“What’s she been on?” he asked, grinning.
“Ballooons, most recently anyway. Here, help me out blowing these up.”
"Can I unpack first? Or at least have a drink?"
Presents for the still absent Caro were being placed on the dining table, all shapes and sizes, tied with ribbons and even more balloons and the house was awash with chatter and laughter. At that moment, everything was truly perfect. I went upstairs to find a jumper and looked out at the sunset feeling something approaching true bliss.
“Can we swap rooms?” I turned around to see Johnny in the doorway, looking nonplussed at the sight of myy luxurious accommodation.
“You definitely cannot swap” I retorted, hurling myself onto the bed with a ta dah! He threw a pillow at me and I threw it back, knocking his glasses off.
“This is quite something.” Johnny nodded approvingly at the splendour of my bedchamber. “Makes you think, why do we put up with tiny cramped city houses?”
“Because that’s where we work and earn money.”
“People work in the countryside too.” Johnny sat on the edge of the chaise longue and took a sip of his beer.
“Yes, but no-one can afford to live here. That’s why they rent it out isn’t it?”
“I’m sure there’s a way of making money outside the city Rach. I mean, you listen to the Archers for God’s sake. You should know.”
“Wow! I absolutely love it here!” Maddie exploded into the room, followed by a stoned-looking Jess. She had probably never touched drugs, but she went around looking high as a kite, just on life. She was, like me, a druid in training, but unlike me, looked the part. Cascading auburn curls and kaftans were her trademark. While Sally was busy earning money by looking like the host of a nature programme, Jess would be most likely telling fortunes at festivals. She wasn't exuberant like Maddie but just serene, as if she was privy to some heavenly secret. She nudged Johnny in the ribs.
“Did someone mention the Archers? Seriously?” Jess was determined to protect us all from unnecessary premature ageing. If we were old, then so was she. It was better that we were protected from the ugly truth as long as possible. “Let’s not go there, just yet…”
“Actually, they have a very young audience these days, you know,” I objected, but she had already thrown a pillow at me, and now Maddie was joining me in throwing the whole lot back in a feathery bombardment. Johnny had scuttled out of the room in fear of more damage to his eyewear and Maddie was climbing onto the bed, burying herself in duvet. Her little face looked out like a happy moon.
“Get Maya and Sally in here, and we’ll see how many we can fit in…”
Before we could find out, Caro and James arrived to a fanfare of welcome that made me wonder if there had been no accident at all, just a rethink on the whole triumphant entrance plan. There was no actual reason for them to arrive before us. Dinner, after all, had been pre-arranged. I had taken it upon myself to make a chilli the night before, so that was what we had. A hot chilli on a hot day when really there should have been a barbecue, but the iPhone weather app had predicted cloud and 15 degrees, and a barbecue is a man’s job, everyone knows that. As usual, I apologised too much, first for taking the easy option on menu choice, then for the fact that there was too much cumin in the chilli. Maya had watched me make it the night before, telling me to go easy, just a pinch of …. Oh too late…”
I was never good at moderation. You might have worked that out by now.
Wine helps relieve the urge to apologise. More wine makes you even more relaxed. I had intended to stay off the booze that night and be ready to party on Saturday for the big banquet, but intentions are only intentions, and are often foolishly conceived without proper consideration of likely temptations and circumstances. So it was hardly surprising that I let the wine flow in my direction until fatigue took over and sent me to my four poster where I propped myself up on my pillows and opened WhatsApp, leaving the birthday girl opening her mountain of gifts to a chorus of oohs and ahs and “well I just saw it and thought of you…”.
So what do you think of this? His message read.
I was looking at a photo of a motorbike – a bright green Kawasaki. To be exact, it was a photo of Harry on the bike, in what looked like somebody’s garage.
Nice. Today’s purchase?
Yep. It should tide me over until the Ducati replacement arrives
Replacement?
The accident, remember? I told you.
Oh yes sorry. Chastised, I wanted to soften the sharp words with my own gentle ones.
Come down here on it. I want to see you.
He sent a surprised face.
Okay, too soon. Sorry, must be the wine talking. Why was I incapable of letting things happen at their own pace?
It’s not too soon, just – well firstly I have to get some adjustments made so it’s going into the garage, but don’t you need to do your thing with your crew?
My crew? Okay, I spose so.
I’m missing you babe.
I sent him a kissy face back, and then he called, and we chatted for another hour, about me, him, and the magic that bound us. I said I wished he could be here, to see it. I meant to see me. We talked again when I woke up. We were linked by an invisible cord, and every so often one of us tugged at it to check the other was holding on. Since we had met, the tug was becoming more frequent; we wanted to see each other again, it was just a question of when. The excitement was stomach-churning. I didn’t remember feeling like this ever before.
Chapter 3
Danger of death
Next morning, leaving the boys at the gym in the care of resident personal trainer Jason, we walked off our hangovers, 14,834 steps of walking to be precise, which was the length of the journey to and from Lawrence of Arabia’s house. T. E. Lawrence had led a colourful life, culminating in ten or so years at Clouds Hill, the tiniest cottage in the world, now the tiniest heritage site in the world. It’s amazing how long you can stand in such a minute space, taking in the smallness, the quirkiness of the building and the man that lived there, imagining his mind, his thoughts, his dreams, the shock, everybody’s shock, when he was killed in a motorbike accident on a country lane just two months after leaving the army. A motorbike accident. Everything made me think of Harry.
We were all rather subdued as we began the walk back. Caro, Maddie and Jess decided to take the main road, while the rest of us took a short cut home, which turned out to be a gross misdescription. Maya was a keen walker, a keen everything-er really, just like Maddie but not as mad, as Sally summed her up once, but the walking was becoming an obsession. She walked three miles to work every day and was no stranger to a twenty thousand daily step count. Sally wasn’t afraid of a good hike either, but that didn’t make us skilled navigators. My suggestion of using the sun was met by shrugs and fingers pointing skywards at the blanket of unyielding cloud, and my “gut feeling” only sent the others striding in the opposite direction.
After an hour we found ourselves at Boddington Camp, Lawrence of Arabia’s local military training zone, jumping at the sound of distant gunshots while attempting to consult an offline Google Maps app. Eventually we arrived at a kind of tank exercise park. Huge armoured vehicles roared past us on sandy roads, camouflaged officers waving from the cockpit. The noise was deafening, frightening, heart-stopping in the literal and metaphorical sense. I thought of Mr Lawrence commuting here from his cottage, and then of Josh, my youngest, with his new passion for the cadet force and his dreams of joining the RAF. I have no understanding of the desire to go to war, yet as long as there are people who think otherwise, pacifists are forced to accept it as a reality, and ultimately to be grateful for those who risk their lives for peace. War begets peace. That is so ironic.
And here they were in front of us, going through their manoeuvres with a cheery wave to the onlookers behind the barbed wire fence. Young men in killing machines, life and death played out before us like opposing demons, each waiting for
the other to give way. We stood there, mesmerised, awe-struck, and underneath that there was a small voice of protest that couldn’t be heard above the rumble of the engines. It reminded me of something I'd read somewhere. Every man that dies at the hands of enemy fire was once a baby in his mother’s arms. We are not born bad. I'm not so sure now. Some people choose a path in life that defies explanation.
“Danger of death”. Peeling ourselves away from the display of military zeal, we found that the yellow warning sign at the entrance to the public footpath had fallen flat on its back. This was a social network photo opportunity, and I don’t miss those if I can possibly help it. Apart from being great for the stomach muscles, laughter disarms you, leaves you in a state of helplessness. The best thing of all is other people laughing. I think I only ever managed about ten seconds of the Laughing Policeman before it set me off. It’s like the opposite of the Railway Children. I am easily triggered.
After a brief photo stop, we took that path, the one that said Danger of Death. But then some would say I always take that path. And I would say in response that it's the danger of death that makes us feel alive.
Maya wanted the low-down on Harry. Sally filled her in, but not in nearly enough detail for my liking. I embellished her account with sprinklings of fairy dust.
“He’s just what I need, a real man.”
“You mean an alpha male?”
“I don’t know about that. I mean I feel protected, I’m his girl. He’s always taking care of me, thinking about me, making sure I’m okay.”
“Sounds like some sort of gangster. What does he do, for a job?”
I gave my speech, probably word for word as he had delivered it to me. I was on message, a campaigner, his girl Friday.
“So….” I hate starting sentences with “so”. It’s a phenomenon that I swore I’d never join in with but I find myself doing it the whole time. It’s the same with “anytime soon”. When did that suddenly become a thing? And when did we start talking about things being “a thing?”
“So," (ouch) "he is an app developer. He has an office in Liverpool Street, and a team of people working on a ticketing app for the FA, which allows season ticket holders to sell their tickets on a game by game basis, so that the club is notified of the identity of everyone in the ground at any time. The idea is that the app is eventually rolled out to all clubs across the country. So, there is an anti-terrorism angle, and it has some insurance consequences as well, because the club knows exactly who is in the ground at any one time. Reduces their insurance premiums. Everyone wins.”
I drifted off, realising I couldn’t remember exactly how the club would know who was there, and what was to prevent people just lending a local terrorist their ticket for the day. It wasn’t watertight. I needed to ask Harry more about it before trying to launch the PR campaign. I was trying to justify his existence again, and I had been there before, jumping up and down with excitement about some new man I hardly knew. I knew how it must come across. I should, as my children often told me, calm down.
Needless to say, the girls were less concerned about the mechanics of the app function and more about the personal stuff.
“What about kids?” asked Maya.
“Three, I think.”
“Same mother?”
“Two different mothers, never married them, but he gets on with them both, which makes a change.”
That was true. I had made it a priority not to meet anyone who held grudges against my predecessors. Faced with men who did this, and Jealous Craig had been one of them, my reaction would always be to tell them I was no better than the ex-wife, that I would probably have reacted to the situation, whatever it was, in the same way. It’s no wonder those men didn’t stick around. I was walking straight into the trap, hands aloft in surrender. It’s a fair cop. Let’s get it over with. I’m no different from her.
“I’m sick of guys telling me how their ex-wife is a crazy jealous narcissist and they don’t speak. Harry is still friends with his last partner even though she ended up getting back with her ex. He could be really bitter about it, but I think the fact he can resist shows that he has some sort of maturity. He can end a relationship with someone without things getting out of hand. It’s so important for the kids.”
There was silence while Maya and Sally digested this. Sally had no contact with her brother, and her boyfriend had way too much contact with his wife. Maya, in contrast, had practically no contact with her own husband. Neither of them knew whether I was right or wrong. They managed their lives surrounded by frostiness and had never known anything else.
My perspective on marriage and divorce was more extreme. I remembered the day my father left my mother, the first day of twenty years of vile acrimony. I was away at university but my brother, who still lived at home at the time, lost his whole family at once. He came home one evening to find our father missing and our mother collapsed over an untouched plate of food, unconscious after swallowing some concoction of prescription drugs and alcohol. After their divorce, my parents never communicated again. Now, twenty years later, my father had Alzheimer’s and couldn’t speak to anybody if he wanted to. If my mother had ever imagined reconciliation, that dream was over; if retribution, then she had had her way. Their divorce was brutal and costly, leaving scars which left their mark in turn on my brother and me, like a marker pen going through to the next page.
So that’s why getting on with exes is a priority of mine.
There were other plus points about Harry that I was keen to share, and perhaps hadn’t elaborated on to Sally the previous evening as fully as I could have, so I carried on, as my captive audience desperately wracked their brains for an alternative conversation topic.
“Another thing about him was that he phoned me straightaway rather than days of texting.”
I told them about the morning after we first connected on Tinder. I was walking down the railway path with the dog and he called me, told me who he was, what he wanted, and put all his cards on the table. I tried to explain to the girls how the conversation had gone.
“I know it sounds weird”, he said “but the thing is, I’m not looking for love. I’m solvent. I’m okay. I’m just…”
I think I interrupted him then with something like:
‘I know, I get it, you’re fine on your own but to meet someone would be the icing on the cake.’
“You’re finishing each others’ sentences already, ha!” said Maya.
“Or rescuing him,” added Sally. We regularly accused each other of being rescuers. Once our mission had been completed, our newly healed partner would soon be on his way, leaving us puzzled and lonely once again.
“And the thing is, of course, what he said was all bullshit.” I made them stop in their tracks, which didn’t matter since we were probably walking in circles by this point.
“What do you mean?” Two pairs of eyes frowned at me with incomprehension.
“I mean, when he says I’m not looking for love and I’m okay on my own, I just infer that he is not okay on his own and definitely looking for love.”
“How do you get to that?” Sally looked baffled.
“I don’t know. I just feel that whatever people come out with, you know, first off, it’s to counteract the truth. I don’t mean all the time, I just mean as a first announcement, a declaration of who you are. That is always going to be a projection of what you think you should be, rather than who you really are. Especially if you’re a man. So much more pressure to be a man.”
“So you’re saying he’s a liar? Or all men are liars?” Maya was not getting my point, not understanding that we have a habit of saying things to convince ourselves they are true.
Sally didn’t get it either.
“Oh my God Rach, doesn’t that make it a bit difficult – working out the truth?” she asked. “I mean where does it stop? Do you just assume the opposite of everything? And if so, that means he’s broke anyway, because he said he’s solvent.”
T
hey had a point. I just knew that he wasn’t being honest about not wanting love. Everyone wants to be loved.
“There was another thing that was weird though.” I hadn’t been meaning to tell them but I was there now. “We were talking about personality disorders. Actually, we were talking about personalities in general to start with. We did the Myers Briggs personality test and he came out with the same result as me.”
“Great, so you’re twins now,” said Sally. “Incredible. Did he show you his workings?”
There was more. “And then he said there’s this test for psychopaths.”
“Psychopaths?” They both stopped again and looked at me with even more astonishment. “What the…?”
“Apparently there was a documentary about it, then he looked it up out of curiosity and did the test and scored – a high score.”
“What? Are you serious?”
“The thing is, that’s just another example of him being the opposite. He is no way a psychopath.”
“But why would he say he was?” asked Sally. “I mean, I get solvent and independent, but why would anyone say they were a psychopath?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s a test?”
“To see how stupid you are?” Sally said. “Seriously, did he say he was a psychopath?” She had stopped properly now and was looking at me with those laughing blue eyes, that demanded the truth.
“Yes, but he’s not.”
“Oh Jesus!” It was Maya’s turn to interject. “How can you possibly know? What if it’s true, all of it?”
“I’ll be fine. I’m a big girl. I can look after myself, and if I thought for a second it was true, I wouldn’t be seeing him again.”
“You’re seeing him again?” repeated Maya, reminding me of everyone I had ever met whose mission it was to throw water on my fire.
I didn’t tell them he had sent me the link to the Psycho Killer video on YouTube. They wouldn’t have understood that it had just become a joke between us now. And I was used to other people’s cynicism when it came to online dating. There were the ones who were either coupled up and had never needed to indulge, and those who had thrown the towel in and resigned themselves to singledom. In either case, they couldn’t hope to see things from my point of view. Maya wasn’t the first. The first person who had tried to lift the scales from my eyes was Isabel Taylor, two weeks earlier...
The Delusionist Page 3