He joined the agency around the same time Daphne did, and since he looks like he’s been laboratory-designed to worry insecure husbands, the idea of her copping off with him quickly became a running gag between us. If I burned the toast or something, she might sigh dramatically and murmur, ‘I bet Rich is a great cook …’ Or if I went out for the night, leaving Daff home alone, I’d bid her goodbye with ‘Tell Rich I said hi,’ and she’d mime oh-shit-I’ve-been-busted as I walked away laughing.
But like all our other private jokes, this one seems to have curdled and hardened. Whether this is down to her actually starting to fancy Rich, or me just suspecting she might, I’ve no idea. He’s definitely a major-league shagger (Daphne once told me, ‘If Tinder was a computer game, Rich would have completed it,’ which I found both hilarious and slightly intimidating), but I don’t think there’s anything between them. The idea that there might be does hit me occasionally, like a punch in the gut. I guess I just can’t figure out why Daphne wouldn’t be interested in him. Or maybe she is interested in him, but she’s just not the kind of person who would do something about it.
I think suddenly about the messages from Alice, squirrelled away secretly on my phone. I’m exactly that kind of person, apparently.
When it comes down to it, I suppose that’s the reason Daphne’s still with me: because of the things she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know about Alice; she doesn’t know about Paris. She knows about Mum, obviously, but she doesn’t know the things I said to her before it happened. Things that still choke me awake in the middle of the night.
After fifteen years together, and four years of marriage, she doesn’t really know me at all. If she did, then surely she wouldn’t still be here.
She clicks open the front door, and makes to step out into the cold early-evening gloom. ‘I’d better go,’ she says, but she doesn’t. She just stands there, frowning at the doormat. ‘We can talk later. It’s just … Work is so draining at the moment, and then I come back here and it’s … even more draining, you know?’ She breaks off and fixes me with her big hazelnut-brown eyes, and she looks tired and really – genuinely – unhappy. And my insides freeze, because I’m suddenly sure she’s about to say something: something big and awful and final.
But then she glances through into the living room at the Christmas tree, and shakes her head, as if remembering that this is not traditionally the season for big, awful, final announcements.
‘Anyway, we can talk later,’ she says again. ‘And don’t worry about the thing tonight – I’ll think of something. Tell everyone you needed to put the decorations up, maybe.’ She looks again at the naked tree. ‘Actually, that wouldn’t technically be lying, would it?’
‘I’ll do it as soon as you’re gone, I promise. And the presents.’
She nods. Then she steps outside, shuts the door and she’s gone. And even though nothing was actually said, I can still feel the storm clouds gathering inside my head. We can talk later. She said that twice. But talk about what?
The word DIVORCE stamps itself onto my brain, making me physically flinch. Is that what she wants? Could it even secretly be what I want? The thought of it makes my stomach lurch, but I don’t know if it’s the idea of losing Daphne, or the shame of being divorced at thirty-four.
Another failure to add to my already ridiculously long list.
But I can’t think about this stuff right now. Daphne’s parents, sister, brother-in-law and their kids are all arriving at midday tomorrow, and there’s still a hell of a lot to be done before then. I should really head straight up to the attic to get the decorations, then sort the tree out and crack on with wrapping the presents.
That’s what I should do.
Instead, though, I decide to go and get drunk.
Christmas Eve is pretty much the only time you can guarantee that Harv will be available at short notice for a pint. On Christmas Eve, there are no swanky club nights to attend or Tough Mudders to endure, and presumably the dating apps are pretty quiet, too.
We meet in The Raven, a grotty little pub in Crouch Hill whose grottiness is trumped by its exact equidistance between my place in Harlesden and Harv’s in Stoke Newington. It’s already heaving when I arrive: packed to bursting point with rowdy office workers, all draped in tinsel from their Christmas lunches. I squeeze past an old bloke with a scraggly beard who is trying to flog an extremely unconvincing Rolex to a pair of drunken businessmen.
Harv is already at the bar, wearing a parka so large it resembles an unzipped sleeping bag. He waves me over with a tenner.
‘You all right? What d’you want?’
‘Just a beer. Whatever you’re having.’
He wrinkles his forehead. ‘I’m not having a beer, mate. D’you know there’s two hundred calories in a pint of beer? You might as well have a Zinger Burger.’ He taps his stomach, which looks impressively washboardy even through his T-shirt. ‘I’m seeing this girl at the moment who’s a fitness instructor,’ he says. ‘She’s full of these facts and figures. We were talking last night about how drinking Guinness is literally like drinking a pint of lard.’
‘Sounds like a very erotic relationship.’
‘Yeah, the conversation can get quite boring,’ he admits. ‘But the sex is pretty great.’
I look again at Harv’s perfectly flat stomach. I still can’t get my head around how all blokes nowadays are suddenly insanely ripped. It seemed to happen pretty much overnight, about eight years ago, and I was apparently the only male on the planet who wasn’t forewarned. When I met Harv at university, he was fifteen stone and subsisted entirely on Carling Black Label and chicken nuggets. Now he looks like Ryan Gosling’s stunt double.
It’s fine for guys in their twenties, who were raised on Instagram and Love Island; they don’t know any different. But these mid-thirties blokes who suddenly become protein-guzzlers – they’re old enough to remember the halcyon pre-David Beckham days, when young men were all pigeon-chested and Twiglet-armed. They’re selling the rest of us out, I reckon.
I order a Guinness just to piss Harv off.
We sit down at a table by the window, him sipping his vodka and tonic and me slurping my black lard. Another office Christmas party comes barrelling through the doors, all wearing badly torn cracker hats.
‘You going to your parents’ tomorrow, then?’ I ask Harv.
He nods. ‘My sister’s giving me a lift to Suffolk first thing. Are you round at your …’ He flinches and shakes his head. ‘Sorry, man. Wasn’t thinking.’
‘No, no, don’t worry.’
It’s been two years now, and I still forget myself from time to time. I’ll read some book or see something on TV and think, oh, Mum would like this, and then crumple as the realisation gut-punches me.
I wonder if that ever goes away. Probably not.
‘Are Daff’s lot coming to you, then?’ Harv asks.
‘Yep. I’m supposed to be doing the tree and the presents right now, but y’know …’ I hold up my pint and take a big sip.
‘Where is Daff?’
‘She’s at a work thing. I thought she wanted me to come, actually, but maybe not. She’s always on at me to meet new people.’
‘But you hate new people.’
‘Exactly.’
We both laugh. It feels comforting to fall back into our old groove: me as the grumpy, shy one, Harv as