Turning Thirty by Mike Gayle Page A

terrible.’
    She smiled softly. ‘Don’t worry. It’s been eighteen months now. The worst of it’s over.’
    â€˜Your mum, she was a really nice woman,’ I said. And I meant it. Ginny’s mum was the kind of parent you could always talk to without the conversation sounding fake. ‘She’d always offer to make us beans on toast whenever we were round there, whatever time of day it was.’
    Ginny smiled. ‘Yeah, Mum was good like that.’
    â€˜Was it sudden?’
    â€˜Not really. It was cancer. She’d been ill for quite a while, in and out of hospital all the time, and then when the doctors said it was serious I packed in my job and came back from Brighton to look after her. Because it’s always just been her and me when she died I inherited the house. I thought briefly about selling it and moving on but then I thought, why not stay? So I did just that. I don’t think I could have sold the house anyway . . . too many memories.’
    â€˜I really don’t know what to say, I’m so sorry.’
    â€˜These things happen,’ she said, and she gave a little shrug accompanied by an awkward half-smile, and somehow we ended up in another short embrace during which neither of us spoke.
    â€˜So, how are you?’ I asked, when we were just standing and staring again.
    â€˜I think we might have been here before, Matt,’ she said, arching her left eyebrow sardonically. ‘I’m fine now, honest. Really good.’ Her eyes flitted briefly across the room to the door. ‘You know how it is. You have your ups and downs but today’s an up day.’ She smiled. ‘Anyway, what do you do in New York, you flash git?’
    â€˜I work in computers.’
    â€˜What? Building them? Using them? Wearing them on your head? You always were hopeless with details.’
    â€˜It’s really boring,’ I said, wanting to get off the subject. ‘I promise you.’
    â€˜Try me.’
    â€˜I design software for banking systems. Very tedious.’
    â€˜But essential all the same,’ she said agreeably. ‘Without people like you I’m sure my wages would take much longer to arrive in my bank account. Obviously that would probably mean I wouldn’t spend it quite as quickly as I do. But I think, generally speaking, you’re probably more an asset to my life than a hindrance.’
    â€˜How about yourself?’ I asked quickly. ‘What are you up to?’
    â€˜I teach art.’
    â€˜An art teacher? Respect due. Art teachers are the coolest type to be – floating about with their easels, generally being groovy, encouraging thirteen-year-olds to reach their inner muse.’
    She laughed.
    â€˜Where do you teach?’ I asked.
    â€˜Have a guess.’
    â€˜Not King’s Heath Comp?’
    â€˜The very same.’
    â€˜How weird is that?’
    â€˜Very. On my first day there I walked into the staffroom and immediately felt like a fraud. Right there, slap bang in front of me, were Mr Collins, Mr Haynes, Mrs Perkins and Mr Thorne.’
    â€˜Don’t tell me,’ I said laughing. ‘Let me see – Mr Collins, geography, Mr Haynes, physics, Mrs Perkins, maths, and Mr Thorne, English?’
    â€˜Nearly,’ she said laughing. ‘Mr Haynes teaches history.’
    â€˜They must be nearly a million years old now because they were half a million when we were there.’
    â€˜I know,’ she said, ‘and now I’m one of them.’
    We halted the conversation to allow me to get the drinks for which Gershwin and his friends must have been desperate by now. It was also at this moment that it occurred to me that Ginny was still waiting for her friend. I wasn’t going to ask her if this friend was a man because it would’ve been too obvious. But Ginny was apparently as curious about me as I was about her because as the barman began my order she asked me