Chapter 16 Adam “Cheek to Cheek”
Adam
“Cheek to Cheek”
After brushing my teeth to get rid of the rank taste of last night’s beer and Kambi’s chicken shawarma with chips, I wander downstairs in my boxer shorts and Dad’s old threadbare dressing gown to our tatty kitchen with its old green eighties units that look the exact same color as my gills.
I’m going to the shed. For what’s set to be my new regular Saturday-morning workout. Even if that knackered old exercise bike didn’t exactly get me pool-party ready for Darius’s a couple of weeks back, the least I can do is keep using it to try to get a bit more fit.
Plus, it’s not like I’ve got anything else to do, is it? Not now I’ve been fired. Or made redundant. Or however else Darius prefers to gloss over what his new management group has done.
When I rang him, admittedly bladdered, last night from the Lion & Lobster—straight after that email from HR pinged into my inbox and the inboxes of the rest of my team—I really did think he might have been able to do something to help, but he said he couldn’t.
His hands were tied, but that we’d talk.
What does that even mean? That maybe things won’t be so bad after all?
Perhaps he’s setting up another company entirely.
One that me and my team can be brought into as well?
Only not all of us. Not Meredith. At least he’s retained her. But what if that report she did for him is what led to us all getting the flick? That’s what everyone was bitching about last night in the pub.
“Adam!” Jules calls out from the living room.
I don’t call back right away. I’m still pissed off at her.
As well as still being in the doghouse myself after getting back drunk last night and breaking the news about losing my job.
Leaving her first freaking the hell out about what Darius did, before taking comfort in the fact that at least he might be up for bankrolling her pop-up, just for old times’ sake.
Meaning we’ll be able to keep the wolf from the door.
Right.
Unless Darius is the damned wolf. I still can’t help thinking about that too. About what I thought I saw outside the house the night before last when he dropped her home after his investor meal. Him nearly kissing Jules in his car.
Even if she swore it wasn’t like that and that her chat with him was actually quite stressy because of how badly the dinner went, because he’d thought she was an expert in French cooking and spoke the language a bit as well, both things she’d exaggerated and then got caught out on.
But things kind of just blew up between us after that.
She went on the offensive big-time. Telling me all that stuff about our lives being in the same old holding pattern with some stupid metaphor or simile or whatever the hell it was about planes, and banging on about me never taking any risks, like not signing that bloody Totally Sirius contract way back when, which was why she was now getting Darius to back her pop-up, whether I bloody wanted her to or not.
Which isn’t fair. Because I would help her if I had the money. Or, okay, maybe not before, but now that I can see how much it means to her. Only now I’m not just broke, I don’t have any means to make money either.
I’m screwed.
“What do you want?” I glare down at Groucho Barx, who’s trotted in from the garden, reeking like a compost heap and wagging his tail with something in his mouth that he now half drops, half vomits on the floor.
No, no, please don’t let this be a recently deceased mouse or baby bird, because I just can’t handle that today.
Only then I see what it is, and Christ alive, it’s Boba Fett. That same Star Wars collectors’ figure of mine that Liam half melted on the barbecue—what, maybe ten years ago? My heart sinks. Because, hey, if he hadn’t, I might have been able to sell it now to help fund Jules’s pop-up.
But what’s done is done, eh? It’s not like you can go back.
Still…my one lost chance of financial redemption being served up as such a timely reminder—it’s like the universe is laughing in my face.
Kicking Boba Fett as hard in his Mandalorian nuts as I can, I send him spinning unceremoniously back out through the garden door…watching him take off for a second, even two, as though his plastic jetpack might actually make him fly…before he plummets into the manky water butt to drown.
“Adam!” Jules calls out again. “Come here!”
For fuck’s sake.
Scratching furiously at my beard, I reluctantly turn round with the approximate speed of a container ship reversing its course. There’s no escaping her tone of voice. Whatever Jules wants to discuss, she’s intent on doing it right bloody now.
“What?” I snap, finding her in the living room, hunched up on the sofa next to that Brush Up on Your French Level 1 book she picked up in Waterstones last week. That same one that failed to help her bluff her way through Darius’s investors’ culinary demands the night before last.
“This just got delivered,” she says, flapping a faded envelope.
And you know, sometimes I really hate making eye contact with her. Especially when we’re fighting, because no matter how pissed off I am…I can’t help liking her too. A feeling that trumps everything else. Dampens down the rage.
“What is it?” I ask. “Let me guess. Another frigging bill.” Bills I can’t pay.
“No, it’s addressed to us both.”
As she turns it round to face me, I see that the words For Adam and Jules Hole are typed on it. No stamp. No postmark. Even weirder is what’s underneath.
From a well-wisher, along with a date for it to be hand-delivered on and our address.
“But that’s…today,” I say.
“You’ll never guess who brought it.”
“Who?”
“Eddy, from the solicitors. You know, who drinks in the Peregrine. He just turned up here ten minutes ago in a suit.”
“What, like it was a work thing?”
She pulls a face. “I guess. Dunno.”
“Weird.”
“So, shall we open it?”
I shrug, feeling more than a little freaked out, to be honest. Our names staring up at us like this. Sitting down beside her, I’m mindful not to scratch my belly, stretching against my threadbare Soul Mining T-shirt.
Jules carefully slits the envelope open with her fingernail. As she opens it, I see there are two sheets of folded paper inside. I feel this absurd intake of breath, like I’m on a game show or something, as she takes the top one out.
Across it is typed:
What You Should Be Doing Full-Time
Adam--the Dadass Dudes
Jules--Chez Jules at the Peregrine
That’s it.
She flips the piece of paper over, but there’s nothing on the back.
“What the fuck?” we both say.
“Did you do this? Is this some kind of a jo—” we both say at the exact same time.
Then stare at each other. Because, clearly, neither of us did, meaning it’s not.
“What does it even mean?” I ask.
“Well, my bit’s obvious. That I should set up my restaurant.”
“And I should try and make more out of the DDs.”
“The what?”
“It’s a gaming thing I’ve been doing with Doodles.” It’s stupid, I’m about to say. But is it? Because suddenly, seeing it typed out like this…
“Which means that whoever typed this,” Jules says, “maybe Doodles, or Ngozi, or even Darius…”
“…they clearly know us pretty well.”
“Do you agree?” she says, studying the piece of paper. “That these are things we should be doing?”
“Um…” I stare at her, thrown. “Shouldn’t we be more wondering about who the hell sent this?” Because it looks like a prime piece of mischief-making to me.
She frowns. “Yes. But still, I’d like to know.”
“Well, I suppose maybe?” I say. “I mean, obviously, for you, with the restaurant, that is what you want to do with your life.” She couldn’t have made that any clearer the night before last.
She nods.
“But for me. For me and Doodles? At our age? Going pro? I mean, of course, on some fantasy level, I’d love to. But…” Could we? God, it would be fun. A hell of a lot more fun than turning up at the office every day. If I even had one left to turn up at. “I guess it might be worth a go,” I say.
She nods again. Like this is settled. Like we’ve just made some kind of life choice. Like we’re somehow no longer—what was that word she used?—stuck.
Only making monumental decisions like this, based on some bullshit someone—we don’t even know who—has typed out anonymously like some serial killer on a piece of old paper…
we must need our heads examined, right? Plus, there are wider considerations too.
It’s not just us we’re talking about here, is it? It never is with a family.
“What about the kids?” I say.
“How will it affect them? I was thinking that too.”
Then we talk. About where they’re at. About how a big shake-up like this might not have been such a good idea even just a few weeks ago.
How Nelly would have gone batshit at having me and Doodles back home in her workspace.
How us focusing on our new ventures might have taken our attention away from Liam too much, leaving him stewing in his room, but now he’s getting out a bit more, and really does seem to have a plan for his new band with Max.
“So what’s on the next page?” I ask.
She takes it out and lays it flat on the table.
This one reads:
Be Honest. Be Kind.
Jules--tell Adam about Darius
Adam--tell Jules about Meredith
Whoa! What the hell?!
My heart races.
“Okay, so whoever’s doing this is just shit-stirring,” I say.
Maybe too quickly. Jules’s eyes flick round to mine.
“I’m serious,” I tell her. “There’s nothing going on with Meredith.” There isn’t. Hasn’t been. Right?
“I believe you,” Jules says, but only after a pause.
“You do?” Again, I fail to hide it—the surprise in my voice. “What?” I say.
“You can read, can’t you?”
Be honest… that’s what it says. Right there in black ink. Like whoever typed this knew we might not be.
“Honestly?” I feel my mouth drying out.
“Honestly.” Her piercing blue eyes lock on mine.
“But we don’t even know who wrote this or where it came from,” I point out.
“Does it matter?”
“No, I suppose not.”
“Well, then?”