A Friend of the Family Read Online Free PDF Page B

before. He wanted to celebrate every moment he was with her, buy her gifts just for opening her eyes in the morning, for fiddling with an earring, for sneezing, for breathing, for existing. And surely, he reasoned, being a writer meant that affairs of the heart were paramount. How could he be expected to write about life if he didn’t experience every aspect of it, daily, deeply, accurately, with every fibre of his being?
    He got dressed, left the flat and walked down Bays-water Road towards Marble Arch. He then took the back roads towards Bond Street, walking through the redbrick streets of Mayfair.
    How rich, he wondered as he walked, how rich would you actually need to be to afford to live here? In Catford, where he lived, in among the sprawling estates and tiny terraces, Sean felt proportionately loaded. The large five-figure sum sitting in his bank account, the cheques that arrived every few weeks from his agent – a thousand here, a thousand there, Polish rights, Catalan rights, Brazilian rights – the gadgets he’d bought, the new bed, the new bicycle, the big Smeg fridge in the kitchen, all paid for in cash, these things made him feel rich, unthinkably rich. In the context of where he lived, who he knew and where he came from, Sean was richer than he’d ever imagined he could possibly be. But here, in Mayfair, in among the gentlemen’s clubs, foreign embassies and million-pound pieds-à-terre of anonymous international businessmen, he was a complete pauper. How, Sean wondered, was it possible for one person toaccumulate so much wealth? Ironically, it was harder to contemplate the concept from his position of relative affluence than it had been when he’d had no money at all.
    He zig-zagged through these elite streets, strolling past antique shops and gun shops and art galleries full of bland landscapes until he found himself where he wanted to be – on New Bond Street. Outside Tiffany’s.
    Sean had never been to Tiffany’s before but decided the moment he walked through the door that he liked it, very much. He liked the way the doorman smiled at him as if he were a proper grown-up man, even though he still felt like a teenager. He liked the sleek, uncluttered layout, the symmetrical lines of the cabinets, the way the overhead lights caught every nuance of the metals and gems underneath.
    He even liked the smell of it.
    Once up close to the sparkling merchandise, he decided that he especially liked baguette-cut diamonds and platinum. Together. He also found, much to his surprise, that he really quite liked the accompanying price-tags, which were reassuringly expensive as opposed to complete rip-off. He liked the girl who served him, too. He liked the way her little hands darted in and out of the cabinets, hovering over rings while she watched his face to check she was in the right vicinity, plucking them out and handing them to him with a small smile that said that she was enjoying selling every bit as much as he was enjoying buying.
    He liked the way they didn’t call them rings, theycalled them ‘diamonds’, and he liked the way the ‘diamond’ he chose was whisked away from him, like a newborn baby, and returned moments later snugly coddled in a shiny duck-egg carrier and presented to him like a prize.
    He liked the way the doorman said ‘Goodbye, sir’, as if the duck-egg bag had conferred upon him membership of some exclusive club, and, more than anything, he liked the sensation of striding down Bond Street on a sunny April afternoon with Millie’s engagement ring swinging back and forth in its carrier bag as he walked.
    Sean was aware that he was rushing things. He’d known Millie for only two months, but getting engaged didn’t mean that they’d have to get married or anything, not straight away at least. They could have a long engagement, get a place together, take their time, see how it went. Maybe in a year they could start talking weddings… or two. But in the meantime Sean wanted to