‘I just thought you might want to . . . you know . . . talk about it.’
Stephie couldn’t have looked any more puzzled had I asked to discuss which brand of bleach she was using in the V’s toilets or the GDP of Peru.
‘Why would I want to do that?’ she asked.
‘Oh, no reason,’ I said.
One way to deal with the rash things you’ve done in life is to pretend they never took place. And I could hardly insist we anatomise our moment of madness if Stephie wasn’t prepared to take a scalpel to it. For the next few weeks we chatted as though nothing had happened. It got to the point where I began to wonder if my booze-sodden brain had simply invented the entire event. And then one evening, when I was kicking back after a hard day photographing an alleged paraplegic trampolining at his local leisure centre, my buzzer went.
Stephie was on the step holding a bottle of Stoli.
A protocol quickly built up around our relationship. Never acknowledging the fact that we were having one was the first rule. It always happened at my flat and Stephie left within the hour. I suppose you could say we were fuck buddies, if that term could apply to people whose combined ages were north of a century.
No-attachments sex is generally regarded as the male ideal and certainly beats no sex whatsoever. And yet the truth was that I felt oddly uncomfortable about the arrangement, but not so much that I wanted it to end.
We paid the bill at Pizza Express and headed south down Dean Street. It was getting on for eight o’clock. Those who had been hanging around the parish for a couple of post-work drinks were changing their minds or vacating the area. Curtains were rising in theatreland and red lights being turned on in second-storey windows.
After picking up a bottle of Smirnoff in Gerry’s – rarely consumed these days but still somehow necessary – we entered Brewer Street. The conversation was stilted, to say the least. Anyone would have thought Stephie and I were en route to a game of Russian roulette as opposed to an appointment with sexual bliss.
The flat I lived in was above the Parminto Wholefood Deli, a shop that catered for fruitarians, vegans and other lunatics. My brother Malcolm’s company bought the place a few years ago to put up out-of-town clients. As virtually all of them preferred twenty-four-hour room service and a view of the park, it was seldom occupied. Malcolm let me stay there when I was between places, which was pretty much permanently.
A large white envelope with my name across it lay on the flat’s doormat. I dropped it on the side table at the top of the stairs. Stephie visited the bathroom while I straightened up the sitting room and poured a pair of drinks. She returned clutching the Atriliac box.
‘What are these?’ she asked, using much the same tone my mother had on discovering a packet of Senior Service in my school blazer.
‘I’m looking after them for another boy,’ I said.
‘Is that a joke?’
‘They’re just some pills my doctor prescribed.’
‘Why’s he giving you antidepressants?’
‘Would you believe because I’m depressed?’
Stephie sat next to me on the sofa. She dropped the Atriliac box on to the coffee table and said, ‘Have you started taking them?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Why are you depressed, Kenny?’
‘Low serotonin.’
‘Low what?’
‘It’s a naturally occurring feel-good hormone,’ I explained. ‘If your system’s deficient then you struggle to maintain a positive mood.’
Dr Leach had also said that depression was nothing to be ashamed of and that I’d done the right thing coming to see her.
Stephie was less sympathetic.
‘Remember what Jack used to say about having eyes in the front of our heads so we could look forward in life instead of backwards?’
I nodded. ‘He was full of annoying shit like that.’
There was a hiatus in the conversation, which Stephie eventually broke. ‘You know they offer grief counselling on the NHS these days, Kenny.’
‘I wasn’t related to Jack.’
‘You might as well have been.’
True enough. Over the years, Jack had given me payday loans, advice on women, a place to kip between flats, and allowed my tab to slide until it looked like the national debt of a rogue African state. Not so much a father figure as an indulgent uncle.
And now he was dead.
‘What can a counsellor say that I don’t know already?’ I asked Stephie. ‘Doesn’t matter whether you’re or good or bad; loved or loathed, it all ends up the same way.’
‘You don’t know what the future holds, Kenny. No one does.’
‘I can give you an educated guess about mine.’
Stephie sighed. ‘Go on . . .’
‘Odeerie’s bound to drop dead soon and then I’ll be out of a job. I’m too old to get another and I’ll be even more broke than I am now. Eventually my brother will sell this place, which means I’ll be on the streets without a pot to piss in.’
‘Might never happen,’ Stephie said after taking a hit on her drink.
‘Why not?’
‘You could get cancer next year, have multiple bouts of unsuccessful chemo, and then die alone in some underfunded shithole of a hospital.’
‘That’s a fucking terrible thing to say.’
The corner of Stephie’s mouth began to twitch. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t prevent mine from following suit. Eventually we were laughing like a pair of lottery winners. It was a couple of minutes before either of us could speak again.
‘You don’t seem depressed now,’ Stephie said.
‘Yeah, well, it won’t last,’ I replied.
‘I’ve got something that’ll keep you happy for a while.’
‘The vodka?’ I asked.
She rolled her eyes and kissed me.
Stephie and I were practised enough to know what worked for each other but not so much so that sex had become routine. I recalled the side effects of Atriliac, and wondered if that was another reason not to take it. Was it worth ruining one of the few enjoyable things in my life just for a dose of chemical sunshine?
After the event we lay on the duvet, sheens of sweat drying on our bodies. Each told a different story. Stephie attended yoga classes three times a week and ate a largely vegetarian diet. Her skin retained the pliancy of youth and had yielded little ground to the years. Her legs were as sleek and muscled as a professional dancer’s.
The best that could be said about me was that at least I wasn’t fat – quite the reverse, if anything. My ribcage stood out like a glockenspiel; my hips like the fins on a Ford Anglia. There had to be muscles in there somewhere, but they were small and they were scared. Thank God for a winning personality, is all I can say.
Stephie turned on to her side. ‘Did you take a pill?’ she asked.
‘Check in the box if you don’t believe me.’
‘I meant a blue one.’
‘Nope.’
Stephie smiled and ran her hand over my chest. ‘Not bad for an old man,’ she said. ‘Not bad at all.’
‘Who are you calling old?’
‘That’s the spirit.’