofa the following morning Adam knew he had just experienced the single best night of his life; and the contrast between his night with Steph and the million one-night stands that he had shared with the Wrong Kind of Girls could not have been more marked. They had talked. They had laughed. But above all they had connected on a more fundamental level than he had ever experienced.

Feeling as though he needed to mark his arrival into the world of fully functioning adult relationships, Adam had carefully extracted himself from Steph’s limbs, borrowed her front-door key and sneaked out to the North Star Deli on Wilbraham Road where he picked up two hot chocolates and a huge box of freshly baked pastries. Just as she was stirring from her sleep he presented his purchases to her and had been more than a little startled when she gave him the oddest of looks. Adam’s imagination had gone into overdrive as he reasoned that perhaps a surprise breakfast of hot chocolate and freshly baked pastries might have been ex-boyfriend Rav’s signature move and now she was thinking about him. Apologising profusely for stirring up memories from the past, Adam had been about to get rid of the offending items when Steph had explained that she was looking at him oddly because Adam was being so nice to her. Perplexed at this complexity of thought processes Adam let out a sigh of relief and told her it was no big deal. He sat down on the sofa next to her, turned the TV over to one of the music channels and encouraged Steph to start eating and as they slurped hot chocolate, scoffed down pastries and took it in turns to perform a variety of comical reconstructions of R&B music videos, Adam felt sure that he was on to a good thing.

Back at his own place some time in the mid-afternoon Adam had been about to go to bed when he had received a text from Steph that read: ‘Hey you! Am off to bed just wanted to say good night and a huge thank you for the most fun that I’ve had in a long while. You are amazing. Sleep tight. S xxx.’ He had replied straight away (something along the lines that he too had enjoyed himself) and for the rest of the week that followed a constant stream of warm, funny and intimate messages bounced between her phone and his without a single call taking place until, on the following Saturday morning when desperate to see her again, he had called her up directly and asked her out on a second date.

Adam had suggested all manner of restaurants and bars that they could go to but Steph had politely rejected each of his suggestions and instead offered up one of her own: the cinema. Adam had driven them both into town where they then visited the Cornerhouse and watched a French film with subtitles. Indifferent to the film (which to his mind was needlessly complicated) Adam had instead contented himself with simply holding Steph’s hand in the darkness while making plans about where they would go to eat afterwards. And later still, full to the brim as they left the small Portuguese restaurant off Deansgate that he had selected, he had driven them back to Steph’s house where they had sat up until the early hours talking about nothing.

Now after weeks of dates covering everything from art exhibitions to folk artists in Levenshulme (plus a week-long separation) Adam was now well beyond ‘like’ with Steph and though he insisted on baulking at the word ‘love’ whenever his subconscious threw up the concept late at night, at the same time there were moments when he couldn’t help but conclude that if what he was feeling looked, smelled and tasted like ‘love’ then chances were that it probably was.

And now that she was away the clarity of thought that separation sometimes brings persuaded him that there was one last hurdle left before he could relax fully into this new era of his life. Picking up his phone Adam typed out the following message: ‘I think it’s time you met my family,’ and pressed send.

‘Are you ready?’

‘I think we ought to cancel.’

It was just after ten on the following Sunday morning and Adam was standing at the cooker in Steph’s sun-filled kitchen making breakfast for the two of them while Steph sat at the table in the middle of the kitchen and in preference to reading the open newspaper instead chewed pensively on a fingernail.

‘Cancel?’ Adam turned down the gas underneath the eggs he was currently frying. ‘Why would you want to do that?’

‘Because I’m not ready!’ she said, only half joking. ‘I need more time. You know you only get one opportunity to make a first impression.’

‘I don’t believe you! You’ve travelled all over the world, stood up to address meetings crammed full of ludicrously rich and powerful business people and run divisions that made a lot of money for your company and you’re scared of meeting a little sixty-seven-year-old woman who wouldn’t say boo to a goose and her two reprobate sons – who to be frank should be more concerned with impressing you than the other way round. What is wrong with you?’

‘I’m nervous, that’s all.’

‘You’ll be fine. All you need to know is that Mum likes fussing during dinner so there’s no point in asking her to take a seat, Luke is bound to be a bit off with you because his life is falling apart and Russell . . . well Russell will more than likely fall in love with you the second you say hello.’

‘You say all this like it’s some kind of a joke! Meeting your family is actually kind of a big deal, you know. I mean, what if they don’t like me?’

‘Then they won’t invite you back.’

‘I’m serious, Adam. This is a really big deal.’

‘To be fair it’s not a really big deal – it’s actually
a lot
bigger than that. I didn’t want to freak you out but since you’re already halfway there anyway I suppose it’s time I told you the truth: I have never, ever, ever in all my thirty-eight years brought a girlfriend –’ He stopped and raised a solitary ironic eyebrow. ‘I take it you are officially my girlfriend now, aren’t you?’ Steph rolled her eyes in a weary fashion. ‘Good,’ said Adam, and then continued – ‘back to my parents’ house for Sunday lunch.’

‘Never?’

‘Not ever.’

‘And you’re telling me this now because?’

‘Because basically you could walk in that house, slap my mum in the face with a wet fish, put your feet on the table and fart the National Anthem and my family would still think you’re the best thing since sliced bread.’ Adam paused and turned up the heat under the frying pan until the oil began to froth and spit. ‘So are you ready?’

‘Yes.’

‘For breakfast or to meet my family?’

Steph took a deep breath and exhaled. ‘Both.’

From the moment that she first received Adam’s text about meeting his family Steph had gone into panic mode even though Adam tried his best to point out that the Bachelors ‘weren’t the kind of family you have to worry about impressing’. No matter what Adam said to reassure her Steph refused to be reassured and instead demanded that with the little time they had left Adam should make sure she was up to date with every single last bit of Bachelor family trivia.

As they ate breakfast together Steph began to calm down enough to read out various snippets of news she thought worthy of discussion. Although Adam had little or no interest in the article about the investigation of a corrupt MP or the one about the playwright who had written a play that had a bunch of people he had never heard of up in arms, Adam liked the fact that Steph
was
interested in these things. As he sat watching her half chewing on a fried egg sandwich while simultaneously getting irate over a comment in the letters pages he finally accepted something that had only partially occurred to him before this moment: Adam Bachelor (bar owner, man about town and current holder of the title ‘second best-looking bloke in Chorlton’) had fallen completely and incontrovertibly in love with Steph Holmes.

‘Mum this is Steph,’ said Adam as he stood in his mother’s hallway. ‘And Steph this is Mum.’

‘I’m so pleased to meet you,’ said Joan, in what Adam noted as her ‘this is the voice I would use to meet the queen’ manner. She was wearing her ‘these are the clothes I would use to meet the queen’ clothes too, a pale lilac outfit that Adam had only seen her wear once before at his eldest cousin’s wedding. She shook Steph’s hand, invited her into the front room and asked if she would like a cup of tea.

‘I’d love one,’ said Steph. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Joan. ‘I think I’ve pretty much got everything under control. How do you like your tea? I’m guessing you don’t take sugar.’

‘You’ve guessed right,’ said Steph. ‘No sugar for me but apart from that I’ll take it as it comes, thanks.’

Nodding to herself appreciatively as if Steph’s no-sugar-in-tea stance was indicative of some great moral worth of which she approved, Joan left the room and returned five minutes later with two cups of tea on a tray, served in the china which only ever got used at Christmas or for visitors of international importance.

‘Adam tells me Sunday lunch at your house is a bit of a tradition, Mrs Bachelor,’ said Steph as Joan handed her and Adam (even though he hadn’t asked for one) the cups of tea. ‘I think it’s great that you’ve managed to get your boys to sign up to it.’

‘I’ve always felt that it’s important to have family time,’ said Joan, taking a seat. ‘The boys know I don’t care about lavish birthday presents or Mother’s Day gifts but if there’s one thing guaranteed to make me happy then it’s making the effort to come here on a Sunday.’