The Understudy: A Novel by David Nicholls Read Free Book Online Page A

a fact emphasized by a football in the corner of the room, a basketball hoop and some chin-up bars mounted on the wall. The high roof was composed of white-painted girders and reinforced glass running the length of the apartment. A spiral staircase reached up to a raised level, screened off with discreet, translucent fabric walls, which he assumed contained some sort of tasteful erotic pleasure dome. Artfully mismatched furniture—modishly kitsch old cracked leather sofas, salvaged bar stools and brittle antique Queen Anne chairs—was distributed around the football pitch in little clusters, perfectly chosen to facilitate social interaction, and if not all of the furniture was entirely in good taste, then the bad-taste items were clearly the right kind of bad taste. The flooring was some kind of expensive seamless black rubber, as if the whole flat were somehow slightly kinky, and at the far end of the room, two Charles Eames chairs reclined in front of a massive flat plasma TV screen, currently displaying a frozen PlayStation game, a computer-generated footballer paused in midkick. Neat piles of imported American comics were stacked along the walls, scale models of the
Millennium Falcon,
R2D2 and an X-Wing Fighter acting as paperweights. Clearly, at an age when Josh might be expected to put away childish things, he had instead decided to invest heavily in them. An electric guitar and a drum kit lurked in the corner, like a dark threat, next to a DJ mixing desk, and the slow, discreet boom-tsch of generic chill-out music pulsed from huge hi-fi speakers perched high on metal stands.
    The second thing Stephen noticed about Josh’s world was that there were no other guests.
    “Oh God, I’m
really
early, aren’t I?” laughed Stephen, now very far from chilled out.
    “No, no, not at all. If anything, you’re a little late. Still, gives you plenty of time to meet the others.”
    Josh padded across the factory floor, pausing halfway to nonchalantly drop the bottle of champagne into one of three old-fashioned metal dustbins. Stephen felt slighted for a moment, but glanced into the dustbins as he passed, and saw that they were full of ice and perhaps another thirty bottles of champagne and vodka. Shop-bought ice. Stephen had never seen quite so much shop-bought ice.
    “So what d’you think of the old place?”
    “It’s amazing. What was it before?”
    “Disused umbrella factory. I just prefer found spaces to houses, you know? I looked at hundreds of places before I found this—banana warehouses, carpet depositories, deconsecrated churches, disused swimming pools, libraries and schools. I even looked at this old abattoir in Whitechapel, but it really smelled of, you know, death. So we ended up here. Not much, but it’s home.”
    At the far end of the room they turned into a screened-off industrial-style kitchen area, where three neat, clean, good-looking men with product in their hair were standing round, variously taking glasses out of cardboard boxes, laying out strips of pale smoked salmon like gold leaf, breaking up more bags of ice with a small silver hammer. All three wore immaculate, identical black suits and ties, suits very much like Stephen’s own.
    “Guys, this is the famous”—a little paradiddle fanfare on the bongos—“Steeeeeve McQueen!” said Josh to deferential mirth. “He’s going to be helping you out today. Steve, this is Sam, John, and, sorry, I’ve forgotten your name…”
    “Adam,” said Adam.
    “As in don’t-know-you-from!” joshed Josh, and Adam gave a smile like ice cubes cracking. “Right, got it—Adam. Okay, guys, this is my good mate Steve!” All three turned and smiled their professional caterer smiles—“Hi, Steve, hello there, any relation?, pleased to meet you, Steve, loved you in
Bullitt,
Steve”—but Stephen couldn’t hear them because he was still trying to process the information, still trying to make sure that his conclusion was correct. It took a while, but