Past Present Future

by Alexander, N J.

  ‘Nicole – I don’t really see you running off with a 21-year-old, it was just one of those things and you didn’t do anything did you? Please tell me you didn’t do anything?’

  ‘Lord no, he’s only a few years older than Richard’s grandson and to be honest I started to think of him as more of a precious gift that made closing the place down easier. But I haven’t really spoken to Richard much since Ilex closed, actually I think our only conversations the last year or so have been about Ilex Drapes, William and Elyse. I can’t talk to him about having a crush on James and I’m scared…’ I could feel my eyes fill again, so I went for the paper napkin as my emotional pendulum forcefully swung back to Richard.

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘That if Richard retires he’ll say that he can take over the main childcare role and then I can go back to work full time.’

  ‘Which is what you want? Don’t you?’

  ‘Yes…but no. I want to be at work but I want to be the one who is there during school holidays too. But it would mean that Richard would no longer be the Alpha male.’

  ‘What the fuck do you mean – Alpha male?’

  ‘Well…I’m scared that if he is at home, and I’m at work, that I’ll be attracted to someone else but in an environment where my emotions won’t be protected by circumstances…as with James. Okay – I am worried that I will fall into having an affair – that’s it, I have said it now.’

  On the word ‘affair’ the tears went into freefall down my cheeks. The paper napkin was rapidly disintegrating between my fingers as I thought about the fear of managing to land myself into any more explosive situations.

  ‘But you can’t be with someone of sixty and expect them to not want to slow down?’

  ‘I know that. But retiring! That’s a word that takes away the hope. Does that make sense? Being together and building things together gives hope. But retiring – it’s like saying this is our life, and that’s it, we climb no higher – there’s no more fight left and life is about the fight.’

  Despite my heightened emotion and tears, I was acutely aware that I was in a tiny confined space surrounded by elderly retired people, who would probably liked to have taken every last bit of strength in their failing limbs and give me a damn good punch.

  ‘I need a cigarette, let’s get some fresh air,’ Maddy said, whilst texting.

  ‘Okay, I just need to be a bit careful getting out of this chair, my skirt keeps disappearing.’

  ‘What? Let’s see?’ and her head dropped under the table.

  ‘Wow…that is short – hope you’re wearing pants?’

  ‘Of course, I’m wearing pants!’

  I was grateful for fresh air. It would have been better without the cigarette smoke. But I was mostly grateful for being out of earshot of the fellow diners. I gathered myself a little, as I stood looking down at the back-door steps in the tiny stone courtyard. I rocked the sole of my feet against the edge of the step; feeling the pressure against it seemed to help somehow. Maddy inhaled her cigarette and exhaled as she adjusted her Gucci shoulder bag that matched her Gucci ballet pumps. ‘You’re right, you can’t tell Richard – but I know what you mean about hope and building things together.’

  ‘See, I told you.’

  ‘But you need to talk to him. There must be a tactful why of explaining how you feel? You don’t have to mention James. So what are you going to do?’

  ‘What can I do?’ I didn’t mean to be churlish with her – this wasn’t her fault.

  ‘I don’t know? Do you fancy a browse round the shops instead of breakfast?’

  ‘I’ll pay for the tea,’ Maddy offered as usual.

  ‘No…I’ll pay,’ we both hurled notes over the counter.

  A few seconds out of the door and Maddy bumped into someone she knew but hadn’t seen for ages. This always happened because she’d lived most of her life here. I was still a stranger to the place and had so far made no attempt to get to know people. I said a polite ‘hello’ and then stood idly kicking my feet against the pavement, waiting for them to finish their small talk. Then a driver in a passing car beeped his horn at me a couple of times.

  ‘That skirt is way too short,’ said Maddy as she crossed over to me.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I just want to go home.’

  ‘You promise to talk to him.’

  ‘I promise,’ I said. Fortunately for me, she’d forgotten to give me a timescale.

  My first ever Facebook photo album felt like an achievement worthy of a diploma or at the very least a mention on my CV that I no longer wanted to think about. But I’d spent ages ferreting through old pictures that had been taken in the last decade or so – it had been far more entertaining than my study books. A few days after creating the album, I sat at the laptop flicking through it but stopped when I got to a picture I’d uploaded of Richard. His body looked good on it – strong and powerful. He had always worked hard to stay in shape. The fact he was wearing Speedos on the photo, had left it wide open for abuse from Maddy, Steve and a few other friends who had since left a string of comments, ripping it apart. I looked into Richard’s pale blue eyes on the picture. The fact I’d still not spoken about my fear to him was still sitting heavily on my conscience. A month had now passed since I’d promised Maddy I would raise the subject with him.

  I clicked onto some of my other pictures, as a means of blotting it from my mind. There were loads of William and Elyse, a picture of me jumping over a fence on my pony and a graduation picture with my friend Sophie from University, which reminded me of her recent email where she’d managed to drop in the lines: “…you’re a Jack of all trades” her response to my accountancy exams, and “…we need to meet up before we’re both grey.” She would have been innocently clueless that her words were enough to make me want to pull my hair out when I read them. My other graduation photo was of me clutching a six-month-old William.

  Making the most of my limited time, I casually browsed through the friends of an old colleague. I was looking to see if I could spot any more familiar faces or names; people were starting to feel like collectable items on the site.

  And then I spotted him.

  I must have searched around five-hundred Anthony Hope’s on Facebook before and failed to find him…until now. To me, there was only one Anthony Hope in the world, and this was the one. I looked at his tiny profile picture. He was pictured on a sailing boat – part of it was slightly out of focus in the background. Even with his New York Yankees baseball cap on I could see it was him; there was no doubt whose cocky smile I was looking at. I quickly sent a friend request through, and then decided that I’d better send an email because I wasn’t sure whether he knew me by anything other than my nickname – Little N. I sat looking at my screen, and suddenly I’d become electronically tongue-tied as I struggled to think of something appropriate to say. I waved my fingers over the keyboard like I was trying to dry my nails. Somehow it helped me think what to write.

  To: Anthony Hope

  Always wondered where you went to. Hope you are well…Love Nicole (But you probably remember me as Little N)

  And…a few hours later…

  Nicole is now friends with Anthony Hope.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The phone was ringing and I ignored it. It had been ringing all day – four or five rings then it would stop. But this time Anthony Hope and his profile picture sat conveniently in the centre of my laptop screen, so there was absolutely no chance that I was going to pick up any call. Piles of clothes waiting to be dropped into suitcases also sat inconveniently around me. I could have waited until we got back from holiday to look at his page, but that would have been like going away and leaving a mystery parcel sat in the hallway. The phone stopped. A single click on his name and I was able to go away without giving him a second thought; my curiosity satisfied. So I did it and cursed Facebook for taking so long to load everything, and I was in. Shit! His page felt strangely like I was snooping around someone’s house, e
ven though they’d given me the key to get in.

  The first thing I honed in on was his Relationship Status: Single! I didn’t even want to question why this was the first thing I noticed. But then I’d expected him to at least be engaged by now. Politics said Democrat – this was my first reminder that he wasn’t English. Employment said ‘The RocX’ – that sounded like a band name, which meant he was probably still making a living from singing. I planned to check out the band’s website using Google later.

  I was desperate to read his Wall so that I could piece little bits of his life together from his Status Updates. I told myself I would browse for ten minutes and then get on with the packing.

  There was rather a lot of activity; he’d been quite busy with his Updates. I’d got hours of reading material ahead of me, but a few jumped out:

  Anthony has quit smoking…again – that was from 2007.

  I found another posting from early 2008 saying pretty much the same thing and I thought of Maddy…for some reason.

  Anthony is hating the navigation exams – I only want to sail a goddamn boat around for a bit and not circumnavigate the world! That one explained his profile picture.

  Anthony is back in New York with his folks for Thanksgiving – another reminder that he wasn’t a Brit. Where was he living when he wasn’t in New York? I wondered.

  Anthony is thinking about sleeping in the parking lot as there’s more room in the truck – these digs are absolute shite – and that post definitely sounded like he was still in a band.

  Anthony is jamming – made me think about his attachment to his guitar.

  Then I spotted: Anthony’s got the zipper stuck on his pants dude. For a few seconds I completely got the wrong end of the stick – language barrier – I shook the first image from my mind. Obviously he meant the zip on his trousers.

  Time wasn’t on my side: I had gone way over my ten minutes and I really needed to be getting on with the packing, so I left his Wall and moved on to his photos. There were loads where people had Tagged him in and they showed him singing at various venues. There were also many of him looking hammered in bars and clubs.

  The thing I really noticed was his hair; it was still deliciously dark but he’d chopped it off at some point. It was now angled into his neck but longer on top around the fringe – it suited him better. On one hand he looked older, but on the other hand his new hairstyle softened him. I suppose it was a bit like looking at a dog after its coat had been trimmed off – it showed the same cute effect.

  I could feel myself frowning in concentration and lapping up the information in front of me.

  The phone started again – I ignored it.

  I moved onto the albums he’d created – I knew these would be more personal and give more insight. There was an album on a “fishing vacation” as he called it, in Madagascar. There was one of him skiing, but obviously he’d typed the wrong place on it because it said New York. Since when could you ski in a city full of skyscrapers? There was another of him sitting nonchalantly under a tree with a white, colonial-type house in the background – that said New York as well, but the typo error wasn’t what interested me – it was the photo. I found myself lingering on it – he looked so bloody sexy in it - in an understated way. He was wearing jeans and a blue v-neck sweater. He was leaning against a tree with his guitar resting on his lap. Next to him was a can of beer and what looked like a white note pad. I thought back to the times he used to scribble words down. Maybe they were the song lyrics he was singing nowadays? His long legs were stretched out it front of him – one resting on the other. The camera had caught him with a half-smile, as though someone had asked him to look up, but he’d failed to raise anything but his eyes. His fringe had fallen forward, catching the corner of his right eye. I wanted to brush the stray hair out of his way and kiss where it had been, working my way down to his mouth.

  I sighed. The phone started again, this time it was more persistent.

  I looked at my watch, sighed again, and clicked onto another photo – in this one he looked like he was in a rickety rowing boat moored at the end of a jetty. He was holding a fishing rod and only wearing shorts – I’d never seen his naked chest before. I could see a few dark hairs scattered across his torso. He had a flat stomach but no real signs of muscle. I was starting to wonder whether adding him was actually good for my health. I scrolled to the bottom of the picture. This said New York too – but I could see it wasn’t a lake in Central Park. No skyscrapers anywhere. I concluded that he must have been pissed when he wrote the captions on his pictures.

  The next picture was a family one. It said: Dad, and Big Sis Alice, at the bottom. His sister took after his dad, except his sister was blonde and Anthony’s dad was dark like him. But his dad looked thicker set than Anthony. Presumably his mum must have taken the picture. I recalled someone once telling me that Anthony’s dad was a conveyancing lawyer but Anthony rejected the same career path – to his dad’s despair. I didn’t know how much truth there was to the rumour.

  I came out of the album and opened up another he’d called “work ‘n’ stuff”. There was a promotional shot of him with his band mates – they all looked similar ages, and the photo was pretty much like every other band shot out there with the guys all striking different poses. The band logo The RocX was in large letters in front of them. The X extended downwards – like a firework exploding across the picture – the graphic designers obviously had a field day with it. Most of the other stuff looked pretty much like the pictures he’d been tagged in so I closed it down – I could always go through those another day.

  Over five hundred friends! He’d got five times the number of friends I had. I couldn’t help but wonder how many had been ex-girlfriends. That was one of the things that did strike me about his page – there was no evidence of any specific girlfriend. Loads of females – but no one female dominated any part of his Facebook. But I never did grasp what his type was when he was at Opus. The other thing that struck me: no Big Apple pictures – I was expecting to see inside a city apartment, roof-top living, yellow taxis and Broadway.

  I picked up the phone and dialled 1471; the caller has withheld their number message played. Anyone who knew us well would have either mine or Richard’s mobile.

  I logged out of Facebook and went to Google his band. The first hit that came up had a ‘.co.uk’ web address but…surely that would mean he was living in the UK? I clicked on the site and went straight into the Contact page. I was right. He was in London and not on the other side of the Atlantic like I thought. I closed my laptop. It didn’t matter that he was still here…his addition to my Facebook was harmless.

  I called Richard to see if he had been trying to get hold of me. He said no, but the calls were probably connected to the banks – most likely calling from India.

  The plane landed at Larnaca airport and we stepped out into a heat wave. The extreme heat at the early hour was nothing to the extreme heat we went on to experience during the day.

  Two days into the holiday and I was trying to get more comfortable on a sun-lounger as my towel had started forming criss-cross patterns on my skin adding to the appeal of the white sun-cream smears. The overall effect meant that my black all-in-one, slashed to the waist swimsuit was a waste of time.

  I lay down, but then jumped back up again to lower the parasol some more. Richard had definitely found a good spot at the sloping end of the pool, so it was safer for Elyse and it was slightly more shaded. Half the guests were like us, parents with young children, the other half were young clubbers, so they didn’t get up until lunch at the earliest. It also looked like a lot of people had gone home and this was a bit of a change over day anyway. If the previous night’s evening entertainment was anything to go by, Alcatraz was going to look appealing. We couldn’t go for romantic meals, and we couldn’t go clubbing in one of the Meds biggest clubbing resorts – Richard’s too old anyway, even I’m on the borderline.

  We were trapped for two weeks with no air
-conditioning, as the air-con in the room appeared to be for aesthetic purposes only. I was seriously starting to think that we needed to reconsider the whole holiday thing. Try different things.

  Richard’s wife was on the sun bed next to me. She’d chosen to holiday with us and the rest of Richard’s family this year. She still has the formal status of wife because she is still his wife. They never divorced. Richard being prepared to divorce her was good enough for me and possession of the ring meant more to her, than it did to me – I prefer the cage door open. When Richard initially walked out on her, back then, relations were very hostile, but time has healed and over the years I have grown to really like and respect her.

  She was a hardened sun worshipper though, and never showed any visible signs of sweating in the intense heat, and as a consequence her hair didn’t fall flat like mine, or her make-up slide off. She had all of her sun creams neatly organised in a cute little zip bag and she kept her pocket fan with her at all times.

  I watched her get herself comfortable – she switched on her iPod (her grandkids had downloaded songs on it for her) and relaxed like a pro. She had already raised her kids a long time ago, so she had every smug right to sit in peace looking glamorous and relaxed. I on the other hand, in my ghostly, smeared state was fidgety, spending my time hopping in and out of the pool like a yo-yo with Elyse.

  ‘Do you want a drink?’ Richard asked.

  ‘No I’m fine,’ I said, as his wife confirmed the same from the sun bed next to mine.

  ‘So you don’t mind me going and having another pint then? They’re not very strong. In fact, I think they’re watered down.’

  ‘No, I don’t mind,’ that was my attempt to help ease his guilty conscience. It worked as he happily wandered back over to the bar.

  ‘Blast. That’s my phone, where is it?’ I chaotically tipped everything out of the beach bag to find it before it stopped. ‘Oh…it’s Maddy,’ I said, as I flipped down my phone and then gave Maddy a quick rundown on the place before asking how things were her end.