The Family Remains(16)
15
December 2016
By Christmas of that year, Michael was officially Rachel’s boyfriend.
It felt surprising to Rachel both in its unexpectedness and its predictability.
When she caught sight of herself and Michael in a shop window or the mirrored wall of a restaurant, she would note that they made a good couple: both tall, both olive-skinned, both with recently whitened teeth and thick brown hair. Their age gap was cancelled out by their physical similarities. Michael’s Americanness was tempered by his Europhilia; Rachel’s Englishness was tempered by her cosmopolitan upbringing. In spite of the ocean and the years that had kept them from having shared experiences to bind them together, they made a strange sort of sense.
A week before Christmas, Rachel took Michael to a party. It was the party of Rachel’s best friend, Dominique. She threw it every year in her converted loft in Kentish Town. It was legendarily messy, drug-fuelled, loud and late. But Dominique was currently pregnant with her first child and guests had been warned that this year things would be a little more sedate; Ubers @ midnight, the invitation stated.
Michael seemed a little nervous as they got ready at her place that night.
He had met a handful of her friends already over meals for four with other couples, but he had not been required to socialise with Rachel’s friends on a large scale and it was here that Rachel felt a disparity, a difference between them beyond age and nationality. In London, Michael was a lone ranger. He had a few business associates and a couple of ex-girlfriends, but he didn’t have a rooted circle of friends with the conversational and emotional shorthand that comes with having rattled around together in the same city for all of your life.
She felt protective of him that night, watching him button his shirt, check his teeth, fuss with his hair. She imagined him worrying about what people would think of him, worrying about the impression he would make. She sidled up to him in the bathroom and kissed his cheek.
‘What was that for?’ he asked, turning to smile at her.
‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘Just like kissing you on the cheek.’
He kissed her on her cheek and then returned to fussing with his hair in the mirror. ‘Is there anyone there I need to watch out for? Any rogue exes or crashing bores?’
‘No rogue exes, possibly more than a couple of crashing bores. I’ll point them out to you.’
‘And remind me? Dominique? Is your friend from high school?’
‘Primary and secondary. I’ve known her since I was four.’
‘And she is married to? No, don’t tell me. I can remember. She is married to Jonathan. Who is a tabloid journalist.’
‘Correct. High five.’
‘She is five months pregnant, due in April?’
‘High five again.’
‘And she’s a … a … a visual merchandiser at Matches, the boutique for rich ladies?’
‘Wow, you are good! Yes. She is. And she will most likely be in a bad mood because she can’t drink and she’s at that awkward phase of a pregnancy where you look fat, not pregnant, so she won’t be able to wear anything nice, and she’s tired all the time.’
Michael nodded sagely. ‘Oh, yuh,’ he said. ‘Yup. I remember that phase. I remember it very well.’
Rachel flinched slightly at his words. Michael didn’t talk much about Lucy, about his marriage and the family he’d lost touch with, but whenever he did, she felt it like a small spiteful pinch to her insides. Michael was box fresh to her: a fragrant, well-maintained man with no ties and no commitments beyond the occasional business call or meeting. Yet, beneath all that, she had to keep reminding herself, there was a brief mysterious marriage to a woman who could play the violin, who talked in poetry, who was fluent in French and had given birth to his only child. Beneath all that was a life that she would never ever be allowed to understand or experience, secret places she would never be allowed to go. She felt the smile freeze on her face and then snapped herself out of it.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking maybe a glass of something before we leave? Just to take the edge off?’
‘One hundred per cent yes. I will join you in a minute.’
She kissed him again and left the bathroom, uncorked a bottle of wine and poured them each a glass. She’d intended to wait for Michael but found herself picking up her glass and taking a large slug, her psyche telling her to pour something numbing over the hot ashes of jealousy smouldering inside her. Rachel was not a jealous person. She had never felt like this before about any other man’s history. She didn’t like the feeling; it made her feel lesser, somehow. It made her feel as if Michael was now somehow in control of her happiness, could switch it on and off with a careless comment or a throwaway anecdote. She took another sip of wine and then turned on her phone.
Dom, she typed, can you get Jonathan to do a bit of sleuthing with Michael tonight? Find out stuff about his ex and his kid and stuff? Don’t want to keep asking him stuff and he’s v cagey. THANK YOU!!! See you in an hour.
‘He’s fucking gorgeous,’ Dominique hissed in Rachel’s ear. ‘God, the way you were describing him I thought he was going to look like your dad. Which … well, he kind of—’
‘Don’t! Do not even!’