an inch or so, gesturing vaguely. ‘I find that holding the cork and turning the
bottle tends to be a safer bet.’
‘There’s a man who knows his champagne,’ Dad said. ‘There you go, Patrick.
Turning the bottle, you say? Well, who knew?’
‘I knew,’ Patrick said. ‘That’s how I was going to do it.’
The champagne was safely popped and poured, and my birthday was toasted.
Granddad called out something that may well have been, ‘Hear, hear.’
I stood up and bowed. I was wearing a 1960s yellow A-line minidress I had
got from the charity shop. The woman had thought it might be Biba, although
someone had cut the label out.
‘May this be the year our Lou finally grows up,’ Dad said. ‘I was going to say
“does something with her life” but it seems like she finally is. I have to say, Will,
since she’s had the job with you she’s - well, she’s really come out of herself.’
‘We’re very proud,’ Mum said. ‘And grateful. To you. For employing her, I
mean.’
‘Gratitude’s all mine,’ Will said. He glanced sideways at me.
‘To Lou,’ Dad said. ‘And her continued success.’
‘And to absent family members,’ Mum said.
‘Blimey,’ I said. ‘I should have a birthday more often. Most days you all just
hurl abuse at me.’
They began to talk, Dad telling some other story against me that made him
and Mum laugh out loud. It was good to see them laughing. Dad had looked so
worn down these last weeks, and Mum had been hollow-eyed and distracted, as
if her real self were always elsewhere. I wanted to savour these moments, of
them briefly forgetting their troubles, in shared jokes and familial fondness. Just
for a moment, I realized I wouldn’t have minded if Thomas was there. Or
Treena, for that matter.
I was so lost in my thoughts that it took a minute to register Patrick’s
expression. I was feeding Will as I said something to Granddad, folding a piece
of smoked salmon in my fingers and placing it to Will’s lips. It was such an
unthinking part of my daily life now that the intimacy of the gesture only struck
me when I saw the shock on Patrick’s face.
Will said something to Dad and I stared at Patrick, willing him to stop. On his
left, Granddad was picking at his plate with greedy delight, letting out what we
called his 'food noises’ - little grunts and murmurs of pleasure.
‘Delicious salmon,’ Will said, to my mother. ‘Really lovely flavour.
‘Well, it’s not something we would have every day,’ she said, smiling. ‘But we
did want to make today special.’
Stop staring, I told Patrick silently.
Finally, he caught my eye and looked away. He looked furious.
I fed Will another piece, and then some bread when I saw him glance at it. I
had, I realized in that moment, become so attuned to Will’s needs that I barely
needed to look at him to work out what he wanted. Patrick, opposite, ate with his
head down, cutting the smoked salmon into small pieces and spearing them with
his fork. He left his bread.
‘So, Patrick,’ Will said, perhaps sensing my discomfort. ‘Louisa tells me
you’re a personal trainer. What does that involve?’
I so wished he hadn’t asked. Patrick launched into his sales spiel, all about
personal motivation and how a fit body made for a healthy mind. Then he
segued into his training schedule for the Xtreme Viking - the temperatures of the
North Sea, the body fat ratios needed for marathon running, his best times in
each discipline. I normally tuned out at this point, but all I could think of now,
with Will beside me, was how inappropriate it was. Why couldn’t he have just
said something vague and left it at that?
‘In fact, when Lou said you were coming, I thought I’d take a look at my
books and see if there was any physio I could recommend.’
I choked on my champagne. ‘It’s quite specialist, Patrick. I’m not sure you’d
really be the person.’
‘I can do specialist. I do sports injuries. I have medical training.’
‘This is not a sprained ankle, Pat. Really.’
‘There’s a man I worked with a couple of years ago had a client who was
paraplegic. He’s almost fully recovered now, he says. Does triathlons and
everything.’
‘Fancy,’ said my mother.
‘He pointed me to this new research in Canada that says muscles can be
trained to remember former activity. If you get them working enough, every day,
it’s like a brain synapse - it can come back. I bet you if we hooked you up with a
really good regime, you could see a difference in your muscle memory. After all,
Lou tells me you were quite the action man before.’
‘Patrick,’ I said loudly. ‘You know nothing about it.’
‘I was just trying to -’
‘Well don’t. Really.’
The table fell silent. Dad coughed, and excused himself for it. Granddad
peered around the table in wary silence.
Mum made as if to offer everyone more bread, and then seemed to change her
mind.
When Patrick spoke again, there was a faint air of martyrdom in his tone. ‘It’s
just research that I thought might be helpful. But I’ll say no more about it.’
Will looked up and smiled, his face blank, polite. ‘I’ll certainly bear it in
mind.’
I got up to clear the plates, wanting to escape the table. But Mum scolded me,
telling me to sit down.
‘You’re the birthday girl,’ she said - as if she ever let anyone else do anything,
anyway. ‘Bernard. Why don’t you go and get the chicken?’
‘Ha-ha. Let’s hope it’s stopped flapping around now, eh?’ Dad smiled, his
teeth bared in a kind of grimace.
The rest of the meal passed off without incident. My parents, I could see, were
completely charmed by Will. Patrick, less so. He and Will barely exchanged
another word. Somewhere around the point where Mum served up the roast
potatoes - Dad doing his usual thing of trying to steal extras - I stopped
worrying. Dad was asking Will all sorts, about his life before, even about the
accident, and he seemed comfortable enough to answer him directly. In fact, I
learnt a fair bit that he’d never told me. His job, for example, sounded pretty
important, even if he played it down. He bought and sold companies and made
sure he turned a profit while doing so. It took Dad a few attempts to prise out of
him that his idea of profit ran into six or seven figures. I found myself staring at
Will, trying to reconcile the man I knew with this ruthless City suit that he now
described. Dad told him about the company that was about to take over the
furniture factory, and when he said the name Will nodded almost apologetically,
and said that yes, he knew of them. Yes, he would probably have gone for it too.
The way he said it didn’t sound promising for Dad’s job.
Mum just cooed at Will, and made a huge fuss of him. I realized, watching her
smile, that at some stage during the meal he had just become a smart young man
at her table. No wonder Patrick was pissed off.
‘Birthday cake?’ Granddad said, as she began to clear the dishes.
It was so distinct, so surprising, that Dad and I stared at each other in shock.
The whole table went quiet.
‘No,’ I walked around the table and kissed him. ‘No, Granddad. Sorry. But it
is chocolate mousse. You like that.’
He nodded in approval. My mother was beaming. I don’t think any of us could
have had a better present.
The mousse arrived on the table, and with it a large, square present, about the
size of a telephone directory, wrapped in tissue.
‘Presents, is it?’ Patrick said. ‘Here. Here’s mine.’ He smiled at me as he
placed it in the middle of the table.
I raised a smile back. This was no time to argue, after all.
‘Go on,’ said Dad. ‘Open it.’
I opened theirs first, peeling the paper carefully away so that I didn’t tear it. It
was a photograph album, and on every page there was a picture from a year in
my life. Me as a baby; me and Treena as solemn, chubby-faced girls; me on my
first day at secondary school, all hairclips and oversized skirt. More recently,
there was a picture of me and Patrick, the one where I was actually telling him to
piss off. And me, dressed in a grey skirt, my first day in my new job. In between
the pages were pictures of our family by Thomas, letters that Mum had kept
from school trips, my childish handwriting telling of days on the beach, lost ice
creams and thieving gulls. I flicked through, and only hesitated briefly when I
saw the girl with the long, dark flicked-back hair. I turned the page.
‘Can I see?’ Will said.
‘It’s not been ... the best year,’ Mum told him, as I flicked through the pages
in front of him. ‘I mean, we’re fine and everything. But, you know, things being
what they are. And then Granddad saw something on the daytime telly about
making your own presents, and I thought that was something that would ... you
know ... really mean something.’
‘It does, Mum.’ My eyes had filled with tears. ‘I love it. Thank you.’
‘Granddad picked out some of the pictures,’ she said.
‘It’s beautiful,’ said Will.
‘I love it,’ I said again.
The look of utter relief she and Dad exchanged was the saddest thing I have
ever seen.
‘Mine next.’ Patrick pushed the little box across the table. I opened it slowly,
feeling vaguely panicked for a moment that it might be an engagement ring. I
wasn’t ready. I had barely got my head around having my own bedroom. I
opened the little box, and there, against the dark-blue velvet, was a thin gold
chain with a little star pendant. It was sweet, delicate, and not remotely me. I
didn’t wear that kind of jewellery, never had.
I let my eyes rest on it while I worked out what to say. ‘It’s lovely,’ I said, as
he leant across the table and fastened it around my neck.
‘Glad you like it,’ Patrick said, and kissed me on the mouth. I swear he’d
never kissed me like that in front of my parents before.
Will watched me, his face impassive.
‘Well, I think we should eat pudding now,’ Dad said. ‘Before it gets too hot.’
He laughed out loud at his own joke. The champagne had boosted his spirits
immeasurably.
‘There’s something in my bag for you too,’ Will said, quietly. ‘The one on the
back of my chair. It’s in orange wrapping.’
I pulled the present from Will’s backpack.
My mother paused, the serving spoon in her hand. ‘You got Lou a present,
Will? That’s ever so kind of you. Isn’t that kind of him, Bernard?’
‘It certainly is.’
The wrapping paper had brightly coloured Chinese kimonos on it. I didn’t
have to look at it to know I would save it. Perhaps even create something to wear
based on it. I removed the ribbon, putting it to one side for later. I opened the
paper, and then the tissue paper within it, and there, staring at me was a strangely
familiar black and yellow stripe.
I pulled the fabric from the parcel, and in my hands were two pairs of black
and yellow tights. Adult-sized, opaque, in a wool so soft that they almost slid
through my fingers.
‘I don’t believe it,’ I said. I had started to laugh - a joyous, unexpected thing.
‘Oh my God! Where did you get these?’
‘I had them made. You’ll be happy to know I instructed the woman via my
brand-new voice recognition software.’
‘Tights?’ Dad and Patrick said in unison.
‘Only the best pair of tights ever.’
My mother peered at them. ‘You know, Louisa, I’m pretty sure you had a pair
just like that when you were very little.’
Will and I exchanged a look.
I couldn’t stop beaming. ‘I want to put them on now,’ I said.
‘Jesus Christ, she’ll look like Max Wall in a beehive,’ my father said, shaking
his head.
‘Ah Bernard, it’s her birthday. Sure, she can wear what she wants.’
I ran outside and pulled on a pair in the hallway. I pointed a toe, admiring the
silliness of them. I don’t think a present had ever made me so happy in my life.
I walked back in. Will let out a small cheer. Granddad banged his hands on the
table. Mum and Dad burst out laughing. Patrick just stared.
‘I can’t even begin to tell you how much I love these,’ I said. ‘Thank you.
Thank you.’ I reached out a hand and touched the back of his shoulder. ‘Really.’
‘There’s a card in there too,’ he said. ‘Open it some other time.’
My parents made a huge fuss of Will when he left.
Dad, who was drunk, kept thanking him for employing me, and made him
promise to come back. ‘If I lose my job, maybe I’ll come over and watch the
footie with you one day,’ he said.
‘I’d like that,’ said Will, even though I’d never seen him watch a football
match.
My mum pressed some leftover mousse on him, wrapping it in a Tupperware
container, ‘Seeing as you liked it so much.’
What a gentleman, they would say, for a good hour after he had gone. A real
gentleman.
Patrick came out to the hallway, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, as if
perhaps to stop the urge to shake Will’s own. That was my more generous
conclusion.
‘Good to meet you, Patrick/ Will said. ‘And thank you for the ... advice/
‘Oh, just trying to help my girlfriend get the best out of her job/ he said.
‘That’s all/ There was a definite emphasis on the word my.
‘Well, you’re a lucky man,’ Will said, as Nathan began to steer him out. ‘She
certainly gives a good bed bath.’ He said it so quickly that the door was closed
before Patrick even realized what he had said.
‘You never told me you were giving him bed baths.’
We had gone back to Patrick’s house, a new-build flat on the edge of town. It
had been marketed as ‘loft living’, even though it overlooked the retail park, and
was no more than three floors high.
‘What does that mean - you wash his dick?’
‘I don’t wash his dick.’ I picked up the cleanser that was one of the few things
I was allowed to keep at Patrick’s place, and began to clean off my make-up with
sweeping strokes.
‘He just said you did.’
‘He’s teasing you. And after you going on and on about how he used to be an
action man, I don’t blame him.’
‘So what is it you do for him? You’ve obviously not been giving me the full
story.’
‘I do wash him, sometimes, but only down to his underwear.’
Patrick’s stare spoke volumes. Finally, he looked away from me, pulled off his
socks and hurled them into the laundry basket. ‘Your job isn’t meant to be about
this. No medical stuff, it said. No intimate stuff. It wasn’t part of your job
description.’ A sudden thought occurred to him. ‘You could sue. Constructive
dismissal, I think it is, when they change the terms of your job?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. And I do it because Nathan can’t always be there, and
it’s horrible for Will to have some complete stranger from an agency handling
him. And besides, I’m used to it now. It really doesn’t bother me.’
How could I explain to him - how a body can become so familiar to you? I
could change Will’s tubes with a deft professionalism, sponge bathe his naked
top half without a break in our conversation. I didn’t even balk at Will’s scars
now. For a while, all I had been able to see was a potential suicide. Now he was
just Will - maddening, mercurial, clever, funny Will - who patronized me and
liked to play Professor Higgins to my Eliza Doolittle. His body was just part of
the whole package, a thing to be dealt with, at intervals, before we got back to
the talking. It had become, I supposed, the least interesting part of him.
‘I just can’t believe ... after all we went through ... how long it took you to let
me come anywhere near you ... and here’s some stranger who you’re quite
happy to get up close and personal with -’
‘Can we not talk about this tonight, Patrick? It’s my birthday.’
‘I wasn’t the one who started it, with talk of bed baths and whatnot.’
‘Is it because he’s good looking?’ I demanded. ‘Is that it? Would it all be so
much easier for you if he looked like - you know - a proper vegetable?’
‘So you do think he’s good looking.’
I pulled my dress over my head, and began peeling my tights carefully from
my legs, the dregs of my good mood finally evaporating. ‘I can’t believe you’re
doing this. I can’t believe you’re jealous of him.’
‘I’m not jealous of him.’ His tone was dismissive. ‘How could I be jealous of
a cripple?’
Patrick made love to me that night. Perhaps ‘made love’ is stretching it a bit.
We had sex, a marathon session in which he seemed determined to show off his
athleticism, his strength and vigour. It lasted for hours. If he could have swung
me from a chandelier I think he would have done so. It was nice to feel so
wanted, to find myself the focus of Patrick’s attention after months of semi¬
detachment. But a little part of me stayed aloof during the whole thing. I
suspected it wasn’t for me, after all. I had worked that out pretty quickly. This
little show was for Will’s benefit.
‘How was that, eh?’ He wrapped himself around me afterwards, our skin
sticking slightly with perspiration, and kissed my forehead.
‘Great,’ I said.
‘I love you, babe.’
And, satisfied, he rolled off, threw an arm back over his head, and was asleep
within minutes.
When sleep still didn’t come, I got out of bed and went downstairs to my bag.
I rifled through it, looking for the book of Flannery O’Connor short stories. It
was as I pulled them from my bag that the envelope fell out.
I stared at it. Will’s card. I hadn’t opened it at the table. I did so now, feeling
an unlikely sponginess at its centre. I slid the card carefully from its envelope,
and opened it. Inside were ten crisp £50 notes. I counted them twice, unable to
believe what I was seeing. Inside, it read:
Birthday bonus. Don’t fuss. It’s a legal requirement. W.
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