by Kate Eberlen
The first pale beams of sunlight are beginning to illuminate the arches of the amphitheatre, grey against an almost white sky. Cleaners are hosing down the streets, freshening the air. He can smell the pine trees of the Palatine as he walks towards the Circus Maximus, arriving in Testaccio to the clatter of the shutters going up at his local bar. He stands at the counter to drink an espresso, eats a cornetto, then buys another and puts it on the bench beside the homeless man, who is still sleeping.
As he climbs the four flights of stairs to their apartment, he is dreading the impending confrontation. He told Gina that he was playing five-a-side with a group of the lads from school. She was spending the evening with her dad, so she wasn’t that bothered about the details. At least he won’t have to tell her that he ended up getting drunk and crashing at the imaginary apartment of an imaginary classmate, because he can’t wait any longer. He has to finish with Gina this morning.
As he opens the apartment door, he breathes slowly, looking at his watch. In a couple of hours it will be over. He just has to get through this. And then he will be free.
He pushes the door of their bedroom open carefully, so as not to wake her abruptly, but the bed is empty. Her work clothes are scattered around. Two pairs of high-heeled shoes tried and discarded, matching handbags abandoned on the bed. She obviously came back from work in a hurry to get dressed up. She has probably stayed over in Stuart’s suite.
Alf recalibrates his plans. He will get packed up and wait for her to return. He stands on tiptoe to slide his backpack down from the top of the wardrobe, clears Gina’s possessions from the bed, then starts packing up his clothes, leaving the shirt Stuart bought him still in its Prada bag, complete with the receipt.
Then he sits on the bed, not wanting to lie down in case he falls asleep, and waits.
In the kitchen, he hears Mike pouring cereal then eating it noisily. Sally is in the shower. Then she’s in the kitchen, brewing coffee. They exchange a few brief words. Mike’s not a morning person. Then Sally calls out, ‘Gina? Alf? Bathroom’s free! Catch you later!’
The front door clicks shut. By nine o’clock Gina still isn’t back.
Alf has a shower and puts on clean clothes, shoving the dirty washing into the top of the backpack. He sits in the kitchen, wondering if it would be better to encounter Gina there, on neutral territory.
Alf wakes up suddenly as his head lolls and bangs down on the table. The waiting and tiredness must have overcome him for a moment. He looks at his watch and panics. It’s half eleven. In an hour and a half, he and Letty have a train to catch. And Gina is still not here.
He decides to ring her. He hears the mobile ringing so loudly it could be in the flat. It is in the flat. He follows the sound to the bedroom and peers over Gina’s side of the bed. Her phone is on the floor, still plugged into the adaptor socket, charging, where she must have left it. She was in a rush. It’s happened many times before.
‘The person you are calling is not available. Please leave a message after the bleep.’
Alf taps the off button.
They’ve been together for nearly a year. He cannot dump her by voicemail.
Time is running out.
Would leaving Gina a note actually be kinder? It’s the coward’s way, but is it any worse than all the lies he’s told her so far? He’s tried to do the right thing. He can’t put it off any longer.
He fetches a piece of paper and a pen.
He waits opposite the school, the anticipation of seeing Letty again making him so happy he forgets everything else. Then she is there and her beautiful face lights up as she spots him, and she is about to run but, seeing his alarm, looks both ways before crossing the road. Then she comes to him, and he puts his hands on her waist and lifts her so that their faces are level. He kisses her for a long time, until she slips down his body to standing and says, looking at his backpack, ‘Are you bringing your whole life with you?’
‘Something like that. I’ll explain on the train.’
He reaches for her hand and, as he does so, glances in the direction of Termini station.
He sees the couple walking towards them as Letty might see them: the woman dolled up for a night out – red dress, high heels tapping on the pavement, the chain of her black quilted evening bag slung across her cleavage; the older guy in smart jeans and an expensive white shirt, sleeves rolled up. In this area, close to the station, they look like a prostitute and a pimp.
Terror spasms through his body, and he drops Letty’s hand.
‘We’ve come to take you for lunch, Alf!’ says Gina.
She has clearly not been home, not seen the note.
She walks straight up to him, putting her hands on his waist, and plants a kiss on lips that have just kissed Letty.
He feels Letty freeze beside him, hears her sudden intake of breath.
‘No!’ she says.
Then she’s running down the street, picking up speed until she reaches the corner and disappears.
Part Two
Twenty months earlier
18
September 2016
LETTY
It was a late September day, just like the one a year before when Letty had first arrived in Oxford. The leaves on the trees lining St Giles’ were beginning to turn from green to gold. There was a crispness on the air whispering that summer was almost gone. As she walked into town from the road in North Oxford where she had a room for her second year, she felt as nervous as she had done then.
The Randolph hotel wasn’t a place students normally frequented. It wasn’t a place that really felt like Oxford at all. Letty walked past the tall windows of the restaurant a couple of times in the hope of catching a glimpse of her date before their meeting, but she couldn’t see any likely candidate waiting. When she asked at the reception desk, she was shown in the opposite direction to a lounge with swathes of soft peach and eau de nil.
The word that came to mind when she first saw Spencer was ‘masculine’. His blue suit seemed a very definite colour against the pastel tea room. She suspected he was a little older than thirty-eight, the age stated on his profile. In good shape though, longish hair swept back from his face.
This was a silly idea, she thought. She hadn’t even remembered to turn on her phone’s voice recorder, and it was too late now because he was smiling at her, hand outstretched.
‘Elle?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said.
The collar and top three buttons of his shirt were undone, as if he’d removed a tie in an attempt to appear relaxed. His openly appreciative look made her feel exposed. She realized that ‘yes’ wasn’t a proper greeting.
‘Spencer?’ she said, suddenly unsure if she’d remembered the name correctly. To her relief, his smile remained.
His handshake was dry and firm. She was never sure she got handshakes right because she always forgot to think about how her hand should be until the moment was over. Handshakes were important. Frances had once met the Chancellor of the Exchequer at a function, and had never been able to hear his name since without remarking on the weakness of his grasp and how it had undermined her faith in his fiscal policy.
Letty wondered what Spencer did for a living. Not politics, she thought, although from the look of him he could be an ambitious Tory MP, but if he were, they probably wouldn’t be meeting in such a public place.
He gestured at the sofa he had been sitting on. It was low and squashy, big enough for two people to sit at each end without touching, but she’d have preferred to sit on a separate piece of furniture.
‘What would you like?’ he asked.
‘Tea,’ she said. ‘Would be nice.’
‘Scones? Cake?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘You must have to be careful,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘A figure like yours.’
‘Oh . . .’
‘You could be a model. Perhaps you are?’
His way of dealing with the awkwardness was t
o flatter her, slightly too loudly. Or perhaps he didn’t find it awkward? Perhaps he had encounters like this all the time.
This was such a mistake, Letty thought, shifting deep into the corner of the sofa.
A waitress appeared.
‘Are you ready to order?’
‘Pot of tea for two.’ He took charge. ‘English Breakfast – unless you’d prefer . . . ?’
Letty shook her head, grateful at least that he hadn’t forced the issue of food. The scenario would be intolerable with tiers of dainty plates between them; the question of whether to use a cake fork and risk shooting a macaron across the damask.
‘Do you come here often?’ he asked.
Her blurt of laughter came from nowhere, like a sudden sneeze.
‘Never,’ she said. ‘How about you?’
‘First time,’ he said. ‘First time in Oxford, in fact.’
‘Well, this is not representative,’ she said.
‘Representative?’
The repetition made it sound almost as if he didn’t understand the word.
‘I just mean that most of the buildings are medieval rather than ostentatiously Victorian.’ Letty could hear herself talking quickly, nonsensically, making things worse not better.
‘You’re interested in property?’ he asked.
‘Not especially.’ Architecture was the word she would have used.
‘I’m a property developer.’
‘Oh!’ Letty didn’t think she’d ever heard the phrase spoken before without the falling cadence of disapproval. ‘How interesting!’ she said.
‘You’re a student at this university?’
‘Yes.’
‘Clever as well as beautiful. Well, not exactly beautiful. Striking,’ he said.
‘Would you like my honest opinion about your looks?’ she asked him, suddenly finding a kind of courage.
‘I’m thinking probably not, from the way you said that,’ he laughed.
‘You’re too old for hair gel,’ she said. Then, seeing his surprise, ‘I think almost everyone is too old for hair gel, by the way.’
‘Point taken,’ he said with a raised eyebrow.
She was grateful for the arrival of the waitress because she felt she was floundering at some strange card game where she didn’t know the rules, a bit like when Marina had tried to teach her to play bridge.
‘You’re clever, you’ll soon pick it up,’ Marina had said. But Letty never really had. And Marina had eventually given up, claiming one Sunday lunch that Letty’s intelligence was more deductive than strategic, which had made Ivo laugh and Frances protest: ‘Don’t you dare try to put limits on the sort of person she is!’ Which was rich coming from Frances.
Letty watched Spencer pouring the tea. Steady, at ease with himself, clean, shiny nails. Could they even be manicured?
‘Milk?’ he asked.
Frances had some rule about milk in tea that Letty could never remember. Was it that you showed your modest origins if you added milk to the poured tea, or the other way round? Frances always put her milk in first, but Letty wasn’t sure whether that was her in her ‘I’m as sophisticated as anyone else’ or ‘I’m proud of my working-class roots’ mode.
‘Just a little.’
The two cups and saucers remained on the table.
‘What do you study?’ he asked.
‘Classics,’ she said.
‘Pride and Prejudice, that kind of thing?’
‘It’s what they call Latin and Greek here,’ she explained. There was no reason why he should know. Most people didn’t. She waited for him to ask what was the point of studying dead languages, which was often the next question.
‘Now I’m really out of my depth!’
She quite liked that he laughed, as if it wasn’t going to affect his view of himself. She thought he could be quite attractive, if you didn’t know why he was there.
‘What’s the endgame?’ he asked.
She wasn’t sure whether he was asking about her degree or this meeting.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Latin? Greek? What do you do with that after?’
‘I’m not sure yet . . .’
Spencer picked up his tea. The china cup looked very delicate in his big, masculine hands.
‘What sort of property do you develop?’ she heard herself asking.
He took a sip of his tea, looking over the top of the rim at nothing in particular.
‘Residential, mostly,’ he said.
‘The market’s very hot, isn’t it?’ she said, using a term she thought a property developer might use.
He gave her a stare she couldn’t quite read.
It crossed her mind for a second that maybe he thought she was flirting. Or maybe he was bored.
‘Cut to the chase,’ he said, holding her gaze. ‘What are you looking for?’
It felt a bit like a who-blinks-first contest as she struggled to remember the backstory she’d created. She hadn’t really thought through the questions he might ask her, only the questions she might ask him. The persona of Elle was fairly sketchy.
‘Fun, mostly,’ she heard herself saying, in the least fun voice she’d ever heard. ‘As a student, you know, you’re always on a budget and, well, it can get a bit dull . . .’
‘And what sort of things do you like doing – apart from Latin and Greek?’
That probably seemed like the dullest thing in the world to him.
‘Opera,’ she said. ‘Reading.’ She was only making it worse. ‘I also like travelling, exploring other cultures,’ she added, feeling like a contestant in a beauty contest.
‘Don’t we all?’
‘Do we?’ she asked. ‘Lots of people want to go back to the same place, to lie in the sun or whatever. I prefer finding out about a place and its history.’ She was conscious of sounding sanctimonious and unsophisticated whilst trying to sound the opposite. ‘What about you?’
‘What do I like? Good food, good wine, lying in the sun . . .’ He winked at her.
‘I didn’t mean—’
‘Don’t worry. I’m pretty easy-going.’
He gave her a long appraising stare.
‘Cards on the table. We’re different, but I like the look of you. I don’t do tea. Why don’t you come up to London one evening. See how we get on? No obligation on either side. Sound reasonable?’
It did sound very reasonable in the circumstances, Letty thought, but it wasn’t something she had any intention of doing.
‘Will you excuse me for a minute?’ she said.
She could feel his eyes on her back as she walked across the room, and asked the waitress for directions to the Ladies’ room. Locking herself in a cubicle, she sat down and considered her options. This was moving faster than she had anticipated. Why had she ever thought it was a plausible idea? He didn’t seem like a bad person, but she had to keep reminding herself that his intention was to buy the services of a much younger woman. What services exactly they had yet to discuss, but she couldn’t imagine from the look of him that sex wouldn’t be involved. He was fit and attractive. She didn’t really understand what he was doing here.
What she did know was that she wasn’t capable of going through with the deception.
Should she therefore go back, explain and apologize for wasting his time? If he were insulted or angry, she didn’t know how she’d cope in the pastel gentility of the tea room.
Should she suggest they go for a walk? Somehow she didn’t think he would ‘do’ walking any more than he ‘did’ tea. And she would run the risk of bumping into someone she knew.
It wasn’t as if she owed him anything, Letty thought. A cup of tea. It would be ridiculous to go back and offer to pay her share.
He had no way of contacting her again apart from via the site, and she’d given false information on that. She ran through what she had told him. Only the subject she was reading. Not the name of her college, or where she lived.
She decided to leave. But how, wit
hout the possibility of running into him? She weighed up the likelihood of him coming to find her or sending someone to look, but she didn’t think a man of his type was going to suffer the indignity of asking someone to search the Ladies’.
All she needed to do was wait.
Luckily she had a book in her bag.
‘You sat there for five hours?’ Oscar said, when she told him the following day at Browns.
The words struck some distant memory of him reading to her as a little girl. Beatrix Potter, she thought. Didn’t a cat sit on a basket with Peter Rabbit inside for five hours?
‘I got involved in my novel,’ she told him.
‘Let me check I’ve got this right . . . for your first attempt at student journalism, you decide to go undercover to honeytrap a complete stranger?’
Letty nodded.
‘What were you thinking?’
‘Frances kept banging on about me doing something extra-curricular like journalism to put on my CV. So I went along to an editorial meeting and they were talking about the cost of student loans and this sugar babies thing a lot of female students are doing, where they get rich men to pay their fees in exchange for, well, company . . .’
‘I heard something about that on the radio.’
‘Yes. It’s been in the news.’
‘You know Frances wanted me to do that . . .’ Oscar said.
‘Sell yourself to an older man?’
‘Ha ha! No, student journalism. Frances has some notion that if she’d done journalism when she was at Oxford, her life would have turned out differently.’
‘Frances would have been a good journalist,’ Letty said.
‘Frances would have been a good columnist,’ Oscar corrected. ‘Frances is all opinions.’
Letty always felt at a disadvantage when talking to her brother about her mother. Oscar was so much more like Frances and the two of them blossomed in each other’s company, vying to top each other’s puns or waspishness. Whereas she, in Frances’s company, seemed to shrink and wilt.