Come Again Read online

  ‘It was getting cold,’ he mumbles, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth as I reach him. He watches me stare at the single greasy cube of pineapple in the otherwise empty box. ‘Don’t stress it, mate,’ he says, pushing the box to one side, revealing another, closed one beneath. ‘Yours is in here.’ His forehead wrinkles. As with all Jack’s expressions, time has given me the ability to read it like a book. And this page reads guilt. ‘Well, most of it is,’ he mumbles on. ‘You see, I had to try a bit to make sure it wasn’t my Hawaiian . . .’

  I accept the box from his outstretched hand and open the lid and my good vibe vanishes. A third of my Country Farmer Triple Spice is missing. But that’s not the worst of it. There’s a large, Jack-sized bite mark in the centre of the remaining crust. I snap the lid shut, then look from Jack to the box and then back to Jack again. I take a deep breath, because it’s not every day that a man has to make a decision between his pizza and his best friend. Jack is not the enemy, I remind myself. He may be a completely selfish bastard with an appetite like a half-starved pig, but he’s not the enemy. Jealousy is the enemy. Jealousy over the fullness of his life. And now, jealousy over the fullness of his belly. I breathe deeply once more and remind myself that I’m bigger than this, and that I can and I will overcome these negative feelings. Exercising extreme control, I slowly close the lid and drop the box into a bin.

  ‘Forget it,’ I tell him. ‘Let’s go for a drink instead.’

  We duck in to a bar just round the block. By the time we’ve got our drinks and squeezed in to a comer table, I’m feeling calm again.

  ‘You booked anywhere yet?’ he asks.

  ‘What?’

  ‘For the stag weekend. You got somewhere sorted?’

  ‘Um, sure,’ I lie. What with everything that’s been going on at work, I haven’t had a chance. I’d better get on the case soon, or we’ll end up sitting in some dull pub in London. ‘It’s all done.’

  ‘And have you let everyone know?’

  ‘Faxed them last month,’ I confirm, and this is true: I have given them the dates. ‘Everyone’s replied except for Carl, and he’s an unreliable bastard at the best of times. Gete’s off to Ibiza with Tim and Mark, so they’re out.’ I count off the party on my fingers. ‘So that’s you, me, Stringer, Damien, Jimmy and Ug, maybe Carl, and your brother. Seven definites, then, maybe eight. Are you sure about Jimmy and Ug?’

  He nods his head. ‘Yeah. I can’t not. They’d be gutted.’ I look at him sceptically. Amy’s not the only one concerned about the two Neanderthals in question. ‘Don’t worry,’ he reassures me. ‘I’ll keep an eye on them.’ He grins and chinks his glass against mine. ‘Assuming I can see straight.’

  ‘How’s it going with you in the new place?’ I ask.

  ‘It’s good.’ He looks at me sidelong. ‘Not that I don’t miss living with you,’ he quickly adds, ‘but I thought it would be a major issue, you know, a surrender of my independence . . . that kind of thing. But it’s not. It’s great being with her full time. I suppose it’s different because we’re getting hitched. It’s a natural progression.’

  ‘Growing up and moving on . . .’

  ‘Yeah. You going to get another bloke to move in?’

  ‘Not decided.’

  ‘You’re on to a loser,’ he states, shaking his head morosely, and whistling through his teeth.

  I look at him, confused. ‘Huh?’

  ‘Getting someone as awesome as me. It’s just not going to happen. I mean, no matter who you find, they’re always going to be a huge disappointment. Christ,’ he reflects, ‘what an act to follow. You’ve got to pity the poor bastard.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I humour him, ‘it’ll involve a world-wide search. National advertising campaign. Wanted: Jack Rossiter’s successor. Only applicants possessing a degree in Slob Studies from the University of Blag need apply . . .’

  Jack runs his tongue thoughtfully across his lip before saying, ‘Yeah, that should just about do it.’ He looks at me expectantly. ‘Have you put the ad in yet?’

  ‘No, I’ll put one in between the stag and the wedding. I’ve been too busy with work. I’ll get Chloe to give me a hand interviewing the applicants. Should be a laugh.’

  He nods his head. ‘How is she? I haven’t spoken to her for a while.’

  Chloe’s an old schoolfriend of ours from Bristol. The three of us have been as thick as thieves for years.

  ‘She’s got some new guy.’ I make speech marks with my fingers as I say, ‘film producer’, because, obviously, like most young so-called film producers in London, he hasn’t actually got around to producing anything more substantial than a line in plausible bullshit just yet.

  ‘You met him?’

  ‘Last week. Round at hers.’

  ‘More info.’

  So I tell him. I tell him exactly what happened when I went round to Chloe’s flat last week. And I tell him why.

  Last Thursday afternoon, I got a phone call from Chloe at work.

  Chloe: Your secretary sounds drunk.

  Me: Mrs Lewis is a teetotaller. A drop hasn’t passed her lips since her husband, George, ran away with the landlady of their local pub five years ago. She has a speech impediment owing to a severe laceration she suffered to her tongue as an infant, after her brother, in a vile enactment of sibling rivalry, pushed her pram to the top of a hill near their home and then released the brake.

  Chloe: Fascinating as that may be, darling, I wasn’t calling you up for your secretary’s life history.

  Me: So why have you called?

  Chloe: Because I need your help.

  Me: What do want me to do?

  Chloe: Come round to my flat tonight.

  Me: For dinner?

  Chloe: Not exactly, though I can rustle up a snack for you, if you like.

  Me: For a drink and a catch-up, then?

  Chloe: No, but we will have time for a quick chat . . .

  Me: What, then?

  Chloe: I want you to be my boyfriend.

  Me (suspecting there was probably more to it than that): OK. Will eight o’clock do?

  Chloe: Better make it seven. I’ll need to brief you on exactly what’s required.

  Me: Fine. Seven it is.

  Come seven thirty that evening, I was sitting down in the window, seat in the living-room of Chloe’s ground floor flat, overlooking the road. She doesn’t have a front garden and passers-by get a clear view of exactly what’s going on in Chloe’s front room. And what was going on in Chloe’s front room was this: Chloe was sitting with her back pressed up close to me and her fine, shoulder-length hair falling against my cheek, as I administered a sensuous massage to her shoulders and whispered sweet nothings into her ear.

  Or rather, that’s how it looked. In reality, there was nothing sensuous about the movements of my fingertips and the sweet nothings whispered between us went something like:

  ‘Look, can we give this a rest for a minute? My arms are starting to ache.’

  She craned her neck and stared at me for a second, allowing her essentially wicked blue eyes to grind my misgivings away. ‘Don’t be such a weed, Matt,’ she finally said, turning back. ‘He’ll be here in a minute.’

  ‘What if he takes it badly?’ I asked. ‘He’s not violent, is he?’

  ‘No, he’s lovely. He just needs a nudge in the right direction.’

  ‘Yours, you mean . . .’

  ‘Exactly. He’s older than us, set in his ways. I just want you to get him jealous enough to make him realize that he’s not the only fish in the sea, and that he can’t go on stringing me along for ever without giving me some sort of commitment. How are the wedding plans going, by the way?’ she moved fluidly on, before I could have a chance to object. ‘Have you written your best man’s speech yet?’

  ‘Working on it.’

  ‘And Jack and Amy? How are they?’

  ‘Great. They’re in their new place. We’ve got the stag and hen nights coming up.’

  ‘Yes, and
I haven’t been asked on the hen . . .’

  ‘Well, what do you expect? You and Amy hardly see eye to eye.’

  ‘No,’ she corrected me with finality, ‘Amy doesn’t see eye to eye with me. I’ve got nothing against her. I think she’s perfectly sweet. She’s just jealous about how close I am to Jack. Or was . . . Still,’ she reflected, ‘at least I’m getting to go to the wedding . . . not that it would have surprised me if I’d been NFI to that, as well.’

  NFI, as Chloe informed me a while back, is an acronym for Not Fucking Invited. ‘Yeah, well, maybe that’s a good time for you and Amy to make your peace. Who knows, you two might end up good—’

  ‘Shush,’ she hissed, tensing up, ‘here he comes.’

  I continued to massage Chloe’s shoulders, and began to mutter the alphabet sexily into her ear, whilst surreptitiously looking out of the window. Chloe’s new boyfriend, Andy, was getting out of his ruby-red Alfa-Romeo Spyder. He was good-looking, about thirty-five, and was dressed like an extra from Operation Desert Storm: baggy combat slacks, a Portobello Market khaki T-shirt, desert boots and a photographer’s multi-pocketed waistcoat. His hair hung in untidy bleached streaks on his shoulders.

  ‘You sure he’s not violent?’ I asked Chloe. ‘Only all that ex-army gear . . .’

  ‘Don’t be so mean,’ she chastized. ‘He’s cute.’

  At this point, I observed the cute Andy stop in mid-swagger and literally freeze on the pavement as he noticed the two of us. I counted the seconds off by my heartbeat – one, two, three – and then saw movement again, as Andy got down to some seriously aggressive grooming of the male kind: sticking out his chest, dropping his Wayfarer shades down off the top of his head over his eyes, and running his fingers with deliberate slowness through his hair.

  ‘I still can’t believe I’m doing this,’ I muttered, continuing to massage Chloe as I felt Andy’s eyes boring like drills into the side of my face. ‘Remind me again,’ I continued. ‘Why am I doing this?’

  ‘Because you’re a good friend and you know that I’d bail you out if you were in a similar fix.’

  ‘OK,’ I tell her, ‘but if he attacks me, I expect you to defend me. To the death, if necessary . . .’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she assured me, getting up to answer the door. ‘It won’t come to that.’ She stopped at the doorway to the hall. ‘And remember to niggle him,’ she reminded me. ‘Make him a little insecure. But don’t be downright offensive. If things work out between us, you’ll be seeing a lot more of him . . .’

  I was mates with a guy called Paddy at university. Like me, he was there to study law. But unlike me, he had the uncanny ability of never ending up in situations he didn’t want to be in. He put this down to his uncompromisingly honest approach towards life. He always spoke his mind and if he didn’t want to do something, he’d just come out and say so. After observing him in action a few times, I narrowed down his manipulation-free existence to a single facet. It wasn’t Paddy’s uncompromising honesty that saved him from being roped into dreadful situations, it was his deployment of the word no. When Paddy said no, it was apparent to all and sundry that he most definitely meant it. Whilst remaining within the boundaries of civility, it was an essentially antisocial statement of intent capable of killing debate in an instant. I never once saw it questioned.

  As Chloe brought Andy through in to the living-room and he stood there – shades in his hand, eyeing me suspiciously – I decided that selective use of the Paddy No would be my weapon of choice for the forthcoming duel. From what Chloe had told me about him, Andy was a man used to living life on his own terms. I suspected he’d never suffered a decent no in his life.

  Chloe, standing between us, smiling brilliantly, seemed impervious to the testosterone leak that was presently flooding Andy’s pants. ‘Andy, this is Matt, an old friend of mine. Matt, Andy.’

  Andy grunted at me and, following his lead, I grunted back.

  ‘Beers, boys?’ Chloe asked.

  We both nodded, two prize-fighters, not taking our eyes off one another for an instant. Chloe left the room to fetch the beers and, in her absence, the stare-off continued unchecked for a few seconds. Andy, I’m glad to report, though if truth be told it was a close thing, was the first to crack.

  He weighed his shades in his hand. ‘What line are you in, then, Matt?’ he eventually asked.

  ‘Law.’

  He considered this for a moment, before realizing that his enquiry wasn’t going to be reciprocated. ‘I’m a film producer,’ he stated, watching me for a reaction.

  ‘Really? And what exactly have you . . . produced?’

  He lit a cigarette. ‘I’m working on a short at the moment.’

  ‘A shorts what?’

  ‘Film.’

  ‘And what are your shorts about?’

  ‘Short,’ he corrected me.

  ‘Whatever .’

  ‘It’s a love story.’

  ‘Cute.’

  ‘Do you like films?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you go to the cinema, right?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Watch television?’

  ‘No.’

  He watched me, waiting for me to elaborate; I didn’t.

  ‘So,’ he eventually asked, fishing for a reason for my presence, ‘do you live round here?’

  ‘No.’

  Again, he waited for me to go on. Again, I didn’t.

  ‘London, though, yeah?’ he finally asked.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve got a nice little bachelor pad.’

  He took the bait. ‘You’re single?’

  ‘I wouldn’t exactly put it like that,’ Chloe interrupted, returning with three open bottles of beer, and distributing them before tactically taking an armchair at the side of the no man’s land between Andy and myself. ‘Matt’s a bit of a shark, aren’t you, darling?’ she went on, looking up and smiling at me winsomely. ‘Exes all over London who he likes to . . . keep in touch with?’

  I smiled easily. ‘Something like that.’

  Andy looked between us. ‘How did you two meet?’

  ‘Us?’ I reflected dreamily. ‘Oh, we’ve known each other since school. We’re – how shall I put it? – very close . . .’

  ‘I see.’

  I gave him a couple of seconds for the ramifications of this to sink in, before adding, ‘How about you?’

  He glanced at Chloe and cleared his throat. ‘Chloe and I are seeing each other.’

  Bingo. If Chloe wanted commitment, here it was. ‘Really?’ I said, looking over at her. ‘You’re a sly one, aren’t you, keeping that one from me . . .’

  ‘We’ve only known each other a few weeks,’ Andy quickly added.

  ‘But you are seeing each other?’ I asked. ‘As in boyfriend, girlfriend?’

  He looked shiftily at Chloe for a split second, before fixing me with a stare. ‘Most definitely,’ he said.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ I said to Chloe, stifling a grin, before turning back to Andy. ‘Well, let me offer you my congratulations, Andy. Chloe’s a tough woman to pin down. She’s got very high standards in men, you know. Very high,’ I repeated. ‘Not the kind of person who stands for any flakiness. Take it from someone who’s tried . . .’

  A mixed expression of confusion and relief flooded Andy’s face. ‘You two are exes, then?’ he asked.

  I smiled at him for the first time since he’d come in, and then winked at Chloe. ‘Only if you count a ten-second snog aged fourteen in the school bus on the way to see Macbeth.’

  ‘Yes,’ Chloe exclaimed, ‘and you told everyone, you little shit.’

  ‘See what I mean about high standards?’ I asked Andy, ignoring Chloe. ‘Cross her and you’re dead meat. She didn’t speak to me for a whole year. I suggest you watch your step and take good care of her. If not, you mark my words, she’ll be off out of your life like a shot.’

  Andy walked over and put his arm round Chloe’s shoulder. ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’ He raised
his bottle to me. ‘Thanks for the advice.’

  I checked my watch. ‘Shit,’ I announced, getting up. ‘Is that the time? I’d better get going.’ Chloe started to get up, too. ‘Don’t worry,’ I told her, ‘I’ll let myself out. Feeling like a bit of a gooseberry sitting here, anyway, to tell the truth . . . You love birds . . .’ I walked over and shook Andy’s hand. ‘Good meeting you,’ I told him, and then, unable to resist, I glanced down at his lap and added, ‘And good luck with your shorts.’

  Here in the bar, Jack smiles and shakes his head in amusement. ‘Nice one. How’s it going between them now?’

  ‘He’s been as good as gold since. Chloe’s delighted. He’s even taking her away to Bruges at the weekend.’

  Jack laughs. ‘Christ, it’ll probably be her next.’

  ‘What will?’

  ‘Marriage, of course.’

  I shake my head. ‘Uh-uh, mate. It’s not like that.’

  ‘What’s not?’

  ‘Her being next.’

  He looks bemused. ‘Haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about,’ he says, taking a drag from his cigarette and shooting me a mischievous look.

  ‘Yes,’ I correct him. ‘Yes, you do. You know precisely what I’m talking about. I’m talking about your assumption that just because you’ve gone and decided to tie the knot, it’s only a matter of time before me, Chloe and everyone else you’ve ever met goes and does the same thing.’ I glare at him. ‘Chloe’s not a domino, Jack. Just because you’ve toppled doesn’t mean she will as well.’

  ‘That isn’t what I said.’

  ‘That’s what you implied.’

  ‘No, Matt,’ he says, shaking his head, ‘that’s what you inferred.’

  ‘Same bloody thing.’ I smile thinly. ‘You, my friend,’ I tell him, ‘should be a bloody lawyer.’

  He takes a swig of his wine and another drag on his cigarette. ‘Anyway,’ he says with a shrug, ‘even if I was talking about marriage, what’s the big deal? No reason for you to get all bristled up about it. You’ve got no objection to marriage per se, have you?’

  ‘Per se?’ I consider. ‘No, no, I haven’t. I have no objection to marriage per se. I am, for example, as you well know, delighted about you and Amy getting married. Per me, though – well, that’s a different matter altogether.’