“Back there,” he said, “I was a bit . . . upset . . . because I was thinking about my sister. Not the person—Ian. Not that I wasn’t thinking about him, but . . .”
“It’s okay, I get it,” Peggy said.
They walked on in silence for a while. Andrew began to feel the tightness leaving his throat and the tension draining from his shoulders. He realized Peggy was waiting for him to be the one to speak first, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. Instead, he found himself softly humming Ella’s “Something to Live For.” He’d been listening to it the previous evening—the version from Ella at Duke’s Place. He’d always had an odd relationship with the song. He loved it for the most part, but there was a particular moment that always seemed to leave him with a gnawing pain in his gut.
“There’s a piece of music,” he said, “which is one of my favorites. But there’s this moment, right at the end, that’s jarring, and loud, and sort of shocking, even though I’m expecting it. So when I’m listening to the song, as much as I’m enjoying it, it’s always sort of spoiled by the fact I know this horrible ending is coming. But there’s nothing I can do about it, is there? So, in a way, it’s like what you were saying earlier, about people who are comfortable with the fact they’re going to die: if I could just accept the ending’s coming, then I could concentrate on enjoying the rest of the song so much more.”
Andrew glanced at Peggy, who seemed to be trying to suppress a smile.
“I cannot believe that you had that pearl of wisdom up your sleeve,” she said, “when you let me wang on about someone pushing a cat into a bin.”
—
Peggy began to attend all the funerals with him after that. Without really thinking about it, Andrew realized that he now felt relaxed around her, glad to have her company. It was an odd sensation to feel so normal discussing everything from the meaning of life to whether the vicar was wearing a wig. He was even starting to hold his own when it came to playing along with the games she and her kids had invented. His proudest moment had been coming up with one of his own, devising a challenge where you had to argue in favor of arbitrary opponents: the color red versus Tim Henman, for example. On occasion, at home in the evenings, he found his mind wandering, thinking about what Peggy might be up to at that moment.
Schedules permitting, they would have lunch in the pub every Friday, where they would review the week, marking property inspections from one to ten on the “harrowing scale,” reminding each other of the latest personal hygiene disaster from Keith or snarky comment from Meredith. It was as he was on the way to one of these lunches, enjoying the sun on his back after days of gray skies, when Andrew had a sudden realization and stopped dead in the street, causing a man behind him to take evasive action. Could it really be true? He supposed it must be. No, there were no two ways about it: he was dangerously close to making a friend. The thought actually made him laugh out loud. How on earth had this happened? It was as if he’d managed to do it behind his own back. He carried on toward the pub with a new swagger, so much so that he overtook the man whose path he’d just accidentally blocked. As soon as he sat down, though, unable to stop grinning like an idiot, Peggy raised her eyebrows and jokingly speculated that he’d just popped over to Diane’s office “for a quickie or something.”
And therein lay the problem: the closer they got, the worse it was when he had to lie. It felt like a ticking time bomb—like it was only a matter of time before Peggy found out the truth and he’d lose the first friend he’d made in years. One way or another, he knew that something had to give. As it turned out, he didn’t have to wait long.
—
The day had begun with a particularly grueling house inspection, not helped by the fierce July heat. Terry Hill had slipped in the bath and lain there dead for seven months. Nobody had missed him. It was only when his overseas landlord finally stopped receiving rent that his body was found. The TV had still been on. A knife, fork, plate and water glass sat gathering dust on the kitchen table. Andrew had opened the microwave to find something festering inside and accidentally inhaled a great waft of rancid air, coughing and retching as he ran from the room. He was still feeling like he might be sick when Peggy, who valiantly dealt with the microwave horror while he recovered, turned to him and said, “We’ve not talked about tonight, have we?”
“What’s tonight?” Andrew said.
“So, the week you were off work, before the funeral, Cameron started on again about his stupid Come Dine with Me family dinner party thing. Every day it’d be an e-mail or he’d mention it out of nowhere in a meeting.”
“Jesus,” Andrew said. “Why is he so obsessed with this idea?”
“Well, I think there are probably two explanations.”
“Go on . . .”
“Okay, one: it’s something he’s been taught to do in a course. It’s a box-ticking exercise to show he’s getting the team to bond, and he’ll be flavor of the month with the bosses.”
“Hmm. And two?”
“He hasn’t got any friends.”
“Oh,” Andrew said. The bluntness of it caught him off guard, but thinking about it, Cameron’s general behavior did seem to make more sense if that was the case.
“That would explain a lot,” he said.
“I know,” Peggy said. “So anyway, he made us get a date in the diary—we delayed it as far down the line as possible, obviously. He didn’t want to ask you about it when you were away, but I ended up saying I’d ask you, largely just to get him off my back for five minutes. I just haven’t found the right moment to tell you. But as far as Cameron’s concerned, you’re coming.”
Andrew started to protest but Peggy interrupted. “Look, look, I know it’s a massive pain in the arse, but I for one cannot bear him going on and on about it all the time with his sad face all crumpled in disappointment when we put it off. He’s going to host it tonight, the others and I are going. His missus will be there but it’s optional if we want to bring partners.”
Well that’s one thing at least, Andrew thought.
“I think you should come,” Peggy said. “It might be fine—okay, it’ll definitely be awful, but . . . well, what I’m really saying is, please just come so we can get shitfaced together and ignore the others.” She put her hand on Andrew’s arm, smiling hopefully.
Andrew could think of many things he’d rather be doing that evening—most of them involving his testicles, some jam and some aggrieved hornets—but he suddenly felt a rather strong urge not to disappoint Peggy.
—
That evening he arrived at Cameron’s carrying a bottle of corner shop merlot and feeling firmly out of his comfort zone.
Who even likes dinner parties, anyway? he thought. Dutifully doling out compliments just because someone’s managed to shovel some stuff into a pot and heated it to a point where it won’t kill anyone. And then there was all the competitive conversation about books and films: “Oh you simply must see it. It’s a Portuguese art-house epic about triplets who befriend a crow.” What a lot of nonsense. (Andrew did take the occasional bit of enjoyment from hating things he’d never actually experienced.)
Keith and Meredith had been particularly abhorrent that afternoon, with Cameron in particularly irritating form. Quite why the man thought their all spending an increased amount of time together in an enclosed space was going to help, Andrew had no idea. It was like trying to force the negative ends of magnets together.
He was looking forward to spending time with Peggy, of course, although she’d seemed unusually subdued when she’d left the office, something that was possibly connected to the phone call he’d overheard her having on the back stairs, during which she had employed the word “wanker” several times. Delivered in her Geordie twang, it sounded like music to him.