‘Wow,’ Matthew said, ‘Ben?’
‘Mmm’.
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m here’. ‘Where?’
‘In your office’.
‘What are you doing here?’
Ben leaned against the nearest wall.
‘Working. Nearly done’.
‘Right—’ ‘You free?’ ‘What, now?’
‘Half an hour or so—’
‘Well, yes. Yes, I could be’.
‘I need a beer,’ Ben said. ‘This afternoon has pretty well done my head in’.
‘Fine. Fine. It – it would be good to see you’. ‘You too, bruv’. ‘Don’t do that’.
‘What?’
‘Don’t,’ Matthew said, ‘use that fake East End talk’.
“Scuse me’.
‘It’s phoney crap—’
‘What’s eating you?’ Ben said.
‘Nothing’.
Ben looked down the corridor. A girl was walking away from him, silhouetted against the light from the window at the end. She was a lovely sight, tall, high heels. Naomi was tall too, nearly as tall as Ben. He suddenly felt rather better.
‘Half an hour,’ Ben said. ‘OK?’
‘Yes,’ Matthew said. His voice had dropped a little. He sounded, abruptly, very tired. ‘See you’.
‘ We can drink in here,’ Matthew said. Ben peered through the glass doors. ‘Looks a bit posh—’
‘It’s all posh round here,’ Matthew said. ‘Artificial and posh’.
He pushed the door open, leaving it to swing in Ben’s face. Ben followed him and seized his arm. ‘What are you like?’
‘What?’
‘What are you in such a strop about?’
Matthew sighed. He looked, Ben thought, not just tired but drained and without that air of confident togetherness that Ben had supposed, for the last five years or so, to be inbuilt. He watched Matthew order, and pay for, a couple of bottles of beer, and then he followed him to a table in a corner, under a plasma television screen showing a picture of some giant freeway interchange, photographed from directly above. Matthew put the beer bottles on the table and glanced up at the screen.
‘I watched the rugby World Cup on that’.
Ben grunted. He put his duffel bag down on the floor and eased himself into an Italian metal chair.
‘How’s things—’
Matthew went on looking at the screen. ‘OK’.
Ben said, ‘My afternoon was shite. He just put me down the whole time over stuff he’d told me to do anyway’.
Matthew glanced away.
‘But apart from this afternoon, everything’s OK?’
‘Aren’t you going to sit down?’
‘Yes’.
‘Well, sit then. I can’t talk to you if you’re standing’.
‘Sorry,’ Matthew said. He sat down slowly, on the chair next to Ben’s. Then he said, ‘Sorry to snap at you’.
Ben took a swallow of beer. He pulled off his knitted hat and ruffled his hair.
‘That’s OK’.
Matthew looked at him.
‘And you really are OK? Apart from this afternoon’. ‘I’m great’. ‘And Naomi—’
‘Great. And the flat. It’s cool. I really like it’. ‘You look as if you do’.
‘Don’t tell Mum,’ Ben said, ‘but I should have gone before, two years ago, three’. Matthew picked up his beer.
‘We all do that’. ‘Do what?’
‘Stay too long’. Ben eyed him.
‘At home?’ ‘And the rest’.
‘Matt,’ Ben said, ‘what’s happened?’ Matthew put the neck of the bottle in his mouth and took it out again. ‘I’m not sure’.
‘You and Ruth—’
‘I think it’s over,’ Matthew said abruptly.
‘Christ’.
‘It just happened. It was so sudden. And I didn’t see it coming’. He took a mouthful of beer and shut his eyes tightly, as if swallowing it was an effort. ‘And I should have’.
‘Hey,’ Ben said. He leaned towards his brother. ‘Hey, Matt. Mate—’
‘She wants to buy a flat,’ Matthew said, ‘and I can’t afford to. I can’t afford to because it’s been costing me every penny I earn to live the way we do and I’m a stupid bloody idiot to have got in this mess. I am twenty-eight years old, Ben, and I’m back where I was at your age. I feel – I feel—’ He stopped and then he said in a furious whisper, ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter’.
Ben said slowly, ‘It’s hard to say—’
Matthew looked at him.
‘It’s hard to say, to a woman, that you haven’t got enough money’.
‘Yes’.
‘And if the woman has more than you do—’ ‘Yes. Does Naomi?’
‘No,’ Ben said, ‘and I tell her I wouldn’t mind if she did. But I’m not so sure’.
‘It isn’t good,’ Matthew said. ‘You may not have failed, but it feels as if you have. So you don’t say, and she makes assumptions. She’s perfectly entitled to make assumptions, if you don’t say’.
Ben drank some more beer.
‘Don’t you want to live in her flat?’
‘Not under those circumstances. I’d feel like a lodger’.
‘So—’
‘So I’ve said to her that if she wants the flat – and she should be buying a flat, earning what she does – she should go ahead and buy it, but that I can’t come with her’.
‘Why,’ Ben said, ‘does it have to be this flat?’
‘She’s set her heart on it—’
‘But if you had a cheaper flat, then you could manage it, maybe’. Matthew frowned.
‘I tried that’.
Ben gave him a quick look.
‘What did she say?’
‘She said she wanted me to come too. To this flat. She wants this flat’.
‘Well then’.
‘But I can’t. And she knows I can’t’.
‘So you’re making her choose—’
‘No,’ Matthew said, ‘I’m setting her free to choose’.
Ben stared ahead.
Then he said, ‘I’m sorry’.
‘Thanks’.
‘Will you tell the parents?’
‘I’ll have to’.
‘Why have to—’ Matthew looked down.
He said, almost bitterly, ‘I may need a bit of help. For a while’.
Ben adjusted his gaze from the distance to his beer. This was the moment, if he was going to take it, to tell Matthew that Rosa had already asked for help from their father, and been, however reasonably, turned down. But it occurred to Ben that Matthew wasn’t like Rosa and that, in any case, his older brother and sister had to do things their own way, fight their own battles. If he mentioned Rosa, it might just be one more depressing thing for Matthew to have to factor in, one more difficulty in an already difficult situation.
He picked his bottle up again.
‘Talk to Mum’.
Matthew turned to look at him.
‘Really? I was going to talk to Dad’.
Ben shook his head. He was conscious of feeling something he had never felt in his life before, a sensation of not just, at last, being the same age as his brother but also, headily, almost older. He put an arm briefly across Matthew’s shoulders.
‘No. Talk to Mum,’ Ben said. ‘Trust me’.
Chapter Six
Barney reached across Kate to buckle her car seat belt. She put a hand out. ‘I can do it—’
‘I like doing it,’ Barney said. ‘My wanting to will probably wear off, so I should enjoy it while you can’. He pushed the buckle home. ‘You look better’.
‘I feel,’ Kate said, ‘marginally less awful. Marginally’.
Barney turned the ignition key.
‘Or you are relieved to be getting away from the flat for the weekend’.