Maureen was first down. I waved to her as she came in, to be friendly, but the wave was somehow misinterpreted as an invitation, and she came and sat down at our table. She looked at Kathy suspiciously.
“Is someone not coming down for breakfast?” She wasn’t being rude. She was just confused.
“No, see…” But then I didn’t know what to say.
“I’m Kathy,” said Kathy, who was also confused. “I’m a friend of JJ’s.”
“The trouble is, there isn’t really room for five on the table,” said Maureen.
“If everyone else shows, Kathy and I will move,” I said.
“Who’s «everyone else»?” Kathy asked, I guess reasonably.
“Martin and Jess,” said Maureen. “But Jess got brought home in a police car last night. So she might be having a lie-in.”
“Oh,” I said. I mean, I wanted to know why Jess had been brought home in a police car and everything. But I didn’t want to know right then.
“What had she done?” asked Kathy.
“What hadn’t she done?” said Maureen. The waitress came over and poured us some coffee, and Maureen went to the buffet table for her croissants.
Kathy looked at me. She had some questions, I could tell.
“Maureen is…” But then I couldn’t think of a way to finish the sentence. I didn’t have to find a way, either, because then Jess walked in and sat down.
“Fuck me,” she said. That was by way of an introduction. “I feel so shit. Normally I’d think a good puke might make me feel better. But I puked my whole insides up last night. There’s nothing left.”
“I’m Kathy,” said Kathy.
“Hello,” said Jess. “I’m in such a state I didn’t even realize I don’t know you.”
“I’m a friend of JJ’s,” said Kathy, and Jess’s eyes lit up ominously.
“What sort of friend?”
“We just met yesterday.”
“And you’re having breakfast together?”
“Shut up, Jess.”
“What have I said?”
“It’s what you’re going to say.”
“What am I going to say?”
“I have no idea.”
“Have you met our mum and dad yet, Kathy?”
Kathy’s eyes flickered nervously over to Maureen.
“You’re braver than me, JJ,” said Jess. “I wouldn’t bring a one-night stand down to the family breakfast table. That’s fucking modern, man.”
“That’s your mother?” said Kathy. She was trying to be real casual, but I could tell she was freaking a little.
“Of course it’s not my mother. We’re not even the same nationality. Jess is being…”
“Did he tell you he was a musician?” said Jess. “I’ll bet he did. He always does. That’s the only way he can ever get a girlfriend. We keep telling him not to try that one, because people always find out in the end. And then they’re disappointed. I’ll bet he said he was a singer, right?”
Kathy nodded, and looked at me.
“That’s a laugh. Sing for her, JJ. You should hear him. Fucking hell.”
“Kathy saw my band,” I said. But as soon as I’d said it, I remembered that I’d told Kathy she’d seen the band, which isn’t quite the same thing; Kathy turned to look at me, and I could tell she was remembering the same thing. Oh, man.
Maureen and her croissants sat down at the table.
“What are we going to do if Martin comes down? There’s no room.”
“Oh, no,” said Jess. “Aaaaagh. Help. We’ll just panic, I’s’pose.”
“Maybe I should make a move,” said Kathy. She stood up and gulped some coffee down.
“Anna will be wondering what’s happened to me.”
“We could move to another table,” I said, but I knew it was over, destroyed by a malevolent force beyond my control.
“See you later,” said Jess cheerily.
And that was the last time I saw Kathy. If I were her, I’d still be reconstructing the dialogue in my head, writing it down and getting friends to act it out, looking for any kind of clue that would help me make sense of that breakfast.
You never know with Jess whether she’s being sharp or lucky. When you shoot your mouth off as fast and as frequently as she does, you’re bound to hit something sometime. But for whatever reason, she was right: Kathy wouldn’t have happened without music. She was supposed to be a little pick-me-up, my first since the band broke up—my first ever as a non-practicing musician, because I was already in a band when I lost my virginity, and I’ve been in a band ever since. So after she left, I started to worry about how this was ever going to work, and like whether I’d be in some fucking old folks’ home in forty years telling some little old lady with no teeth that REM’s manager had wanted to represent my band. When was I ever going to be a person—someone with maybe a job, and a personality that people could respond to? It’s no fucking use, giving something up if there’s nothing to take its place. Say I’d just kept talking about the books we were both reading, and we’d never mentioned music… Would we still have gone to bed? I couldn’t see it. It seemed to me that without my old life, I had no life at all. My morale-booster ended up making me feel totally fucking crushed and desperate.
Maureen
We didn’t really think anything of Martin missing his breakfast, even though breakfast was included. I was getting used to the idea that once or twice a day, something would happen that I wouldn’t understand. I didn’t understand what Jess had been up to the night before, and I didn’t understand why there was a strange woman—a girl, really—sitting at our breakfast table. And now I didn’t understand where Martin had gone. But not understanding didn’t seem to matter very much. Sometimes, when you watch a cops and robbers film on the television, you don’t understand the beginning, but you know you’re not meant to. You watch anyway, though, because in the end someone will explain some of the things to you if you pay close attention. I was trying to think of life with Jess and JJ and Martin as a cops and robbers film; if I didn’t get everything, I told myself not to panic. I’d wait until someone gave me a clue. And anyway, I was beginning to see that it didn’t really matter even if you understood almost nothing. I hadn’t really understood why we had to say we’d seen an angel, or how that got us on to the television. But that was all forgotten about now, apparently, so why make a fuss? I must admit, I was worried about where everyone was going to sit at breakfast, but that wasn’t because I was confused. I just didn’t want Martin to think us rude.
After breakfast I tried to telephone the care home, but I couldn’t manage on my own. In the end I had to ask JJ to do it for me, and he explained that there were lots of extra numbers to dial, and some you had to leave out, and I don’t know what else. I wasn’t being cheeky, using the telephone, because the others told me I could call once a day whatever the expense; otherwise, they said, I wouldn’t relax properly.
And the telephone call… Well, it changed everything. Just those two or three minutes. More happened to me in my head during the telephone call than during all that time up on the roof. And it wasn’t as if there was any bad news, or any news at all. Matty was fine. How could he not be? He needed care, and he was getting care, and there wasn’t much else they could tell me, was there? I tried to make the conversation last longer, and, fair play to him, the nurse tried to help me make it last longer, God love him. But neither of us could think of anything to say. Matty doesn’t do anything in the course of a day, and he hadn’t done anything on that particular day. He’d been out in his wheelchair, and we talked about that, but mostly we were talking about the weather, and the garden.