The Two of Us (26 page)

‘Drive safe,’ says Maria. Then she punches me on the arm again, hard. ‘Dickhead.’

‘Love you, too,’ I say, climbing into the car.

On the apocalyptically empty roads, with my foot hard to the floor, leaning forward in the driver’s seat, the Fiat has a top speed of eighty-two m.p.h. Two police cars pass me as I head
south, exceeding the speed limit by a full twelve m.p.h., but all they do is wave and grin and honk their horns. ‘Honk if you’re horny’, says one of the bumper stickers on
El’s ‘battymobile’; and though I can’t say that I am – I am happy and frantic and eager, which, perhaps, amounts to the same thing – I honk and grin and wave
back to the speeding coppers.

Door-to-door, the trip takes two hours and fifty-seven minutes. I ring the Lees’ doorbell at four minutes past eight on Christmas evening, and my heart is banging as if I’ve run the
entire journey.

Frank answers the door. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

‘Happy Christmas, and right back at you, shit-bag.’

Frank puts a hand to his temple as if he’s just been struck with a migraine. He shakes his head. ‘For fuck’s sake.’ And then he laughs.

‘Is everything okay?’

Ivy’s mother shouts from inside: ‘You’re letting the cold in. Who is it?’

Frank shouts back into the house: ‘Fisher!’

‘Arseholes!’ This bellowed welcome from Ivy’s dad, followed by an explosion of booming laughter.

‘Frank, are you going to ask me in, or what? What’s going on? Where’s Ivy?’

Frank looks at his bare wrist as if checking a watch. ‘Somewhere on the M6, I imagine. My guess is she’ll be arriving at your dad’s gaff in about . . . twenty
minutes.’

As I travel towards London on the M4 on Christmas evening, attempting to push the accelerator through the footwell, El’s Fiat reaches a terrifying, teeth-rattling
eighty-six m.p.h. The wind must be blowing east. Or maybe it’s the force of my will.

Frank was ten minutes out and it wasn’t until after eight thirty that Ivy called her parents’ house from my dad’s. Thirty not unpleasant minutes in the company of Ivy’s
mum, dad and Frank, me drinking tea and eating a turkey sandwich, them drinking wine, whisky and advocaat respectively. Frank, it transpires, managed less than twenty-four hours of festive solitude
before deciding he was in danger of going mad or drinking himself into oblivion. Following a Christmas breakfast of burnt bacon sandwiches, he spent an hour watching kids’ TV, agonizing over
whether or not to open the Cointreau. Halfway through
The Muppet Christmas Carol
, he threw a bag into the boot of his Audi and set off for Bristol. He arrived at his folks’ in time
for Christmas dinner. He revealed all this while we were in the kitchen, making another round of drinks. I asked whether he’d told his parents about the Lois situation, but before Frank could
answer Eva came into the room to fetch the Quality Street.

Despite vocal protestations from her son and her husband, Mrs Lee insisted on a round of charades (
It’s a Wonderful Life; You Only Live Twice
,
Bridge Over the River . . .
sounds like mince pie
). Ken wanted me to have a drink and Eva wanted me to stay the night, but I resisted both offers because I was still holding out hope.

The motorway is quiet, but there is still more traffic at ten thirty in the evening than I would have guessed, and it makes me sad. Many of the cars contain single drivers – people who
should be with other people. Maybe they are returning from days well spent with friends and family, but in my imagination they are alone and adrift. Perhaps they’re thinking the same thing
about me. No one honks on the motorway at ten thirty on Christmas Night.

Ivy called at eight forty, as Frank was miming the act of throwing up
(‘Out of breath? Dodgy tummy? Retch? Sick? Spew? Wallace and Vomit!
). Maria and her brood had gone home by
then, so it was just Dad and Ivy on the other end of our six-way Christmas conference call. The consensus was that Ivy and I should spend the night at our respective ‘in-laws’’,
but foolishness prevailed and Ivy squeezed herself back into her van and I squashed myself behind the wheel of the Fiat.

Even travelling in excess of a hundred miles an hour (speeds neither of our vehicles is capable of ) it was extraordinarily unlikely that both Ivy and I could make it back to Wimbledon before
midnight. But we calculated that, with luck, faith and a good tailwind, we could both get to the Oxford services while there is still some Christmas left in the day. It’s not exactly
en
route
, but when have I ever done anything the easy way?

The car park at Oxford services is practically deserted, and I immediately spot a white van with the words ‘Glamour Squad’, stencilled onto the side. Ivy is perched on the bonnet,
her breath forming white clouds in the air. I pull up alongside and unfold myself from the tiny car at six minutes and a bunch of seconds to midnight.

‘You made it,’ Ivy says, managing to communicate with a quiet smile that this is a moment I should resist cheapening with any kind of glibness.

I put my arms around Ivy and hug her as tightly as I can without crushing her or my babies. ‘Happy Christmas.’

Ivy kisses me, softly at first, increasing the pressure and tension by increments until we’re engaged in the kind of kiss that would be embarrassing if there was another soul around to
witness it. ‘Happy Christmas,’ she says, and we sit side by side on the bonnet of her white van, holding hands and saying nothing else until midnight ticks over, and then Ivy kisses me
again.

‘Right,’ she says, ‘if I don’t pee in the next two minutes, I think my bladder might explode.’

If I had expected any kind of festive atmosphere in Oxford services in the early hours of Boxing Day morning, then I would have been an idiot. The skeleton staff (Santa hats drooping over their
eyes) regard us with indifference as we gaze into each other’s eyes across a Formica table and two steaming cups of burnt coffee.

‘Do you think we passed on the way?’ Ivy asks.

‘Are you being metaphoric?’

‘Too late at night for that. Or is it early in the morning? I can never decide.’

‘I think we must have done,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry.’

Ivy shrugs. ‘It’ll make a good story to tell our children.’ She smiles, and it’s a smile I’ll remember until I lose my hair, teeth and mind.

‘Shall we go home now?’

We pull up outside our flat at a little after two a.m. Ivy is dead on her feet, and with her arm around my shoulders, I all but drag her up the stairs. I’ve driven a
six-hundred-mile triangle in thirty-six hours to get here, but it’s been worth the trip.

‘Shall I put the kettle on?’ I ask as Ivy curls up on the sofa, still in her coat and shoes.

‘Do we have any sherry?’

I open cupboard doors and rummage through the tins and packets. ‘No sherry. Cointreau or port?’

‘Hmm, tricky. Cointreau might be a little pokey, d’you think?’

‘You could have a small one.’

‘Surprise me.’

I pour two ports and take them to the sofa.

‘Happy Boxing Day, baby,’ I say, going to clink my glass against Ivy’s.

Ivy pulls her glass out of clinking range. ‘I’m pretty sure it doesn’t stop being Christmas till we go to bed.’

‘Really?’

‘Totally.’

‘So . . . if we stayed up for the next two days?’

‘Still Christmas.’

‘In that case, Happy Christmas, baby.’

And now we clink. Ivy sips her port, closes her eyes and savours the sweet liquid. ‘First drink I’ve had in twenty weeks.’

‘How is it?’

She purses her lips. ‘Bloody good.’ And she takes another sip.

‘I’m sorry, you know. About . . . everything.’

Ivy shrugs a minuscule shrug. ‘Me too,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry too.’

‘I forgive you.’

Ivy goes to kick me in the leg. I grab her foot and hold it in my lap, massaging the heel, sole and toes. And that, it seems, is that. We could have said these words two days ago, of course; but
I don’t think they would have carried the same weight and value without a six-hundred-mile, two-day road trip behind them.

‘You must be exhausted,’ I say.

Ivy nods. ‘Don’t think I’ll be staying up for the next two days, I’m afraid.’

‘Can you manage ten minutes for presents?’

My parcel is about the size of a packet of crisps; Ivy’s is roughly the size of a signed first edition copy of
A Prayer for Owen Meany
.

‘You first,’ Ivy says with a sly smile.

I tear open the snowman paper to reveal a pack of ten picture hooks.

As well as deferring my birthday until three fifty-five on the afternoon of December 25th, my family has always (for the last fifteen years, at least) found it highly amusing to give me a
feeble, disappointing ‘joke’ gift for Christmas, only to follow it up with a present proper at five minutes to four in the afternoon. I have never told Ivy about this tradition, but it
appears someone (Hermione, is my bet) has, and it seems I am doomed to suffer this festive farce for as long as I have the strength to tear paper.

‘Hooks,’ I say, with my traditional routine of forced enthusiasm and poorly concealed disappointment. ‘Just what I always wanted.’

Ivy smiles, picks up her own parcel and picks at a corner of Sellotape with her nail.

‘Be careful,’ I advise.

Ivy regards me suspiciously. What she is holding is obviously a hardback book. What she doesn’t know, though, is that this particular bunch of pages cost me over four hundred pounds. Worse
still, she has read it before.

Ivy frees the tape from one end of the package and starts working on the other.

‘
Owen Meany
,’ Ivy says, clutching the book to her chest.

‘You were reading it the first time we met.’

‘I remember,’ Ivy says, laughing.

‘It’s a first edition.’

And then she melts into tears. ‘Thank you,’ she says, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. ‘It’s . . .’

The tears come harder now, and I’m terrified that one of them is going to land on the book and do about a hundred quid’s worth of damage. Carefully, I take the book from Ivy’s
hands and place it on the coffee table.

I pull Ivy into a hug and kiss the top of her head.

‘I love you,’ she says. And if that’s it, if those three words and a packet of picture hooks are all I get this year, then it will still be the best Christmas of my life.

‘It’s only a book,’ I say. ‘Pull yourself together.’

Ivy sniffs, wipes her eyes again. ‘Phew,’ she says, ‘must be my hormones.’

She picks up the book from the coffee table, holds it reverentially and opens the cover, revealing John Irving’s rather clumsy signature. She turns to the first page of the story, and
starts reading. ‘So good,’ she says under her breath. ‘Do you think it’s safe to read?’

‘Now?’

Ivy laughs, closes the book. ‘Probably not, hey.’

I shake my head. ‘I’d keep it well out of the reach of little fingers, too.’

Ivy’s hands go reflexively to her belly.

‘How are they?’ I say.

‘Great. Moving all the time.’

I lean forward and kiss her bump. ‘Happy Christmas, babies.’

Ivy strokes my head. ‘I almost forgot,’ she says.

‘Hmm?’

‘It’s your birthday, isn’t it?’

‘Thirty-two today.’

‘Wait here.’ Ivy begins hauling herself from the sofa.

‘Shall I?’

She shakes her head and disappears into the hallway. When she returns, she is holding a flat package almost an arm span high and wide.

‘Happy birthday,’ she says, propping the article up against the sofa.

The very first day I met Ivy, we were discussing the make-up for the
Little Monsters
commercials I was shooting. Ivy made the comment that the scripts were ‘horror in fancy
dress’, citing the old movie
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
.

And it is these three faces that adorn the framed poster Ivy has bought me for my birthday.
The laughs are monsterous
, according to the headline.

‘I love it.’

‘First day we met,’ Ivy says, kissing me, and it sends a red-hot impulse straight to the centre of me.

‘I remember. Where will I hang it?’

‘Anywhere you like. It’s your house, too.’ And she leans forward and kisses me hard on the lips.

‘So is it Christmas until we go to bed, or until we go to sleep?’ I ask.

Ivy grins. ‘Not sure what you’re getting at.’

‘Well, I thought that, as we’ve got the place to ourselves for a night . . .’

‘A bit more than a night, actually.’

‘Why, when’s he coming back?’

Ivy shakes her head. ‘He isn’t.’

‘They got back together?’

Another shake of the head. ‘No. Frank and Lois are done. I told Frank it was time to move on. To move out, actually.’

I force myself not to grin too expansively. It’s not easy. ‘What did Frank say?’

‘I told him we, me and you . . .’ She kisses me on the forehead, the tip of the nose, the lips. ‘I told him we needed our own space. He’s fine, he gets it.’

‘Do your folks know?’

Ivy nods.

‘Wow, that must have been fun around the Christmas pudding.’

Ivy winces. ‘Anyway,’ she says. ‘You taking me to bed or what?’

I fell asleep – with an idiot smile on my face – attempting to resolve a calculation . . . we last made love on the last weekend in August, the day before we
visited Dad. Thirty days has September, April, June and November . . . all the rest have thirty-one . . . but every time I close in on a figure, I drift into sleep . . .

Whatever the number, it had been well in excess of one hundred days since Ivy and I made love. Until last night. Until this morning.

When I wake several hours later, Ivy is not beside me. The sheets on her side of the bed are cool, but the physical memory of her still clings to me under the heavy blanket. Like the imprint of
a sheet on my cheek and the smell of port on my breath. I’m hungry and need to pee, but I want to stay here, wrapped in the echo of Ivy’s heavy breath, the residual heat from her body,
the smell of her hair, the ghost of her back pressed against my chest . . .