“Oh I’m fine, really. I’m just having a bit of a hard time of it. With Steve, actually.”
Andrew wasn’t quite sure how to respond, but Peggy didn’t need a prompt.
“You remember I told you about my friend Agatha, the one who clearly didn’t approve of him?”
Andrew nodded. “The spatula. The one that you, well . . .”
“Chucked at his head? Yes, well. That’s not the only thing I’ve felt like throwing at him recently. It’s just so bloody hard, sometimes. I remember when Agatha told me her doubts about him when he first proposed, I just couldn’t even consider what she was saying. I was so fiercely proud of what I had, I thought she was just jealous. Sure we used to row a bit, but we’d make up. Better that than those couples who never raise their voices but keep each other awake grinding their teeth.”
“And what seems to be the problem?” Andrew said, wincing at how he’d managed to somehow sound like a 1950s doctor talking disapprovingly to his patient about their libido.
“So there’s the drinking,” Peggy replied. “I know things are on the verge of going tits-up when he starts singing, and last night it was ‘Yes Sir, I Can Boogie.’ Next thing he’s getting all boisterous and asking complete strangers to dance, buying shots for everyone in the pub. Then he finally has too much and starts getting confrontational with people for no reason. But it’s the lying about the drinking that I really can’t stand. It’s just relentless. Last night I went home before him as he was having ‘one for the road.’ He gets back steaming at two a.m. Usually I can handle him by giving him a quick bollock-wallop, but last night he was determined to go and say good night to the girls, but it was so late it was practically morning, and I didn’t want him to go and wake them up, so then it became ‘Oh, you’re not letting me see my own kids.’ He ended up sleeping on the landing under a Finding Nemo duvet in some sort of protest. I left him there snoring this morning. My youngest, Suze, came out and saw him lying there. She just looked at me, shook her head and said, ‘Pathetic.’ Pathetic! I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.”
An ambulance flashed past, lights on but no siren, ghosting through a gap in the traffic.
“You got an apology this morning, presumably?” Andrew said, not entirely sure why he’d decided to play devil’s advocate.
“Not exactly. I tried to talk to him, but he gets this scrunched-up face when he’s hungover and it’s hard to take him seriously. Honestly, it goes all mad and blotchy. Like he’s a clumsy beekeeper. We’d have had it out this evening if I hadn’t had this nonsense to go to. The only reason I stayed as long as I did was because you were there. I mean, that lot are just the absolute worst, aren’t they?”
“They really are,” Andrew said, wondering whether Peggy had seen just how wide he’d smiled about him apparently being the only reason she’d stayed.
“I wonder if Meredith and Keith are still up in that bathroom,” Peggy said with a shudder. “Oof, it really doesn’t bear thinking about.”
“It really, really doesn’t,” Andrew said.
“And yet now I can’t stop picturing them sweating away.”
“Oh god, sweating?!”
Peggy sniggered and linked her arm into his.
“Sorry, there was no need for that, was there?”
“There absolutely wasn’t, no,” Andrew said. He cleared his throat. “I have to say, it’s felt like a lifetime, having to deal with those idiots by myself, so it’s nice . . . it’s been really good to have, you know, a friend, to share the burden with.”
“Even when I make you think of them at it?” Peggy said.
“Okay, maybe not then.” Andrew wasn’t exactly sure why his heart was beating almost uncomfortably hard. Or, for that matter, why he’d allowed them to walk past at least three stops from which he could have caught a bus home.
Peggy groaned. “I’ve just realized Steve’s going to have written me an apology song on his stupid guitar. I actually can’t stand the thought of it.”
“Hmm, well, we can always head back to Cameron’s for pudding,” Andrew said. Peggy elbowed him again.
They were both quiet for a moment, lost in their own thoughts. A siren sounded in the distance. Perhaps it was the same ambulance that had gone past with just its lights on, Andrew thought. Had the paramedics been on the radio, waiting to hear if they were needed after all?
“Are your lot still going to be up when you get in?” Peggy said.
Andrew winced. Not this. Not now.
“Diane, maybe,” he said. “The kids should be asleep by now.”
They were approaching the station Andrew guessed Peggy was getting her train from.
“Is it bad,” he said, fighting the voice in his head warning him that this wasn’t a good idea, “that sometimes I just sort of wish I could escape from it all?”
“From what?” Peggy said.
“You know, the family . . . and everything.”
Peggy laughed and Andrew immediately backtracked. “God, sorry, that’s ridiculous, I didn’t mean to—”
“No, are you kidding?” Peggy said. “I dream of that on a regular basis. The bliss of it all. The time you could actually spend doing things you wanted to do. I think you’d be mad not to fantasize about that. I spend half my life daydreaming about what I’d be doing with myself if I wasn’t stuck where I was . . . and then that’s usually when one of the kids ruins it by drawing something beautiful for me or being inquisitive or loyal or kind, and I feel like my heart’s going to explode with how much I love them, and then it’s all over. Nightmare, eh?”
“Nightmare,” Andrew said.
They hugged good-bye outside the station. Andrew stayed for a while after Peggy had gone, watching people coming through the ticket barriers, blank face after blank face. He thought of the property inspection that morning and Terry Hill with his knife, fork, plate and water glass. And that’s when the thought hit him so hard it practically winded him: living this lie would be the death of him.
He thought about how he’d felt in the brief moment Peggy had hugged him. This wasn’t physical contact through formality—an introductory handshake. Nor was it the unavoidable touch of the barber or dentist, or a stranger on a packed train. It had been a genuine gesture of warmth, and for that second and a half he was reminded about how it felt to let someone in. He had resigned himself to the fate of Terry Hill and all those others, but maybe, just maybe, there was another way.
— CHAPTER 12 —
When it came to model trains, one of the most satisfyingly simple things Andrew had learned was that the more you ran a locomotive, the better it performed. With repeated use, an engine starts to glide around the track, seeming to grow in efficiency with every circuit. When it came to making connections with people, however, he was less of a smoothly running locomotive and more a rail replacement bus rusting in a rest stop.
After he’d left Peggy at the station he’d practically floated home, suddenly buoyed by possibility. He’d half considered turning on his heel and running after her to improvise some sort of grand gesture—perhaps spelling out “I am terrified of dying alone and I think it’s probably weird when adults make friends this late in life but shall we do it anyway?” in discarded Coke cans at the side of the tracks. In the end he managed to contain himself and jogged halfway home, buying four cans of lukewarm Polish lager from the corner shop, drinking them in quick succession and waking up hungover and afraid. He forced himself out of bed and fried some bacon while listening to “The Nearness of You”—Ella and Louis Armstrong from 1956—five times in a row. Each time the vocals kicked in he could feel the sensation of Peggy’s arm interlinked with his again. If he closed his eyes tightly enough he could see the smile she’d given him as they parted from their hug. He looked at his watch and decided he had just enough time for one more spin of the record, but as he went to move the needle back, the miserable sound of “Blue Moon” suddenly came into his head, as clear as if it were coming through the record player. No no no. Not now. Stay in the moment for once. He scrabbled to put “The Nearness of You” on again and bent down by the speaker, his ear so close that it hurt, his eyes screwed shut. After a moment there was a piercing shriek and he opened his eyes to see the room was hazy with smoke, the alarm triggered by the now-cremated bacon.