Past Present Future

by Alexander, N J.

  ‘We’re fine. I left you a few messages on Facebook,’ she said.

  ‘Have you? It looks like there’s Internet access here, so I’ll have a look at some point.’ Opening messages was like opening presents, pleasurable. I was now itching to get on the Internet to see what she’d put. Something had amused her, I could tell, there was a smile in her voice.

  ‘Oh…and I added that Anthony Hope. He’s such a Facebook whore, doesn’t even know me and he added me. I saw you’d added him,’ there was devilment in her voice, a note of oneupmanship, her watchful eye letting me know that his addition to my Facebook hadn’t passed by her. Bugger…she had remembered his name. My instincts had been right – I should never have mentioned him to her and Lorna. There was no way that I was going to give her the pleasure of asking why she’d done it.

  ‘Anyway,’ I continued, in the best casual not disturbed by it voice that I could muster, ‘he’s in a band called The RocX which is based in London. He’s not in New York like I thought. Have you seen all the female friends he’s got, there’s hundreds, obviously still a player; life’s still one big party for him,’ I said, while not condemning him for this. It’s a matter of fact that men get a much better deal. They can take as many as twenty years longer before deciding to settle down as they don’t have to worry about the biological clock, and they become distinguished – not old. But his lifestyle was helpful as a means of flippantly dismissing him to Maddy as an insignificant addition to my Facebook.

  ‘No, I haven’t had a look, I just added him.’

  ‘Have a look,’ I said, with contrived disinterest.

  ‘Will do, well just a quick call, to check you are all okay. Enjoy your holiday and speak soon…got to go sorry,’ and she’d gone before I got in a bye. I wondered if Richard’s wife had listened to the conversation and if she had heard enough to mention anything to Richard.

  The hours slowly drifted by, punctuated by lunch, then quiz time – I would have happily taken a gun to my own head each time we had to sit through a banal quiz, and then we went back to the room, showered and change only to then get wet through again with sweat in the restaurant. Then the whole process was then repeated the next day and the next.

  Richard and I had a rule that one of us stayed sober for William and Elyse, and this night was my turn to have a drink…or two. I was egged on for the Karaoke and sung at best an interesting version of Living La Vida Loca. I love singing, but usually only in the confines of my home, car or Maddy’s playroom on the PlayStation. A few cocktails down and what the hell I thought, I was never to see these people again, and I was up and away. I could feel the alcohol kicking in fast and my usual natural grace that Richard found so attractive was probably somewhat lacking. I handed over the microphone and tip-toed off to the Internet with my cocktail and straw now firmly in my grip.

  Getting your bearings at a strange PC while your head is spinning is not the easiest task in the world. But, somehow, through sheer determination, I managed to type in the hotel reference number that Reception had given to me, and I navigated myself straight to Facebook. A tiny envelope icon at the top of my screen was showing I had one message. Expecting it to be from Maddy, I went straight for my emails.

  From: Anthony Hope

  Of course I remember Little N. Hope you’re well. XX

  God…I could still hear his voice and I quickly closed down my email and read Maddy’s messages, which I found on my Wall. Clearly William’s two teachers having to share a box of chocolates as their end of term gift had smugly entertained her. I will never know how Richard managed to cock that one up. My instructions were clear enough: buy two boxes of chocolates. I took another long sip of my drink; then I checked my Facebook notifications…

  I’d been tagged in a photo. Maddy had tagged me necking wine, and here I was feeling drunk again.

  I then fumbled my way around the site until I found the photo that Sophie Morreti had commented on. It was the graduation one with us throwing our caps in the air. I read her long message but that took a while because the effect of the alcohol was making it difficult for my eyes to read in a straight line.

  I’ll never forget our uni days – hot chocolate and faces stuffed with cheesecake in our spare time. Now twelve years on and you’re still only 5ft 2! he he. Need to meet up squirt before we’re both too wrinkled and past it! X

  I added a comment below …

  No intention of growing old, got Botox for that. I think I’ve just typed this on the wrong bit and now everyone will see it on the Newsfeed, but I am too pissed to care. X

  And then I somehow found myself back in my emails again.

  Hi Anthony

  Nice to hear from you. Currently in Cyprus but slightly not sober at the moment. I hope you appreciate tje effprt to tyope. X free dprnk here.

  ‘Here you are, what are you doing?’ It was Richard. He had come to find me. ‘Elyse’s looking for you. Are you going to get off that and join the rest of us? You’re being anti-social.’ Even slightly drunk I could detect annoyance. Why did he hate me being on the computer lately?

  ‘What are you looking at anyway? Bet it’s that Facebook. It is, isn’t it? Can’t you take a holiday from it?’

  ‘I’m not looking at anything. I’m coming. Maddy told me she’d left a message. I just need to log out,’ I wasn’t drunk enough to slur my words, or at least I thought it was clearly said. I took another long, noisy sip of my drink through the straw, getting the frothy bits from the bottom. I then logged out and was back watching the entertainment, until Elyse wet her pants, and then I escaped back to the room, passing all of the teenagers and twenty-somethings in miniscule dresses on their way to the clubs.

  I failed to get anywhere near a PC for the rest of the trip.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Once we were safely back home, the holiday felt like it had been a million years ago, and the Botox comment had now been removed from my Facebook. It didn’t matter that the Botox had been justified. Ilex Drapes had stressed me out, and I kept reading about stress being a big ageing factor. The crush on a 21-year-old could also have had something to do with it, but I didn’t want to consider that possibility and I didn’t really want everyone knowing that much about my private life. But it was too late for that stupid email to Anthony Hope – it would be like trying to retrieve a ring after lobbing it off the edge of a cliff – it had gone. At least he’d the decency to ignore it, which was a good thing because I was too embarrassed to apologise. I was far happier to pretend it didn’t exist. It wasn’t like I was going to have to speak to him ever again anyway. I hadn’t added him to communicate with; my life was complicated enough: we still had the financial shit hanging over us and school holidays to contend with. This is what I tried to tell myself on the ninth of August, my 38th birthday and the day after the 2008 Olympics had kicked off.

  I sat at the study desk. The study was the only room that felt closed off; it was the smallest, cosiest room in the house and the only room downstairs we’d carpeted, everywhere else was more or less open plan with either wooden flooring or stone tiles, which worked well with the solid Spanish oak doors and kitchen units and worked even better with kids and a dog.

  In front of me was the old PC and it was infuriatingly slow. The screen went to black every so often then froze before loading up the next page, which meant that sometimes the text ended up jumbled up on the search bar when typed in too quickly. As long as it continued ticking along, I didn’t bother replacing it or getting it repaired – it simply required a lot of patience.

  While it was loading I sat thinking about some of the things said earlier around the table over dinner. Maddy, Steve and Henry had joined us for my birthday – to stay at home had been my choice, but it had got a little uncomfortable after Mum and Dad also popped in with my presents. They were still miffed over the three grand my dad lost for some engineering work he’d done for one of Steve’s companies that had been seized in the dawn raid. So all of them together in the same room was
always a little awkward until they surmounted the hurdle until the next time they met. Mum and Dad had taken to calling them Bonnie and Clyde – not to their face of course. But that wasn’t what had bothered me about the evening. It was the word ‘bankruptcy’ flying round the table like it was as insignificant as the naan bread being passed over our heads. Steve had told Richard that he thought bankruptcy was the route he should go. Steve was forced into it after the dawn raid – he didn’t really have a choice. But Richard didn’t say things like: I don’t think it is necessary. Instead he said: ‘I’m mulling over my options with lawyers right now.’ I was starting to feel deceived by Richard. I’d always felt cheated that he was actually a couple of inches shorter than the 5ft 11 he had at first claimed. It still bugs me because he has as a consequence cheated my children of those same few inches. But this time I felt cheated over our financial security and I didn’t know how to deal with the emotions that came with that.

  While the PC was still on a go slow I looked down at the curry stain on my white brorderie anglais shirtdress. It was a few years old but I loved it; it still fitted perfectly. It was a dress I could only wear when I had a tan, which usually meant the occasional spray tan, but the Cyprus tan was still lingering. The egg timer on the PC was still static and I thought about the withheld-number phone calls which Richard still insisted on being the banks. On the rare occasions I did bother with the phone, I discovered he’d been right: it was usually someone from the bank. Always a foreign accent, always asking for Richard. I’d reached the stage where I no longer bothered to pick up the phone until I’d done the 1471. But then caller-withheld-number messages meant I had no idea who it was. How serious was our financial predicament?

  Facebook was at last open and I read through some birthday wishes that had been left. Before I logged out I took a quick look at Anthony Hope’s Page. He hadn’t sent a birthday message – but then with 500 or so friends on there I was sure he wouldn’t bother with those that he barely knew. I clicked on a video clip he’d posted which was filmed at a gig in Newcastle. The speakers didn’t work on the study PC so I couldn’t hear what song he was singing. It didn’t really matter to me – it was his speaking voice I loved most. The camera went close-up and he played to it with his eyes. I loved his dark eyes; they had an upward slant and always looked like they were fighting for space with his cheek bones. I noticed his slightly chipped front tooth – for some reason this flaw made his face more interesting.

  I logged off and picked up the heart-shaped memory stick that Maddy had given as my birthday present. I slid it from its small velvet pouch and held it for a moment. It felt like a smooth, cold pebble in my palm. I turned it towards the light, watching it bounce off the crystal’s sharp edges. Then I pulled it apart – you had to break the heart in two before you could get to the memory. I put the two halves back together, dropped in back in the pouch and put it safely in the desk drawer.

  A few days of William and Elyse back at school and life on the surface appeared to be calm and orderly again. The lack of noise gave a false sense of security. I walked into the study to pull one of the textbooks off the shelf and noticed that the study PC was still open on Facebook. I hit refresh to see if the connection was still live, as usual the screen went to black for a moment, but then, right before my eyes, at the top of my Newsfeed was Anthony Hope, along with gossip on the big bang experiment that had taken place that morning.

  I wondered if the smashing together of tiny particles in a 27-kilometre tube on the French Swiss border would create another one of him, in their miniature universe. Anthony had loaded some pictures of India. His Status said Anthony loves Nepal. I looked through the album – it appeared to be one of those walking adventure type holidays where you slum it in tents and guesthouses. I looked at a couple of pictures of him white-water rafting, and riding on the back of an elephant.

  Richard and I should go there, I thought.

  I decided to send Anthony an Instant Message.

  Was this trip organised or did you plan it yourself?

  It was a perfectly reasonable thing to ask. But I waited and there was no reply. He may have missed my message – there might have been no room for it to pop up along the bottom of his screen. It was either that or he didn’t consider me worthy to even speak to because of that bloody email, I concluded. Then I thought that I could always look up Nepal holidays on the Internet. Because Richard was in the house I decided to get him to have a look at the pictures while they were still on my mind.

  ‘Richard, come here a sec,’ I yelled up to the third floor. He was sorting through some paperwork before going into his office.

  ‘Why?’ he shouted down.

  ‘Come and look at these pictures.’

  ‘What…now?’ he shouted back down again, sounding mildly irritated by the interruption.

  ‘Yes, now, while they’re on my screen.’

  Eventually he made his way back downstairs; luckily his reading glasses were already on.

  ‘Look at these India photos,’ I said cheerfully. For some reason I found myself being selective over the ones I lingered on, as in no close-ups of faces.

  ‘Yeah…it looks like good fun.’

  ‘It’s Nepal…we could do something more interesting with our holidays.’

  ‘Yeah…where you got those from?’

  ‘They’re on my Facebook.’

  ‘Who are these people?’

  ‘They’re in Anthony Hope’s photos,’ I said, after thinking that there was nothing I should hide about him being on my Facebook.

  His eyebrows raised, this was one of those situations where Richard would have benefited from a dose of Botox too.

  ‘Anthony Hope as in Opus, that Anthony? Why is he on your Facebook?’ he asked.

  I managed a smile whilst telling him that it was me who added him as a friend.

  ‘You added him? Well…who else have you added, have you got any ex-boyfriends on there? Is Loopy Luke on there?

  Why was he being so arsy?

  ‘One ex-boyfriend is on there, but no Loopy Luke,’ I said, thinking that Richard was being a complete idiot.

  ‘Who else then?’ he pushed.

  ‘Nik,’ I told him.

  ‘As in Nik?

  ‘Yes…as in Nik,’ I reconfirmed.

  ‘Fine…yes…Nepal looks fun, but I not sure it would be suitable for William and Elyse. Do you speak to Anthony Hope a lot then?’

  ‘No, we have not spoken since we last saw each other – all that time ago,’ I said, now glad he’d ignored me, so I didn’t have to lie.

  ‘So why is he on there then?’

  ‘Because I added him as a friend as I’ve just told you.’

  Richard looked at me strangely but seemed like he hadn’t got time to go round in circles any longer; he had more important things on his mind so I let him get back on with his work, me with my studies.

  I could hear Blue trying to let himself out of the kitchen French doors. Sighing, I put down my pencil and went to get the key to open the door and let him out. He was whimpering so no doubt he had spotted the neighbour’s cat daring to venture into his territory. While I was waiting for him to return, I put all the keys into the plastic pot rather than leaving them lying around untidily next to the microwave. The phone rang and I waited to see if Richard would pick it up upstairs where I assumed he was working. It rang for a long time, so after it did stop I went to the study and did the usual 1471. It had been Maddy calling so I decided to call her back once Blue was back in. I returned to the kitchen and stopped dead. My hands and fingers tingled from the sudden shock. All the keys were once again scattered across the worktop as though they hadn’t been put in the pot at all. I looked out of the kitchen window. There didn’t appear to be anyone around.

  I shouted Richard and he quietly emerged from the downstairs toilet with a newspaper.

  ‘Have you moved these keys?’ I asked aggressively.

  ‘No. Why would I move the keys?’ he said casually,
but he was looking at me like I was crazy.

  ‘I put them in the pot a few minutes ago, went to get the phone and when I came back in to the kitchen they were spread all over the work surface again.’

  ‘Well you obviously didn’t put them in the pot did you? You’re always thinking you’ve done something when you haven’t. Look at that incident with the window the other week. You’re too disorganised, you’re left hand never knows what the right hand is doing. You spend too much time with your head in the clouds.’

  Maybe he was right and I had merely thought about moving the keys, but hadn’t actually done it. I wasn’t convinced though. The recalled sensation of the keys having been in my hands was too real. And just like Richard I also thought about the day that the lounge window had closed on its own. I’d never bothered to mention to him the fact that the cushions were still plumped up. Were the two things connected? I checked the keys, but I couldn’t see that there were any missing and neither could Richard. Blue let himself in and I locked the door, not bothering to put the keys in the pot again.

  I put my foot down on the accelerator enjoying the long, free stretch of road whilst listening to the radio. It was still stuck on some intellectual station that Richard liked, and I’d not bothered to switch.

  The news readers words filtered through my thoughts, “…the US Federal Reserve has stepped in with an $85 billion rescue package to save insurance giant AIG.”

  Relief washed over me but I still couldn’t get my head around the global financial chaos that was emerging. The previous day Richard had been on a round-the-clock vigil, waiting to hear if the US would bail them out. He was clearly edgy and I didn’t dare ask what it meant in terms of us and money. I hadn’t even heard of AIG until that point. But Richard had said that they’d got a lot of customers’ placed on risk with them which would have been a nightmare to get cover elsewhere because premiums would soar and they could lose clients as a consequence. But it looked like AIG had been insuring a lot of the banks toxic assets. I couldn’t understand why the government wouldn’t bail them out – they always bailed out the big companies. But Richard had pointed out that the American’s let Lehmans go to the wall only last week. The US banks seemed to be falling like a stack of cards. I still couldn’t get my head around a bank being bankrupt. It’s as though the whole world was one big board game full of cheats who were slowly holding their hands up and saying “…sorry but we are in fact skint”.