Come Again Read online

  On Monday, I’m up early, fussing over Maude and getting in the way. I bundle their rucksacks into the back of the Metro and beg it to get us to Heathrow. They’re both so excited, they can’t wait to leave, but I’m feeling wobbly. As I walk them to the gate of the departure lounge, I can feel my throat constricting.

  ‘You’re crying,’ laughs Maude, gently wiping my tears away.

  ‘I don’t want anything to happen to you,’ I blurt, clinging on to her.

  ‘Shh,’ she soothes, planting a kiss in my hair. She seems infinitely self-confident, so much more mature than me, despite the fact that I’m nearly a year older. ‘We’ll be fine.’

  ‘I’ll miss you both.’ I sniff loudly. My chin is trembling.

  ‘Come here, silly,’ says Maude, wrapping me in a big hug. Zip joins in and I’m enveloped in their warmth.

  ‘Why don’t you come and join us out in LA?’ says Zip, suddenly, pulling away. ‘We’ll get you a job.’

  ‘Go on with you,’ I bluster. ‘This is your trip. Three’s a crowd and all that.’

  ‘We’d love you to come,’ says Zip and Maude nods in agreement. ‘Come on, Sooze, it’ll be amazing. My Mum is out there. She’ll be able to sort you something out.’

  ‘You’re just saying that,’ I tut, but even if they are just saying it, the thought cheers me up immeasurably, as if a small part of their bravery has rubbed off on me.

  I’ll call you,’ mouths Maude, putting her little finger by her mouth and her thumb by her ear as she hitches her bag up on to her shoulder, links arms with Zip and walks through the departures gate. And in a second they’re out of sight and all I’m left with is my fading smile and my hearty wave withering in mid-air.

  Back in the short-stay car park, I have a good therapeutic bawl to get it all out of my system. Everyone seems to be deserting me: Maude to an adventure in America, Amy to get married, Sarah into motherhood.

  Where am I going?

  I turn the key in the ignition and drive down the slippery concrete ramps to the exit. It’s only then that I turn on the windscreen wipers and they stick, because someone has left a flyer on the windscreen. I curse and get out of the car and pluck it off. I’m about to screw it up when I notice its banner line. It reads in block capitals:

  CHANGE YOUR LIFE

  And for some reason, I put it in my pocket.

  Matt

  Tuesday, 20.45

  I remove a piece of paper from the bound file and pick up my dictaphone from my desk and walk over to the window, where I catch my half-reflection staring back: short black hair, charcoal-grey suit. My face looks every one of its twenty-eight years and my eyes are baggy and tired. It’s dark outside. There are no stars, just the glow of the city lights bouncing back off the smog-soaked clouds. From up here, on the eighth floor of the Robards & Lake building off Piccadilly, I can see across Haymarket, clear over Trafalgar Square and on to the Houses of Parliament themselves.

  The room smells of industrial polish and I reach out to open the window, then check myself, remembering that you’re not allowed to any more because it mucks up the air-conditioning. Instead, I settle for sitting on the windowsill and hitting the play button on the dictaphone. My voice drones, ‘Yours sincerely, etcetera, etcetera,’ at the end of the last letter I dictated. I press record.

  ‘Letter to William Davey of Mathers, Walter, Peacock, please, Mrs Lewis,’ I begin. ‘Dear Mr . . .’

  Only it’s not so much a beginning, as an end, because the next word that comes out of my mouth hasn’t got anything to do with either Davey, Mathers, Walter or, indeed, Peacock. Nor, equally, is it any business of Mrs Lewis’s, whose typing skills I’m fortunate enough to share with Peter in Property and Joan in Employment. In fact, the only person in the world that the next word has got anything to do with is me, because the next word is:

  ‘Pizza.’

  Three years at university, one year at law school, two years’ articles and four years’ employment with one of London’s top legal firms, and what have I got to say for myself?

  Pizza.

  Not what flavour pizza. Not what extra toppings. Not whether to order fries or onion rings or garlic bread. Not whether to choose cheesy-crusted deep pan or thin. Not even what soft drink I should get to wash it all down with.

  Just pizza.

  Because pizza, it seems, is where my life is at.

  I switch off my dicta phone and continue to stare out of the window. I feel the piece of file paper slip from my fingers and watch it flutter to the floor.

  This is the fourth night in a row – including Saturday and Sunday – that I’ve ended up stuck in the office, case-building for my Soho-club-owning client, Tia Maria Tel (he who’s always out after dark), attempting to discover a way of successfully demonstrating in a court of law that he’s not, as a certain columnist recently declared, ‘a dishonest, hypocritical, flatulent arse, who’s had more prostitutes over the last ten years than all the sailors of the Royal Navy put together’. According to my client expenses, since I took Tel’s case on seven weeks ago, I’ve chewed my way through no less than twenty-six pizzas on his behalf. And this, as I told Amy when I met her for a quick drink at lunch-time today, is a worry.

  ‘Oh, Matt,’ she sighed, squeezing my arm sympathetically across the pub table. ‘It’s only pizza. It’s not like it’s God, or the meaning of life, or anything scarily profound. ‘Pizza obsession is perfectly normal in a man your age.’

  Amy’s someone whose opinion I value, so this was a generalization I was prepared to run with. ‘It is?’ I enquired.

  She nodded her head enthusiastically. ‘Oh, yes. Jack’s the same with curries. I’ve seen him practically immobilized over a take-away menu. To vindaloo or not to vindaloo, isn’t that the question? It’s a basic male consumerist dilemma . . . too much choice, you know?’

  ‘You’re thinking about this in marketing terms,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s not that simple for me.’

  ‘It’s not?’

  ‘No.’

  Amy raised her eyebrows and waited for me to continue. I stared back for a moment. Talking through your psychological demons (even the dough-based kind) with someone is kind of personal. Still, Amy, via Jack, probably knows more about me than anyone on the planet. They have no secrets, in the same way that Jack and I used to have no secrets.

  ‘It comes down to the fact that my life hasn’t always revolved around pizza,’ I began. ‘It comes down to the fact that my life used to be about bigger issues. You remember that time when you and Jack came up to my office?’ She nodded. ‘You remember the view from my window?’ Again, she nodded. ‘Well, when I started working in London, that view inspired me. And not just that view either, but the whole city. I saw it as pure Wall Street. There I was, fresh in to town, ready to take control, yet to meet my Gordon Gekko and have the wool tom from my eyes. Back then, I’d get a real buzz from the whole thing, just standing up there, looking out, knowing that I was a part of it all. Potential. I suppose that’s what it spelt out to me, Amy. London was a wide open space, and I could fit in any place I wanted.’ I took a sip from my Coke and leaned back in my chair. ‘I even had a fantasy, you know. Not a sick fantasy,’ I quickly added. ‘Nothing involving farmyard animals, bearded nuns, or long pointy sticks.’

  Amy smiled slyly at me. ‘That’s not what Jack told me . . .’

  I rolled my eyes at her. ‘Seriously, Amy, I imagined that, by this age, I’d have got where I wanted in my career. I’d have got myself a house, I’d have—’

  ‘But you have got all that,’ she interrupted.

  ‘I know.’ I sighed. ‘But I thought it would all mean something. I thought that I’d be –’ I shot her a warning look – ‘I know this sounds corny – happy . . .’

  ‘And you’re not . . . ?’

  ‘No,’ I told her, suddenly experiencing a huge surge of relief over fronting up to someone about all this stuff. ‘No, I’m not. None of it seems to mean anything. And it was easy before, you know, when J
ack was living with me, when we were both in the same boat. Everything seemed fine. He wasn’t complaining, so why should I have been? Only now that he’s moved out . . . I don’t know . . .’

  I noticed Amy frowning at me. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘about stealing your best mate.’

  ‘No,’ I said hurriedly, ‘it’s not that. Christ, that’s the last thing I’m thinking. You two being happy and being together means the world to me.’ And it does, it really does.

  ‘Good,’ she laughed, relieved, ‘because I’m not giving him back.’

  We stared at each other for a beat and I felt myself smiling too. It’s a funny thing, watching your best friend fall in love. So many aspects of your relationship with them alter. I remember Jack last year, when he and Amy first met. It was all confidences between us then. Did I approve? Was he getting too involved? Was she really the only one for him for the rest of his life? And it was a buzz for me, too, watching these two people reaching the conclusion that they were one hundred per cent right for one another. Then, though, came the realization that my relationship with Jack had altered, probably for ever. No matter what he might say to the contrary, I was no longer his best friend. Amy was.

  I groaned, coming back to our conversation. ‘It’s just, Christ, Amy, I don’t know where Jack leaving my house leaves me.’

  ‘Single?’ Amy suggested.

  ‘But I’ve been single for ages. Jack moving out shouldn’t make any diff—’

  ‘Of course it does. I mean, yes, you were single before, sexually . . . but emotionally and everything, you always had Jack, didn’t you? Partners in crime. All that stuff. I met you two at the same time, remember,’ she said with a glint in her eyes. ‘I remember exactly what you were like. It was the same with me and my close friends. When you’ve got mates, who needs partners?’

  ‘So you reckon it’s a girlfriend issue, then?’ I asked, failing to catch the sarcasm in my voice. ‘Easy as that?’

  ‘I don’t know about that, Matt, but having someone or something else to think about might stop you obsessing about pizza quite so much.’

  I look away from my office window and consult my watch. It’s one minute past nine and the moment of decision is upon me. Pizzas are chargeable to clients from nine onwards, my stomach is rumbling. I’ve yet to follow Amy’s advice of getting myself an alternative obsession, and denial will only make matters worse. With this information at my disposal, it’s not a tough call. I reach for the phone to dial up some dough. But then the phone does what phones have a habit of doing in offices just when you’re quietly minding your own business: it rings. I stare at it, a look of mild offence no doubt settling in for the duration on my face. Then I pick it up.

  ‘Hello, Matthew Davies speaking,’ I say, praying it’s not Tia Maria Tel, who’s already called three times today.

  ‘All right, Matt,’ Jack’s voice comes on the line. ‘How’s tricks?’

  I smile. Jack’s voice is one of those sounds that automatically put a smile on my face. I sit down in my chair and put my feet up on the desk, relaxing, I think, for the first time today. ‘Tricky. How about you? What’s new?’

  ‘Nothing much. I’m starving. Just got out of a meeting with some posh hairdresser down the road from you. He wouldn’t shut up, kept me there for hours. Kept banging on about wanting an industrial centrepiece to put in his front window . . . Maybe I should drive a car through it and leave it there. Call it Ramraid. Do you think that would be industrial enough for him?’

  ‘Are you asking me that as a lawyer or a friend?’

  ‘Friend.’

  ‘In that case, I’d say it was a distinct possibility.’

  ‘Any chance of borrowing your Spitfire for the job?’

  ‘No, Jack. No chance at all.’

  ‘Didn’t think so.’ He sighs. ‘Industrial, indeed. I ask you, mate, what is the world coming to?’

  ‘The world,’ I calmly inform him, ’is coming to an end. In the new millennium, psychos and zealots will take to the streets, signalling the beginning of a thousand years of darkness, during which there will be a perpetual cacophony of wailing and gnashing of teeth.’

  ‘Mmm . . .’ Jack considers this response for a moment, before deducing, ‘You’re not having a good day, are you?’

  ‘I’ve had better.’

  ‘You want to tell Uncle Jack about—’

  ‘Hawaiian, or Four Seasons?’ I interrupt.

  ‘Eh?’ Jack queries.

  ‘Hawaiian, or Four Seasons?’ I ask again.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s one minute past nine, Jack,’ I say tiredly. ‘You’re starving and you’re just around the corner. You know I’m working late this week and you know I get to order free pizzas after nine. So what’s it to be? Hawaiian, or Four Seasons?’

  He finally accepts the fact that he’s been rumbled. ‘Hawaiian. Heavy on the pineapple, yeah?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Half an hour all right?’

  ‘Fine. Get security to buzz me and I’ll come down and get you.’

  That’ll be Jack, then. Jack Rossiter, my best friend in the whole world. Jack Rossiter, the grubby little kid who used to fight with me in the playground during lunch breaks over who got to be Batman and who Robin. The same grubby little kid who repeatedly stole my records, cigarettes and hair gel throughout the eighties. The same Jack Rossiter who hooked back up with me in the nineties in London after university, became my lodger, borrowed my car, my clothes, my money, my food, and, from time to time, my girlfriends. The same Jack Rossiter who’s capable of making me laugh until my eyes water. The same Jack Rossiter who I’d march through the gates of hell to rescue. And the very same Jack Rossiter whose new lease of life has inadvertently cast a black shadow across my own.

  I think back to my conversation with Amy at lunch-time, all that stuff about needing something bigger than pizza in my life, and suddenly I find myself glaring at the phone I’ve just put down. And even though I know it’s childish and pathetic, there’s no use in denying it: I feel jealous of Jack, jealous to my core.

  I snatch the dictaphone off the desk and press record.

  ‘Letter to God, please, Mrs Lewis,’ I say briskly. ‘Dear God. Matt Davies here. You probably won’t remember me, but I’m the lucky soul who got beamed down into a human body at 03.13 G.M.T. on 4th April, 1971. Mother, Gina. Father, Mike.

  ‘Anyway, down to business. I’ve never been much of a churchgoer, but I do know my statutory rights, and although I’ve never actually seen a specific clause relating to divine warranties, I’m working on the assumption that such things do exist.

  ‘The basic problem is that it’s recently come to my attention that my life’s not going the way I expected. It’s a matter of fairness, I suppose. You see, God, there’s this guy. His name’s Jack. Jack Rossiter. He’s been my friend since I can remember. Now, don’t get me wrong here, God, Jack’s a great guy and I wouldn’t wish anything bad on him. No thunder strikes, locust plagues, or rent asunderings. I’m not complaining about his circumstances, you understand, just my own.

  ‘What I want to know, God, is how come it was OK for him to quit his job last year and slob about for months on end, only to turn into an overnight artistic success story? And to fall in love at the same time? And to suddenly find himself happy beyond his wildest dreams? Are you telling me that’s just the way the cookie crumbles?

  ‘And if it is, then how about giving me just one itsybitsy bonus, too? It can be anything. I’m not greedy. A win on the horses. A promotion at work. Jennifer Lopez walking into my office right this minute, asking me if I know how to show a girl a good time. Something simple like that. Just one pinch of that good stuff you’ve seen fit to sprinkle all over Jack. Just to make the balance even and restore my faith.

  ‘I look forward to hearing back on this pressing issue in the near future, present, past, or any other temporal dimension you see fit.

  ‘Yours sincerely, etcetera, etcetera.

  ‘Thank
you, Mrs Lewis.’

  I put the dictaphone back down on the desk, and then check the wall: nothing. No denial from God on that one, then. No celestial scrawl, acknowledging that there’s been some sort of mistake that will be rectified forthwith. So it’s a fact. Jack’s life – by heavenly decree – is better than mine.

  It was to be expected, I suppose. I couldn’t go through twenty-eight years of existence side-by-side with someone and always end up on top, could I? It wouldn’t be right. And, to be fair, I’ve had a pretty good run for my money up till now. Since that temporary aberration of Jack losing his virginity before me, things have gone almost entirely my way. I got better results than him at A level, got a better degree and a better job. I ended up with a great house and a great career. And Jack ended up paying me rent.

  Only then he met Amy and everything changed.

  And I haven’t changed. And herein lies the problem. I’ve stayed the same. And everything I valued before now seems meaningless. I mean, what’s the point in having such a great house if I’ve got no one to have over for dinner? What’s the point in working late at the office every night if I’ve got no one to go home to? And what’s the point in earning all this money if I’ve got no one to blow it with?

  Amy’s right: I need to find someone.

  But where?

  Just where the hell do you even start looking for love?

  The only answer that hits me is a negative one: not here. Not here in this office and not now. Guiltily, I glance down at the dictaphone. I rewind the tape and erase my rant at God, then cross my heart for good measure. Then I call the pizza place. Pizza’s going to have to do for now.

  At nine thirty, I’m at the top of the spiral staircase which descends through the hanging plants and indoor trees of Robards & Lake’s atrium. I lean over the edge of the balustrade and see Jack, four floors down, sprawled on one of the sofas in the reception, with what looks suspiciously like an open pizza box on his lap.