“What a cock.”
“My thoughts exactly. I’ll try him again later, I think.”
They stood still for a moment, looking around at the mess. Andrew scratched at the back of his head.
“I, um, just wanted to say thank you,” he said, “for, being here and chatting and the brownies and everything. I really do appreciate it.”
Some color returned to Peggy’s cheeks, and she smiled.
“No bother, pal,” she said. “So, back to the office?”
“You should go back,” Andrew said, not wanting Peggy to be there a second longer than she needed to. He pulled a roll of trash bags out of his rucksack.
“Is there not more to do then?” Peggy said, looking at the trash bags.
“No, it’s just . . . When it’s as bad as this I like to clear up the worst of the rubbish. Just doesn’t seem right to leave the place like this. Like I said, you can go back.”
Andrew wasn’t quite sure what the look Peggy was giving him meant, but he felt like he might have said something embarrassing.
“I think I’d rather stay,” Peggy said, arm outstretched. “Chuck us a bag.”
As they cleared up, Andrew willed his imagination into action until, eventually, he had something.
“I’d go to Edinburgh, by the way,” he said.
“Edinburgh?” Peggy said, looking confused.
“During the apocalypse. I’d see if I could drive a train up there. Then try and break into the castle. Or climb Arthur’s seat.”
“Aha, not a bad shout at all,” Peggy said, tapping her chin contemplatively. “I have to say, though, I still think I win with my Savoy fry-up or Parliament golf plan. Just saying.”
“I didn’t realize there was a winner,” Andrew said, folding up a pizza box that had chunks of greasy mozzarella stuck to it.
“I’m afraid there has to be. And given that I lose to my kids every single time, do you mind if I have this one, you know, to regain a bit of pride?”
“Fair enough,” Andrew said. “I’d shake your hand to congratulate you, but there seems to be quite a lot of moldy cheese on mine.”
There was a moment where Peggy looked at his hand in horror, where Andrew thought he might have said something far too weird, but then Peggy let out a huge belly laugh and said, “Jesus, what is this job?” and Andrew felt awake for the first time that day.
—
They’d worked their way through the majority of the rubbish when Peggy said, “I wanted to say I’m sorry, you know, about your sister. I just didn’t know when was the right time.”
“That’s okay,” Andrew said. “I’m . . . It’s . . . I don’t know, really . . .” He trailed off, caught halfway between saying how he felt and saying what he thought he was supposed to say.
“I lost my dad nine years ago,” Peggy said.
Andrew felt like someone had stuck him on pause. “I’m sorry,” he managed to say, after what felt like an age.
“Thanks, pet,” Peggy said. “It’s a while ago now, I know, but . . . I still remember afterward, there were days—especially at work—where all I wanted was to hide away, but there were others when it was all I wanted to talk about. And that’s when I noticed people avoiding me, deliberately not catching my eye. Of course I realize now they were just embarrassed about not knowing what to say to me, but at the time it felt like I had something to be ashamed about, that I’d done something wrong and was inconveniencing everybody somehow. What made it harder was that my feelings were all over the place.” Peggy gave Andrew a look as if wondering whether she should continue.
“How do you mean?” he said.
Peggy chewed her lip. “Let’s just say kindness wasn’t exactly in my dad’s DNA. The abiding memory of my childhood is sitting in the living room and holding my breath when I heard his footsteps on the drive. I could tell from how the sound varied what mood he was going to be in. He never hurt us, or anything, but he got in these moods where nothing me or my sister or my mam did was good enough, and he left us in doubt as to exactly how we’d let him down. Then one day he just up and left. Ran off with some lass from work, so my sister later found out. Mam never accepted that, though. That was the hardest part. She talked about him like he’d been God’s gift, as if he were a war hero who’d drifted out to sea on a raft never to be heard of again, despite the fact he was shacked up with this woman four streets away.”
“That must have been hard,” Andrew said.
Peggy shrugged. “It’s complicated. I still loved him, even though I barely saw him after he left. People think loss is the same for everyone, but it’s different in every case, you know?”
Andrew tied a trash bag closed. “That’s true,” he said. “I think when you’ve not been through that sort of loss you just imagine you’ll feel it in one big wave of sadness, that you’re immediately devastated and then it just goes away over time.” He looked up quickly at Peggy, worried that he was sounding callous, but her expression was neutral. Andrew continued. “With my sister, I sort of . . . well, it’s complicated, like you said about your dad. And the idea of people looking at me all sympathetic—I just can’t deal with that.”
“Yep, I hear you,” Peggy said, joining him to pick up the remaining rubbish with a litter picker. “I mean, their hearts are in the right place, but if you’ve not been through it, then it’s impossible to understand. It’s like we’re in ‘the club’ or something.”
“The club,” Andrew murmured. He felt a burst of adrenaline pass through him. Peggy looked at him and smiled. And Andrew, remembering his failed attempts at properly saying cheers in the pub, suddenly found himself raising his litter picker in the air, an empty bag of Doritos in its pincers, and saying, “To the club!” Peggy looked at him in surprise, and Andrew’s hand wavered, but then she reached her own picker aloft. “The club!” she said.
After a slightly awkward pause they lowered their pickers and carried on with their tidying.
“Now then, Andrew,” Peggy said after a while. “Back to more important matters.”
Andrew raised his eyebrows. “Is this going to be about the apocalypse, by any chance?”
—
An hour later they were nearly done, Andrew having had a surprisingly enjoyable time clearing away rubbish and playing end-of-the-world-themed games, when Peggy said, “If you want a slightly more structured mental test, it’s that pub quiz I mentioned tonight if you fancy it.”
Maybe, actually, Andrew did fancy it. It would be something else to take his mind off things after all, and this way he could make it up to Peggy properly for snapping at her, if not with his atrocious general knowledge then with pints of Guinness.
“Yes, why not,” he said, trying to sound like this was the sort of thing he was always doing.
“Top stuff,” Peggy said, and the smile she gave him was so warm and genuine that he actually had to look away. “And bring Diane! I want to meet her.”
Oh yes. That.
—
Maybe Diane would magically appear in the bathroom mirror and find him a better shirt than this orange monstrosity. He’d panic-bought it after work on the way home, suddenly very aware that the last time he’d specifically bought clothes for a night out people were still worried about the Millennium Bug. He had no real idea what was fashionable these days. Occasionally he thought about replacing some of his particularly old stuff, but then he’d see someone young and apparently trendy wearing a shirt that looked exactly like one he’d hung on to since the early nineties, so what was the point? It was just lucky that his stubbornness and loathing of clothes shopping were neatly complemented by the cyclical nature of fashion.
He moved his face closer to the mirror. Maybe he should buy some cream or other to sort out those dark circles under his eyes. But then again, he did feel an odd sort of attachment to them, perhaps because they were the closest thing to a distinguishing feature he had. Everything else about him was just so . . . normal. Part of him longed to have “a thing”—like those men who decide to compensate for being five foot five by spending hours in the gym, ending up incredibly muscly yet still having to walk a bit faster than their friends to keep up. Or maybe he’d choose a dominating nose, or jutting-out ears— the sort of feature that, if possessed by a celebrity, would lead to their being described as “unconventionally attractive” by the press. “Ordinary”-looking women were saddled with “Plain Jane.” There didn’t seem to be an equivalent for men. Maybe, Andrew thought, he would take on that mantle. “Standard Andrew”? “Standy Andy”? The benchmark for men with light brown hair and unremarkably straight teeth. It would be one way to leave a legacy.