by Jenny Kane
About three months into Kit’s relationship with Phil, Jack had met Ryan. He was built like a bear, but was as gentle as a lamb. He had fallen hopelessly for Jack, who’d liked him back, but not enough. For when he had introduced Ryan to Kit and she hadn’t been particularly impressed, Jack had unceremoniously dumped him. There was no way he could seriously date someone Kit didn’t like.
Since watching Ryan crumple before him, Jack hadn’t let anyone get emotionally close to him again.
He’d broken Amy’s heart and badly hurt Ryan. Jack was determined not to do that to anyone else ever again, and he didn’t ever want to feel that way himself. Anyway, he told himself, I don’t need anyone special. He had his friends, and he was attractive and, Jack privately admitted, arrogant enough to get regular sex, so why worry?
Over the last two weeks Rob had started to twitter on about ‘chickens coming home to roost.’ Jack had listened to his friend’s well-meaning advice, and then completely ignored it, preferring to throw himself into the fledgling bookshop web site by day, and into gay bar and club life by night. Only six of the past fourteen nights had he spent alone. He never took anyone home to his flat though. He’d never been one for drama on his own doorstep.
The waiter reappeared at Jack’s side, ‘Can I get you anything else, sir?’
He’s got a nice smile too. ‘Another coffee would be great, thanks. Maybe a Danish pastry if you have any?’
‘Almond, custard, cinnamon, fruit? I could go on.’
Jack laughed. A real, genuine laugh. He felt like he hadn’t laughed for weeks, and it took him by surprise. ‘Almond would be great, thanks.’
‘No problem.’ The waiter, whose name badge announced him to be called Toby, headed off on his new task.
Jack’s eyes followed him. His brain sternly reminded his body that he’d fucked some other guy only a few hours ago, and that to make any sort of move now would be low, even by his current standards.
Jack began to fiddle with his mobile. He’d tried to call Kit several times over the past fortnight, but the voice-mail seemed to be permanently on, or else the call was stalled by Phil, who claimed Kit was either out or busy.
It was no secret that Phil didn’t really like Jack. He’d never been able to understand the strength of his wife’s relationship with an ex. Wallowing in self-pity, Jack imagined that Phil was secretly pleased that they’d fallen out.
‘I’ve put extra sugar in your drink already.’ Cutting into Jack’s thoughts, Toby produced a tray holding a cup of black coffee and an almond croissant. ‘Don’t argue. You look like you need it.’
Then he turned away before Jack, open-mouthed, could say thank you, protest, or do anything other than meekly drink it.
Sixteen
October 16th 2006
Honey, what’s going on? You’ve never been late with a story before. You’re usually the one who keeps us to schedule! Sorry if there’s a crisis or something, but we need those Christmas stories by yesterday. Can you email them ASAP?
Thanks, Pearl
Kit re-read the email and then glanced down at her doodle-covered notebook. So far she’d decided on a naughty fairy theme, possibly with a secret Santa’s grotto. Beyond that she’d produced nothing. Not a single word of erotica in nearly two weeks. Normally she would have produced two stories in that time.
There was a soft knock on her office door. Phil pushed it open, ‘You OK, love?’
‘Not really.’ Kit swivelled the laptop around so he could read the email.
‘How much have you done?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I see.’ Phil knelt beside Kit as she sat on her black leather chair. ‘Look love, I’ll help all I can, but I can’t sort this thing with Jack out for you. Especially as you say you can’t explain it to me.’ He stroked her sleek red hair.
‘I know. It’s silly and irrational. Thanks though, but it’s no good pretending you like Jack now.’ Kit turned to face Phil, her shoulders drooped, ‘I’m not keeping secrets, love, I just can’t explain.’
‘It’s OK. He’s OK.’
Kit spoke in a quiet, matter of fact way, ‘Come on Phil, you’ve never liked him. This must be a relief for you.’
From the first moment Jack had met Phil, he’d tried to include him, to make Kit’s new partner part of his friendship with Kit, but every attempt had proved awkward and stilted, and in the end both sides had graciously, and without rancour, given up trying.
‘No.’ Phil shuffled into a more comfortable position, ‘I’ve never got on with him that well, it’s true, Jack’s too into himself for my liking, far too me-me-me,’ Phil raised his hand, seeing Kit was about to argue, and continued, ‘but he’s important to you. Call him. What’s the worst that can happen?’
‘I have no idea. I’m not sure why I feel like this anyway.’
Phil’s brow crinkled, ‘Feel like what exactly? I’m having trouble understanding this one, Kit.’
‘You and me both.’ Kit reached up and put her arms around her husband’s neck, ‘I really appreciate you being here. I love you, Philip Lambert.’ She kissed him on the nose, ‘Now get lost and make sure those lovely children of ours are ready for school. I have to write some flannel to appease our American cousins.’
For days Kit had replayed every conversation she’d ever had with Jack in her mind. She knew she wasn’t, and never had been, angry about his coming out. If you’re gay, you’re gay. If you’re gay with the need for an occasional female fuck to reassure yourself that you’ve got your preferences right, then so be it. After all, she’d reasoned, these days being gay was so fashionable there had to be plenty of folk that saw it as an alternative lifestyle, living happily cheek-by-jowl with those whose preference could never have been anything else. Kit didn’t care which of these categories Jack fell into, and she suspected that if she could have asked him he wouldn’t have known.
The morning after Jack had come out to her, Kit recalled that they had slept together again, just as they always did when they weren’t working. It was as if nothing had been said, right up until they reached the local tea room they had hit the town in the search of a late breakfast …
June 3rd 1995
Jack passed Kit the sugar and stirred his own mug of coffee.
‘I think I’ll give up having sugar,’ she had pushed the bowl back to its original place on the lemon-yellow easy-clean tablecloth, ‘Time to start watching the weight if I’m going to be on the pull again.’
Jack flinched at her directness.
‘Come on honey, you’ve just told me that we aren’t exactly going to be together forever.’ Ignoring the screaming voice at the back of her head that told her she loved this man, Kit marched down the boringly practical route, accepting things; giving the world a face which said she was blasé about everything. Burying how she felt.
‘So, when did you first start to suspect that you wanted to share more than football chat over a pint of beer with the male half of the population?’ Kit asked, as she began to make headway into the mountain of toast and marmalade before her.
Jack looked carefully at Kit, searching to see if she generally wanted to have this conversation. ‘You don’t mind me talking about it?’
‘Of course not. Anyway, what are friends for?’ Kit wiped some of the tangy orange spread from her lips, ‘I’m all ears.’
Appreciating the opportunity to share his early suspicions, Jack eagerly confided in her, ‘You know we were talking about how music can remind you of salient time in your life? Well, whenever I hear “Unbelievable” by EMF, then I’m taken back to where I began to suspect I was a bit different. The Ziplight.
‘The what?’ Kit accidentally spluttered toast crumbs across the table.
Jack put his head in his hands, ‘It was a disco at uni every Friday night. Oh God, how old am I, a bloody disco!’
Kit mopped up the mess she’d made, ‘Calm down, Grandad, I remember discos being called discos too! So, the Ziplight? That really is a crap name.’
‘I know, but that at least is not something I’m responsible for.’
Kit put her hand out to stop Jack’s violent stirring before he splashed his drink across the table, ‘What about “Unbelievable” then?’
‘It’s so clear in my memory. It’s as if I close my eyes, I could almost be there.’
‘So, sit back, shut your eyes, and describe what you see to me.’
‘Well, OK. I’ll try.’ Jack sat back and attempted to recapture the scene for Kit.
‘It was a Friday night. A crowd of two hundred or more students would all be cavorting together in your approximation of something which might possibly be called dancing. Mostly first-year undergraduates like I was, all cramped into the dark, sweat-smelling hall, whose floor was virtually an ice rink of spilt alcohol by about eleven at night. The girls all wore interchangeable, brightly-covered oversized cardigans and black Lycra miniskirts, and flirted shamelessly with the lads, in their eternal black jeans and slogan covered T-shirts. Everyone thought they were dressed so distinctively, and yet we were all more or less interchangeable with the next.
The DJ was always positioned in the middle of one side of the room, away from the bar, which was usually at least six layers of thirsty students deep, each waiting impatiently for a plastic pint glass of Tiger or McEwen’s lager. Now and then the odd would-be sophisticate would order a bottle of Beck’s, or a Diamond White if it was a particularly heavy night.
There, for the first time, I saw I didn’t quite fit, although I hadn’t yet worked out why. My whole teenage life I felt I was watching an alien world through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars.
My mates and I usually danced together most of the night. Outlandish movements to “Sit Down” and, of course, “Dancing Queen”!’ Jack grinned wider as he recalled how he, Rob, Paul and his other friends had regularly managed to clear the floor as the attended masses watched, goggle-eyed, at their wild response to such numbers.
Returning to the point of the conversation, Jack shifted uncomfortably. ‘I had no trouble in attracting the attention of the girls. In fact, it always irritated me how keen some of them were when they didn’t even know me. I watched the boys, the men, and felt safer. I assumed at the time that it was because they didn’t demand anything of me. But I had also liked some of the girls well enough, so I shrugged off the out-of-place feeling and kissed them, screwed them, used them, and left them, anyway. After all, I was a teenage boy, that was what I was supposed to do wasn’t it?’
October 16th 2006
Kit yawned into her coffee, and snapped back to the present as Peggy approached. ‘Keeping you up, are we?’ Peggy placed a warm croissant and accompanying pot of butter before her bleary-eyed friend.
‘I was up at six o’clock staring at a computer screen, willing myself to write for America.’
‘What? All of it?’ Peggy’s eyes twinkled.
Putting a hand over her mouth as she replied, so Peggy wouldn’t see her semi-chewed breakfast, Kit replied, ‘Oh, ha, ha. No, I’ve got a bit behind.’
‘But you’re never behind. You’re more punctual than a full stop.’ Peggy lost her mischievous glow, dragged out the chair opposite her friend, and sat down concerned. ‘So if you haven’t been scribbling away furiously for our American cousins, what have you been doing in here? I’ve barely heard a peep out of you lately, except the faint scribble of pen on paper.’
‘Sorry Peg, nothing personal.’
‘I swear I saw steam rising from your pen yesterday. What are you working on?’ Peggy emptied the contents of her percolator jug into Kit’s mug.
‘Not sure to be honest. Just thoughts.’
‘You OK?’ This wasn’t like Kit, Peggy shrewdly observed; her friend normally took salacious pleasure in sharing her plotlines.
‘Not really, but I can’t explain it. Wish I could.’
Peggy sighed for her friend, ‘You haven’t called Jack yet, have you?’
‘No.’ Kit changed the subject. ‘How’s the new girl shaping up?’
‘I’m surprised you’ve even noticed I have a new girl! You’ve barely raised your head from the table recently. Scott was dead worried about you on Friday. He said you’d left some coffee to go cold.’
‘OK! I’ve said sorry.’
Peggy put her hands on the table and pushed herself up, ‘Oh honey, I have no idea what’s going on, but it sounds like teenage angst to me. Jack’s your mate, not your bloody lover. Be an adult and call him, for fuck’s sake.’
‘Thank you, Mary Poppins.’
‘No problem. Now drink up and write some pornography. And not another word, young lady! Or I shall have to call in a number of chimney-sweeps with fake Cockney accents to make you work. I’ll get them to dance across the tables, soot and all, if you’re not careful!’
‘Yes Mum.’ Kit giggled as Peggy did a Dick Van Dyke-style jig across to her counter.
Looking down, Kit contemplated her notebook. A novel. She was almost sure she was writing a novel. She just hadn’t told anyone yet, not even herself.
Seventeen
16th October 2006
Nothing, Amy thought as she scuffed her feet, is quite as satisfying as scrunching through freshly-fallen leaves.
Last autumn Amy had kicked her ankle wellies through the satisfying crackle of pine needles and cones at the impressively Scottish Crathes Castle. Kew Gardens was quite a different proposition. Even though she’d never been before, Amy had optimistically handed over the rather steep yearly membership fee and wandered through the main gates.
Pickwicks was work now, so it could no longer function as her place to hide. She needed a different bolthole, somewhere to disappear into whenever she felt like it. ‘Like a security blanket, but for adults.’ Amy had tried to explain her need to Peggy, who’d simply shrugged, openly declaring Amy insane for spending a precious day off in the freezing cold, and paying for the privilege.
As her blue boots flashed through the contrasting russets and orange of the autumn fall, Amy reflected on the weekend just past. Sunday dinner had been good. Rob obviously fitted the role of family man perfectly. His three girls were delightful, with shy smiles and shocks of curly ginger hair; they had mumblingly introduced themselves to her earlier. Having read them a collective bedtime story, and promising Flora that she would come round to play Lego sometime soon, Amy had left Rob to tuck them into their beds, and escaped into the kitchen.
Despite being nervous, Amy had forced herself into conversation with Debbie. Shorter than Amy, with shoulder-length brown hair which curled like her daughters’, she was every bit as nice as Amy had hoped. In fact, after several hours of regaling her with tales of Rob’s less auspicious university escapades, Debbie had been in hysterics, and Rob had had the air of a hunted man, torn between being fed up at being the butt of the jokes, and pleased that his wife and his long-lost friend were getting on so well.
The grounds of Kew Gardens were very quiet. While most of London coped with the horror of another Monday morning, Amy revelled in the peaceful solitude of freedom. Clutching her foam-topped mug of cinnamon- and marshmallow-sprinkled hot chocolate, she watched two squirrels dance around the trunk of a nearby oak tree, as she took stock of her short time in England.
Over the past few years, Amy had become adept at phasing out the image of Jack. In the beginning, once the initial sobbing self-pitying stage had passed, anything that reminded her of Jack was treated to serious diversion therapy. She would concentrate on anything else; the weather, the people nearby, the view. Any distraction would do. Amy had become so good at it, that her brain had learned to short-circuit the whole process for her. Sometimes she found herself thinking about one thing, and suddenly her mind would flick elsewhere, like a well-honed automatic self- defence module, before she’d even registered that a Jack thought was imminent.
Now that she was in London, only a short distance from the cause of her self-imposed exile, her control over those defences had slipped. Even though they’d n
ever lived in London together, there seemed to be reminders everywhere. Bitter coffee, couples taking lengthy walks in the cold, music (any music), pubs, laughter, and the smell of leather jackets in the rain. He was everywhere.
Rob had asked her again last night. When was she going to get in contact with Jack? She’d hesitated, knowing that she was suffering, not just from cold feet, but also from the need to sit back a while and adjust to the increased influx of memories, before she faced the reality. Everything had changed so fast. She simply wasn’t ready to meet him yet. To appease Rob, Amy had agreed to take the address of the bookshop in Kew.
Fishing out a sunken pink marshmallow from the bottom of her mug with a finger, Amy supposed that she couldn’t be far from Reading Nature right now. Maybe she should turn up there today? The mere idea of finding the shop, let alone seeing Jack, brought on a fit of butterflies.
‘I’m a coward, that’s the trouble,’ she told the squirrels as they continued to chase each other around the trees. ‘Don’t knock cowardice,’ the squirrels seemed to reply.
Shouting a thank you to the waiting staff, Amy continued her walk, temporarily burying the decisions she needed to make beneath the opportunity to investigate the huge tropical greenhouse that stood before her.
Two hours of slow meandering later, Amy sat down on an old grey metal bench beside the currently-closed Waterlily House. Just for now she could live like this. A poorly-paid waitress in a small Richmond café, an explorer in a city she hardly knew. A visitor on the edge of other people’s lives. ‘For another day or two,’ she told a passing blue tit, ‘just a couple more days, that’s all, and then I’ll text Jack, start applying for permanent jobs, and re-enter the real world, however scary it is.’
Eighteen
October 16th 2006
Jack put the cup back into its saucer with a crash, grabbed his jacket and, before he could change his mind, crossed to the till and waited to pay. He barely acknowledged Toby as he thrust a ten-pound note at him and, without waiting for change or looking back, Jack sprinted from the café. He’d got about three strides down the pavement, when he ran back.