It was as if the sound had been put on mute and his face seemed to blur in front of my eyes. ‘What do you mean?’ I rested my fork on the edge of my plate, nervous butterflies filling my stomach. I wasn’t hungry any more.
‘Well, I know there isn’t anything going on between you, so don’t worry. It’s just that she adores you, Nick. She bloody adores you, you’re her best mate, and I find it all very hard to live up to.’ He looked embarrassed again, but I was deeply impressed by the nakedness of his admission.
His honesty was so rare, yet refreshing. But what would happen if everyone acted like this? ‘I’m sorry, but I stopped seeing you because when you took your clothes off, your bum freaked me out,’ or ‘I moved away from you on the train because your breath smells like the back end of a donkey.’ People would get pissed off . . .
I cleared my throat to say something, but I didn’t know what to say. My cheeks were burning up. Sienna adores me? Bloody adores me? Hard to live up to? Was I really hearing this? Half of me wanted to shake him out of it, and the other half wanted to punch the air with joy. Ben picked up the wine bottle and tipped the rest of it into my glass as if to wipe my memory of his confession.
I sat there for a few seconds. Seconds which felt like long-drawn-out, hideously awkward minutes. I hadn’t realised I meant so much to her. What would I say? I thought, as the predictably awful disco music kicked in, saving me from the intensity of my feelings.
I was finally ready to speak. ‘Well, er, right. OK. Er, wow.’ I suddenly became aware that I was waffling even more than Hugh Grant did in Four Weddings. I was getting frustrated just listening to my own dithering. I tried again. ‘That’s lovely in a way, Ben – and yes, Sienna and I are close friends. But don’t feel like it’s something to live up to . . . I really admire you, I get on with you really well. I don’t want this to become an issue . . . Pal, she really likes you.’ Phew.
He looked relieved, but still troubled. There was marked concern across his features. He was a frightened man and I had a horrible feeling he was still about to run away from her.
‘Nick, Nick! Come over here, you have to come and see what Lydia has made out of carrots!’ came a sudden shriek from Tom, who was horribly drunk already for the relatively early hour. I put my hand up in his direction as he put his weight on my shoulders and leaned over, laughing hard.
‘Tom, please – that sounds great, but I’m kind of in the middle of something here . . . I’ll be over soon, OK?’
‘All right, you boring bastards,’ he said, ruffling my hair as he stumbled away. Idiot.
‘Anyway. Come on, Ben . . .’
‘God, I’m so sorry, Nick. I’m an idiot. It’s fine. I’ll deal with this.’ He pushed the silverware together on his plate to indicate he had finished.
‘Please don’t leave her. Please?’
I couldn’t believe I was begging him like this. I just couldn’t bear the thought of seeing her hurting. Especially when I looked across the table and saw her smiling, looking like a glittering little star. I turned back and he was gone.
The rest of the night was a drunken haze. Lydia had constructed a naked man out of vegetables, which had been passed around the room on a large square plate. When it reached our table, I managed to drop it, turning me into the most hated individual of the night for ruining her masterpiece. Thankfully it only took a Cosmopolitan cocktail to apologise to Lydia.
Tom managed to get so drunk that he sang Barbie Girl through the karaoke machine three times in a row and still wowed the ‘crowd’ like he was Jon Bon Jovi. Chloe and I danced to the slow songs, my hands around her waist, remembering the last time I’d danced like this.
‘Was everything OK earlier, darling?’ she asked, placing one of her hands around my neck and playing with my hair. It made all the little hairs on my back stand up.
‘Hmm, I don’t know . . . I’m not totally sure what’s going on with Ben and Sienna. We tried to talk about that silly comment he made earlier.’
‘I guess it was only the sort of thing I would have said a while ago, when I was being silly.’ She rolled her eyes at the absurdity of it all. ‘I love you, Nick Redland,’ she said, kissing me on the nose.
‘I love you too,’ I told her, so glad she was happy tonight. Maybe I would get some sleep.
It turned out quite differently. Chloe dragged me up to our hotel room and that was pretty much the end of the Christmas party and the start of a private one. I tried to stop her – I felt rude leaving so early – but the things she was whispering in my ear were making it very difficult for me to concentrate on anything else, so we scuttled up the stairs, giggling away. She was struggling in her heels, so after a while I slung her over my shoulder and carried her the rest of the way in a fireman’s lift.
It was about 1 a.m. and we were just drifting off to sleep when I heard what sounded like a sob in the corridor. Then suddenly – silence. That was strange. I lay there for a few minutes, wondering if I’d imagined it. Well, whoever it was would be gone by now . . .
Then I heard it again. Shit, it sounded like Sienna.
I carefully moved Chloe’s slender arm from around my torso and placed it gently on the mattress. Tiptoeing to the door, I put on a T-shirt I’d brought for the morning and pressed my ear against the wooden surface. I was still fairly drunk, but a lot more collected than before. The sound was more distant this time, so I opened the door quietly and shuffled out. Yes, it was definitely Sienna. But where was she?
I followed the corridor round, the red carpet scratchy against the soles of my feet. The walls were illuminated with old-fashioned uplighters in the shape of seashells. Hideous. Despite the light, the corridor was still quite dark and my sleepy eyes were struggling to adjust. I kept one hand on the wall, following it round by touch. There was no one else about, and the only thing breaking the silence was the sound of distress nearby.
There was less sobbing now and more laboured breathing. Cigarette smoke was filling the air. That was naughty, I thought, as my eyes started to sting a little. That was not like Sienna . . . God, maybe it was someone else and I was about to be forced into comforting some complete random. I might even accidentally flash them from the inside leg of my boxers and make them even more traumatised.
I turned one more corner and beneath the haze of thick smoke was a green puff of fabric, and somewhere underneath that was Sienna. She was slightly illuminated by a green fire-exit light to her left.
‘Who goes there?’ she asked, a drunken lilt to her voice. She squinted through the blur, one eye closed and mascara streaked down her cheeks. A curly strand of hair had come loose from her updo. It hung by her face, lingering around her jawline. Jesus.
I crawled on to the floor and started to shuffle along on my elbows. ‘Emergency. Emergency. I need to rescue you from this burning inferno,’ I said with my joke robot voice on.
A white cigarette was hanging from between her fingers, the tip glowing fiercely in the dim light. Somehow, in the midst of her turmoil, she laughed.
I dragged myself up from the floor and sat next to her. ‘Miss Walker. What on earth are you doing alone in this corridor? Where’s your man? What’s happened?’ I pulled her legs out from beneath her dress and laid them across my lap.
‘I don’t have a man any more,’ she said, with what sounded like a lump in her throat. She took a deep drag on the cigarette and then passed it my way.
Bugger. ‘What? What happened?’ Clearly my pep talk hadn’t helped at all.
She leaned back against the wall again, the dress pulling tight around her neck because of the angle at which she was sitting. ‘He said that things are too hard with his life right now, and that he isn’t giving me what I need,’ she finished, taking the cigarette back and puffing away at it. It was dangerously close to the nasty letters at the bottom. I pulled it back and threw it out of an open window next to us. She hiccuped.
‘Holy shit, Sienna. I’m so, so sorry,’ I said, pulling her arms around my neck.
‘That’s OK. It’s not your fault,’ she responded in her lovely voice, like a modern Audrey Hepburn.
‘Well, I still love you, Panda Pop,’ I told her, running a hand through the hair near her forehead to comfort her.
She didn’t say anything, but she squeezed me a little tighter. ‘Am I ever going to find a nice man, Nick? I mean, I’m twenty-four now, for God’s sake,’ she cried, stupidly unaware of how painfully young she was, and just how much there was to come.
‘Of course you are. You’re a wonderful girl, so I think we can do a bit better than a “nice man”. Nice is a crap word . . .’ I started.
‘It’s boring, a bit like a biscuit,’ she giggled, finishing my sentence and mocking my voice all at the same time. It was a phrase I’d used a few times before.
‘No, seriously . . . What am I going to do?’ She looked at me blankly. It was as if she had cried so much there was nothing left but empty questions.
‘I wish I knew the answer, Sienna. The man you will marry is walking this earth. He’s alive right now, somewhere. He could be in Australia, backpacking with friends; he could be working in a bar in China; he could be a hotshot American lawyer; he could be a musician; he could be going about his life in London at this very moment . . . Any day now, your paths will cross.’ She smiled when I said this, like it brought her comfort.
‘Where’s your room?’ I went on. ‘I don’t want you lying here like this, gassing yourself in a tiny hallway. Plus this dress, it’s bloody gorgeous, Si, and you’re going to make it smell like a sewer. Where did you get it from, anyway?’ I asked, wiping my thumb over one of the black stains on her face. It smeared like charcoal.
She giggled again. ‘Er . . . It’s a long story. Well, actually, I was told this dress would change my life, but this wasn’t quite what I had in mind. My room is 204, I think,’ she continued, quickly changing the subject and squinting cross-eyed at her key as she held it in front of her face. What did she mean about the dress? I couldn’t seem to get any sense out of her right now.
‘Nick, I don’t want to go back. Can I just stay here alone? Please?’ She was being very strange. But people are strange when they’re hurting and pissed.
‘No, absolutely not,’ I said, standing up and holding her in my arms at the same time. She was light as a feather.
With one hand she pulled the band from her hair, causing it all to tumble out as she tilted her head back in exhaustion. The long swathes of material trailed behind us like the tail of a green dragon. It was beautiful. I wished someone could take a picture.
Thirteen
‘Don’t call me. Ever.’
Nick
It all started with a plate. Chloe was standing there in the kitchen holding it tight when I got back from the shop. I’d only nipped out for some cumin seeds and bread, and the next thing I knew the damn thing was hurled across the room, narrowly missing my ear before smashing to smithereens against the wall behind me.
‘What the fuck, Chloe?’ I shouted, standing in the hallway and trembling in fury. It was terrifying. I mean a bit of rough play and fiery passion were great fun, but this was bloody ridiculous. There were oranges on the side; she could have grabbed one of those instead . . .
‘I’ve had enough, Nick, I really have,’ she yelled, holding my phone in the air and storming past me and up the stairs. The screen was glowing in the darkness, lighting up her face and transforming her from sweet, ethereal Chloe to Frankenstein’s monster.
I had no bloody idea what she was on about. I stood in the hallway for a bit, droplets of rain seeping into my hair and slipping down my forehead. Only minutes earlier I’d been passing money over the counter of our local shop, talking about the weather and the latest football scores. I’d hardly been ducking out of a brothel or peeling myself away from some illicit lover. This was driving me mad. And that plate was expensive. I dropped the bags and stomped up the stairs behind her.
She was sitting on the edge of the bed in tears. Angry tears.
‘Chloe, come on,’ I said quietly, trying to sit down next to her but she pushed me away. Hard. My chest jolted as she shoved me backwards.
‘No, get away from me, you shit!’ she shouted, so loud now I knew the neighbours would hear every word. Make-up was streaming down her face. She was in a right state.
‘What have I done? You were fine just ten minutes ago, Chloe, and now it’s as if I killed your cat. Come on! I can’t take this any more!’ I yelled back, aware that I had well and truly lost my cool. If I’d had any in the first place.
‘You want to know what you’ve done? Don’t play dumb! Read this.’ She thrust the glowing screen of my touch-screen phone against my nose, which immediately cancelled the message. Then she flounced past me again, leaving a trail of anger behind her.
I grabbed the handset and went into my recent messages. Oh shit, it was from Amelia:
‘Hey, Nick. I miss you so much. We need to do something about this situation. Call me, please. Amelia xxx’ After all this time . . .
‘So, what do you have to say for yourself?’ she shrieked, stomping back into the room with her heels on, which bashed hard against the wood. I jumped out of my skin.
‘Well, I’m simply not defending myself. Yes, it’s my ex-girlfriend, from years ago, but so what if she still feels something for me? It’s not my fault,’ I tried to explain calmly, realising that this didn’t look great but unwilling to take responsibility for it.
‘Bollocks, Nick. I don’t trust you. Why does she still have your number? And what’s this situation, huh?’ She stared straight into my eyes now, breathing so hard her shoulders rose up and down.
This was horrible. ‘So she’s texted me. I haven’t texted her once since we broke up, and yet all of a sudden this is my fault?’ I said, following her back down the stairs waving my phone in the air. This was ludicrous. Utter madness. ‘And Chloe, can you take your bloody shoes off, please, because you’re going to carve up the floor.’
‘I’m not taking my shoes off, Nick, because I’m leaving now,’ she seethed, pacing the hallway with a huge bag in her hands.
‘Oh, Chloe, this is ridiculous. What do you want me to say?’ I walked behind her with my arms out. I was starting to feel very irritated now. I had never been mistrusted like this. And I’d never given her any real reason to mistrust me, either. I kind of understood why she’d worried about Sienna, but we’d moved on from that so long ago now.
She started to ram her possessions into the bag. The candles, the cushions, the strange pebbly things she keeps in bowls. She could definitely take those . . . I looked at her and I didn’t see the Chloe I fell for, I saw an angry, insecure young woman. I felt sorry for her. There had always been signs of this in her personality, but she’d managed to balance it with the wild love she gave me. I loved her. I said it to her all the time, I whispered it in her ear at night, I wrote it on Post-it notes and left them in her lunch. I loved her. Or at least I thought I did.
‘So you’re leaving, just like that?’
‘Yeah, just like that,’ she snapped back, almost hissing in my face.
I sank down into the sofa and watched her as she systematically stripped the space around me. If she took my Radiohead CD, I swear . . .
My home. My girl. The two were parting and I felt helpless.
‘Chloe, you know I love you. I don’t know what else I can say. Is it something else?’ I asked, trying to diffuse her fury. I realised that being angry was not going to help in any way; I had to swallow my pride and try to talk her down. Coax her away from this stupid cliff she was about to jump from.
‘Well, you’ve always had eyes elsewhere, Nick, so it’s best I go.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked, genuinely confused.
‘When we go to restaurants you stare at the waitresses, when we go to the park you stare at other girls, then there are all those hidden gifts and secret phone calls with Sienna, and now these intimate texts . . . You’re a horrible, cheating bastard.’
/>
The words cut into me. Horrible, cheating bastard . . . No woman had ever even come close to saying that to me. I looked back at all the meals we’d had and the days in the sun. Had I been looking at other girls? Surely not . . . And I couldn’t believe she was bringing Sienna up again – we’d been over that more times than I could remember. I was totally confused, baffled and now pretty angry.
When she had bagged up her possessions in the living room she went upstairs. She’d even taken the DVDs we bought together, but I felt petty saying anything. I sat for an hour listening to her stomping about. I had no idea what to do. What the fuck was I going to do? Did I want her to stay? Did I? Did I really want to be accused of things I hadn’t done? Did I want any more of these silly fights and crazy sex like two wild, confused animals?
I needed Sienna. She would know what to do. She always knows just what to do. I sat some more and pulled my head into my lap, hoping if I fell asleep this would all just be a dream. Thanks a lot, Amelia . . .
After a while Chloe had created a pile of bags by the front door, about four in all. Heels were poking out of them, hangers, bottles, a toothbrush. All of those items that had scared me for so long when they began appearing everywhere . . .
She made her final descent of the stairs. I walked towards them so I could talk to her. She still looked furious. I tried to pull her towards me but she pushed me away again, flicking her arms so my hands flew off them. I lost my grip.
‘Chloe, I’m really quite angry about this. I’ve never cheated on you. So I think this is for the best,’ I said, the words just spilling from my mouth.
She pushed her nose into mine once more and scrunched up her features as she said her last words to me: ‘Don’t call me. Ever.’
Well, that was going to be interesting considering we worked in the same office.
And that was it. The bags were gathered, the door was slammed and I heard her churn up the gravel beneath her tyres as she sped away from my house and out into the open road.
This is a Love Story Page 29