As she’s walking back to her flat her mobile buzzes in the pocket of her biker jacket. The number is unknown but she answers it anyway, expecting it to be a call centre, so she’s surprised when the man on the other end introduces himself to her as Peter Freeman. He begins to explain who he is but she cuts him off: ‘I know who you are.’
He asks her if she’d meet him tonight for a drink as he’s driving back to London later. Her heart sinks at the prospect of having to make the journey back into the centre of town, but she can’t let this opportunity pass.
He must sense her hesitation because he adds, ‘Or I can see you somewhere near where you live? I’m happy to meet anywhere.’
She suggests her local pub, which is just down the road from her flat and very old-fashioned, usually only frequented by the over-sixties who have been going there for the past thirty years, but it will save her feet. He says he’ll see her in an hour.
Courtney lets herself into the flat. Kris has been living with her since January and already the flat smells like him. Una’s once rose-scented bedroom is now filled with his drum kit, old vinyl records, an amp, stereos and other paraphernalia. Her bathroom cabinet is crammed with his aftershaves, razors, toothpicks, hair gels and mouthwash. It was only supposed to be a temporary thing because she knew, by September, she’d be off with Una, travelling the globe. And now she feels trapped. She doesn’t want to see the world by herself, but she certainly doesn’t want to go with Kris. She sighs. The problem is her parents. They have such a great marriage – the love they have for each other is still as solid today as it was when she was a kid. They make each other laugh all the time. When she goes home to visit them it’s not unusual to see her mum doubled up with laughter in the kitchen and her dad with a smile on his face, happy that he can still amuse his wife. He often embraces her mum when she least expects it and plants a kiss on her neck. After growing up around such love, Courtney knows she’ll never settle for anything less.
Kris is sprawled on the ugly brown sofa, his legs hanging over the arm, watching TV, his head resting on the bulldog cushion she and Una had picked out at Ikea when they first moved in. She wants to yank it from under his greasy hair. He has a large rip in the knee of his jeans, exposing his hairy legs. Kris doesn’t have a job. He spends his time either gigging or ‘working on new material’。 It’s a constant cause of irritation to her, especially after a day like today. He pays half the rent with the money he makes from his gigs so she can’t complain. She feels like his mother sometimes, especially when she hears herself nagging him to be tidier, or when she’s picking up his dirty pants from the bedroom floor and throwing them into the laundry bin, which he always ignores.
‘All right, babe?’ he says, without looking up from the game show he’s watching. ‘What shall we do for tea tonight?’ Which means, ‘What are you going to cook?’
‘I thought you had a gig.’
‘Nah. That’s tomorrow.’
Her heart falls. ‘Oh, right. Well, I’m out tonight. I was going to grab some chips at the pub.’
He looks up at her then, disappointment written all over his face. He’s pretty, she’ll give him that, his large blue eyes fringed with dark lashes, which are, quite frankly, wasted on a man. And he makes her laugh, when he’s in the right mood. At first they’d been all over each other but now, even though they’ve been together less than a year, they seem to have fallen into a comfortable, slightly boring routine. She knows it isn’t love. It’s laziness. Neither of them can be bothered to go out and meet someone else. She only let him move in because she’d needed a flatmate when Una got the live-in carer job.
‘Oh. Who with?’
‘Peter.’
He swings his legs around and sits up straighter. ‘Peter? Peter who?’
She explains who he is as she shrugs off her jacket and kicks off the uncomfortable pumps that pinch her toes. They’re part of the salon uniform and she hates them.
‘Can’t I come too? He could be a weirdo. How do you know he didn’t meet Una that night and cave her head in?’
She blanches at Kris’s insensitivity. ‘For fuck’s sake.’
His eyes widen. ‘What? I’m just saying. He could be a murderer.’
‘You said you thought Una fell and banged her head.’
He stands up and goes to where she’s hovering by the kitchen sink. He takes her hand. ‘We don’t know anything for certain.’ She knows he doesn’t believe a word of it and just wants to accompany her to the pub to check out Peter for himself, to see if he’s a threat. She can’t be bothered to argue. She’s done in.