Peggy was worried about Andrew’s coming straight back into work. You should take some time off, get your head together, she texted him. Remember how grim this job can be. You’re not an ice cream taster. But Andrew was struggling with being at home. It was just him and his own thoughts, and he hated his own thoughts; they were largely bastards. Since Peggy had come to his flat he was also beginning to realize quite how ridiculous the state of the place was. He spent the evening after the subforum meet-up cleaning everywhere until he was sweaty and exhausted.
As he left the building the following morning he caught a tantalizing glimpse of perfume woman’s door closing behind her. He was so surprised to actually see evidence that she existed he very nearly called out.
The evening of the dinner party coincided with Andrew and Peggy’s first property inspection for two weeks (Malcolm Fletcher, sixty-three, massive heart attack on a lumpy futon), and for once it only took them a few minutes before they had a breakthrough.
“Got something,” Peggy called from the bedroom. Andrew found her sitting cross-legged on the floor of a walk-in wardrobe, surrounded by pairs of pristinely polished shoes, nearly identical suit jackets hanging above her, like she was a child playing hide and seek. She proffered Andrew a posh-looking address book. He flicked through but there was nothing written on any of the pages from A to Z.
“Last page,” Peggy said, reaching up for Andrew to pull her to her feet. Andrew flicked to the “Notes” section at the back of the address book.
“Ah,” he said. Mum & Dad and Kitty were written at the top of the page in small, spidery handwriting, with corresponding phone numbers next to them. He took out his mobile and called Mum & Dad, but it was a young-sounding woman who answered who’d never heard of anyone called Malcolm and had no record of the previous occupants. Andrew had more luck with Kitty.
“Oh goodness, that’s . . . he’s my brother . . . poor Malcolm. God. What a horrible shock. I’m afraid we’d rather fallen out of touch.” Andrew mouthed along with the last six words for Peggy’s benefit.
“So how are things?” Andrew said as they left the flat, deciding to keep the question vague enough that Peggy could respond however she wanted.
“Well, Steve came to collect the last of his stuff yesterday, which was a relief. He told me he hadn’t had a drink in ten days, although he did smell like a distillery, so unless he got very unfortunate and someone spilled an awful lot of vodka on him, I think he was probably lying.”
“I’m sorry,” Andrew said.
“Don’t be. I should have done this a long time ago. Sometimes you just need that extra little push. A reason to help you make the decision.”
Andrew could sense Peggy had turned her head to look at him, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to meet her eye. He knew what she was getting at—and he didn’t want to concede that she was right.
Just then, he received a text from Jim with the menu for that evening (the food sounding reassuringly posh—what, indeed, was kohlrabi?) and asking him to pick up some booze. He shook the doubts from his mind. He had to focus on everything going perfectly tonight, no matter what Peggy thought.
“I just need to make a quick detour,” he said, taking them into Sainsbury’s and heading for the alcohol aisle.
“That person you spoke to today—Kitty, was it?” Peggy said.
“Mmm-hmm,” Andrew said, distracted by reading the label on a pinot noir.
“She must’ve been the hundredth person you’ve heard saying ‘we’d rather fallen out of touch,’ right?”
“Probably,” Andrew said, reaching for a bottle of champagne and passing it to Peggy. “Is this classy?”
“Erm, nope, not really. How about this?” She handed him a bottle with some silver netting around the neck. “What I mean is,” she said, “it’s all very well doing what we do, but it all feels a bit ‘after the fact,’ you know? I mean, wouldn’t it be nice if everyone did more to at least give people the option of finding company, to be able to connect with someone in a similar position, rather than this sort of inevitable isolation?”
“Yeah, good plan, good plan,” Andrew said. Nibbles. Do we need nibbles? Or are nibbles passé these days? He hadn’t felt that anxious up until then, but he was really starting to feel the nerves bubbling now.
“I was wondering,” Peggy continued, “if there was, like, a charity that did that, or—I know this sounds a bit mad—whether we could actually look at setting one up ourselves. Or if not that, then finding a way to make sure at least someone other than one of us turns up to the funerals when we can’t find a next of kin.”
“Sounds great,” Andrew said. Why does paprika have such a monopoly on spice-flavored crisps, anyway? Fuck, what if someone is allergic to paprika, or any of the food Jim is cooking? Okay, just calm down. Deep breaths. Deep. Fucking. Breaths.
Peggy sighed. “And I’d also like to ride an elephant into the sea, naked, while singing the words to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody.’”
“Mmm-hmm, good plan. Hang on, what?”
Peggy laughed. “Never mind.” She took the bottle out of his hands and replaced it with another. “So, tonight . . . ,” she said.
Andrew winked. “Got that all figured out,” he said.
Peggy stopped dead, waited for him to turn around and face her.
“Andrew, did you just wink at me?”
As soon as he got back to the office from the supermarket, he walked straight over to Keith’s desk.
Keith was eating a donut and chortling at something on his screen. But when he saw Andrew he dropped the donut and scowled.
“Hello, Keith,” Andrew said. “Listen, I just wanted to apologize for what happened the other week. Things got really out of hand, but I am so, so sorry for pushing you like that. I really didn’t mean to hurt you. I hope you can forgive me.”
He handed over the champagne Peggy had picked out and offered Keith a handshake. Initially, Keith seemed taken aback by this charm offensive, but it didn’t take him long to regain his composure. “Costcutter own brand, is it?” he said, ignoring Andrew’s hand and turning the bottle over to read the label, as Meredith hurried over to stand protectively at his side.
“Well, this doesn’t exactly make up for what happened,” Meredith said.
Andrew held his hands up. “I know. I agree. It’s just a little gesture. I really hope that we can all get together tonight at mine, have a lovely time, and put it all behind us. What do you think? Sound like a plan?”
Okay, okay, keep a lid on it, don’t sound so desperate.
“Well,” Keith said, clearing his throat. “I suppose that I was maybe being a bit out of order myself. And, well, I guess you weren’t trying to deliberately knock me out.”
“No,” Andrew said.
“Obviously given another day I’d have probably sparked you out for hitting me, if you’d not got that lucky shot in.”
“Definitely,” Meredith said, looking at Keith admiringly.
“But, for the sake of, you know, moving on, I’m happy to say bygones be bygones, and all that shit.”
This time Keith shook his hand.
Just then, Cameron walked past, doubling back to see what was happening. He had dark rings under his eyes and looked horribly gaunt.
“Everything okay, chaps?” he said, slightly warily.
“Yes, absolutely,” Andrew said. “We were just saying how much we’re looking forward to dinner tonight.”
Cameron searched Andrew’s face for signs of sarcasm. Apparently satisfied of its absence, he smiled, put his palms together and said, “Namaste,” before backing away into the corridor and heading to his office with a new spring in his step.
“What a weirdo,” Keith said.
Meredith, realizing that Keith’s label was poking out of his shirt collar, reached over and tucked it in. Keith, Andrew noticed, looked a little embarrassed at this.
“So, Andrew,” Meredith said, “do we finally get to meet Diane tonight?”
“No, afraid not,” Andrew said. “She and the kids have tickets for a show. Crossed wires on the dates.” Even though he’d rehearsed this line several times, it still took all his concentration to make the words sound genuine. As he sat down at his desk, a fresh pile of paperwork in his in-tray, a new lot of death to be tackled, he couldn’t help but picture Peggy’s reproachful look as he begged her to help him. Only you can change things. It has to come from you.