The Grin of the Dark

for Pete and Nicky Crowther

who got me out of the wods

ONE - I'M NO LOSER

I've hardly lifted my finger from the bellpush when the intercom emits its boxy cough and says 'Hello?'

'Hi, Mark.'

'It's Simon,' Natalie's seven-year-old calls into the apartment and then asks me even more eagerly 'Did you get your job?'

As I tell him, a boat hoots behind me on the Thames. An unsympathetic November wind brings the sound closer. A barge outlined by coloured lights is passing under Tower Bridge. Ripples flicker on the underside of the roadway, which appears to stir as if the bridge is about to raise its halves. The barge with its cargo of elegant drinkers cruises past me, and a moon-faced man in evening dress eyes me through a window as he lifts his champagne glass. He's grinning so widely that I could almost take him to have been the source of the hoot, but of course he isn't mocking me. The boat moves on, trailing colours until they're doused by the water as black as the seven o'clock sky.

I hear quick footsteps on the pine floor of the entrance hall and arrange an expression for Mark's benefit, but Natalie's father opens the door. 'Here he is,' he announces. His plump but squarish face is more jovial than his tone. Perhaps his face is stiff with all the tanning he's applied to make up for leaving California. It seems to bleach his eyebrows, which are as silver as his short bristling hair, and his pale blue eyes. He scrutinises me while he delivers a leathery handshake that would be still more painful if it weren't so brief. 'Christ up a chimney, you're cold,' he says and immediately turns his back. 'Mark told us your good news.'

By the time I close the heavy door in the thick wall of the converted warehouse he's tramping up the pale pine stairs. 'Warren,' I protest.

'Save it for the family.' As he turns left into the apartment he shouts 'Here's Mr Success.'

His wife, Bebe, dodges out of the main bedroom, and I wonder if she has been searching for signs of how recently I shared the bed. Perhaps the freckles that pepper her chubby face in its expensive frame of bobbed red hair are growing inflamed merely with enthusiasm. 'Let's hear it,' she urges, following her husband past Natalie's magazine cover designs that decorate the inner hall.

Mark darts out of his room next to the bathroom with a cry of 'Yay, Simon' as Natalie appears in the living-room. She sends me a smile understated enough for its pride and relief to be meant just for us. Before I can react her parents are beside her, and all I can see is the family resemblance. Her and Mark's features are as delicate as Bebe's must be underneath the padding, and they have half of Bebe's freckles each, as well as hair that's quite as red, if shorter. I feel excluded, not least by saying 'Listen, everyone, I –'

'Hold the speech,' Warren says and strides into the kitchen.

Why are the Hallorans here? What have they bought their daughter or their grandson this time? They've already paid for the plasma screen and the DVD recorder, and the extravagantly tiny hi-fi system, and the oversized floppy suite that resembles chocolate in rolls and melted slabs. I hope they didn't buy the bottle of champagne Warren brings in surrounded by four glasses on a silver tray. I clear my throat, because more than the central heating has dried up my mouth. 'That's not on my account, is it?' I croak. 'I didn't get the job.'

Warren's face changes swiftest. As he rests the tray on a low table his eyebrows twitch high, and his smile is left looking ironic. Bebe thins her lips at Natalie and Mark in case they need to borrow any bravery. Natalie tilts her head as if the wryness of her smile has tugged it sideways. Only Mark appears confused. 'But you sounded happy,' he accuses me. 'The noise you made.'

'I think you were hearing a boat on the river,' I tell him.

Natalie's parents share an unimpressed glance as Natalie asks Mark 'Don't you know the difference between Simon and a boat?'

'Tell us,' says Warren.

I feel bound to. 'One sails on the waves...'

Before Mark can respond, Bebe does with a frown that's meant to seem petite. 'We didn't know you were into saving whales. Can you spare the time when you're hunting for a job?'

'I'm not. An activist, I mean. I don't make a fuss about much. One sails on the waves, Mark, and the other one saves on the wails.'

I wouldn't call that bad for the spur of the moment, but his grandparents clearly feel I should. Mark has a different objection. 'Why didn't you get the job at the magazine? You said it was just what you wanted.'

'We can't always have what we want, son,' Warren says. 'Maybe we should get what we deserve.'

Natalie gazes at me, perhaps to prompt me to reply, and says 'We have.'

Bebe drapes an arm around her daughter's shoulders. 'You two know you've always got us.'

'You haven't said why yet,' Mark prompts me.

Through the window behind the editor's desk I could see to the hills beyond London, but when the editor conveyed her decision this afternoon I felt as if I'd been put back in my box. 'I'd be writing for them if I hadn't mentioned one word.'

Bebe plants her hands over his ears. 'If it's the one I'm thinking of I don't believe this little guy needs to hear.'

Perhaps Mark still can, because he says 'I bet it's Cineassed.'

She snatches her hands away as if his ears have grown too hot to hold. 'Well, really, Natalie. I'm surprised you let him hear that kind of language, whoever said it to him.'

'He saw me reading the magazine,' Natalie retorts, and I wonder whether she's reflecting that Bebe persuaded her not to display the covers in the hall as she adds 'I did work for it too, you might want to remember. Otherwise I wouldn't have met Simon.'

Everyone looks at me, and Warren says 'I don't get how just mentioning it could lose you a job when Natalie landed a better one.'

'She was only on design.'

'I wouldn't call that so very inferior.'

'Nor would I, not even slightly. The look was all hers, and it sold the magazine, but I'm saying my name was on half the pages.'

'Maybe you should try not telling anyone that's offering you a job.'

'You don't want people thinking you're trying to avoid work,' Bebe says.

'Simon is working. He's working extremely hard.' Rather than turn on either of her parents, Natalie gazes above my head. 'A day job and another one at night, I'd call that hard.'

'Just not too profitable,' says her father. 'Okay, let's run you to work, Simon. We need to stop by our houses.'

'Don't wait for me. I'll have time for the train.'

'Better not risk it. Imagine showing up late for work after you already lost one job.'

As Natalie gives me a tiny resigned smile Mark says 'You haven't seen my new computer, Simon. The old one crashed.'

'Nothing but the best for our young brain,' Bebe cries.

'It's an investment in everyone's future,' Warren says. 'Save the demonstration, Mark. We need to hit the road.'

The elder Hallorans present their family with kisses, and I give Natalie one of the kind that least embarrasses Mark. 'Bye,' he calls as he makes for his room, where he rouses his computer. I leave Natalie's cool slender hand a squeeze that feels like a frustrating sample of an embrace and trail after her parents to the basement car park.