I went to Ruby’s room. I could hear the electro guitar of a pop song, so I pushed the door open without knocking. Ruby was lying on her stomach on the bed, staring at her tablet. She looked up at me briefly.
‘Want some food?’
‘No.’
‘You need something.’ She sat up and crossed her legs. Even though I had bought her a new skirt at the start of term, she was wearing an old one and it ended many inches above the regulation knee length.
‘Why would you ask me what I want and then dismiss what I say?’ I was impressed by her use of the word ‘dismiss’, but I couldn’t tell her that when she was being so surly. Why did she make it difficult to be nice to her?
‘I’m just trying to look after you.’ She snorted. Her phone vibrated on her bedside table and she turned towards its glowing face. What would she do, what could she do, if I grabbed it and destroyed it in front of her?
‘I’ve bought some nice steaks,’ I tried.
‘I don’t eat meat,’ she muttered.
‘You ate chicken yesterday.’ She responded with an exaggerated sigh.
‘I don’t eat red meat.’
‘Eat the chips then. Your dad’s going out. Come and watch TV with me.’
‘No.’ I took a step into the room and she looked up sharply. Clearly, as her guilt about the photos had waned, so had any affection she felt towards me.
‘Can you just make an effort!’ I cried. She looked shocked for a moment, but it quickly gave way to calm. I knew she was enjoying the satisfaction experienced when you achieve something you weren’t sure you could.
‘I have homework,’ she said smugly. I glanced around her room. The pink walls she had delighted in when she was eight were covered in photos of teenage faces smooshed together; there was a pile of clothes at the foot of the bed and a make-up counter worth of products scattered across her desk, but not a book in sight. I left without comment. As I headed back to the stairs, Dylan left the bathroom wrapped in a towel. I pressed myself against the wall to let him pass.
I made a cup of tea and posted myself in the living room. I heard Dylan pass up and down the stairs several times. He was looking for something, probably his jacket. I reached under the sofa where I had tucked Frank’s book, rubbing some dust bunnies from the cover before opening it at random. I read a passage about the energy it takes to stand still: it’s a human drive to evolve, it read, we have to work hard not to change. Dylan stuck his head into the room.
‘There you are,’ he said, as though you could lose a person in our home. ‘I’m just going for one, and then I’ll get Chloe from Elsie’s. She’s going to have dinner there and watch a film.’ I had forgotten that Chloe was at her friend’s house. It made sense that she would want to spend the evening pretending to be part of another family. I thought that maybe I should offer to pick her up, let him spend more time with his friend, but Elsie’s mother made me nervous; she was always watching very carefully and asking tricky questions like ‘What are your plans for Christmas?’ in the middle of spring. So, I simply said OK.
‘My jacket!’ said Dylan, walking past me to pick it up from the back of the armchair. ‘All right, I’ll see you in a bit.’ Then he was gone. I didn’t even tell him about my new client.
My Aunt Caitlin, Mum’s older sister, believes in reincarnation and mediums and all that nonsense. Sometimes, when she and Mum were on speaking terms, Henry and I would stay with her at weekends, and she would fill us up with jam tarts and tales of the occult. She claimed that in her twenties she had an out-of-body experience. After one too many sherries she’d recount the sensation of floating above her friends at a party, watching them chat and smoke, completely unaware she was there. At her sixtieth, Uncle Hugh let slip that she had edited a tab of acid out of her story – a major plot point, I feel. Still, I thought of her then as I sat alone in the living room. I felt trapped outside my life and unsure I wanted to be let back in. I know it was this sensation that found me sipping a vodka before lunch that Saturday morning; racing away from the chaos of London on a fast train headed for Birmingham.
18
BIRMINGHAM NEW STREET looks like the inside of a space station. Of course, I’ve never seen the inside of a space station and I presume there isn’t usually a coffee shop in the centre, but the domed ceilings and glass doors gave it an out-of-this-world air. It felt appropriate; I may as well have been on another planet, one where virtue and monogamy were not valued. Frank hadn’t sent me any information about where to find him. In my head I pictured a scene from a wartime movie – exiting the train to find him couched in steam and cigarette smoke on a deserted platform. Instead, I was carried up an escalator with a throng of football fans and families and spat out on to the main concourse, where I stood clutching my overnight bag under the digital boards. I could have called him, but I wanted to preserve the time between hoping he was something and understanding that he was not. I was chewing the inside of my mouth, and contemplating popping into Marks & Spencer for another little tin of vodka and orange, when a woman said my name. I recognized her but not in a complete way.
‘Frank told me to collect you,’ she said and, hearing her flat tone, I could immediately place where I had seen her previously – sitting behind the table at Frank’s launch, as uninterested now as she was then.
‘Where is he?’ I asked, battling to sound calmer than I felt.
‘He got held up at the event,’ she said. ‘He asked me to take you to the hotel.’ This made me feel like serviced laundry, but I went with her. In a cab, I tried my best to make conversation.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Jemima.’ She looked in my direction rather than at me.
‘How long have you been working for Frank?’
She shrugged, and when I continued to stare at her she exhaled before saying, ‘Probably about a year. It’s an internship really. I’m trying to get into project management.’
‘Is he a good boss?’ She looked at me directly then. Her eyes, already on the small side, narrowed to near obscurity.
Whatever she was looking for, I don’t think she found it; she flashed the briefest of smiles and said, ‘Of course.’ The rest of the journey was silent, and thankfully it was short. So short we could have walked. Jemima paid with a ten-pound note, and told the driver to keep the change when he gruffly requested something smaller. Wordlessly, she led me to the hotel lobby where I hovered next to a miniature olive tree as she spoke to the receptionist. A minute later she returned and handed me a small plastic card.
‘Room 702. He’ll meet you up there.’ I was floored. The execution of it was so brazen, so presumptuous. His belief that I would accept his assistant’s involvement in our meeting and that I would happily trot up to a hotel room, with no knowledge of what I would find there – although that’s exactly what I did.
The room was in fact a suite, with an area for sleeping and another for all the living one has to do whilst staying in a hotel. On a glass table in the centre of the space, a platter of seafood rested on ice. There was another of sliced fruit and a third of meats and cheese. A note written in small capital letters had been placed carefully beside them. It said ‘MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME.’ I breathed in the synthetic hotel-room smell and felt at ease for the first time that morning. I loved staying at hotels, even the most basic motorway-pit-stop variety, precisely because it is nothing like being at home. I could mess up the sheets and make soap rings in the bath, safe in the knowledge that someone else would have to deal with it. In the bathroom a glass shelf held a cluster of miniature, designer toiletries. I picked up a few to take back before remembering that this trip didn’t exist. I was visiting an old university friend at her family home; I couldn’t return with evidence to the contrary.
I took a shower, put on one of those huge, white bathrobes and blow-dried my hair, taking the time to get height at the roots and make sure that the ends curled under. I sat in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows to reapply my make-up. When finished, I e
xamined my face for a while, and it occurred to me that when dealing with my reflection I focused on individual elements – the lashes being curled or the teeth to be flossed. I rarely thought about the impact of the whole. The woman I saw looked tired – not unattractive but not striking. You see her at the school gates and in line at Sainsbury’s; you’d probably ask her where the nearest cashpoint was. I wasn’t sure I knew her at all.
I stayed in the dressing gown and picked at the food. Eating calmed my nerves. I’d brought a dress as well as jeans and didn’t know what would be appropriate. It felt like a mistake to allow Frank to let me arrive so unprepared. I unpacked my bag; the dress was crushed beyond recognition so I searched the room for an iron. Behind the cupboard doors I found a few items of clothing and a leather holdall tucked neatly in the corner. I shut the door again quickly, feeling stupidly ashamed. Even though Frank wasn’t there, knowing that he had been, I felt like I was intruding. I finished the cheese. There was a knock on the door and I jumped and knotted my robe tighter. When no one entered, I approached it slowly. The knocking came again, louder and more insistent, and before I lost my nerve, I eased it open a few inches. A young, pale-faced man stood a few inches from the door. He was chewing on his lip nervously, and his waistcoat was far too big for his thin frame.
‘Your champagne,’ he said, holding up a bucket.
‘Oh, right. Thank you,’ I said. I took the bucket, balancing it awkwardly on my hip like a baby as I scrawled across the receipt. The boy paused for a few seconds before walking away, and it wasn’t until he reached the end of the hallway that I realized he had been waiting for a tip. I felt embarrassed and then annoyed that Frank had put me in the position of feeling lost and alone and awkward. I poured myself a glass of champagne, drank it like water and served myself another. Frank was used to controlling the narrative and, emboldened by alcohol, I wanted to even the score. I went back to the cupboard, moving quickly to avoid having time to analyse my actions. His clothes told me nothing. I paused only briefly before kneeling on the ground and opening the holdall. There was some underwear – all black. A couple of books – both thick and imposing, the sort of thing I knew I would have neither the time nor the energy to read – a toilet bag and a leather-bound notebook. I opened it to the first page and a photograph fell out. Frank in sweats, holding a baby. The baby was very little, too small to have any defining features; nothing to signify that the wrinkled, jaundiced creature belonged to anyone yet. But the way Frank was looking at the child, the promise to protect imprinted on his face, made it clear the baby was his.
Another knock. I swallowed a scream. I heard the door open, and threw the notebook and photo back into the bag before shutting the cupboard door.
‘Hello?’ said Frank. He found me on the floor, legs out in front of me. I stretched my arms towards my feet.
‘Hi,’ I said casually. ‘Still a bit stiff from the train.’ He held out his hand and I reached to him. He pulled me up and used the momentum to draw me into an embrace. We kissed – firmly, decisively, as if we’d been kissing for years, but not for years because kisses after years of kisses are not like that. They don’t hold the mystery; they don’t have the urgency; they don’t make you forget who or where you are. Frank sat on the little sofa and took off his tie. I told him I would get dressed but he asked me not to.
‘I like you like that,’ he said. ‘I like knowing you’re comfortable.’
‘And nearly naked.’
‘That too,’ he said, his mouth forming half a smile. I sat next to him with my feet tucked up on the sofa and my knees pressing into his thigh. He put an arm around me and gave a tired groan.
‘Hard day at the office?’ I laughed, feeling the need to indicate that it was a joke. He rubbed my arm in response.
‘I’m an introvert really. I like my work, but I find it draining being around all those people. I feel like they’re all picking at me, wanting a piece of me, like little gnats.’ I kissed his chest and then bit him quickly in the same spot. He grabbed me and pushed me back on the sofa. I shrieked and struggled; I was aware that I was putting on a display.
‘You don’t know how good it is to come back to you and not an empty room,’ he said. I watched him scanning my face, like he was trying to make a map of it. The tension was making my stomach cramp. I pushed him away from me.
‘I’m sorry it was a tough day,’ I said. ‘Let me get you a drink.’ He sat back on the sofa.
‘You’re wonderful,’ he said, and I almost believed it. I went and got us two glasses of champagne.
‘To small audiences,’ he said before drinking. I raised my glass. He patted the space next to him and I scrambled to sit back down.
‘You want to go out for a late lunch? I’m in the mood for some Thai.’ I felt a bit light headed; I was barely wrapping my head around being together, let alone going out. ‘You want to propose something else?’ Frank asked when I didn’t respond.
‘No, it’s just that …’ It was that the cramping in my stomach had become fierce and urgent. What I thought was nerves had been a warning.
‘It’s just that …’ I covered my mouth with my hands but vomit still spurted out from between my fingers. I ran to the glossy, white bathroom. I knew I didn’t have enough time to open the toilet lid, and leaned over the bath and let myself release. I threw up everything I’d eaten; it felt like everything I’d ever eaten. I heard Frank come into the room and ask if I was OK, and desperately waved him away with one hand. I couldn’t see if he had complied because I was still leaning over the tub, ready for another assault. Finally empty, I settled on the floor, weak and embarrassed. I wondered if it was a punishment, arranged by the universe when I had been unable to make the right decisions by myself. I could hear Frank on the phone berating some poor hotel employee for their insurmountable ineptitude. I washed out the bath and took another shower.
I left the room sheepishly, head first, and when that proved to be tolerable, the rest of me. Frank was sitting on the edge of the bed. He looked like a man waiting to receive terrible news; his face was flooded with concern.
‘Are you OK? I can’t believe it. I won’t be staying here again.’
‘I’m fine. It might not have been the food – maybe I have flu or something. I hope I’m not contagious.’
‘I don’t care,’ said Frank. He came to me and cupped my face; conscious that I hadn’t brushed my teeth, I turned away.
‘I need to lie down,’ I said. I went to the bed, and as soon as I felt the cool surface of the sheets I knew it would take considerable force to get me up again. I lay on my back with my eyes closed, reminding myself that food poisoning was something I had lived through before. Frank lay down beside me and stroked my forehead. It immediately took me back to being a child, and Eddie tucking me into bed and making me cream of tomato soup when I was off school sick. There were times when I faked being ill, pressing my head against the radiator, just for the experience.
Frank whispered to me. I couldn’t make out what he was saying but the sound was a comfort. It wasn’t long before I was asleep. When I woke, the room was dark. I could still feel Frank beside me and I could hear the soft, shushing sound of crowd noises and the familiar hum of sports commentary from the television. Without all the complication, it was just a bloke watching the game with his woman dozing next to him.
Frank shook my shoulder. I opened my eyes and saw him standing above me. He looked fresh – clean-shaven and already dressed in dark jeans and a white shirt. I panicked that in the unforgiving morning light he would realize the error of his ways, and pulled the covers over my head. If I looked half as bad as I felt, I knew I looked rough.
‘You OK?’ he asked. His voice was still brimming with worry; at home there was a twelve-hour limit on sympathy.
‘I’m fine – just completely embarrassed,’ I said.
‘Don’t be.’ I felt him sit on the bed next to me. ‘It’s rare to be with someone when they’re in such a vulnerable state. It makes me
feel closer to you.’ I poked my head out far enough to see if he was taking the piss. He smiled tentatively.
‘You’re a freak,’ I said.
He laughed. ‘You don’t know the half of it.’
I want to, I thought.
‘Do you think you’d be able to go for a walk?’
‘Definitely, but can you give me fifteen minutes? I’ll meet you in reception.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, kissing me on the forehead lightly before leaving.
As soon as I heard the door close, I jumped up and into action. I took the dress into the bathroom with me, so the steam from the shower could work on some of the creases. I blow-dried my hair again and slapped on a palmful of tinted moisturizer. Twenty minutes later, I was almost presentable.
In the foyer, I hung back and watched him for a moment. He had an espresso, and seeing his hands manipulating the tiny, doll-like cup was so sexy, or maybe everything he did was sexy. I wasn’t sure. As if he sensed me there, he turned. I stood up straighter and went to him. He took my hand and kissed my fingers. It was so intimate; I could feel my chest turning red.
‘You want some breakfast?’ he asked. I shook my head.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ I said.
19
WE STROLLED THROUGH the city centre. I found Birmingham visually uninspiring but was taken by its vibrancy, like an unattractive date who disappoints at first but then wins you over with their charm. Unlike our surroundings, Frank was anything but disappointing. As soon as we left the hotel, he took a firm hold of my hand and gently steered me clear of high-street hazards as we walked. At first the proximity made me paranoid – I had visions in which we were seen by a friend on a work trip, or a long-forgotten cousin – but after a few minutes I adjusted, my fear extinguished by the joy that he was publicly claiming me. I watched as people clocked us. Frank’s strong features might seem harsh at first, but they hammered at your brain until you relented and deemed him attractive. When women passed, their mouths continued to move in conversation but their eyes were trained on him. If, as an afterthought, they glanced at me, their faces would crumple in bewilderment.
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