How We Met

‘So you got here then?’

Fraser was still boring a hole in Ollie’s back when he realized, back inside the arch, that Melody was talking to him.

‘A call would have been appreciated, Fraser, we’ve been worried sick.’

Ha! this was rich. What about Anna? Why was nobody angry with Anna, who was busy removing her various bags (Anna always seemed to be carrying an assortment of bags, since her life was one big impromptu sleepover) like nothing had happened? Anna had always been flaky and selfish and Fraser had always forgiven her, not least because Liv always had (‘I understand her, Fraser,’ she always said. ‘She’s a mass of insecurity inside.’) Also, Anna compensated by being gutsy and fearless; she appealed to Fraser’s passionate side. Anna came from a socially aspiring, lower-middle-class family who had as good as bankrupted themselves to send her to private school. She and Fraser would have awesome ‘heated debates’, i.e. blazing slanging matches, in the kitchen of 5 South Road, where she would accuse him of being an inverted snob and he would accuse her of being a shameless social climber with a massive chip on her shoulder.

They disagreed on many things: Fraser incensed her with his tendency to always play devil’s advocate. But Fraser loved her passion, how she wasn’t remotely interested in life’s subtle emotions: it was all pain and death and love and torture with Anna. But these days, she seemed to be using Liv’s death as an excuse to be even more flaky and selfish, and Fraser wasn’t having it.

He felt rage rise within him.

‘Um, Anna.’ He rubbed at his head hard, as if this would somehow get rid of it. ‘Can I have a word with you? Like, outside? In private, please?’

Anna froze. Everyone had gone quiet and was staring into their drinks.

‘Why?’ she said, defensively.

‘Why? Fucking hell, Anna. If you don’t know why, then there’s something wrong with you.’

‘Oh, look, we’ll just leave,’ Anna snapped, standing up and gathering her stuff. ‘Jesus Christ. If I’d thought this was going to be such a big deal … if I’d thought—’

‘Anna,’ Melody broke the silence. ‘How can you say that? Of course this is a big deal, this is Liv’s birthday.’

Anna let out an incredulous little gasp.

‘Oh, my God, you’re at it too! What is this? Gang up on Anna night? You lot have such double standards. HE was forty-five minutes late.’ Anna was standing up now, pointing at Fraser. ‘Later than me, and Liv was his girlfriend!’

‘She does have a point, Fraser,’ said Melody, grimacing, but Fraser didn’t want to know about logic or who had a point; he was just angry, really fucking angry, and he didn’t know why but it was taking over him, becoming bigger than him, as if he was being engulfed by a fireball.

The words came out in a torrent before he could help himself. ‘God, you’re selfish.’ Anna stood there open-mouthed as he laid into her. ‘You’re like a fucking teenager. You want so much back, and yet YOU, you, just do what you want, when you want. Bring who you want – twats in red jeans … some bloke you probably shagged last night.’ He was on a roll now and he didn’t care. ‘No respect for Liv, for me …’

Out of the corner of his eye, Fraser clocked Norm staring at him and looked away.

‘Fraser come on …’ It was only when he heard her voice, alarmed but still soft, that Fraser clocked that Mia was with Billy – why was she with Billy? Oh, he knew why she was with Billy. Eduardo. Such a useless pile of shit. Why she’d ever got together with him was beyond him.

Then Mia got up – Billy was crying now – and went over to him, putting her arm around Fraser as if trying to soothe him.

Anna exploded. ‘Oh, that’s nice, that is. You just take sides, Mia, go on – you always look after him, don’t you? Have you noticed that?

‘Anna, I do not … I—’ Mia tried to defend herself, but Anna cut her dead.

‘It’s not all about you, you know, Fraser. I know Liv was your girlfriend, but she was our friend too; we all miss her. She wouldn’t have given a shit if I had wanted to bring a friend along, or someone I shagged last night for that matter …’ She was shouting now and Billy was crying harder. ‘I’m sure she would have liked Ollie actually.’ Ollie had come back from the bar now, and Fraser could feel him looming behind him. ‘She liked new people, unlike some people I know. Some very angry and tormented people.’

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

She carried on and all hell broke loose. Anna was shouting at Fraser, Melody joined in and Fraser was shouting back. Then Mia was arguing with the landlord, Bruce, who said she couldn’t bring a baby in a pub after 7 p.m., to which she shouted, ‘DO YOU THINK I WOULD UNLESS I HAD TO? Unless it was a very special occasion? Do you not remember last year?’ Then ate her words when a look of realization crossed Bruce’s face as last year’s escapade came flooding back. In the middle of all of this, Fraser had a flash of lucidity, something he found very uncomfortable when he got like this, which was getting more, not less, often, because he knew, deep down, that they’d done it again, he’d done it again. He thought of Liv. Jesus wept, you lot, get a grip, and he felt a trickle of shame run down his spine.

It was Norm who finally snapped and got them all to shut up. Including Billy.

‘Look, people …’ He slammed his pint down, a good deal of which splashed all over his shirt. ‘Shit,’ he mumbled, wiping it away. ‘Don’t you think this is pretty lame?’

He shifted on his feet, looking slightly uncomfortable. Voice of authority and reason was not a natural role for Norm, but circumstances called for it.

‘I mean, if Livs could see us, you know, if she was looking down on us now – on her twenty-ninth birthday, in case you’ve all forgotten; if she had her feet up watching Countdown, having one of her cheeky Tia Maria coffees and maybe a twenty-quid fag …’ There was a murmur of laughter and recognition from the group. ‘Do you think she’d be impressed? Do you reckon she’d be like. Awesome. Look at my mates, aren’t they just the best?

‘I don’t think so somehow.’

Fraser looked at his friend and felt a bloom of pride in his chest. Norm must think I’m a dick, he thought. I AM a dick. Norm had been so good to him in that text, going out of his way to make Fraser feel better, and then he’d still let the side down: rocked up an hour late, hungover, taking his guilt out on everyone else. He really hated himself sometimes.

‘Look …’ said Norm eventually.

Everyone was shuffling and staring at the ground, as if they were being told off by the headmaster.

‘I found this.’

He reached inside his pocket and pulled out a tatty piece of A4.

‘It’s a list that Liv wrote – Things To Do Before I Am Thirty. I thought it might be nice for us all to read it later, pass it around or whatever and raise a drink to her. But since everyone’s being idiots now …’

There was a sheepish mumble of apology from the crowd. Fraser was staring at the piece of paper in his friend’s hand.

Norm looked at him, realization crossing his face.

‘Oh. Totally innocent, mate, found it in the pocket of my old parka that Liv must have borrowed some time.’

Fraser smiled and waved his hand away. He didn’t care where he’d got it from. He had a list. A list with Liv’s handwriting on.

‘Can I have that?’ he said, stepping forward. Norm handed him the piece of paper.

THREE

Lancaster

Mia piled banana-and-mango purée into Billy’s mouth, most of which he then regurgitated back onto the spoon, too busy watching Peppa Pig to concentrate on swallowing. She looked over at her friend on the sofa – just a tuft of brown, slightly matted hair poking out of the top of her orange sleeping bag – and felt a warm rush of nostalgia. When was the last time she’d had anyone stay the night on her sofa? (Except Eduardo after a row.) Or talked to someone in a sleeping bag late into the night? God, must have been years ago. University probably. They were always talking late into the night in sleeping bags back then.

Who did she talk to now? NatWest Debt Management Centre (although technically, that was more shouting), Virgin Media, Ashley at the Benefits Office. In fact, Ashley at the Benefits Office probably knew more about her life than her friends did. Definitely more than her mother did. No, if she really thought about it, Mia didn’t really talk to anyone these days. Not proper talking, anyway, just for the sheer fun of it. These days, talking always had to have a purpose.

She had a sudden memory – these were coming more often, like now the heavy numbness of early motherhood was lifting, clarity was gradually returning and, with it, memories and feelings, some of which she’d kept down for a reason. V Festival in Leeds – 2000, or was it 2001? She wasn’t sure, but she knew Coldplay were headlining and that Melody pooh-poohed them as dullsville. Now Melody couldn’t get enough of Coldplay.

It was warm and getting light – 4.30 a.m. or thereabouts – and she, Liv and Fraser were the only ones awake, sitting in their sleeping bags outside their tent, talking in hushed voices and drinking flat lager, the sound of Norm’s pneumatic snoring coming from the tent next door.

‘Let’s play a game,’ said Liv, suddenly. ‘I know a brilliant game.’

Mia and Fraser had groaned: Liv was always coming out with new, strange games and ‘takes’ on things. Once, she’d tried to combine strip poker with the children’s game Frustration – moving little men around a board in their bras and pants. Liv and Fraser were big on taking their clothes off when drunk – it was one of the many traits that made them perfect for each other. Whereas, Mia? Good God, no. She’d rather chew off her own arm than reveal her body to her friends. And that was before she’d had a baby.

‘It’s called I Have Never,’ Liv continued. ‘And it’s a bit like Truth. Basically, the person whose turn it is says something they’ve never done in their life. For example, I might say … anal sex.’

Fraser had laughed. It sounded extra-loud in the soft dawn. ‘Do you have to be quite so crude, Olivia?’

‘So if you’ve done whatever the person whose turn it is is saying – i.e. you have had anal sex,’ she carried on, ignoring him, ‘then you have to down your drink, and then it’s your turn, and so it goes on.’

They went through the usual repertoire: saying I love you when you don’t mean it (they’d all done that one); threesomes – nobody had had one of those, which seemed a bit of a poor show. Mia had felt disappointed that at twenty-one, nobody in the group had fulfilled this particular rite of passage, but had comforted herself in the knowledge that good old Anna would no doubt have had one, if not that very evening in her tent.

Then it was Mia’s turn: ‘I have never … snogged anyone famous,’ which Fraser drank to because Floella Benjamin, a distant family friend – they all thought this was hysterical in itself – had once given him a peck on the cheek at a country fair when he was eight. They’d all agreed that didn’t really count.

It was almost light now; a rosy mist hovered above the field, illuminating their faces. Norm’s snoring from the tent was reaching crescendo levels. Then Liv said, ‘I have never … snogged any other member of our group of friends except Fraser.’

‘What, not even Anna?’ Mia blurted out, almost on automatic. ‘Everyone’s snogged Spanner.’ Which was true. She’d kissed her back in their first year at Lancaster, at the height of her very fleeting foray into lipstick-lesbianism, which she was quite proud of if truth be told.

‘No, I have not snogged Anna!’ said Liv, outraged, and yet Mia suspected, ever so slightly jealous. ‘When the hell did you snog Anna?’ Mia was in the midst of answering when it all came flooding back, it dawned on her. She glanced at Fraser, whose face was covered with the can of lager he was now drinking from.

Liv looked at Mia, then at Fraser.

‘Oh, my God, you’ve snogged Anna?’ she said, smiling, but it was a sliding smile – half intrigue, half … what was that look? Appalled? Mia didn’t like to think about it too much.

Fraser had spluttered beer everywhere.

‘What? No. I haven’t snogged Anna. Or anyone else for that matter. Sorry, I was just drinking my beer, is that allowed? I just forgot the rules.’

Then they’d all sort of moved on, the question lost in booziness and early morning confusion, but Mia was thinking about it now as she shovelled banana-and-mango purée back into Billy’s mouth. It was coming back to her. Lots of things were coming back to her now.

Fraser stirred, made some sort of grunting sound – an attempt at speech, and Billy, on cue, did the same, which made Mia laugh.

‘Morning, Fraser Morgan.’ She’d been up since 5.50 a.m. with a grizzly baby, but then grizzliness was more or less Billy’s default mode. It was now 9 a.m. and she felt as though she’d lived a day already.

‘What?’ He stuck his head out of the sleeping bag and grimaced at her, squinting into the light that flooded through the Velux window, a look of pure confusion on his face.

‘How you doing?’ Mia dodged a bit of purée as Billy smacked his podgy little hands up and down on the high-chair top. ‘’Coz you look shocking, to tell you the truth.’

‘I didn’t ask for the truth, but cheers, I feel like death,’ croaked Fraser, easing himself up on his elbows. There was a brief pause before they both registered what he’d said and laughed awkwardly.

‘Well, I can tell you, you’ve done very well indeed.’ Mia turned her back to carry on feeding Billy. ‘You’ve slept through a box-set of In the Night Garden, a phone row with Eduardo and a meltdown from Billy who lobbed a rusk at your head at one point and you still didn’t wake up.’

Fraser laughed weakly, then coughed – he’d smoked last night and could feel it on his lungs – and pulled the sleeping bag up around his chin, staring blankly out at the bare trees, dark and arrested as if frozen in time. The stark whiteness of another winter’s day.

And I do feel like death, he thought. I really fucking do. He remembered this from last year, the days after the anniversary of Liv’s death and her birthday.

The actual anniversaries themselves weren’t that bad; they certainly weren’t that good, either, but he was drunk for much of them. Also, they were occasions and, like all occasions, there was a momentousness, some degree of specialness involved. People called and fussed around him, Mia especially. On the first anniversary, she’d called practically every hour to check he was out of bed and dressed. Actually, he was in the Bull by midday, halfway down his second pint, Karen listening patiently as he blathered on. His parents, Carol and Mike, had called too. That was one good thing to come out of Liv’s death, he supposed: he’d become closer to his parents. Before he lost Liv, their relationship was stuck in teenage mode, where he told them nothing except the absolute essentials and they didn’t ask much except about when he was going to get a proper job like his brother (Shaun Morgan ran Top Financial Solutions. Why he’d never come up with a ‘top solution’ to his little brother’s financial problems, Fraser would never know).

Fraser was a dutiful son – i.e. he did the bare minimum, visiting them in their spotless ex-council house in Bury every few months, where he’d sit and read the paper whilst Liv talked to Mike about his job in the world of tap fittings and to Carol about her gallstones, but they weren’t close. They didn’t really know each other. In fact, if Carol Morgan were honest, she’d lost her youngest son the day he went to university, when his friends and his girlfriend became his family.

But that was before grief dismantled Fraser, ripped him open then hurtled through him like a freight train, making him furious and self-destructive and self-pitying. That was the worst. After his mother had to pick him up from Manchester Royal Infirmary, where he was admitted with a broken ankle after being so drunk he had fallen down a fire escape at a club in Manchester, Fraser knew the game was up. There was no room for his teenage self, full of misplaced pride and embarrassment. He needed her again like he had when he was a blond, corkscrew-haired five-year-old, and he’d curled up in her arms that night and cried like one.

So, in a strange way, the actual anniversaries were doable. At least everyone was there. But this – the day after – was worse, because what now? Where now? Life still carried on, but the phone stopped ringing, and when the specialness had gone, what did he have left? Except himself. And he was a mess. He couldn’t settle anywhere; his flat scared the shit out of him, a place he just rattled around in, wandering from one room to another, in some state of intoxication most of the time. He had told himself, countless times, he’d use this time alone to learn to cook, because Liv was a fabulous cook, but eventually got bored of buying lemon grass only to stop off at the Bull on the way back and leave it there. the Bull in Kentish Town must have the biggest stock of lemon grass in north London.

He couldn’t watch TV any more, couldn’t concentrate on films – something he and Liv had loved to do; daft comedies were their favourite, cuddling up on a Sunday to watch Meet the Fockers. Nowadays, he’d totally lost the ability to look at a screen for any length of time and, sometimes, although he never admitted this to anyone, he went to bed at 8 p.m. because he couldn’t deal with any more day.

Then there was the job, or excuse for one, really, since life as a freelance sound engineer – holding a fluffy mike whilst some geezer did a piece to camera about local history, or a party political broadcast – didn’t actually require much skill, and it was a far cry from being a sound engineer for bands, too, wasn’t it? Let’s face it. That dream, along with his dream to be an actual rock star himself had shifted, as he moved through his teens to his twenties, from a dead cert to still doable if he really pulled his finger out, to now, aged thirty, simply a comforting fantasy he liked to indulge in occasionally.

The worst thing was, it had been over a year now, he should really have pulled himself together. But life had become one big long promise to himself that tomorrow would be different. Tomorrow he’d get it together. Sometimes he wondered if his grief was becoming a habit rather than a need, but it didn’t matter because now he was breathless with it – the emptiness – as if he’d woken up entombed in concrete.

‘Fancy a tea? Bacon sandwich?’ Fraser could hear Mia’s voice and he could see her but couldn’t really compute what she was saying; it was all muffled as if he were looking at her through a glass screen, and yet he was so glad she was here, suddenly overcome with gratitude in fact because it occurred to him – what the hell would he have done with himself today if she wasn’t? For a second he wanted to reach over and grab onto her legs. He shook the feeling away.

Billy was sucking on a bottle of milk now, not very enthusiastically, and Mia took it off him for a second to shake it, so he started wailing, a cry that turned into a raspy scream. It reminded Fraser of something and he was aware of his heart pounding as though it might leap right out of his chest. Mia gave Billy the bottle back and he immediately stopped crying. Fraser could still see his little flushed cheeks sucking greedily and happily, and yet he could still hear something. He could still hear a terrible noise.

‘Oh, God, Frase. Oh, shit …’

It wasn’t until Mia had her arms tight around him, that he realized the noise was coming from him.

FOUR

Mia got Fraser up and out of the flat as soon as possible – which in reality, Fraser had noted with some amusement, took about an hour, half of that trying to get an incensed Billy into his snowsuit. ‘Told you I lived with Mussolini,’ Mia shouted over the racket, whilst Fraser looked on, gobsmacked. She was right. Bloody hell. How could such a small thing make so much noise? Did Mia really have to do this every day, just to get out of the door? In the months that followed Liv’s death they’d spent a lot of time together – first when Mia was pregnant and then those difficult months after Billy was born, but he didn’t have a clue about the day-to-day, the reality of which now shocked him.

Still, Billy looks like I feel, thought Fraser.

‘Can I do that now, please?’ he said. ‘Roll onto my back and scream whilst someone puts me into a straightjacket?’

They went directly into town to the Sunbury Café. It was bitingly cold, the sky sharp and blue as stained glass. The Sunbury Café – housed in one of Lancaster’s sandstone Georgian houses down a cobbled alley – was where they used to go as students. They’d have millionaire’s shortbread and cappuccinos, sit out the back on the terrace on wrought-iron chairs, like they were ladies who lunched, not poverty-stricken students, discussing the big topics of the day (back when talking was just for the fun of it): whether Phillip Schofield dyed his hair, whether Prince Harry was the love-child of James Hewitt, but also marriage, kids, what order they’d do everything in.

Even though Mia liked to think of her style as ‘thrown together arty’ (although admittedly, of late, it was more single mum on benefits), she was a traditionalist at heart and had said yes to both, in the right order. Liv had said yes to marriage but definitely no to kids, ‘Over my dead body!’ How those phrases came back to them now.

Mia had loved those times, when everything was hypothetical, when it felt like life was a game and they could press ‘reset’ at any time. These days, of course, it all felt so real.

Mia walked back towards the terrace from the café, carrying a large black coffee for Fraser and a cappuccino for herself and eyed him in a motherly way. This was the thing: she had no problem feeling naturally maternal towards her friends; it was just her son she sometimes struggled with.

Fraser was all wrapped up in his parka like a duvet and was pushing Billy back and forth in his buggy – a bit too hard if Mia was the sort to be pernickety, which she wasn’t – trying to get him off to sleep, and Mia thought what a cute dad he’d make and whether, if Liv had still been around, he might even have changed her mind and they might have made a baby together by now.

‘So basically, I’m a mess,’ he said suddenly. It took Mia by surprise. Fraser wasn’t one for outbursts of self-awareness, it was all going on inside with him, all being secretly brooded about.

She put the coffee down in front of him.

‘Um, yeah, I’d say so. But that’s OK, that’s workable with.’

He smiled, weakly.

‘Can I come clean about something?’ he said.

Mia sat down.

‘You’re in love with me. That’s OK.’

Fraser sighed, wearily.

‘Sorry.’ Mia grimaced. She knew she did this; this was her coping mechanism – humour in dark times. In some ways, she often thought Fraser was more in touch with his raw emotions, that his were somehow closer to the surface than hers, Norm’s, Melody’s and Anna’s put together.

‘I’ve stooped low,’ he said.

‘Oh?’

‘With the whole grief, mess, not coping thing, I’ve stooped low, Woodhouse, Really low.’

‘Well, it can’t be as low as I’ve stooped in the last twelve months,’ said Mia, scooping the froth from her coffee onto the saucer (Fraser noted this, and once again wondered why she insisted on ordering cappuccino when she hated the frothy bit, the whole point of a cappuccino, surely?). I once left my son with a seventy-eight-year-old batty old woman who lets her cat poo in her knicker drawer.

He blinked and shook his head.

‘What?’

‘Mrs Durham. You know the old lady I look after on Tuesdays? Billy was teething – well, that’s always been my excuse, but I just think he’s one of life’s screamers, to tell you the truth. He’d have about ninety-two teeth by now if he’d really teethed at the rate I had people believe …’