How We Met. Katy Regan

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СКАЧАТЬ was Liv’s birthday, after all. ‘Fraser’s given up! Would you believe it? I’d be happy for him if he wasn’t so smug. Honestly, it’s killing me. The other day, he called me at seven a.m. – just as Billy had gone back off to sleep; I could have murdered him had he not been two hundred and fifty miles away – to say, “Guess where I am? Go on, guess, guess!”

      ‘I was like, “Dunno, a police station? The zoo? Buckingham Palace?” And he was like, “No. Hampstead Heath.”

      ‘And so I said, “Oh, well done. So clearly you haven’t been to bed yet after some brilliant night out and are just ringing to nauseate me. That’s not very nice.” But he said, “No. I’m at Hampstead Heath Running Track.” Then he said it again, just in case I hadn’t heard: “RUN-NING TRACK. I’ve just been for a RUN.”

      ‘He didn’t sound very out of breath, which I pointed out, and then he hit me with it: “Ah, but then I wouldn’t be, would I? Because I’ve given up smoking. Three weeks, and five days!”

      ‘Which turned out to be the real reason he was calling me at that hour.’

      ‘Like I said, just unbearable. Horribly, horribly smug. It was all I could do not to be sick in a bag.’

      ‘So that’s Fraser.’

      She looked around just to check she was alone. She had to admit, she did feel moronic on occasions, sitting here, talking to herself. But it was the only real place she had to come – a place that was Liv’s (unless she wanted to traipse all the way to the cemetery in Peterborough every month. She knew what Liv would have to say about that too.) She also knew, if this were the other way round, Olivia would have rallied the troops, weeks in advance, marched them all up that killer hill to Williamson’s Park, bringing cake, candles – probably a personal choir, knowing her. She could picture them all now: Liv at the front carrying everything, Melody struggling behind in heels and a slightly too-tight skirt-suit, complaining that the cake was too chavvy, why didn’t we get one from Marks’s? Norm at the back, breaking into a light jog, Anna … Well, Anna probably wouldn’t be there yet, having only left some random bloke’s bed in Tooting about an hour ago, and finally Fraser – lovely Fraser Morgan … what would he be doing? Probably pegging it to the nearest offy, having decided right at the last minute that this occasion called for booze.

      Mia thought of Fraser now, alone in his flat in Kentish Town – the one he used to share with Liv – and felt a rush of love. Poor Frase – she must give him a call as soon as she was finished up here, because today would be extra tough for him. She imagined him waking up, the date hitting him and then the aching absence of Liv in the flat and the memories, flooding back, more acute and painful than ever. It was at times like this that she wished Fraser would move back to Lancaster, just so she could keep an eye on him.

      ‘So what else is new …?’ Mia pulled her sleeves down over her hands and blew on them to keep them warm. ‘Oh, yes … Billy. My son. Almost forgot! He’s almost eight months old now, I can’t believe it, Liv. Where the hell has the time gone since July? I look back and I can’t remember anything. Must have blanked it out. Anyway, the good news is, he hasn’t got my bacon ears or prominent chin – yet … although it’s hard to tell since currently his entire jaw line is covered in fat. The bad news is, he’s got Eduardo’s everything else. Literally, he is his double, which as you can imagine, I am seething about: same beautiful green eyes, same Brazilian monobrow, same permanent look of wounded entitlement. I just hope to God he doesn’t inherit total disrespect for women, too.

      ‘Oh, Olivia, why didn’t I listen to you when you said never trust a man who wears sunglasses inside?

      ‘So, Eduardo has turned out to be a useless cock – no surprises there – although I suppose, in some part of my tiny pea-brain I did, at one point, think he might change. Sadly not. Since I’ve had Billy, he’s seen him eight times. Eight times in nearly eight months! Pathetic or what …?’

      Mia could feel the familiar rage bubbling up inside her, the sort that made her want to punch a wall – no, actually, just Eduardo’s stupid, face; the maddening sense of injustice she always got when she thought about Eduardo. What really got her goat was that Eduardo was meant to be a summer fling, not the (useless-at-that) father of her child. She’d been seeing him for getting on a year by the time she fell pregnant, but Mia had always just thought he was ‘good enough for now’, that they’d eventually fizzle out. If she were really honest, she was kind of banking on that.

      They rowed constantly for a start, but although she was ashamed to admit it now, part of her had thought that was cool and romantic. If she couldn’t have a tumultuous, impulsive relationship with a hot-headed Latino in her twenties, when could she? She imagined them in one of those black-and-white foreign films she dreamed of writing one day, where nothing much happened except for two, very beautiful people shouting at each other in a spartan room in Provence or Andalucia or, well … somewhere very hot, anyway. It didn’t quite translate into a flat in Acton that smelled permanently of ragù, but then she’d got pregnant. If it had been up to her she would have had a termination, but Eduardo’s Catholic upbringing had suddenly made an appearance. It made her feel guilty: It’s a life, Mia, as soon as those cells start to divide. She’d fallen for it at the time, she thought he actually wanted this baby, that it might even bond them. Now she realised he was calling her bluff. Well that backfired pretty spectacularly.

      ‘Anyway …’ She told herself to rein it in. She’d promised herself this birthday visit to Liv’s bench today was not just going to turn into a rant-athon about Eduardo but, look at her, she was at it already.

      ‘… The thing is, whatever I think of him, he’s still Billy’s dad, isn’t he? And I want Billy to have a relationship with his dad. It’s just I’m not that sure his dad wants to have a relationship with him, which is the most heart-breaking thing of all, do you know what I mean?

      ‘But hey, let’s see, he’s promised me he’ll be here at five p.m. today to take Billy off for the night because everyone’s arriving for YOUR do.

      ‘Which brings me onto everyone. I guess you’ll be wanting an update:

      ‘One. Anna. You’ll be glad to know everything is exactly as it was in Twelve Station Road days, Livs, except she’s gone north of the river now and inflicts it on some other poor, unassuming flatmates in Islington. She still has dubious hygiene, walks round with toothpaste on her spots, picks plaque from her teeth when she thinks you’re not looking and eats gherkins straight from the jar. And yet still scrubs up to look like Florence Welch – how is that?

      ‘She still reads The Economist in bed, too – like we were ever impressed – and I still maintain she hasn’t got the faintest clue what it’s on about, but we love Anna Spanner, she’s good value. Oh, and she’s still single, obvs.

      ‘Who else? Melody and Norm … Well, it’s all change in that camp, Melody having almost completed her total transformation from Indie mosher to hotshot lawyer (as you will know, Norm was far more impressed with the Indie mosher version). They’re doing really well for themselves: Norm’s ‘Entertainment Correspondent’ for the Visitor these days. I know! Get him. It pays peanuts, of course, and occasionally he has to go and cover groundbreaking front page stories about people turning a hundred, but the rest of the time he gets to go to free gigs, so he’s not complaining. They’ve got a swanky, three-storey townhouse up on that posh estate by the university. Clearly, it’s only a matter of time before all those rooms are filled up with mini-Normantons. Fraser reckons they’ll have twins: a boy who looks like Melody and a girl who looks like Norm.

      ‘It’s bizarre though, Liv, it’s СКАЧАТЬ