Fraser tutted.
‘Anyway, I was just thinking,’ she continued, ‘about what you said, about Liv having a laugh at you. I mean, besides it being a bit morbid, why would she want to have a laugh at you? She loved you.’
Fraser took a deep breath; there was no point dragging this out any longer, it was killing him. He covered his face. ‘Oh, God, I slept with someone.’
Fraser didn’t know what he expected Mia’s reaction would be, but three small words that conveyed neither sense nor feeling, and a face like he’d just told her he had a fungal infection, wasn’t really it.
‘What? Oh. Eeeew …’ She was actually recoiling, screwing her face up.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he said.
Mia didn’t really know what that was supposed to mean. They were just the first noises that came out of her mouth.
‘Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything, it’s just … God, OK.’ Something strange was happening to her facial muscles and her voice but there seemed little she could do about it. She attempted to smile. ‘So who was it?’ she slapped her knees with her palms. ‘Come on!’
‘Karen,’ said Fraser.
‘Karen?’
‘Yes, you know, Karen from the Bull.’
A cruel ‘Ha!’ escaped from Mia’s mouth. That didn’t seem like something she could help either. ‘What? The really old one who looks like Ness from Gavin and Stacey?’
‘She’s not really old, she’s forty-two.’
Mia felt her eyebrows rise involuntarily and put them back, sharpish.
‘And she looks nothing like Ness from Gavin and Stacey.’
‘She so does!’ Rein it in, rein it in. ‘A bit. I mean in that she’s got dark hair and she’s, you know … curvy …’ REIN. IT. IN.
‘You mean fat.’
‘I did NOT say fat, you did. Also, she’s …’
Fraser cocked his head.
‘What? Easy. Bit of a slapper?’
‘I did NOT say slapper, you did! No, I was going to say bubbly, actually.’
‘Bubbly,’ said Fraser, flatly.
‘Yes, bubbly. You know, outgoing, chatty …?’
‘Mmm,’ said Fraser, unconvinced. ‘Anyway, crucially, she’s not Welsh, she’s from Hull.’
There was a long and sudden pause.
‘Well, I’m sure she’s very nice,’ Mia said, eventually.
‘She is and she’s got a very pretty face.’
‘Well, we all know what that means.’
Fraser’s mouth dropped open.
‘Oh, Fraser. It was a joke!’
Neither of them said anything for a moment. Fraser was confused and yet he wasn’t even sure what he was confused about; he just knew he’d expected a proper discussion or even a motherly telling off about one thing – i.e. the fact he’d slept with someone, anyone, the night before Liv’s reunion – and he’d got something else entirely.
‘I just think it’s a bit disrespectful,’ Mia blurted out when she’d tucked Billy in as much as she could and the silence was getting too much. ‘Not just to Liv but to Karen. I mean it’s not like you intend to see her again, is it?’
Fraser felt sick. What was it about girls that meant they could always do that? Psychologically strip you in a flash – it really pissed him off. This was exactly how he felt, exactly what was driving his guilt, but still, the way this whole conversation was going … it was making him defensive.
‘I was drunk,’ he said. ‘I was pissed. I didn’t know what I was doing, did I? And she’s been really good to me. She’s a nice person.’
Mia looked at him. ‘But you don’t fancy her.’
‘I don’t not fancy her.’ Fraser was getting more agitated. ‘Anyway, what’s with the double standards?’ This was another thing girls did that really got his goat. Double standards, left, right and centre. ‘I mean look at you and Eduardo. He’s such a tit, Mia, he lets you and Billy down constantly and yet you still let him sleep on your settee.’ He jabbed a finger in her direction. ‘And I bet it’s not your settee every time, young lady.’
Mia fidgeted uncomfortably – how could he possibly have deduced that when all she ever did was slag Eduardo off? He was far more perceptive than she gave him credit for. Still, she was riled now. She hardly thought him sleeping with Karen and her letting Eduardo – the father of her child – stay over now and again were quite the same thing.
‘Fraser, it is actually quite hard on my own, you know. Really bloody hard, actually.’ She hated doing the poor single mother thing, but she was really hacked off now. ‘If I had the luxury of being able to wipe Eduardo from my life, then I would, course I would, but, as it happens, I rely on every scrap of support and help I can get.’
‘Oh, God, look, I’m sorry,’ said Fraser, getting up. ‘I’m going for a fag.’
‘I thought you’d stopped,’ Mia called after him.
‘I started again.’
Fraser walked around the front of the café and leant against its façade, cupping his hands to light his cigarette. Well, that went well. Clearly, he’d been deluded to think Mia would ease his guilt – she’d basically just made him feel worse! And the awful thing was, she was the most objective and reasonable of the group (except Norm perhaps. Norm was Switzerland. But that was more down to being stoned than any political decision to remain neutral.) If she thought what he’d done was bad, there was no hope for everyone else. And yet, it had to happen some time, didn’t it? Presumably, he couldn’t swear himself to celibacy all his life? Become a monk, one of those shaven-headed ‘Tibetan’ ones he often saw in Lancaster town centre, who weren’t Tibetan at all; more ex-drug dealers from Skerton – Lancaster’s answer to Moss Side – who wanted to turn their life around and still spent all day hanging outside Greggs, waiting for food handouts. Presumably, he had to get laid some time? Surely, Liv would have wanted that? Wouldn’t she? He didn’t know any more.
Fraser put his lighter back in his coat pocket and, as he did, felt the piece of folded-up paper – Liv’s List, the Things To Do Before I Am Thirty – that Norm had given him the night before. He must have felt pretty special to find that, it must have been a big deal for Norm, and yet he’d just nabbed it from him. He felt a twinge of guilt at his crassness and, not for the first time recently, wondered if he was just not that nice any more.
He unfolded it, JULY 15TH, 2005 it said at the top – two and a half years ago, she would have been twenty-six – and read downwards, touching Liv’s elegant, left-handed writing that sloped to the right. Liv Jenkins woz ’ere. He said it quietly. She was here and now she’s not. It was the maddest concept ever.
He read on and, for a moment, standing outside the café, the cold numbing his fingers, it felt like she was there; he could hear her voice in the writing and yet he also felt disloyal, as though he was snooping. They always discussed everything. Liv couldn’t go for a wee without informing him first. How come she’d never discussed making this List with him?
He read on: Sleep with an exotic foreigner (in an ideal world, Javier Bardem). He smiled, whilst vigorously fighting a niggling dent to his ego. What’s so special about this Javier Bardem character? He sounded like a knob. And what did he have that Fraser didn’t?