“Hi!” I say, then add anxiously, “How’s your arm?”
“Fine,” says Matt cheerfully. “Wow,” he adds, hefting the case. “This is massive. What have you got in here?”
“Harold’s stuff,” I explain. “I brought his bed and his blanket…a few toys….We’re both so excited to see your place!” I add excitedly. “And meet your flatmates!”
We start walking and I look around with bright eyes, because this is Matt’s neighborhood. This is part of him. And it’s a glorious area of London: one pretty street after another. And, look, a garden square! My fingers are crossed that he lives in a square just like this and has a key to the garden. I can see us, lying on the grass in the sunshine, lazily scratching Harold’s head and drinking wine and just enjoying life. Forever.
“So, tell me about the people in your life,” I say eagerly. “Start with your parents.”
I’m always interested to hear about the parents of guys I date. It’s not that I’m looking for new parents, it’s just…Well. I like hearing about happy families.
I told Matt about my parents last night while we were sitting on plastic chairs in A&E. I told him about my dad, who’s still alive but divorced my mum and moved to Hong Kong when I was small. And how we do see each other sometimes…but it’s not like other people’s dads. It’s not easy and familiar. It’s more like seeing an uncle or a family friend or something.
Then I told him about my mum dying when I was sixteen. I tried to paint a picture of her for him. Her blue eyes and her artist’s smock (she was an art teacher) and her cigarette habit. Her endearing way of getting the joke just slightly too late and exclaiming, “I see, oh, I see, oh, that’s funny!”
Then I described Martin, who was my stepdad for twelve years. His friendly face; his love of jive clubs; his famous six-bean curry. I explained how he was devastated when Mum died but he’s since found a lovely woman called Fran and two more stepchildren and how I’m thrilled for him, of course I am, but it’s weird for me. They ask me for Christmas every year and I tried going once, but it didn’t really work. So the next year I went to Maud’s, which was noisy and chaotic and distracting in the best possible way.
Then I really opened up. I told Matt how I sometimes realize how very much on my own I am in the world, with just a distant dad and no siblings. And how it feels scary. But then I remember I have my friends and I have Harold and I have my rescue projects and all my work….
I suppose I talked quite a lot. But there wasn’t a lot else to do in the A&E waiting room. And I was going to ask Matt about his family, but before I could, we were called by the nurse.
So now it’s time for me to hear about his background. I want to learn all about his parents. Their lovable quirks…their heartwarming traditions…the important lessons they’ve given him as he’s grown up…Basically I want to learn why I’m going to love them.
Nell once said to me, “Ava, you don’t have to be ready to love anything and everything you come across,” but she was exaggerating. I don’t. And anyway, this isn’t “anything,” this is Matt! I love him! And I’m ready to love his family too.
“Tell me everything about your parents,” I reiterate, squeezing his hand. “Everything. Don’t leave anything out.”
“OK.” Matt nods. “Well, there’s my dad.”
We walk along a bit in silence while I wait for Matt to continue. Till I realize that’s it.
“What’s your dad like?” I prompt, and Matt furrows his brow as though I’ve hurled some impossible problem at him.
“He’s…tall,” he says at last.
“Tall,” I say encouragingly. “Wow!”
“Not extreme,” Matt clarifies. “He’s about six foot two. Maybe six foot three. I can find out if you like.” He gets out his phone. “I’ll text him.”
He summons up his contacts page and I hurriedly say, “No! No, it doesn’t matter what his exact height is. So, he’s pretty tall. Amazing!”
I’m hoping Matt might carry on with more details, but he just nods as he puts his phone away again and we walk on, while I feel tiny prickles of frustration.
“Anything else?” I say at last.
“He’s…” Matt thinks for a bit. “You know.”
I quell an urge to retort “No, I don’t know, that’s the point.” But that would ruin the mood, so instead I say brightly, “What about your mother? What’s she like?”
“Oh.” Matt thinks for a while again. “She’s…You know. It’s hard to say.”
“Just anything!” I say, trying not to sound desperate. “Anything about her. Any detail. Big or small. Paint a picture.”
Matt is silent for a while, then says, “I guess she’s pretty tall as well.”
She’s tall too? That’s all he has to say? I’m starting to picture a family of giants here. I’m about to ask if he has any siblings when Matt says, “Here we are!” and my head jerks up in surprise. Followed by stupefied horror.
I’ve been so preoccupied, I haven’t noticed our surroundings changing as we’ve been walking. We’re not in a pretty garden square anymore. Or a pretty street. We’re standing in front of the ugliest building I’ve ever seen in my life and Matt is gesturing proudly at it. “Home!” he adds, just in case there was any doubt. “What do you think?”
What I honestly think is, I can’t believe anyone ever designed this. Or built it. It’s made of concrete with sinister-looking circular windows and odd rectangular structures extending in all directions. There are three blocks in total, linked by concrete walkways and stairways and weird angular bits. As I look up, I can see a distant, high-up face peering out of a glass stairwell as though in prison.
But then I feel guilty for having critical thoughts. London’s a nightmare to find a home in. It’s not Matt’s fault that this is all he could find.
“Wow,” I say. “This is…I mean, London property’s expensive, I know it’s hard, so…” I smile sympathetically at him and he beams back.
“Tell me. I was lucky to see this place on the market. I had to fight off three other bidders.”
I nearly fall over in the street. Three other bidders?
“It’s a great example of 1960s brutalism,” he adds with enthusiasm, opening the main front door and ushering me into a concrete-clad hallway.
“Right,” I respond faintly. “Absolutely! Brutalism.”
I’m sorry, but if you ask me, no word that contains “brutal” is a good word.
We travel up to the fourth floor in the kind of lift that belongs in a violent thriller, and Matt opens a black-painted front door into an atrium. It’s painted matte gray and contains a metal console table, a leather footstool, and a piece of wall-mounted sculpture straight ahead that makes me jump in fright.
It’s an eyeless face made from clay, straining out of a panel on a long neck as though it wants to scream or eat me. It’s the most grotesque, creepy thing I’ve ever seen. In revulsion, I swivel away—to see a similar piece of art on the adjacent wall, only this is ten hands all reaching out at me like something from a nightmare. Who makes this? I reach down to Harold for some reassurance and say, “Isn’t this…great, Harold?”
But Harold is whining unhappily at the face sculpture, and I don’t blame him.
“Don’t be scared!” I say. “It’s art.”
Harold gives me a desperate look as though to say, “Where have you brought me?” and I pat him, soothing myself as much as him.
“Take your coat?” says Matt, and I hand it over, trying desperately to think of something positive to say. In my peripheral vision I can see yet another sculpture, which seems to depict a raven. OK, I can cope with a raven. I walk up to it, intending to say something complimentary, then notice that in the raven’s mouth are human teeth.
I emit a scream before I can stop myself, then clap a hand over my mouth.
“What?” Matt looks up from putting our coats in a cupboard which is so discreet I hadn’t noticed it. “Are you OK?”
“Yes!” I try to gather myself. “I was just…reacting to the art. Wow! It’s really…Does it belong to you?” I’m seized by a sudden hope that it’s his flatmate’s, but Matt’s face brightens.
“Yeah. It’s all by Arlo Halsan?” he says as though I might recognize the name. “I was never really into art, but I saw his stuff at a gallery, and I was like, I get this artist. Blew me away. I have another piece in my bedroom,” he adds with enthusiasm. “It’s a hairless wolf.”
A hairless wolf? A hairless wolf is going to watch us have sex?
“Great!” I say in a strangled voice. “A hairless wolf! Awesome!”
Matt closes the cupboard and opens another door, which I hadn’t noticed either because everything is so uniform and sleek and monochrome. “Come and meet the guys,” he says, and ushers me through the door.
The first thing I notice is how huge the space is. The second is that everything is black or gray. Concrete floor, black walls, metal blinds. There’s a seating area with black leather sofas, three desks with an array of computers on them, and a punching bag hanging from the ceiling, which is being thumped by a thickset guy in shorts with his back to us.
On one of the leather sofas is a guy in jeans and massive sneakers. He has headphones on and is intently gaming. I swivel to see the screen—and bloody hell, it’s massive.
“Ava, Nihal. Nihal, Ava,” says Matt by way of introduction, and Nihal raises a brief hand.
“Hi,” he says, and flashes me a sweet smile, then turns his attention back to the gunfire on the screen.
“And that’s Topher,” says Matt, gesturing at the guy whacking the punching bag. “Topher!”