Page 40 of Beautiful Losers

I casually examine my nails, attempting to play it nonchalant.

‘Chloe?’ says Leonard. ‘That’s Sabrina’s niece. She’s here with her son, Theo. Had a bad split from his dad, I believe. They’re staying with Sabrina for a while until they’re back on their feet.’

I want to know more, but I’m not sure how much I can ask without giving the game away. I like Leonard. There’s no judgement with him. He seems entirely at ease in his well-worn skin. Not a hint of ego or entitlement. This, in my experience, is a rare thing in a white man over forty. That said, I don’t trust him not to try and play matchmaker if he gets a whiff of my being into Jack. I’m not sure what’s going on with me. I feel like Jack is messing with my head. Drawing pictures with Ari, offering to cook the other night. The nice guy routine is almost convincing. The thing is, IknowJack Hamilton. He’s the man who wore leather trousers to work for a week in protest against a British burger chain launching a vegan steak. My recent attraction to him is clearly the result of some kind of hormonal meltdown, my vagina’s last gasp for relevance as it inches towards decrepitude.

‘Hey, look,’ Leonard whispers, nudging me with his elbow.

He tilts his chin at an ant crawling across the armrest of the bench, a considerable-sized crumb of bread on its back.

‘Did you know an ant can carry fifty times its own body weight? They can transport even bigger objects when they work together. Isn’t it amazing what something that small can achieve?’

I smile.

‘What?’ Leonard says.

‘Nothing. I enjoy your company is all. You don’t see much of what you’ve got these days.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Being happy with your lot. Trying to do right by others. Generally not being an arsehole.’

‘Ah there’s plenty of it around. You just need to seek it out.’

‘Well, I’d love to know where you find it. Do you ever feel like the world has gone off its hinges? There’s no good news anymore. You know that little girl who fell down the well? She died. All those people and they couldn’t save her. She was down there on her own for five days. She must have been so scared. I don’t know. It feels like humanity’s been on a losing streak forever and I can’t see things getting any better.’

Leonard rests his arm on the back of the bench and looks at me attentively.

‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I’m not sure if I’m talking about the world or myself.’

He stretches his feet out in front of him, crossing his ankles.

‘My man, Leonard Cohen, he wrote a couple of novels. Did you know that? I wouldn’t recommend reading them. He was a genius, but the novel wasn’t his form. Anyway, his second book, I can’t remember what it was about – it wasa commercial flop. It was the title that got me.Beautiful Losers. It resonated, you know? Seemed to me to sum up the human experience. We’re all losers when you think about it. We lose all the time. Jobs, lovers, status …’

‘Waistlines. Hairlines,’ I quip.

‘Why do you think I wear this baby all the time,’ he says, lifting his trilby to reveal a thinning grey crown. ‘We’re losing the natural world and the fight against climate change. We lose the people we love. Sooner or later, we lose this game called life. And all of these losses, don’t get me wrong, they’re a sucker punch to the chest. But then you have to decide – what kind of loser am I gonna be? That’s where it gets interesting.

‘It’s a goddam tragedy what happened to that kid, but you know what I took from that story? All those people coming together, working around the clock to save her, knowing their efforts would most likely end in failure. I thought, man, isn’t it a beautiful thing, the love we’re capable of showing when we’re not trying to tear everything apart.’

I want to say it’s a lovey sentiment. To tell Leonard I felt the same once. That I looked at the world and saw what he saw. That I want so badly to feel that hope again.

‘But if you can’t change anything for the better, why bother?’ I say. ‘What’s the point in being a beautiful loser?’

Leonard furrows his salt-and-pepper brows and turns to face me.

‘Look, I lived in Arizona for a while. One summer, there was a drought. Real bad. All the lakes dried right up, there were fires everywhere. It was a shit show. The authorities imposed a hosepipe ban. Now, you had these assholes who didn’t observe it. You’d drive past their lawns and they were green aspop rocks candy. And you know, I’m there turning off the tap when I’m brushing my teeth, thinking what’s the point? Me turning off the tap doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to the drought, not when you’ve neighbours who won’t play their part. And then it hit me. It didn’t matter if it made a difference or not. There was only one question I needed to ask myself. Did I want to be the kind of person who cares about their community or did I not want to be that person? Easy decision. I turned the water off.

‘You gonna lose, kid. Many times. There’s no surer thing in the world. The best thing you can do is to ask yourself what kind of person you want to be and figure out what matters most to you. Then fight like hell for it. Are you gonna save the world? Probably not. Can you help me make this garden beautiful, help some local wildlife to thrive? Yes, you can. Now, are we doing this or what?’

Leonard screws the lid back on the flask and makes to stand. I put my hand on his arm.

‘In a minute,’ I say. ‘Let’s watch the sunrise a bit longer.’

24

The Kellaways arrive shortly after midday. Mrs Kellaway asks to be shown to their rooms, ignoring the email in which I told her check-in was from 3 p.m.

‘But we’ve been travelling since yesterday. The girls areexhausted,’ she says, elongating the middle vowels of ‘exhausted’ for emphasis. She indicates her teenage daughters, who are scrolling through their phones inside an enormous SUV.

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