Page 28 of The Spark

He had military focus. We didn’t go out much. He’d take his laptop to bed, then get up early to flip through library books on land law, and health and safety, and building regulations. He said working hard was how his brother Harry had got to where he was, and how his dad had made his fortune. He carried around notes on topics far beyond my sphere of curiosity, like ideological positions in architecture, and the impact of green buildings on sustainable development. I’d watch him sketching plans of every kind of structure from cinemas to cricket pavilions as he drank his morning coffee. I knew he was driven primarily by ambition – he wanted to have his name on something iconic, to be known for a famous building. Something world-class, he told me, like a concert hall, or a museum, or a city skyline landmark. He always said he wanted to be the next Norman Foster. ‘I’m going to design the next Gherkin,’ he would say. And I didn’t doubt for a moment that one day, he would.

I envied his drive, sometimes. I was still toying with the idea of working in interior design, so had been paying more attention to the relevant parts of my course, like workshops on how to use CAD, and the employer engagement project briefing us to produce six different designs of curtain. I started buying interiors magazines, and creating scrapbooks and mood boards of rooms that inspired me. I followed interior designers on Instagram. I let the thought of it percolate. I went to bed dreaming of warehouse conversions, and the apartment Jamie and I were going to live in one day.

The arrangement for the gig was that Jamie would go to London a night early, to catch up with his parents and attend some architectural function with his dad. He would meet me off the train at Liverpool Street the next day.

Jamie had visited London a handful of times that year, to see his parents. I’d gone with him twice. His dad had ended up renting out the Soho flat, so when we visited, we stayed with them in Putney.

From the outside, the Putney house was Edwardian period perfection: red brick, with a wooden-framed porch and mock-Tudor cladding and timbers on the front apex. But inside, it felt like exposure therapy for migraine sufferers. It had been stripped of any residual character – whether by Jamie’s parents or the previous owners, I wasn’t sure and couldn’t ask – resulting in a mish-mash of laminate flooring, a series of increasingly bizarre lampshades, fireplaces painted in garish colours and a jumble of furniture spanning several architectural periods. The only bit I liked was the garden – long and wild and unkempt, it was somewhere I felt I could sneak away to, and there were always a couple of deckchairs handily propped up near the shed at the bottom, well out of view of the house.

Less than an hour before I was due to catch my train to London for the gig, Jamie reappeared without warning back at Edinburgh Road.

Lara and I were lying on my bed, looking over some screen-printed cushion covers I’d made earlier in the week. We were trying to decide if the pattern on them more closely resembled amoebae, or neurons. My tutors always seemed to want us to come up with profound interpretations of the stuff we created.

‘Amoebae can eat your brain,’ Lara was saying, reading from her laptop. ‘Better call them neurons.’

It was then that Jamie appeared in the doorway, hands in pockets, making us both jump.

After a second or two, Lara said, ‘Well, that Pukka Pie isn’t going to microwave itself,’ before vanishing, heading downstairs to the kitchen.

‘What’s wrong?’ I said, scrambling into a sitting position. ‘What are you doing here? Are you okay?’

He slung down his bag. ‘The gig’s off. I can’t do it. I’m sorry.’

‘What? Why?’ We’d been looking forward to this for months, ever since Christmas.

‘Had a massive row with my dad.’

‘About what?’

He shook his head and came to sit down next to me. Then he let out a breath so long and heavy I wondered if he’d been holding it in for hours. He pushed the hair back from his face. It had grown longer since we’d been at uni, and I knew it annoyed his dad (which was possibly why I liked it so much).

‘He’s still on about the flat, in Soho. He wants me to move there in September, and finish my degree in London.’ He drew a hand down his face, seemingly exhausted. ‘He’s obsessed, honestly. Anyway, I told him where to shove it. Which didn’t go down well. He even ended up getting Harry on the phone, to try to “talk sense” into me.’

My heart stung with the knowledge that Jamie’s dad had effectively asked him to dump me and move to London alone.

Jamie took my hand. ‘He’s just... worried about us committing too soon. You know.’

I swallowed. ‘Jamie. Is there any part of you... that agrees with your dad? Because if there is, I don’t want to be the one who—’

‘Not a single, tiny part, okay?’ He took my face between his palms and kissed me. ‘His dreams... they’re not my dreams. I’m happy, why can’t he see that?’

‘Maybe he can. Maybe that’s what frightens him.’

He pulled away slightly. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, if you’re happy, and content, you don’t need him any more, do you? And maybe that scares him.’ I didn’t add that I thought his dad was egotistical in the extreme, that he lived for constant capitulation to his views.

We sat there for a few moments, not speaking, just holding hands. Then Jamie got up, and said, ‘Wait there.’

He left the room, and I heard him jog downstairs.

I drew my knees into my chest. Secretly, I’d always hoped that one day, Jamie’s parents would warm to me. That eventually, I might become part of his family. A family who never forgot birthdays, who celebrated Christmases together. Who could name each other’s favourite TV shows and music and preferred flavour of ice cream.

I knew Jamie’s brother Harry had a girlfriend in Zurich. But I had no idea whether it had been an uphill battle for her too, with his family, at the start. Whether it still was.

After a few minutes, Jamie returned. He was holding Lara’s plastic beer cups from last year’s Glastonbury, each one filled to the brim.

Passing me a cup, Jamie extended a hand. ‘I guess we’re just going to have our own private gig right here.’

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