Love Your Life(38)

I’ve been so preoccupied, I haven’t noticed our surroundings changing as we’ve been walking. We’re not in a pretty garden square anymore. Or a pretty street. We’re standing in front of the ugliest building I’ve ever seen in my life and Matt is gesturing proudly at it. “Home!” he adds, just in case there was any doubt. “What do you think?”

What I honestly think is, I can’t believe anyone ever designed this. Or built it. It’s made of concrete with sinister-looking circular windows and odd rectangular structures extending in all directions. There are three blocks in total, linked by concrete walkways and stairways and weird angular bits. As I look up, I can see a distant, high-up face peering out of a glass stairwell as though in prison.

But then I feel guilty for having critical thoughts. London’s a nightmare to find a home in. It’s not Matt’s fault that this is all he could find.

“Wow,” I say. “This is…I mean, London property’s expensive, I know it’s hard, so…” I smile sympathetically at him and he beams back.

“Tell me. I was lucky to see this place on the market. I had to fight off three other bidders.”

I nearly fall over in the street. Three other bidders?

“It’s a great example of 1960s brutalism,” he adds with enthusiasm, opening the main front door and ushering me into a concrete-clad hallway.

    “Right,” I respond faintly. “Absolutely! Brutalism.”

I’m sorry, but if you ask me, no word that contains “brutal” is a good word.

We travel up to the fourth floor in the kind of lift that belongs in a violent thriller, and Matt opens a black-painted front door into an atrium. It’s painted matte gray and contains a metal console table, a leather footstool, and a piece of wall-mounted sculpture straight ahead that makes me jump in fright.

It’s an eyeless face made from clay, straining out of a panel on a long neck as though it wants to scream or eat me. It’s the most grotesque, creepy thing I’ve ever seen. In revulsion, I swivel away—to see a similar piece of art on the adjacent wall, only this is ten hands all reaching out at me like something from a nightmare. Who makes this? I reach down to Harold for some reassurance and say, “Isn’t this…great, Harold?”

But Harold is whining unhappily at the face sculpture, and I don’t blame him.

“Don’t be scared!” I say. “It’s art.”

Harold gives me a desperate look as though to say, “Where have you brought me?” and I pat him, soothing myself as much as him.

“Take your coat?” says Matt, and I hand it over, trying desperately to think of something positive to say. In my peripheral vision I can see yet another sculpture, which seems to depict a raven. OK, I can cope with a raven. I walk up to it, intending to say something complimentary, then notice that in the raven’s mouth are human teeth.

    I emit a scream before I can stop myself, then clap a hand over my mouth.

“What?” Matt looks up from putting our coats in a cupboard which is so discreet I hadn’t noticed it. “Are you OK?”

“Yes!” I try to gather myself. “I was just…reacting to the art. Wow! It’s really…Does it belong to you?” I’m seized by a sudden hope that it’s his flatmate’s, but Matt’s face brightens.

“Yeah. It’s all by Arlo Halsan?” he says as though I might recognize the name. “I was never really into art, but I saw his stuff at a gallery, and I was like, I get this artist. Blew me away. I have another piece in my bedroom,” he adds with enthusiasm. “It’s a hairless wolf.”

A hairless wolf? A hairless wolf is going to watch us have sex?

“Great!” I say in a strangled voice. “A hairless wolf! Awesome!”

Matt closes the cupboard and opens another door, which I hadn’t noticed either because everything is so uniform and sleek and monochrome. “Come and meet the guys,” he says, and ushers me through the door.

The first thing I notice is how huge the space is. The second is that everything is black or gray. Concrete floor, black walls, metal blinds. There’s a seating area with black leather sofas, three desks with an array of computers on them, and a punching bag hanging from the ceiling, which is being thumped by a thickset guy in shorts with his back to us.

    On one of the leather sofas is a guy in jeans and massive sneakers. He has headphones on and is intently gaming. I swivel to see the screen—and bloody hell, it’s massive.

“Ava, Nihal. Nihal, Ava,” says Matt by way of introduction, and Nihal raises a brief hand.

“Hi,” he says, and flashes me a sweet smile, then turns his attention back to the gunfire on the screen.

“And that’s Topher,” says Matt, gesturing at the guy whacking the punching bag. “Topher!”

Topher stops punching and turns to face us, and I feel an inner jolt. Whereas Nihal is skinny and quite conventional-looking, Topher is arresting. He’s powerfully built, with a face which is…

Well. I don’t like to use the word “ugly.” But he’s ugly. So ugly he almost comes full circle. His eyes are sunk into his face. His dark eyebrows are massive. His skin is bad. Yet somehow he’s compelling. He radiates personality, even standing there, all sweaty in his sports shorts.