Chapter 10
I walk back to my parents’, feeling shaky. The ghost of the person I hurt unforgivably is back to haunt me, along with his flesh-and-blood – and still angry – brother. Could the timing be any worse?
Ironically, Rich knows about my history with Leo. Apart from my therapist, he’s the only person I’ve told the full story to. Even Yan doesn’t know everything.
I’ve curated it, only sharing the parts that have been sanitised; the rest I had to compartmentalise and put away. It’s the only way I could cope. Leo’s death cut my life in two: before and after.
Back home, in need of some urgent distraction, I open my laptop and hover the mouse over a document I’ve been avoiding for months.
When I was doing my PhD on infidelity, my supervisor suggested adapting part of it into a self-help book.
She had a friend who was a literary agent and when she’d run the idea past her, the agent had requested a meeting.
During an informal chat over coffee in Soho, we’d come up with a title and logline: The Five Types of Cheaters and How to Avoid Them.
I came home so fired up because I’d often walked around the big Waterstones on Gower Street, scanning the popular psychology section and imagining how amazing it would be to have my own book sitting on the shelf beside them. Now, there was a chance it might actually happen.
I’d promised my agent I’d get a detailed outline to her within three months. It’s been four now, and I’ve barely touched it.
At first, it didn’t feel like I was actively avoiding it, it’s just whenever I had a free night to devote to the book, something would come up.
Rich would score tickets to a West End play I’d been wanting to see; a mate would call needing a shoulder to cry on, and I was terrible at saying no.
But most of the time, I was just plain tired, and an evening with an Indian takeaway and Stranger Things was all I could manage.
Charles did his best to gee me up; he’d gone properly gaga when I first told him the news. ‘My dear, imagine how good business will be once you’re a best-selling author. I can already see you on Graham Norton, wowing the nation.’
‘I’m not sure how many writers go on chat shows, apart from people like Richard Osman, so unless I throw in a murder in a care home, we’ll have to park that ambition.’
‘I know a lot of TV people,’ he’d said confidently. ‘I’m sure I can set up a meeting. They’ll be putty in your hands, especially if you wear that leopard print dress.’
That leopard print dress was a charity shop find for when Charles threw a Tarts and Vicars-themed office Christmas party. I still don’t know how he got away with it.
However, the chances that anyone would want to read a book by a therapist who claimed to be able to teach you about the five types of cheaters – and, crucially – how to avoid them after she missed the fact her boyfriend was playing away, are roughly zero.
Yeah, I can see that racing up the charts.
I close my laptop, too anxious to open the dreaded document. To assuage my guilt, I swing open my wardrobe and start hunting for clothes I could donate to charity. Who knows, I might even find something I still want to wear.
A couple of hours later, I’m at that panicked stage where everything’s been chucked on the floor, so I can’t just abandon the task, but I haven’t progressed enough to be able to see the end of this sartorial stocktake.
I’m saved by the bell – or rather, someone’s key. As soon as the front door shuts, Yan’s voice floats up the stairs.
I don’t know why I’m surprised he’s randomly dropped by.
It was my habit, too, but in the last couple of years with Rich, I came less and less, usually blaming work and traffic.
We’d see Rich’s parents, though, and they lived in Hampstead, which was just as far from Clapham as Ealing.
He never said it outright, but I could tell Rich wasn’t a big fan of the noise and nosiness of my family.
They couldn’t have been more different from the loose-tea-sipping, Mahler-listening Bensons.
Dad once told Rich he didn’t like the look of one of his moles.
‘Our window-cleaner had one like that on the back of his hand. He’s dead now.’
Rich was understandably freaked out when we got home.
‘Can you tell him not to terrify me?’
I tried to calm him down. ‘He worries a lot, but he means well. And I’m sure that mole is nothing, but maybe see the GP about it?’
When I go downstairs, Yan is rearranging the fruit bowl in the kitchen.
‘You can’t stay here, Nell. I’m filming Dad for his YouTube channel.’
‘You’re doing what?’
‘His cooking videos are going down a storm. We signed him up for his own channel so more people could find them.’
‘People other than his immediate blood relatives want to watch him?’
‘His clip on how to make the perfect shamishi got twelve thousand views.’
Dad was an internet sensation, and I didn’t know?
‘I even made him a title sequence.’
Yan pulls out his phone, navigates to YouTube, and taps ‘play’.
The opening image is a sheet of A4 paper where crudely stencilled block caps announce VASILIS IN THE KITCHEN.
There’s even a gif of a fluttering Cypriot flag.
It couldn’t be more low-fi or home-made, but there’s something strangely hypnotic about it.
Then comes Dad, hamming up his accent as he explains what ‘Cyprus delights’ he’s going to offer his adoring public.
I’m about to quip that the advertisers must be flocking in, before I notice a Greek brand of olive oil strategically placed front and centre.
‘Am I going mad, or is there some product placement going on?’
Yan winks. ‘Dad says there’s no harm in some free publicity for our compatriots. He’s going to do a shout-out to Uncle Philip’s garage today. Get ten per cent off an MOT if you mention Dad’s YouTube channel.’
Christ, my dad’s hit the jackpot if he’s found a way to monetise his home-made videos.
My dad the celebrity chef enters the kitchen, takes one look and gasps.
‘What’s all this mess!’
He points to a side plate and knife in the sink that I may have used to eat a Nutella smeared muffin earlier.
‘It’s nothing,’ I tell him guiltily, opening the dishwasher and stuffing them in.
But he’s not listening; he’s already squirting Cif on the sink and scrubbing with a green scourer.
‘People will think we’re slobs,’ he mutters.
He’s always been a neat freak, and it rubbed off on the rest of us. But somehow, we’re never tidy enough.
I catch Yan’s eye. Is it my imagination, or is Dad nervous about his performance?
He’s wearing his ‘good’ jeans; deep blue with a crease ironed down the middle.
His hair is aggressively parted to the side and locked in place with a lot of Brylcreem.
And judging by the smell wafting off him, he’s wearing a litre of Azzaro Pour Homme. Has no one explained how cameras work?
I leave them to it and go back upstairs to resume my wardrobe clear-out, only taking very short breaks during which my fingers navigate to Dad’s YouTube channel and before I know it, I’ve seen every single one of his clips.
And I’m dying for Greek-style ratatouille with feta and oregano.