Perfectly Ordinary People(71)

‘And what were these clauses?’

‘I’m not sure it would be strategic on my part to give you the full list.’ I laughed. ‘But they were things like your partner becoming a serial killer, or a junkie . . . or a smack dealer. Stuff like that.’

‘Right,’ Dan said. ‘Are you intending to do any of those?’

‘Not in the immediate future,’ I said. ‘Though apparently there’s quite a lot of money to be made.’

‘In smack dealing?’

‘No, serial killing. On a contract basis, of course.’

‘Right,’ Dan said. ‘Of course.’

‘But the truth is, sweetie, that we just don’t see much of each other. That’s not a criticism, honestly. Not at all. It’s just a statement of fact. So I’m still not sure where a kid fits in.’

‘Well, things would have to change,’ Dan said.

‘Everything would have to change. But I’m not sure you’re ready for that.’

‘I’m ready if you are,’ Dan said.

I shrugged.

‘Well, are you?’ Dan asked.

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Oh, you’re not sure?’

‘I guess I’m ready if you are,’ I said.

‘Cool, that’s sorted,’ Dan said. ‘So let’s do it.’

Because the very next thing he did was to roll me on to my back, I wasn’t one hundred per cent sure if he’d meant, ‘let’s move in together and have a child and do the whole shebang,’ or merely, ‘let’s do it.’

The next morning, when I got up, the blister pack was missing. Rather sleepily, I hunted for it, surveyed by Buggles from the open bathroom door.

Thinking that maybe I’d inadvertently carried it elsewhere, I searched the bedroom and the lounge before finally returning to check the bathroom dustbin, where I found it, lying on top.

I stood with my foot on the bin pedal for some time, perhaps two or three full minutes, just staring at that blister pack and thinking about all the different aspects of the situation. How did I feel about Dan taking it upon himself to bin my contraceptives? Was that cute, or pushy, or full-blown narcissism on his part? Did I feel we’d discussed the subject enough for Dan to feel justified in doing such a thing? After all, it was all very well Dan being ready, but was I?

And then a sort of combined what-the-hell/fuck-it feeling rose up in me so I allowed the lid of the bin to slam shut. ‘Sometimes you just have to go for it,’ I told Buggles as he preceded me through to the kitchen, where he’d correctly assumed he was about to be fed.

Dan had rather sweetly laid out breakfast for me and tucked into my empty coffee cup was a slip of paper ripped into the shape of a love heart.

Yeah, I thought. You’ll do, Danny boy.

We set things in motion quite quickly, in fact no later than the following weekend.

On Saturday morning, I phoned two estate agents and booked them to work up estimations on my place. Meanwhile Dan went to Nationwide to ask how much he could borrow. The answer to that question was, sadly, not much. Banks do not favour the self-employed in these matters. In the afternoon we phoned around various estate agents to request they inform us of any suitable properties on their books.

As our joint criteria included that it needed to be in a lovely area, near park or woodland; that it had to have two (or preferably three) bedrooms, a massive kitchen and a lounge that got direct sunshine, plus the obvious one that we had to be able to afford it, I wasn’t holding my breath. This was London, after all. Property prices had been going crazy ever since Thatcher had first got in and there were no signs that they were going to crash under Blair. The only upside was that the value of my flat had also skyrocketed.

Christmas ’97 we spent at my place, and that was a first for both of us.

In a way, I saw it as a test. Could Christmas with Dan possibly rival Christmas at my parents’ place? The answer, it turned out, was yes. Though I don’t think two experiences of Christmas could really be more different, it definitely wasn’t a downgrade.

Of course, I missed seeing the family and all the fun and games. But Dan cooked the most incredible veggie dinner and did so without any of the burnt bits or fuss that characterised Christmas dinner at Mum’s.

After we’d eaten, he gave me a pretty coral bead bracelet, and he had even wrapped a cat toy for Buggles. Though Buggles preferred the wrapping paper to the toy, that was a sure-fire way to my heart.

We got drunk on champagne that Dan had pilfered from one of his jobs and then fell asleep in a big, warm huddle on the sofa.

Meanwhile, in the corner of the room, my unreliable TV worked just long enough to beam It’s a Wonderful Life at our three snoozing bodies. And though you’d probably say that I’d drunk too much, and though you’d almost certainly be right, I swear that final detail, that lovely film, just filled my living room with Christmas.



The package arrived on the 11th of January 1998.

I’d been working, reading a manuscript set in an apocalyptic landscape where everything and almost everyone had been lost to various catastrophes provoked by the millennial bug.

Though the story was well written and was reasonably exciting, it needed major revision before publishing, and I wasn’t entirely sure we’d be able to get that done in time to monetise the whole thing by December ’99. Because whether the novel turned out to be fiction – if 2000 went off without a hitch – or prophetic – in which case we’d all be dead – I was struggling to see how it could sell beyond that point.