It Was You

by It Was You (retail) (epub)

  I told Mike to put his cash away, bought two bottles of beer and looked around for a space. There was nowhere to sit so we walked right through the bar and out onto the balcony. Just last month the balcony had been packed every night but it was now cold enough to have deterred everyone else but us. I didn’t get the impression that Mike wanted to be too close to anyone anyway. I don’t know if other people spotted it but he seemed to stand out. He was on edge, his eyes flicking around the room. I could tell he was trying his best to keep a lid on whatever it was he was feeling. And he was only just managing it. I was trying to keep a lid on what I was feeling too.

  Mike didn’t speak for a while and I told myself not to prompt him. I was still stunned by what he’d told me and didn’t want the conversation to start badly. We stood side by side on the broad balcony, leaning against the railings and looking out over the Thames towards St Paul’s. Wren’s masterpiece seemed huge and stately from so high up, the way it must have when it still dominated London’s skyline. To its right, two lit City churches were visible amongst the tightly packed mesh of glass and steel. To the left the Eye, all of north London in front. In between it all was the river, high and silent, moving like a black snake through the city. It really was an impressive picture and two French girls had followed us out, braving the cold to see it. They stood at the other end of the balcony, clutching hold of each other, teetering on the kind of platform heels that should have required planning permission.

  It was a dry, clear night, just a few dense clouds moving like airships along the river. Mike and I leaned out over the railing holding onto our bottles to keep them from hurtling down on the people milling below. I still didn’t know what to say to him. I thought about the cafe that morning, the tension I’d noticed. The sarcasm an inch over the border from the banter they usually employed to keep sane, working and living together as they did. Mike still didn’t speak and I realized he wasn’t going to: he was waiting for me to start. In as calm a voice as I could I asked what was going on. Mike turned to me and sighed through his teeth the way I’d heard him on the phone. He set his beer bottle down on the railing top.

  ‘We were supposed to go away,’ he said eventually.

  I took the thought in, nodding.

  ‘When we got married. It’s what we said. We said we’d spend another six months in the cafe saving and then lease it out or else just let it go. We were going to go to Africa. Don’t ask me why there but we’d planned it. Two years, maybe more. It was a big secret, something we kept reminding each other of, you know? We said we weren’t getting married to settle down but to push each other, get more out of life. We agreed that.’

  I pursed my lips and nodded. I was with him so far. ‘So what happened?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Mike shrugged. ‘After the wedding, Ally, she just stopped talking about it. Stopped getting excited when I brought it up. When I talked about actually doing it she said sure, OK, but why don’t we put it off, just another six months? She said she liked being married, just living in London together. It didn’t really worry me. I said OK, figuring we’d just have more cash when we did take off. I liked the way we were living too, it was a brilliant time, but I didn’t want to do it for ever. Ally said she didn’t either and I believed her, I did. And she knew how important it was for me. Something I really wanted to do. Then…’

  I let out a breath. ‘Then she got pregnant.’

  ‘That’s right. She got pregnant. When she told me I didn’t know what to think. It was a fluke, she’d missed a couple of days on the pill when we went away one weekend. But the thing was, she told me like it was supposed to be some happy, great thing. She told me, her face lit up, and she just left a space for me to get really excited in. As if this one thing wiped out everything we’d planned. As if the thing that I’d been dreaming of since I was sixteen was nothing. She was so psyched, so amazed and happy. But I was stunned. My first thoughts – fuck, I’m ashamed – but you know what they were?’

  ‘You didn’t know if you wanted it.’

  ‘No. I did know. I knew very well. I didn’t. One day maybe, one day definitely, but not then. But I couldn’t even bring up termination or anything. Ally was just so far down the road, you know? Mentally. Right away I could tell it was unthinkable, so much so that she didn’t have a clue that I was considering it, that it was the first thing that came into my head. I should have said something.’

  ‘But you didn’t.’

  ‘I couldn’t. She was so happy. I felt like a twat. I went along with it. I told myself not to say anything I’d regret. I told myself to take the thought in. Give it a chance, you know, not say something that I’d regret, that would never go away.’

  ‘But nothing changed? You never got round to being happy about it?’

  ‘No, I did! I actually did after a couple of weeks. And properly happy. I thought about it. I saw us in Kampala, or Addis Ababa, yeah?, getting on a bus with the baby in a sling. Cool young parents. People do travel with kids, it would have been great. But when I brought that up Ally said no way. Like I was crazy to even mention it. We have to wait, she said. Do it later. When the kid’s at fucking college! Eighteen years and then we’ll be old, we won’t do it. And even if we do, I can’t wait. This is my life. It’s my life!’

  ‘And you’ve spoken to her, told her that?’

  Mike’s laugh was dismissive. ‘I’ve tried. She says we just have to catch the ball that fate has thrown us.’

  ‘She has a point, Mike. I mean, before, when she first told you, when you could have changed it, I guess not. You could have done something. But now? Now, Mike?’

  ‘I know. Shit, I know. I love her. And I love the idea of having a kid with her. I told myself it was OK. I’ve been pretending it’s OK for months, pushing the feelings down. But this is just going to cut out a slice of my life. One that I really need to feel like I’m me. It’ll be gone. And the closer it comes to Ally having this kid makes me feel like I can’t accept that. I just can’t accept that I’ll never have those two years, have them to live or have them to remember. I’ll always resent her. Even more than I do now.’

  Mike stopped speaking for a second and looked back across the river, a bitter, taut expression curling his face. I kept my eyes on him. Mike is a tall man, six-one or two, with the long scruffy hair of the Seventies’ Chelsea players he has often expressed his wish to be. He usually has a slightly bumbling, impossible to dislike demeanour, that makes men want to buy him a pint and women take him home to Mother. It wasn’t there now, though, and I wondered whether I’d ever actually taken the time to get to know Mike. On his own. Thinking about it, I’d always been friends with Mike and Ally: not with Mike, or with Ally. Mike ‘n’ Ally, like a sun strip on a Capri. I’d met them both on the same day, at the same time: in their cafe, Mike asking me if I was new to the building or just visiting; Ally chiding her boyfriend to leave me alone, that it was my business why I was there. I’d been part of their lives. I’d got to know their story. How Ally had come to the building looking for a studio to make her jewellery in. How she’d put the jewellery on the back burner and come to work with Mike, turning his cheap and cheerful sarnie joint into a little powerhouse, the heart as well as the stomach of the Lindauer Building.

  I knew that Ally was honest and easy to tease, the way people who only think the best of others often are, and I knew that Mike was laconic and very generous with his time and his friendship. But what I was really familiar with was the energy they put out together. The fact of their being together in my mind was probably what made the idea of them breaking up seem so wrong. I’d lose them out of my life. Even if I saw them separately, I’d lose them.

  There was also the fact that Ally was pregnant. Whatever Mike thought he couldn’t walk out on her now. Could he? If the answer was yes, then, even though I’d met him eight years ago, the day I moved into the Lindauer Building, I definitely didn’t know him.

  Mike was staring straight ahead, looking right down the barrel of the
decision he had to make. I put a hand on his arm.

  ‘Look at it another way,’ I told him. ‘Christ, I accept what you’re saying. You must be terrified, but no one gets to do absolutely everything they want to do in life. And you can’t blame Ally. She’s going to be missing those things too.’

  ‘But she doesn’t care! OK, if she’d said, shit, I’m up the duff, oh no, Africa’s out, what a pisser, that would have been different. I never would have made her have an abortion. But she stopped being excited about the trip months before.’

  ‘You think she did it on purpose? Got pregnant?’

  ‘No.’ Mike shook his head in frustration. ‘Not consciously. But yes, in some way. Some way that women get when they’re round about thirty. That made her forget to bring her pills when we went away for the weekend. I don’t know. Something else inside her was stronger than the dreams we had. And because of that she gave me no choice, none at all. I’m tied to this.’

  ‘You shouldn’t think of it that way. As something that’s just going to be restricting. I’m sure…’

  ‘You’re right. It doesn’t have to tie me down. I do have a choice. That’s the terrifying thing. That’s what’s horrifying me, pushing me towards doing something so terrible, something I’d never for a second imagined I could do. That choice, Billy. The fact that if I want to go to Africa I can. I can do it. All I have to do is be a bigger bastard than I ever thought it was possible for me to be. All I have to do is get on a plane.’

  ‘You can’t.’

  ‘No? What else do I do? Go to the baby club with Roger and Caroline? Always book a holiday in a place where they’ve got a kiddies’ club and a nice safe beach?’

  ‘No. You only think you have to live like that. I don’t know but maybe you can have what you want. Give Ally time. She might agree to go away in a year or so. You don’t know. And you don’t know what you’re going to feel in five weeks’ time either. That kid you’ll have…’

  ‘Will just represent everything I’ve given up.’

  ‘No,’ I said again. ‘Just because most people have kids in a certain way doesn’t mean you have to. Talk to Ally. Let her know how crucial this is to you. You’ll have to modify things but you can still get everything you want. The child will be yours as much as Ally’s so you’ve got just as much say as her. And if you don’t get what you want it’s your fault for not pushing for it, for not going for it. You can’t blame other people for your own life. You can’t blame Ally. And you can’t blame the child you’re going to have together.’

  Mike’s eyes welled with tears and his jaw trembled. He was being broken apart in a way that I could never understand. I didn’t know whether what I’d said had any relevance. I just didn’t want him to leave his pregnant wife. For them, for the baby, and also for me. Tears rolled down Mike’s cheeks but I couldn’t tell whether they were out of love for Ally or of anger at her and the position he was in.

  Mike lifted his hands to his face and an odd thing happened. Odd because I can still see it so clearly. Mike’s elbow brushed his Budvar bottle, which was standing on the edge of the railing we were leaning on. The bottle tottered. I watched as it pivoted, in slow-mo, then spun on its base. The bottle straightened and then, just when I thought it was about to right itself, the neck lurched towards the huge space in front of us and the whole thing tipped over. I seemed to watch the bottle for ages but then, in one of those strange, unbidden surges, my arm rushed forward and my knees dropped. My hand darted through the thin, black bars of the railing. Between my little finger and the very bottom of my palm I caught the bottle just before it plummeted to the ground below. I looked down at the tiny figures there, moving like cells in a Petri dish, saw the suds disappearing towards them. I looked up at Mike.

  ‘Christ,’ he said, his mouth open, looking over the railing. ‘I could have killed someone. I could have killed somebody.’

  I drew the bottle back towards me slowly and set it down on the concrete floor.

  ‘Be careful, Mike,’ I said.

  Chapter Seven

  Fifteen minutes later Mike and I were walking along the river towards London Bridge, a cold east wind making us squint. We strolled past the Globe Theatre, white as a goose in the night air, and then under Southwark Bridge, where a man dressed as an Elizabethan clown was singing an Oasis song, accompanying himself on a lute. It got a pound coin from me. When we emerged I looked out over the Thames, the dark surface spotted with light. It was high tide now and the water was moving in shifting eddies, not knowing which way to turn.

  I’d managed to persuade Mike to tell Ally what he was feeling. Give her a chance to respond. I told him that Ally loved him and wouldn’t want to stifle him in any way. Mike said he’d try to put a clamp on his feelings, for now at least, and hold onto the love he had for his wife. He still looked a mess, though, dread stamped on his features as I wished him goodnight. He said he was going to speak to her that night, as soon as he got in, and I thought about the conversation they were going to have. I really hoped that Ally would be able to reassure him, help him through the doubts he was feeling. Ally and Mike were so right for each other. Anyone who knew them could tell that.

  After Mike had gone I thought about a cab but decided to walk home, back towards the Tate, then over the new footbridge, again wondering why they’d seemingly decided to model it on the interior of an Eighties’ wine bar. I carried on past the cathedral and up through Clerkenwell Green to my flat. It only took thirty minutes: London can sometimes be a lot smaller than the traffic in the daytime lets on. I emerged on Clerkenwell’s fashionable Exmouth Market and walked along to the side street at the other end and the former photographic studio I’ve lived in for eight years. All the way I was thinking of Sharon. Having Mike’s problems thrust into my face as well as Jemma’s really made me want to see her. I couldn’t wait for these treacle-slow days to go by, couldn’t wait to be standing at the arrivals’ gate, scanning the weary faces for two fresh green eyes. The three months she’d been away had gone pretty quickly, I’d even enjoyed the pain of missing her, for the certain knowledge it brought with it. But I couldn’t believe these last two weeks were ever, ever going to end. I suddenly realized that, like Mike’s, my life was also going to change dramatically. Unlike him, I wanted it to.

  * * *

  I spent most of the next day back at Loughborough Junction looking for Denise Denton. It was the coldest day of the year so far and I saw a few hats, quite a few scarves, people beginning to cover up in inverse relation to the trees. I heard a lot of Eminem, banging out of passing cars, watched a wino drink himself unconscious on White Lightning, and bizarrely, I caught a glimpse of Prince Charles in the back of a sleek black Jag. I didn’t see Denise, though. She wasn’t around and neither, fortunately, was the hooker I’d tangled with. I passed out more photos and told myself that was about the end of it. I had something more important to look into.

  At six-thirty I was standing at the bar of a pub on Islington’s Liverpool Road. I was waiting for Detective Inspector Andrew Gold, and he didn’t keep me long. When I saw him struggling through the door with his briefcase I ordered him a pint of Stella. By the time he’d made it through the crowd, mostly men watching the football highlights on a wall-mounted TV, the pint was sitting on the bar with lines of white foam running down the sides. Without even looking at me Andy lifted it and sank it down to a couple of inches. He slammed the glass back down on the bar top and let out a long, growling belch, before looking over my shoulder. I turned to see a table of four men getting up to leave.

  ‘Get us a pint in, Billy,’ Andy said. ‘I’m fucking parched.’

  The Rising Sun was packed and it took me a while to get the barmaid’s attention again. I spent the time looking round the pub I used to frequent four, five, even six times a week. It hadn’t changed. There was no espresso machine, no list of New World wines chalked up above the bar. The clientele wouldn’t have stood for it, they wouldn’t have countenanced the removal of the chipped, wo
od-effect Formica tables or the replacement of the booze-encrusted, red-paisley carpet. I wondered why every coppers’ local I had ever set foot in was a fleapit. There was a bright, clean boozer round the corner that would have made the safest of havens for any number of rapists and drug pushers because no member of the Queen’s constabulary would ever have set foot in it. Entering the Rising Sun was like walking into a diseased lung.

  I carried the drinks over to Andy, who was sat at a small round table in the corner where no one would notice us unless they were really looking. Andy had finished his pint and took a long pull of his new one.

  ‘Fuck, that’s better,’ he said. He pulled open his tie like a condemned man pardoned just before the drop.

  ‘Bad day?’

  ‘Oh, you know.’

  ‘Not any more. Tell me.’

  ‘Usual crap. Middle-aged woman down Lea Valley way tells some kids to stop sitting on her car. Instead of saying yes, miss, sorry, miss, they gang-bang her, chuck her in the canal.’

  ‘Lovely.’

  ‘S’ what I thought. Girls as well as boys, you believe? They all helped. We bring in some suspects and she identifies them. She’s like positive: posse of black teenagers, you know the type. Haven’t spent long enough in school to have learned more than four words each and two of those are mother and fucker. We’re happy, of course, but the only problem is they can’t have done it. They mumbled something about being in Old Street, which I took to be a crock of shit, but there they are, on CCTV. The woman just shrugs. She thought it was them but she just wants someone to blame, any stroppy black twats. So today we collar some more and she says it again – that’s them. And this time it might have been but how the hell do we know? Jesus, Billy, I think you were right to jump ship.’