Ham and Cheese, Part One

Ham and Cheese, Part One

C RISPIN

E DMUND

J ULIAN

Wilkerson III has had everything handed to him. The best school, the best after-school fencing club, the best university, which he sleepwalked into, because how could he not get top grades with a class size of twelve and a weekend French tutor with the biggest boobs he’d ever seen in real life? The best graduate internships with his dad’s friends in their plush London-based companies, with their fridges full of free Diet Coke and top-quality pastries. But this job, lead copywriter

at the Little Fly agency, he got on his own. Applied in secret, interviewed while his father was skiing in Val d’Isère, and he got it. By himself. Mostly because he made Rav, the company director, snort water out of his nose during the interview from laughing.

When his father found out, once he had got over the shock of his son wanting to work in Birmingham, of all places

, and not in Town

, and with some unknown creative director who went to a polytechnic

, and not with his father’s hunting buddy Wifty Jenkins over at Jenkins and Harrow Ltd, he insisted he gift his son a wardrobe of the best-tailored

suits made bespoke on Savile Row. If his son was going to be in Birmingham

, he could at least look nice.

And you would think that all of those things, all that privilege and private education, would make Ham and Cheese an unbearable dickhead. But Chris (he added the ‘h’ at university so people would presume his name was Christopher) is just a good egg. At least, that’s what the barman at his terrible local pub would say after Chris paid for the pub’s stray cat to have surgery when it was hit by a taxi. The friends he stayed in touch with from uni weren’t the legacies and the exhaustingly ambitious middle-class children, they were the ones who worked in the library coffee shop and would hang out with him when he was up late studying because there weren’t any big-breasted French tutors to help him out and he was finding he actually had to put effort into learning at university. His football-club friends would say that he’s a terrible goalie, a top laugh and always shares his cigarettes. His theatre friends would say he’s a fast improviser who ‘yes-ands’ with affection but can’t do accents to save his life. His flatmate, Terrence, has no complaints, given that Chris always empties the dishwasher, hoovers once a week, comes to every ballet Terrence has ever costumed, made rainbow jelly shots for Pride and didn’t mind when Terrence’s boyfriend threw up rainbow vomit all over their cream living-room carpet, almost definitely losing them their deposit.

The thing about Chris is he just likes people. The weirder the better. People who have a little jaunt to them, who don’t do things the way they should. After a lifetime of pin-sharp ironed uniforms and matching Mercedes cars at school

pick-up, all he craves is difference. It’s why he got into a creative industry, because that’s where all the best weirdos are. He was supposed to go into steel or law or finance, something impossibly boring, but the thought of all those dull men conversing at the weekend about the cricket and the strength of the euro made Chris want to pull his hair out. And his hair is glorious. He started growing it when he moved to Birmingham, and now he has enough to scoop into a pretty generous bun. His father isn’t keen. But his father has also been bald for forty years, so Chris suspects his opinion is tinged with envy.

Chris’s Obsessive Compulsive Disorder doesn’t run his life like it used to. His therapist has said he’s doing really well. His rituals used to prevent him from leaving the house before they were complete. Now, he has got it down to one. And nobody apart from the girl who works in Sainsbury’s seems to have noticed. It was his second day of working at Little Fly, and Chris came in on the train to the misleadingly named Snow Hill (there are no hills and very little snow come winter) and ran to Sainsbury’s to grab lunch. He was pitching for the following year’s Christmas adverts for a candle company, and he got it. Brought in over ￡3 million for the agency and was swiftly taken out for shots by the whole team. The next day, he nipped back into Sainsbury’s again, bought some other combination of lunch things and ballsed up his computer, spilled coffee on his colleague’s dress and got locked in the toilets. Clearly there was something about the combination of ham and cheese and salt and vinegar and orange and mango that was just lucky for him. Or, rather, not unlucky

. It is primarily about the prevention of bad things.

The girl in Sainsbury’s has started smiling every time he comes to the till with his specific combination. Perhaps she thinks it’s just a quirk, a foible. Perhaps she sees his OCD for what it is. But still, she smiles at him. She spoke to him on the street the other day, told him to enjoy his ham and cheese. He was midway through reading an email about an ex-client who was suing the agency, and there she was, brightening his day.

He’s seen her eating lunch in Pigeon Park with the incredibly old man who wears bow ties and has recently been evolving his look and is now a bit of a style icon. A senior fashionista. Chris thought the old man was her grandad at first, but now he is not sure. Sainsbury’s Girl dresses like it’s 2005 and the emo style never went out of fashion. It looks terrible under her uniform. A commitment to the cause that Chris appreciates. This morning, he has nipped to the big Tesco for Rav’s birthday cake, and there they are, Sainsbury’s Girl and the old man with the bow ties, sitting on a bench together in the sunshine.

Just seeing her makes him smile.