He was still naked but for last night’s boxers, when Damien found him in the kitchen, unloading the fridge of all its contents and squinting at every shelf.
Damien was a small man, but had what Freddie’s mother liked to call ‘presence’. He worked nights at a telecoms company, so Freddie rarely spent any time with him. When Freddie got home from work, Damien was on his way out, if not gone already. This was an arrangement that suited Freddie, as most of the time it felt like he had the entire place to himself, but it meant that when their paths did cross, he would end up feeling like an invader in his own home, with Damien’s small but determined ‘presence’ taking up way more space than Freddie was used to.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Damien asked now, the raising of his eyebrows causing deep furrows in his forehead.
‘You’re home?’ Freddie asked in return.
‘Just got in an hour ago. And I’d really prefer it if I was able to get some sleep without an absolute ruckus happening right next to my bedroom.’
Freddie frowned, sympathetic for his flatmate’s need for sleep, but not able to subdue the anxiety he felt.
‘Have you seen a rucksack full of Starboy comics?’ Freddie asked. ‘I took it out with me last night, and then I got drunk, and I was hoping I had left it in here somewhere before I made it to bed. ‘
‘If they were so valuable, why would you take them outside with you?’
Damien moved to the fancy Tassimo coffee machine that Freddie wasn’t allow to use, and made himself an espresso. Freddie winced at the sudden loud noise, and then marvelled at the fact that Damien wanted to drink high-concentration caffeine just before he was due to go to bed.
‘Because Brian Teller was at the shop, and I got them all signed! They’re in pristine condition!’
Damien looked down at him (which, considering he was a fair few inches shorter than Freddie, was quite the feat) and sighed sadly.
‘I really could do without all this commotion after the shift I’ve just had.’
‘Damien, I promise that as soon as I find them, I’ll be quiet as a mouse. And I’m not even going to be here later. You’ll have the flat to yourself and it’ll all be nice and quiet. I just really need to find them.’
‘I don’t know why you care so much about those things. All lurid illustrations from seedy Soho tradesmen.’
‘Comics aren’t porn, Damien.’
Damien took a sip on his espresso, and let his face fall into an expression eerily reminiscent of a withering Maggie Smith.
‘Look, have you seen the bag? Or the comics? Just tell me, OK?’
‘For the sake of peace in this flat, I wish I had.’ Then Damien took his tiny cup and retired to his bedroom, closing the door behind him with a force that wasn’t angry enough to be an outright slam, but enough to make Freddie clench his jaw with worry about there being an atmosphere later.
‘Damn it,’ Freddie mumbled, and went back to his bedroom, digging his phone out of the pocket of his jeans. No messages. Not that he was expecting any, but there was always the hope that either Baz or Wayne had taken the bag home with them by mistake. Maybe they hadn’t woken up yet, so hadn’t had the chance to tell him?
EMERGENCY – anyone seen my black rucksack with the comics in them?
Freddie waited thirty seconds, and then waited thirty seconds more. No replies.
This is OK. This is all going to be OK, he told himself, willing his brain to believe it. Just calm down, have a shower and drink some water. They’ll turn up.
He couldn’t look at himself in the mirror as he brushed his teeth. He was too ashamed to meet his own eye. Was it worth it? Spending all that money and time getting wasted the night before? And for what? Broke and still one week from payday (why was January so long?) and facing the possibility of his precious comics dumped in a side alley bin somewhere. Or worse, stolen by that guy from Ben Day and sold on the dark web for Bitcoins.
Nevertheless, he brushed vigorously. And then, after about three minutes’ work, feeling the anxiety tingle through his hands, he started from scratch again, working into his own gums with a torturous velocity. A whisper in the back of his brain told him that maybe, if he just kept brushing, that if he was clean enough, everything would turn out all right in the end. It took meeting his own eyes in the mirror, and taking a number of deep breaths, to resolve that this time, brushing only twice would be enough.
He distracted himself in the shower by thinking about what he was going to wear for his niece’s birthday. He decided on his date jeans, so-called not because he had actually been on any dates, but because they were what he would wear should the occasion ever arise. He had been saving them, but impressing his family was as important as impressing any future romantic interest. It would potentially stop them from worrying, and who knew, maybe, if he just looked like he had his shit together, then it might magically happen? Even so, he started bracing himself for the comments. Like last time, when Stella had asked him in that tone he couldn’t quite figure out where he had bought his shoes, and he could only think that he had somehow managed to buy them at the wrong place. Was there a wrong place to buy shoes?
There were still no messages on his phone once he had finished in the bathroom. Freddie wondered about calling Baz, but didn’t know whether that was an OK thing to do these days. The only phone calls he’d received over the last few months were from automated robots checking to see if he’d been in a car accident that wasn’t his fault. It didn’t seem like something a regular, normal person would do. But this was an emergency, and emergencies changed everything.
‘Hello?’ It was a girl who answered the phone, a child. Freddie took the phone away from his ear for a moment to check the number. It was definitely Baz’s phone. Numbers didn’t spontaneously change once they were stored, but the voice on the other end was high and sweet. ‘Is there anyone there?’
‘Uh, yeah. Is Baz there? I mean Barry. Is Barry there?’ He knew that Baz was short for Barry, he guessed that much. But was Barry also short for something? After all this time, why had his mind gone blank suddenly? Barold? Was Barold even a name?
‘Daddy!’ the girl screeched away from the phone.
Wait, was that Maisie? He remembered when Maisie had been born. Surely the amount of time necessary for a newborn baby to grow into a person who was old enough to answer the phone hadn’t passed that quickly? Freddie’s brain quickly did the mental arithmetic and worked out that in the time it had taken for Maisie to grow into a fully conversational human being, he had barely managed to grow at all. There wasn’t one thing that had developed or evolved in his life (bar the introduction of Damien) in the time it had taken for Baz’s tiny girl to gain a basic knowledge of the English language. It was frighteningly depressing.
There was fumbling, a sound like the phone being dropped and then picked up again.
‘Hello?’
‘That was Maisie?’ was the first thing Freddie could think of to say.
‘Hey Freddo,’ Baz mumbled. He sounded just as hungover as Freddie felt. ‘What’s going on?’
‘No, I mean. I’m sorry, but I was just surprised. She can answer the phone now?’
‘Yeah. Maisie. Nearly five, can you believe it? Obsessed with the bloody phone. Laura has to ring sometimes just so that she can answer it. Look mate, I have a headache, you know? Is everything OK?’