When Julie walks through the back door of number 17 Windy Close, Luke’s mum is cooking in the kitchen.
‘Hello, Jean,’ says Julie.
‘Julie,’ says Jean sharply.
‘What’s wrong?’ asks Julie. ‘Is Leanne here?’
‘I’d give them a minute if I were you,’ says Jean. She puts up with Luke’s sex life but it obviously makes her uncomfortable. ‘Cup of tea?’
Julie shakes her head. The kitchen smells like gravy.
‘I might just go up anyway,’ she says. ‘Take my chances.’
‘Common little slut,’ Jean says, and Julie knows she’s talking about Leanne.
‘Hello, Julie,’ says Leanne when Julie walks into the bedroom. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’
Leanne’s sitting on the bed and Luke’s in his armchair looking like he’s got new clothes. There’s some weird music playing.
‘What’s this?’ asks Julie.
‘Pink Floyd,’ says Luke, grinning. ‘We watched Top of the Pops but now there’s some gardening programme on. Leanne didn’t like it.’
‘Can’t we watch The Bill?’ Leanne asks.
‘No,’ says Luke. ‘I already told you. I can’t follow The Bill.’
‘Can I check my e-mail?’ Julie asks, sitting in Luke’s computer chair.
‘Haven’t you been home yet?’ asks Leanne.
‘No, I went to The Rising Sun with David.’
Leanne raises an eyebrow. ‘You and David, eh?’
‘No,’ says Julie firmly. ‘Not me and David.’
‘Isn’t it about time you got laid?’
Luke laughs. Julie sort of smiles. ‘Yeah, I suppose it is, really.’
‘Well, you keep your hands off my Luke.’
Luke turns away, making an oh-my-god face.
‘I seem to have managed it for the past fifteen years, Leanne,’ Julie says. ‘But then again, if I got really desperate . . .’
‘Stop trying to wind me up. Luke, tell her.’
But Luke’s still trying not to fall off his chair laughing. There’s a ding from the computer. ‘E-mail,’ says Luke. ‘Better see what it is, Jules.’
Julie’s been looking at her Hotmail account. There’s an e-mail from Luke saying: Help! Where are you? Come and rescue me from Leanne. She grins, closes the browser and sees that something has just been filtered into Luke’s ‘Personal’ inbox. ‘Charlotte,’ Julie says. ‘Shall I open it?’
‘Charlotte?’ says Leanne. ‘Are you two still in touch with her?’
‘I haven’t heard from her in ages,’ says Julie.
‘Me neither,’ says Luke. ‘Until today. She sent me a couple earlier.’
‘Yes, well, it is Friday the thirteenth,’ Leanne says.
‘Leanne!’ says Julie.
‘Sorry. Anyway, I’m going home,’ says Leanne, getting off the bed and smoothing down her skirt. ‘Have you got Charlotte’s e-mail address? I think I might e-mail her to, you know, impress on her how important it is for her to stay away for a while.’
‘She’s already stayed away for a year, though,’ Julie points out. ‘If you hadn’t said anything she probably wouldn’t ever have come back. It’s not like she’s got happy memories of living here. But I bet you’ve wound her up now and she’ll want to come and see what’s going on. You know what Charlotte’s like.’
‘Yes, well,’ says Leanne. ‘I’d still like to e-mail her.’
‘I’ll give her your address if you want,’ Luke suggests.
‘Yeah,’ says Julie. ‘We’d better not give her address out without asking her first.’
Leanne gives Julie a look and leaves.
‘I miss Charlotte,’ says Luke, after Julie’s read him the e-mail. It said: By the way, I also forgot to say I’m doing yoga now. It’s really cool.
‘Yeah, me too.’ Julie minimises Outlook Express and turns around. ‘Leanne is so mental.’
‘Leanne’s scared of people like Charlotte.’
‘What did she say in her other e-mails?’
‘Not much, just stuff about Leanne, and this party and everything.’
Julie looks down at her fingers. ‘I looked for her today, in The Rising Sun.’
‘What, Charlotte? Really?’
‘Yeah. She wasn’t there.’
‘Why were you looking for her? Has she e-mailed you?’
Julie shrugs. ‘No. I haven’t heard from her for ages. I don’t know why I was looking for her really. Probably because I was talking about her with Leanne and then I saw these mice, and this guy from school and . . . I just wondered how she was doing, I suppose.’ Julie is silent for a moment.
‘You haven’t been to The Rising Sun for years,’ says Luke. Julie used to go to The Rising Sun with Charlotte and Mark. She hasn’t been there since Mark died.
‘I know. It wasn’t as weird as I thought it would be.’
‘Why did you go there, though? Were you just looking for Charlotte?’
‘No. I told you, I went with David.’
Luke looks surprised. This isn’t the sort of thing Julie normally does.
‘Who is David?’ he asks.
‘One of the chefs. He’s doing a law degree or something.’
‘Why did you go for a drink with him? Do you, you know . . .?’
‘What, fancy him? No. Don’t be stupid.’
‘So how come . . .?’ Luke says.
Julie shrugs and swivels around absentmindedly on the computer chair. ‘We had to shut early at The Edge and he asked me to go into town and help him choose a jacket. Then we went for a drink.’ She stops swivelling and frowns. ‘It was a bit weird, actually.’
Since Leanne left, Luke’s ditched his weird music and now the TV is on. When the BBC News starts, there’s a report about a huge flood in Uckfield, East Sussex. Apparently some schoolchildren were performing ‘Captain Noah and his Floating Zoo’ when the heavens opened, flooding the small town.
‘Very biblical,’ comments Luke.
He and Julie stop talking to listen to the report.
‘So what was weird?’ Luke asks when it finishes.
‘What, about David? Um . . . Well . . . To be honest I thought he was trying to pull me at first, especially since he kept asking all these questions, like he was trying to get to know me in five minutes or something . . . Then it seemed like he just wanted to talk about how weird I am – Leanne told him loads of stuff, apparently – and about you and stuff. And then he just completely freaked me out. He told me something . . .’
‘Which was?’
‘Well, he’s this normal, nice guy . . . And we’d just been shopping at Xoom and he always seems all cool and together and everything . . . You know, like, just healthy and young and stuff. Anyway, after we’d established how weird I am, which, incidentally, I didn’t enjoy at all, he looked at me and told me that he’s um . . . He’s got cancer.’
‘Fucking hell. Cancer of what?’
‘The testicles. He found out a few months ago or something, and he’s had treatment but they’re not sure yet if it’s spread. He hasn’t told anyone about it – not even his parents. He knew he had to tell someone but of course all the guys David knows are insensitive apes, and he doesn’t know any women apart from his ex, who hates him, and his sister, who’s in the middle of a divorce and stuff – oh, and Leanne, and it’s not like you’d tell her anything confidential – so when he found out I was weird he decided to tell me.’
‘What, just because you’re weird? I don’t get it.’
‘He probably thought someone else might laugh, or tease him.’
‘They wouldn’t, though, would they?’
‘Of course they would. People around here are pigs. I think he wanted to find someone who was similarly afflicted, and then when he couldn’t find anyone who was actually dying or terminally ill, he chose me, because I’m weird, and around here that’s almost the same as being terminally ill, and I suppose because I don’t have anyone to tell and because he probably thinks I’m extra sensitive because I’m a loner and, well, just weird.’
‘What does cancer of the testicles involve?’ Luke asks.
‘I don’t know. Let’s look it up on the Internet.’
Dawn’s not there when Julie goes home. She sometimes is around late at night, because she’s got some sort of insomnia. Dawn says it’s stress but what’s stressful about making sandwiches for a living?
Julie’s father has been married to Dawn for about five years now but Julie still feels funny around her. Maybe it’s to do with not growing up with someone, never seeing them naked, never having them read you bedtime stories . . . And then having to pretend, as an adult, that you are related. When Julie’s mother still lived here, the house had a bohemian edge; purple walls and second-hand furniture. Dawn got rid of all that when she moved in. Now the sitting room looks like something out of a mid-nineties Argos catalogue, with display cases, massproduced ornaments and those chairs that go up, down, backwards and forwards, like the ones Joey and Chandler have on Friends. The whole room’s designed for optimum TV viewing: comfortable chairs all facing the TV, footrests, occasional tables and about three different universal remote controls.
Julie picks up one of the remote controls and presses the number 3. There’s a chat show on. The host is talking to a man who is in a relationship with his ex-wife’s sister’s child, who is sixteen. The man is about forty. He left his wife for her sister’s daughter. He is sitting there holding hands with the girl, and her mother is sitting next to them.
‘How could you do this to the family?’ the girl’s mother asks her.
‘You can’t choose who you fall in love with,’ she replies.
They bring on the man’s daughter, who is about seventeen.
‘Why did you take my dad away?’ she asks forlornly.
‘You can’t choose who you fall in love with,’ repeats the girl.
Everyone hates her. Julie can’t help feeling sorry for her. She’s never met the girl – an art student, apparently – who helped break up her own family. She could never hate her, either; it’s not like it would be fair to hate the girl. This hasn’t stopped Julie wondering about her, though. She went to Ireland, apparently.
‘He’ll beat you like he beat me,’ says the ex-wife.
It’s time for bed but Julie’s not tired, and this chair’s too comfortable. She sits here every day after coming home from Luke’s, like déjà vu or a recurring dream. Every night it’s hard to get up from the chair. Every night Julie gets sucked into late-night TV and thinks she may as well have stayed at Luke’s for an extra hour. But even if she did stay for longer, she’d still sit here for an hour after getting home. It’s her routine.