Alan woke up and blearily checked the clock next to the bed: 7.12 a.m. He ran the damage check. Limbs? Not aching. Head? Not pounding. Mouth? Mildly dry, nothing drastic. Stomach? Fine. What a result. He did the thing of counting his drinks. Two halves and one, no, two pints in the pub. Two bottles of wine between two of them in the Groucho. Oh – and a couple of whiskies. But he’d stopped early, stopped drinking really at about 8 p.m. – that coffee on the train had been the turning point. He’d just sipped a single glass of wine with dinner and they’d gone to bed very soon after. Not bad. Right on the cut-off point of having a proper hangover, thank God.
He was aware of Katie moving around the darkened room, gathering things. Dressing. It was one of her London days. ‘Morning,’ Alan mumbled from beneath the duvet.
‘Morning yourself, there’s tea there.’
He saw the mug steaming on his bedside table, the yellow Balamory mug, a mug it was well known he hated. Balamory – the kids’ TV show much beloved of Sophie a few years back (and Melissa before her, it was after Tom’s time). It was aimed at preschool children and dealt with the comings and goings of folk in a fictional island in Scotland. All ethnic groups were represented – black, white, fat, thin, gay (the town policeman was absolutely flaming, to the point where Alan had wondered if he might not be part of a brilliantly ingenious BBC scheme to actively promote homosexuality to children behind the government’s back), disabled – and everyone got along famously. The plotlines all dealt with stuff like helping someone else do some fucking thing. As a family they had visited the island where the programme was shot, when holidaying up there a few years back. Alan had got in with some locals at the hotel bar, where, over a bracing round of malts, he had been delighted to learn about which of the cast members were raving alcoholics, which were utter shits and which would literally do it with the coalman behind the bus stop for 50p. Initially, of course, he was driven to murderous tears of rage by the programme and used to survive the repeated early-morning viewings only by imagining the wonderful, appalling things he could do to various cast members had he the use of a soundproofed basement and some surgical instruments. Had he been apprehended mid-flaying, he often thought, all he would have to do by way of mounting a defence would be to show the court a video of the average episode and the ‘acting’ it contained. No judge in the land would convict him. (Convict him? He’d get the George fucking Medal.) But, over time, a funny thing happened. Alan found that he would be tuning into Balamory before Sophie even asked for it. He found his heart lifting as that boat sailed over the sparkling water towards the green place where no man or woman was hated on account of their appearance or sexual preference. He enjoyed the visual fabric of island life: the sunny harbour, the windy high street, the battlements of Archie the Inventor’s castle (a local landowner, English, obviously, very possibly also gay and involved in something with the copper), and when Sophie finally started saying ‘NO!’ when he tuned to the show in the mornings (having intellectually bested its screenwriters somewhere around the age of four and moved on to violent cartoons), it was with a heavy heart that Alan realised a troubling fact: like a kind of modern-day Winston Smith with tears of Victory gin running down his face – he loved Balamory. Katie had bought him the mug – ironically – as a parting shot in the island gift shop and it depicted PC Plum looking jolly (no doubt having recently had, or being in the act of planning, a buggery). Why did Alan hate the Balamory mug? He just did. We do not enjoy dispassionate relations with inanimate objects, do we? This bowl or plate, that knife or grater or peeler is a favourite. That other is banished to drawer Siberia. Nowhere is this more crystallised than in the field of mugs. Just something to do with the shape of it, the feel of it in the hand, the volume of tea or coffee it will contain (mustn’t be too much or too little) and the colour the inside of the mug will turn the beverage. The mugs tremble in their hierarchy in the cupboard as the master or mistress approaches and there are some – like the fat kid with the cola-bottle-bottom glasses at school – that will never know the joy of being picked. We do not consciously go through all of this. We just know we like ‘him’ and we don’t like ‘him’. Just as Alan did not go through the rich history of mug theory right now, he merely looked at it in the half-light and said, ‘I hate the fucking Balamory mug.’
‘Everything – and I mean everything – is in the dishwasher,’ Katie said.
He sat up and sipped the weak tea. Katie made terrible tea.
It was still dark outside. ‘Right, I’ll be back around four. So, tell me, what are your plans for the day?’
‘Plans?’
‘With our guest.’
‘Oh. Well, I –’ Of course he had no idea. Somewhere in his head Alan had thought this would be simple. That they’d have breakfast and share a few amusing memories from their youth, Alan would then give Craig his dry, clean clothes back (he’d perhaps even throw in a few new sweaters, from the Mum drawer; the vast collection of woollen oddities that had come his way as presents over the years, all testimonies to how strangely the simple words ‘a crew neck or V-neck in plain black or navy’ could be interpreted) before slipping him a few quid (how much was a vexing question, true. A few hundred would seem about right. Anything less might be insulting, anything more might open the door to Craig saying something like ‘You know, with a few thousand …’) and sending him on his way.
It was also possible that Craig would just wake up, thank him for a lovely evening, tell him how nice it was to catch up, and see you around. But really, Alan had no idea how it was going to go. Not that he could say this to Katie. ‘I’ll let him sleep in a bit and then see what he wants to do. I thought I might take him shopping for a few bits and pieces. Maybe some new shoes …’
‘And you’re going to talk to Pandora?’
‘Yes, I’m in town tomorrow.’
‘Don’t get me wrong, he seems very nice and we’ve got plenty of space and all th—’
‘EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!’ and a pair of knees were headed for his chest. Alan just had time to set his mug down on the bedside table before Sophie smashed into him. Sophie always woke up somewhere around 7 a.m. Never later. Holidays, weekends, it didn’t matter if you kept her up until two in the morning or she went to bed at 7 p.m. She would be awake – fully, screamingly awake – by 7 a.m. Alan sometimes thought about conducting an experiment where they kept the child up all night until 6.59 a.m. to see if she’d fall fast asleep for one minute to reboot before snapping awake again at 7 on the dot. Right now, however, he was grateful for the distraction.
‘Look,’ he said to Katie while wrestling with Sophie over the remote control for the TV, ‘we’ll figure it out. Play it by ear.’
‘Mmmm, I thought you might say that …’
‘SOFIA THE FIRST!’
‘I’ll call you after I – no chance, Soph – talk to –’
‘I’m not saying just kick him –’
‘We’re watching the news. I know you’re not, Ka—’
‘HORRID HENRY!’ Alan was thumbing through the channels now. Infuriatingly the TV had come on on one of the kids’ channels. He had to get out of here quick, before something really juicy caught her eye.
‘Soph, please, Mummy and Daddy are –’
‘OK then.’ Katie went through into their en suite.
‘AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!’
‘Sophie, do we have to do this every morning?’
‘What?’
‘Every morning you come in here and demand kids’ programmes on our TV and every morning I tell you that, during the week, we watch the news first.’
‘NO! CHILDREN’S TV!’ He could solve this. Sophie’s iPad, her seventh-birthday present, was in his bedside drawer, but they’d agreed her access to this extravagant gift would be heavily policed – a good balance of educational apps and no handing it to her just to obtain yourself five minutes’ peace. He found BBC1 – the girl who did the stock market looking very serious about something. He turned the volume up. ‘… who announced record profits this quarter.’ Supermarket profits. Some fucker at BBC Breakfast was absolutely obsessed with supermarket profits. Every other day it seemed there was a long feature on the subject.
‘THIS IS BORING!’
‘Oh for God’s sake, go and get ready for school!’
‘BORING!’
‘Oh here …’
He gave her the iPad.
‘YAYYY!’