The Family Remains(6)

Alf throws Marco an uncertain look; then they both shake their heads. ‘No,’ says Alf, ‘no, we were just going to hang.’

I nod tersely and head to my room.

I know what I’m going to do. And I really do have to do something, or I’ll explode. I can’t sit around waiting for the lugubrious Miller Roe to sort this out. I need to sort it out myself.

I go on to Booking.com, and I book myself a four-day, all-inclusive ‘Gold Star’ stay at the Chobe Game Lodge in Botswana.

For one.





5




October 2016


At thirty-two years of age, Rachel tried not to dwell too much on the fact that her entire adult existence was a mirage. Her flat was owned by her father, who also bankrolled her business. It had happened so gradually, this reliance on her father’s adoration and generosity, that she hadn’t noticed when it had tipped over from being ‘what parents do to help their kids get started in life’ to something she was too embarrassed to talk about. Her jewellery business was making money but was not yet in profit. She could fool herself that it was in profit once a month when her allowance arrived and tipped her accounts over from red to black. But really she was at least a year away from making a proper living, and even then it would depend on everything going right and nothing going wrong. In six months she would be thirty-three, a long way from the benign shores of thirty, the age she thought she’d be when she finally became fully independent of her father.

But to the objective onlooker, Rachel Gold cut an impressive figure: five foot ten, athletic, groomed, slightly aloof. She looked like a self-made woman, a woman who made her own mortgage payments and paid for her own gym membership and had her own Uber account.

On a Friday evening in late October, a week after the unexpected email from the American guy, to which she had still not replied, Rachel went for drinks after work with the woman from the studio next door in her complex on the cusp between West Hampstead and Kilburn. Paige was twenty-three and still lived with her mum, but made her own money, enough to pay her mum some rent, enough to pay for her own holidays and her own drinks and her own eyebrow tinting. Paige made jewellery from base metals, unlike Rachel who used gold and platinum. Paige lived below her means and saved. She’d left art school only two years earlier, but she was already more of a grown-up than Rachel.

In the pub Rachel got the first round: a bottle of Pinot Grigio. There were heaters on the terrace, so they drank it outside, with blankets draped over their knees. Rachel asked Paige about her love life. Paige said, ‘Nil. Nada. Zero. Zilch. You?’

‘A guy,’ Rachel began, hesitantly at first and then with an unexpected swell of certainty that this was a conversation she needed to have. ‘I met him in the States, this summer, then he stalked me down on the internet and wrote to me via my website. Said he’s going to be in London for a few months and wants to meet up. I kind of …’ She placed the wine bottle into the cooler. ‘I kind of can’t stop thinking about him. At first I was like, I dunno, thought maybe it was a bit creepy. He’s older, as well.’

‘God. How much older?’

‘Like, maybe, ten years? Early forties, I’d say. Here.’ She turned her phone to face Paige, showing her the photo of Michael Rimmer she’d saved into her camera roll.

‘Hot.’

‘You think?’

‘Yeah. In that way. You know?’

‘What way?’ She narrowed her eyes at Paige, not wanting her to echo back her own strange thoughts about this unexpected man.

‘Looks like he’d fuck you hard. Then lie there, bollock naked, with his arms behind his head and ask you to get him a drink.’

‘Fuck.’ She snatched the phone back from Paige’s hand.

‘Which could be, you know, a good thing? Yes?’

‘God. I don’t know. Yeah, maybe. But no. Good and bad, I reckon. I’m going to be thirty-three next year. Is that what I want?’

‘I dunno – you tell me?’ Paige peered at her quizzically, a challenge in her gaze.

‘No. No. I mean, yes. For fun. But not for marriage, babies, all that.’

‘Is that what you want?’

‘No, not really, but I might want it and I don’t want to be stuck with a guy who doesn’t do nurture then, do I? You’ve got to have a guy who nurtures if you’re doing babies. And this guy’ – she cast her gaze down again at Michael Rimmer clutching his champagne glass in a tacky C?te d’Azur restaurant – ‘he does not look like a nurturer.’

‘Well,’ said Paige. ‘If you’re not ready for babies and marriage, why don’t you just go for him as your last one that’s not “the one”. He’s only in London for a few months. Just use him.’

A surge of nervous energy passed through Rachel at Paige’s suggestion. She’d just put Rachel’s own thoughts into words.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Yeah. Maybe I will.’





6




June 2019


Lucy approaches a young man in a tight grey suit clutching a folder. She puts a hand out towards him and he shakes it.

‘Max Blackwood,’ he says. ‘You must be Lucy. Lovely to meet you. Did you find it all right?’