by Louise Kean
‘Christine, and Peter, it was lovely to meet you both.’
Peter is drunk and gets up to kiss me goodbye.
I kiss him, or rather the air around him, lightly and quickly, and then click quickly around the table to Christine and kiss her as well, so she doesn’t think I am hitting on her husband.
‘And, Christian! I’ll see you again soon, I’m sure.’ I reach across a hand to hold his, but he pushes his chair back and leans forward, so I can peck him a quick goodbye. I stand up straight and survey the only adult left standing that I haven’t kissed goodbye.
Cagney, who is standing on the other side of the table, glares at me.
‘Now I have to go,’ I say, and walk out.
I grab my bag from the table in the hallway and stop by the door to the sitting room. Adrian is still on the phone. He looks up at me apologetically after a few moments, and mouths the word ‘sorry’. Then puts his finger to his lips and mouths ‘shhh’.
I don’t turn round as I walk out, despite hearing Christine ask, ‘What’s the name of her website? It sounds wonderful!’
I round the corner of their pathway by the gate and walk deliberately into the middle of the quiet road, because it is safer and nobody can grab you from behind a bush or a wall and drag you in. It’s a little tip I picked up from Crime Watch, otherwise known as the most terrifying show on television. I have barely taken a few steps when I hear a voice behind me.
‘I’m very sorry.’
I turn round and see Cagney is standing in the middle of the street.
‘Christian told you to apologise that quickly?’ I say quietly.
‘I didn’t mean for you to leave. I’m going now, please go back in.’ Cagney looks at his hands as he wrings them once, and then lets them fall to his side.
‘No,’ I say resolutely, ‘I’m too upset to stay. I’m going home.’ I turn to walk away.
‘Sunny,’ Cagney says clearly, and I stop with my back to him. He doesn’t speak, and so I turn round. ‘You should at least wait for … your friend,’ he says. I smile half a sad smile.
‘I don’t know how long he’ll be, and I can’t ask, in case his girlfriend hears me.’ I laugh at how pathetic I sound.
Cagney doesn’t say anything, but stares at a bush to his right, filled with small blue flowers that I am guessing neither of us could name given fifty guesses.
‘You can’t walk home alone,’ he says to the blue-flowered bush.
‘I’ll be fine,’ I say sadly. It’s not so bad, it’s what I’m used to. Maybe I don’t need protecting.
‘Fine is never fine,’ he says, and I smile because I’ve heard that before.
‘Well, what do you suggest?’ I ask suddenly, surprised at the words as they come out, surprised at what I might suddenly be about to say.
Cagney looks at me, and then at a post box across the road. I look at the post box too, to see what is so interesting.
Cagney coughs slightly, and his eyes flicker towards me. I widen my eyes, waiting for his suggestion. We both hear Christian shout, ‘Bye bye,’ as he heads out of the front door. Cagney’s eyes dart back to the post box.
‘At least let Christian walk you,’ he says quietly.
I open my mouth to speak but nothing comes out.
‘Christian, you’ll walk her home, won’t you.’ It is a statement, not a question.
Christian stops at his side, and glances at Cagney with incredulity. I feel a trickle of disappointment chase down my spine with a bead of sweat, and I don’t understand it at all.
Christian looks up in time to catch the confusion on my face. ‘Of course I’ll walk you home, Sunny. Come on, my lovely.’
As Christian walks towards me I concentrate on his face, although something makes me glance back at Cagney at the last moment. But he simply looks at the ground, as Christian grabs my hand, and pulls me off in the opposite direction. Until this evening I have met him only in the video shop and yet it feels comfortable to walk hand in hand with Christian, arms outstretched, swinging our interlocking palms backwards and forwards, in the middle of the quiet Kew streets, towards home.
‘What a funny man,’ I say eventually.
‘Funny’s not a word that gets used a lot to describe Cagney, to be honest.’ Christian winks at me and smiles.
‘You know I mean funny weird, of course. Not funny ha ha.’
‘Oh, he’s not weird, not really. He’s just been through a lot.’
‘Not that you’d know! I mean, Jesus, Christian, he’s so angry all the time! And I haven’t done anything – why does he hate me so much?’
Christian tugs my hand back so I stop walking and addresses me. ‘It’s not you, lovely girl, it’s more that … he doesn’t really mix … with women … that much anymore.’
‘Has he ever?’ I ask, incredulous.
‘Oh, yes …’ Christian nods his head wisely.
‘So does that mean he is … divorced?’ I ask curiously.
‘Yes.’ Christian nods his head solemnly, and I am sure I am supposed to take something more from it.
‘I see,’ I say, not really seeing at all.
‘Three times,’ Christian says.
I cough loudly, and pull on Christian’s hand, so he stops this time. A big fat Kew cat strolls past, utterly disinterested in the pair of us.
‘Now do you see?’ Christian asks, wide-eyed.
‘Jesus, he’s the Liz Taylor of Kew! Is that why you love him so much? Does he remind you of her?’
‘It is not the only reason. He has always been there for me, if I need him.’ Christian nods seriously again.
‘But three times? Jesus, did he … did he beat them?’
‘Oh, sweet buggery, no Sunny! You’ve got him all wrong! He just … he picks the wrong ones! He has shocking taste, and not just in knitwear. He’s got a spark, Sunny, even if it has faded a little recently, but he’s got this funny thing, a strange charm, when he cares to show it. But he just picks these dull beautiful women.’ Christian moans the words, as if just saying them might put him to sleep, as if there were nothing more depressing in this whole wide world than a dull but beautiful woman.
‘Dull? How so? You mean, just, a little vacuous?’
‘No, darling, I wish that it were that simple. Shallow can be huge amounts of fun! No, it’s that they have nothing to them at all, no fire, no personality, no nothing. Of course you wouldn’t understand, being the woman that you are …’
‘What does that mean?’ I ask.
‘It means that if your personality were bell-bottomed jeans, I wouldn’t be able to walk for the acres of denim swishing at my ankles!’
‘I know … I have a “good” personality,’ I say in a mocking pathetic voice, but Christian throws away my hand in an instant.
‘Excuse me? Good? You have an amazing personality!’ Christian makes his eyes wide, and draws a big circle with his two index fingers in the night air, although I don’t really know what for, or what it is supposed to mean.
‘Oh, you don’t know me at all, Christian! A few too many wines and a few too many words thrown at your friend doesn’t make me Miss Congeniality.’
‘You might not be Sandra, darling, but then who is? What I know is that you’re feisty, and you are sassy, and you have substance, and you are determined! Look at what you did!’
‘What did I do?’ I ask, confused.
‘What did you do? Where did you go, more like? Darling, you changed your life!’
‘Oh, that.’ I visibly deflate. I thought he might say I am beautiful. He is only saying that I am thinner than I was, but that’s obvious. Something in me desperately wants Christian to think of me as beautiful, like one of his idols, Liz Taylor or Rita Hayworth, or Diana Dors – somebody fabulous!
‘Christian, I’m not so feisty, I just get so scared that I shout. It hides it. But better to be thought of as having a good personality than nothing, I suppose.’
‘Of course, darling! Otherwise you’d just be another one of those
beautiful vacant types that Cagney goes for!’ We turn the corner of my street. My feet hurt and now Christian is patronising me.
‘Yes, OK, Christian. I’m tired, I’m not stupid.’
‘Darling.’ Christian turns towards me and holds both my hands. I look up at him, and then look away. ‘Darling?’ he says again, until I relent and meet his gaze. ‘You get how pretty you are, right? You get that those big old eyes of yours were messing with Cagney’s mind tonight and making him crazy, right?’
‘Whatever, Christian, you are being very sweet, but you don’t need to go over the top.’ I try to shake off his hands, but he holds on.
‘Sunny, honey, listen to me. You are never going to mend properly if you don’t learn to say thank you when somebody tells you the truth. Take a compliment, darling. Only a silly woman can’t accept a compliment, and I don’t spend time with them.’
I look away. ‘Well then, I guess I’m silly.’
‘Why?’ Christian asks, confused.
‘Because I’m not there yet,’ I say, looking at my feet, and then back up at him again, shrugging my shoulders, admitting it.
‘Then yes, I am afraid you are a silly, silly girl’ Christian says, but kindly.
‘I know.’
We are sitting on my wall by now. It’s a warm night, and the air smells wonderful. It is past midnight, and there is a chill, nipping at my arms, giving me goose pimples. I am already a little hungover. But Christian and I want to swing our legs off the side of my wall for five more minutes, and enjoy the guilty pleasure of staying up late and talking about nothing, and everything. We are as comfortable as it is possible to be in an Armani suit and a silk dress, sitting on old rugged slate stones.
‘Now, tell me about this Adrian guy. He was kind of bland-looking, although nice and tall, I’ll grant you.’
‘Well, what do you want to know?’
‘What’s his story? What’s with the phone stapled to his ear?’
‘His story, and the phone, are because, officially at least, he is with somebody else.’
‘With?’ Christian is confused.
‘He’s engaged to somebody else.’ I nod my head with acceptance as I say it, flatly, in a tone that I hope will stop Christian being too appalled. It doesn’t work.
‘No he isn’t!’ He claps his hands once, and then guiltily puts them back down at his sides.
‘Yes he is!’ I say, and laugh. It strikes me that I might cut a desperate figure, hungry for somebody to love me, willing to take whatever scraps are thrown my way. Or maybe I seem, to everybody else, simply to want what I can’t have. Maybe everybody else can see quite clearly that I just like the idea of Adrian, and not the reality, so his scraps are more than enough. Maybe he is the tragic one. Maybe the whole world is tragic, in love with the wrong person, wanting something they can’t have, desperate for a reason to leave, desperate for some excitement to make staying more bearable, desperate not to let go. Christian isn’t quite so understanding.
‘That is just … weird! I’m sorry, it’s super weird! It’s crazy drunken madness! Who cheats when they aren’t even married yet? Isn’t engagement supposed to be the happy time? Not that I know … but that’s right, right?’ Christian searches my face for clarification.
‘Christ, Christian, I don’t know either. I’ve got no kind of experience with this kind of thing; I’ve been on my own for ever. And as for Adrian … well,’ I think about it for a moment. ‘Well, I think he’s just confused,’ I say in my most down-to-earth and objective manner. ‘And I think he is terrified of hurting Jane.’
‘OK because Jane would be doing star jumps if she knew where he was tonight!’ Christian hits the nail on the head.
‘I know, I know … it’s a desperately hard situation, but I think I like him … or I thought I did … or maybe I do, I don’t know. I feel like somebody else being involved shouldn’t make me qualify my feelings. I should just know how I feel, and I think I do … or I thought I did … or I’m trying to work out how I do anyway …’
‘But, lovely girl, don’t you want somebody of your own? Don’t you want somebody to belong to?’
‘Of course I do, Christian, but wherever he is, he doesn’t seem overly bothered about tracking me down … and you meet who you meet … and you like who you like …’
‘Well, you think that if you want, and you keep thinking it as Mr Perfect walks on by because he sees you with Adrian.’
‘I know,’ I say again. Tonight it would seem I think I know a lot, when I really don’t.
‘You’re better than that, Sunny – you know that much, right?’
‘Maybe. Or maybe what I really honestly know is that Adrian wants me, even if it is just as an appetiser, or a side dish, but it’s still more than I had before.’
‘But still not enough. You deserve somebody just for you. He isn’t being fair.’
A milk float buzzes round the corner and motors past us in slow motion, with its distinctive hum and the gentle clink of old-fashioned milk bottles.
‘He doesn’t mean to be mean, Christian. His emotions have just gone a little cloudy.’
‘Well then, you need to be the one to see clearly now.’ Christian clicks his fingers and hums the next line of a song.
I nod my head; I can’t bear to say ‘I know’ one more time.
‘Well.’ I jump down from the wall, which is only a few feet high, my feet were basically touching the pavement anyway. Christian’s feet are firmly on the ground already, with his knees bent. I clap my hands together and childishly engage Christian in a game of pat-a-cake, as I talk. ‘I think,’ clap clap, ‘it’s time,’ clap clap, ‘for me,’ clap clap, ‘to go to bed,’ clap.
‘Weren’t you hungry tonight?’ Christian asks, between claps.
‘Not particularly.’ I shrug, and speed up my hand clapping.
‘Because I didn’t see you eat anything.’ Christian catches my hands in front of me.
I look at him with surprise. ‘Oh my God, I did! I ate loads!’
‘No, you didn’t. You had the seaweed at the start and the salmon, but you had one mouthful of lamb …’
‘Yes, but I’m not a big lover of lamb.’
‘… And you didn’t have any sweet potatoes or halloumi.’
‘It’s just Nigella’s recipes give me a stomach ache – they have too much fat.’ I have a quick-fire answer for everything he can throw at me.
‘So you just had vegetables. And you didn’t eat many of those.’ Christian looks at me evenly, and waits for a response.
‘It’s not what you think,’ I say.
‘What do I think?’ he asks, and I feel silly, and paranoid, and persecuted.
‘Something dramatic,’ I say, trying to make him feel silly instead.
‘So starving yourself isn’t dramatic?’ he asks.
‘I’m not starving myself. You don’t know me, Christian. I just don’t really … eat … in public.’
‘Public? Why not in public?’
‘Because … it’s a hangover – from the old days. I feel … greedy if people see me eating.’
He stares at me, and I look away. ‘Jesus,’ he whispers, but I refuse to look up.
‘OK, well, I need my sleep.’ Christian pushes himself up, and I take a step back to clear out of his way. ‘Why don’t you pop into Screen Queen soon, lovely. We can grab a coffee, I can watch you eat a muffin, and you can advise me on my film festival; you can tell me what you think of the flyers! And then I can console you, after you tell Tarzan he leaves Jane or no more fun in the Sunny, right?’
‘Maybe,’ I say.
Christian smacks me on the bum, and I smack him back.
‘Thank you for walking me home, Christian. I don’t think I could have handled that amount of time with Cagney.’ I laugh and run a hand through my hair.
Christian says, ‘We’ll see,’ and takes a few steps backwards. ‘Ciao, bella,’ he whispers as he blows me a kiss.
‘Are you sure you don’t feel like c
hanging sides, Christian?’ I ask.
Christian stops walking backwards, and takes five long swift steps forward, kisses my forehead, and whispers, ‘Not a chance.’
As he walks away, I say, ‘I don’t blame you,’ but quietly, so no one will hear.
Adrian banged on my door for eight minutes starting at 1.10 a.m. Twenty minutes after Christian had left, and four minutes after I had climbed into bed, alone.
Should he have banged for longer? Should he have cried my name to a full-fat soft cheese Kew moon, wailing to the stars, pleading to be let in? Would that have made me answer my door? Or would I have just flicked the speed dial button on my phone that connects me to Richmond police station … ?
Eight minutes isn’t anything. It’s not completely disinterested – that would have been thirty seconds of bangs, a muttered ‘Anyone home?’ and then quick relieved steps away in time for the last bus.
But it’s not demanding or passionate either. Eight minutes is just a very average ordinary man wanting his mistress to let him into her bed. ‘Bored-inary’ as Christian calls it, as in ‘How can anybody live a life that bored-inary?’ or, ‘His shoes are soooo bored-inary, I’m staring straight at them and I couldn’t tell you what they look like. It’s as if my mind won’t allow me to compute the image, it’s just so bored-inary.’ If Adrian had a bit more imagination, he would have knocked to the tune of an Elvis song that I like, or he would have tried to make me laugh by shouting, ‘Knock, knock – who’s there? Adrian! Adrian who? You know, Adrian! You had sex with him in your kitchen a couple of hours ago!’ Or, as a last-ditch attempt, he might have stage-whispered through the letterbox that, given that it was a nice night and all, he would simply curl up on my porch until I extricated myself from my current position, trapped under something heavy, and let him in. But Adrian knocked with no discernible rhythm for eight minutes – bang, bang … Sunny? Bang … Sunny? Bang bang bang bang … bang, Sunny? The effect being that he bored me into my paralysis. I guess he doesn’t work in IT for nothing.