We trooped down the stairs in single file. I could hear male voices and I suddenly realized I hadn’t asked anything about the other occupants. But it was too late now because there we were, standing in the large, messy semi-basement where three men were sitting round the long table, and Astrid was introducing me, while Pippa slid chipped and unmatching plates round the table, then dumped a handful of cutlery in the middle.
‘Right, everyone,’ said Astrid, and silence fell. Everyone looked at me. This first impression would be important, I knew.
‘Hi,’ I said, and raised a hand.
‘This,’ she said, ‘is Davy.’
I knew that first impressions would be important. I smiled at each of them. I looked each of them in the eye. I made mental notes.
‘First of all,’ Astrid said, turning to a scrawny, freckly man, who looked like the carrot-headed runt in my class at secondary school whom everyone had picked on, ‘this is Dario.’
‘Hi, Dario,’ I said. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
‘Are you?’ His pupils were dilated and his words ran into each other. Stoned, I thought.
‘What? Well, yes. At least, I will be if you decide I can live here.’ There was a ripple of amusement and I felt my confidence grow.
‘And this…’ Astrid gestured towards a slightly older man with a buzzcut, who was wearing a thin grey T-shirt that seemed too tight for his stocky body. Something about his pale-blue gaze made me feel uneasy. ‘This is Mick.’
He grunted something. That was all I’d get.
‘And last but not least…’
I turned towards the third man, smiling and holding out my hand. I knew at once that I didn’t like him, not one bit. I didn’t like his long dark hair, or his high cheekbones, or the hooded lids over his dark, secretive eyes. I didn’t like his fucking beauty or the way he looked dreamy, as if he was seeing something I couldn’t. And I didn’t like the way Astrid was staring at him now; there was a sudden glow about her that was like heat being given off. Nor the way he looked back, a glance passing between them and electricity in the air.
We shook hands.
‘Owen,’ he said.
‘Hello, Owen.’
I took a seat between Astrid and Dario, uncorked the two bottles of wine and poured everyone a glass. Pippa lit three stubby white candles. I listened, nodded, laughed in all the right places. I was modest, appreciative. I patted Dario on the back when his prawn went down the wrong way. I helped Astrid clear away the foil containers. I said I wouldn’t mind dealing with the wasps’ nest under the eaves when summer came. It turned out to be as simple as that. I was in.
Chapter Twenty-seven
I arrived the following Saturday morning. Miles took me up to show me my room, which had been rejected by six other people. It was right at the top of the house, overlooking the street.
‘It’s a bit bare,’ said Miles. ‘We haven’t really got round to doing it up. Dario promised but… you know…’
It was extremely bare and, because the radiator hadn’t been turned on for weeks or months, cold. There was a threadbare carpet, a bed with just a mattress, a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, a curtain rail with no curtains.
‘It’s perfect,’ I said, because it was. Previously I’d been staying in different places. Squatting with workmates. Sometimes even on site in a sleeping-bag.
‘Have you got much stuff?’ Miles asked.
‘A few things.’
I had a laundry bag full of clothes and that was about it. So I went to the high street and found a funny old housing-supply shop where I bought a duvet and a cover to wrap round it, a pillow and a pillow-case to wrap round it, a sheet, a towel. Then I walked along the street and went into a little bookshop. I browsed through a section devoted to psychology, religion, self-help and gardening and found a book called Success in Friendship: A User’s Manual. When I handed it to the girl at the counter she looked at me curiously.
‘It’s for a friend,’ I said.
‘Really?’ she said.
‘That was a joke.’
‘It’s seven ninety-nine,’ she said, not laughing.
I didn’t really care whether or not she thought I was the sort of person who needed a book to tell him how to find friends. That wasn’t what I wanted it for or, at least, not exactly. I wanted to leave my old life behind and to do that I didn’t have to create a fake birth certificate and steal someone’s name. It was very simple. All I needed was never to go home again, never to phone home again. What was the problem with that? In the end my old life would catch up with me, the way it generally does, like something stuck to your shoe, but in the meantime Maitland Road was going to be my experiment. I was going to impersonate a normal housemate who got on with everybody. I was going to treat it like a technical exercise. That was why I needed a book. It would give me a part to play.
I made up my bed, hung my towel on a hook on the back of the door and lay on the bed with my book. I read the chapter on conversation. Each paragraph was headed by a maxim and I read them aloud to myself: ‘The art of conversation is the art of being a good listener’; ‘If you want to meet a person, first you must meet their gaze’; ‘Respect their space’; ‘Reinforce, don’t compete’; ‘When in doubt, talk shop’; ‘Yes, not yes but…’
My mate Ben’s uncle had put me in touch with a major refurbishment going on across the river in Camberwell. Two days after I moved in, I went down there and wandered round it with the guy who had been hired to do it. It was a fairly basic job, it was cash in hand and it was going to take at least three months. It was all so easy. It was early evening when I got back to Maitland Road. I wasn’t exactly sure what being a good housemate was like but I could avoid being a bad one. Don’t use up the hot water. I had a shower that lasted about a minute. I came downstairs and found Pippa alone, reading a magazine. Don’t be an obvious free-loader, especially at first.
‘I bought some wine,’ I said. ‘Would you like a glass?’
‘Sure,’ said Pippa. ‘Red or white?’
‘Whichever you like,’ I said. ‘I got both.’
‘Well, you can stay,’ she said cheerfully. ‘White, then.’
I poured two glasses and sat along the sofa from her, respecting her space. Be a good listener.
‘I’m sure this is going to come out sounding wrong,’ I said, ‘but you don’t look like a solicitor.’
‘That’s a relief,’ she said, sipping her drink.
‘So what kind of stuff do you do?’
She was really quite funny as she talked about the characters in her office and her strange, demanding clients. I was such a good listener. The book had said that in conversation men compete and women support. So I was really a woman. A really terrific woman. Yeah, yeah, that’s right, I said. I see what you mean. Yeah, right, absolutely. Oh, that’s fantastic. I can’t believe it, you really did it? So what did he say? Bloody hell, what an idiot. I kept topping up the wine. I looked her in the eyes. I didn’t invade her personal space. I reached for the bottle to fill her glass again but it was empty.
‘Shall we move on to the red?’ I said.
She slid along the sofa and invaded my personal space. She put her hand on my forearm.
‘You know what one of the big problems with sharing a house is?’ she said.
‘No.’
‘No, you don’t, but I’m going to tell you. It’s the sexual tension. It ruins the friendships and it causes problems.’
‘I see what you mean.’
‘You can’t, because I haven’t said it yet. When we’re together, there’s all this ridiculous flirtation and will-they-or-won’t-they?, and then there’s probably some terrible break-up. It’s dreadful for the couple and almost as bad for everybody else. You probably know about Astrid and poor Miles.’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Basically they got together and it was hopeless and she dumped him and he’s been mooning around ever since.’
‘I’m sorry.’