How I Lose You

by Kate McNaughton

  ‘Hey. Sorry I’m a bit late.’

  Tom stands up and kisses her in greeting, perfectly unnecessarily. God, she must feel so sticky.

  ‘Don’t worry – I’ve been having a fine time chatting to Godfrey here.’

  He pulls out a bar stool for her, and somehow manages to gracefully help her into it, taking her hand in his, his other on the small of her back.

  ‘All well in Blighty?’

  ‘Oh – yeah. Well. Actually, our washing machine just broke.’

  ‘Ah. Annoying.’

  ‘Yeah. I mean. It seems kind of surreal to be discussing something so trivial after what we’ve seen today, but you know …’

  ‘Yeah. I know …’

  He gives her one of those looks of his that seem to delve deep into her very soul, to blast through her eyes, her skin, the thin veil of consciousness that separates her self from his.

  ‘Christ. It’s sweltering down here.’

  ‘Yeah. Godfrey was saying they’ve decided to cut the air conditioning everywhere except for the rooms, to make sure it doesn’t overload the system.’

  ‘Right. Well, I guess better that than it cutting out in the middle of the night.’

  ‘Yep. It’s working in your room, right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Mine too. So actually, I was thinking, maybe we should just get a couple of drinks and go to my room – it’s going to drive us crazy if we stay down here.’

  ‘Yes, I don’t think I can bear this much longer. I must look disgusting, I’m sorry.’

  ‘You look gorgeous. G&T?’

  ‘G&T.’

  He smiles at her while Godfrey mixes the drinks, which look as crisp and cool as a Schweppes advert.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yeah – sure – why d’you ask?’

  ‘It’s just – I know that days like today can take it out of you, you know?’

  ‘Yeah – I mean, it has. Or, to be honest, I think I haven’t quite come to terms with everything we heard yet. This drink is definitely more than welcome …’

  ‘Cheers to that.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Come on, let’s go up to my room.’

  He guides her up the stairs and along the corridor, his hand on the small of her back again, his voice rich and warm in her ear, telling her to watch her step there, making jokes about the poor, harassed, antiquated air-con units.

  His room is typical of the seasoned traveller, his suitcase open in a corner revealing neatly folded T-shirts and boxer shorts, his shirts hung up, his camera and computer recharging on the desk – only essential items unpacked, everything ready to be rebundled and carried off again in about five minutes. Eva looks at him, his perfect body, as he puts their G&Ts down on the table. Adam seems so far away. It occurs to her that she hasn’t been thinking that it would actually come to this, which is perhaps a little naïve. That she hasn’t properly thought about whether this is what she really wants.

  She moves to the window and looks out at the dusty streets, weirdly clear because the pedlars and lepers and down-and-outs are discouraged from coming too close to the places Westerners stay. Tom comes up behind her, snakes a hand behind her waist and starts gently kissing her neck. Those hands, those forearms, brown and strong and manly. She turns towards him and he kisses her on the mouth, a gentle kiss, and pulls her in closer to him. She feels she could melt into him right now, she wants so desperately to extinguish any space between them. But then he kisses her harder. His mouth becomes foreign to her, his lips too wide around her own so that she can feel saliva beginning to trickle on to her cheek. His tongue barrels around hers like the drum in a washing machine.

  ‘I – er …’

  Tom twirls a strand of her hair around his finger, looks at her tenderly.

  ‘Everything OK, babe?’

  ‘I – Tom. I don’t think I can do this.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I – I do want this. Kind of. But, you know …’

  He takes her left hand in his, plays wistfully with her wedding ring.

  ‘Yes. Precisely. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come up here.’

  ‘No, it’s fine. I understand.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re missing out, though.’

  ‘I’m sure I am.’

  He still has his arms around her, their pelvises touching. He lowers his forehead so that it is touching hers.

  ‘You’re sure about this?’

  ‘Yes. Really. It’s not right. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘Sleep well, gorgeous.’

  He pulls her in and kisses her again, a gentler kiss that makes her reconsider her decision somewhat, and they must be standing there kissing for about five minutes before he thankfully starts barrelling his tongue around again and it is frankly disgusting, and she finds the strength to break away.

  ‘I really have to go.’

  ‘See you tomorrow.’

  ‘Good night.’

  She looks at him again as she closes the door to his room behind her: silhouetted against the clear moonlit night, his broad shoulders as taut and smooth as a soldier’s, his wistful gaze. He is definitely the best-looking man who has ever wanted to kiss her.

  Eva hurries back to her room through the fug of heat, her heart racing, her mind firing wild and incoherent thoughts. In the safety of the cool air, she switches on her computer and looks through Adam’s list of washing machines. She ends up selecting a choice of two, at the more expensive end of the price range, which have the best environmental efficiency grades, and also a specific silks wash. Sleep eludes her for hours, and when her alarm goes off the next morning, it takes her a considerable amount of time to pull herself out of the incredibly graphic dream she is having about Tom, and what she might have missed.

  SOMETIMES, YOU THINK you have forgotten him entirely: you close your eyes but cannot see him, you open up your ears but cannot hear the familiar voice.

  But then you remember how his hand would run over the curve at the base of your spine, how his lips would deposit a kiss on your shoulder blade.

  Despite death, you still know the truth of a touch.

  IT TOOK A few moments for Eva to remember where she was, so that at first she thought the arm lying heavily across her stomach was Adam’s, until she noticed its unfamiliar weight, and also recalled that Adam was dead, and that she and Ulrich had kissed yesterday evening, that they’d tried to have sex without success, then fallen asleep, or rather he’d fallen asleep and she’d lain there for ages without being able to fall asleep, except she must have done because then at some point in the morning they’d both woken up and had shagged with mind-bending intensity, fallen asleep again, and now here she was with this enormous arm lying across her. She pulled herself out from underneath it, thankfully without waking him. She looked at him. Up close, you could see the thick stubble pushing through his skin, his crow’s feet, the other lines time had drawn over his face. The weather-beaten details that were part of what made him so attractive. Then she thought of how Adam was no longer growing older, how he would never get to feel the growing weight of years on him, and why was Ulrich allowed to? What made him so special?

  She looked at him and thought how little she knew about him, and how strange it was to be lying naked next to a complete stranger, or at least a virtually complete stranger. She got up, stole his bathrobe and left the bedroom.

  How strange, too, to be walking through a virtual stranger’s flat, wearing their bathrobe, and helping yourself to a glass of water in their kitchen. These were gestures you did in your own home, in the home you shared with the man you had been married to for years and years, not in a flat you were temporarily renting a spare room in.

  But then again, how much had she and Adam really shared? Why hadn’t he told her about what he had found out here? Why had he lied to Lena about the Stein family? Was Adam really any more known to
her than Ulrich?

  She unscrewed the coffee jar.

  ‘Hey. Hallo.’

  Ulrich wandered into the kitchen, bleary-eyed in his boxer shorts.

  ‘Oh. Hi.’

  Eva hadn’t seen his naked body in daylight yet; she resisted an urge to pounce on him.

  He came up to her and folded her gently into his arms, nuzzled her neck.

  ‘Have you slept well?’

  ‘Mm. OK. It took me a while to get to sleep.’

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  ‘Is – are you OK, about what happened? I know that …’

  ‘I – I don’t know. I feel a bit weird about it, to be honest.’

  ‘Me also.’

  He stroked her hair. It was such a tender gesture. Too tender. Eva wriggled away from him.

  ‘Anyway, I was going to make some coffee.’

  ‘I will do it.’

  He gave her a peck on the lips. Eva wiped away the dab of moisture he had left on her mouth.

  Ulrich had his back turned towards her now. His pants were tight around two perfect buttocks; she followed the line of his spine as it curved down towards them, first with her eyes and then with the lightest touch of a finger. He shivered. Adam would have turned round immediately to kiss her, press her into him – but Ulrich continued to pile coffee grounds into the espresso maker. With every second his back stayed facing her, she felt more urgently the need to see him turn round, to be able to kiss him, touch him. Adam stands behind me, but I can’t turn round to look at him; Ulrich stands before me, but won’t turn round to look at me. She wanted to scream at the heavens, tear them down in fistfuls – she wanted to turn round and for Adam to be there and to be able to hold him, melt into him – she wanted to make love to this beautiful man in front of her, lose herself in sweat and skin and inarticulate noise. She dragged Ulrich back to the bedroom, kissing him quiet whenever he tried to talk, running her hands over the strands of hair on his chest, the curves of his muscular arms, and felt for once as though she was the one getting the upper hand over death, as though death couldn’t touch her where she had got to now.

  ‘SO, RIGHT ALONG here … There’s something I want to show you just along this road.’

  They turned on to Schlesische Straße. A phone pinged: Henry’s, of course.

  ‘Uh. Sorry ladies.’

  They had to stop while he consulted the text message and composed a reply. Henry, bent over his tiny phone like a bear who had just befriended a sparrow. Eva and Carmen exchanged a ‘What is it Georgie wants now?’ look.

  ‘All good?’

  ‘Er. Yeah. Just – turns out that the museum isn’t open today so she’s gone to KaDeWe instead – I said to just text when she’s back on her way over here.’

  ‘OK, cool.’

  ‘So what was it you wanted to show us?’

  ‘Oh. It’s just a bit further along here.’

  They started walking again. Schlesische Straße was still covered in post-First of May detritus: shreds of flyers and banners in various forms of disintegration, countless empty beer bottles. Henry picked his way through them gingerly: he was wearing rather nice shoes.

  ‘Sorry, Henry, I should have told you to wear more sensible shoes.’

  ‘These are the most sensible I have with me, unfortunately.’

  Carmen bent down to peer at them.

  ‘They’re very nice.’

  ‘Yes. Present from Georgie. She recently discovered this guy who imports loads of handcrafted stuff from Italy, so there’s been something of a revolution in my footwear.’

  ‘Blimey. Can you still afford handcrafted stuff from Italy?’

  ‘Ha! Not really. But Georgie’s been difficult to rein in since she discovered that her credit card wasn’t going to be taken away from her after all. Plus I kind of figure she’s been really good about us having to sell the house, and this is a small luxury in comparison.’

  ‘Plus you get a nice pair of shoes out of it.’

  ‘Carmen’s right, they’re gorgeous. I just hope Berlin doesn’t destroy them.’

  ‘Yep, me too. It’s funny, I was just thinking – it seems like a funny place for Adam to have fallen in love with the way he did, don’t you think? I mean, he was so tidy, and this is – so dirty …’

  ‘Maybe that was what he liked about it.’

  ‘Yes, I think it might have been – well, I mean, you guys shouldn’t assume it’s always quite this bad. It’s particularly dirty right now because of the First of May – but I think he liked that Berlin has this chaotic edge to it.’

  ‘Despite being so unchaotic himself.’

  ‘Hm.’

  They cross over the canal, Eva, Henry and Carmen, the three old friends. It’s good to have them here. Even though they are missing the fourth member of their company. They are missing him, but at the same time he is there, and not lagging behind them out of reach, but in and around them, in their minds, their conversation, in the coat that Henry is wearing.

  ‘It looks really good on you, Henry, you know, Adam’s coat.’

  ‘Thanks. It has served me well. Though I have to say it’s a little too warm for the weather today.’

  ‘Yes, it almost feels like summer is on its way, doesn’t it?’

  ‘You’re wearing all the wrong clothes, Henry.’

  ‘I am. Always have. Now I mainly let Georgie decide for me, but she gets it wrong most of the time too.’

  ‘Ah well. It’s part of your charm, old banana.’

  ‘Thanks, Eve. Good to know I can still rely on my old friends to take the piss out of me.’

  She has not told them about Ulrich. She will not tell them about Ulrich, about his living, breathing body. She has made sure they won’t meet. ‘He’s too busy,’ she has lied. A small lie, to preserve the greater truth of her and Carmen and Henry and Adam, of her and Adam.

  She scans the tarmac for where the Wall once stood.

  ‘OK, so anyway, here we are …’

  They had now reached the trace of the Wall. The line ran right across the street, between a petrol station and an unkempt park.

  ‘So OK – these bricks are where the Wall used to be, so if you imagine, the street we just walked up was a dead end.’

  ‘And this was West Berlin, right?’

  ‘Where we’ve just walked up was, yes. And where we’re standing now would have been East Berlin – or, to be more precise, the death strip.’

  Now it’s just cars whizzing by, and the petrol station, and, on the side of the road they’re on, a sort of park with patchy bushes and thin trees sprouting into the spring.

  In the park, unnoticeable at first because it was covered in a camouflage of graffiti, stood the ominous form of a Wachturm: a small concrete tower with a flat roof terrace. Eva, Henry and Carmen wandered up to it. People lay in the grass and drank beer.

  ‘And this here would have been a watchtower. They were dotted along the death strip every few dozen metres.’

  ‘It must have been quite boring to spend your days sitting up there waiting for something to happen.’

  ‘Yes – boring and terrifying. If anyone escaped, the guards on duty were held responsible. You would basically be suspected of being an accomplice – unless you shot them.’

  They stood in silence, watching the Wachturm.

  ‘It’s hard to imagine – that there was this impenetrable barrier here, so recently.’

  ‘Yes – and actually, when you do see the bits of it that are still standing, they look really flimsy, like it’s hard to believe they could divide a country so effectively – though of course, well, there was the death strip too …’

  ‘There are still some bits left, then? Of the Wall?’

  ‘Yes – though maybe not for much longer. I went on this demonstration, to try and save this one section from being knocked down so some investors could build some flats behind it – and they fobbed us off by stopping the work for that day, then just coming back a couple of days later and b
ulldozing through it before anyone could organize getting the protesters back out …’

  ‘…’

  ‘The city is changing so fast – even in the short time I’ve been here, I’ve seen whole new buildings appear out of nowhere.’

  ‘Yes, I remember Adam telling me about that.’

  ‘Have you guys – did Adam ever tell you about him trying to track down my mum’s family when he was here?’

  Carmen shakes her head.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Oh, he did mention something like that to me, actually – that he was thinking of trying to find them.’

  ‘What did he say exactly?’

  ‘Not very much – I mean, this was ages ago – just after I’d got together with Georgie, in fact. I remember because we’d met up so I could tell him about it. He was about to make one of his trips here, and he was thinking of trying to find out whether your mum might have any relatives that were still alive. I think he felt it might be a way of making you feel more connected to the place – of helping you get over your mental block about coming here.’

  ‘He said I had a mental block about coming here?’

  ‘Yes. Well, I mean – you did, didn’t you?’

  ‘What did Adam say about it?’

  ‘He said he thought your mother put you off it – maybe not consciously or deliberately, but that she’d sort of passed on her trauma about the place to you.’

  ‘Well. I suppose that’s not an entirely bad analysis.’

  ‘…’

  ‘He stopped asking me, you know. To come to Berlin. He’d ask me all the time at first, and then he just didn’t any more.’

  ‘Well yeah, I think he got tired of hearing you say no.’

  ‘And I think he was hoping you’d come round to it on your own – that one day you would be the one to suggest it.’

  ‘…’

  ‘But I think that’s also why he started to look for your relatives. I think he hoped that if he could find some great-uncle or something, someone who would actually be able to tell you about your family, that that might make you curious enough to come over.’