Fullepub 
Chapter 17
17
Cooper’s car is messier than one would expect for someone with such a stick up his bottom. There are piles of papers and books in the back seat, empty Bic biros and water bottles scattered in the footwell. Cooper is so massive that I’m kind of squished to the side of the car, my face almost sticking out of the open window like a dog.
Cooper’s parents live in North London, and as we set off, it becomes clear that neither one of us is keen to initiate a chat. Instead, I lean forward and press the dial for the radio. It’s pre-programmed to a station called Jazz Noir because of course it is.
Cooper immediately flicks it off.
I flick it back on.
He flicks it back off.
We both reach for the button at the same time, our fingers brushing. I tut and snatch my hand back like I’ve been burned. He clears his throat.
When his hands are safely back on the steering wheel and out of the way of my hands, I press play on the old CD deck, snorting when I realise that the song that was just playing on the radio is also playing on the CD.
“Not much of an eclectic taste in music then?” I say breezily.
“Eclectic music taste is what people who don’t understand music describe themselves as having.”
“Oh, sorry, Rolling Stone magazine.”
I start rifling through a stack of CDs on a little shelf above the stereo, but Cooper blocks me with his arm.
“We have to establish some exposition.”
Jesus. Who on earth talks like that?
“My parents are Amy and Malcolm. They are very nice and very nosy. I…well, I told them that we met three weeks ago at a…” He murmurs the end of the sentence, and I don’t quite catch it.
“What was that?”
“A Charlie Parker tribute concert.”
“Sorry, say again, I couldn’t hear.”
“You heard perfectly well.”
I feel a little flicker of delight at his discomfort but remain innocent of face.
“They won’t expect us to know everything about each other because we’ve only been…dating…for a few weeks. But let’s get the basics established so that there are no major errors.”
“You go first.”
Cooper turns onto the North Circular and immediately pulls into the fast lane. I wind my window up so I can hear him properly.
“Fine,” he says. “I work from home as a computer programmer. Writing code, testing code, that sort of thing. I’m thirty-three years old. I like to listen to music, drink delicious wine, read novels, explore London and—”
“Did you copy and paste that from Guardian Soulmates?”
“How about you?” he asks, sidestepping my dig.
“I work at Meyer’s Pharmacy as an assistant and I’m twenty-seven.”
“And?”
“And…that’s it.”
“Now is not the time to be facetious. I can hardly introduce you to my parents like that—This is Delphie, who works as a pharmacy assistant, is twenty-seven, and, ah yes, has hooked up all over this town with a man named Jonah, now missing.”
I wiggle uncomfortably and dart him a dirty look for once again bringing up my unfortunate phrasing about sleeping with Jonah.
“Seriously,” he says. “Tell me something real about you.”
The truth is, there’s isn’t much more than that to offer. I don’t really have any hobbies. I’m not a hobby person. What else do I do apart from work and hang out with Mr. Yoon and watch TV? I suppose I love drawing. Well, loved, at least.
“I like art,” I tell him.
Cooper glances over with interest. “Nice. Who’s your favourite painter?”
I smile to myself. “Modigliani. For definite. He’s got such a specific point of view. All those elongated lines, all that melancholy.”
“Did you copy and paste that from the National Gallery website?”
“Did you copy and paste your comebacks from me?”
“Ha! I like Modigliani too. Woman with Red Hair is my favourite.”
“Artists and red hair. They’re obsessed.”
“I mean, I get it.” He shrugs a shoulder.
I give him a sideways glance. Is he…is he flirting with me? His eyes remain on the road, face straight. No. Of course he’s not. The very thought is absurd.
I tut and pat my own red hair self-consciously.
We disappear into our own thoughts for a while and eventually turn onto a road that looks like pure suburbia. Cooper stops the car. “Damn it. I thought we’d have a little time out here to discuss backstory, but that’s my mother at the window. Watching us.”
I look up to see a smiling woman, her face squashed between two window blinds. I’m not sure but I think she wiggles her eyebrows at us.
I’d thought, judging by Cooper’s plummy accent and general demeanour, that his parents would live in a big town house somewhere in Hampstead or Richmond. But we’re in the much less fancy Barnet, parked on a street that looks the epitome of middle class.
“Just follow my lead,” Cooper instructs, sounding slightly nervous, which makes me feel nervous. Hmm, this actually seems like a big deal to him. He really does care what people think and is now probably shitting himself that I was his only option for the ruse.
I lift my chin and decide to use this games night as practice for when I meet Jonah and hopefully, maybe one day, meet his parents. I am going to be the opposite of what everyone thinks I can be. I am going to be fucking lovely.
I’m doing a great job. I have complimented Cooper’s mum Amy’s dress, as well as the prosecco she gave me. His father, Malcolm, told me I had a handshake firm enough to rival his old friend Doug, who is legendary for his impactful handshakes. Also in attendance at the games night is Cooper’s Uncle Lester, who is a lot older than Malcolm and has already knocked back three proseccos in the fifteen minutes since we’ve arrived.
The five of us are sitting at a large rectangular table by the front window. There are a couple of bowls of crisps and a bowl of chocolate truffles, as well as a stack of board games including Operation and Pictionary. A flicker of excitement unfurls in my belly. I used to love playing Pictionary when I was a kid.
Sipping from my prosecco—being careful to go slowly because last night was more booze than I usually have in a year—I take a peek around the living room. It’s crammed wall to wall with stacks of books and newspapers, the sofa big and cosy looking, a worn pink Persian rug on the floor. I like it.
“You’re not Cooper’s usual type!” Amy remarks, nudging the bowl of crisps over to me. I take one and nibble it delicately around the edge, which makes it crack into two pieces, one of which drops onto the table. I quickly pick up the broken piece and shove it into my mouth. “Beautiful, of course. They’re always beautiful, but yeah, his other girlfriends were all very different to you.”
“What’s his usual type?”
“Well, there hasn’t been anyone in rather a while but when there was, they were one after the other and they all looked the same.”
Cooper rolls his eyes and his dad chuckles.
“How was it that Em used to describe them?” his dad asks.
Amy laughs. “Like a rotation of Wednesday Addamses walking for Chanel.”
I laugh and think of the dark-haired woman in Cooper’s doorway. The description fits. “Who’s Em?”
Amy’s face crumples. She gives Cooper a wounded glance. “You haven’t told Delphie about Em?”
Cooper’s nostrils flare. He drains his glass of water as if it’s the prosecco he was offered but turned down on account of driving. “It’s fine,” I say to the table. “You absolutely don’t need to tell me anything! I’ve only known Cooper a few weeks after all.”
“Em is Cooper’s twin sister,” Malcolm says softly. “Was. She passed away in 2018.”
My heart sinks for Cooper. For all of them. “It sounds like she had a great sense of humour.”
“Oh, she did. She was absolutely crackers.” Amy’s eyes water slightly. “Smart as all heck too. Top of her class in grammar school just like her brother and then a full scholarship to Trinity College. This one here went to Oxford.” She thumbs at Cooper.
“As I’m sure he mentioned within two seconds of meeting you,” Lester adds.
“When I say I was a proud mother…” Amy raises her voice to drown out Lester.
Cooper went to grammar school and Oxford? That explains the blue-blooded tones of a man whose family is pure North London.
“I’m sorry you lost her,” I say directly to Cooper.
I’ve lost a few people over the years, but never anyone to death. I can’t begin to imagine how painful that would be.
“Thick as thieves, they were,” Malcom sighs, putting a hand on his son’s arm. “Em and Cooper, Cooper and Em.”
Cooper clears his throat, gently moving his arm away from Malcolm’s touch. “Let’s not talk about Em,” he says brightly. “We’re here for you to meet Delphie.”
“Of course, you’re right, love. Delphie. Tell us all about you!” Amy rubs my shoulder. I flinch because I’m not used to people touching me. But flinching looks bonkers, so I style it out with a little shimmy.
Cooper’s eyes widen. He’s clearly nervous about me taking centre stage.
Screw him. I can be delightful. I set my jaw.
“I work at a pharmacy in West London. I love running in Kensington Gardens. I’m part of a club there in fact. I also like…” What else do delightful women do? I get a vision of period dramas in which all the women are trained to be cultured and well-rounded. It’s a stupid, outdated reference, but it’s all my mind can glom on to in the moment. “I read poetry and, um, often partake in…crochet?”
“You don’t sound so sure about that,” Lester grunts, his words already melting into one another.
Malcolm, though, seems delighted with my answer and leans forward, his chin in his hands.
“I adore poetry. Lester read Byron’s ‘She Walks in Beauty’ at mine and Amy’s wedding. Oh, do recite us something, won’t you, Delphie?”
Ah shit. Why did I say poetry? I know no poems. None. I’m going to be immediately outed as a fraud. Cooper was right to worry about me.
He clears his throat. “Ah, let’s not put Delphie on the spot!” he says faux cheerily.
“Delphie doesn’t mind!” Amy says, patting me again. “I too would love to hear a poem. It’s so romantic. A poetry reading in our living room!”
I can’t feel my face. I slurp down the rest of my prosecco and then in a state of acute panic stand up onto suddenly trembling legs. I take a deep breath.
A poem. A poem…Think of something that rhymes at least, for fuck’s sake, Delphie.
“Lo, back up now and give a woman room. The fuse is…alit and I’m about to go boom.”
I have started. I have started this way and now I cannot stop.
“Mercy, mercy, oh mercy me, my whole life feels like a cage. Yet onstage…I am free.”
I hear a snort. Cooper’s eyes are wide, and he’s covering his mouth, though I can see that his shoulders are shaking. His parents and Lester throw him a curious look, but don’t seem to have realised that I am on the spot adapting “Boom! Shake the Room” so that it sounds less like a bop and more poet-y.
When I’m done, they give a slightly bewildered round of applause. Cooper joins in. He’s managed to stop laughing, but his face is still a little flushed from it, his eyes glittering in a way I haven’t seen since the first few weeks he lived in the building.
“How interesting,” Amy says. “That’s a new one to me.”
“Who’s the poet?”
“I believe he’s called William Smith,” Cooper answers, expression serious. “A modern poet with a very important oeuvre of work. ‘Wild Wild West’ is a favourite of mine.”
“Gosh,” Malcom says. “Thank you for introducing him to us, Delphie.”
“Most of Cooper’s old girlfriends wouldn’t know Keats if he bit them on the behind.”
I laugh heartily, also not knowing anything about Keats.
“I didn’t come here to get bloody read to.” Uncle Lester pours himself another glass from the bottle. “Let’s play, damn it.”
“You can choose the game, Delphie,” Cooper says, to which his mum awws as if he just offered me a kidney.
I nod and look up and down the pile, eventually pointing at my selection. “I choose Pictionary.”
It might have been many years since I last played Pictionary, but I’m as competitive about it as I ever was. Amy has set up an easel in the middle of the room and, of course, I’ve been paired with Cooper, who, as it happens, is shite at Pictionary. We’re getting annihilated by Amy, Lester, and Malcom. It doesn’t help that Cooper’s sketches are thoughtless, the lines lax and unfocused.
When it’s my turn to draw, Cooper gets so frustrated that his voice pitches an octave deeper—an unsuccessful attempt to conceal the frustration.
“You’re shading? You’re shading right now, Delphie? The clock is ticking.”
“The reason I haven’t correctly guessed your drawings, Cooper, is because your drawings lack basic information,” I reply through gritted teeth. If he is managing to keep his shit together, then I will not be the one who gets visibly angry.
“It’s Pictionary, Delphie. We don’t need bloody chiaroscuro. Just draw what it says on the card.”
“I am drawing what it says on the card, Cooper.” I speed up my rendering of a surprise party because we only have fifteen seconds left.
“Come on, come on!” Cooper stands up from the sofa, the top of his curls almost touching the ceiling.
“Please refrain from speaking unless you have a reasonable guess, Cooper.”
“Well, clearly the sex is dynamite,” a now-sozzled Lester says, grinning from ear to ear. The rest of us studiously ignore him.
I finish my final flourish—the object of the surprise party, her mouth open in a scream. “There. Come on! Surely you can see…”
“Oh…oh! It’s a surprise—surprise party!” Cooper yells, hands on his knees.
“Yes!” I squeal, fist pumping the air.
Cooper crosses the room and pulls me into a celebratory hug. I immediately stiffen. Not overtly but enough for him to realise. He immediately steps back. He doesn’t say sorry, because that would look totally weird in front of his family, but he gives me a small apologetic shrug.
“Don’t know why you’re getting excited,” Lester says. “You still lost.”
“Thanks, Uncle Lester.”
“Congratulations to you all,” I say with a little bow. “You were worthy winners. Good game.”
“I rather think we are the winners for having met you tonight!” Amy says, also pulling me into a hug. This time I’m prepared and don’t flail on her. I sort of melt into the hug, the soft cottony smell of her blouse sending a soothing, comforting sensation swimming right through me. She pats the back of my head softly. To my mortification, my eyes fill with tears. Great. I don’t cry in over ten years and now twice in the same day?
Amy leans back and beams at me, her hands on my shoulders. “You look after him, won’t you. He could do with a little happiness.”
“Mother,” Cooper barks. “Christ. Delphie and I…It’s been three weeks.”
Amy shrugs. “I just…It’s nice to see you smiling is all.”
“He so rarely smiles.” I nod, stealthily dabbing a tear from my eye before it falls.
Cooper is stony faced. He runs his hand through his curls and looks at his wristwatch. “Perhaps time for us to go.”
“And it’s such a lovely smile,” Amy continues as if Cooper hasn’t spoken. “Go on, Coop. Show us all that lovely smile.”
“Yeah, come on, son,” Malcolm adds. “Show your mum that killer smile. It’ll sustain her for a week, and then I won’t have to hear her go on about how you never smile anymore.”
Amy turns back to Cooper, a hopeful, slightly desperate look on her face.
Cooper closes his eyes briefly, like he would rather be anywhere else right now. I think of how he told me to fuck off that cold morning when I asked him to turn down his music. “Yeah, Cooper. Show us those beautiful white teeth.” I lean in to Malcolm. “His teeth are my favourite thing about him.”
“Really?” Malcolm snorts. “His teeth?”
I nod. “They’re so straight. It’s mesmerising.”
“Years of orthodontics,” Amy says. “I took him to all his appointments.”
“Fine!” Cooper growls. He produces a massively over-the-top smile, like Wallace out of Wallace and Gromit. He holds the smile for a second before his face drops back into its usual sternness, although his eyes have softened slightly.
“It’s a start, I suppose,” Amy chuckles as she walks us to the door. “It was lovely to meet you, Delphie.”
“I’ve loved meeting you too,” I say, a flood of confusion swishing up my insides as I realise that I’m not just being polite. I’m telling the truth.
On the way home, I think of Mum and text her to let her know that I’m going to a life-drawing class tomorrow. Not that I intend to do any drawing when I’m there, but seeing Amy with Cooper made me remember how much Mum and I used to like drawing together. When we get back to Westbourne Hyde Road, Cooper opens the car door for me.
“Thanks,” I say. “Your key or mine…?”
I trail off as Cooper slides his own key out of his jeans pocket and slots it into the lock.
He strides across the hallway towards his apartment, turning to me when he’s at the door. “Thank you for your help this evening.” His eyes soften a little. “I enjoyed it more than expected. And it should call off the Veronica setup for the foreseeable.”
I shrug a shoulder. “It was fine. Your parents are nice.”
He makes no move to open his door.
I step forward. “I…I was sorry to hear about your sister…” I say.
He swallows and unlocks his door. “Let’s not, eh? I assume we’re even now, Delphie. I did you a favour, you did me one. Quid pro quo.”
His demeanour cools the temperature of the lobby by at least a degree.
“All squared up,” I say brightly.
“I hope things go well with Jonah.”
“I hope things go well with…your delicious fine wine,” I finish in the absence of a smarter response. “See you around, Cooper.”
He doesn’t answer. Just dips into his flat and closes the door respectfully quietly behind him.
