The bar, when Lucas and I found it, was off-puttingly fashionable. Round the corner from Danny’s office in War-dour Street, it was below pavement-level and reached by rusty metal steps that looked as if they might lead down to a gangsters’ hang-out or late-night poker den. My shoes made an attention-seeking clung-clung-clung as I descended. A bouncer with a shaved head and an earpiece pushed the heavy fire door open, giving us a quick once-over. Inside, a strip of mirror about two feet wide ran around every wall at face-level; it was disconcerting not to be able to look away from one’s reflection. The air was stifling. Even early on a Wednesday it was busy and we had to thread our way between tightly packed groups to look for Danny and Martha. We found them lolling on a sort of low black bed in the far corner.
‘Lucas, thank God.’ Danny raised himself on his elbows a little to acknowledge our arrival. ‘Are you going to the bar?’ His eyes looked particularly blue against their kohl rims today.
‘Hold on a moment.’ I took off my coat, conscious of my suburban-hack get-up: knee-length skirt, pale shirt and plain jacket. Martha, by contrast, looked great in her best Seven jeans and the black polka-dot jacket that tied with a ribbon at the side.
‘What do you want?’ asked Lucas.
‘Scotch.’
I went with him to help carry the drinks. When we returned, Danny was leaning in towards Martha, as if whispering a confidence. I wondered if he were telling her about Michael and was glad again that I hadn’t.
‘So, what’s going on? Why the school-night cool fest?’ Lucas lowered himself gingerly on to the edge of the mattress.
Danny turned to him and raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ve been sacked.’
‘What?’ That was the last thing I’d been expecting to hear. ‘Why?’
‘I got caught doing coke in the lavs with a client.’
‘You idiot, Danny.’ Lucas shook his head slowly.
‘What’s the big deal? Everyone’s doing it.’
‘Well, if that’s true, why have they fired you?’
‘Because I got caught. There’s a big difference between doing it and being seen to do it. I was just unlucky. It’s a while since they’ve made an example of anyone. If they do this now and again, it reminds everyone else to keep their heads below the parapet.’ He flexed his arm distractedly and watched the muscle bunch in it.
‘So, what are you going to do?’
‘Don’t know. I’m screwed.’
‘Surely you can get another job, especially with your reputation,’ Martha said.
‘Maybe, but I’m going to have to lie low for a while. The whole thing’ll blow over in a couple of months but until then I don’t stand a chance.’
‘But you’ve got savings, haven’t you?’ asked Lucas. ‘You’re covered?’
Danny laughed without humour. ‘I haven’t got anything, mate. Except debts.’
I was amazed. ‘Debts? How?’
He turned to me with the sort of patient face that let it be known he was about to explain something I couldn’t possibly understand. ‘Jo, sweetheart, when you operate at a certain level, people have expectations of you. I’ve had to look right, for example. I couldn’t dress off the high street.’ He cast a disparaging glance over my outfit. ‘Advertising is about image.’ He turned to Lucas. ‘It’s mostly credit cards.’
‘Jesus. How much?’
‘Twenty, twenty-five. But that’s not the pressing issue, as it happens. I was going to say something the other day. Mate, I’ve got to move out of my flat.’
Suddenly I could see what was going to happen. Danny knew that Lucas’s flatmate had just bought his own place and moved out. A bolt of anxiety ran through me. I didn’t want Danny at Lucas’s. I knew that he would take him out every night and tell him that he shouldn’t feel constrained by having a girlfriend. A jealous flower unfolded little petals in my gut.
‘Why do you have to move?’ asked Martha.
He pulled a face. ‘Well, you know Stacie, my flatmate? She and I … yeah, it’s a bit of a mess. Don’t know what I was thinking.’
‘You can have our sofa while you get yourself sorted,’ I tried.
‘No,’ said Lucas, and I saw it was inevitable. ‘I’ve got a spare room at the moment. It’s ridiculous for you to sleep on a sofa while I’ve got a bed going.’
Danny was doing a convincing job of looking like the thought had never occurred to him. ‘Are you sure? Just till I get myself sorted out?’
‘Well, let’s see. If it works out, you could stay. We’ve never shared before. It’ll save me looking for another housemate and it’ll be fun. Go on, it’s perfect. And I’ll just carry on with the rent; you can start paying your half when you get a new job. You’ve helped me out in the past.’
‘Lucas, really, that’s beyond the call of duty but if you’re sure … ?’
Danny moved the next day. He had nothing else to do so he packed his stuff and got a cab across town. I worked late and then had supper with Martha so it was ten o’clock by the time I rang Lucas to see how they were getting on.
‘It’s going to be good. I can’t think why we haven’t done this before,’ he said.
I didn’t remind him that he’d once told me he thought Danny would be exhausting to live with. ‘He goes out all the time and he’d make me go, too. His lifestyle is too erratic. I’m a lawyer, Jo – we can’t do erratic.’ If Danny with a job was erratic, I dreaded to think what he would be like untethered by employment. And then there was the question of money. Although Lucas was now in a position to help Danny out financially in the short term, I hoped that Danny wouldn’t take advantage of him. I had to try to trust him not to.
Lucas didn’t call me the following evening and, when he didn’t ring until gone eleven on Saturday night, I was angry. We hadn’t made any plans to go up to the country and I had expected to do something with him during the day. I’d called him regularly but got voicemail every time. All day I had been pacing up and down and constructing ludicrous scenarios in my mind. When I finally heard from him, he was drunk and calling from a phone box. I could hear a car engine idling in the background and Danny opening and closing the door to the booth, stage-whispering to Lucas to hurry up, he was getting cold.
‘Jo? It’s Lucas.’
‘I know.’ I picked up a biro from the telephone table and began to bite the top.
‘Are you angry with me?’
I tapped the pen against my teeth. ‘Should I be?’
‘I’m really sorry, I’m drunk.’
‘Why do you have to apologise to me for that? I’m not your bloody mother.’ I felt an immediate flash of embarrassment as I realised what I’d said. ‘Why are you in a call box anyway? Where’s your mobile? I’ve been trying to get you all day.’
‘I left it in a taxi last night. We went to a party in Clapham.’
‘Whose party?’
‘I don’t know. A girl – a friend of Danny’s.’
The end of the pen splintered in my mouth. I grimaced and picked the tiny shards of plastic from my tongue. I heard the door of the phone box open again. In the background Danny said impatiently, ‘Come on, mate. He’s got the meter running. You can speak to your bird later.’
‘Jo, I’ve got to go.’
‘So I hear.’
‘Listen, will you come to dinner at the flat on Monday? Danny’s going out and I’ll cook something for us.’ A softer note entered his voice and he was whispering so that Danny, presumably still agitating on the pavement outside, couldn’t hear. Annoyingly, I felt my anger begin to dissipate. Bugger Lucas and his charm, I thought.
‘What time?’ I asked.
I took the tube to Lucas’s after work. The underground was muggy and permeated with the smell of wet wool but outside again the rain had a hard edge. By the time I got to Lucas’s building my chest was tight and I rested a minute in the dimly lit lobby to take some Ventolin and let my lungs recover.
When I reached the flat, the door was ajar. I stepped inside and pushed it gently closed. The hall light wasn’t on but a warm glow fell from the kitchen doorway on to the carpet outside. I could hear voices, Lucas’s low and serious and Danny’s joky. ‘Oh lighten up,’ I caught.
I walked into the kitchen and put my bottle of wine on the counter, still wrapped in its twist of cheap tissue paper. ‘Jo, I didn’t hear you come in.’ Lucas turned in surprise and pulled me into a tight hug. ‘God, you’re so cold,’ he said. ‘Let me feel your hands.’ He took them in his own and rubbed our four hands together to warm my two. He kissed me gently on the lips but I pulled away quickly, conscious of Danny behind him, leaning against the sink.
‘Don’t worry, Jo,’ he said with an amused look. ‘I’m going out any second.’
I tried not to let my annoyance register. ‘Doing anything interesting?’
‘No, just meeting an old friend.’ He finished his cigarette and half-heartedly stubbed it out on a side plate behind him. ‘Right, see you later.’ He winked at me.
When the front door slammed, I put out the cigarette, which was burning into the filter and giving off a chemical aroma that mingled badly with the delicious scents from the oven.
‘Why don’t you go and sit down?’ said Lucas. ‘Dinner’s almost ready.’
The food was really good, even by his standards. I was touched that he’d made so much effort, especially after a day at work.
‘Danny was in a good mood,’ I fished.
‘Hmm,’ he said, non-commitally.
‘He seeing anyone at the moment?’ Had Danny told him about Michael but asked him not to tell me, I wondered. If so, I reckoned I would see it in Lucas’s face.
He put down his knife and fork and looked at me. ‘Jo, do you think I’ve got it in me to write? As a career, I mean? Like my mother?’
‘Why do you ask?’ I said.
‘Well, you know. I’m not enjoying law and I’ve got enough money now not to have to do it. Realistically, am I going to stick it out for the next thirty years?’ He took a large gulp of wine and I watched his Adam’s apple plunge.
‘But you’re brilliant at it, partner by thirty-two, all that…’
‘That doesn’t mean anything.’ He ran his hands through his hair, pulling the black curls flat against his skull.
‘Has something happened?’
‘I’m just thinking about it, that’s all. You only have one life. You might not even get a long one – look at my family.’ He fixed me with a stare, challenging me. ‘Patrick did what he wanted to do. He didn’t do a job that he hated for years on end. He wanted to work with art so he did, even though my grandparents pressured him to have a profession.’
‘It’s a privilege of money,’ I said, returning his hard look. ‘You have more freedom to do what you want because you know that, if you screw up, you can afford to stay alive while you find something else.’
‘But if you do have money, why not use it to follow your dream?’
I shrugged. I couldn’t think why the conversation was annoying me so much. ‘I don’t know. It seems like a good idea.’
Lucas looked pleased with that. He stood up and cleared the starter plates. ‘No, stay where you are.’
I leant back in my chair and reached into my bag for cigarettes. I lit one and sat with my elbow on the table, listening to the musical clatter of crockery and looking out of the window down into the street. The noise of the traffic was muffled by the time it reached the third floor. A car pulled up on the double yellow lines underneath and a man jumped out and ran across the road to the all-night chemist opposite, his scarf whipping behind him.
Lucas returned, bringing an Italian chicken casserole, polenta and a green salad. His mood seemed to have lightened and he chatted about a book he was reading. ‘I want you to know that, whatever happens, I think you’re the best,’ he said, reaching across and putting his hand over mine.
I got up from my seat and went to stand behind him. I put my arms around his neck and bent down so that we were ear to ear. He smelt of herbs and very faintly of sweat.
‘Nothing’s going to happen,’ I said. ‘I love you.’
As soon as the words were out of my mouth I couldn’t believe I’d said them. I hadn’t planned to tell him that at all. I wasn’t sure it was true. I had thought about it on Friday night and Saturday, waiting for him to ring me. I had tried it the other way round. If I didn’t love him, I had wondered, why was I so bothered by his not calling?
His face was shining and he pulled me round to kiss him. When we moved apart, he looked at me seriously. ‘I’ve always loved you. Please don’t forget that.’
He returned to the kitchen. The fridge door opened and closed and more plates were taken from the cupboard. ‘Do you want coffee?’ he called out. I heard the front door slam. Now the sound of voices came from the kitchen, kept low. Danny. He was back early. I went through, carrying my glass.
‘Danny. I didn’t expect to see you home so soon.’ I leant against the counter and smiled at him questioningly. ‘I thought you were meeting someone.’
‘I was. He had to go back to the office. We just had a couple of quiet pints.’ He looked around him at the dirty plates and pans. ‘But it looks like you’ve finished dinner now, so I haven’t spoiled your evening too much.’ Lucas was unwrapping cheese and putting it on a board. ‘Cheese, great. Shall I open another bottle of wine?’ Danny went to the fridge and took out my bottle of Frascati.
I tried to catch Lucas’s eye but he was looking down, carefully peeling the wax paper from around a wedge of ripe Brie. Touching his arm, I waited for a response, some sign of annoyance at Danny’s behaviour. He flashed me a forced smile and turned away again.
‘Well, you might as well come and have some of this with us, Danny. You’ll have to find another chair.’ Lucas picked up the board and carried it through to the table.
With a theatrical gesture, Danny pulled the cork from the bottle and poured it. ‘Cheers,’ he said, bringing his chair up to the table. ‘Now, who’s for some cheese?’
We drank the white wine and Danny opened another. He was steering the conversation into areas where I couldn’t contribute: old schoolfriends of theirs, people they’d seen the previous evening. I was tuning in and out, irritated by his efforts to exclude me but also just not bothered to compete with him for Lucas’s attention. Perhaps it was because he was an only child that he had never learned to share.
Lucas stood and got down the decanter that Patrick had given him for his twenty-first birthday. He poured out three large measures of Scotch. ‘Jo, there’s something we need to talk to you about.’ He handed me a glass.
The collective put me on my guard immediately. I poured myself some water.
Danny raised his eyebrows at Lucas, prompting him. Lucas cleared his throat and made a show of rolling down his sleeves and fastening the cuffs. ‘Danny and I are moving to Stoneborough.’ His eyes were looking anywhere but at me.
‘What?’ I took an angry swig of whisky, which burned my throat. ‘What do you mean, moving to Stoneborough?’ I tried hard not to cough.
‘We’re going to live at the house full time, not just at weekends.’
‘Why?’ But I knew the answer: it was what Danny wanted.
‘Well, it’s like this.’ Danny leant back and lit a cigarette. He put out the match with a deft flick of his wrist. ‘Lucas wants to write and I’m going to try working on some short films. It’s what we both should be doing, not slogging in offices. Lucas doesn’t want to be a lawyer, Jo, he wants to be a writer.’
‘I know that.’ Did he think he was the only person who understood Lucas at all? I could feel my anger as a physical sensation. I knew I was flushed. I wanted to get up and storm about the room but doing that would show Danny just how furious I was. ‘It’s no reason to move to the bloody country.’
‘It’s much cheaper, Jo.’ Lucas looked at me imploringly. Please accept this, his eyes asked me. ‘At the moment, I’m paying rent on this place. The house is already mine.’
‘You were just telling me money wasn’t an issue. And you intend to do what all day? Write books and make short films? Really?’
‘Yes. Exactly that.’ Lucas drained his glass and poured himself another large measure. ‘If it doesn’t work out, we’ll reconsider.’
‘What about your job?’
‘I’ve resigned.’
‘Well, thanks for telling me. There I was earlier, while you talked about what you wanted to do with your life as if it were theoretical and now you present me with this as a fait accompli. Thanks a lot.’ The cough finally got the better of me and the force of it shook my body and brought tears to my eyes. Lucas got up and came to stand beside me, holding out my water glass and slapping my back.
‘And another thing,’ I said, as soon as I could. ‘When will I see you, if you’re not here? It’ll change everything.’ I wiped a strand of hair off my hot face. Danny was watching me with a detached interest, as if I were an ant and he a boy with a magnifying glass on a sunny day.
‘At weekends, when you come up to the house.’
‘And that’s it?’
‘I’ll come down here sometimes, too. To visit you.’
‘This is crap and you know it.’
‘Danny, do you think you could make yourself scarce for a bit so that I can talk to Jo? There’s stuff that we need to discuss on our own,’ he said.
Danny took his wine glass and the bottle and went to his room, banging the door behind him. Lucas picked up our whiskies and led me to the battered leather armchair. He sat down and pulled me on to his lap. Maybe it was the sight of my legs crossed over his or the way that he stroked my hair, I don’t know, but I started to cry. I was furious with myself, swiping the tears away with the back of my hand.
‘I’m not crying because I’m upset about you moving away,’ I said. ‘It’s because I’m drunk and tired and angry.’
Lucas turned my head to face him. He burst out laughing. ‘Oh, Jo,’ he said eventually. ‘You’re so funny.’
I sniffed disgustingly. ‘What the hell’s so funny about me crying?’
‘You look lovely. And you’ve got nothing to worry about. Like I said, I love you and that won’t change, whether I live here or at Stoneborough.’ Ill-advisedly, he kissed me. ‘Trust me: I just want to write my novel and I don’t have the time now.’
‘It’s not you I don’t trust,’ I said.
‘I can look after myself.’
‘Three days it’s taken him to persuade you to quit your job, give up your flat and move to the middle of nowhere.’
‘I’ve been thinking about it for longer than that.’
‘Lucas, what’s he going to do for money?’
‘I’ve got loads of money and he’s got none, Jo. Think about it from my point of view. He’s been taking me out, buying me drinks, meals, for years. I’ve always felt like the impecunious younger brother – it’ll be good to redress the balance a bit.’
‘But it’s different.’
‘How?’ He lowered his voice. ‘He’s in a really tight spot. He’s got no job and massive debts. It’s nearer thirty than twenty thousand. Who else is going to help him? He can’t go to his family – his father’s probably in a worse position than he is.’
‘What about his mother? She’s got money.’
He shook his head. ‘He’d never ask her. Jo, he wouldn’t tell you but Danny loathes the way his father taps his mother for cash. He thinks it’s pathetic, with the way he treats her. He just wouldn’t do it – it’d make him no better than he is.’ He sighed. ‘Look, I just want to help him.’
I could see that he’d made up his mind. ‘You know, I feel like I’ve been set up – that’s what makes me so angry. I thought I was coming over for dinner and Danny was going out so you and I could have an evening together.’ I fished in my bag for a tissue and blew my nose. ‘Did you have this planned all along, to sweeten me up with the great food and a few glasses of wine before he arrived back at some prearranged time?’ Another wave of fury broke over me and I kicked my heel hard against the base of the armchair. ‘I feel really stupid, Lucas.’
‘It wasn’t a set-up. I was going to tell you. I was working up to it. When Danny came home early it forced the issue.’
‘I just hope you know what you’re getting yourself into.’
My anger with him began to drain away. I had to admit Danny had been clever. He had identified Lucas’s weak spot, his worry that he wasn’t living up to Patrick’s example and that he was playing the game without taking risks, and put pressure on it until he got what he wanted: the freedom that came with Lucas’s money. I could imagine him next door, raising a silent toast to his new life, and I wanted to break his door down and inflict real physical pain on him.
‘So you’ll miss me, will you, when I’m in the country?’ Lucas always knew when I’d argued enough. He stroked my hair, following the shape of my head. It had a strange lulling effect on me.
‘You know I will. We’re just getting started.’
‘There is an alternative.’
My heart lifted. ‘Is there?’
‘You could come and live with us, too.’
For a moment, I thought I’d misheard. And then it dawned on me that I hadn’t. I jumped off his knee as if he had suddenly caught fire. ‘You want me to come and live with you in Stoneborough?’
He had the start of a smile. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think you don’t know me at all.’
‘What?’
‘You’re asking me to give up my job – my career – to come and live in the middle of nowhere.’ I reached for my cigarettes, my hands shaking with rage.
‘But you don’t like your job.’
‘Only because I’m not doing well enough at it yet. That doesn’t mean I’m going to quit. I love journalism. It’s what I’ve wanted to do my whole life. You know that. You know how important it is to me.’
‘You could freelance.’
‘Who for? I don’t have the experience or the contacts. If I could do that, I’d be doing it now. Don’t you understand? This is the beginning, the groundwork. I’m just not at a point where I could do that and even if I was I wouldn’t want to.’ I started to cry again. ‘How can you not get it? After all this time? I thought you were the one person who would understand.’
‘I just want to look after you.’ His face was pained.
‘But I don’t want to be looked after. I’m not ready for that. Maybe I never will be. I need to do things.’
To my horror, he looked as if he were on the verge of tears himself. The whole situation was awful.
‘Please don’t cry,’ I said, trying to lighten things up. ‘That’s my job.’ I sat back down on his knee and put my arm round his shoulder. I buried my face in the side of his neck and felt my tears soak into the collar of his shirt.
‘I need you to love me,’ he said, holding me tightly. ‘Do you?’
I said yes, because I had to and because I was afraid to look too deeply into the alternative. What I did know was that one of the things I had taken for granted about Lucas and me, that we understood each other in a way that no one else understood us, was no longer true. It was like suddenly losing faith in the floor you’re walking on.
Much later, in bed, he reached for me, sliding an arm over my waist and resting his fingers lightly on my stomach. I couldn’t respond. He felt lessened. That he wanted to write I could respect but I found it hard that he could so easily let go of his determination to be different from his father, to live on money that he had earned, a principle we had talked about for years. It was more important to me even than I had realised. I knew I had worried from the start that Lucas’s new wealth would affect the relationship between us. I had needed him to be especially grounded to prove to me that it didn’t matter, to counterbalance its weight. I lay still and pretended to be asleep.
The following morning I made an excuse about having to be at work early and slipped out of the flat quickly. I went to the greasy spoon around the corner and sat at a small table with a coffee while I tried to assimilate my new feelings. The caffeine didn’t help me come to any conclusions other than what I already knew: that our relationship would never be the same again. I had only one new thought, a childish one of which I was immediately ashamed: Lucas had chosen Danny over me.