The Sweet Second Life of Darrell Kincaid Read online

  ‘Well–’

  She cradled her face in her hands and shook her head from side to side.

  ‘Oh, my God–’ she said in a muffled voice.

  She dropped her hands and gave me a smile that was part sheepish, part annoyed, as if some of this were my fault.

  ‘My brains are mush,’ she said. ‘And I’ve no idea if it will get any better. Who knows what level of mental disintegration I have to look forward to?’

  ‘My friend says it reaches its peak when you’re breastfeeding. Soon as you stop, your faculties start to come back.’

  ‘Right. Well, that’s as good an argument for bottle-feeding as I’ve ever heard.’

  She smiled, less frostily this time, and stuck out her hand. ‘Let’s start again. I’m Clare King. And I’d love to be able to assure you that I won’t barge on in again, but anything’s possible.’

  I shook her hand. ‘I’m Darrell Kincaid. And I’m sorry I’m not a man.’

  ‘Darrell is an unusual name for a girl, isn’t it? Was it one of those family names that are supposed to be passed down through the male line but are inflicted on girls when there are no boys born? Like it was on Richmal Crompton?’

  ‘I don’t think so. To be honest, I’ve never asked my parents. I always felt they might be concerned I didn’t like it.’

  ‘Surely they’ve been asked by other people?’

  ‘No. My parents are not the kind of people other people ask personal questions of. If you see what I mean.’

  ‘Yes. I think I do. Are they in favour of doilies?’

  ‘Also antimacassars.’

  Suddenly, my landlady’s eyes widened. She strode to the mantelpiece where I’d placed a couple of photos, including one of Tom and me. But that wasn’t the photo she picked up.

  ‘Oh my God, what a gorgeous baby. How old is he?’

  ‘That’s Harry. He was about nine months there. He’s–’

  I got no further. She clasped the photo to her chest and I saw her eyes well up.

  ‘He’s so beautiful …’

  ‘Yes, he–’

  ‘I can’t believe how beautiful babies are,’ she whispered. ‘They’re so perfect, and so tiny, and so vulnerable …’

  Her voice petered out and she stood there, hugging Harry’s photo to her, tears running silently down her cheeks. I was tempted to size up the distance to the nearest exit. But I deemed it more prudent to say, ‘Um … Would you like some tea?’

  It seemed to do the trick. She heaved in a breath. Then she glanced down, realised that she was holding the photo in a death grip and hastily placed it back on the mantelpiece. She ran a finger under her eyes and then began to rummage in her coat pockets.

  ‘Shit. I don’t have a tissue–’

  My bag was on the table next to us. I pulled out the white handkerchief and handed it to her.

  ‘It’s covered in coffee,’ I apologised. ‘But I think that corner’s OK.’

  She took it with a wan, grateful smile. But as she held it up to her face, she hardened.

  ‘This is Patrick’s,’ she accused.

  ‘Oh. Yes. He lent it to me yesterday. Sorry, I was going to–’

  ‘Why did he lend it to you?’

  ‘Um … I spilled some coffee. Hence the coffee stains.’ I made a conciliatory face. ‘I was going to wash it and give it back to him.’

  ‘When?’

  Jeepers. ‘At the café?’

  ‘He’s hardly ever there,’ she said, immediately. ‘And if he is, he’s there very early. He’d be long gone by now,’ she added, to drive home the point.

  ‘OK.’

  Her fist tightened over the balled-up handkerchief. ‘I’ll give it to him.’

  ‘OK.’

  She looked down as she pocketed it, and then, like before, she froze. Slowly, she raised her eyes to me. Her expression was wary.

  ‘You may find this hard to believe,’ she said, ‘but before I got knocked up, I was pleasant, calm and lucid. I had a sense of humour and everything.’

  ‘That’s all right. My friend Michelle went mildly bonkers, too. She was convinced the mailman was staking out her house on behalf of an illegal adoption network.’

  ‘I accused the cable TV man of installing secret cameras for paedophiles. Actually, I didn’t believe that at all,’ she added, ‘but it was a great release of hormonal tension to watch him grovel and plead.’

  We grinned at each other.

  ‘Tea?’ I asked again.

  ‘Why not?’ she replied. ‘It’ll give me a chance to show you exactly how this house is going to be ripped apart.’

  The people I fantasised about meeting at the Italian café:

  A woman with a huge shambolic house stuffed with flowers and dogs and people. Called Hattie. (The woman, not the house.) She would be upper class and rather sweetly absent-minded and would call me ‘darling Darrell’. She would include me in all her mad family’s get-togethers, including Christmas. She would try to set me up with her charming wastrel younger brother, Jago, more for his sake than for mine. But while Jago and I would have a brief fling (can’t decide whether the sex should be frantic and mind-blowing or companionable and giggly), his tragically self-destructive nature would lead him away from me and possibly into either a Turkish prison or a motorcycle crash in the Mongolian desert.

  An older man with connections in publishing. He would be dapperly dressed and find me deeply interesting and charming but not enough to want to jump my bones. He would offer to read my books and would come to the café the next day brimming with excitement about my unique ‘voice’ and my intelligence and wit and humour. He would set me up with an agent friend, who would immediately take me on and win me a three-book contract with Black Swan. He would take me to tea at Claridges, where they do over thirty kinds of cake. Possibly, he would die and leave me his Nash Regency house and his collection of small Impressionist paintings.

  Fabrice, Duc de Sauveterre. Enough said.

  But as we all know, due to my chicken nature, the most I’d got to know about the regulars at the café was that they came regularly. We all had our separate tables; we all had our separate and individual little morning routines. I would bring a book and nurse my double espresso for as long as decently possible. Real names wanting, I had given them nicknames.

  Big Man sat out in the tented area, smoking and staring into space. He was, as you’ve probably guessed, a big man. Not quite as tall as landlord Patrick, but more solid. I placed him in his early fifties and decided he must have been handsome in his youth, but age and endless cigarettes and perhaps circumstances (he didn’t appear to be all that well off) had turned a strong chin and jaw jowly and had etched rows of lines under his eyes. His physique was that of a strongman gone to seed – not fat, exactly, but he was certainly carrying more weight than was good for him. His hair was military buzz-cut short and every day, without fail, he wore a godawful blue polyester bomber jacket that looked as if it hadn’t been washed in years. He never read, not even the paper, just stared out through the plastic sections of the clip-on tent. I’d tried this myself and you cannot see a thing. The plastic made the world outside as blurry as a pavement chalk painting in the rain. What was he staring at then? I couldn’t tell by his expression – it was neither sad nor thoughtful. I could describe it as neutral except that it wasn’t that, either. In some not immediately obvious way, Big Man radiated ‘go away’ vibes – though I’d hazard a guess that he’d phrase it more succinctly. I’d heard him order coffee only a couple of times. His voice was gruff and his method of requesting terse. The normally voluble Italian brothers – I did know their names now: Mario and Vincente – seemed to know their customer wasn’t up for idle chitchat, and they served him politely, but quickly and quietly. If there were to be a first person I approached, I’d make a wild stab that it would not be Big Man.

  Mind you, I wasn’t sure that Mr Perfect was any less intimidating. One, because he had a voice that made Prince Charles sound like Dot Cotton an
d two, because he was the neatest human being I’d ever seen. For me to be that tidy, I’d have to be encased in resin, like a dead beetle. Mr Perfect – what else could I call him? – was, I guessed, in his mid-forties, and looked as if he’d stepped out of an advertisement for Armani. It wasn’t that he was spectacularly handsome, although he was certainly a good-looking man. It was more that everything about him was clearly a cut above. Like landlord Patrick, he wore a suit that fitted him too well to be anything but bespoke. Unlike Patrick, he had clearly never known anything but affluence. He appeared to have no paying occupation – I’d never seen him with a mobile phone – so I could only assume he was a man of independent financial means. It would certainly explain why he was so freakishly tidy. His shirts were unfailingly pristine, with knife-sharp cuffs and collars. His ties were always in a perfect Windsor knot. You could have eaten off his shoes. He didn’t actually dust off the chair with a handkerchief before he sat down, but I got the distinct impression he wanted to. When I saw him eat a croissant without shedding a single crumb (a feat that surely should have been acknowledged by some worldwide authority), I decided he was an even less likely prospect for introduction than Big Man.

  Regular number three was a woman. I’d nicknamed her Miss Flaky, as all she drank was herbal tea, and all she read were self-help books with the kind of titles that make you throw up a little in your mouth. She was around forty and almost, but not quite, beautiful. She had amazing long blonde hair, big blue eyes, and the porcelain skin of a Renaissance Madonna. But the reason she wasn’t beautiful was because she wore the most hideous clothes in Christendom – Edwardian-style high-necked, ruffled blouses in beige or cream and ankle-length skirts that looked as if they’d been made from blankets that had been rejected by one of the more desperate refugee camps. These items were inevitably covered by one of two long, shapeless cardigans – one in dead-leaf brown with leather buttons and a maroon one with a stringy knitted belt. From the neck up, she was lovely. Full length, she looked monkey weird.

  I suppose I had no right to feel disappointed. I mean, what had I really been expecting? That there’d be someone here who’d tick all the boxes of a perfect match? That our eyes would meet across the room and there’d be an instant connection, as there had been with Tom? OK, Tom and I weren’t in a room as such; we were at the bus stop. But there was a connection. I dropped my change and he picked it up for me and bammo! It wasn’t a lightning bolt of lust, a coup de foudre as the French say. It was more a jolt of recognition. An acknowledgment of each other, and how right we’d be together.

  Yes. All right. I suppose I had been expecting that. Or at the very least, hoping for it.

  But if it were going to happen, it certainly wasn’t going to happen here with this lot. That little bit of hope had been crushed like one of Big Man’s fag butts under the heel of his crappy vinyl shoe.

  What then? Should I still try to make contact? Let’s face it – I had precious few other opportunities to meet people. The only person who’d been keen to chat with me lately had smelled like feet. I might have been able to overlook that, but then I realised that he’d only initiated conversation because he wanted to sell me a copy of The Big Issue.

  I couldn’t, though! And it wasn’t just that I didn’t have the balls – although, admittedly, that was a large contributing factor. My problem was that everyone was so – separate. We all sat at separate tables, with at least one other table between us. Big Man sat alone in the smoking section, Miss Flaky in the far corner by the panettone, Mr Perfect in the middle, and me by the front door. Mario or Vincente greeted all of us with their usual bonhomie (or whatever is the Italian equivalent), but so far, none of the three had acknowledged me, or either of the other two. Not even a nod. I supposed that the reason they chose this timeslot was for its lack of other people, so they could read – or smoke and stare – in relative peace. Separately. Alone …

  I started fantasising about a major event occurring, which was the only catalyst I could see for any kind of shared conversation. A car crash right outside. Or the chemist’s going up in flames. Eventually, I had scripted a full Die Hard moment, in which a car catapulted into a helicopter, which crashed onto the chemist shop, and the whole block burst into flames. Yippee kay-yay …

  I should have remembered what my mother always said. Be careful what you wish for.

  This time, I was expecting the knock. Landlady Clare had rung the night before to tell me she’d be coming round at seven-thirty in the morning with the builder. I felt my heart sink. I’d been in the house almost three weeks now, and there’d been no mention of ripping out kitchens and bathrooms. Secretly, I’d hoped her baby brain had wiped the whole notion from her head. But no …

  Clare was on the doorstep with a man who to all intents was a smaller, slimmer version of her husband. The same olive skin, the same dark eyes and close-cropped hair. Except this man was younger – same age as me, I guessed – and much better looking. Landlord Patrick was attractive because he exuded energy and confidence, but he wasn’t really handsome. This man had similarly strong features, but they were more refined. I also noticed he had a small gold hoop in one ear.

  ‘This is Anselo,’ said Clare. ‘He’s Patrick’s cousin.’

  ‘Hello.’ I smiled and extended a hand.

  Anselo did not smile, and he gave my hand only a cursory shake. Righty-ho. Either he didn’t like women in general, or he just didn’t like the look of me. Or perhaps he didn’t like the fact that he’d have to work around me. I suppose it would be a bit of a nuisance to have someone watching you. You might actually have to build something.

  ‘Anselo and I are just going to run over the plans this morning,’ Clare explained. ‘Is that all right?’

  ‘As long as you don’t mind me eating toast in front of you.’ I gestured for them to come inside. ‘Cup of tea?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Clare.

  But from Anselo, all I got was a curt shake of the head.

  Jolly good. On top of angsting about money and why I hadn’t heard from my publisher, I was now going to have share my house with a man with no charm and no conversation. If I’d been made of sterner stuff, I would have seen that as the perfect excuse to sit at my computer and bash away at another book, confident that Hippolyte’s lack of contact was a mere glitch. But as we all know, my stuff was considerably stern-short. I decided it was the perfect excuse to get out and stay out. Which I did. And I entered a café that was a complete zoo. There were people everywhere!

  ‘What happened?’ I asked Vincente, the younger brother. ‘Are you giving away free coffee?’

  ‘It was fire alarm in building next door. All people from doctor’s and chemist’s have to leave until fire truck turn up.’

  ‘But it was a drill, right? Not an actual fire?’

  Vincente shrugged. ‘Someone press alarm. Maybe some crazy looking for drugs.’

  ‘Does that happen often?’

  ‘Not so often.’

  Good to hear.

  I ordered my usual espresso and then looked around for somewhere to sit. I had half-hoped Mr Perfect’s table might have a free chair, but no – there was a man with him. He was about forty-five, with curly brown hair that could do with a brush and a good trim. He wore a shirt under one of those Fair Isle woollen vests that were big in the nineteen forties, and Dickensian wire-framed spectacles behind which he squinted and blinked like a small, irritable mammal roused from hibernation. I was a little surprised to see that he and Mr Perfect were intently engaged in conversation. I had not thought Mr Perfect was keen on conversing with anyone.

  As I turned on my heel, I realised there was not one free chair anywhere inside. Even Miss Flaky’s table was packed. She had all the girls from the chemist with her – perhaps she went there regularly for her Prozac prescription? Feeling a little foolish and obvious, I walked quickly out into the smoking area. No free chairs there, either. Great. My only options seemed to be to push back into the café and swap my cup for
a takeaway one, or keep walking, cup in hand, back to the house.

  Then I spotted the chair. It was at Big Man’s table. He was in the far corner, and the chair was tucked tight between his table and the wall. If I wanted to sit there, I’d have to ask him to get up and shift the table outwards. I could see why someone else had not already tried this. Big Man’s whole stance – the leg slightly outward, the arm crossed over the chest, the set shoulders – said ‘piss off’.

  I glanced down at my coffee and saw the lovely rich crema on the top was starting to fade. It meant it was getting cold. After two weeks of sussing out the prices of food, public transport, phone calls, etc, I was less panicky about my finances, but I knew there was very little sliding room. If I wasted this coffee, I could not have another today. Suddenly, I became extremely pissed off. How dare some stupid person set off the fire alarm during my coffee time? How dare everyone decide to come here instead of schlepping up to the high street? Didn’t they know walking was good for them? How dare Big Man be such a rude prick?

  Fuelled by burning outrage, I strode right up to him, nodded at the spare chair and said, ‘Can I get in there?’

  At first, his eyebrows rose a fraction in surprise. Then his face settled back into its usual neutral (read hostile) expression. He slowly blew smoke sideways out of his mouth.

  ‘If you like,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll have to pull the table out,’ I told him. I was no longer feeling so fired up. Close up, he really was quite intimidating. It was his lack of response, I decided. You couldn’t tell what he was thinking, and as such, you had no idea what he might do. He might do nothing. Or he might crush you with one giant fist. It was all rather unsettling.

  Without a word, he stood up and tugged the table out just far enough to let me squeeze through the gap. Then he sat back down, angled his body away, and ignored me. I felt another surge of irritation. How hard is it to be even a tiny bit polite?

  ‘Thank you,’ I said pointedly.