2cool2btrue

by Simon Brooke

  “What do you mean?” She says nothing but I can still hear the sounds of the street around her.

  “You’ll find out. Now, where shall we meet? Um, let me think. I know. The bar of the Metropolitan Hotel in Park Lane. At 8:30 P.M. Does that sound okay?”

  “Yes. Sure.”

  “See you then, babe.”

  I drop the phone on the floor and slump back in the bath.

  I sleep fitfully that night rehearsing over and over in my mind the various conversations that I could have with Lauren when she gets back. I know that whatever I say to her she will somehow be able to top or knock down in debate. Perhaps it’s because she so good at that sort of thing or perhaps it’s because she really is just right.

  I’m also thinking of what Nora said. The party. Guy and Piers knowing my dad. I begin to dial his number a couple of times and then stop. He can ring me when he’s ready to tell the truth about what he’s been up to. Then I’m back to thinking about Lauren and what I’m going to tell her.

  By six thirty I give up on sleep altogether and get out of bed. I go into the kitchen and begin to make some coffee but somehow the smell makes me feel sick. It’s too early and I’m feeling jittery enough already. If only I knew what time she would be back. It occurs to me that the health club down the road is open now. I’ve never been at this time of day before—why would I?

  I get dressed quickly, grab my swimming trunks and a towel and set off. Even though it’s not yet seven, Chiswick High Road has swung into life—shops open, people getting onto buses, cafe staff putting out chairs. I walk into the club where the girl smiles at me, swipes my card and buzzes me in. There is one other bloke in the pool, ploughing up and down monotonously. I follow suit.

  By eight I’m back home where I have a shower and a shave and make some more coffee. I open a copy of The Post which I bought. Only after I’ve read it right through to the sport do I realise to my great relief that there is no mention of 2cool anywhere in it.

  Pottering around the flat, trying to guess at what time Lauren might be home, my mood ranges from one of deep depression to agonising confusion to a strange sense of calm detachment. I’ll see what Lauren has to say, decide how I feel when I see her and we’ll just take it from there. I clear the place up, as much to give myself something to do as to try and please her.

  I nip out later and buy some food. I use my 2cool credit card which, to my surprise, seems to go through the system okay. I am aware as I’m signing the receipt that I’m probably breaking the law but such is my state of numbed preoccupation that I really don’t mind if I go to jail. Anyway, they offer all kinds of welfare services and emotional support to prisoners these days, don’t they? Maybe I could get some advice on what to do about my life.

  As I put my key in the door, my heart starts racing. I double locked it before I went out, didn’t I? No, maybe not. Anyway, she’s not there. I eat some bread and pâté and tomatoes out of their packets for lunch. I decide not to have a glass of wine so that I can keep my head clear. Then I laugh at the idea of being clear about anything at the moment. I put the rest of the food away and then go and see what is on TV. There’s an old Western with John Wayne. I lie down and begin to watch it.

  For some reason—perhaps it’s the noise of the gunfire—I don’t hear her key in the front door and so one minute I’m just staring at the TV, thinking about her and the next minute she is there, standing in the doorway of the living room. I notice her first in the mirror. I get up slowly and face her. She is tanned and beautifully dressed as always, but her eyes look like she’s been crying quite a bit and not sleeping much.

  She looks at me for a moment in silence and then mutters something about putting her bag in the bedroom. I nod and stay where I am. She is back moments later, saying something else.

  “Sorry?” I whisper.

  “I was going to make a cup of tea, would you—?”

  “Yes, oh, yes, please. Are you hungry? I’ve just been to the store and there’s masses of food—some fruit and some nice bread—” But I’m gabbling.

  “Erm, no, thanks. I’m not hungry.”

  “Sit down, I’ll get the tea.”

  She comes into the room to let me pass and I go out into the kitchen, trying to work out from what I have seen so far whether we can make a go of it again or whether we simply need to discuss the mechanics of splitting up.

  I come back with cups of tea for both of us and she asks:

  “So, how are you?”

  “Okay, thanks. You?”

  “Not bad.”

  “How was France?”

  She looks slightly surprised by the question. She did go to France, didn’t she? I look enquiringly at her. She looks down at her mug.

  “It was very nice. Lovely, thanks.”

  We sit in silence realising that there is no point in continuing this small talk.

  “Lauren, we—”

  “Charlie, I’ve been thinking—”

  It’s all I need to hear. I know from her tone that she has made up her mind to end it. I feel shocked but relieved at the same time.

  “Oh, right. Okay.” I stand up and take a deep breath.

  “I haven’t said—”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Charlie…” Her face creases and she begins to fight back tears. I can’t bear to see her like this, I keep wanting to hold her but I know I can’t anymore. I turn away and look at the TV. “I love you, I probably always will but…”

  “Have you met someone else?” I realise that I want her to say yes for the sake of my conscience.

  “No.” She sounds surprised. “No. And there was nothing like that going on between Peter and me, in case—”

  I laugh.

  “I know.”

  “How do you mean?” She isn’t laughing.

  “I found him in bed here with a young guy.”

  “Oh, right. I said he could borrow the flat. I didn’t think you’d be back.”

  “Neither did he.”

  There is a long silence between us.

  “I’m sorry I thought you and Peter were having an affair,” I say at last. “I made a fool of myself because of it. And I’m sorry I slept with Nora.”

  “Are you?” she says quietly.

  “Sorry? Well, yes I…” But even as I’m saying it I’m not sure that I am. I’m sorry I was unfaithful to Lauren—she didn’t deserve to be treated like that—but I’m not sure that I’m sorry beyond that. Sleeping with Nora was special, it felt right when I did it and somehow it even feels right now. Lauren obviously understands what my trailing off, my pausing for thought means.

  “The thing is, Charlie, you’ve changed. Since you’ve been involved in this whole crazy 2cool thing I hardly recognise you. You’ve shut me out, ignored my advice.”

  “Your advice?” I laugh irritably. “Is that what you think I need?”

  “We just don’t talk any more. You don’t even want to listen to me.”

  “Lauren, I told you why I wanted to see this thing through, what I wanted to do. Yes, I have changed—and I’m glad I’ve changed. I’m not ashamed of it. I want something else in life now.”

  There is silence for a moment then she says what I’m thinking:

  “And I’ve changed too, Charlie, I want something else too.”

  We’ve both changed, become different people. We both want other things. That’s it. There’s no better reason for ending it.

  I’ve been sitting at a cafe in the High Road fingering my mobile and trying to work out who I want to talk to when I find myself ringing Nora at the office. Am I the bearer of good news for her? It doesn’t feel like it. I want to talk to her though. Inevitably I get some rude, hassled colleague who snaps that she’s not there. I try her mobile and get her voice mail. When the beep comes I can’t think of what to say to her other than that I do want to go to the party tonight, after all. I get the feeling that if I even mention Lauren’s name to her I’ll break down.

  It’s not tha
t I don’t want to break down in front of her, it’s just that if I do, I want her to be alone with me, somewhere quiet where we can talk and hold each other.

  My mind is flooded with the consequences of splitting up with Lauren. We’ll have to tell people. We’ll have to sort out the flat. Our flat. Weirdly it’s the small practical things that I keep thinking about, that make me almost ache with unhappiness. The thought of Lauren packing up her things in our flat. Undoing our life together. The end of our little rituals.

  I’m going to have to find somewhere else to live. With Nora? A bit premature. She might not want me to, at least not so soon.

  I really don’t know that much about this girl, my new girlfriend? Is that what she is? Is that what she wants to be? Is that what I want her to be? Suddenly I feel very uncertain. Lauren was all about certainty, comfort, familiarity, but Nora is like setting off in a new city without a map.

  I feel sort of exhilarated when I think about it. New things. New places. New little rituals. That business of finding out about each other. New “our songs.” I’m enjoying this feeling, relieved to discover it, buoyed up by it, so I work at it a bit, pushing myself in this direction, telling myself it’s where I want to go, what I want to do. New things. New starts. With Nora.

  To my surprise she’s already there when I arrive at eight twenty-five. I haven’t worked out what to say to her about Lauren. I suppose I was just hoping the words would come. She smiles broadly, throws her arms around me and kisses me on the lips, playing with my hair.

  “How are you, babe?” she says, looking at me closely, obviously trying to read from my face what has happened between me and Lauren. But my miserable expression could mean anything—sad because we’ve split up or sad because we haven’t and I don’t want to see Nora any more. Or just sad because I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here and what I’ve got myself into.

  “All right,” I mutter. I realise how much I’ve been looking forward to seeing her but not here, like this. Not with her in this mood—Nora the journalist on a high because of a story, perhaps the biggest story of her career. Not here, in this smart, noisy bar, full of hip people double kissing and hitting each other with media world gossip and elegantly crafted one-liners.

  “Good.” She scans my face again. I look away. “You look very nice.”

  “Oh, thanks.” I don’t feel it. “Er, so do you,” I add rather unconvincingly.

  “How did it go with Lauren?”

  I open my mouth to tell her but I don’t know where to start. I can hardly bring myself to say “We’ve split up” and even if I did, what would I say then? “So how about it?” I just can’t work out how I feel at the moment, let alone find some words to express it. Before I talk about me and Lauren I need to talk about me and her.

  “Listen we’ve got to talk—somewhere quiet,” I tell her. She looks at me again, trying to read me once more. I realise Nora must hate this. Not being ahead of the game must be an unusual experience for her, probably quite frightening.

  “What’s wrong with here?”

  “It’s too noisy, too many people.”

  “Have a drink,” she says suddenly, a note of anger in her voice.

  “Nora—”

  “Excuse me,” she bellows across at the barman who makes a great show of looking shocked at such over-excitable behaviour in this temple of cool. Her elbow catches her own glass but I manage to rescue it just in time.

  “Well? What do you want?” she barks at me.

  “Nora, look, listen to me—”

  “Come on, what do you want? Can’t be that difficult. Glass of white wine?”

  “Erm, yeah, yeah, whatever.”

  She remains staring resolutely in the direction of the barman, despite my attempts to get her to face me. When the drink finally appears she snatches it from him and thrusts it at me. I look at it. Realising that she is determined not to let me speak I take a large gulp of it.

  “Can we talk before we get to this party?” I say slowly.

  “If there’s time,” she says, knocking back her gin and tonic.

  “Look, it’s not what you think—”

  “Ha!” she says. “That old one.”

  “Nora, really.” Somehow the longer she goes on, getting angrier, assuming she knows what has happened between me and Lauren, the more difficult it is to stop her and tell her the truth. I need to find the right words, to tell her how I feel about Lauren and how I feel about her. To see where we go from here.

  “Do you like it?” she says smoothing down her dress and twisting around to show it off. She is wearing a simple black close-fitting frock with a fur collar. And a lot of diamonds. “Got it from the fashion department. Mustn’t get it dirty—or ripped or anything.” She giggles, maniacally. She’s scaring me now. “These rocks are paste of course, but they’re so glam, aren’t they? They’re mine. I bought ’em in New York years ago.”

  “Nora, what is going on? What’s this party all about?” I certainly can’t talk to her while she’s so obsessed with this fucking thing. Now I’m beginning to get nervous about it.

  “I like your jacket.” I’m wearing a black dress shirt and a black Armani jacket courtesy of 2cool and some faded, stitched-up blue jeans—“model’s own,” as they say. When I sneaked back into the flat, avoiding Lauren who was watching TV and talking quietly on the phone, I couldn’t really think what to wear. I just wanted to get out. I opened the wardrobe and saw all our things together, the history of the last six years on shelves and coat hangers, all of it waiting now to be divided and packed. I just grabbed the first thing that looked vaguely appropriate.

  “Thanks,” I tell her for the second time. “Now what on earth is going on?”

  “I don’t know, you tell me.”

  “I would if you’d give me a moment,” I tell her, my face paralysed with anger.

  “We’ve got all evening together so you can do it whenever you want,” she says. I try and interrupt but she ploughs on. “Don’t ask me about this party tonight, by the way, because I don’t know anything. Honestly! All I know is what happens at these things will tell us a lot about 2cool and why all these people who have coughed up aren’t that bothered about trying to find out what happened to their money.”

  “So what is going to happen at this thing?” I decide that she is right, I’ll just drag her into a quiet corner later, when she is less hysterical, less wired and more willing to listen.

  “I don’t know,” she says, opening her eyes wide. “But we’ll see. Just have patience. Here, look at this.” She holds up her handbag, spilling her drink and mine.

  “What about it?”

  She looks around suspiciously and then points to what looks like a large sequin on one side of it.

  “Hidden camera.”

  “What?”

  “The picture desk sorted it out for me. You just squeeze the catch here. Hang on, I’m doing it the wrong way round, yep, that’s it, you just squeeze the catch here and it takes a picture.”

  “Why? A picture of what?”

  “What goes on at this party.”

  “And you still won’t tell me?—”

  “I told you, we’ll have to wait and see.”

  “Nora, you’re really beginning to annoy me.”

  “Feeling’s mutual,” she says quickly.

  “Then for fuck’s sake, let’s go somewhere quiet first and—”

  “Here he is,” she says, looking over my shoulder and waving.

  I turn round. A guy in a baseball cap and sunglasses is walking straight towards us. Not surprisingly most other people in the bar have spotted him too and are looking discretely but intensely to see who it is. Robbie Williams? Will Young? Oh, no, they almost certainly won’t know him but I do:

  “Piers!”

  “Shhh,” he and Nora say in stereo from either side of me.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Hello, matey,” he says, looking around, coming up close to me and shaking my hand w
hile clutching my elbow as if he’s trying to stuff my arm into the black bomber jacket he’s wearing.

  “What do you want to drink?” whispers Nora.

  “Oh, a real drink. Thank God,” he whispers back.

  Fortunately the barman is being a bit more attentive this time, obviously wanting to check out the “celeb.”

  “G and T,” he hisses at Nora. “A large one. Lots of ice.”

  She relays this to the barman who has in fact already heard and is inspecting Piers closely.

  “Good disguise,” I tell Piers, as more people turn to look at him.

  “Cheers,” he says, winking behind his sunglasses, oblivious as usual to my sarcasm.

  “Why don’t you tell Piers what’s happened recently,” says Nora. “To you, I mean.” For a moment I think she must be talking about my meeting with Lauren again, sarcastically implying that if I won’t tell her I’ll tell Piers, bozo that he is. Then I realise that she has other things in mind. I leave out the Peter and Scott episode but explain about Slapton’s visit and the computers. Piers is pleased and tells me that he knew it would all work out okay. Then I give him an edited version of the conversation with my dad.

  “Your dad,” laughs Piers as he takes his drink from the barman.

  “What about him?” I say, staring intensely. If I thought talking to Nora was going to be difficult until a few minutes ago, now with Piers here it’s going to be impossible. He looks surprised at my hostile reaction.

  “Well, it’s just unfortunate that…you know…he’s mixed up in this.”

  “Unfortunate?” I say, moving slightly closer. Piers takes a step back.

  “Just saying. I’m sure he won’t, you know get into any trouble.”

  “He’d better fucking not.”

  “Stop it boys,” says Nora. “Don’t forget, we’ve got to work together tonight.” She’s probably right. I back off.

  “I’m so glad to be out of that bloody warehouse place. Full of rats, I’m sure,” says Piers.

  “It must be,” says Nora.

  “I’m looking forward to this party, as well,” sniggers Piers.