His thoughts are cut short as he follows Eddy and Frank into the bar and realises that all of the Mr Jones editorial team are here – the clueless designers, the bewildering fashion team who describe clothes as ‘pieces’, and the writers who look like they’ve barely acquainted themselves with razors yet. Even Nadine, the young editorial assistant who doesn’t seem to like him much, is smiling over the rim of her glass. And they’re not only here, having a casual drink after work, but assembled before him in a rabbly semi-circle, all grinning and staring as they burst into song:
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Robbeeeee …
Robbie? It sounds as if he’s in a boy band. Rob’s not a Robbie, but never mind that because here comes a cake, ablaze with candles and dusted with sugar (clearly, Jack’s is too cool for the kind of garish iced creations Kerry creates), carried on a big silver board by a beautiful girl with red hair cascading down her back. Shock has morphed into pleasure as someone hands Rob a drink (how did they know he likes vodka and tonic?), and his colleagues cluster around him as the cake is cut.
‘Well, thanks,’ he blusters. ‘I didn’t think, I mean I didn’t realise …’
‘Hope you don’t mind us hatching this little surprise,’ says ‘Stewie’, the new features editor whose pallid complexion suggests he spends most of his free time huddled over a games console.
‘No, of course not. Not at all.’ Rob grins in disbelief. ‘I’ve never had a surprise party before. I’m really touched …’
‘Feel okay about the big four-o?’
‘Oh yeah, it’s fine …’
‘And I hear you’re going to be our new sex columnist!’ exclaims fashion editor Ava, her severe black bob swinging excitedly.
‘Er, it hasn’t exactly been decided yet,’ he says, a little less freaked out by the prospect now he’s quickly downed most of his drink. How did she know, anyway?
‘Eddy seems to think it has,’ Ava says, raising an eyebrow. ‘Once he gets an idea in his head there’s no shifting it.’
‘Well, I suppose I’ll manage to, er …’
‘You’ll do a brilliant job,’ declares Nadine, startling Rob with her friendliness. Usually, she regards him with cool indifference as if he’s the maintenance guy.
‘Er, thanks, Nadine. I’ll give it my best shot, I suppose …’
She giggles, sweeping a hand over her cute gamine crop, and he feels himself blushing. Rob wonders briefly if she’s teasing him. Perhaps she finds it hugely amusing that the oldest man in the office – the Granddaddy of Mr Jones – has been chosen to write a sex column. He’s faintly relieved when Frank beckons him over to the bar to share a filthy joke.
No, he’s just being paranoid, Rob decides, which is understandable, considering the sweeping changes Eddy’s been making. Anyway, he feels better tonight, now buoyed up by his second vodka and tonic. Nadine has reappeared at his side, and is telling him about working with Eddy – ‘I follow him around like a little limpet,’ she explains with a grin – and Ava is complimenting his jacket. As the evening continues with much banter and laughter, Rob decides to socialise more often, and to try to remodel his work persona, which he suspects comes across as too earnest for Eddy’s ‘dynamic’ regime.
Rob might not be a member here at Jack’s, and he might be hanging onto his job by the tips of his neatly-filed fingernails, but right now, turning forty doesn’t seem so bad. And hours later – even though Rob rarely stays out late on a school night – he doesn’t see why he shouldn’t go along when someone suggests continuing the party at Nadine’s Baker Street flat.
Chapter Four
‘Mum. Mum! MUUUUM!’
Kerry snaps awake and peers at the alarm clock on her bedside table: 1.37 a.m. ‘What is it, Freddie?’ she croaks.
‘Mum! C’mere!’
With a groan, Kerry hauls herself out of bed and blunders barefoot in a rumpled T-shirt and knickers across the landing. By the time she’s in his room – which still retains its crabby whiff – she has already decided he sounds too perky to be ill or traumatised by a nightmare.
‘It’s the middle of the night, Freddie. What’s wrong?’
‘Can’t sleep.’ His brown eyes gleam in the dark.
‘Why not? Did something wake you up?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What was it?’
‘The sea.’
‘The sea?’ she repeats.
‘Yeah.’ He nods. ‘It’s noisy.’
Kerry kneels at his bedside and rubs her eyes. ‘There’s not an awful lot I can do about that, sweetheart. I mean, I can’t turn it off.’
He scowls, radiating disappointment in her mothering abilities. ‘Well, I can’t sleep with it on,’ he growls.
‘You’ll get used to it, love.’
‘How long have we lived here?’
‘Three weeks.’
‘When will I be used to it?’
How is she supposed to answer that? On September twenty-fifth at eight p.m. you will stop noticing those infuriating swishing waves …
‘Listen,’ she says, mustering up a hidden reserve of patience, ‘just close your eyes and think of happy things, okay? That’s what I do and it really works. You’ll soon be asleep.’
He’s quiet for a moment. ‘I’m thinking about a happy thing, Mummy.’
‘That’s good.’
Small pause. ‘I’m thinking about when we have a dog.’
Kerry exhales loudly. ‘Don’t start on about dogs now, Freddie.’
‘But you said, you promised—’
‘I’ve never promised …’
‘You did!’ he shrieks.
‘Shhh, you’ll wake Mia—’
‘You said we could have a dog when we’re not in London and we’re not in London now.’
‘I didn’t say definitely. I said maybe when you’re older and can take him for walks by yourself and—’
‘I’m older NOW!’
For God’s sake. What would Rob say now, if he were here? He’d say she should have been one hundred percent firm about the dog thing, instead of her feeble ‘maybe-one-day’ wafflings. Rob is exceptionally good at pointing out what Kerry should have said after the event. It doesn’t seem to occur to him that, as she has only worked part-time since having the children, she has had to make thousands more child-related decisions than he has.
‘I’m going back to bed now,’ she says firmly, tucking Freddie’s duvet, with its prancing Captain Haddocks and Snowies, around him.
‘Mum!’ Freddie cries as she leaves his room.
‘Freddie, you’ll wake your sister …’
‘Can I phone Dad?’
‘No, not in the middle of the night.’
‘I