Love Will Tear Us Apart Page 6

  And so we both turned twelve that September – old for our year group. Paul was given a Sony Walkman and I was given an electric typewriter and a party dress from Miss Selfridge that my mum had picked up in London. I opened that present before breakfast, perched on the edge of my mum’s bed as she smiled and watched me from the pillow. She seemed nervous that I would like it, which was a new thing, possibly caused by my jeans outburst the year before. Mr Baker had already placed the typewriter in my room the night before, without ceremony. It was heavy and grey. I liked the fact that I had it more than I liked using it. Paul was the real writer and I was desperate to show him.

  Mrs Baker gave me a birthday cake that she’d baked in the pantry, and a little bag with Miners make-up from Boots in it. ‘Don’t tell your dad,’ she said and I hid it under my bed and wore it later that evening when I pedalled out to see Paul.

  ‘You look like a clown,’ he laughed.

  ‘Well, you look like a fucking gaylord,’ I said, fists in balls at my side.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he’d muttered, looking down. ‘I’m not used to you wearing make-up.’

  ‘It’s my fucking birthday,’ I said, and I started to cry a bit, despite myself, bright blues and purples trickling down to my chin.

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’ He shuffled around and watched me until I finished sobbing, something he had only rarely seen. He gave me an awkward pat on the back and then handed me a small parcel wrapped in a Londis bag and sellotaped neatly.

  ‘I made it,’ he said. ‘I have to go.’ And he ran off full pelt without looking back.

  I listened to the mix C60 tape inside until the black ribbon spooled out, snagged on the workings of my Alba tape player.

  Three years after we first met, I finally took Paul to my house. He was the first friend to ever step inside the gates. I waited until both my parents were away and Mrs Baker was out shopping. I’d promised to let him use the typewriter.

  His house wasn’t far from mine, but it had seemed to take a long time to snake our way out of the centre of the small village. I fumbled with our wrought-iron gates and suggested we should just scramble over the wall, like I often did, but Paul was worried that he’d be seen and people would think the worst. No matter who he was as a person, he was still Mick Loxton’s boy; Mick was no angel and assumptions would be made. Eventually we got the metal moving and trudged up the drive.

  Paul was sombre and weirdly deferential at first. He asked politely about the large paintings in the formal dining room, and the black-and-white photos of my mother, taken by a photographer friend. He followed me up the stairs like it was a walk to the gallows. I hadn’t noticed quite how big the landing was until I saw it through his eyes. The downstairs of Paul’s house could have slotted neatly into it. I almost apologised.

  Paul’s bedroom at the Loxtons’ was the bigger of the two, a hangover from his childhood when his big bright boxy toys took up more space than Mick and Viv’s chest of drawers and bedside lamps. In his room, there was space for a desk, a single bed, a wide, flat record player and a sagging bookcase that left enough space for a Z-bed and a holdall. My holdall. After a while, I saw it as ‘our’ room. A space I could describe in intimate detail with my eyes closed. It smelled of whatever was being cooked downstairs, and when the heating was on, the windows dripped with condensation that slipped over the sills and down the walls. I loved it.

  My room was on a corner of the manor, with two sash windows along the longer wall and a smaller window on the other side. Each window had double curtains with a pelmet, dark purple velvet. Just looking at them with him by my side made me want to bundle him back out.

  I pointed to the typewriter, sitting on its writer’s bureau near the window but Paul was distracted by my wardrobe which ran the length of one wall, full of velvet dresses I didn’t need, pretty little broderie anglaise blouses and fine cord skirts. At the nearest end, were several pairs of Levi, Wrangler and Guess jeans. I hoped he wouldn’t look in, and notice brands he coveted that I never wore in front of him. Behind the jeans were some Chelsea Girl tops and a stripy tight dress I’d never worn outside of the manor but looked at a lot. At the back of the shelf along the bottom, I’d hidden my make-up bag even though the only person to clean in my room was Mrs Baker, and she was the one to buy most of the contents of the bag for me. Probably because she realised no-one else would think to, my mum certainly didn’t.

  I watched Paul scanning the room. The Wired for Sound poster from Athena. Framed. The David Bowie Serious Moonlight tour poster. Framed. Paul’s posters were pinned to the wall with thumbtacks. His mum didn’t allow Blu-tack because it took the paint off, but framed?

  The thing that seemed to catch Paul’s eye the most was the basin in the corner of the room, with my toothbrush in its pot. My own toothpaste! He looked at the basin, and he looked back and me with his head to one side, like he was waiting for an explanation. And then he shook his head a little.

  ‘I’ll put some music on while we do our homework if you want?’ I offered. ‘You can use the typewriter.’

  ‘Sure, thanks.’

  I wavered over the turntable, unsure what to play. I picked up Let’s Dance by Bowie, turned it over like I was looking at it for the first time. Put it down. I picked up Rip It Up by Orange Juice and looked to Paul for approval. He nodded but then a door had slammed downstairs, jolting us into a panic. We rushed onto the landing and, once we could see the coast was clear, thundered down the stairs and into a corridor. I showed Paul out of a side door and leaned against the wall, breathing hard. I went upstairs before Mrs Baker could ask questions and did my homework lying on the black carpet of the sunshine room, heart still racing.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  November 2012 – Tuesday morning

  ‘Have you given any more thought to Saturday?’ I ask in my lightest voice as I realise Paul is awake next to me.

  ‘What about Saturday?’

  ‘Dinner, about Saturday’s dinner.’

  ‘I’ve not even had breakfast yet. And it’s only Tuesday.’

  ‘I just don’t want a nice thing to turn into a problem.’

  ‘Well, right now you’re the only one doing that.’

  I bite the inside of my cheek and feel a gush of something in my chest.

  Paul has one hairy leg hooked over the starched white duvet, his arms up against the headrest either side of his face like chevrons. I can smell his morning smell, the musty, slightly sharp scent I’ve woken up to for all these years.

  He curls away from me and picks up his phone, glancing at it and replacing it on the side in one practised move.

  ‘Work?’ I ask but he’s staring at the ceiling and doesn’t answer.

  I breathe deeply and glance sideways at the sliver of sea framed by the dove grey curtains. It’s a bright winter day, golden sunshine plays on the cream carpet and the bed is as warm as buttered toast.

  ‘I love it here,’ I say, and I flip onto my side and look up at Paul.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ he says, ‘though I definitely think a week will be enough.’

  He looks at me for a long time, and then pecks me quickly on the nose.

  ‘I should get in the shower,’ he says.

  Seconds later, I can hear the furious blast of the water and I push my head back into the pillow.

  When I open my eyes again, Paul is at the foot of the bed, watching me.

  ‘I forgot to take the towel in,’ he says, avoiding my eye. ‘You should go back to sleep, Kate, I’ll tackle the troops for a bit.’

  ‘You sure?’ I know he’s sure.

  After his shower, Paul dries in the bathroom and dresses quietly. I keep my eyes screwed shut and pretend I’m already asleep.

  Paul’s visibly uncomfortable under my glare so I never watch him drying or getting changed. Even after all this time, it still feels like a forbidden act. Like watching how a teacher behaves when they don’t realise you’re still in the classroom. And Paul prefers to get undressed in the dark. Lik
e the first time.

  I always dry and dress in front of him without a moment’s thought. He has seen me beyond naked. He has seen me beaded with sweat, crouching on all fours, giving birth to a huge and hairy baby’s head. Twice. After that, covering up after a shower seems almost insulting. But perhaps I should retain an allure, perhaps I was wrong to feel confident in a skin I thought he wanted above any other.

  The first time we slept together in the light, my nakedness was raw and brittle. I heard him suck his breath in surprise, and pretended I hadn’t. He’d made love to me the way you might handle a leaf skeleton or ancient piece of glass.

  We’d expected to know each other’s bodies but I too was surprised that his chest had thick hair on it, that his skinniness had rolled out into something more like ‘lithe’ or ‘athletic’. I’d run my hands over his shoulders, measuring them silently, while he’d avoided doing any such thing to mine.

  Ours is not the most adventurous sex life, or the most regular. It has been months since the last time, a lethargic near miss late at night leading to an almost panicked burst of activity the following morning. But our sex life is still probably more varied than some outsiders might imagine. We try new things occasionally. We make an effort. I buy new underwear every few months and try it on when he’s in the room. That’s a staple in our routine. Admittedly, we rarely kiss. We peck goodbye, hello, good night. But we rarely kiss. I don’t recall ever pushing my mouth, hot and searching, onto his. In turn, his mouth is almost always somewhere near my ear. Only when he’s had an awful lot to drink – an awful lot – will he whisper things into it. Things I’d never repeat. And then, the morning after, he dresses behind the door of the en suite.

  I’m surprised to feel my eyes prickle when it strikes me that I might never experience these filthy whispered words again.

  I want to stay under these warm covers all day. I find it harder and harder to get up these days. But throughout my childhood and right through to my twenties I’d sprung out of bed like a baby rabbit. It almost chokes me how heavy I feel in the mornings now. From Izzy’s age, I was collected by the school bus at barely seven in the morning, early starts were in-built. Very few children outside of town attended my prep school, and we were scattered across the tiny villages so the bus took a good hour to gather us all up. I was one of the first, socks pulled up to my knees against the cold. My red hair in bunches, satchel, shiny patent shoes. I would stand and wait, shivering and frightened of the words scratched on the old wooden bus shelter.

  When I stayed at Paul’s for the weekend as a teenager, I’d wake up as soon as I heard the click of Viv’s kettle downstairs. Paul’s mouth would be slightly open like a fish, his arm hanging off the bed and his scrappy chest rising and falling. I’d ease myself off the Z-bed quietly but he never stirred. Viv and I would have had at least five cups of tea, have covered all sorts of topics and be sitting tucked into the corners of the sofa by the time he’d appear.

  Even at university I relished being up early enough to catch the rush-hour tube. I threw my arms up and let the tide take me, happy to be swimming downstream with a thousand faceless people, professionals I hoped to join soon. I drank in the sweat, the tapping feet, the sheets of newspaper smudging into nothing on the floor. Everything a blend of grey and neon. God, I miss having it all in front of me.

  And then, after graduation, I was a part of it. I was up and at ’em. Glassy-eyed, fully made up and intensely caffeinated, bouncing into the office before 8 a.m. Sometimes I needed to be in the office earlier, summoned to a breakfast meeting or to prepare for an event. I was always on time, enthusiasm pulling me out from my warm covers. I can’t even imagine it now.

  At home in Blackheath, our household is alive by seven but I conduct the chaos from my bed for a good hour, yelling instructions. Finally, when the need for caffeine is too great, I slope downstairs. School is a five-minute walk, but we generally leave with three minutes to go. At the last minute, front door wide open, one of the children will thunder back up to their bedroom – shoes on – to collect some urgent bit of paper or collectible card to swap. I stand there and shriek that they will genuinely give me a bloody coronary one of these days, but really I should just get up earlier. Every Sunday night, as I’m lying in bed running through the week ahead in excruciating detail, I promise over and over to myself that I will slow the mornings down, give myself more time, not blame the children.

  Sometimes, when I’ve dropped the kids at school and my heart rate has returned to normal, I turn left at the last minute and keep Greenwich on my right. I follow the Thames all the way through the dust of Deptford and the hum of Bermondsey – so cosmopolitan compared with a decade ago. I plod on towards Southwark, my feet starting to sting from the repeated slap of the pavement. I stride out onto Tower Bridge and then wedge myself into one of the little triangle cut outs in the belly of the bridge. Time dissolves as I stare down at the old brown river. The boats stream underneath. HMS Plymouth sits like a beached whale in the distance, the square mile within shooting distance.

  Sometimes that’s enough and I walk home on gritty feet, arriving back with enough time to throw myself into the laundry and pick at a bit of toast before the school run gobbles up the afternoon.

  On emptier days, I creep on up and over the bridge, eventually flopping down into St Katharine Docks, all cobbles and coffee places, gleaming glass buildings blocking out the sky. I tread lightly over the footbridge by the moneyed marina and count the little boats. So many names remain the same: Mia, The Sheemaun, Pride of England. . . I walk past the enormous anachronistic Dickens Inn, its big mock Tudor face gussied up with flowers. And then I’m there. Right outside the first home I ever bought, and the last home I bought alone.

  I stare at the windows of my old flat like a jilted lover. I worry whether the new owners look after it. It always looks so tiny, pushed at from above, below, left and right – the middle block in a sea of LEGO. The little flat could fit inside our current home’s kitchen–diner extension. Back then, all those British clichés about homes and castles. . . but it did feel like a tiny palace. A shrine to me and my adulthood. A sanctuary. But of course it made sense to sell it. It became the deposit on our married home, the real start of our new life.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  1985

  I loved Viv and Mick. I loved the smell of their soap. I loved the feeling of the rough doormat under my feet, the sofa that perfectly fitted the four of us and our lap trays.

  All day at school, I would sit quietly and watch the other girls play-acting. Hours of pirouetting and pouting, hair-flicking and bragging. Underwired bras had spread like poppies that year, but Mrs Baker still bought me soft cups from Marks and Sparks.

  At school, it was a race to the tallest tale. They all – we all – had so much already, and they’d still plump it up. Telling exaggerated tales about holidays, gifts, boyfriends, celebrity playmates. Yachting with Jagger’s nephew or polo with a minor royal.

  Viv and Mick were not dirt poor. But what they had was smaller and more cherished. One television, in the sitting room. One sofa. Two bedrooms because they only needed two bedrooms.

  ‘Moving’s for them’s that have,’ Mick once prophesied, when Viv tutted about the leaking tap and the bit of the kitchen known as ‘mildew corner’.

  ‘They’re building new houses up near the hospital,’ she said. ‘And I bet those new houses don’t have a doorbell that shorts the lights.’

  ‘Fancy that then, Queen Viv!’ Mick said.

  They never moved. The house had been Mick’s dad’s. Maybe I’m making it sound like their reluctance to move was out of nostalgia or obligation. It wasn’t, they’d both disliked Mick’s dad a lot. When he died of a heart attack a few years after Viv moved in, they celebrated with a Party Seven and new living-room curtains that hung until the nineties. But even in the housing boom, as they watched their neighbours selling up for increasingly soaring prices, the Loxtons rolled their eyes like they were watching an entertaini
ng farce.

  The house at 4 Church Street was always warm and always vacuumed and polished, no matter how many shifts Viv had at the hospital.

  By 1985, I stayed over on weeknights more often than not, catching the school bus from a different stop to my own. My dad was rarely home and Mrs Baker had known the Loxtons for years and trusted Viv. Knowing I was safe under Viv’s gaze saved her the trudge up the drive with a torch to perform her cursory version of babysitting.

  Most evenings, Paul and I would read our respective books by a nightlight and sometimes listen to Radio 1 or Paul’s tapes or records. He was obsessed with the Smiths. I liked them a fair bit but he would listen to their records like a gambler listens to the horse tips, writing down the names of playwrights, poets and writers. Morrissey was his cultural curator.

  So only once did we flout the trust we were given, and it felt like a very good reason.

  It was all last minute. We saw the Meat Is Murder tour dates in the NME the day before, checked that Viv had a shift on the calendar in the kitchen and casually asked Mick what his plans were for the next night.

  ‘Arrows,’ he said, without looking up from the pools form he was deliberating over.

  Darts at the pub while Viv worked invariably meant Mick would be installed in The Swan’s snug until kicking out time, or staying for a lock-in, arriving back with no mind to check that we were sensibly sleeping (which we usually were).