12

Toby was glad not to be a teenager in the twenty-first century – it all seemed so stifling, so conformist. Young girls all looked the same to Toby these days. They all had the same strip of stomach showing between the same jersey top and low-slung jeans, their belly buttons all studded with the same flashy gems. They all wore their long hair in the same side-parted style, their lips sticky with the same glossy gel, their complexions the same shade of Balearic brown all year round. And there was something about modern bras that rendered all young girls’ bosoms into the shape of pudding tins, attached, bam-bam, to their fronts, somehow unrelated to their bodies, like they could be unscrewed at the end of the day and put in a drawer.

Toby, like most men, loved nothing more than a little light porn, a few minutes of harmless thrusting and fellating shot at close range and poured down the virtual tubes and wires of the Internet into his bedroom. But he didn’t want real girls to look like that. He wanted real girls to have wobbly bits and breasts that were unexpected shapes. He liked variety in his women. He liked character. He liked PJ Harvey. He liked Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He liked that tall DJ girl with the DJ husband whose father was Johnny Ball. He actually thought that Cherie Blair was a very attractive woman, though he’d never yet found anyone to agree with him. And his all-time best-ever pin-up, since his teenage years, was Jamie Lee Curtis. He didn’t have a type. He knew what he liked when he saw it. But kids today – it was all so generic. It was all so boring.

And that, when it was all boiled down to its essence, was the main problem with Con. He was boring. He added nothing to the mix in the house. His youth could have been a fizzing plop of seltzer into the still water of this thirty-something house; instead he lurked at the bottom like a dull penny.

‘Hello, Con,’ Toby opened, coming upon him eating a Big Mac in the front room.

‘Hiya.’ Con glanced up and looked at him in surprise.

‘Good day at work?’

Con shrugged. ‘Nothing special.’

‘See anyone famous?’

Con had once shared the lift with Cate Blanchett. Cate Blanchett was quite high up on Toby’s list of quirky, desirable women, so this fact had lodged itself firmly into his consciousness when he’d overheard Con sharing it with Ruby a few months back.

Con smiled. ‘Nah. Not today. Saw that gay bloke coming in the other day, though, you know?’

‘Which one?’

‘That posh one. Can’t remember his name. He was in a film with Madonna.’

The only film starring Madonna that Toby could bring to mind at that moment was Dick Tracy, but he was sure that Con couldn’t have been referring to Warren Beatty, who was, as far as he knew, neither posh nor gay.

‘So,’ he said after a moment, ‘do you think you’ll stay at Condé Nast for much longer? Is there any promise of a … of any career progression, at all?’

Con laughed and wiped a fleck of ketchup off his chin. ‘Er … no. Definitely not. Unless I want to be post-room manager. Which I don’t.’

‘But what about the publications? The magazines. Surely there must be possibilities there?’

He laughed again. ‘Not for the likes of me there aren’t. It’s like one of those fucked-up dreams, that place. On one side you’ve got reality – that’s us lot in the post room, the caterers, the cleaners – then on the other side you’ve got this whole other world, these posh people, my age, live in Chelsea, don’t know what day of the week it is, kind of floating round, like, you know … oblivious. They’re the ones that get the proper jobs there. The careers. We’re just there to make sure they get their letters and their lunch.’

‘Oh,’ said Toby, ‘I see. So, if you don’t want to be the post-room manager and you don’t think there are any other opportunities there, what’s your game plan? What’s next?’

‘My PPL.’

‘Your what?’

‘My private pilot’s licence.’

‘You’re going to learn to fly?’

‘Yeah. Why not?’

‘God, well, isn’t that very expensive?’

‘Can be,’ he shrugged. ‘But I’ve been looking into it. If I go to South Africa it’s a third of what it would cost here. I’ve been saving since I started work, and I’ve worked out that I only need another eighteen months at Condé Nast to earn what I need. Then I’moff. Get my licence. Go to the Caribbean. Chartered flights. Island-hopping. The good life. Oh, man …’

‘Right, so, er …’

‘I tell you what, if it hadn’t been for Nigel writing to you and me getting this room, and the, you know, the great deal on the rent, there’s no way I’d have been able to think about learning to fly. I would never of been able to afford it. That was a good day that was, the day we met.’

He smiled at Toby, a lovely warm smile full of gratitude and Toby felt his ribs crunching together as his chest slowly deflated. He sighed quietly. This was exactly what he’d always wanted. This is what this house was for. It was for allowing people to follow their dreams. His main criterion for choosing house mates was that they should benefit in some positive, constructive way from having tiny outgoings. The only exception to this rule had been Ruby, whom he’ doffered a room to on the grounds that he wanted to have sex with her. He’ doffered Con a room because he felt sorry for him, because his mum had abandoned him, because he had no fixed abode and was about to lose his job and end up on the streets. And now, a year later, Con had a dream, too. He wanted to fly planes. And Toby should have been delighted. Instead he felt trapped.

Toby thought sadly about the wedge of magic money that had appeared from thin air to make real the dreams he’d had in the wake of Gus’s death. And then he looked at Con, a boy who’d arrived here with nothing, no ambition beyond a bed to sleep in, no dreams other than to keep his job, who’d suddenly and magically found a path he wanted to follow. Toby had had his whole life to make a success of himself. He had no one to blame but himself for finding himself washed up in Nowheresville in his late thirties. Con had no ready-made safety net – he’d had to knit his own. What was more important, wondered Toby, his own silly middle-aged need to prove himself to his father or a young man’s future?

He sat for a moment, staring blankly at the television, listening to Con slurping his cola, letting his dreams slink away like naughty children. Then he slapped his hands against his thighs and got to his feet.

‘I was thinking,’ he said, ‘that I might invest in a pair of new sofas. What do you think?’

Con looked at him in surprise, then at the aged blue sofas dressed with tatty ethnic cushions. ‘Yeah. Why not? Go for it.’

‘Cool.’ Toby put his hands in his pockets. ‘I’ll go shopping tomorrow. Sales on now. Good time to go.’

And for now, he mused, new sofas might just have to do.