Page 22 of The Life Experiment

Relief came the instant Angus closed the door of his apartment. Finally, he could breathe.

For the entire ten-minute walk to his flat, Jasper had tried to convince Angus that fun could be found within the strobe-lit walls of a nightclub. Each time, Angus had been adamant it could not.

‘You’ve turned boring, my friend,’ Jasper hollered as Angus headed for the lift. Angus didn’t fight him on it. Instead, he let his friend go.

Moving through his apartment, Angus pulled out his phone. He needed to complete an OPM Discoveries questionnaire, but it could wait. There was only one thing he wanted to do with the evening, and it didn’t involve rating his energy level.

Scrolling for Layla’s contact details, Angus paused. He took a breath, and prepared himself to lie.

Angus knew he only had himself to blame for the predicament he was in – he was the one who told the lies – but in the cafe, when Layla asked if he was posh and he denied it, the lie didn’t seem like such a big deal. The more they spoke, though, the more Angus stretched the truth.

He said that Peter owned a business, but he didn’t specify that it was worth tens of millions.

He told Layla anecdotes about his friends, but he didn’t admit to meeting most of them at an elite private school.

And, perhaps most damningly of all, Angus’s cushy unemployed life became enduring a vague IT role, because even Angus knew that saying ‘I work in IT’ was a sure way to fend off any further questions.

In no time, Angus had become someone who was so distanced from the life he lead, he was unrecognisable to himself.

‘I can’t believe I ever thought you were posh,’ Layla giggled when Angus remarked that a Senior Partner at her work sounded like ‘a typical entitled prick’.

While Layla hadn’t explicitly stated that she hated wealthy people, she’d dropped enough hints about the vapid, unfair nature of the world for the subtext to be clear.

Angus couldn’t exactly argue with her. How could he protest workplace privilege when so many of his friends were only in their senior positions due to family connections?

How could he do anything but agree with the injustice of the 2 per cent holding most of the country’s wealth?

It was a serious problem, as Layla rightly pointed out.

The issue was it was a problem Angus himself was part of.

Silencing that nagging thought, Angus flopped onto his sofa and pressed dial.

‘Well, isn’t this a surprise!’ Layla chimed when she answered his call.

Angus smiled. ‘I’d have thought by now you’d be used to me calling at this time.’

‘I suppose there are worse things to get used to,’ Layla teased.

The muffled sound of footsteps told Angus she was moving. ‘Is everything okay? You sound like you’re running.’

‘I’m heading to my room. Mum and Dad are watching a film. It’s the first time I’ve seen them relax since I got here. I don’t want to spoil it by giggling over the top of it.’

‘I make you giggle, do I?’ Angus grinned, his words laced with unashamed delight. ‘What are they watching?’

‘ Pretty Woman . Dad suggested it.’

‘The Julia Roberts film?’

‘Don’t sound so surprised. It’s a classic, and Dad loves a happy ending. He’s a softie like that.’ In the background, a door clicked. Layla was safe to talk freely.

‘Tell me about your dad,’ Angus said, settling deeper into the sofa.

‘What do you want to know about him?’ Layla replied.

‘I don’t know. Everything, I guess.’

The sound of Layla’s laughter lifted the corners of Angus’s mouth again. ‘I’m hurt, Angus. I thought I was the one you wanted to know.’

‘You are, but your dad is a huge part of you. I can tell by the way you speak about him. There’s a smile in your voice.’

‘Really? You can hear that?’

Angus grinned at Layla’s disbelief. The fact that he could read her tone shouldn’t come as a shock when he spent his days living for their conversations. ‘What can I say, I’m good at reading people. Besides, everything about you screams adoration for your father.’

‘I guess you could say I’m proud of him. More than proud, even. After everything that happened, how could I not be?’

‘Everything that happened?’ Angus questioned. ‘Tell me more.’

The inhale Layla took before speaking told Angus that her story was a heavy one. As he prepared himself to listen, Angus realised how privileged he was to have it shared with him.

‘My dad has always been, and will always be, my hero,’ she began. ‘When I was little, he carried me on his shoulders and took me on days out. He taught me to climb trees. He showed me I could go higher even when I was sure I couldn’t. I was his little adventurer.’

The smile in Layla’s voice was back and wider than ever, but when she next spoke, the happiness had gone.

‘Dad worked in construction from the age of seventeen,’ Layla continued.

‘He was a big, strong man. The life and soul of the building site. He was forever helping his friends and doing extra jobs to bring in more money. He wanted to take us to Disneyland, he said. But one day, when I was seven, everything went wrong.’

The moment suspended, elevated by a thread of vulnerability that ran between Layla and Angus. Delicate and fragile, it was so newly formed that to be suspended by it felt scary, but Angus knew he wouldn’t allow it to break.

‘Dad was helping a friend install guttering on a house,’ she said.

‘A few hours of work over the weekend, off the books, cash in hand. He’d done it a million times before.

He should have been able to do it a million times more, but that day he lost his footing.

He… he fell.’ She paused. ‘Dad shattered his pelvis, slipped a disk in his spine and broke more bones than I knew the human body had in it. In a second, my family’s life changed forever. ’

‘Jesus, Layla,’ Angus breathed. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s fine,’ Layla replied, but the catch in her voice told Angus it wasn’t fine. His chest ached, wishing more than anything that he could hold her.

‘Did he recover okay?’ Angus asked gently.

‘Dad was in hospital for months. He had surgery after surgery. For so long, we didn’t know if he was going to walk again, never mind do anything else.

We thought that was the hardest time, but things only got worse from there.

Dad couldn’t go back to work. He couldn’t get compensation either because the accident happened in his own time, not on the job.

My parents had to sell our home. We moved to a tiny house on a council estate, but we even struggled to afford that.

Overnight, Mum became Dad’s carer. She worked at a supermarket too, which meant my sister and I had to take on jobs around the house.

Dad hated it. He was so angry that our childhood was cut short. ’

Closing his eyes, Angus tried to picture his father dealing with the same horrific fate Layla’s dad had endured.

It was hard to imagine how someone as proud as Peter would react to his freedom and autonomy being taken.

Most of Peter’s confidence came from the life he provided his family.

If that role were gone, what would he have done?

‘Things were tough,’ Layla admitted. ‘It was hard watching Dad struggle to adjust to his new life. It was hard losing our money and our home and knowing we were getting into more and more debt. It was hard turning on the news and seeing people talk about families on benefits as if they were scum. I wanted to scream that it wasn’t Dad’s fault.

If it weren’t for the government support Dad got, I’ve no idea where we’d have been.

Hungrier than we already were, probably. ’

Shame burned in Angus’s chest as he thought of all the times he had been around people who looked down on families like Layla’s.

And if he was honest with himself, he had too.

It was easy to see a clickbait headline about a person taking advantage of government aid and forget about the thousands who weren’t.

Angus’s voice was like sandpaper when he next spoke. ‘Is your dad okay now?’

‘Honestly? I don’t know,’ Layla replied.

‘He’s still larger than life, but now I’m here, I’m seeing firsthand how he struggles.

After the accident, Dad’s health spiralled.

He gained a lot of weight. He fell into depression.

He has type 2 diabetes now and is on medication for his heart.

He’s in so much pain, Angus. When it’s cold, his hips are stiffer than ever, but he still insists on going to work. ’

Angus’s eyebrows arched. ‘He’s back in work?’

‘He drives a taxi a few shifts a week. He says it makes him feel useful. Mum says he’s a workaholic.’

Angus smiled at this. ‘Is that who you learned your hard-working ways from?’

‘Do you know something? I think it is.’ There was a pause while Layla digested this.

‘It’s funny, isn’t it, to reflect on the things we learn from our parents?

So many people want to be the opposite of them, but in the end we all take on some of their traits.

Good and bad, I suppose. But I know my best bits are things I got from my parents. ’

‘They sound like wonderful people,’ Angus said.

The smile was back in Layla’s voice when she replied. ‘They really are. What about you? What traits did you get from your parents?’

With the conversation flipped to him, the cushions surrounding Angus became suffocating. Emerging from their padded embrace, he sat tall. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it.’

‘Well, now’s your chance.’

Gripping the sofa, Angus thought of his parents. Had he inherited Gilly’s cold, distant demeanour? Or Peter’s ability to glide through a conversation without ever getting to the deep stuff, the real stuff?

How had being a Fairview-Whitley shaped him?

‘Cooking,’ Angus heard himself reply. ‘I love cooking, same as my mum. Well, she prefers baking, but she was the one who first showed me around a kitchen.’

The answer surprised Angus, mostly because memories of baking with Gilly were not ones he thought of often.

They only made Angus remember how special those vanilla-scented afternoons in the kitchen with his mother and Hugo were.

The baking stopped when Hugo was gone. His mother’s smile vanished too, as did any closeness Angus felt towards her.

‘I love that you can cook!’ Layla enthused, her chirpiness jarring with his sudden swirl of nostalgia. ‘What’s your favourite cuisine?’

‘That’s impossible to answer. They all have their own unique flavour profiles.’

‘Check you out, using words like “flavour profile”,’ Layla teased. ‘Well, speaking as someone who can barely boil an egg, colour me impressed. If you ever feel like teaching someone how to cook, I’ll be your student. We’ll have to cook at your place, though. I think I only own one pan.’

Angus should have pounced on Layla’s offer, but he couldn’t. Blood was rushing to his head, drowning out her voice.

Angus could never teach Layla to cook because she could never come to his apartment. One look at the penthouse and Layla would know he had lied about a lowly IT job.

Placing his feet on the carpet to steady himself, Angus rested his forehead on his palm and listened to Layla ask about his favourite dishes.

His answers were short and noncommittal, but it was impossible to reply in any other way.

The severity of what he had started with that first lie was too great to see past.

For the rest of the call, Angus listened to Layla’s beautiful voice while feeling sick. He ended the conversation early, claiming tiredness and promising to rest. Angus wasn’t lying this time – he was tired. Shattered, even. The problem was, he was tired of himself.