The Sick Rose (16 page)

Paul went into the Gents, opened up his phone and removed the SIM, bent it out of shape and tried to tear it. It was harder to destroy a metal-and-plastic rectangle the size of a fingernail than it was to dig out a clump of knotweed. The exertion brought him out in a beery sweat. Once he had managed to twist it into two pieces he tried to flush the halves down the lavatory but they kept bobbing to the surface, chasing each other around the bowl like tiny golden fish.

When he came back into the pub, the tables were on the chairs and Kylie was just about to draw the bolts across the front door. That meant that everyone had got the last bus back to Coventry, which meant that the Leamington bus would be leaving in . . . shit shit shit.

He stood in the little shelter, trying to strike the balance between making himself visible to the driver and making himself vulnerable to the late-night cars that took these lanes at speed. The yellow wash of light that heralded the bus’s arrival did not come. He read the bus-stop timetable twice to confirm the departure times he knew by heart and tried to turn on his phone for the clock but his fingers were cold and clumsy and he couldn’t get the battery back in. Without a SIM card he had no way of calling for a taxi, even if he had had the money. A car approached. He locked eyes with its headlamps, turned to full beam, and was blinded for half a minute. When the white blobs and splashes cleared, the car had pulled up parallel to his stop and Louisa was lowering the window. In the dark she looked about the same age as him.

‘Have you missed your bus?’ she asked.

‘Doesn’t matter, I can walk,’ shrugged Paul.

‘Walk? To
Leamington
? How many have you had? Get in, I’ll give you a lift. I’ve just driven Ingram and Demetra home, it’s no bother.’

The interior smelt strongly of something herbal and churchy underlaid by a heavy, eggy smell that made him feel seasick. The silence in the car filled up as though it would burst the windows. He didn’t know what to do with his hands so fiddled with his fleece, worrying at the hem and then pulling at a loose thread in the embroidery on the breast, unravelling the letters until they just said ‘as’.

‘I’m sorry if I hit a nerve earlier,’ he said. ‘When I was talking about what happened with my girlfriend. I think it was a bit insensitive. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

Her laughter was sad. ‘You don’t need to apologise to me for what you did to your girlfriend.’

‘I’m not, I don’t think. More like, I’m sorry someone did it to you.’ He hadn’t meant to share his theory with her: it had just slipped out. They were approaching Leamington now, and she stopped at a red light.

‘No flies on you, are there?’ she said, in a tone that put an end to the conversation. ‘Whereabouts d’you live?’

He directed her to his flat. When she dropped him off, he didn’t know how to say goodbye. Should he kiss her on the cheek? What if Ross was right and she saw that as a sign? How embarrassing would that be? He settled for a mumbled thank-you and then tried to make a fast getaway, but his seatbelt caught and he had to twist his whole body around to release the tangled strap. In the back seat, sitting upright and belted in like three well-behaved children, was a trio of orange gas canisters. He knew at once that he had found the occupant of the secret caravan but he kept it to himself; he had already blurted one of her secrets this evening.

The alleyway was moated by a steaming puddle of vomit, which Paul cleared in a flying leap he would never have been able to repeat sober. He had just missed his elusive housemates: the kitchen windows were weeping with fresh condensation and a comforting cabbage smell lingered. He lifted the lid of the pan on the hob: there was an unidentifiable but appetising stew inside. He ate the lot, standing up, with the wooden spoon and then in a rush of guilt emptied his pockets, arranging four pound coins in the bottom of the dirty pan. In his room, he didn’t get undressed, just kicked off his shoes and trousers. He kept his socks on and even his fleece. The smell of the gas clung to his clothes and skin like a veil. Before sleep mugged him, he held two thoughts in his mind. The first was that Louisa’s lift had distracted him from the Carl problem. The second was that it was a pity she was so old. That night he had his first wet dream in years, waking with a start at four in the morning to find that he had made a bog of the cold, empty bed.

Chapter 20

March 2009

‘How’s it going with that girl?’ said Daniel with unconvincing nonchalance.

‘Emily? Yeah, she’s all right.’ Paul wished he had never mentioned Emily, but it was hard when she was his default thought. She was in the year below him, Year 12 and taking AS levels while he was in Year 13 and hurtling towards A Levels. She had a round infantile face and soft wispy hair and her breath was pure and milky, like a child’s, but from the neck down she was all woman; when she let him touch her, his hands swerved like an out-of-control car. She could have got away with tight clothes like the girls from the estate but she wore dresses that floated around her; like Paul, they only got to skim, never to cling.

Emily read for pleasure the kind of books that Paul had only read for school. She had lent him her copy of
Great Expectations
, a second-hand paperback with a wrinkled orange spine. After a couple of chapters he’d got really into the story, but was learning that enjoying a book and being able to talk impressively about it were two different things. He read the Dickens in tandem with a York Notes guide to help him through the bits he didn’t get. So far, she was impressed with his take on the book; he lived in mortal fear that she would one day catch him in the act of reading the study guide.

It had taken three months for Paul to speak to her and another three to progress from that to their – his – first kiss. That first time, she’d been allowed to drive her mum’s car to college and she had driven him out to the quarry. She had been wearing a flowery dress, a denim jacket and a pair of baseball boots. Her hair had been washed that day and was more flyaway and babyish than ever. She kept putting up her hand to smooth it down and at one point Paul reached out and tucked a strand behind her ear. She had blushed furiously, a bright coral that had stained her cheeks and the skin above her breasts, but she hadn’t taken his hand away and he had known that she wanted him to kiss her. But kissing was still all they did. He hadn’t even seen her bra beyond the strap. The pattern had not changed or progressed in the term they had been whatever it was they were – weekly conversations which would progress to hand-holding or a bit of tickling, whichever seemed more likely to culminate in a fully clothed snog. He was sore and swollen with wanting her. He wished he could just bypass this stage and somehow magic the pair of them to a clean bedroom, clothes already off, permission already given, preferably with Emily already having done whatever girls had to do to warm themselves up for the event. He would be as gentle with her as he could. He was in a rush to be able to take his time.

Emily was the reason Paul had not yet applied to university, although he had not told anyone this, not even – especially not – Emily herself.

He told his mother that he wanted to work for a year or so first, to put aside a bit of money so that he wouldn’t spend the rest of his life in debt. She was delighted; her pride at the thought of a graduate son had always been tempered with worries about money. If Paul worked locally and lived at home, in two years he would have saved enough to cover rent, fees and living. He felt bad about lying to her about his intentions; the minute Emily was off next year, he would follow her.

He told his tutors at the sixth form college that, seeing as he intended to spend the rest of his life in the education system, he wanted to experience real life for a while. They were less enthusiastic, and not just because of the insult implicit in his excuse. Why not apply this year, they said, secure a place, and then defer? They pretended it was for his own good but he knew that the more students they sent off to higher education, the better ratings the college would score. He stood his ground. A year from now, he was confident he and Emily would be sleeping together, a proper couple. What if he was accepted onto a teaching course in, say, Bristol or Exeter and then a year later when she started looking at courses, she found that the university for her was in Edinburgh or Glasgow? She was cleverer than he was, he didn’t expect to go to the same university, but he knew that all of the big university towns also hosted less elite universities, former polytechnics. Perhaps they could even live together.

So far he had managed to keep her apart from Daniel but that could not last forever. Emily would never understand the nature of their friendship and he knew she would disapprove of where they went to at night; he disapproved himself. And Daniel would never understand what he felt for Emily. Girls flocked to Daniel ‘like flies to shit’, as Carl put it. It was his looks, of course, but the raw material was well packaged. While Paul saved almost every penny of his share of their takings, Daniel spent the lot on designer clothes. Unless they were working, he never wore sports gear or trainers but worked a sort of high-fashion formal look that the girls couldn’t get enough of. For someone who had terminated his relationship with education at fifteen, Daniel was pretty well known at the sixth form college, especially among the girls. Once, when he’d met Paul at the gates, a girl had invited him to some party she was having and ignored Paul. Not that anything long term ever came of this popularity. Soon after leaving school, Daniel had had a thing with a girl called Nicola which had spanned a good two months. Paul had hoped that he would get her pregnant, marry her and emigrate to Australia. But Nicola had dumped him for being moody and shut-off. Paul deduced that the closer they got, the harder it became for Daniel to hide his illiteracy. Knowing Daniel better than anyone, Paul guessed that he had masked his panic and shame with truculence and stonewalling. Daniel had spent the night after she broke it off in custody, after uprooting a post and using it to smash in the window of Ladbroke’s in the precinct. It was the first time Daniel had been arrested, and Paul had been as frightened by the lick of the law as if he were the one spending the night in the cells. That fear, though, was nothing compared to seeing Daniel cry when he came home again. He had never seen his father in tears but he imagined that it would feel like this, panic and a strange sense of betrayal at such weakness from a strong man.

In the immediate aftermath of Nicola, Daniel had seen some programme about the history of male friendship and discovered that in ancient Greece platonic friendship between men, not sexual unions between men and women, was the elevated relationship, the one all the great art was about. He had pressed the record button halfway through and made Paul watch it. Watching the bad actors playing Achilles and Patroclus, Paul understood what Daniel was trying to tell him: that their friendship was the bedrock of his life and there was no room for women. It made Paul feel claustrophobic and prematurely but passionately angry, as though Daniel had already come between him and Emily.

‘Troy not in?’ said Paul, dumping his bag on the kitchen floor.

‘He’s at the Warrant Officer,’ said his mother. ‘He thought he’d give you and me a bit of time together.’ The house stank of the Chinese herbs she took in conjunction with her acupuncture. The bag of curling leaves and dried-out roots was acrid and choking when it was dry; they had to be boiled for half an hour before she could drink them and when the pan was on the hob, the smell was repulsive. His mother used honey to make the tea go down; she spooned almost half a jar into the cup, gulped it, shuddered, then peered into the mug, clearly dismayed to find there was still so much left.

‘Sit down, baby, I want to talk to you,’ she said, when she had recovered. Paul was immediately on guard. Did she know what they’d been up to, and if so, how much did she know? Did she only know about the legit stuff or was she on to the stealing, too? He tried to compose his features into an expression of puzzled innocence.

‘Me and Troy have been talking about things,’ she said. ‘You know that my last IVF cycle didn’t work, because Troy was still working?’ Paul nodded. Natalie had made poor Troy give up his business, concerned that the chemicals in the oven-cleaners were somehow disabling his sperm. He had heard them rowing about it in the night; his mum had threatened to leave if he didn’t change his career and eventually Troy had agreed. Paul would not have understood before, but since he had met Emily he was beginning to see why men did completely stupid things because women asked them to. ‘Well, that was the last of the money. I only had one go on the NHS and we can’t afford any more private ones with Troy being out of work.’ Was she going to ask him for
money
? He was suddenly conscious of the roll of notes in his jeans, as conspicuous and mortifying to him as any erection. ‘The rules are different in different parts of the country. In some counties you can get three goes up to the age of forty. It’s a postcode lottery.’

‘So?’

‘You know Troy grew up on the south coast? Well, I’ve made some phone calls and it turns out that if we move in with his mum there, we’ll be eligible for two more cycles on the NHS. To cut a long story short, we’re moving.’

Paul remained still while his mind turned cartwheels. He wasn’t even sure where Sussex was, to be honest, although he guessed it would make commuting to Tilbury Fort Sixth Form College quite a challenge, and if she thought she was taking him away from Emily before he had sex with her she had another think coming. He folded his arms.