‘You’ve never heard “Alone” by Heart?’ She pressed her burning cheek to mine as the lyrics began and I felt the muscles in her face working as she sang. I mouthed along gamely, while our guests mocked the band’s haircuts, speaking of the era as if it were Elizabethan. They were both pie-eyed now and elegantly swaying. Costumed differently, they could have been in Warhol’s Factory, adult children wafting into shot behind a dancing Edie Sedgwick.
‘Play us something you like!’ Clare urged them, when her own favourites had run out.
Melia overruled Kit to choose a lullaby by some R&B star, which finally defeated our second wind and at last, just after two, they stood to leave.
‘So great to finally meet you,’ she told me, at the door, as if she’d known of me for years, not weeks.
‘Likewise. Delighted to have had the opportunity to see your famously elastic skin close-up.’
‘Oh!’ She giggled. ‘Clare said you were funny.’ Amid farewell hugs and kisses on hot cheeks, her mouth caught the corner of mine.
‘They’re great, aren’t they?’ Clare said, upstairs. ‘I didn’t mean it about the old codger.’
‘Oh, I don’t care,’ I said, thinking that I would only care if I was one. Even so, she was kissing me in apology, and I wasn’t going to argue with that. These days, sex was neither frequent nor frantic and to be taken in whatever spirit it was offered.
But midway, a terrible, unforgivable thought ignited before I could stop it and I confess I almost burned my eyeballs on the flame before blowing it out:
Shame it’s you and not her . . .
4
January 2019
The next morning, Clare received a thank-you text from Melia, who requested my number on Kit’s behalf. A few minutes later, a text arrived from him, complete with a screenshot of his river bus season ticket confirmation:
See you on the 7.20 tomorrow?
My first thought was shamefully childish, That was my idea, not yours, though it was by definition impossible to claim ownership of a form of public transport. I was uncommonly fired up, though, and while Clare was in the shower I bought my own annual ticket for £1,500.
‘I’ve done it,’ I told her, when she reappeared.
‘Done what?’
‘Booked the river bus season ticket. So you won’t need to hear my moans about the train anymore.’
‘Oh, really?’ She looked disconcerted, began towelling her wet hair with excessive vigour.
‘What? Is it the money?’ I’d used the joint account, set up a decade ago for household expenses. Separate finances had served us well until my removal from white-collar security the previous summer, and what savings I’d had had rapidly dwindled. Now we’d entered a grey area, discussed only in vague terms: I could use ‘whatever’ joint funds I needed till I was earning ‘properly’ again.
Clare draped the damp towel around her neck and smoothed her hair from her forehead. At the roots, there were little worms of silver. ‘Those one-time offers are nonrefundable, aren’t they?’
‘Is that a problem? I’ll get a refund on the rest of my train ticket,’ I added, an unexpectedly personal note in my voice.
‘No, it’s just I didn’t realize the idea was to stay in that job for another year.’ She stood in front of me, her face bathed in natural light from the huge skylight; without makeup, her skin was heavily patterned with lines, a diagram of life lived, and I thought, with a jolt, How weird that we’re getting older. I understood exactly why she’d declared herself open to newness: time was running out!
‘I’ll still need to travel in, whatever I do next,’ I pointed out. ‘There aren’t any decent jobs around here, as we know.’ When I’d searched locally for a stop-gap position like the one I held now in Central London, it had been a dismal experience; on the two occasions I’d been invited for an interview, I’d been rejected as overqualified, beaten out by candidates half my age.
I could see Clare appreciated my effort to meet her halfway. She nodded, smiling. ‘Well, I think it’s great you’ve made the change. No more train dramas. Kit as well?’
I know it sounds crazy: I’d known him only for a few hours, but just like that he’d proved himself an agent of change in my life. Just like that we’d committed ourselves to seeing each other once, perhaps twice, a day, Monday to Friday, for the rest of the year.
‘Yes, Kit, as well.’
*
The conditions that first morning did not make for the sparkling debut commute we might have imagined. For starters, it was mid-winter and still dark when Kit called at Prospect Square at 7.05; sunrise, when it came, had no more effect than a frosted glass lamp with a failing bulb. And the brackish smell of the river was just a little repellent.
The boat was more familiar to me from the website than real life. Amazing how you can live by a world-famous river for years and not notice a thing about the craft that go up and down it. It was a 150-seater high-speed catamaran called Boleyn (the others in the fleet were also named after abused Tudor queens) and, compared to the train, was palatial. Plenty of space, big leather seats. A bar. TV screens showing the news.
‘First day of the rest of our lives, eh?’ Kit said, in general mockery, but I could tell he was as exhilarated as I was to have changed something fundamental so suddenly. He was immaculate in a costly-looking wool coat with an equally high-end leather messenger bag slung over his shoulder. Next to him, in my jeans and North Face jacket, I felt shabby, a slacker relic from the nineties.
‘Hope it sticks to the schedule,’ he added, as the engines fired and we set sail so smoothly as to be anticlimactic. Lit by the boat’s powerful lights, the river was the exact colour of black Americano. ‘I’ve got a new boss who likes to start the week with an eight-fifteen “motivator”. Marks you on some register if you’re late; you’d think we were still at school.’ As I would learn, work was a necessary evil for Kit. He expressed none of the vaunted ‘passion’ his generation had been taught they were entitled to – and that was required of mine if we were even to begin to compete.
‘It’s an insurance firm, right? You must get great benefits? Car insurance, that kind of thing?’
‘Haven’t got a car, mate,’ Kit said.
‘All right, life insurance, then?’
‘Well, yeah, Melia would get a fortune, but that’s no use to either of us since I plan to stay alive.’
‘Don’t we all. Pension? Let me guess, you don’t plan to get old? Fine, we won’t speak of your package ever again.’
He laughed at that. His laughter was an automatic weapon, firing and firing after you expected it to stop, and as heads turned to look at us I experienced a schoolboy’s satisfaction that I was sitting with the cool kid.
Already, we’d reached Woolwich, where more commuters took their seats. Boarding was fast, the crew slick. It was a well-heeled crowd: I could see I was the only minimum-wage worker on the boat – other than the guy serving coffee – and I said as much to Kit.
‘How long have you worked in . . .’
‘Catering? It’s a recent thing, only four or five months. Before that I was in marketing, internal comms, but the company I worked for was in North London and the commute was a bit of a saga. The Northern Line, you know.’