Jane frowns across to the pair of blokes who are sitting in the windowsill. They’re roughly our age, late-20s or early 30s, and I don’t know them.
‘Don’t light that in here,’ she says.
One of the men looks down to the cigarette he’s rolling and shrugs. ‘I wasn’t going to.’ He licks his lips and then adds a conspiratorial: ‘Want one?’
‘No.’
He grins and tilts his head: ‘You’ve changed since uni.’ He laughs, though Jane doesn’t, and then the duo get up and head off into the garden.
‘Ben’s friends,’ she says by way of explanation.
As they disappear, a blonde woman in yoga pants and a wool sweater ambles into the living room with her boyfriend or husband in tow. She turns in a half-circle, seemingly lost, and then smiles, waves and shrieks, ‘Happy birthday!’
There are few things quite as awkward as being at the side of a conversation while not knowing who the other party is. The woman’s boyfriend/husband is in the same position and we exchange knowing half-smiles.
‘I love the new house,’ she says.
‘We’ve not got much furniture yet,’ Jane replies. ‘We’re getting there.’
‘We’re still renting…’ The woman delivers her retort with an obvious edge of annoyance, but then levers a wrapped present out from under her boyfriend/husband’s arm and hands it over. ‘That’s for you,’ she says. ‘I can’t believe you’re turning thirty. I feel so old.’
‘You feel old? You’re not the one turning thirty.’
Jane opens the gift and it’s a picture frame full of a scrappy piecemeal of photos. Jane looks young in all of them and she’s alongside various people I don’t know.
I presume this is another of Jane’s old university friends. Most of the people at the house party know either her or Jane’s boyfriend, Ben, in the same way.
Jane and her friend make small talk until the woman disappears off towards the kitchen, her boyfriend or husband trailing a step behind like a trained puppy at heel.
Jane runs her fingers across the pictures and then places the frame down at the side of the TV unit.
‘That was Eleanor,’ she says. ‘I should’ve introduced you.’
‘I wouldn’t worry about it.’
I don’t explicitly say that I’m not bothered about Jane’s university friends, though it has to be somewhat implied. I suppose everyone has different lives depending on who they’re with and where they are. It’s only events like birthdays, weddings and funerals that bring it all crashing together.
It’s been a steady parade of guests arriving for Jane’s birthday, but, for now at least, the living room is quiet. We lean on the back of the sofa and stare towards the window at the front. We’ve known each other for so long that, sometimes, it doesn’t need words.
Jane eventually sighs her way into a sentence: ‘So…you have news?’
I glance off to the kitchen, wanting the chat but not wanting to be interrupted or overheard. ‘Gary dumped me,’ I say.
‘I thought you were going to break it off with him anyway?’
‘That makes it worse. I wasn’t into him – but I wanted him to be into me.’
The grin creeps across Jane’s mouth and then disappears. I laugh, anyway. We both get it.
‘Then the gym is closing down,’ I add. ‘I lost a job and a boyfriend all within about thirty hours.’
‘So… that’s two things you didn’t like that are both out of your life. Tomorrow’s a new day and all that…’ She pauses and then adds: ‘Perhaps it’s a chance to look at something else?’
‘Like what?’
‘I can ask around to see if there are any jobs going. Ben’s bank is often after people to start at the bottom…’
‘I don’t want to work in a bank. I—’
She holds up a hand to stop me: ‘I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just…’ Jane tails off and doesn’t finish the sentence properly because we both know she meant it in precisely the way it came out. She works at a design agency that is some sort of mix of public relations and brochure design. I’m not sure anyone really knows what she does, including herself. She’s always been artsy and my choice of teaching exercise classes with the goal of working my way up to being a full-on personal trainer with my own studio is alien to her. We were in the same class for every year throughout school and yet there are times at which we feel like utter strangers.
Jane pushes herself away from the sofa. ‘I’m going to find Ben,’ she says.
‘Sorry for dragging down your birthday.’
She rubs my upper arm like she always does when she wants to be reassuring: ‘You haven’t.’
Jane drifts away, leaving me alone in the living room with only a hum of chatter from the kitchen. Considering she and Ben are apparently still looking for furniture, their house looks largely complete to me. The living room is full of the usual things and there are no obvious gaps. She was probably talking about the little touches she considers important to finishing a room. The candles, the abstract prints, the books she’ll never read. That’s one of the differences between us, I suppose.
I head into the kitchen to get myself a drink. There are beers and wine floating around but I settle for water from the fridge.
It’s all right for couples who turn up to parties and can spend the evening chatting to one another. For singles, it is a slow, bubbling panic of trying to latch onto literally anyone who is vaguely familiar. Failing that, it’s anyone who seems remotely normal.
I recognise a couple of faces of people who live around the general area, but they’re all friends of friends. People I might nod or wave to, rather than anyone with whom I’m pals. They’d still offer an escape, though each of them seems to be chatting and drinking with other people. I’ve never been one of those who can sidle up and join a conversation. It’s only as I find myself back in the living room, having done a lap of the house, that I realise what should have been obvious.
My only real friend is Jane.
It’s all a bit pathetic. I’m turning thirty in three months and have no job, no boyfriend and no proper friends. They’ve either drifted away, or gone off to get married and have kids. That’s the problem with remaining in the area in which a person grew up. The competition over who’s making the best of their lives is endless. Everyone started in the same place, so it’s hard to blame anyone else other than ourselves for failure.
I’m on another lap, heading through the hallway, when the doorbell sounds. I’m not sure if Jane or Ben will have heard so open the door and am faced with a middle-aged man in a cardigan. He smiles awkwardly.
‘Could you, uh, turn the music down a bit?’
I blink at him, largely because I’d somehow blanked out the fact there was music playing. It’s only now he mentions it that I realise there’s an Oasis song playing in the background. I am about to say that I’ll find someone who lives here when there’s a presence at my side. I glance sideways to see Ben. He’s in jeans and a loose-fitting shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
‘Sorry about all this,’ he says, reaching for the man’s hand.
The neighbour seems to have little choice in the matter and ends up shaking.
‘I’m Ben. We’ve just moved in. It’s my girlfriend’s thirtieth so we were having a bit of a joint housewarming and birthday party.’
‘Oh, well that’s—’
‘Are you from next-door? We would have invited you over but everything’s happened really quickly. If you hang on a moment…’
Ben releases the other man’s hand and turns quickly, disappearing along the hall towards the kitchen. Moments later, the music dims and then Ben reappears with a six-pack of Guinness in his hand.
He offers the cans to the neighbour, almost forcing them into his hand: ‘Here you are, mate. Sorry about everything. What’s your name, by the way?’
Ben has spoken so quickly that the man takes a second or two to take it all in. He accepts the cans and straightens his cardigan.
‘Oh, this wasn’t necessary. It’s Cliff. My wife’s Alice. She’s very sensitive to loud noise, you see.’ He taps his ears as if to indicate the issue and Ben tilts his head.
‘Oh, that’s awful. I’m so sorry. If there’s ever anything we can do, just let us know.’
Cliff bobs awkwardly. I suspect he was fired up, ready for an argument and now, from nowhere, he’s got a new buddy. He holds the cans up, says thanks again, and then turns and heads off back to his house.
Ben watches him leave and then closes the door, before turning to me and shrugging.
‘Seems like a nice bloke,’ he says.
I can’t tell if he’s being genuine, or if there’s an edge there. That’s Ben all over, though. He and Jane met at university and have been together for a decade since. He travelled from the other end of the country to come down to Kingbridge, while Jane picked the university that was a little over half an hour away from where we grew up in Gradingham. That perhaps explains the difference between them.
Ben looks to me and his eyes are like buttons: big and round and blue. It feels as if I’m frozen. He’s always been able to do this to me, but it’s not the kind of thing I could ever say out loud. I don’t even think it’s a physical thing; it’s more the way he is. There’s something effortless about him. As if life itself comes so naturally that he doesn’t need to try.
‘How’s it going, Morgs?’
‘It’s been worse.’
‘It was about time you got rid of that Gary.’
‘It wasn’t quite like that, but yes…’
‘Keep your chin up,’ he says. ‘Everything will come together.’
If anyone else had said it, the words might have sounded cheesy – but there’s something about Ben’s phrasing that means I don’t question it. Perhaps things really will come together.
He grins and possibly winks. It’s hard to know because it’s there and gone. ‘I’ve got to go find the birthday girl,’ he says. ‘We’ll catch up later.’
With that, he disappears up the stairs, leaving me alone in the hall. I watch him go and then move to the bottom step, sitting by myself and taking out my phone to make it seem like I’m doing something other than wallowing.
Minutes pass and then there is a clatter of footsteps and suddenly someone is sitting next to me.
‘Parties not your thing, either?’ the newcomer says.
I turn and it’s an older man I don’t know. I’ve never been great at judging ages but he’s got that silver-fox thing going on, with short, pepper-pot hair. He’s maybe a decade older than me and there’s something about his shrugged indifference that is immediately appealing.
‘Is it anyone’s?’ I reply.
‘In my experience, the moment anyone invites you to a party, you start thinking of ways to possibly get out of it.’
I laugh and shuffle sideways on the step so that I can lean on the wall and get a better look at him.
‘How do you know Jane?’ I ask.
‘I don’t really. I’m an old friend of Ben’s from university. We were in the football team. A few of us came together for a bit of a reunion.’
As if to emphasise the point, he raises his can of Boddington’s to someone who passes us on the way up the stairs.
‘What about you?’ he asks. ‘How do you know Jane?’
‘From school. I think we were six or seven when we first met.’
He pouts a lip and nods. ‘I think you win,’ he says, offering his hand. ‘David,’ he adds.
‘Morgan.’
‘Nice to meet you.’