The Predictions

  “There you are,” said a voice close to my ear, and I startled as Lukas put his arms around my waist and nuzzled into my neck.

  “Where are we?”

  “Marlon’s place.”

  “I mean where in London. What area?”

  “The one rich ­people live in.” He pointed up the garden to the big house. “On the other side of there is Regent’s Park.”

  So that’s why it was familiar. On the night I had almost caught hypothermia in the park, I had gazed at these buildings from the other side and wondered who lived here, thinking they couldn’t possibly be real. “They’re more than just rich,” I said. “They’re upper class.”

  Lukas shrugged. “I suppose so. But they’re not snobby or anything.”

  We had been brought up to believe that living like this wasn’t just ostentatious, it was morally wrong. All those lectures from Hunter about the evils of capitalism, elitism and the moral bankruptcy of the Western world, and yet here we were, in the lap of it, enjoying the spoils. I opened the window to get a better look at the mansion and noticed a woman slowly making her way down the garden from the main house, careful to avoid any grass or puddles. “Is that Serena?”

  Lukas peered over my shoulder. “She brings leftovers from breakfast, usually croissants. They get chucked out otherwise.”

  “She lives there?”

  “Serena is Marlon’s little sister.”

  I should have guessed. This information was both a relief, in that it explained Serena’s presence regardless of her relationship to Lukas, and annoying, because it meant she would be always hanging around.

  When she appeared in the kitchen, however, my dislike of her was as straightforward as it had been the night before. In her miniskirt and loafers, the scent of apples wafting off her glossy blond hair, she was just too perfect, too privileged, and I did not want her to get her hands on my man. I stood in front of her in a towel, defiantly clutching the clothes and underwear I’d had on the night before, and hoped she could smell on me the salty odor of semen.

  If she shared any similarly hostile feelings toward me, she did a first-­class job of hiding them.

  “I’ve got the most terrific news,” she said to Lukas, placing a small basket covered with a napkin on the kitchen counter. “I’ve been badgering Daddy for weeks, and I think I’ve finally made some headway.”

  Lukas mumbled something in response but hunger blocked my ears. Serena lifted the napkin, and a waft of yeast and sugar syrup hit my nose. These weren’t croissants but five plump Danish pastries, bursting with apricots and blueberries.

  “When did you last eat?” said Lukas, catching my wide-­eyed stare.

  “Oh,” I said, trying not to drool. “I can’t even remember.”

  He handed me a pastry, and I scoffed it, watched closely by Serena. At first I thought she was offended by my greediness until I realized she was staring at the pastry with intense longing, eating it vicariously through me. No wonder she brought us the leftovers—­it removed the temptation of eating them herself. “Would you like one?” I said, jiggling the basket in her direction, and enjoying her look of repulsion.

  “Made headway with what?” said Lukas, oblivious to the standoff.

  The pastry had so mesmerized Serena that she had forgotten to tell him her news. “Daddy’s agreed to pay for recording sessions,” she said, coming back to earth.

  “That’s great,” said Lukas. “Does Marlon know?”

  “Yes, and he said he doesn’t want Daddy’s help.”

  “Fuck.” Lukas threw back his head in frustration. “Most ­people would give their eyeteeth for that sort of leg up. Why can’t he see it’s so much worse to have all the advantages and to throw them away?”

  “I agree,” said Serena. “It makes no sense.”

  “Maybe he’s afraid you won’t have any credibility,” I said.

  Lukas was indignant. “With who?”

  “I don’t know. The music industry, fans, critics?”

  “Bullshit,” said Lukas. “They’re going to love us—­but if we don’t record anything, no one will know we exist.”

  “Why don’t you get Fran to try and convince him?”

  “Fran! Of course.” Lukas ran to the telephone to call her. “I forgot we had a manager.”

  On Sunday morning, after a second blissful night with Lukas, I went home to the grotty bedsit I shared with Fran and bawled my eyes out to her. “What am I going to do?” I said between sobs. “I can’t break up with Gavin. We’re . . . we’re engaged.” I still couldn’t bring myself to tell her about the prediction, that I thought he was my destiny.

  “You don’t love him. Or you wouldn’t have jumped into bed with Lukas. Even I wouldn’t cheat on someone I loved.”

  “You wouldn’t?”

  Fran thought about this for a moment. “It’s an untested theory.”

  “You’ve never been in love?”

  “I don’t think so. I just don’t see the point. It’s messy. Too complicated.”

  I burst into tears again. “But I love him.”

  “Who?” said Fran. “Who the fuck do you love?”

  “Lukas,” I said. “I love him so much.”

  Fran smiled. “There, I bet that feels better—­to finally admit it.” She handed me another tissue. “Don’t worry about Gavin. He’ll get over it. He’s too dull to stew on it for long.”

  “I hope you’re right. I don’t want to hurt his feelings—­he’s just so . . .” I tried hard to think of a complimentary word about Gavin. “He’s just so decent.”

  “Decent?” said Fran. “For fuck’s sake. Dump him now.”

  We had both laughed at that, but Gavin was decent, so decent that when, on the Monday, I asked him to come to the greasy spoon with me for lunch, and told him that we had to call off the wedding, he said, “Is it because my parents didn’t like you?”

  “No,” I said. “That’s not the reason.” And after a pause, “They really didn’t like me?”

  “I don’t care what they think,” he said. “I’ve told them we’re getting married, and that’s that.”

  “That’s that?” Had he not heard me asking to call the whole thing off? “It isn’t about your parents. It’s about us.”

  “But the church is booked, and the reception, and”—­he took a deep breath—­“I was going to keep this a surprise, but I’ve put down a deposit on a house in Croydon. Near my parents—­in the same street I grew up on.”

  I was speechless.

  “I was going to tell you after the wedding.”

  “Gavin,” I said. “There isn’t going to be a wedding.”

  “There is,” he said. “It’s all planned.”

  “I can’t marry you.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know if we can make our lives fit together. We’re too different.”

  Gavin laughed. “I know about your funny upbringing and I don’t care. That’s all behind you—­in the past. What matters is our future. The way we live now.”

  “You don’t understand,” I said. “I haven’t been myself. I haven’t been honest.”

  It was as though Gavin hadn’t heard me. “Look,” he said. “Take some time, think it over. The wedding isn’t for another six months.” He reached across the yellow-­flecked Formica table and took my hand. “It’s perfectly normal to get cold feet.”

  When I told Fran about our conversation, she thought it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. “So let me get this straight. You tried to call off the wedding, but he wouldn’t let you?”

  “It was like he was deaf.”

  “But you didn’t tell him about Lukas, did you?”

  “I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.”

  Fran snorted. “It’s a bit late for that, darling.”

  In a very smal
l voice, I said, “I know.”

  For five consecutive days that week, I tried to break off the engagement with Gavin, and each time he would not budge. Even when finally I told him there was someone else, he said it was normal to fantasize about sowing a few wild oats before settling down to have a family. In fact, he said, it was better to get that sort of thing out of your system before the big day than to have it destroy the marriage later on, when you had a family and things were more complicated.

  On the sixth day, I gave Gavin back his engagement ring. I would have returned it earlier but because I never wore it, it had taken me a week to find the thing. “Well,” he said, upon pocketing it, “I’m still not canceling the wedding.”

  “But I’m not going to come over to your flat anymore,” I said, to which he shrugged, as though I had just told him I wasn’t going to finish the rest of my sandwich. “And no more sex.”

  That’s when I finally understood. His course was set; he was incapable of changing direction. Nothing I said would make any difference. It was why he couldn’t eat Greek food, or fuck me from behind.

  “As far as I’m concerned,” I said, “we’ve broken up and it’s okay to see other ­people.” I didn’t know how much clearer I could make it.

  “The wedding’s six months away,” said Gavin. “You’ll change your mind before then, I’m sure of it.”

  Is this what the prediction had meant by true love—­a love that was like quicksand or superglue?

  I stayed with Lukas every night that week. When we were together, I forgot about my other existence. I was intoxicated by our reunion and there was much going on that was exciting and distracting. Fran had worked her magic on Marlon, convincing him to accept the help offered by his father, and within weeks, the Communists had gone into the recording studio to record a demo of “Frozen Hearts.” Not just any studio, mind you, but Abbey Road. The Right Honorable Giles Andover QC was a huge Beatles fan, as well as a believer that if one was going to do something at all, one ought to do it properly. For three sessions that kicked off in the dead of night, when more famous bands had gone home to sleep, he would have had to pull strings and fork out a considerable amount. The day before they went in, Lukas confessed he was terrified. He had done a bit of recording before, in New Zealand, but they’d only ever used shitty equipment and had never had enough time to get down anything decent. When the resulting record was awful, no one was dumbfounded, and there were plenty of factors on which to lay blame. This time, there would be no such scapegoats. If the record sucked it would be because the band sucked.

  I was concerned the band sucked but saying so would have been cruel. “You’ll be brilliant,” I reassured Lukas. “You guys are so tight. You saw everyone go nuts at that gig.”

  “But we won’t be in front of an audience . . .” Lukas looked anxious. “It won’t be the same vibe. The same energy.”

  “Isn’t that what the producer’s for? To make it sound good?”

  “I hope so,” Lukas said. “I bloody hope so.”

  While the Communists were recording, I went to work as usual—­when I saw Gavin, he acted as though nothing had changed. After work I caught a bus to the mews flat to wait for Lukas to finish. Neither Fran nor I had ever brought boyfriends back to the bedsit in Fulham. It was too small, just a room with two single beds, a kitchenette and shower cubicle, clothes strewn all over the floor, and no privacy. Lukas had given me a key, and I let myself in and waited—­and waited. I read a book, drank a glass of vinegary Beaujolais, watched Dynasty, ate leftover vindaloo, and then fell asleep on the velvet banquette. When I woke later on, Lukas still hadn’t come home, and I figured they had skipped an evening off and gone straight into the next session. The next morning I went to work, where he rang me midafternoon. He was sorry he hadn’t come home, they had recorded all night and crashed out in the studio, he couldn’t talk for long, it was going well, much better than expected, the producer was a genius, and he was looking forward to seeing me later.

  But later, the same thing happened. I waited and waited. Lukas didn’t come home, and then I fell asleep. Not long after, I woke with a start. Someone was banging on the back door of the mews. I went to answer it, thinking it was Lukas, that he had forgotten his key. Only it wasn’t him. Standing silhouetted in the moonlight was Serena. She had on an elaborate dressing gown, monogrammed at the breast with her initials, and she had put on gumboots to make the trek through the soggy garden. Her expression was unexpectedly one of fear.

  “Mummy and Daddy are away,” she began. “My room is right at the top of the house and I . . . well, I can’t stand being home alone at night.”

  “I thought you had a housekeeper—­a maid of some sort?”

  “She doesn’t stay over.”

  I said nothing, wanting to make this hard for Serena.

  “Look here,” she said. “The thing is I’m scared to death. I thought I heard someone trying to break in.”

  “You can stay here,” I offered. “In Marlon’s room.” I had tiptoed up there earlier, surveyed the disarray, and then retreated.

  Serena screwed up her nose. “Eww, no. I couldn’t possibly. I was rather hoping you’d come up to the house.”

  “Me?”

  “You’ve been up there before, surely? Lukas has, many times.” Was she gloating?

  “No,” I said. “I’ve never been further than the mews.”

  Serena hovered in the doorway. I hadn’t complied yet and I could see that it pained her to have to beg.

  “Do you think you could stand it?” she said. “I’ll make us breakfast in the morning—­or rather, Aggie will. She comes in at seven.”

  Aggie, short for Agnes, was the housekeeper and cook, who had been with the family for a hundred years. I had heard Marlon telling Lukas what a jolly good sport she was, especially for someone so ancient. Not that long ago, he had tried to bake hash cookies in the basement kitchen of the big house, and Aggie had come in halfway through his experiment and suggested an improvement to the recipe. When Marlon had asked if she would like to eat one, the old cook had laughed heartily at his mischievousness and told him she would take one home for her dog. I had never met a domestic servant before and was curious what one might be like, not to mention the fact that she would be serving me breakfast, an offer too glamorous to turn down.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let me get my things.”

  I followed Serena up a garden path bordered with pebbles, admiring the profusion of neatly clipped rosebushes, each one a perfect globe. At this time of year, all the branches were bare, exposing all the thorns. A square pond had been dug into the lawn, and in the center of that stood a fountain, flowing for no one but the moon’s benefit. There was a gazebo too, furnished with steamer chairs, and dozens of bulbous Grecian urns, carefully arranged to simulate disarray.

  Serena guided me up a set of wide terra-­cotta steps and through a heavy black door. Inside, the house was even more impressive than I’d imagined. First the kitchen, vast, with acres of counter space and a range, then wide stairs, the carpet so thick it purred under my feet. The ground-­floor hallway was tiled in checkered black-­and-­white marble, and off it, a series of heavy paneled doors, thick with varnish and sporting ornate brass handles. A few of these were open, revealing large, lofty rooms and antique furniture, the polished surfaces glinting even in the dead of night. The carpet was an impractical ivory, pristine like fresh snow, its powder broken by thick Persian rugs. Weighty brocade and tassels adorned every window, and each wall was crowded with portraits of somber men and women in wigs and crinolines and breeches. “Who uses these rooms?” I asked.

  Serena was puzzled. “What a strange question.”

  “It’s just that everything’s so old, so valuable—­like it belongs in a museum. What if you broke something?”

  “We never did,” said Serena. “Even when we were children.” I could tell she was prou
d of that fact.

  “Where do you watch TV?”

  She pointed upward. “In my room.”

  What she should have said was in her suite, for she had a bedroom and a bathroom and a dressing room all of her own. It was on the top floor, next to Marlon’s abandoned teenage bedroom, which she showed me, still decorated with various medals and cricket cups and rugby shirts in frames on the wall.

  “There,” said Serena, pointing to a surprisingly small television set, bunny ears atop a small black cube. “Marlon has one too.”

  “Television was banned from the commune,” I said. “And we weren’t allowed to make friends with children who had one, in case it corrupted us.”

  “We wouldn’t have been friends then,” said Serena, flopping down on one of two single beds in her room, both dressed up in doilies and covered with teddy bears and cutesy heart-­shaped pillows—­like a very young girl would have. Her walls were decorated with pony club rosettes. “Lukas told us about the commune. Was it really that awful?”

  “Is that how he described it?”

  “He likened it to being in prison.”

  “It wasn’t that bad. We thought it was paradise when we were kids.”

  “Paradise,” repeated Serena. “Lukas didn’t use that word.” She pointed to the other single bed. “You can sleep there.”

  I had not brought anything with me to sleep in, and was wearing a going-­out dress. “Can I borrow a T-­shirt?”

  Serena gave me a queer look. “Whatever for?”

  “To sleep in.”

  “You mean a nightgown?”

  “I guess so. I’ve never worn one.” On the commune boys and girls alike had worn T-­shirts to bed.

  “You’ve never worn a nightgown? That’s so funny.” Serena opened a few of the drawers in her dresser and held up something pink and frilly. “Hmm, I don’t think this will fit you,” she said. She rummaged some more and found a pair of silky pajamas. They looked about my size, but Serena said, “No, these won’t either.” She shut the drawer. “I don’t seem to have anything. Sorry.”