The Trouble with Henry and Zoe (28 page)

‘Why would your parents invite us if they thought it would cause a scene?’

‘Because they’re stupid?’

‘Honestly, Henry, you are such a card. I never realized you were such a card!’

I called my mother the second Zoe left for work on Monday morning.

‘You just needed a little nudge, babes.’

‘Mum, I don’t need you interfering. And I really don’t appreciate you stirring up drama.’

‘Really, Henry.
You
don’t appreciate
me
causing drama? Oh that’s rich.’

‘Mum . . .’

‘You seem to have a short memory, Henry Smith.’

‘Actually, Mum, I really don’t. How the hell do you think April is go—’

‘Don’t you
hell
me, Henry. Don’t you dare.’

‘Mum, calm d—’

‘For the record, Henry, I have talked to April.’

‘You have?’

‘What did I just say? Yes, I have.’

‘And . . .’

‘It’s over, Henry. In the past.’

‘Did you talk to George, Mum? Did you call him up and ask if he’s bringing a hod full of bricks to your little party?’

‘I don’t like your tone, Henry.’

‘Mum, listen, I—’

‘I talked to April, April will talk to George. It’s done, love.’

‘But, Mum—’

‘Henry, love, you can’t hide away forever.’

‘I know, but Zoe’s . . . it’s complicated.’

‘Newsflash, Henry, life is complicated. You deal with it, you move on.’

‘But—’

‘Henry, I want you here, your dad wants you here, and if there’s someone important in your life, well, we want them here too.’

‘. . .’

‘Henry?’

‘Okay.’

‘Good boy. And wear something red.’

But there is a part of me – a small sub-cellular part – that almost welcomes the inevitable. It will go one way or another and then – one way or another – it will be
over. Eight more days.

I gently uncurl Jenny’s fingers from the mirror.

‘It’s going to be a little sensitive for a while, okay? Your teeth need to find each other, make friends with each other again, and that’s going to take a few days.’

‘Can eat?’

‘Yes, you can eat. But give it a few days before you try steak or toffee apples, okay?’ Jenny smiles with her brand new teeth, and nods that she understands. ‘I’m going
to give you my phone number,’ I say. ‘So if you have any problems, any at all, you just call me, okay?’

‘Friends.’

‘That’s right, friends.’

‘
Doh je
,’ Jenny says, putting her hands to either side of my face, and kissing me quickly on the lips. ‘
Doh je
.’

‘
Mh sai haa hei
,’ I say, again. ‘Where did you learn to do that?’ I say, nodding at the curled up scroll.

‘Learn?’

‘Calligraphy,’ I say, writing in mid-air. ‘It’s very beautiful.’

‘Hah! No calligraphy. Buy on Amazon, five pounds, very bargain, innit.’

Henry doesn’t finish work for an hour, so I pass the time inside my duvet darkroom. Not developing film, but scrolling through my phone, watching footage of humans
temporarily separated from their sanity. Search for ‘freakout’ and you get one-point-two million hits, ‘road rage’ gives you nine hundred thousand, there are over sixteen
million ‘crazy’ women. Mad-faced screamers and frothing ranters. No wonder we say they’ve gone viral. Their rage and humiliation loaded online and shared and shared again. One
million views of some hysterical mum gone banshee over a pinched parking space. One hundred thousand likes for some spittle-mouthed pensioner ranting respect at jeering teens. But it doesn’t
do to be too amused. It could be you one day.

While the rest of the office went to the pub, I walked down to the travel clinic on Tottenham Court Road for my vaccines – yellow fever, typhoid, and an alphabet’s worth of
hepatitis. Maybe they affected my brain; you read funny things about these vaccines.

As I wandered back to the office, I watched a guy in a baseball cap and headphones step off the pavement, causing a car to slam on its brakes.

Next week Alex would have been thirty.

The driver that hit him was fined sixty pounds for driving without due care and attention, and given three points on his licence. My friends hear this with anger and indignation –
It’s a disgrace
,
He should be banned
,
He should be locked up
. But the truth is Alex stepped in front of him. No one is tactless enough to say it explicitly, but the
driver didn’t have a chance. He wasn’t speeding, wasn’t talking on his phone, wasn’t drunk. I feel guilty for thinking it, but I feel sorry for him too.

On Tottenham Court Road, the driver hit his horn hard: one, two, three times. The guy in the headphones lifted the peak of his cap and mouthed the words
Fuck off
, punctuating his
gratitude with his middle finger.

Without thinking, I was walking towards the guy, shouting like a woman demented. ‘Look where you’re going! You could have been killed.’ He looked at me and laughed dismissively
before walking away. But I followed him along the road. ‘I’m talking to you. Hey, you, don’t ignore me. What’s wrong with you?’

‘Piss off, yeah.’

‘Piss off? Really, you want me to piss off. I could be calling you an ambulance now. You could have been killed, for God’s sake.’

‘Well, I wasn’t, was I? So jog on, yeah.’

‘Jog on?’

‘Yeah,’ said the guy, stopping, and jutting his chin at me. ‘Fuck off.’

I slapped him hard, knocking his cap from his head. For a full second the guy was frozen in shock, and then his face knotted into anger and he took a step forwards.

‘Go on!’ I shouted at him. ‘Go on!’ I screamed.

We had a crowd around us by now, two or maybe three people holding up mobile phones.

‘Fucking psycho,’ said the guy, scooping his cap up from the floor. But he had the good sense to say it while he was backing away.

‘What are you looking at?’ I said to the semicircle of onlookers, a stupid question that should serve as a good punchline if my performance finds a larger audience.

I don’t doubt it’s out there somewhere, but good luck finding this mad cow. The best thing about these online meltdowns is the sheer volume of them. It’s almost enough to make
you feel normal.

‘Remember,’ whispers Gus, ‘you are not your thoughts. You are . . . well, you, obviously.’

‘Hmmm hmmmm.’

I feel as if I’m nothing but thoughts, jostling, yammering, antagonistic thoughts.

It’s whale song today, but to me it sounds like a gathering of demons.

My bank statement arrived yesterday, showing that seventeen thousand, six hundred and forty-six pounds has vanished out of my account. It is unlikely April’s father has forgiven me for
jilting his only daughter, but it seems his hatred has cooled to the point where he is now prepared to take my money. The effect on my conscience hasn’t been as profound as I’d
hoped.

‘Now attach those heavy headaches to your balloon. I think I’ll go with orange today. No, second thoughts, pink. And flooooat your funk away.’

It’s pointless.

Standing in the basket of a colossal hot air balloon are Zoe, April, Brian and a nervous midwife; Mad George is fiddling with the burner; mine, April’s and Zoe’s parents are
introducing themselves to each other. It’s crowded in there. They’re staring at me impatiently, waiting for something to happen, but this balloon is going nowhere.

The train takes just under two hours to rattle up the centre of the country to a small market town on the east of the Peaks. From there it’s another two hours to travel
half as far again, before finally arriving at the village where Henry grew up. He’s quiet today and becoming more so with every station we leave behind, staring out of the window, seemingly
hypnotized by the heavy rivulets of horizontal rain. Last night we watched
The Graduate
on DVD and Henry was so quiet I almost wished I’d taken on an extra shift at the pub. But we
have only five weeks left, so anything I’m going to earn in the Duck is no longer going to affect the course or duration of my travels. I continue to work there now, as much for the comfort
of routine as for six pounds an hour and all the cholesterol you can eat. And besides, I want to be with Henry, even if he has been quiet lately. Maybe he’s nervous, and after everything
he’s told me, I suppose I can understand.

It’s a little after three in the afternoon and we’re already on gin and tonic number two. Maybe for all his protestations to the contrary, he is sulking about my imminent departure.
But if he is, I wish he’d just talk to me about it.

For me, the best bits in
The Graduate
were between Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft; there was a chemistry between them that, from what I could see, Ben simply didn’t share with Mrs
Robinson’s daughter. For all of Hoffman’s brooding and mooching and running to the church, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what he saw in dreary old Elaine. But even so,
I was rooting for him when he followed her across the country, tracked her down on campus, hammered his fists against the chapel windows. I cried when they rode away together on the bus, Elaine in
her wedding dress, dishevelled Ben, for once, smiling. And all I could think was,
We have so much more than them, so why is it so easy for him to let me go?

Because it’s far from easy for me. The question has become a nagging voice inside my head, and I have had to physically bite my tongue to keep from saying something.
Take me with
you.
That, I suppose, is what I’m waiting for Henry to say, ask, demand. But then how would I answer? The whole point was for me to travel alone, to ‘find myself’. Can you do
that with someone else in tow? I guess that depends on who that someone is.

‘Excited?’ I ask.

Henry turns away from the window slowly, almost with reluctance. He sees his drink is empty and rattles the empty can. ‘Want anything from the bar?’

‘Talk to me,’ I say, drawing a glance from the woman sitting beside Henry and diagonally across from me. I reach across the table and take hold of his hands.
‘Nervous?’

Henry nods, and I raise my eyebrows to let him know that this doesn’t count as an answer.

‘Yes,’ Henry says. ‘A little.’

‘It’s just an anniversary. It’s not like you have to give a speech, or anything.’ A small laugh to lighten the mood, but Henry doesn’t pick up on it.

The woman opposite is wearing headphones, but as she fiddles with her phone it’s clear that she is lowering the volume.

‘I don’t suppose she went into labour then?’

‘My mother?’ Henry says, smiling.

‘You know who . . .
she who must not be named.’

Henry shakes his head. ‘If she has, no one’s told me. But then, they wouldn’t, would they.’ And he looks at me with so much more depth and meaning than the statement
would seem to deserve.

‘Will she throw a drink over you?’ I ask. ‘God, that would make a good picture. Give me a nudge if you see it coming.’

Henry doesn’t seem to find this possibility as funny as I do.

‘Look, I know you were
engaged
,’ I say, dropping my voice to a whisper on the last word, ‘but, well,’ – my mind flashing back to
The Graduate
–
‘it’s not like you left her at the altar, or anything.’

So fate lends a hand. Or, rather, sneaks up and shoves me violently between the shoulder blades.

‘It’s not like you left her at the altar,’ Zoe says.

And there’s no turning back now. Right up until this point, if I have lied it’s been a lie of omission, a white lie, a well-intentioned avoidance of potentially upsetting details.
But this is the point of no return; to leave Zoe’s rhetorical gambit unanswered and uncorrected amounts to nothing less than bare-faced deceit. And while we’re hitting the honesty
switch, let’s not pretend this is fate making a late appearance. I took the first step when I told Zoe I was a dentist, the second when I mentioned my engagement. Last night I could have
dropped any movie into the DVD player, but I chose
The Graduate
. Zoe cried at the final scene, as Ben and Elaine left the carnage of her broken wedding behind them, and the words were in my
mouth, but like so many times before they caught against my teeth.

It’s not a question, but Zoe has spoken through a smile, her eyebrows arched, waiting for me to laugh off this piece of fantastic whimsy. To acknowledge the joke. Instead, I press my lips
together apologetically, and watch Zoe’s smile fade from the eyes down. She opens her mouth to speak, thinks better of it and turns to look out of the window.

‘Zoe.’ I lean across the table and take hold of her hands, but Zoe sits back, drawing her hands out of my grip.