Cover Story - 8

Connor had just taken his seat at the Polish restaurant when he slipped his handset out of his pocket and saw the iconic HAVE A NICE LIFE message ping in from Jen on his WhatsApp.

Can you pick up?! Your brother’s on my case. No one’s dead (except you, if you keep not picking up)

Seriously Con, where are you to have your phone turned off this long?

He made his excuses to Aaron and Bel, whom he suspected thought he was being London-grand or a deliberate saboteur of the occasion, or both.

‘I have to make a phone call. Can you get me a …’ he twitched the menu, ‘ Zywiec ? Sorry,’ he said.

‘Pronounced Jhuv-ee-etch not Zwetch! Sure,’ Aaron said, as the ever-jovial antagonist.

‘One of those, yes.’

The restaurant was of the easy-going, rowdy variety: open kitchen, wooden chairs and tables and a jungle of artificial plants dangling above their heads. It was the modern hipster way, and yet strongly reminded Connor of Disneyland’s Rainforest Café in Florida from when he was a kid. Just add piped-in cicada chirruping.

The legendary Bel Macauley was tonight in a belted navy dress with flared skirt, and scarlet suede ankle boots. Her hefty quantity of caramel hair was again bird’s nested and coiled into a sloppy approximation of a bun, kirby grips stabbed at haphazard points in its mass.

The outfit looked to Connor still woefully closer to ‘Sunday brunch’ than ‘Lois Lane’ but it was leagues better than the fell out of bed like this look of Monday. Perhaps, he had to concede, being around women in Dries Van Noten trouser suits in finance had skewed his expectations. Aaron was no Cary Grant either: he kept a rolled-up black tie in his top desk drawer for ‘death knocks’.

He pushed through the door, calling Jen, while dodging the already inebriated pedestrian traffic of a Friday evening.

‘Hi, sorry for missing you. I was sent out on a knifing in Whalley Range,’ he said.

‘I feel like I’ve had a knifing in my Whalley Range after half an hour on the phone with your brother.’

‘Haha. What’s his problem? He’s coming over?’

Shaun lived in Washington DC with his wife, Lauren, and announcements of return to Britain were always like this: fiercely enthusiastic and out of the blue, demanding they drop everything. Shaun’s incredible impatience and buoyancy of mood had brought him much success in life, but it was sometimes like dealing with a Yorkshire Terrier on cocaine.

‘Yeah, he wants to come over for one of his bacchanals. Just him, Lauren’s busy. I explained you’re not here and we’re not … there, anymore, you know?’

Connor had a jolt she meant as a couple.

‘He was going on about trying Soho Farmhouse ? Yeah, no. He’s not caught on to the change of pace.’

Ah. Not there financially.

‘I’ll talk to him, don’t worry. I could draw his fire and invite him up here? I know he’ll have a meltdown at heading north, but … Gives me company.’

‘Yeah, that would work, actually?’ Jen said, with a note of relief, having clearly already considered this option.

Connor thought about their early days together and the hedonistic lost weekends with his brother and sister-in-law – wincing at the mini statement afterwards – were a thing of the past.

If he was able to say: sure, book three nights at Soho Farmhouse, sounds good, charge it to my card , like he used to, would this be going any different? Would it fix it? Yes and no. They’d been falling out of love anyway and this had merely expedited the process. But the fact remained, trips to The Ledbury were no longer available to oil the hinges – so subtracting them meant confronting how much they’d mattered.

He knew exactly what Shaun, never one to hold back with the blunt diagnosis, would say: You Can No Longer Afford Her. Once again, on examining his feelings there was no real pang of loss. Connor was more bothered that he’d previously been affording Jen, which, call him a rash idealist, wasn’t how it was supposed to work.

‘If Shaun’s here soon, want to come up this weekend coming?’

‘I can’t this weekend because I’ve got a work thing on Friday night in Bloomsbury, a book launch. Weekend after?’

Three weeks since he moved up? You’d not mistake this for infatuation.

‘Sure,’ Connor said, as they shifted to awkward chit-chat for the sake of the other.

‘Is everything OK?’ Jen said.

‘Yeah, why?’

‘You sound like you’re in a rush to go, that’s all.’

‘I’m having dinner with my two colleagues. I get the feeling it’s about as appealing to them as it is to me, but we’re pushing through it anyway.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Guy called Aaron from the Manchester News and a podcaster woman called Bel.’

‘Bel? As in Beauty and The Beast “Belle”?’

‘No, as in Isabel.’

‘What’s she like?’

He was surprised at Jen still doing due diligence on proximate women.

‘Uhm …’ Connor looked at her, in animated conversation with Aaron, and assessed what courtesy he owed her. He knew they were both mocking him behind his back, the photo on his desk had been moved. The thought of them sniggering at Maurice made his stomach muscles clench. ‘Honestly? Hard work.’

A waiting call started blipping, with the caller ID: OH FFS IT’S SHAUN. He’d forgot he’d changed his name to that in his address book during a drunken night out.

‘Argh, Shaun’s calling me, want me to take it?’

‘Fuck yes, thank you! Speak soon, Con.’

She rang off.

‘Oh, THERE you are,’ his brother said, with the slight vocal muddiness of a transatlantic connection.

‘Here I am. You’ve been harassing Jennifer?’

‘What’s going on with you two?’

‘How do you mean?’ Connor said, feeling motion sick, knowing exactly what he meant.

‘I’m not getting warm vibes from your girlfriend of five years’ standing, you know? I am getting a Talk To Connor one instead.’

Connor sighed, pain in his chest. Knowing something was ending and that it was better off ending didn’t stop it hurting. Nor, apparently, stop the mad urge to last-minute repair it.

Even if Connor could talk himself and her back in love again, he couldn’t return to being the six-figure bonus Connor she wanted.

‘I’m up in Manchester, aren’t I? It’s tricky to make London plans,’ Connor deflected. ‘She says you’re over soon?’

‘Next month, thought I’d do a Wednesday to Sunday, stop off at Mum and Dad’s after. How long are you in the grim north for?’

‘Three more months. Well, two months, three weeks now,’ Connor said, savouring the countdown. ‘Why don’t you visit me here? It’s dull as fuck for me not knowing anyone. I’m renting a one-bed flat in Salford. You can sofa surf.’

He grinned, tip of tongue between teeth, despite himself.

‘Renting a one-bed flat, in SALFORD? THE SOFA? What is this, WORLD WAR TWO? Are we like those Sealed Knot nerd guys, doing BATTLE REENACTMENTS? I’ll get on the nice hotel search. Better yet, you can. Shortlist me the best three you’ve seen from drinks in their bars and I’ll get you a room too. I see why Jen thinks you’ve lost your mind. Gotta go.’

Connor found himself dismissed with speed a second time inside a minute. He glanced over at Aaron and Bel who were looking over at him and both quickly glanced away. In that moment, being jostled by strangers, Connor felt exquisitely lonely.

He squared his shoulders and headed back in to Platzski’s.

‘We’ve ordered some starters to share, hope that’s OK,’ Bel said, as Connor picked up his beer bottle, muttering thanks.

As he poured it out into a glass, he was approached by a very heavily made-up girl with a mane of curled blonde hair. She was surely only about twenty-five but had enough cosmetics and facial tweakments that Connor couldn’t quite judge. Northern girls were a class apart when it came to high-maintenance presentation, he was gathering. Bel Macauley was an anomaly. There were two more lookalike girls in tiny Lycra dresses held together by metal hoops, standing behind her, looking expectant.

‘Excuse me, has anyone ever told you – you look like the actor, Aaron Taylor Johnson? From the film Kick-Ass ?’ the girl said, in a strong Manchester accent. Connor wanted to shrivel up and disappear into his own shoes, like a Wizard of Oz special effect.

‘Do I? Thanks,’ he said. Oh, the fucking HAY the other Aaron here was going to make of this.

‘You’re a very lucky girl,’ she said, to a horrified Bel, before smiling coquettishly, flicking her hair over her shoulder, and her Sugababes trio clattering to the door.

They left a stunned, aghast silence in their wake.

‘If they think you’re with him, who did they think I am?!’ Aaron said.

‘Our son?’ Connor said, before he could stop himself, and from Aaron’s face, he could see mocking his height was an absolute red line.