And as he says this, I say, ‘You’re not saying that Victor is . . .?’
‘Gay?’ Mark says.
‘Straight?’
‘Huh!’ Mark laughs.
‘Is he? No, he’s gay. Tell me he’s gay.’
‘Is he?’ Mark says.
‘Surely he is. Oh stop winding me up. You! You’re terrible.’
Mark starts to snigger uncontrollably now. ‘Honestly, CC, you’re unbelievable.’
‘Victor is straight? That’s what you want me to believe now, is it?’
‘He’s a gynaecologist, sweetie.’
‘This much I know.’
‘So he spends his life putting his . . .’
‘Enough. I know what a gynaecologist does, Mark.’
‘So how many gay men do you think grow up dreaming of doing that all day long?’
‘Stop,’ I say.
‘Sorry, I forgot, you’ve been there. Or rather Victor has.’
‘Stop, I said.’
‘Well!’ Mark laughs. ‘You really have some dodgy equipment, don’t you?’
‘Dodgy equipment?’
‘Yes! You so need to get your gaydar retuned, honey.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ I say, even though I’m starting to believe him.
‘He’s been cruising you since he first met you, you silly bitch.’
‘He has not.’
‘Smiles, drinks, salsa . . . what did you think that was all about?’
‘I thought he was just another gay man in search of a fag hag,’ I say.
‘Right,’ Mark says, his mirth fading for a moment.
‘Joke, Mark,’ I say.
‘Yes,’ Mark says. He isn’t laughing.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean . . .’ I say, grimacing as I belatedly realise how demeaning those words might sound.
‘Thanks for that one.’
‘That’s not . . . You know what I meant.’
‘Sadly, I do.’
‘I’m sorry. Really I am.’
‘It’s fine. Anyway . . .’
I sigh and stroke his arm and then continue, ‘Anyway, we all danced salsa.’
‘With each other! Victor was the one rubbing groins with you.’
‘God. No! Really?’
Mark nods.
‘How amazing. I missed that one entirely.’
‘Looks that way,’ Mark says.
‘So why is he always with you guys? I mean, you can see how I thought . . . Are you sure you’re not winding me up?’
Mark raises a hand to his heart. ‘Honest to God,’ he says. ‘He’s as straight as Ian’s willy, and that’s pretty straight, believe me. And he’s been bleating on about you since you first met in March or whenever it was.’
‘And why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I thought I had. And, well, I just assumed you had dipped your toe in the water, and not liked the temperature or something.’
‘I do not dip my toe in. I’m not that kind of girl.’
‘Well clearly not.’
‘Anyway, he’s a gynaecologist,’ I point out. ‘That’s a real turn- off for a girl.’
‘It’s pretty icky if you’re a boy,’ Mark says. ‘More so, probably. Anyway, he won’t be for much longer.’
‘Won’t be what?’
‘Well he’s retiring, isn’t he.’
‘Retiring? How can he be?’
‘Well, not retiring exactly. But he’s off to France, isn’t he? To set up a farm or something.’
‘Is he really doing that?’
‘Yeah. I think so. His parents left him a place and he’s been buying up extra land around it.’
‘Shame. He’s cute. I finally find out he’s straight just when he’s leaving.’
‘I bet you’re wishing he was staying in gynaecology now, aren’t you?’
‘Why?’
‘Well, be serious.’
‘I don’t get you.’
‘Well, otherwise you could go for it. I mean, I can’t imagine you tripping around in the mud in your Manolo Blahniks.’
‘You’re getting me confused with Carrie Bradshaw, dear. I can’t afford Manolo anything.’
‘Or your Jimmy shoes or whatever.’
‘Jimmy Choos. God, you really don’t know me at all, do you?’
‘Huh!’ Mark laughs.
‘Huh?’
‘Well if I don’t, whose fault would that be?’
Mark and I down the two bottles of wine between us and then I slurringly, gigglingly order pizzas and then open a third bottle whilst waiting for the delivery.
Mark phones Ian and informs him that he won’t be home, and we sit and drink and eat and drink some more until the first signs of daylight appear in the east.
Mark tells me about Ian and his illness and how he, Mark, is struggling to come to terms with the open relationship that Ian has imposed. He tells me that it’s not his thing, but that he’s determined to make things work, because despite everything, he’s simply never been happier.
For my part I tell him for the first time about my dad, and Brian, and Waiine, and wanting a baby, and thinking of leaving Spot On for a new life somewhere far away from London.
As the evening progresses, I feel like a weight is being lifted from my shoulders, and realise that I have made considerable efforts these last years to keep those around me at a distance. In the end though, all of this stuff is better out than in, and it strikes me that if I hadn’t spent so much energy keeping things to myself, perhaps I wouldn’t have needed a shrink in the first place. Certainly, if I had expressed how I felt about Victor to Mark, my life could, it seems, have been very different. I just wish I had found the time to talk to Darren like this. Perhaps that’s all it would have taken.
Short-Sighted Date
I look around the restaurant and check my watch. I wish I had had the nerve to organise this myself, because I’m now realising that letting Mark set it all up has just added an extra layer of embarrassment to the whole thing.
I straighten my top and check my watch. A quarter past twelve. I sigh, and think that letting Mark organise things has also increased the possibility of a complete cock-up.
I pull my BlackBerry from my pocket and phone him to check that I am waiting in the right restaurant, but there’s no answer, so I pull Victor’s card from my purse, and sigh and start to type the number in.
But then he’s there in the doorway, the low November sun streaming around him.
He crosses the restaurant and pulls a face. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he says.
‘I was just about to phone to check that Mark hadn’t given us two different addresses,’ I say. ‘Just for a laugh. That would be so his style.’
Victor removes his suit jacket and slides into the seat.
‘Nice jumper,’ I say. ‘Not sure about the stubble though.’
He laughs. ‘Oh this is just two days. When I grow a proper beard I look like one of ZZ Top. I am sorry I’m late though. I had an appointment at the surgery and it went on far longer than expected. I would have called but I don’t have your number, so . . .’
‘It’s fine really. I only got here five minutes ago myself,’ I lie.
‘God, it’s posh here isn’t it?’ Victor says looking around. ‘When he said Indian I imagined some little side-street place.’
‘Yes. I’ve never been here either.’
‘So, what’s this about?’
I feel a rash of heat rise instantly from my collar. ‘Mark didn’t say?’
Victor frowns. ‘No. He just said you needed to talk to me.’
‘Jesus!’ I say.
‘Is that a blush?’ Victor asks, apparently amused.
‘It might be,’ I say. ‘I just . . . I just thought he would have said something.’
Victor pouts and shakes his head. ‘Nada,’ he says.
I rub my brow and fiddle with the menu. ‘Oh God,’ I say.
‘So hazarding a guess, it’s something embarrassing?’ Victor says.
‘A little, yes.’
‘Is it professional? To do with your project to—’
‘No,’ I interrupt. ‘No it really isn’t to do with that.’
‘How are you getting on with that? Have you . . .? Oh. You’re not going to ask me to . . .’
‘No!’ I say. ‘No, I said, it’s nothing to do with that.’
‘Right,’ Victor says, frowning now. ‘Is it something to do with Darren?’
I shake my head. ‘No, it’s . . . God this is awful!’
Victor shrugs. ‘Just . . .’ he says with a shrug. ‘I don’t know, say it. How bad can it be?’
‘It’s Mark. He thought . . . he thinks that we might get on.’
‘We might get on . . .’ Victor repeats.
‘Jesus,’ I say. ‘Can we just forget it? Can we just have lunch?’
Victor nods, and then, clearly trying to restrain a smirk, he says, ‘Sorry, but, when you say, get on, is this, like, a blind date or something?’
I cough.
Victor’s face is distorted with mirth. ‘Oh my God, it is!’
‘Well, it’s not exactly blind, is it? Perhaps a bit short-sighted . . .’ I laugh weakly.
Victor nods and says, ‘God!’
‘Look, if you want to forget this, we can just . . .’ I say, reaching vaguely for my coat.
Victor extends an arm across the table and touches my shoulder gently. ‘No, please,’ he says. ‘Let’s have lunch as planned.’
I relax back into my seat and fan myself with the menu. ‘I told you it was embarrassing,’ I say. ‘It’s Mark’s fault. He was convinced that you’re keen or something. Stupid boy.’
‘Keen,’ Victor repeats, laughing.
‘Look,’ I say. ‘If you’re just going to . . .’
Victor shakes his head. He thinks this is all so funny his eyes are glistening with tears. ‘CC,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘I . . . I really . . . keen doesn’t really begin to describe how I felt about you.’That past tense feels like a razor-blade slicing right across my jugular.
‘But . . . God, your timing is bad,’ he continues.
‘My timing,’ I repeat, quietly, wondering if it would be really hysterical of me to just stand and sprint from this restaurant right now. Because all I want to do is lock myself in my flat and close the curtains. ‘Look, this is turning out to be excruciating for me,’ I say. ‘Maybe we should just go separate ways and pretend that this never happened.’
‘It’s not that . . . Look,’ Victor says. ‘Look, I really do like you, CC, don’t get me wrong. I am keen. But I’m just not . . . well, I’m not available for that sort of thing now. And why now anyway? Why suddenly me, now? Were you seeing someone before?’
‘No.’
‘Then . . .’ he shakes his head and shrugs.
‘I thought you were gay,’ I say in a whisper.
‘You thought I was gay?’ Victor repeats incredulously.
‘Yes. Well you were always with Darren and Mark, and . . .’
Victor’s face cracks into a grin again.
‘Oh, don’t laugh at me,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry. But yes. I thought you were gay.’
‘Hey, no need to be sorry,’ he says. ‘Darren is . . . was . . . my best friend. But I can see how . . . and you’re not the first and I don’t suppose you’ll be the last. And I don’t mind in the slightest. In fact I’m rather flattered. My girlfriends were always saying how much better looking gay men are.’
‘Yes, well, now you know,’ I say.
‘The thing is, CC,’ he says.
‘That you’re not available,’ I say. ‘Yes, don’t worry. I got that.’
And then I realise why. Of course. I’m too late. I would be. Victor has met someone else. At that second, I am so disgusted with my own stupidity I could throw myself off a cliff there and then . . . well, except that there isn’t a cliff in the restaurant of course. But really, I could. For this guy, this gorgeous, smiling, clever, beautiful guy has been asking me out for nine months . . . nine months! And all the while I have been hunting high and low . . . I have been to speed dating, I have followed random perverts to Nice, and he was here; Victor was here in front of my very eyes from the start. Only I was too goddamned stupid to see it.
‘You’ve met someone else,’ I say. ‘Of course.’
Victor frowns. ‘What ever happened to women’s intuition?’ he asks.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Never mind . . . No. Look, that’s not it at all. It’s just that I’m leaving.’
‘For France.’
‘Mark told you?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you know,’ Victor says with a shrug. ‘I just don’t see . . . unless . . . Are you one of those hopeless cases who never grabs at anything until it isn’t available any more? Is that why this is happening now? Because it’s bloody irritating.’
And he has me almost convinced. For a minute I think, Maybe yes. Maybe that’s my problem. ‘I . . .’
‘Sorry, that was rude,’ Victor says, laying his right hand over mine. ‘But it’s just so . . .’ he shrugs.
‘I really thought you were gay,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry. Otherwise I would have . . .’
‘You could have just asked me,’ Victor says.
‘I just assumed.’
‘Anyway, yes. The timing’s . . . well, impossible really. Because I’m going to France. As soon as the sale of my share of the practice is signed. I’m hoping in a couple of weeks, or at worst by the end of the year. I’ve been dreaming of this forever, and, when Darren died . . . well, it makes you think about things, something like that; it makes you want to get on with things.’
I pull my hand away. ‘I understand entirely.’ I consider telling him about my own dreams of another life, but realise that it will come across as cloying. He could only end up thinking that the real reason I’m approaching him now is because, like Saddam, I see him as a ticket to a new life; because I want to hitchhike a lift on the back of his adventure.
I sigh deeply. ‘Look, I’m so sorry, can we please try to forget all that and just have lunch?’
Victor nods. ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘That would be sweet.’
‘So tell me about your farm.’
‘Well it’s not really a farm. Not yet,’ Victor says.
And so he tells me all about it. He tells me of the tumbledown farmhouse he has bought and all the work that needs doing on it. He tells me of the land he has bought from the ageing neighbours. He tells how he’s been to visit a friend’s smallholding in the Lake District to learn how to rear goats and make cheese.
I half listen, merging in my mind’s eye Victor’s dreams with my own. And with the other half of my brain, I desperately search for a way to salvage this stupid silly missed opportunity. But his departure is too soon, and everything has happened the wrong way around, and the one phrase that is pulsing through my brain like tribal drums is the one phrase that I can’t say, the one phrase that on a first date would make any man run a mile. And so, as I watch him waving his hands around as he describes the shape of the outbuildings, as I watch his gleaming eyes, his face ever more youthful as he explains the project with a crazy level of excitement, it is all I can do to stop that internal chant spilling out from between my lips. Take me with you. Take me with you, it goes.
Seize the Day
By the time I get back to Primrose Hill, I’m feeling thoroughly desolate.
I dump my bag on the kitchen table and head through to the lounge and hurl myself onto the couch. I feel swollen like a balloon, as if the pressure of my unexpressed desires, of the words that pride and reason would not let me pronounce has made me swell and stretch to bursting point. Take me with you. Take me with you. Take me with you. I can still feel them, lodged in my throat, suffocating me. But of course there was no way to say them without sounding desperate, or needy, or indeed, utterly, utterly crazy.
And now there is nothing left to do except sit on this sofa and wait, like Tom Hanks on a be
ach, for the tide to bring something else, another chance meeting with Victor, or another Victor perhaps, and hope that, just maybe, next time, I won’t be so stupid.
But being honest with myself, what are the chances of either now?
I hear my BlackBerry ringing but ignore it. Without even looking, I know it will be Mark enquiring after my lunch-date.
I sit, numbly, my hands folded on my lap, and my eyes start to water and then my throat constricts and I blink, and tears start to dribble down my cheeks. I hear the voice of the shrink saying, ‘That is crying,’ and think, Some victory.
I hear the mobile ring again in the other room but ignore it. Then my body shudders and with a juddering gasp – even though I’m not entirely convinced that I shall ever get back out again – I let go of the ropes and allow myself to fall into the pit. I weep for Victor and then Dad and Waiine, and Darren, and for every aspect of my stupid, stupid fucked-up life.
I cry self-indulgently for an hour or so and then, a little surprised, note that the flood has abated, and that the stock of tears was, apparently, finite after all. But I’m left feeling emptied and numb – not better at all.
I blow my nose and return to the kitchen and wash my face at the kitchen sink. The tap water seems to dance with an unusual sparkle, and I realise that a square of sunlight is illuminating one corner of the sink. It only covers a couple of square feet, but it’s been years since I have seen direct sunlight in my kitchen. I peer out at the Leylandii and see that the branches are drooping unusually, and that some of the lower branches even look a little brown, and I remember Darren offering to kill it for me, and remember jokingly saying yes, and wonder . . .
I shake my head and glance back at the shimmering tap, at the light glancing off the BlackBerry’s screen.
I pick it up and listen to my messages.
The first is from Mark saying that Victor is asking him for my number and asking if he can give it. ‘Why on Earth didn’t you give him your number?’ he says. ‘You’re useless. You’re completely useless.’
The second is from SJ asking me to call her back. ‘I have some news,’ she says, simply.
As I position my finger over the button to call her back, I hear a knock at the door, and thinking, ‘Mark! The tenacious bugger,’ I sigh and cross the hallway to turn him – as gently as possible – away.
The Case of the Missing Boyfriend Page 37