The Cure

Chapter 1

A young professional or couple. Quiet. Tidy. No pets. With at least triple the rent as monthly income. Nathaniel circled the advert with a sigh, three satisfied, hopeful red rings; the rentals page of the newspaper was full of them, those happy spheres of scarlet ink, turning proudly about the nice font, boasting financial security.

Three times the amount of the rent coming in a month! A junior doctor could well smile at that – it was a rarity to be able to afford the centre of town, but gruelling overtime had to have its benefits.

Nathaniel sipped at his coffee, long fingers wrapped about the cooling ceramic, sliding the last of the newspapers onto the pile beside him.

Some of the flats were to die for, judging by the grainy greyscale; old red-brick high-rise flats with long black wooden window-panes, where somebody with a good eye had strung lightbulb fairy-lights that flickered when it rained and looked good with the fake potted plants on the tiny terrace.

Or pristine new-born buildings, where everything was white and angles and fluorescent and exceptionally-adhered-to health – each flat a mirror of the other, down to the second-cheapest grey IKEA sofa.

He was at his leisure to choose.

But that was nothing new.

Nathaniel was purposefully, carefully aware of his good fortune.

Born to a beautiful French hotel receptionist, black hair curling down to her waist, loaning him her latte skin, coffee bean-coloured eyes and effortless elegance; and Doctor Gregory Wells (his name preceding him, of course), a slight man, equally dark but balding, with deep smile lines and gentle hands, ever bowled over and blinking in disbelief that such a goddess had chosen him, even after all these years.

They were what was known as a good family. They rarely fought; they never forgot one another's birthdays.

He had waddled well through the good nurseries, through good primary and secondary school, and waltzed as intended into one of the best Med schools in Britain, strapping and stepping boldly into his school-formed stereotypes, joining the rowing team, and being impossibly polite.

His father had not been a figure of authority, particularly, being a soft, good-hearted man; but upon Nate's politeness, he stood firm; "a doctor is a kindly man," he always said, "a caregiver and a healer. Where those before you suffer, one must be kind."

Kindly, Nathaniel got up from his favourite seat in his favourite coffee shop and gathered up his papers as a drenched baby-lugging lady came in with the wind and the rain through the clanging, clattering door.

'Oh, you don't have to do that,' she tried weakly, breathlessly, as he threw back the last of his cold coffee and, with a one-armed gesture, offered her his chair.

'It's no trouble – I've got to get back to work, anyway,' he looked at his watch as if to reassure her, his eyes crinkling at the corners with a funny half-smile. The lady approved of the timepiece; a nice brand, glinting boastfully in the yellow light of the café; a nice watch, and a nice wrist. She smiled. Even the baby's squealing hesitated in his wake.

'That's very kind of you,' she thanked him, more flustered than before, now, piling the screaming lump of infant onto the still-warm armchair. 

With a second crinkle of those near-black eyes, he was gone, head ducked against the wet onslaught of Autumn, newspapers tucked safely in the crook of his arm, dry against the expensive wool of his jumper.

It was match day, which meant there was vomit mixing with the rain and tunnelling down the cobbles and the air smelt like cigarettes and hops and fried onions and shuddered with sizzling and excitement and those red plastic horns and the boyish and churlish cries of the adult man rendered into youth by the simple wish of a win.

Lola was weaving her way through the wildness, veteran-deaf to the wolf whistles and skilfully sidestepping the large, red-shirted obstacles lingering before her, hoping she would raise her head.

She was a Nicks, as fierce as her namesake and proud to be, and though with no Stevie blood, she embodied all of her rock and roll like a sister. Happy only to be out of the rain, she scuffed her drenched Converse against the mat on the way into the bar.

It was nice to breathe morning air. The city was a fine one; still hanging onto its quaintness despite the invasion of dive bars, and noodle bars, and sushi bars, and badly hidden strip joints, it lately heaved with the bohemian, young wayward souls opening up weird cafés and keeping the bars on the bad side of town in business.

That's where she worked; the bad side of town, which couldn't bear to be seen before nightfall, where the river's edge bobbed heavily with old plastic bags and the railings rusted, with cheap beer in the tumbledown pubs not yet bowing to gentrification, where the braver kids from the Conservatoire of Music and Dance mixed with the twitchers just out of the methadone clinic.

She blinked in the doorway of the bar, unaccustomed to seeing the crooked parquet underfoot, habitually feeling her sticky way with her trainers at three in the morning through the throngs throwing their arms; the wallpaper looked tacky in the daylight.

She donned her black barmaid's apron, feeling slightly sick as she looked over the bottles that had just six hours ago enticed her and her colleagues after hours.

'You look as shit as I feel,' Jules mumbled as he poured a pint, but he was smiling.

She loved this bar. It was easily the best in town. Styled after Prohibition's speak-easy, with decent jazz easing out of the speakers in the afternoon, old, cracked leather chairs, fake fur blankets, red neon signs with uplifting messages buzzing on the patterned wallpaper, reminding the guilty drinkers that it was OK to be out on a school night.

It was clean, kitsch, inviting enough to the gin & tonic middle class that they were often packed at seven in the evening, to the rafters with accountants and salesman throwing their ties back as they ate appetisers; the high rises on the other side of the river cosied up to the University hospital, and tired nurses and lined doctors would pop in for only one, or two, wine's warmth washing away the horrors of their shift as they reclined before the wide, blackened fireplace that the staff sometimes remembered to light.

Today, it crackled invitingly, and the bar windows sweated.

When it struck midnight, all the shit Cinderellas pushed the armchairs back and threw their cocktails back and forgot that they were chic, and Jules normally decided he was a DJ, taking requests, leaving Lola to serve the wall of squinting drinkers, and he played good old rock and even the boss didn't care that people danced to the early hours; he just blew out the candles and pulled the old, heavy curtains across and let people howl along to Radiohead until four in the morning.

Today was match day; it was barely noon, and Lola hadn't had a chance to shake off the fog of four-too-many Fireballs before she was passing beers and taking change with rhythmic and contented and mindless habituality. Everybody knew her here. Especially the men. They adored her.

But they would; she was of conventional pin-up beauty, impossibly blonde, with almond-shaped blue eyes lined with far too much makeup; slim, naturally, with a good tattoo on her forearm and even better ones hidden beneath the checked shirt tied at the waist.

Everybody knew her to be "wild".

That was the word that was most frequently tossed around. For Lola, it always conjured up images of a big, messy, raging sea or a tiger tearing up its bloody prize. Or hair when it hadn't been washed for four days.

But it was kind enough, kinder than what they reasonably could call her, and she wore her title like a mayor's sash, happily obliging when Jules got up on the bar and tipped sambuca into her mouth from a height. She loved feeling it splash against her teeth, hearing the mostly masculine crowd applaud as if she had succeeded. One hell of an achievement.

After midnight, she was a goddess in this place, pulled at and barked at and there was always some hopeful, half-good-looking guy that lingered at the bar, playing at mysterious; sometimes, she drank with them afterwards, revelling in the glow of youth and neon as some bearded artist kissed her languorously, as if he had found the love of his life.

It was an awesome thing to be young at night. The less said of the morning, the better.