‘I’ve left him.’ Her response comes out in between muffled sobs, as if she’s been upset for some time.
‘What do you mean, you’ve left him?’ Not that I’m distraught to hear this; part of me has wanted her to dump Christophe ever since I first met him.
‘He’s been having an affair.’
‘Fuck,’ I say as the door swings open behind me and the sound of Rihanna singing about an umbrella tumbles into the night. It’s a song that seems to have played on repeat since the beginning of a long, very wet, summer. I offer up half a smile to the woman who has come outside for a smoke. ‘Where are you? You keep cutting out.’
‘On the Eurostar. We’re about to go through the tunnel so I should be at King’s Cross in an hour.’
She really has left him. I don’t know whether to feel sad or relieved because, in my humble opinion, Christophe is an arsehole of the highest order. Not that I’ve ever said as much to Layla, but I still can’t quite believe that she is coming home.
‘I’ll come meet you,’ I say. I need to be there to hug her and tell her that everything will be OK. I also need her to be there for me, to fill in the gaps of my life that don’t make sense without her.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Anything for you.’ Layla saved me when I first moved to London, even though I never told her how or why. Now it’s my turn to help build her back up to the girl she used to be before a boy came along and ruined everything.
Making my way along the damp, dark streets, a sharp, icy breeze swarms around my ankles, lifting the hem of my dress and making me shiver. Breathing in, I catch hold of a scent that makes me turn and retrace my steps until I come to a shop that looks about one hundred years out of date.
Opening the door, I’m overwhelmed with a myriad of perfumes, all fighting for my attention. There are glass cabinets on the walls, each filled with clear-glass bottles that would have looked at home in a Victorian apothecary. There’s a sales assistant in the window, adding the finishing touches to a festive display.
‘Feel free to look around.’ She smiles over her shoulder, looking at me from head to toe as she does so.
It’s here somewhere, the scent that teased itself through the night and into my memories. A reminder of a time before I understood what it meant to have your heart broken.
Walking around the shop I breathe in long and deep, searching out my target like a demented bloodhound. Bottle after bottle I sniff then discard for being too flowery or too sharp. I should go and meet Layla; there’s nothing here for me. I never should have come inside. What’s the point in searching for something that should remain in the past?
Because they never came after you. And there’s the rub, the horrible shard of reality that’s stuck inside my gut and refuses to ever go away. I thought they loved me; I thought at least one of them might want to hear my side of the story, give me a chance to explain.
Is this why I keep chasing them, or at least the memory of what happened between us? It’s masochism at its best, which is a particularly annoying habit of mine. The constant push and pull between me wanting to move on, to live my life without regret, and never actually being able to.
Just as I’m about to give up and head to King’s Cross, I catch a fragment of it, soft but pure. Turning my head, I notice a candle resting on a console table by the till. The wax around the wick is still liquid, which suggests that I inadvertently extinguished the flame when I came into the shop. But the scent is distinct and strong enough to make me feel a little sick.
‘That’s one of our original fragrances,’ the sales assistant says as she notices me pick up the candle. ‘It was discontinued, but we’ve decided to do a limited edition just for Christmas.’
‘Do you have it as an eau de toilette?’ I ask, watching as the sales assistant reaches into one of the glass cabinets and takes down a small glass bottle with a ribbon tied around its neck.
‘You’ll never guess what his mother said to me,’ Layla says as I shut the front door behind us and we make our way through to the kitchen.
‘I dread to think.’ Christophe’s mother is achingly beautiful, with cheekbones you could cut cheese on. Not that she would ever let such a tasty morsel pass those pursed lips. Much better to be skinny and judgemental than do anything that even closely resembles fun – she even wore black to her own son’s wedding, which pretty much sums her up.
Layla hovers in the doorway, no doubt noticing both what has and hasn’t changed since she left. For the most part, the kitchen is the same, other than the sofa because the old one was ruined by the people I rented the house out to when neither of us were living in London.
Still, must be a bit strange to come back here. Familiar, but strange. I know it felt odd to me. The first night after I arrived back from New York, it took me ages to get to sleep, listening to the same old sounds that accompany a home, sounds you don’t ever think about. The soft gurgle of water running through pipes, or the low hum of the fridge. Added to which the sense of disappointment that comes with realising you’re no better off than before you left. I hate to think what it must be like for her.
I open the fridge in search of something to drink, but it’s empty apart from a few cartons of chicken soup and some milk. Instead I reach inside the freezer and take out a bottle of vodka, setting it down on the work surface and hunting in the cupboard for some glasses.
‘She said I should be grateful.’ Layla fingers the bottle, running them down the icy glass and drawing the outline of a cartoon shark, complete with lopsided grin.
‘For discovering your husband has been cheating?’ I say as I slide a glass over to her, watching as she fills it halfway, then downs the contents in one.
‘Yup,’ she says, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand then refilling her glass. ‘Said it was far better to have everything out in the open. That I should simply accept the fact men have different needs than women.’
‘Are all French women that psycho, or is it just the mothers?’ I steal the bottle away, because even though she is perfectly within her rights to get absolutely plastered, dealing with a hangover on top of a broken heart is more than she deserves right now.
‘God, I wish I’d never found out.’ She drops her forehead onto the work surface and lets out a long, deep groan.
‘You don’t mean that.’
‘Don’t I?’ Layla’s head comes up and she meets my gaze. ‘We were happy, Erika. We were so bloody happy, and—’
‘And nothing, Layla. He cheated on you. Which means he would have done it again.’ I don’t add that chances are this isn’t the first time he has strayed from the marital bed.
Granted, he is the epitome of tall, dark and handsome. Someone who makes you look twice whenever he enters a room. But there has always been something about him that makes me uncomfortable. He’s never said or done anything outright, but he has the extraordinary ability to wind me up with nothing more than a look. He’s always reminded me of Peter, the boy who thought that hundreds of flowers could cover up the fact he was an utter kuk. Proves that I should always listen to my gut, especially when it comes to men.
Layla begins opening and closing cupboards, clearly in search of something to eat. But I can’t remember the last time I sat down and ate a meal here, much less cooked. I have been so very good at either eating at my desk or meeting people straight from work. Anything to avoid coming back to an empty house.
Layla opens a packet of biscuits that I’m sure are well past their sell-by date, but I figure are a better option than more vodka. She takes them all out one by one, then starts to stack them into the shape of a pyramid, scattering crumbs and chocolate all over the floor in the process.
‘I blame Facebook,’ she says, shoving half a biscuit in her mouth then immediately spitting it out into the sink.
Turns out that social media is responsible for revealing the extent of Christophe’s deception. Layla was absently flicking through a mutual friend’s photos and came across one posted
a week earlier. Christophe standing between two women, both blonde, both skinny and polished in the way only Parisian women can be. That in itself wasn’t a problem, but the hand that was resting on one of the women’s waists wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Added to which, the photograph had been taken on a night when he claimed to be in Berlin on business, but the tag told Layla her husband had in fact been drinking vintage champagne in a club only minutes from the marital home.
‘Did he even apologise to you?’ My dislike of Christophe isn’t something I have ever voiced. Layla seemed genuinely happy, if a little homesick, since her move across the sea, and I never wanted to get in the way of their relationship. Been there, done that and look at what it’s cost me.
‘Sort of.’ Which means no, but probably best not to push her just yet. ‘Why don’t you have anything to eat, Erika? I’m bloody starving.’
‘We can order takeaway.’ I rummage in the cutlery drawer for an old menu. ‘Chinese or Indian?’
‘Curry. Definitely a curry. And make sure you order some extra poppadoms because you always steal mine.’
I dial the number of our local curry house, acutely aware that I am so very pleased she is home. It’s totally selfish, I know, and I’ve done my best to hide it, to pretend it isn’t the case. Which is all kinds of ridiculous, given that I left for New York pretty much as soon as we graduated. But she had Christophe. If she missed me, I doubt it was to the same extent I did her.
‘Can I ask you something?’ she says when I hang up the phone.
‘You can ask . . .’
‘You never really got on with Christophe.’
It’s a statement rather than a question, but something that has remained unspoken between us, almost as if we have both always been afraid of what my answer might be.
‘I don’t think we ever gave one another a chance.’ Christophe came out of nowhere. One minute Layla and I were a team, our friendship brilliant and intense, making me feel in some way justified for leaving Oxford. The next minute there was silence as Layla fell completely and utterly in love with a man who did so little to hide his contempt for me. It was all so painfully familiar, which might have had something to do with why I never trusted him.
‘My family’s a bit mad, a bit loud,’ Layla says with a yawn, stretching her arms above her head and showing me just how thin heartache can make you.
‘Your family is amazing.’
‘Exactly.’ She reaches out and gives my hand a squeeze. ‘You love them and they love you. But Christophe never quite fitted in.’
‘That’s his fault, not yours.’ Or maybe it has more to do with the fact I need Layla’s family, but Christophe has his own waiting for him back in Paris. I managed to make a life for myself after Oxford, but so much of that was dependent on Layla and, by extension, her family. I spent so much time in her parents’ home. So many meals shared in the Browne family kitchen, which to this day is always filled with the scent of her mum’s baking and the endless stream of conversation that comes from a house that is never empty.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Layla asks, peering into the bag from the perfumery and taking out the bottle still wrapped in red tissue paper. ‘That you didn’t like him?’
I let her open the bottle, bring it to her nose and inhale the spicy perfume. I don’t really know why I bought it, given it’s not something I’ll ever wear.
‘It didn’t seem fair,’ I say, watching as she dabs her wrists with the stopper, then once more behind each ear. The smell is overwhelming but wrong, because it doesn’t belong on her skin. I didn’t say anything, even though I know that beautiful men have a bad habit of making girls cry. At the time, I told myself that Layla was old enough to make her own decisions, but now I think it was more to do with me being afraid of that same mistake happening all over again.
‘On you, or me?’
I close my eyes for a moment, pinching my nose shut because the perfume is making me think about someone, and I don’t want to think about her, not now, not when I should be concentrating on the one true friend I still have. If I’d told Layla how I really felt about Christophe, I doubt our friendship would have survived.
‘Christophe always hated having to share me with you. He was so jealous that I loved someone other than him.’
It’s like she knows, but she can’t possibly know, because I have never told anyone from this part of my life about the people who were so dominant in another part. Perhaps we are all guilty of the same repeated patterns when it comes to love. It’s always the same old shit, just in a different city.
NIAMH
Monachopsis (n.) – the distinct feeling of being out of place
Oxford, 1995
‘I can’t believe you dragged me here,’ Niamh said as she handed over her coat to the girl behind the desk at the hotel cloakroom.
‘I can’t believe you’re complaining about the free booze,’ Erika replied as she lifted two glasses from the tray of a passing waiter and handed one to her friend.
‘But it’s all so false.’ Niamh took a long sip as she followed Erika along the corridor to where a throng of people were entering the ballroom at the far end. ‘Even you’re pretending to be someone you’re not.’
Erika stopped at the double doors, in front of which was a huge easel with a poster attached, detailing all the firms who were gathered in the hallowed halls of the Randolph Hotel for the annual Milk Round. Every year, the best and the brightest that Oxford had to offer were lured to various locations around the city by law firms, investment banks and FTSE 100 companies. All of them were promising roads paved with gold if only you would sign away your life after graduation to the corporate machine.
Niamh had no intention of being sucked into their false promises of a so-called better life, but Erika had other ideas and managed to convince her that anything was better than another night in the student bar.
‘You deserve to be so much more than ordinary, Niamh. But at some point, you have to learn to play the game.’ Erika looked her up and down, then gestured to the room in front of them. Pretty much every person was dressed either in a suit or a pencil skirt and blouse. Erika herself was wearing cropped black trousers, a cream silk blouse and a pale grey jacket. Her hair was freshly blow-dried and her face was carefully made-up.
In comparison, Niamh was still wearing the same clothes she had pulled on that morning – a red, tiered gypsy skirt, a plain white t-shirt and an ancient pair of cowboy boots.
‘If you don’t at least try to fit in, you’ll end up like your mother.’ Erika drained her glass, then swapped it for a fresh one as another waiter went by.
‘If you’re going to be a bitch, I’m leaving.’
‘No, don’t.’ Erika slipped her arm around Niamh’s waist. ‘I’m sorry. You know I didn’t mean it. But what is the point of coming to Oxford if you’re not going to do something with it?’
Whatever happened to figuring it out as you went along? At what point did Niamh wake up in a world where everyone around her had a ten-year plan? And why did absolutely every part of success seem to revolve around money? She may have had absolutely no idea what she wanted to do with her life, but Niamh was determined that it would be based more on actually living rather than feeding back into the narcissistic ways of the Western world.
‘Right,’ Erika said. ‘Time to mangle.’
‘Mingle.’ Niamh looked past Erika to a long, rectangular room with windows on two sides. There was a round table set up in the centre and a row of red velvet chairs along one wall. But nobody was sitting on them; instead they were clustered in small groups, diligently paying attention to the person at its helm.
‘Bunch of wanker bankers,’ she muttered to herself as she picked up a leaflet, on the front of which was a group of young people, bright and sparky graduates no doubt, standing in the foyer of an enormous glass building. It was supposed to inspire her, make her want to join the ranks of the chosen few, but all it did was make her feel sorry for anyone who did nothin
g but make rich people richer.
It also made her think of Leo, as most things tended to. Because he was part of that world, that gilded existence that came from being born into money. It was a world Niamh had no idea how to navigate, let alone be comfortable in.
‘Come on.’ Erika gave Niamh’s ankle a not-so-subtle prod with the tip of her stiletto. ‘We’re here to make something brilliant of our futures.’
‘You sound like one of these ridiculous leaflets.’
Niamh drained her glass, then looked around for somewhere to put it. It seemed a little rude to dump it on the tables that were adorned with yet more leaflets about the challenges and rewards that life as an investment banker would yield.
‘I have absolutely no desire to work for any of these soulless institutions.’ She set her glass down, but when she turned around, Erika had inserted herself into a neighbouring group and she was left looking up into the face of a stranger.
‘Not even for a thirty-six grand starting salary?’ he asked, taking a sip of his own drink.
‘Hello.’ Erika reappeared like a rabbit out of a hat, extending her hand and flashing both her teeth and her cleavage. ‘And who might you be?’
‘Charlie.’ He shook Erika’s hand, glancing at her briefly, then returned his attention to Niamh. He was looking at her with a strange expression on his face, and she couldn’t quite work out whether he was silently laughing at her or was just a bit pissed.
‘I’m Erika and this is my friend Niamh. She’s an absolute genius and in need of some ideas about what to do after graduation.’
‘Isn’t everyone at Oxford supposed to be a genius?’ He smiled at Niamh and she figured out what it was that was different about him. His top lip was decorated with a thin, silver scar, which was only apparent when he smiled. She allowed herself to inspect the rest of him – fitted navy suit with a waistcoat underneath, silver cufflinks and a Windsor knot in his tie. It made her think of country gents, of hunting and horses and copious amounts of tweed.
The Love We Left Behind Page 10