The One I Love

by Anna McPartlin

  A meeting she had with an artist by the name of Ken Browne ran late. She was really impressed by his work and energy and they ended up talking for a long time, sharing stories over coffee. His bright blue eyes shone as he spoke about his latest painting and he rubbed his bald head and smiled a wide smile that seemed to take over his rugged features. He had been in a rock band for years and it was written all over his face. He was an accomplished guitar player and told her stories about his adventures on the road and how he incorporated music into his artwork. They spent a very enjoyable two hours together and by the end of their meeting they had agreed that he would show his work in her gallery in July.

  Kurt appeared in the gallery just after lunch with a packed bag and announced he was staying with Irene for the weekend. Irene’s mother was on another post-break-up holiday, and as Irene’s dad was too busy boffing his new girlfriend to be interested in his daughter, Kurt felt a responsibility towards caring for her.

  “No way,” said Jane.

  “Mum, I’m going.”

  “You and Irene are not staying there unsupervised.”

  “I’m seventeen.”

  “No way, no way!” she shouted. She always repeated herself and shouted when she couldn’t think of something else to say.

  “She’s upset, I’m not leaving her,” he said.

  Jane calmed down. “So bring her to ours.”

  “What’s the difference? You’re going to London.”

  “Your grandmother’s here.”

  Kurt started to laugh. “You’re serious?”

  “It’s better than nothing.”

  “Where’s Elle?”

  “She’s gone down to the country with Leslie for a few days.”

  “Mum, why don’t you admit that you need me to care for Gran and not the other way around?”

  “That’s not it. She’s perfectly capable of looking after herself for two days.” She was lying: a list of things she wanted him to do for his grandmother was burning a hole in her pocket.

  “Why don’t you just tell the truth?” he said.

  She didn’t know why she felt it necessary to lie except that maybe she didn’t want her son to feel obliged to care for her mother the way she did. And now he had caught her in a silly and unnecessary lie and it embarrassed her, so she dismissed him angrily. “Fine, Kurt, go off with your girlfriend! Do your own bloody thing!”

  “Fine. I will.” He walked out of the gallery, leaving her to stew.

  What is wrong with me? Why couldn’t I have said, “Son, I need your help this weekend”? How hard is that? It’s not hard at all. Jesus Christ, Jane.

  She then had to sort her mother’s prescriptions and pick up some takeaway menus and cash. When she finally returned to Rose’s it was ten minutes before Tom was due to turn up in the taxi.

  Rose was displeased. “It’s a bit bloody late to be thinking about me now,” she said.

  Jane ignored her and put the menus on the coffee table beside her.

  Rose picked one up. “Jane?” she asked innocently. “Am I Chinese?”

  “Don’t start, Rose.”

  “Because I don’t look Chinese, I don’t speak the language, the only paddy I know is a person and it will be a cold focking day in hell before I eat anything commonly described as flied lice.”

  “That’s racist.”

  “That’s fact.”

  “You’re a pig.”

  Rose held up the menu. “Well, maybe it’s my year.” She picked up the other menu. “Indian?”

  “I’m leaving,” Jane said.

  “Oh, yes, I’ll have an order of dead babies dumped in a river, followed by some Kama Sutra with a side order of shitting in the streets.”

  “Stop now, you insane old hag! Eat chips for all I care! Don’t forget your medication, and all the numbers you could possibly need are on the fridge.”

  “Fine, go off and enjoy yourself – leave a sick old woman on her own!”

  “Thanks, Rose, I will. Try not to die before I get back,” Jane said, with a grin, because two could play the old woman’s game.

  Rose licked her teeth. She always licked her teeth when she wanted to hide a smile. “Is that because you don’t want to deal with the smell?” she asked.

  “If I didn’t want to deal with the smell I would have turfed you out years ago.”

  Jane walked out the door and Rose broke into a smile. Touché, Janey, touché.

  Tom had checked them in on-line so they ran through the airport and joined the queue at the gate. He bought two coffees from a vendor and they managed two sips each before their row number was called. An air stewardess made a no-no gesture at the coffee with her hand and tutted. Neither Tom nor Jane had the will to argue with her so they handed over their full cups and walked through the gate and onto the plane in silence. Once seated Tom took the opportunity to thank Jane once again for coming, and she responded that he was most welcome for the third time that evening and possibly the fortieth since they had decided on the trip.

  Tom was nervous. He didn’t know what to do with his hands and he kept shuffling in the seat. He had cut his hair, manicured his nails and bought a suit that fitted him. He had shaved and he looked handsome – probably the way he had looked before Alexandra vanished or at least close to it.

  Jane was worried that all this effort and hope would not be rewarded. She knew they were clutching at straws, and although she appeared outwardly positive for the sake of Tom’s sanity, she worried that she might have contributed to him having false hope. Now that they were actually flying to London to attend a Jack Lukeman gig, in the hope of spotting someone named Alex with a passing resemblance to Alexandra, it seemed more than desperate: it seemed mad.

  “The hotel is really close to the venue,” Tom said.

  “Great.”

  “Just a walk away.”

  “Fantastic.”

  “We could eat there, if you like?”

  “Lovely.”

  “Or we could go out. I’m sure there would be a place between the hotel and the venue. I just don’t want to move too far away.”

  “The hotel is perfect.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “Nice suit,” said Jane, after a pause.

  Tom nodded. “I thought I’d better make an effort if I’m going to see my girl.”

  “It’s unlikely, Tom, you know it is.” She wanted to cry for him.

  “I do. Still, you never know.”

  “Yeah.”

  He closed his eyes and she read her magazine and they didn’t speak another word for the rest of the flight.

  The plane landed on time and Tom and Jane quickly found a taxi to take them to their hotel. They split in the lobby and agreed to meet half an hour later. Jane showered and changed while Tom paced his hotel room over and over again, counting down the minutes until he might see Alexandra again.

  They met in the hotel restaurant. Jane ordered a steak and salad, and Tom ordered the same, but he only picked at it. Jane tried to allay his anxiety with idle chat. Since his encounter with her mother, Tom had developed sympathy for Jane and had become her sounding-board. She told him about the incident with the doctor, which entertained him, and Rose’s reaction to the takeaway menus made him laugh out loud. Jane laughed, too, because her mother was always funny from a distance. She told him about Kurt and their stupid fight and berated herself for being a bad mother. Tom disagreed and told her she was a great mother – but he hadn’t witnessed the fight she’d had with her son when he was sixteen and had wanted to leave school to join the army after watching Black Hawk Down twenty-five times in the space of a week.

  He had approached her while she was working on her computer at the kitchen table. He’d sat opposite her and folded his arms, and when Kurt folded his arms it indicated he meant to talk business. She’d looked up and asked him what he wanted, and he’d told her straight out, as if he was asking for the price of a CD, that he wanted permission to join the army. She had laughed it off at first
but it soon became apparent that he wasn’t joking. Jane said no. Kurt had refused to accept no for an answer and their argument spiralled so out of control that Kurt called his mother the C-word and stormed out of the kitchen, slammed the door, walked into his own bedroom, slammed that door, locked it and put his music on, blaring. Shocked by his language and red-faced from roaring, his mother had stamped down the hall and banged and kicked at his locked door, calling him a disrespectful little bastard. He had screamed, “I hate you,” and she screamed, “I hate you back,” and only managed to calm herself down after she’d kicked a hole through the door and broken her small toe.

  Tom hadn’t been witness to the time she’d left the child in a pram outside a shop and didn’t notice until she’d got home and her mother inquired as to his whereabouts. He wasn’t there when Kurt was six and a kid aged eight had started to bully him in the school playground. Kurt had confided in Rose rather than her and when Rose told her, instead of taking her mother’s advice to back off, she’d barged into the school, grabbed the bully by the neck and threatened to break his legs if he ever touched her son again. It was obviously the worst move she could have made because there was a playground full of witnesses, including a teacher and a visiting nun, and of course the child’s parents called to her house and threatened action against her. Following a meeting with the headmistress it became apparent that the best course of action, in light of Jane’s aggression to a minor, was to pull Kurt out of the school altogether.

  “You got him expelled when he was six?” Tom said, and laughed.

  “Mortified,” she said. “But when Rose told me I just saw red.”

  “I can’t believe you attacked an eight-year-old.”

  “Well, I had to do something. Rose told Kurt to wait till the kid had his back to him and then beat him around the head with his bag.”

  “That doesn’t sound like the worst idea.”

  “She told him to put a brick in it.”

  Tom laughed again. “I’m sorry for laughing but that’s insane.”

  “I’ve made so many mistakes with Kurt it’s a wonder he’s not a little psycho.”

  “You were so young having him,” Tom reminded her.

  “Yeah,” she nodded, “and my example was Rose.”

  “My God, that’s true. It’s a wonder you’re not a little psycho.”

  “It’s possible I am,” she said.

  “I’ll bear that in mind.”

  Tom had been momentarily distracted from finding Alexandra, but then it was time to pay the bill and head to the club so his mind wandered away from Jane again. Silence resumed as they walked to the place that held one of Tom’s last hopes.

  Michelle met them at the box office. She ushered them inside and was wondering how they wished their search to proceed. “It’s a big club,” she pointed out, “but I’ve put the flyers on the noticeboard and all the staff have been given her picture.”

  “I’d like to sit close to the ladies’, if I could?” Tom said.

  “And I’ll sit at the bar,” Jane said.

  They had discussed it earlier.

  “Look, we’ve got a pretty comprehensive security system,” said Michelle. “Every part of this place is on camera. I could introduce you to Graham – he’s our security guard. I’ve spoken to him and he’s happy for you to join him in his office.”

  “That would be amazing,” said Tom.

  “Good.” Michelle was only too happy to help.

  She brought them to a room where a large man in his fifties sat. In front of him were small TV screens, each one capturing a part of the club. He turned and greeted them, and Michelle went off to get two more chairs while Graham pointed out each camera and where it was positioned. “Box office, main door, back door, side entrance, hallway, main stairs, bar, bar till – you won’t need to focus on that – stage, audience. That breaks into three – here, here and here,” he said, pointing to three separate TV screens, all of which depicted empty chairs and tables. “That one is the balcony and so is that, and over here is the dressing-room area – obviously we don’t have a camera in the actual dressing rooms but it’s the dressing-room hallway that leads here to backstage, stage right and stage left, and that’s it.”

  Michelle returned with the chairs. She placed them either side of Graham. Then she left them but before she did she crossed her fingers.

  “Thank you,” Tom said. “You’ve no idea.”

  She nodded and closed the door behind her.

  “What happens if I see her?” Tom asked.

  “You run,” Graham said. “Michelle has given me your number so that I can call you if I see her again and guide you through the club on the phone.”

  “That’s great,” Tom said. “That’s really unbelievably great. Isn’t that great, Jane?”

  She nodded, then walked over to a counter and made coffee for the three of them as the lads stared at the many screens. First the box office and the main entrance. As they watched people flow through, Graham pointed out that he could zoom in on anyone who sparked Tom’s interest, and while Jane’s back was turned he provided Tom with an example by focusing on a woman’s large breasts.

  They studied face after face as people came in through the doors and halls and spread into the various parts of the venue. The place filled quickly so each took turns monitoring a set of cameras. Graham had posted Alexandra’s picture on the wall in front of him for purposes of recognition. The venue became louder as the chatter grew and people moved to and from their seats to the toilets and to the bar, and servers began working the round tables where groups were drinking, laughing and talking.

  Jane thought how funny it was to have this perspective, to watch people who were unaware they were being watched. She saw one woman lift and separate her breasts when her partner left to go to the toilet, then followed him down the hall and witnessed him turn to stare as a pretty girl walked past him. Another guy waited for his date to go to the bar before he picked his nose, examined the result and flicked it across the room. She pointed at the camera and made a sound suggesting she was appalled. “People are disgusting,” Graham said. She saw many brunettes but none of them had her friend’s rich glossy hair. Every now and then her heart-rate would increase because she spotted someone who just might be Alexandra, but Graham would zoom in and her heart would slow, and Tom would momentarily close his eyes and bow his head for the second or two he needed to pull himself together.

  Jack L and his band emerged from the dressing room two minutes before he was due on stage. Jack was in a black suit and a red shirt; he ran his hand through his hair and took a drink from his bottle of water. The bass player slapped him on the back and he grinned at him, the familiar troublemaker grin that Jane recognized. The door of the dressing room stayed open for a second or two before someone inside closed it. The band walked down the hall and out of shot, only to be picked up on the next camera that focused on backstage.

  On stage the lights rose and danced on the velvet curtain. The drummer sat behind his drums, the guitar player picked up his guitar and placed it around his neck, the piano-player made herself comfortable, and they started to play while Jack bounced with guitar in hand stage right on a separate screen. Tom watched the crowd as they clapped and cheered, and some people stood and some stamped their feet, and the curtain rose and Jack walked on. The crowd went mad – he bowed and grinned and raised his hand – the band started up, the show began and Alexandra was nowhere to be seen.

  They continued to scan each and every face while Jack sang and told stories and shared a joke with the guitar player, and time passed so quickly and then the gig was almost over.

  Jack returned to the stage to sing his encore, but just as Graham turned to offer his sympathy to Tom, Jane noticed a woman with short brunette hair and Alexandra’s face emerge from Jack’s dressing room. She pointed and called out to Tom, and he and Graham saw her. Tom shot up and Graham zoomed in and Tom started running and Graham shouted for him to turn left at the box
office and he did but the hallway was empty. Jane had run after Tom. Graham phoned Tom’s number and directed him to the side entrance and he followed the advice and ran through the club, navigating past people who were on their feet and dancing to “Boys And Girls”, with Jane hot on his heels. He made it outside to an alleyway and the woman had her back to him and was talking to a man with a laminated card around his neck and Tom called out to her.

  “Alexandra!”

  And she turned – and for a split second he thought it was her and seeing her took his breath away, but then she walked towards him and the closer she got the less she looked like his wife because the expression on her face was not an expression he’d ever seen before.

  “Can I help you?” she said, and her accent was English.

  Tom couldn’t do anything but shake his head. “No,” he said, “you can’t help me.”

  And then he was on his knees, weeping uncontrollably.

  Jane stood behind him, staring at the woman who looked so much like her friend on camera but in person and close up seemed shockingly different. We’re so stupid. Of course it wasn’t her. It was never going to be her.

  The woman was unsure how to react. The man with the laminated card moved to stand beside her and they both found themselves staring at Tom, who was on his knees and crying, “Where is she? Where is she? Where is she? Where is she? Where is she?”

  Jane knelt down and took his hands, then pulled him to her and hugged him close.

  “Where is she, Jane?” he whispered. “Where’s my girl?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, rubbing his head like she used to rub Kurt’s when he was young enough to be soothed rather than repelled by her touch, “but we will find her.”

  Michelle, tipped off by Graham who was watching the sad scene on screen, appeared and took the English Alex inside, where she explained the tragic circumstances the crying man had found himself in. The English Alex was dreadfully sorry to hear of the man’s plight and more than a little freaked at the likeness between her and the picture of the missing woman. She explained that she worked for Jack’s UK distribution company and made her excuses as she had somewhere to be. She was gone before at last Jane came in with Tom, whose disappointment had turned into mild shock.