'I don’t care any more. I just need to hear the truth.'
'You’re sure about that are you?'
'As sure as I’ll ever be.'
The lift had reached the top floor. The doors opened out onto a deserted corridor. Al pressed his finger on the 'door open' button.
'I’m seeing someone else.'
Al felt sick. 'What?'
'It’s been a few weeks.'
He didn’t want to know the answer but he had to ask the question: 'Who?'
'Just someone.'
'Oh come on, is that the best you can do?'
'You don’t need to know, Al. It’s ...'
'I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter. It’s your life.' Al took a deep breath and looked at the ceiling of the lift then shut his eyes and screwed them up tight. 'Oh fuck.'
'You’re very dear to me you know that.'
'Do I?'
'Well you should because you are.'
'I’m going to go now.' Al took his finger off the button as he stepped out of the lift.
'But we’re on the top floor.'
'Great, I’ll take the stairs. I just need to be alone for a while.'
'Not going to throw yourself off the building are you?'
She said it with a smile. It was a joke. She didn’t seriously think that he might do anything like that. Al could have just said 'No.' He could have said nothing and just walked away but instead, he said, 'No, you’re not that special.' It sounded so much more hostile and bitter than he meant it to. But there it was, he’d said it now. And if he had meant it to hurt – and at that moment in time he had no idea what his true intentions were – then it had the desired effect. Her smile – nervous, hoping they could still be friends – faded as he said it. By the time the doors had closed, Al wanted to charge back into the lift and tell her that he was sorry, he didn’t mean it. She was the most special person in his world. Too late. He turned around and walked off along the corridor having no idea where he was going or why. As he descended the staircase, turning from one identical flight of stairs into another, he felt drugged. Part of him was busy congratulating himself that he had made Imogen feel as bad as he did. Another part of him felt as though he wanted to rip out his own heart out and offer it to her as a peace offering.
She was seeing someone else.
'I’m seeing someone else.'
That phrase would be burned into his memory forever. She looked so fucking beautiful when she said it too.
Nasdaq: 739
When Miles opened the window in the suite that he had just taken possession of not thirty seconds before, he could just make out the sound of the disco at the Christmas party down below. Buddy Holly by Weezer was playing. Miles could imagine all the embarrassing dancing, all the headaches and self-loathing being incubated prior to hatching in the morning. Strange behaviour. Yet so widespread. The human animal was a curious creature indeed.
Miles took the champagne flute from the table between thumb and middle finger and raised it to his lips. The Bollinger tasted good. It was probably just a little too cold if anything but he liked it like that. From his jacket pocket, he took a CD and slid it into the hi-fi. Dummy by Portishead. As the opening bars to Mysterons came out of the speakers he pressed the next button and skipped to Sour Times. It was his favourite. For today at least.
Cos nobody loves me
It’s true
Not like you do
There was a tap at the door. Miles checked himself in the mirror as he walked across the room. The light was good. He would have preferred a larger room but he was lucky to get a suite at this time of year. As he opened the door to his guest, he couldn’t help but feel that she completed the tableau. There was a sadness to her. There was always a sadness to her – he liked that about her, it made her even more attractive.
'Everything OK?' he asked as she entered the room.
'Fine.'
'You look pissed off.'
'I’m all right.'
'Champagne?'
'I think I need it.'
'Want to tell me about it?'
'No.'
Miles poured the champagne and passed the glass to Imogen, kissing her on the lips as he did so. 1995 had been a good year.
- BOOK TWO -
8 In Vega Veritas
GBP/USD: 1.515
SP500: 666
It felt like the old crew was back together again. When Al had asked Imogen if she wanted to join them for the weekend at his parents’ in Poole, he never really thought that she would agree. The very fact that she would even consider attending made Al think that perhaps there was some further thawing in the cold front that had rolled in since the Christmas party.
In the five months since Imogen’s revelation that she was seeing someone else, Al had seen no evidence of a new boyfriend. She still came to the pub with Fergal and Miles and the others. She still joined them for the regular Saturday nights at Larry’s in Chelsea. Al had come to feel that perhaps there was no new boyfriend, that she had made it up to prevent him from trying to win her back. In any case, the hurt that he had felt had finally begun to dissipate.
It was a tight squeeze with all five of them in the car but it wouldn’t take too long to get there. Straight down the M3 and his new – new second-hand – GTI 16V was handling like a dream. It felt good sitting next to Imogen. It felt as though nothing had really changed.
Rhys Griffiths – ‘the little fella’ – was on board for the weekend, riding shotgun. As he and Fergal had squeezed into the back of the car next to each other, Fergal had gestured to the pair of them and said, ‘Look, two ethnic minorities for the price of one.’
It was one of those weekends that had come together with almost no planning. The night before in the Golden Hind, the subject had turned to the best way of capitalising on a bizarre British weather pattern – heat. Al was due in Poole to see his parents so suggested that the others join him – Imogen included.
As the car passed a big blue motorway sign on the M3 that read: ‘Poole 11 miles’, Fergal was singing along to the radio – Firestarter by The Prodigy – while Al and Rhys were locked in a heated debate as to Rhys’s contention that it was only right and proper that as a Welshman he should support Switzerland in England’s first round match of Euro 96 in a couple of weeks’ time.
‘I should stop this car right now and put you out on the hard shoulder,’ said Al. ‘Your overtly racist sympathies must not stand.’
‘It’s not racist,’ said Rhys, revelling in his role of the belligerent Welshman just as much as Al played up his bruised English pride. ‘It’s just the rules, that’s all. Being Welsh, its part of my DNA to rejoice in England’s defeat. Godspeed Switzerland, that’s all I can say.’
‘That’s unbelievable, wars have been declared over less.’
Imogen reached over and stroked Al’s head, mockingly soothing his angst: ‘There there.’ Al couldn’t help but find himself relishing the feeling of her touching him.
‘As an American,’ said Miles, ‘I can’t help but find myself bemused by the petty rivalries and hostility between two neighbouring European states.’
Imogen turned to him and said, ‘Well you’re just bitter because you’re from a second-rate former colony. And, remember in the war of independence, we let you win.’
It was the way she said it. She was joking – they were all joking – but it sounded genuinely antagonistic. But before Al could attempt any further analysis of Imogen’s problem with Miles, Fergal’s Keith Flint impression had reached a crescendo and he was bouncing around in the back seat of the car, a large and rhythmic enough weight distribution to have the car shuddering on its axles.
When they finally arrived in Poole, Al introduced his friends to his parents with a sense of pride. These were smart and clever people and he hoped that it might demonstrate to his parents that all the sacrifices they had made during his childhood to ensure that he had the best education and opportunities had paid off.
His parents had nev
er met Imogen before – he had hoped to introduce them to her when they were seeing each other – but that night at her parents’ house in Hampstead had put paid to that. They knew who she was. They knew she and Al had been together for a few months but what they didn’t know was the pain that Imogen had caused him. But now, as Imogen enthusiastically hugged them in turn, he couldn’t help but feel that there was more to this introduction than the others he made with Miles, Fergal and Rhys. Imogen was so much more than just a friend.
Al had insisted that his mother didn’t cook for them. It was a tradition in the Denham household that fish and chips were bought from the Cod Father fish bar every Saturday night and consumed from the paper they came wrapped in. He wanted his friends to share this experience with him. Afterwards, he tried to persuade his parents to come with them to Al’s old local, The Bear, on the quayside but his dad told him to go ahead without them.
‘We don’t want to cramp your style.’
‘Of course you won’t.’
‘Get a round in on me,’ said his dad, slipping him a twenty pound note.
‘Dad, you don’t have to do that.’
‘I know I don’t have to but I want to.’
Al took the money and put it into his jeans pocket.
‘Thanks Dad.’
The walk from his mum and dad’s house to The Bear was one that Al had done a thousand times, and half of those times – namely the return journeys – had been undertaken in an alcoholic haze. Al was relieved to find that The Bear hadn’t changed in the eighteen months since had last been in there. It even smelt the same, a mixture of wood polish, ale, cigarette smoke and a curious aroma that was entirely peculiar to The Bear, a mixture of pub food and the barman, Dave’s, liberally anointed aftershave. Dave was a man who felt no shame in sporting a moustache that would not have looked out of place on a 1970s footballer. His crushing handshake was as ferocious as ever and left Al wincing as he announced, ‘Here’s a blast from the past for you,’ and gestured towards the barmaid, a woman in her early thirties with long blond hair tied back into a pony tail, wearing a T-shirt that was a size too small and jeans the same. Laura was something of a legend amongst the regulars of The Bear back in the days when Al’s drinking was barely legal. She had gone to live in America, never to return, or so Al had been led to believe at the time. But before she had gone, she had relieved him of his virginity, a night that was bathed in a golden glow in his memory. She served a punter with his beer, gave him his change and turned to Al.
‘Oh my God!’
‘Hi Laura.’
She rushed forward and launched herself at Al, pulling him close into a kiss that spoke openly of a former intimacy. Al couldn’t help but enjoy the moment, not only because Laura looked and smelled like she’d just stepped off a beach but because she was displaying her obvious affection for him in front of Imogen. It turned out that it hadn’t worked out in LA where she had relocated. After a failed marriage in California, she decided to return to the UK and was working in The Bear as a stopgap before going to university to train as a physiotherapist.
After exchanging their recent biographical details, Al returned to his friends who had managed to find a table in the busy Saturday evening bar.
‘Tell me you haven’t,’ said Fergal.
Al raised his eyebrows and smiled. It was enough for a cheer to go up around the table.
‘What can I say? She missed me. It’s not my fault she finds me irresistible.’ Al said this to them all but he was looking Imogen in the eyes as he said it and he relished the way that she said, ‘You’re a bit of a player, aren’t you?’
They were all of them only too happy to relinquish control of the evening to Fergal’s stewardship. He was in his element, displaying majestic pub form, involving the locals in drinking games and negotiating a lock-in with Dave, the landlord, when last orders were called.
By midnight, the party had crystallised into a hardcore nucleus of revellers. When Dave announced that the jukebox would have to be turned off in case it alerted the local constabulary to the lock-in, Fergal stood up and announced: ‘That’s fine, the music was merely an entrée to the main event.’ Fergal reached across and put his arm around Al. ‘My good friend Alistair Denham here and I will now provide the evening’s floorshow with our own interpretation of the international smash hit, Riverdance.’
Before Al could even begin to voice his reluctance to being drawn in to Fergal’s twisted world of after hours entertainment, the enormous Irishman was dragging him up onto the table top after him. Dave and Laura cleared away the glasses from around them as Fergal commenced his dancing and encouraged Al to do the same. The speed of Fergal’s leg movements was never going to be sustainable and as the cheering and laughter reached a crescendo, he lost his footing. The first that Al knew that there was something wrong was when the thundering sound of Fergal’s feet on the table top came to an end, leaving only the sound of his own feet beating a far less frantic rhythm. Al turned to see Fergal’s smile wither on his face as he started to fall. A moment of confidence that he could manage to regain his footing was quickly extinguished as his feet achieved a higher altitude than his head and he started to flail around for things to grab hold of. One of them was a nearby curtain rail and the other was Al. Al struggled but trying to defy the laws of physics was never going to work and any attempts to remain vertical were just delaying the inevitable. Al’s landing was awkward but not as bad as Fergal’s which seemed to involve him in multiple collisions with tables and chairs, not to mention the curtain rail which cracked him across the forehead leaving a livid red welt. But it wasn’t his head wound that concerned Fergal as much as the damage that he had wrought to The Bear’s interior décor and he was up on his feet straight away, pulling his wallet out of his pocket, offering his apologies to Dave and insisting on paying for any damage.
As Al dragged himself to his feet, watching Fergal in his attempts at drunken diplomacy, Imogen put her hands around him and gave him a squeeze. Al turned around and they stood face to face, her arms still around him. She made no attempt to pull away. Quite the opposite. She moved forward and rested her forehead against Al’s, giggling.
‘You’re nuts,’ she said and pulled away to look into his eyes once more. This was it; she was going to kiss him. This was the moment he had been waiting for ever since that night in Hampstead all those months before.
‘Al, for Christ’s sake, let’s try and fix this mess,’ said Fergal pulling at Al’s sleeve. ‘Let’s at least put the curtain rail up or something cos he won’t take any money off me for the damage.’ The moment was lost but the spell wasn’t broken. It was a moment that they could return to again. This was proof that he and Imogen were meant to be together. This was proof that their enforced separation had merely been a tortuous preamble to their reunion. All would be well.
Al and Fergal managed to fix the curtain rail. Rhys and Miles picked up all the scattered tables and chairs and after hearty farewells to Dave and the few remaining locals – Laura included – the Trenchart Colville ‘massive’, as Fergal insisted on calling them, made their way back to Al’s Mum and Dad’s. Al didn’t walk with Imogen – she was chatting to Fergal – he walked ahead with Miles and Rhys. He didn’t need to be with her at that moment, they had plenty of time to be alone. Her intentions were unequivocal. Everything fell into place. Her agreeing to come down to Poole; it all made sense.
Al’s parents had gone to bed by the time they made it back but the lights in the living room were left on and Fergal made his way straight to the drinks cabinet and started assessing supplies.
‘It’s clear to see from the alignment and configuration of the bottles that there are certain beverages that are clearly not partaken of in the Denham household. This bottle of Cointreau, for example, doesn’t look like it’s been touched for the past ten years and this here Blue Bols the same. So what we need to do is fulfil the necessary ridiculous drinks quota while at the same time doing Al’s mother and father a favou
r by finishing off all the bottles that they don’t really want to keep but can’t bring themselves to dispose of. It’s sort of like a public service really. Oh lookee here, this bottle of Vermouth is looking very unloved and unwanted. Well, all I can say is, not any more. Come to Daddy.’
While Fergal busied himself with the preparation of the ridiculous drinks and Rhys and Miles explored the dusty old LPs in the cupboard beneath the music centre, Imogen sidled up to Al. Looking at Fergal as he cradled a bottle of Tia Maria like a newborn baby, she said, ‘Save me from him. There’s no way that I can survive one of his hideous concoctions.’
‘Come on, you can take the spare room.’
Al led the way upstairs. There was no way he was going to make a move on Imogen unless she initiated it – she didn’t – but it didn’t matter; the way she kissed him on the cheek and smiled at him as she whispered: ‘See you later’ said it all. As he made his way back downstairs, he felt a sweet tension in his stomach. Everything was going to be all right. He even allowed Fergal to talk him into trying a schooner of Campari and Angostura Bitters before he made his excuses, distributed the bedding that his mother had left in the corner of the living room and made his way back upstairs.
His bedroom was a shrine to his younger self, a time capsule. But as he climbed into the same bed that he had slept in as a child and teenager, he wasn’t reminiscing, he was looking forward. Only a few feet away lay Imogen. What had she meant when she said: ‘See you later’? It wasn’t an expression that she normally used. What was she saying to him? Was she trying to seduce him?
‘See you later.’ It kept going over and over in his mind. He sat up and swung his legs out of the bed and sat and looked at himself in the mirror on the dressing table.
‘Come on Al,’ he whispered at his reflection. ‘What the fuck are you waiting for?’ Wearing his boxer shorts and T-shirt, he made his way to the door, opened it, and peered out onto the landing. There was a light on downstairs in the living room. All was quiet. Fergal had clearly drunk himself to a standstill. Al looked along the landing to Imogen’s room. The light was on. She was still up. Waiting?
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