by Lucy Dawson
“Your mother is a bit random,” Pete said, glancing at his watch. “Shall we head home?”
My phone buzzed again. Text message. It was from Patrick. “Today is International Good-Looking Day,” it read. “Send this text to someone you think is gorgeous. Don’t send it back to me, I’ve had hundreds.” I laughed.
“Who’s that this time?” Pete nodded at the phone.
“Patrick,” I said simply and Pete rolled his eyes, muttering, “Say hi from me.”
I’d ignored that. Pete doesn’t like Patrick. He’s deeply skeptical that we can have been mates since school and not once has anything happened between us. I did toy with the idea briefly, but Patrick was always with someone else, or I was. The moment didn’t so much pass as never really arrived and we happily settled into being friends, which is where we’ve been ever since.
“So what do you want to do now?” I asked cheerily, putting my phone back in my lovely designer bag.
“We need to get back for the dog, really,” Pete said. It had started to rain lightly, getting steadily heavier. People around us were starting to look for shelter. There was a cozy little café to our right and I suddenly fancied diving in there to drink a hot chocolate, watch the windows steam up and listen to the hiss of the cappuccino makers until the rain passed. “Quick hot choc?” I suggested hopefully.
He looked at the coffee shop and wrinkled his nose. “Nah. It’s really busy. Anyway, it’s a rip-off. I can make you a hot chocolate at home. Come on.”
On the train home I was happily flicking through the Sunday papers, as Pete gazed out of the wetly streaked window.
“Do you remember that day we went to the beach with the dog?” he said suddenly. “We were trying to hit that big rock with the pebbles and you nearly took out that old couple’s corgi? The one with the really saggy tummy?”
I looked up at him in surprise. “What made you think of that?”
“No particular reason. It was just a nice day. That’s all.”
I smiled and reached for his hand. I gave it a quick squeeze then returned back to the papers.
“Actually we were trying to get the stones in the sea.” He looked thoughtful. “I remember now. You were rubbish.”
I let the paper drop in my lap and shot him a deadpan look. “I think you’ll find I was not rubbish. My throw had velocity—it just lacked distance. I could have had a very promising cricket career, thank you very much.”
He snorted and shifted uncomfortably in his seat, trying to reposition his long legs under the table. “And you threw it right up in the air,” he laughed. “Typical girl, throwing it underarm so hard your feet left the ground.” He shook his head lightly at the memory and smiled. “It was a fun day…” He trailed off, and then gave himself a little shake. “Right,” he said determinedly, crossing his arms. “I’m going to have a nap. Wake me up when we get home.” With that, he closed his eyes and was silent for the rest of the journey.
Later that evening, having enjoyed a long soak in the bath, I walked into the sitting room to find him on the phone. He looked up and saw me and said immediately, “Well, Mia’s here now so I better go. Bye now.”
“Who was that?” I asked, rubbing my wet hair with a towel as I sank on to the sofa.
“My mum, they’re going to Kenya tomorrow, on safari.”
“God, my mum’s in Miami, yours is off to Kenya. There’s something wrong with this picture.” I smiled. “Why did you say you had to go because I’d come back in? She’s going to think I have a problem with you talking to her. She already doesn’t like me.”
He frowned. “She loves you, don’t be stupid. I said I had to go because…well, I’ve messed up, Mi.”
I stopped drying my hair. “What have you done? I knew you were looking shady when I came back in just then!”
“Yeah well.” He shifted awkwardly in his seat. “I forgot to tell you we’re supposed to go to my cousin’s wedding in my mum and dad’s place. Family representatives and all that. I said yes ages ago—sorry.”
“Oh, Pete,” I sighed. “When is it?”
“Next week I think, maybe the week after.”
“Is there a present list?”
“No idea.”
“Well, we need to know, Pete, we can’t just turn up without—”
“Okay, okay,” he cut across me tiredly. “I’ll sort it.”
I nodded and picked the phone up to put it back in its holder. Then it occurred to me that of course he wouldn’t sort it and I might as well do it now before his mum went on holiday. Standing up to go and put the kettle on, I dialed 1471 and hit three. As I walked toward the kitchen it began to ring.
“Hello?” said a voice.
“Shirley?” I was a bit confused, it didn’t sound like her at all. “It’s me.”
“Er, this isn’t Shirley. I think you might have the wrong number.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” I said immediately. “Sorry to disturb.” I hung up. How the hell had I managed that?
I decided to just dial instead and was tapping the number in as I wandered back into the sitting room. Pete sighed as he saw me. “Who are you ringing now?”
“Your mum,” I said. Bugger, he’d made me tap the last number in wrong. I started again.
“Don’t bother now,” Pete said irritably. “She’ll keep you on there for ages.”
Seeing as Shirley had barely said more than a paragraph to me in three years, I somehow doubted that. I gave him a funny look and frowned. “I’ll just be five—” I started, but quick as a flash he was off the sofa and wrestling the phone away from me.
He flung it behind him, grabbed me passionately and for some reason best known to himself growled in a mock-Russian accent, “You vill do as I say, voman! I vant you to myself!”
I’d squealed in delighted shock and we fell to the floor in a tangle of arms and legs. Then he kissed me again. A deep, urgent kiss. I felt my hands curl up around the back of his neck. He began to lightly suck my bottom lip, then pulled away and slipped my dressing gown off. His hands were touching my skin, still damp from the bath.
I got carpet burns, but not once did I take my eyes off him. It was sexy as hell to watch him and know it was me making him feel that good. I delightedly watched the man I loved, eyes closed, hoarsely breathing, “Oh God, oh God, what are you doing to me?” as he began to lose control.
Later in bed, sleepy and peaceful, I watched him dozing. I looked at his eyelashes, the slope of his nose, his lips. How many times had those lips kissed me? Hundreds, maybe thousands?
“Do you love me?” I whispered.
He reached out for my hand and murmured, “Do you even have to ask?” Then he rolled over. Thrilling head to toe, I snuggled into his back. He fell asleep quickly. I, however, didn’t. I’d left the heating on too long and my mouth was dry. I needed a drink of water.
Getting up quietly, I tiptoed into the hall to go down to the kitchen. I didn’t want to wake Pete, but that object was defeated as I noisily tripped over something lying on the floor by the stairs. It lit up and I realized it was his mobile, charging. Panicking that I’d broken it, I picked it up and peered anxiously at the screen. Thankfully it wasn’t cracked. It was, however, very clearly displaying:
New Message: Liz
FIVE
I carry my steaming mug of milk into the cold, still sitting room and perch on the edge of the sofa in the dark. It’s burning my hands slightly and as I raise it to my mouth, trying not to breathe in the smell of the liquid, the first touch of it scalds my dry lips. I have to pull away sharply, setting the cup quickly down on the carpet to cool. I put my head in my hands and massage my temples tiredly. I can feel the heat of my fingers and the sharp edge of one slightly too long nail as it digs into my skin. Was it really only last night that I was down here, having tripped over his phone? It feels like that happened an age ago. I can see myself now, confusedly picking up the phone and staring at the screen reading “New Message: Liz,” and the information just not
computing.
My first thought had innocently been, Why on earth was a client texting him so late at night? It must be an emergency.
But Pete is an architect, not a banker brokering a deal or a doctor on call. There was, of course, absolutely no reason why a client should be contacting him that late on a Sunday night.
All the same, I had stood there for a moment in the dark and wondered, Should I go and tell him so he could take a look?
But he was tired, I didn’t want to have to disturb him. I decided I’d open it and if it was that important I’d wake him up.
I clicked open and read:
Don’t worry! U can get me another one can’t U?! Same brown?! was v v v sweet of you tho. Night night xx
And in that split second, it was as if the room flipped upside down and shrunk all at the same time. An instinctive chill crept across my shoulders like someone had draped a cold, damp towel round me. My heart did an extra thump thump.
Get her what in the same brown? Night night? And kisses?
My brain couldn’t seem to catch up and work fast enough, I just stared at the type dully. Finally my fingers got fed up with waiting and darted to his inbox. I stood there, wearing just knickers and one of his old T-shirts, with the neon screen lighting up my face as I started to scrawl through names that I mostly didn’t recognize, apart from my own.
An icy, bony hand clutched around my heart and squeezed tightly as I saw “Liz” roll into view.
With shallow breath, I opened it. It simply read:
Can’t now xx
I scrolled through some more names and there was Liz again:
On way, running late, will be there xx
Hurriedly I rolled through the rest of the list, my eyes darting to her name again:
I do too xx
And with that, my legs suddenly turned into hollow bendy tubes under me that wouldn’t support my weight. I wobbled over to the stairs, not taking my eyes off the small screen, and sat down heavily. My throat had started to constrict. I could hear my own heart pounding like waves in my chest and blood crashing in my ears.
I desperately clicked on some other names. In contrast, they seemed incredibly businesslike.
Paula:
By lunchtime tomorrow hopefully. Deadline Friday max.
Seb:
Not a chance, don’t think it’s viable at all. Suggest a rethink.
Then there were ones from me that read things like:
What time are you back for tea?
and
Get milk on way home pls?
The lack of kisses jumped out at me straight away.
I scrolled back to the list again and then I noticed what times Liz had texted him: 1:20 in the morning and 11:45 at night.
Hardly the time to be talking shop.
I took a couple of deep breaths and tried to calm myself down. There would be a logical explanation, a good reason for some woman to be texting my boyfriend late at night.
But at the same time, as I stood there holding Pete’s phone, I got a rush of pictures of him in my head. All the times I’d seen him with his mobile lately—just finishing a call, snapping it shut, throwing it casually on the bed as I came into the bedroom, checking it as I came out of the bathroom in the hotel…
A small ripple of fear coursed through me and I started to feel dizzy and sick, the same nausea as when you realize you’ve got way too drunk and you don’t want to be any more; the room is spinning and you’d give anything not to be feeling so foul and out of control.
Acid started to gurgle in my gut. I took some deep breaths and tried to think rationally and calmly. Don’t jump to stupid conclusions, I told myself.
I looked again at the texts. After all, that one could just be her running late for a meeting with Pete to talk business, couldn’t it? And she was probably one of those addicted-to-her job types who worked into the night, hence why they were sent so late.
But that didn’t explain what had been very sweet of him, and “night night?” It was so familiar, relaxed and suggested such intimacy. Something was very wrong.
I went back into his outbox, his sent texts. There were a lot, but I soon saw what I was looking for: To Liz, sent at two in the afternoon:
What u up to? can talk now if you like.
I felt a wash of relief when I realized he hadn’t put any kisses. I scanned furiously up and down the rest of the list, but there was nothing else. That was the only text to her.
I went to his call list. Nothing at all. No incoming or outgoing. The relief started to ebb away…for a man who spent so much time on the phone, why was it all clear? What did he have to hide?
I stared so hard at the screen that her name started to swim in front of my eyes. I needed more information.
Phone bills. That was what I needed. His phone bills. I grabbed a pen and scribbled her number down on the inside of my hand. Then I had to decide what to do with the new message…I couldn’t leave it, he’d know I’d seen it. I clicked delete and it silently vanished without trace.
I plugged the phone back in and quietly began to creep upstairs. Having tiptoed past our bedroom, I listened carefully for any letup in his snoring and then opened the door to his office. Slowly, I pushed it shut until it clicked gently behind me. Then I switched the light on, took a deep breath and began to look around.
SIX
The small room was an absolute tip. His drawing board was covered in sheets, the bin overflowing with balled-up bits of paper. Books were spilling out of shelves, half-full cups of coffee were glued with sticky bottoms to piles of files and as for the desk, it was a total mess. The curtains were half open so the darkness could nose in. I made myself jump when I looked up to see my reflection staring guiltily back at me in the glass.
Pulling the curtains shut I looked around disbelievingly. It was far from the room of someone with an uncluttered mind, that was certain. More like walking into a teenage boy’s pit of a bedroom, or the lab of a mad professor. How the hell, I thought as I stepped over a pile of magazines on the floor, was I going to find anything?
I sat down gingerly at the desk and started to leaf through a pile of loose papers, but they slid through my fingers and cascaded on to the floor in a slippery mess, making what sounded to me like a huge noise. I froze and held my breath…but there were no resulting footsteps across the landing, no opening door and no accusative Pete standing there saying, “What the hell are you doing?”
And what was I doing? I knew I shouldn’t be snooping in his stuff, but I’d gone past the having morals stage: it was proof I wanted. Proof that I was wrong, that I’d made a stupid mistake and could go back to bed feeling a little bit silly and bloody glad I hadn’t woken him up.
But there was nothing to reassure me. Just a list of quotes and notes for a job, tile quantities and wiring requirements.
I opened a filing box: nothing much in there either. Accountants’ letters, tax receipts. I turned back to his desk and another stack of papers.
I came across the receipt for our weekend away and on careful inspection realized we’d been billed wrongly—there was a room service order on there we didn’t have. I tucked it in my dressing-gown pocket and made a mental note to ring the hotel in the morning and get it refunded.
I still couldn’t find the phone bills, though, and that worried me even more than the prospect of finding them. He had got something to hide. Otherwise why weren’t they on view with everything else? I sat at his desk wondering what to do next, when I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the light of his laptop was still on. I lifted the lid up and it whirred loudly as it restarted. My heart stopped again and I froze but, after a second of sitting there holding my breath and waiting, he didn’t appear at the door. Cautiously I looked at the screen.
There were a number of files on his desktop, but it was all work stuff. There was one called personal, but it was just his CV.
I clicked on his e-mail icon and scanned through hundreds of mails, but there was nothing
from or to Liz.
So if she was a client, I thought to myself quickly—if she was a client—where was the correspondence from her? There were no quotes, no nothing. Doesn’t everyone use e-mail for work these days?
I looked in some box files round his desk; none of them had anything that made reference to Liz. Who was this woman?
I stood up and accidentally stood on a slippery magazine that resulted in my nearly doing the splits on the carpet. When I glanced down to see what I’d trodden on, I saw the program for the show he took me to on our weekend away.
My heart softened. We had had a really good time…I picked it up and ran my fingers down the spine of the glossy cover. It was such a great weekend. I started to absently flick through the pages, glancing at the pictures. Perhaps I could just talk to him about the text? Surely it could be explained…
But just as I was on the brink of dismissing it all, resolving just to ask him who she was in the morning and going back to bed, something caught my eye.
A photo was smiling out of the page. It was a girl with long, blonde hair and a familiar face. I knew I’d seen her before. I was frowning and puzzling when it dawned on me. It was the gallery girl, the one with the tattoo from the film about exploitation that I’d seen that very afternoon.
I studied the picture. She looked different, as she would in a contemporary outfit—in an outfit full stop—but it was definitely her. Same full lips, almost feline features and arched eyebrows. My eyes dropped down to the bio under the picture. It read: Teasel—Elizabeth Andersen.
It took a moment. I stared at the picture and the words for what felt like a full five minutes before my brain ground into action: Hang on a minute…that’s a coincidence…A girl you recognize from a gallery exhibit that Pete took you to is in a program in Pete’s office and it just turns out that her name is Elizabeth, just as you happen to be searching for Pete’s phone bills to find out who a mystery Liz is…whaddya know? Whadda the chances, eh? Pete and Liz, Pete and Liz, Liz and Pete…
I looked at the photo again and she stared back at me, a knowing, seductive smile. I slowly started to realize that this was the woman I was looking for. This was Liz. Scanning disbelievingly through her bio notes, my eyes flickered and skimmed over the words: