Alice Adams - Invincible Summer

Lucien grimaced. ‘If you were in bed with Mr Pecs I don’t want to hear about it. I’ve got enough to worry about without that image in my head.’

‘Worse, actually. Or better, depending on how you look at it. He’d just asked me to marry him.’

‘Jeez. You’re not going to are you?’

‘Why’d you say it like that? What do you have against Julian?’

‘Well, you don’t love him, for starters. And you’re not going to thank me for saying this, but he’s a bit of a plank. You know, no personality.’

His casual dismissal sparked a flare of annoyance in her. ‘Lucien, you’ve met him all of twice. How can you possibly pronounce on his personality? Anyway, you barely even know me these days, let alone who I do or don’t love.’

‘Okay, well, you asked and I told you,’ said Lucien, unruffled. ‘Maybe I’m wrong, but I reckon I know you well enough to tell how you feel about someone. We may not have seen all that much of each other lately, but we’ve got enough history for that.’

‘God, you’re arrogant. You always bloody were.’

‘Well, you tell me. Do you love him? Are you going to marry him?’

Eva sighed and looked away towards the rows of tense or sad conversations playing out all around them.

‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘How do you even decide something like that? I’ve told him I want some more time to think about it. He’s not exactly delighted, but what can I do? I mean, there are so many reasons to say yes. He’s got a good heart and we have a good life together. But when I think about spending the next thirty or forty or fifty years together I’m not. . I suppose I’m just not excited. It feels like settling. Which of course is what people do, isn’t it? They settle. Everything in life’s a compromise and you’re better off just accepting that.’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘But the thing is, I can reason around it all I like but when I think about going home and telling him I’ll marry him I feel like there’s an enormous wall in front of me blocking my path. I can’t even imagine saying it, let alone actually doing it.’ She stopped. ‘Anyway, why on earth are we talking about my love life? Lucien, I’m so sorry. How are you doing?’

‘Okay. Kind of.’ He looked down at his hands and picked at a fingernail. ‘Actually, not really, to be honest. I’m shitting myself.’

Eva lowered her voice. ‘What happened? Sylvie filled me in but she didn’t seem to know very much. You got caught with a load of coke?’

‘Yeah. Two kilos, to be precise. No chance of claiming possession instead of dealing, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m going to plead guilty and hope I get a short sentence for a first offence, but it’s definitely going to be jail time.’

‘God. What were you doing with two kilos of coke? I thought you were focusing on the promoting thing? I mean, I know you’ve always done a bit of dealing on the side but two kilos? What’s that even worth?’

‘Thirty-five grand wholesale, maybe a hundred retail. Yeah, I know,’ he said, catching the horrified look on her face. ‘I don’t need you to tell me I’ve screwed up.’

‘But why would you even take such a big risk? I mean, it’s not like you need the money, is it, what with all the club nights?’

Lucien looked away with an unusually sheepish air about him. ‘Well, obviously I gave that impression. Particularly to you, seeing as you have this stellar career and everything. But the thing is, my promotions company never really took off. I never made what you could actually call a living from it. There’s too much competition, every ageing raver calls himself a promoter, and the clubs cream off most of the money anyway. Whereas I’ve made a decent wedge selling drugs over the years. Blown most of it too, unfortunately. Anyway, I wouldn’t usually have handled that much coke but I owed someone a favour. It was only supposed to be at my flat for one night. I don’t know how but the police knew exactly what they were looking for, they kicked the door in less than twenty minutes after it had arrived.’

‘Do you know what sort of sentence you’re looking at?’

‘Maybe five years, if I’m lucky. I’d do half of it in jail and half on licence. So thirty months, minus the time I spend in here on remand. It’s doable. I’ll be somewhere low security, there’ll be a library and a gym so I can spend my time reading and exercising. It won’t be so bad.’ His voice sounded strained and raspy.

‘No, of course it won’t.’ Eva tried to force her own voice to sound upbeat. ‘We’ll visit you all the time, and it’s not even that long till you’ll be out.’

‘To be honest, I’m almost as worried about getting out as I am about being in here. What am I going to do then? Not sell drugs, that’s for sure. You’d have to be a mug to land yourself in here twice, and I’ll have a record for dealing so if I ever got caught again I’d end up doing serious time. And it’s been feeling like the party’s over for quite a while now, anyway. I just didn’t know what to do next and it’s going to be even harder when I get out, because well-paid, life-enhancing careers for ex-cons aren’t exactly in abundance, are they?’

‘Oh, Lucien. You can’t worry about that now. We’ll think of something, you’ve got us on your side.’ Eva felt desperate for him to believe it, but in all honesty she wasn’t sure what life would hold for him at the other end of a prison sentence. For a moment she thought that he might actually be about to cry, but with a visible effort he pulled himself together.

‘Listen, you’re not here to be my agony aunt. There’s a few things I need help with. Sylvie’s not much use right now and I need someone I can trust.’

‘Of course. Tell me what I can do.’

‘Well, first up I’m going to need someone to sort out my flat and put my stuff into storage. It’s rented and the landlord doesn’t know about this yet. But the most immediate issue is Herbert.’

‘Sorry, Herbert?’

‘Yeah. My guinea pig. My next-door neighbour’s got him, the cops let me take him round there after they arrested me. She’s not willing to look after him for long, and anyway, she’s keeping him in a cage and he’s going to hate that. He’s usually free range around the flat, you see.’

‘You have a guinea pig? You’re a drug dealer with a pet guinea pig? Called Herbert?’

‘Yeah, well. I wouldn’t have got him myself, it was Bianca. You know, that girl I was seeing? You met her at Sylvie’s wedding? Anyway, she’s too irresponsible to look after a pet properly. She went away for the weekend without getting anyone to feed him so I sort of confiscated him. I was going to find him a home but no one wanted him and he kept sidling up to me and giving me this really sad look and in the end it got to me and I decided he could stay. So now I need you to take care of him. Sylvie won’t do it, she says she has a phobia of rodents, which is ridiculous because Herbert’s a guinea pig and they’re only rodents on a technicality.’

‘I’m not sure my life’s that pet-friendly either, you know.’

Lucien’s features darkened. ‘Eva, I’m asking you to do one thing for me in really desperate circumstances. You don’t have to, but if you don’t then you’ll have to take him to the vet and have him put down, because we can’t leave him to die slowly in a cage with someone who doesn’t want him and won’t look after him. If you can live with that on your conscience, so be it.’

Eva held up her hands in surrender. ‘Okay, okay, I’ll take Herbert. But I live in a flat and he should have a garden to run around in and maybe some guinea pig friends, so I’m going to have to try to find a better home for him when I can. You might not be able to get him back when you get out but I think guinea pigs have a pretty short lifespan so he may well not be around by then anyway.’