I worried about what it would be like, coming back to the flat tonight, but it’s fine: the unreliable sense of well-being I’ve had since this morning is still with me. And, anyway, it won’t always be like this, with all her things around. She’ll clear it out soon, and the Marie Celestial air about the place—the half-read Julian Barnes paperback on the bedside table and the knickers in the dirty clothes basket—will vanish. (Women’s knickers were a terrible disappointment to me when I embarked on my cohabiting career. I never really recovered from the shock of discovering that women do what we do: they save their best pairs for the nights when they know they are going to sleep with somebody. When you live with a woman, these faded, shrunken tatty M&S scraps suddenly appear on radiators all over the house; your lascivious schoolboy dreams of adulthood as a time when you are surrounded by exotic lingerie for ever and ever amen … those dreams crumble to dust.)

I clear away the evidence of last night’s traumas—the spare duvet on the sofa, the balled-up paper hankies, the coffee mugs with dog-ends floating in the cold, oily-looking dregs, and then I put the Beatles on, and then when I’ve listened to Abbey Road and the first few tracks of Revolver, I open the bottle of white wine that Laura brought home last week, sit down and watch the Brookside omnibus that I taped.

In the same way that nuns end up having their periods at the same time, Laura’s mum and my mum have mysteriously ended up synchronizing their weekly phone calls. Mine rings first.

“Hello, love, it’s me.”

“Hi.”

“Everything all right?”

“Not bad.”

“What sort of week have you had?”

“Oh, you know.”

“How’s the shop doing?”

“So-so. Up and down.” Up and down would be great. Up and down would imply that some days are better than others, that customers came and went. This has not been the case, frankly.

“Your dad and I are very worried about this recession.”

“Yeah. You said.”

“You’re lucky Laura’s doing so well. If it wasn’t for her, I don’t think either of us would ever get off to sleep.”

She’s gone, Mum. She’s thrown me to the wolves. The bitch has fucked off and left me … Nope. Can’t do it. This does not seem to be the right time for bad news.

“Heaven knows she’s got enough on her plate without having to worry about a shop full of bloomin’ old pop records … ”

How can one describe the way people born before 1940 say the word ‘pop’? I have been listening to my parents’ sneering one-syllable explosion—heads forward, idiotic look on their faces (because pop fans are idiots) for the time it takes them to spit the word out—for well over two decades.

“ … I’m surprised she doesn’t make you sell up and get a proper job. It’s a wonder she’s hung on as long as she has. I would have left you to get on with it years ago.”

Hold on, Rob. Don’t let her get to you. Don’t rise to the bait. Don’t … ah, fuck it.

“Well, she has left me to get on with it now, so that should cheer you up.”

“Where’s she gone?”

“I don’t bloody know. Just … gone. Moved out. Disappeared.”

There is a long, long silence. The silence is so long, in fact, that I can watch the whole of a row between Jimmy and Jackie Corkhill without hearing so much as a long-suffering sigh down the receiver.

“Hullo? Anybody there?”

And now I can hear something—the sound of my mother crying softly. What is it with mothers? What’s happening here? As an adult, you know that as life goes on, you’re going to spend more and more time looking after the person who started out looking after you, that’s par for the course; but my mum and I swapped roles when I was about nine. Anything bad that has happened to me in the last couple of decades—detentions, bad exam marks, getting thumped, getting bunged from college, splitting up with girlfriends—has ended up like this, with Mum visibly or audibly upset. It would have been better for both of us if I had moved to Australia when I was fifteen, phoned home once a week and reported a sequence of fictitious major triumphs. Most fifteen-year-olds would find it tough, living on their own, on the other side of the world, with no money and no friends and no family and no job and no qualifications, but not me. It would have been a piece of piss compared to listening to this stuff week after week.

It’s … well, it’s not fair. ’Snot fair. It’s never been fair. Since I left home, all she’s done is moan, worry, and send cuttings from the local newspaper describing the minor successes of old school friends. Is that good parenting? Not in my book. I want sympathy, understanding, advice, and money, and not necessarily in that order, but these are alien concepts in Canning Close.

“I’m all right, if that’s what’s upsetting you.”

I know that’s not what’s upsetting her.

“You know that’s not what’s upsetting me.”

“Well, it bloody well should be, shouldn’t it? Shouldn’t it? Mum, I’ve just been dumped. I’m not feeling so good.” And not so bad, either—the Beatles, half a bottle of Chardonnay, and Brookside have all done their stuff—but I’m not telling her that. “I can’t deal with me, let alone you.”

“I knew this would happen.”

“Well, if you knew it would happen, what are you so cut up about?”

“What are you going to do, Rob?”

“I’m going to drink the rest of a bottle of wine in front of the box. Then I’m going to bed. Then I’ll get up and go to work.”

“And after that?”

“Meet a nice girl, and have children.”

This is the right answer.

“If only it was that easy.”

“It is, I promise. Next time I speak to you, I’ll have it sorted.”

She’s almost smiling. I can hear it. I’m beginning to see some light at the end of the long, dark telephonic tunnel.

“But what did Laura say? Do you know why she’s gone?”

“Not really.”

“Well, I do.”

This is momentarily alarming until I understand what she’s on about.

“It’s nothing to do with marriage, Mum, if that’s what you mean.”

“So you say. I’d like to hear her side of it.”

Cool it. Don’t let her … Don’t rise … ah, fuck it.

“Mum, how many more times, for Christ’s sake? Laura didn’t want to get married. She’s not that sort of girl. To coin a phrase. That’s not what happens now.”

“I don’t know what does happen now. Apart from you meet someone, you move in together, she goes. You meet someone, you move in together, she goes.”

Fair point, I guess.

“Shut up, Mum.”

Mrs. Lydon rings a few minutes later.

“Hello, Rob. It’s Janet.”

“Hello, Mrs. L.”

“How are you?”

“Fine. You?”

“Fine, thanks.”

“And Ken?”

Laura’s dad isn’t too clever—he has angina, and had to retire from work early.

“Not too bad. Up and down. You know. Is Laura there?”

Interesting. She hasn’t phoned home. Some indication of guilt, maybe?

“She’s not, I’m afraid. She’s round at Liz’s. Shall I get her to give you a ring?”

“If she’s not too late back.”

“No problem.”

And that’s the last time we will ever speak, probably. “No problem”: the last words I ever say to somebody I have been reasonably close to before our lives take different directions. Weird, eh? You spend Christmas at somebody’s house, you worry about their operations, you give them hugs and kisses and flowers, you see them in their dressing gown … and then, bang, that’s it. Gone forever. And sooner or later there will be another mum, another Christmas, more varicose veins. They’re all the same. Only the addresses, and the colors of the dressing gown, change.