‘Just caught the end of happy hour,’ she says proudly.
‘Well done, you should’ve ordered two each.’
‘Things that bad at work?’
I make a face and take a big gulp of my mojito. It tastes divine.
‘Look, I’m sorry I overreacted the other day about the Heath thing. For one crazy moment I thought it might be you . . .’ Bell shakes her head.
‘No, don’t be silly, it should be me apologizing for not answering your calls. I do appreciate you were worried about me.’
‘Well, that’s what good friends are for.’ She clinks my glass. ‘You haven’t bumped into your Heath guy lately?’
‘Nah, haven’t been out jogging for a week. I can feel the fab already building up.’ I pat my stomach, hoping she’ll drop the subject. Luckily a waitress appears to take our order.
‘How is your Moscow girl?’
‘Good, really good.’ Bell beams at me happily. Oh God, I think, she’s fallen for it again. And, as if on cue, she says what I’ve been dreading to hear. ‘Actually, I’ve been thinking I might go and see her.’
‘In Idaho?’
‘No, we’ve been talking about meeting up in Vancouver. It’s only a stone’s throw for her and I’ve always wanted to go there.’
‘Vancouver sounds lovely,’ I say, carefully avoiding mentioning her virtual girlfriend.
‘Vancouver is lovely,’ she says, sounding hurt. ‘But I’m talking to my best friend, not TripAdvisor. You haven’t even asked me what her name is.’
‘What is her name?’ I don’t want yet another argument on the subject of Bell’s girlfriends.
‘It doesn’t matter. You think it’s all nonsense, don’t you?’
‘No, Bell, I don’t. I’m happy for you. I just don’t want you to get hurt again. You don’t even know her.’
‘But I do. I’ve spent more hours chatting to her in a week than an average couple spends talking to each other in a year. That’s what long-distance relationships are about. Talking and listening. When was the last time you really listened to one of your boyfriends?’
Careful, I think, let’s not get provoked into a full-blown row. The waitress saves the day again, bringing our food. We tuck in to our Thai green curry with king prawns and lemongrass chicken, savouring the subtle combination of spices, sweetness and salt, our girlfriend/boyfriend tiff forgotten for the rest of the evening. I know the subject will surface again, but I’m relieved it’s not going to happen tonight. And I’m glad Bell has let the subject of ‘the Heath guy’ drop so easily.
But I can’t stop thinking about it. Having dropped Bell off at her place, I drive home, allowing myself to form the question I’ve been avoiding for a week. Could the Dior Man, despite my conviction to the contrary, based mostly on the colour of his track bottoms, be the rapist? Could he be the man who attacked a young woman who was jogging on the Heath one unlucky morning? Was it him? Should I be going to the police, I ask myself, as I crawl in traffic along ever-congested Green Lanes, watching men standing in front of Turkish kebab shops. No, it can’t be him. He doesn’t look Mediterranean and, according to the police description, the rapist is medium height. The Dior Man is taller. But how can I be so sure he’s innocent? I know nothing about him.
It can’t be him because he’s not a rapist. We had rough sex in a public place, but it wasn’t rape. It was instigated by me, after all. Could I have flicked some unknown, violent switch inside his psyche? I feel I’m going round in circles, asking myself the same questions, again and again. And always arriving at the same conclusion: it’s not him. It can’t be him. I don’t want it to be him.
There is nowhere left to park in my street, the usual Friday-night car-owner nightmare. I drive round the block looking for a space. Nothing. I make another loop, poised like a panther to pounce on a freshly freed parking space. Still nothing. I have a choice of either driving out further, towards Highgate Hill, or doing another kerb-crawling circle. Perhaps when people start leaving the pubs something will become free. I stop in the middle of the street, undecided.
A sudden knock on my window makes me jump. I see a man leaning in, smiling. He’s saying something I don’t understand. My heart is pounding and my foot moves instinctively towards the accelerator. Then I look at the man again and recognize him. It’s the guy who found Wispa. Tim Something. I buzz down the window.
‘Hi, I’m so sorry I startled you,’ he says with a sheepish grin. ‘It’s Tom, I found your dog the other night.’
‘Of course! Hi, Tom, sorry, I was miles away . . .’ I feel silly for overreacting.
‘No, it’s my fault, I shouldn’t have knocked on your window like that.’ He actually looks cute in his embarrassment.
‘Let’s forget about it,’ I laugh. ‘No harm done.’
‘I was just doing my late-night Tesco run.’ He raises his hand with a pint of milk in it. ‘We always seem to run out of milk in the middle of the night.’
‘I know the feeling.’ I nod with understanding although I don’t. I never run out of milk because I never have it.
‘Actually, we’re having a bit of a get-together tomorrow night, just a few friends from the neighbourhood, nothing fancy . . . would you like to join us? I know it’s last minute . . .’
Why not, I think. It’s not like I have a better offer for the Saturday night.
‘I’d love to. But . . . can I bring Wispa with me?’
‘Wispa?’ He seems confused.
‘My dog.’
‘Oh yes, of course, do bring her, the kids will be thrilled. Seven thirtyish? We’re just round the corner.’
He gives me the address, we exchange goodnights and he walks off carrying the milk like a trophy. Funny man. I wonder what his wife is like. Miraculously, a car right in front of me pulls out, leaving a prime parking space just waiting for me. Good karma, I think, I must have done something right today. The good karma feeling continues as I take off my make-up later on and notice the scab on my face has faded considerably. Healing like a dog, my grandma used to say.
Fourteen Days Earlier
It’s true, their house is literally round the corner from mine. Wispa seems to know the way and she’s first by their front door, her tail wagging. I ring the bell and Tom opens the door. He looks more handsome than I remember, his curly black hair pushed back with some gel, a dark shadow of stubble on his chin. He seems genuinely pleased to see me as I push a bottle of Blanquette de Limoux into his hands. Wispa’s already inside – I can hear kids’ voices cooing over her. He leads me to the sitting room, a huge space with French windows overlooking the garden. There are a few people already there: an older couple I’ve seen around in the High Street, a slim young man with long hair and the lost look of someone who’s done too many drugs, a tall woman with strikingly red lips and a couple of kids, a boy and a girl, fussing over Wispa, who’s gladly soaking up all the attention. Tom introduces everybody and it turns out we are all neighbours. The conversation is about tree pollarding, the latest craze to have been plaguing our neighbourhood.
‘It’s barbaric and it should be banned,’ says the woman with red lips, whose name is Fiona.
‘It’s the wrong time of the year for it anyway, it should be done between November and February, not now,’ booms David, the older guy. His wife and the young guy remain silent. I feel they are expecting me to chip in on the subject of pollarding. I’m frantically trying to think of something to say when Tom’s voice saves me.
‘Anna, I’d like you to meet my wife, Samantha.’ I turn, relieved I don’t have to suffer the pollarding discussion any more, take one look at Samantha and freeze in horror. I shake her hand and she smiles and says something. Shit. Shit. Shit. It’s the nice doctor from the Sexual Health Centre at St Bart’s. I’m mortified. She doesn’t show any sign of recognizing me and I muster all my wits to follow what she’s saying. It’s about Wispa and she tells me how much her children would love to have a dog but how impossible it would be to keep one. I know she
’s already placed me on her clinic couch and I’m grateful to her for giving me time to recover. I slowly regain my composure and we happily banter about dogs and children for a while. Then she moves on to tend to other guests and I’m left on my own, shaken and ashamed. I excuse myself and find my way to the loo. I lock the door and stare at myself in the mirror. What does she think of me? Is she going to tell her husband? ‘Oh, that nice lady who you helped with her dog the other night is a sex addict who shags strangers on the Heath.’ She actually wouldn’t know it happened on the Heath, but I add it for dramatic effect. Of course she’s not going to tell her husband, doctor–patient privilege and all that, but I’m not sure if it doesn’t apply only to crime dramas. I bet in reality doctors gossip about their patients all the time. Maybe she’s telling all her guests about me right now: ‘Anna is an interesting case, a nymphomaniac, but you’ll be pleased to know she’s currently free of STDs.’ I have to stop this nonsense, pull myself together and go back to the party. I splash some cold water on my wrists, take a deep breath and unlock the bathroom door. When I get back to the sitting room, everyone is busy greeting new guests, Francesca and Simon, an attractive couple who instantly charm the whole party. I’m relieved they’ve taken all the limelight. It turns out Simon is a bit of a celebrity, a business genius who has made millions in advertising. Francesca and Simon have a house on The Bishops Avenue, David tells me in a hushed, reverent voice. Oh, real millionaires, I think, and take another good look at them. They present themselves rather well, I have to admit, a mixture of extreme confidence and charm giving them the well-pampered, glamorous air of people from another dimension. Simon regales everyone with a tale about Michael Birch, the co-founder of the social networking website Bebo, who sold it in 2008 to AOL for 850 million dollars and bought it back recently for just 1 million.
‘This is what I call a bargain,’ Simon says, as if it was something one could pick up in Oxfam. ‘And he actually tweeted everyone about it.’ He’s clearly amused by the story and everyone chuckles in unison.
I empty my glass of Prosecco and quickly pour myself another one. Thank God for tweeting millionaires, but I still can’t stop feeling awful about the secret I now share with Samantha. Thankfully, Simon has moved on to Rupert Murdoch and tells everyone with glee how he forked out over 500 million pounds for MySpace in 2005 only to get totally creamed by Facebook and sell it six years later for the measly sum of 35 million. Everyone finds it hilarious.
‘And then there was Friends Reunited, of course . . .’ continues Simon.
I’ve had enough of social networking investment fiascos and I go to the kitchen in search of nibbles. I find Alden, the spaced-out young man, feeding Wispa big chunks of roast chicken. He’s quite apologetic when he sees me, but I let him off for overfeeding my dog, making him laugh with the story of Wispa’s monstrous appetite. He turns out to be quite sweet and isn’t stoned at all. He’s an aspiring film director, freelancing as a director’s assistant, a harsh reality job that most aspiring directors have to do to survive. He met Tom and Samantha on the Greek island of Skopelos, only to discover that they were neighbours in Highgate. Samantha is a doctor (don’t I know it!) and Tom has a dental practice in Soho. They’ve been really nice to him, looking after his cats when he’s away on shoots and feeding him when he’s around. Alden’s girlfriend sings in a band and is away touring quite a lot, but I must come to her next gig at XOYO in Shoreditch. He’ll get some freebie tickets for me. Then he asks about my work and actually listens when I tell him about the recent upheaval. I’d normally find him quite attractive, a charming little boy locked in the lean, almost ascetic body of a young man, but I realize I’m completely switched off to the charms of other men at the moment. Despite my evident obsession with the Dior Man I actually quite enjoy talking to Alden. We both feel reluctant to go back to the sitting room, but eventually we decide it would be impolite to stay in the kitchen any longer. I’m suddenly keen to join the rest, as I’m struck by the thought that Samantha will have noticed Alden and I are missing and probably thinks we’re shagging on the kitchen table. It’s paranoia, I know, but in every paranoid thought there must be a grain of truth.
Thirteen Days Earlier
It’s Sunday morning, but I wake up with a sense of purpose. It’s my Garden Sunday, one of the rare occasions when I put a bit of time and energy into the jungle at the back of my house. I know very little about gardening and I choose not to do it on my own. I have Pia, the Danish gardener extraordinaire, come to help me once a month. I know it’s not enough for my overgrown garden, but it’s better than nothing. Even with one day every month Pia manages to do wonders with all the plants and bushes, the names of which I don’t even know. Garden Sunday is also a day all my friends know I’m at home and they can pop in any time, providing they bring a bottle of Prosecco with them.
Pia arrives at 10 a.m. on the dot with a precise plan of action in her head. I’m sent off with a shopping list to the garden centre in Ally Pally and when I come back the work’s already started. I feel a bit superfluous standing over Pia’s shoulder, so I make myself useful by brewing some fresh coffee for both of us. Pia, before she became a professional gardener, used to run her own garage. She knows as much about cars as she knows about plants; she’s one of those women who’s perceived as an immediate threat by men because she encroaches on their field of expertise. She’s not a lesbian, although she’d make a fabulous one – or so I’m told by Bell, who never misses an opportunity to see Pia and I bet will turn up at some point today. She’s rather petite, with a mane of curly red hair and Pre-Raphaelite looks. You wouldn’t think she’d have enough strength to pull a single weed out, but I’ve seen her handle a sixty-litre bag of compost as if it were a packet of crisps.
Wispa adores Pia and she’s busy helping her, digging holes wherever Pia puts her tools down. Over mugs of steaming coffee I tell Pia about Wispa’s escape the other night.
‘How did she do it?’ Pia’s looking at the fence.
‘Actually, I have no idea.’ I’m annoyed I haven’t thought about it earlier.
‘Let’s find it and fix it, so she won’t run away again.’
We go along the garden fence, looking for a missing panel or a hole she may have dug. Everything looks intact.
‘Could she have jumped over?’ asks Pia.
‘Just look at her, she wouldn’t be able to jump over two bricks stacked on top of each other, and I mean Lego bricks.’ I know I’m unfair to my little puppy.
‘So how did she do it?’
We take another good look at the fence, the back wall, the overgrown shed.
‘There’s no way she could’ve done it,’ says Pia categorically. Those Danes, they don’t beat around the bush.
‘But she did escape and Tom caught her in the main street.’
‘Well, maybe you should ask Tom, then.’ Pia puts her empty mug down and picks up her edging shears. As far as she’s concerned, there is no way Wispa could have escaped from the garden, so there is no problem. But it gets me thinking. How on earth did my fat little sausage manage to get out of a garden surrounded by a solid fence and adjoining gardens, and end up in the street? A doorbell interrupts my puzzling over the issue.
It’s Sue, my old friend, a production manager known, because of her extraordinary organizational skills, as Sue-perwoman. Her work stories are always outrageous and, indeed, she doesn’t disappoint this time either, launching straight away into the story of her recent shoot in Beirut. Apparently the cameraman, a burly gay guy named Hank, was obsessed with grinder.
‘A power tool?’
‘Not a grinder, Grnder,’ she corrects me. ‘A geosocial networking application.’
‘What the hell is that?’
‘It’s an application you get on your phone and it lets you locate other gay men within close proximity – from the nearest to the farthest away.’
I suddenly feel totally technologically challenged, like one of those old ladies who refuse to learn how
to use the Internet because, as they claim, ‘it would waste their time’.
‘How do you keep up with all this apps shit?’
‘I don’t. I just keep an eye on other people. Talking of which . . . I think I saw James the other day.’
‘My James?’ Ooops, an unfortunate slip of the tongue. ‘You mean my ex?’
‘Well, I hope he’s your ex, because he had a rather dishy blonde on his arm . . .’
‘Really? He’s dating someone?’ I realize I’m not upset; on the contrary, I’m rather relieved I don’t have to feel guilty about dumping him any more. ‘Good for him.’
We’re interrupted by the doorbell. It’s Michael, followed by Alden, whom I invited yesterday on the spur of the moment. I haven’t mentioned my Garden Sunday to Tom and Samantha. I’m still getting used to the idea of someone knowing something so intimate about me, without even being close to me. My doorbell rings again and I decide it’s time to open the first bottle of Prosecco.
Twelve Days Earlier
Monday morning and I think I’m ready to go back to the Heath. Wispa watches me in disbelief when I put my jogging gear on. Eventually she gets up from her bed, stretches herself and goes to wait for me by the front door. I open the door and can’t believe my eyes. There is a bouquet of red roses lying on my doorstep. No wrapping paper, no card, just beautiful, long-stemmed, lush flowers. All fifteen of them. I go back in, find a suitable crystal vase and put them in water. I leave the vase on the kitchen table, thinking I’ll find a better place for it when I get home in the evening.
Both Wispa and I are a bit rusty and it takes us a while to get into our stride. We’re turning off into Fitzroy Park when another jogger overtakes me, slows down and turns towards me. It’s Tom. Wispa greets him like a long-lost friend. What a coincidence.
‘Do you mind if I join you?’
‘Not at all. Although we might be a bit too slow for you. I haven’t jogged for a week and I can feel it. We both can.’ I look at Wispa, who is panting happily. Tom laughs and I notice how white and straight his teeth are. Then I remember he’s a dentist.
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