Chapter 4

Full Moon

IN THE YEAR that followed the signing of the acte final, Dave and I became really good friends. I realised that we actually did have a lot in common: we both loved France and we also shared a passion for dépôt-ventes – although I learned to always take a good book with me, as Dave could spend up to three hours looking at bits of old metal and furniture. He was the only heterosexual man I had ever known who liked to shop more than a woman.

  That winter, we spent several weekends in France together. Often, if Ryanair was offering cheap flights, we would fly out together at a moment's notice. It meant I could meet up with contractors and get quotes for the electrical rewiring, plumbing, replastering and the new kitchen floor. We would take day trips to nearby villages, sitting in cafes having long, deep conversations or enjoying cosy lunches and dinners in small bistros. We spent many nights by his crackling log fire, discussing our plans for our respective houses and poring over paint charts and books on French country interiors together. He loved to sit and drink Sauternes until the early hours of the morning, discussing his wife's increasingly wayward behaviour. She was having a mid-life crisis, he said, and had started partying hard, going out to clubs every night and taking drugs. I lived in hope that he would bring Gerry along again but there was no news on that front – whenever I asked, Dave said that he hadn't seen or heard anything from him – and so most of the time it was just the two of us and, occasionally, another male friend or two of Dave's.

  Dave seemed to have a limitless supply of male friends, all of them attractive and with good jobs – an architect, an investment banker, a commercial airline pilot and an advertising campaign director among them. Nearly all of them were single and they shared Dave's love of deep conversation and seemed to have bonded with him on a very profound level. Yet, despite appearing to have successful careers and attractive personalities, I noticed that they were all a little morose, like they had been through the mill in some way. And when I asked Dave how he knew so-and-so, he was always very vague and it was difficult to get a straight answer.

  We met up in London for drinks too, always with other people. Then one evening, we stayed rather too late in the usual wine bar in Mayfair and Dave missed his last train home to Kent. His problems with his wife had worsened by then and I got the impression that he had missed his train deliberately. He was very drunk. 'You can come back to mine and crash in my spare room if you like,' I said.

  'Can I? That sounds like a good idea,' he said.

  We took a taxi back to my place, saying very little. Then he looked, or rather wobbled, around the flat. 'Christ,' he said. 'You've got such great taste.'

  'Here's the spare room,' I said. 'The bed's already made up, so you can just crash in here.'

  'Stay up and have another drink with me,' he said, reaching for my wrist. 'I don't want to go to bed just yet. I want to talk to you.'

  Another drink was the last thing either of us needed, but I always enjoyed our conversations, so, against my better instincts, I went into the kitchen and opened a bottle of red wine. When I returned to the sitting room, he had taken off his jacket and shoes and was sprawled out on the sofa. I sat down opposite him.

  'So Gerry was a no-show again tonight?' I said.

  ''Fraid so,' said Dave. 'His girlfriend is six weeks pregnant.'

  Girlfriend? Pregnant? Six weeks? This was a triple hammer blow. Not only had my only potential love interest been snatched away from me, but he was about to become a father. There was absolutely no chance of installing Gerry and his laptop in my French attic now.

  'That was fast work,' I said, trying to hide my disappointment. 'I thought you said he didn't have a girlfriend.'

  'He didn't. It was someone that he was friends with in the therapy group and it all happened very fast.'

  'Therapy?'

  Dave put his hand to his mouth and looked very embarrassed. 'Oh Christ,' he said. 'Look, I really didn't mean to tell you that. It just sort of slipped out. But now you know. That's where Gerry and I met.'

  'You were in therapy too? Was it a drink problem?' I asked. 'Or drugs?' I knew that both were rife in the advertising industry.

  'No. I was under a lot of pressure at work. Life was just getting on top of me.'

  'And Gerry? Why was he there?'

  'Depression.'

  'Ah.' Suddenly, Dave's gang of disparate but emotionally literate friends made sense.

  'That's why I tried to warn you away from him,' Dave continued. 'He's racked with self-doubt and constantly battling depression. He's not ready for a relationship, let alone fatherhood. I'm worried about him to be honest.'

  'So all those other male friends of yours, did you meet them in therapy too?'

  'Most of them, yes. It saved some of our lives. You can't help but form close bonds with the people that you meet there. The clinic encourages you to stay in touch afterwards, sort of as a support group, because we all know what each other has been through.' This explained a lot.

  'So there. Now you know,' said Dave. 'So tell me, what secrets are you hiding?'

  'Nothing I want to talk about,' I said. 'I'm sorry.'

  'Listen,' he said, suddenly sliding off the sofa and onto the floor, so that he was closer to me and almost suppliant at my feet. 'I really think you should talk to someone.'

  'Why?'

  'Because you seem so… emotionally unavailable. I honestly think it would do you good to talk about it.' Dave's face was a picture of concern and, for a moment, I was worried that he was going to put his arms around me.

  'So what's going on with Linda?' I asked, embarrassed by the intensity of his gaze. Fortunately, he took the bait.

  'It's really bad,' he said. 'I've got to the stage now where I actually hate her. There's no going back for us…'

  He made several more attempts to turn the conversation back to me that night but I managed to deflect the questions, no matter how astute they were. Eventually, I said I was going to bed. He said he wouldn't be able to sleep just yet, so I left him in the sitting room with a half-full bottle of wine, flicking through my books of fashion photography. Before I went to bed I put a bottle of Evian and some headache tablets in the spare room. I figured he might need them the next morning.

  A month or so later, I was sitting at my desk in London when I received a call from Dave. 'Linda wants a divorce,' he said, his voice shaky.

  'Are you sure?'

  'She's taken out a restraining order on me and wants me to move my stuff out of the house by the end of the week.'

  'Oh God! It's that bad?'

  'She claims that I hit her. In fact, she attacked me with a table lamp. She's crazy. She's doing everything she can to get me out of the house.'

  'And what about Jason?'

  'He's staying with her for the time being. Though she doesn't give a damn about him. All she cares about is clubbing and her new bloke. Jason might have to come and live with me once I've got myself sorted out.'

  'That's terrible news,' I said (and not just because I wouldn't wish Jason on anyone).

  'We've decided to sell the house and split the profit,' he continued. 'If there is any. Most of the equity has already disappeared up her nose.'

  'Where are you going to live?' I asked, suddenly worried that Dave might want to come and stay with me in London.

  'I suppose it will have to be France,' he said.

  'But what about your job?'

  'Fuck the job. Anyway, I'm on compassionate leave.'

  Dave's lack of concern for his job was a little worrying. It was no secret that his debts were stacking up. In addition to the loans he had taken out to buy and furnish his house in France, he had also amassed significant credit card debts. The more miserable he felt, the more money he seemed to spend. 'It seems to me there's no point in working at all,' he continued. 'I'd be better off claiming unemployment benefit since anything I earn will just go to Linda in child support.'

  This sounded like bad news for Gerry, from whom Dave had recently confessed to borrowing £5,000. 'So the thing is, I need to hire a van and move my stuff out to France as soon as possible,' he continued. 'I was wondering if you would like to share it and split the cost?' It seemed like a good idea. I had recently bought two bedside tables and a leather tub chair and they were currently obstructing the communal staircase.

  'OK. When were you thinking of going?' I asked.

  'Tomorrow. Can you book the ferry?'

Dave picked me up the following morning, behind the wheel of a big white van. He was wearing beige cotton trousers and a black polo shirt with a large toothpaste stain on the front. 'I'm really sorry but the van's already pretty full,' he said. 'I didn't realise how much stuff I had.' When he slid back the side door I was expecting to see books and furniture but to my astonishment, it was almost entirely filled with board games.

  'Bloody hell, Dave, what's all this?'

  'I collect vintage board games,' he said, a little defensively, as a box toppled off the pile, scattering plastic soldiers everywhere. 'And battle memorabilia. Some of this stuff is quite valuable.'

  'But where are you going to put it when we get to France?'

  'I've just bought my neighbour's barn. It was only five thousand euros,' he said. 'A bargain.'

  'You've bought a barn?' I repeated, incredulous. 'Where did you get the money?'

  'I borrowed it. I think we might just fit in your bedside tables but there isn't going to be room for the tub chair.'

  We were allocated a complimentary cabin for the crossing (earlier in the year Dave had insisted that we join the Brittany Ferries Property Owners Club, pretending to be a couple to save on buying separate membership). He said he was tired and went off to the cabin to sleep. I sat in the cafe with all the retired fifty- and sixty-somethings heading for their second homes and read a book for most of the seven-hour journey. Dave only emerged when the ferry docked at Caen and I noticed for the first time how dreadful he looked – unshaven and crumpled, as if he hadn't slept for a few nights. 'It's a long drive in the dark,' I said. 'Are you sure you're going to be OK to do it?'

  'We don't have any option. I've got to turn around and bring the van back tomorrow,' he replied.

  It was a full moon that night as we headed south towards the cathedral town of Sees. Dave talked about the sadness of love turning to hate – silently I envied him as I wished I could hate Eric – and his general disappointment at how his life had turned out. 'This is not how my life was supposed to be at forty,' he complained.

  'I'm so with you on that,' I said.

  'So what did happen between you and Eric?' he asked me, somewhere between Sees and Alençon.

  'It's a long story.'

  'We've got five hours.'

  Maybe it was the influence of the full moon or perhaps because I felt bonded with him in misery, but as we drove along in the moonlight, I finally told him – not the whole story but an edited version. Deep down, I think I had wanted to confide in him for a long time. As we hurtled through the darkness, past the war graves of Normandy and with soft music playing on the radio, I explained how Eric had pursued me with breathtaking audacity and ruthless Gallic determination. A few days after our first date, he handed me a letter, which said, among other things:

'I'm sorry to be so insistent in saying what I feel for you, because I know I have no right to say it but I find it very difficult to keep it to myself. I am in love with you.'

I remember cringing at his flowery prose and throwing the letter in the bin. How having just split from my boyfriend of seven years, I wasn't interested in anything serious. I tried to finish with Eric several times but he refused to accept that the fledgling relationship was over, declaring on the verge of tears that he had never loved anyone the way he loved me.

  'Was he a good shag?' Dave asked, suddenly, accelerating past a huge lorry.

  'Being in bed with Eric was like winning the sexual lottery,' I replied, though I spared Dave the details (the beach in Thailand, the tree in Windsor Great Park, the cliff top in the Great Orme and the car park of Watford Gap services on the M1). I told him how Eric's persistence – the phone calls, the letters and the tearful pleas – finally wore me down. How, six months after we met, I capitulated and invited Eric to move into my flat 'on a temporary basis'. I recalled the joy of returning late from my job on the hideously bitchy magazine to find that the lights were on and someone was home – with a bottle of wine and dinner waiting.

  It's funny how, looking back, it is the not the glamorous stuff – the Christmas shopping trip to New York, Kirs in the Hôtel Costes in Paris or skiing in the French Alps – that makes me miss Eric the most, but the more mundane moments: bike rides on a Sunday afternoon, walking home from the local pub in the evening, standing side by side at the kitchen sink, chatting while we did the washing up. We even survived a trip to IKEA together – the true test, I once read, of whether a couple are compatible. He even managed to look like he enjoyed the experience, unlike my previous (public school) boyfriend, who emerged shaking with anger and muttering darkly about his dislike of 'chavs'.

  For a short while the balance of power must have been in perfect equilibrium, and for a brief period we both loved each other equally. He used to talk about what our children would be like and joked that if we had a girl it would be trouble for him, as he would have to deal with a miniature version of me. By that time he had grown on me to the extent that I had decided to spend the rest of my life with him. Somehow he must have sensed the shift in the balance of power. And cruelly – having begged me to marry him countless times – that was when he started to pull back.

  He had started to work occasionally for a friend with a tour company, shepherding American tourists around France. The tours were always themed: Chateaux of the Loire, Vineyards of Bordeaux, that sort of thing. The evening he returned from 'Van Gogh's Provence' he was in a very strange mood. He gave me a perfunctory kiss on the cheek – strange in itself as he always kissed me full on the lips – sat down at my laptop, logged on to his emails and spent the next couple of hours typing furiously. I had planned for us to go out to dinner since we hadn't seen each other for a week and as I sat watching him type, I grew more and more angry. In the end, I ordered in pizza and we ate in sulky silence. This was followed by a huge argument. It was only a few days before he told me (in bed) that it was over between us and he was planning to move out. There are moments that change your life for ever. This was one of mine. 'You can leave right now then,' I said defiantly, knowing that the decision and the power no longer lay with me. And so he left in the middle of the night. I have no idea where he went but he returned with a minicab to move his stuff out the next day.

  After he left, my heart and my body were overwhelmed, swamped by grief, my eyes permanently red and swollen. I was plagued by a recurring dream in which I am alone and driving down a long, dark country road. I drive and drive, thinking, hoping, that I am going to arrive somewhere but I never do. I am stuck on this dark road and there is no way to escape.

  A few weeks after he moved out, he came back to collect his post. I watched from the upstairs window as he walked away and told myself that if he looked back, this would be a sign. Well, he did look back. He looked up and saw my tear-streaked face in the window. For ages, I took comfort in this, told myself that it meant something, but it didn't. I never saw him again.

  I remember the bitterness spilling over into everyday life. Total strangers bore the brunt of my anger and misery: the British Gas customer services department; call centres too numerous to mention and the cold caller who phoned trying to sell me plumbing insurance. My life seemed to be a constant round of conflict and anger. Friends, who couldn't cope with the scale of my grief, melted away like the polar ice caps. For the first time in my life, I felt truly alone.

  For weeks, I was immobilised by illness and misery, barely able to leave the flat. Then, almost a year after he left, I received an email from him. He hoped I was well but wanted to warn me that he was going to close our joint email account – one of the few things he paid for during our relationship – as he no longer used it. If I still needed it, I would have to switch it to my name within forty-eight hours. It was signed 'Best wishes, Eric.' It was sent on my thirty-sixth birthday.

  For the first time, I felt a flash of anger rather than just sadness and regret: he knew that I relied on that email account for work. How could he give me just forty-eight hours' notice before closing it down? And choose my birthday to do it? I phoned the Internet supplier and discovered that since Eric's was the master name on the account he could not be removed. However, I could take over the payment and they gave me a new password. It was a couple of days before it dawned on me, with a sickening sense of excitement, that I could access his old emails. Intuition told me that this was a dangerous thing to do, but nothing prepared me for what I found. For the past six months, Eric had been corresponding with a woman called Suzanne Dance, a schoolteacher he had met on a 'Provence, Grasse and Fine French Perfumery' tour. From the passionate nature of the emails, it was clear to me that they had been having an affair.

  'Fucking hell,' said Dave, the whites of his eyes widening in the moonlight.

  I checked the dates of the emails against my diary and found out that the night he came home from 'Van Gogh's Provence' and sat down at my computer typing furiously, he had sent the following email to Suzanne Dance:

'Coucou,

Well it is not easy to return here. The next few days are going to be very difficult for me. This evening I ate my booring [sic] pizza and had to talk to her. It's not very cool. But I send you big, big kisses and will try and call you tomorrow. E.

  PS: Have you seen the full moon? When I saw it in the sky this evening, I wondered if you could see it too? And I told it to tell you I am thinking of you.'

At what point, I wondered, did he fall out of love with me enough to let this other woman in? What did I do that contributed to that decision? The discovery of his betrayal, even though it was a year later, left me devastated and mired in self-doubt. In my innocence I never imagined that he would cheat on me. I trusted him completely.

  To be left alone in my mid-thirties, after being promised marriage, children and regular holidays on the Île de Ré, made me feel I had been cheated not just by Eric but by life. It was like I'd set out on a journey expecting a lush, beautiful country and had washed up on a rocky, barren shore. And then the anger turned to obsession. I thought about him hundreds of times a day and I yearned not just for him but for my old self, the light-hearted, happy-go lucky person I used to be when I was with him. Above all, I had an overwhelming desire to know where he was and what he was up to.

  At this point I turned to Dave, whose face was a picture of compassion and concern as he drove steadily through the darkness towards Villiers. 'I know he behaved like a total bastard,' I said by way of a summary. 'I know I should be over him by now, but the sad fact is that I am not. I would take him back tomorrow.'

  'So he was a scumbag but you're still in love with him,' said Dave. 'And you are not going to meet anyone else until you deal with that.' Dave, to his credit, did not repeat any of the usual platitudes, such as 'It was for the best' or 'You're better off without him'. Instead, he told me a story about how he had become obsessed with a beautiful girl he had gone out with as a teenager and how he tracked her down and turned up on her doorstep ten years later. 'She was fat and wearing fluffy pink carpet slippers,' he recalled. 'I had wasted ten years of my life being in love with a person who no longer existed, except in my mind.'

  The story at least made me laugh – it was typically Dave – but I doubted Eric would be fat and I knew he wouldn't be wearing pink carpet slippers. 'But if I knew his address, I would turn up on his doorstep too,' I admitted.

  As we drove past Alençon, Dave became serious and said I had to really try and move on.

  'I am moving on,' I said. 'I'm moving to France.'

  'But you have to remember,' said Dave, 'that you can't run from unhappiness. You just take it with you.' I can't remember all of Dave's advice that night, but he did point out that living in the past I was blocking opportunities in the present. 'There haven't been any opportunities,' I said.

  'There have definitely been opportunities,' said Dave. 'It's just that you haven't noticed them.'

  I loved Dave as he drove us south in the moonlight that night. He had listened to every word of my story. I loved him for his empathy, his emotional intelligence, his honesty and his ability to take on another person's problems when facing a barrage of his own. It was helpful for me to be able to talk about Eric with another man. After our French road trip, I added a new dream to my repertoire. In it, I was sinking up to my knees in quicksand while my friends watched from the shore. Only Dave waded in to try and rescue me, but unfortunately, before he could reach me, he ended up sinking more deeply into the mud than me.

  It was 5.30 a.m. and still dark when we finally arrived in the village. Dave's house was cold and damp and smelt faintly of cat urine but he lit a fire and we sat up talking until the darkness faded into the brittle grey light of morning. Then we unpacked the van in the freezing cold, the air scented with the smell of wood smoke and damp earth. There were, I noticed, some new purchases. Despite his financial problems, and the fact he was still off work, Dave had bought a bread maker, a chrome-plated pasta machine and a device called a 'Flavour Shaker' for making marinades. I watched as he unpacked a new pair of wooden candlesticks for his mantelpiece along with a selection of other decorative objects that he had recently bought from Laura Ashley. 'Still spending then?' I said.

  'Yeah,' he said sheepishly. 'But it's your fault. You shouldn't have told me about Laura Ashley.'

  Villiers seemed very austere in the winter light but my heart still jumped with joy at the house that lay waiting for me around the corner – even though I was months away from living there.

  After a few hours' sleep Dave set out in the late afternoon for the long drive back up to the ferry port with the empty van. When he returned the following afternoon by Ryanair, he opened another bottle of wine, sat down by the fire and we carried on talking, almost exactly where we had left off. He said that he had come to accept the Buddhist belief that we had no right to expect happiness in this life. Instead, it was best to view it as an endurance test, and the aim was to get through it while causing as little hurt as possible to other people. I had never seen him so down.

  A few days later I had to fly back to London for a work assignment. I left Dave sitting by the log fire with a glass of sweet white wine, surrounded by Risk, Kerplunk, Operation and a vintage 1960s version of Monopoly. Only much later did I find out that he took the hire van out of the country illegally and, as a result, we were not insured for our road trip. But even then it was hard to be cross with him. Dave and I were two lost souls, swimming around in separate fish bowls.

For New Year's Eve, I suggested that Dave come over to mine for a few drinks and crash in my spare room. It made sense since he lived in Kent and we were both booked on the same Ryanair flight to Poitiers on New Year's Day. That way we could share a taxi to the airport together. I had invited my friend Charlotte, one of London's top libel lawyers, over to join us for drinks. Since Dave was newly divorced and Charlotte was also attractive and single, I thought they might hit it off.

  Charlotte arrived at 7.00 p.m. with a bottle of champagne, looking fabulous in jeans and a black sparkly top. 'This is such a great idea,' she said. 'Low-key but much better than staying home alone.' (She was about to be proved wrong on both counts.) Dave showed up almost two hours later than advertised, unshaven and crumpled. I put this down to the pressure of his recent divorce, in which his wife, he claimed, had taken almost everything (including, by the looks of it, his clothes). He had just about managed to hold on to the house in France. He arrived accompanied by a friend called Matt, an architect, and his sulky teenage son Jason, who loped straight into the flat without saying hello, head down and earphones the size of saucers clamped over his ears. Still, it was gratifying to see that his acne had worsened and he had more spots than a Dalmatian.

  'I know this is a bit unexpected,' said Dave, nodding in the direction of his son. 'But Linda and that new bloke of hers suddenly decided to go to Lanzarote at the last minute and there was nowhere else for him to go.'

  'That's OK,' I lied. 'The more the merrier! Who would like a glass of champagne?'

  'Yes please!' said Dave.

  'Why not?' said Matt, with so little enthusiasm it was as if I'd just suggested a nice cup of cocoa and a game of Monopoly. (Neither he nor Dave had brought a bottle of any kind, I noticed.)

  'Can he have a drink?' I asked, nodding at Dave's objectionable son, who was sitting on the sofa, legs apart and arms crossed defiantly, staring straight ahead. His presence dominated the room. I knew I should have felt sorry for him – after all, his world had no doubt been torn apart by the break-up of his parents' marriage – but it was hard to have sympathy with someone so charmless.

  'Nothing alcoholic,' said Dave.

  'Jason,' I shouted, so that he could hear me above the violent rap music that he was listening to. 'What would you like to drink?'

  He shot me a look of contempt. 'Nothing.'

  Determined not to let a surly teenager ruin the final few hours of the year, I went into the kitchen to take the canapés that I had made earlier out of the oven. And in a sudden rush of goodwill towards Jason I made him a special non-alcoholic cocktail – Angostura bitters, lime juice cordial and soda water. After all, it wasn't his fault that his cocaine-snorting mother had dumped him on his father on New Year's Eve. In fact, I was even tempted to add a secret shot of vodka. The poor kid probably needed it: abandoned by his mother and forced to spend New Year's Eve with his father and his friends rather than his own mates.

  Dave was asking Charlotte about her job when I returned to the sitting room – 'Bloody hell, I bet that pays well, doesn't it?' – while Matt and Jason sat on the sofa next to each other in silence. I handed Jason the cocktail, which, served in a tall glass with ice, a slice of lemon and a stirrer, at least looked like an adult drink. 'Here you go. I made you a special cocktail,' I said.

  He took it reluctantly, as if I was offering him rat poison, and put it straight down, without trying it. He didn't say thank you. Charlotte gave me a meaningful look, while Dave – who was gulping back expensive champagne as if it were Diet Coke – appeared not to notice his son's rudeness.

  'There's a really good gastro pub on Brook Green – about a fifteen-minute walk away from here,' I said, after a while. 'We could go over and get some food.'

  'I'm in,' said Dave, beaming.

  Matt shrugged his shoulders in a non-committal way. All my attempts to make conversation with him had ended in a cul-de-sac. He was, I quickly realised, a clear-cut case of PGL (pointless good looks). He had decided to come to France with us at the last minute, which made me wonder what New Year's Eve tragedy had befallen him. Divorce seemed like the most likely scenario, since Dave, embittered by his own split, had told me that many of his friends were also in the process of getting divorced or being 'taken to the cleaners' by their wives. Matt, like Jason, looked like he would rather be anywhere than in my flat. But, on the bright side, his ex-wife obviously hadn't taken his Porsche, which was parked outside, and he was going to give us a lift to the airport tomorrow, though I wasn't sure how the four of us were going to fit into it.

  The pub wasn't exactly rocking when we got there and it had stopped serving food. There was a forlorn banner saying 'HAPPY NEW YEAR' above the bar. The residents of west London clearly had better things to do. As Matt and Charlotte went to the bar to order the drinks, I asked Dave what he thought of Charlotte. 'Yeah, she seems quite nice,' he said, and then guessing the real meaning behind the question added, 'but not my type. I don't fancy her, if that's what you mean.' He turned pink and looked annoyed that I had even suggested it.

  Surveying the depressing surroundings, I thought back to my best ever New Year's Eve – spent in a ski resort in the Italian Alps with Eric and a group of friends. Still, I forced myself to cheer up as Matt and Charlotte returned with the drinks. After all, I would be living in France before the year was out. I was on the brink of a new and exciting life.

  Dave, at least, was in a jocular mood, asking everyone what their goals were for the coming year.

  'To become a partner at my law firm,' said Charlotte. 'And have more fun.'

  'So, Karen, what about you?'

  'Huh?'

  'What are your goals for this year?'

  'Move to France. And finish renovating my house.'

  'That's all?'

  'You don't think that's enough?'

  'What about personal stuff?'

  'Like what?'

  'Like find a bloke?'

  Before I could reply, Jason beat me to it, with a comment that was gratuitously nasty – even for him.

  'What did you just say?' I asked, thinking I must have misheard.

  'I said, they'd have to be dead or drugged,' he repeated, his scrawny rodent features contorted with malice.

  I bit my lip and did not react. Instead, I tried to put myself in his shoes and feel sympathy for him. I said nothing, but gave Dave a very pointed look, waiting for him to make his son apologise. He didn't. Charlotte raised an eyebrow.

  'I couldn't believe what that obnoxious brat said to you,' she said a little later when Dave had gone to the bar. 'Or that his father didn't pull him up on it.'

  'Well, I guess he's going through a tough time,' I said. But I had already decided that there was no way the toxic teenager was spending the night in my flat. I thought back to the axe he once left on my bed when I was staying at Dave's house in France. He had obviously identified me as the enemy. Fortunately, I had a solution since I had the keys to the rental flat below, which was vacant. (My American banker neighbour Kim was in New York for Christmas and had given me the keys, saying I could use the spare room over the festive season if I had guests.)

  I was pleased when midnight finally chimed and Charlotte suggested that we go home.

  'We'll follow you out,' said Dave. But they didn't. Charlotte and I stood outside in the rain on Brook Green for about twenty minutes. 'Let's just go,' she said, finally. 'They can find their own way back.'

  We waited up. I called several times to ask if they needed directions back to the flat. But Dave's mobile was switched off. Two hours later we were still waiting. 'How rude,' said Charlotte. 'Especially since you have an early flight tomorrow.'

  'Look, there's no point in you staying up half the night too,' I said. 'Let me call you a cab.'

  But Charlotte, loyally, refused to leave.

  Four hours into the New Year (and three hours before we were due to leave for the airport) the doorbell rang. I buzzed it open and Jason came running up the stairs and tried to push past me into the flat, without so much as a hello. There was no sign of his father or Matt.

  'Hold on a minute! Where do you think you're going?' I asked. 'You wait here while I get the keys to the flat below.'

  'What?' He looked at me blankly.

  'Look,' I said. 'I know you're going through a tough time with your parents' divorce and everything but you insulted me in the pub tonight and I don't want you in my flat. There's another flat downstairs. I'll give you a sleeping bag and you can sleep there.'

  Jason looked for a second like he was going to spit at me. Instead, he said, 'Fuck you. I didn't want to stay in your poxy flat anyway.' He ran back downstairs and slammed the door. Charlotte went after him and found him sitting on the doorstep in the rain, hood pulled up, earphones on. She spent half an hour trying to persuade him to come in, but despite her best efforts, he wouldn't.

  It was another hour before Dave and Matt returned. I buzzed them in. Dave was drunk and very angry. 'What's going on?' he shouted. 'What's my son doing on the doorstep in the rain at four a.m.?'

  'He chose to sit there.'

  'He said you wouldn't let him into your flat. That you left him outside.'

  'Let's not talk about this now.'

  'We will talk about it now,' he said, slurring his words. 'This concerns my son.'

  'Dave, you're drunk. I am not discussing it now. I have keys to my neighbour's flat. You can all sleep in there.'

  'So, come on then, what's he done that's offended you so badly that you won't let him into your flat?' sneered Dave as he lurched unsteadily towards me. Fortunately Charlotte, having heard the commotion, appeared in the doorway.

  'Hey, come on,' she said, in her even, lawyerly voice. 'Let's all calm down here.'

  'Yeah, come on, Dave mate, just chill,' said Matt, who looked like he was struggling to stand upright.

  'You can shut up,' shouted Dave, at Charlotte. 'It's her (he jabbed his finger in my direction) that I'm speaking to. I want to know exactly what her problem is with my son.'

  'Your son refused to come in. He said he wanted to sit on the doorstep,' said Charlotte.

  'That's not true, Dad. She wouldn't let me in.' He pointed his finger at me.

  'How could you let the poor kid sit shivering on the doorstep in the rain?'

  'That's not what happened.'

  'Are you calling my son a liar?'

  'I am not discussing this now.' Behind his father, Jason was now snivelling.

  'He's just a kid. I can't believe that you left him out in the rain.'

  'I told you. I didn't! But you're not exactly a model of responsible parenting, sending him back here on his own.'

  I regretted this almost before I'd finished saying it. Questioning Dave's parenting skills was bound to prove a flashpoint and it did.

  'WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?' he bellowed.

  'Look, Dave, please calm down and let's all discuss this tomorrow,' said Charlotte. The torrent of abuse that followed was not pretty. Dave persisted in shouting louder and becoming more threatening until finally, pushed to the limit, I shouted:

  'Look, you're not doing your son any favours by letting him get away with such obnoxious behaviour. He even left an axe on my bed once. That's not normal behaviour. The kid's really messed up.'

  You should never, I know, criticise someone else's progeny, no matter how obnoxious they might be. Dave's face was now as red as a slice of watermelon and the effect of my last sentence was explosive. 'How DARE you,' he yelled, jabbing a finger centimetres from my face.

  'That's enough!' said Charlotte suddenly, her voice raised but her face a picture of steely calm. 'Leave right now or I am calling the police.'

  I was truly scared. This was a side of Dave that I could never have imagined. But thankfully, after much more shouting and swearing, he started to back away. 'Come on, Jason, we're not spending the night here,' he yelled. They stumbled noisily down the stairs, Dave still hurling random insults, Jason whimpering in his wake.

  Charlotte stood in shocked silence for a minute or so as we waited for the front door to slam.

  'Welcome to the New Year,' I thought, as I closed the door to the flat. I was about to move alone to a small village in France and my only friend in the village was no longer a friend but an enemy.