Past Present Future

by Alexander, N J.

  One day, I vowed, I’ll read that sodding novel.

  But I didn’t want some old book telling me that I’d done the wrong thing.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  An email from Anthony Hope sat in my Inbox.

  It had come through while I was on the school run. I didn’t know whether opening it there and then was such a good idea. I didn’t want to allow myself to cry in front of William and Elyse, and I still needed the puffiness to go down before Richard came home from work, otherwise he would be asking what was wrong.

  As usual, the sensible option wasn’t the option I went for. I opened it up, read it, and it made no sense. So I continued to stare at it, as though it was an anagram that would eventually make sense. I couldn’t understand why he had sent such a curt reply and then not removed me from his Facebook. I read it through once more:

  Dear Nicole

  I am really sorry but I think you need to re-read your emails. I was merely responding to an old acquaintance. I love my girlfriend very much. The story is all yours.

  Take care

  Anthony Hope

  This was utter bullshit. What emails? Other than the initial email after he’d added me, and the emails following his prank with Lewis Carroll, there had been no emails between us. The game wasn’t using email. Why the hell would he go to the trouble of reading the Lewis Carroll comment on my Wall then go and post one of his famous quotes on his Wall if he considered me as nothing more than an old acquaintance. He was the one who pulled the stunt with that quote.

  If he wasn’t interested in me he would have ignored me; I would have been invisible to him. And how can he be in love? He can’t have known her two minutes, otherwise she would have already been on his Facebook months ago, the fact I didn’t really know him and thought I loved him was beside the point. For the first time, since adding him, I wanted to punch him, kick him and scream at him until he did make sense, or until he at least confessed to deliberately messing with my head. I thought about his friends calling him Ant. If he was an ant then I could have stamped on him. The asshole.

  The only thing I could feel from his letter was anger. Had I embarrassed him? Was he angry with me for simply telling him my truth? But then, what had I been expecting him to say? He wasn’t even acknowledging the game. He was pretending it never happened. Well…at least he’d replied, and at least the reply had evoked emotion that didn’t need tears.

  I knew then that it would definitely have been smarter, more sensible, to have simply stopped posting things on my Wall that he could translate and respond to; I should have remained silent about my feelings towards him. But, as a consequence of the stupid way I had gone about things, I was now like some pathetically wounded animal waiting for the hunter to finally put the bullet through its head. I was waiting for him to finally hit the tiny “x” button.

  Not allowing Maddy to read the email I had sent to Anthony was probably one of my rare wise moves. However, telling Maddy that I had sent the email, and telling her about Anthony’s reply was definitely not a wise move, I concluded, when I saw what she’d put on her Wall a couple of days later.

  Maddy says if you are going to play cat and mouse, make sure you are the cat.

  OMG! I groaned out loud.

  I am not a mouse, I am a lion.

  A lion always lives to fight another day, even when feeling weakened. No doubt Anthony had already seen it, and yet he’d still not brought down the guillotine.

  Maddy had got her friends wondering what the fuck she was going on about on her Wall. They were trying to decipher her Status Update. I kept hitting the refresh button to see what her friends were writing, cursing the fact that she was screwing the times of my mock paper I was supposed to be completing for my exam.

  By early evening, Maddy was spitting feathers. Being slightly hacked off earlier at the fact she couldn’t get Henry the life-sized dragon he wanted for Christmas, was now a minor issue in comparison to this. I sat at the laptop in the garden room, my fingers flying over my keyboard as emails emerged back and forth between us….

  Maddy: Your little friend Anthony Hope has deleted me.

  Nicole: What?

  Maddy: He’s gone. No longer listed as one of my Facebook friends. He’s knocked me off. Why would he knock me off, and not you? You sent the letter not me.

  I stared at her question, thinking about what I said in the letter to him about Maddy. He must have gone and removed the watchful eye, I thought. I couldn’t tell Maddy that of course; she would have flipped even more.

  Nicole: I don’t know why

  Maddy: Well I’ve got a good mind to leave a snotty message on your Wall for him to read. Give him a piece of my mind. I really don’t like him. I don’t know what you see in him anyway.

  Nicole: No please don’t do that. I accept that I can’t play games with him, that’s over. But don’t leave a message on my Wall for him. Just let him stay on my Facebook where I can see him. He’s probably going to delete me soon with or without your help.

  Maddy: Okay

  Nicole: Thank you. Lots of big kisses

  I posted my last message then took another look at Anthony’s latest Status Update with fresh eyes:

  Anthony is playing AKON sorry, blame it on me!!

  I watched the pop video on YouTube and then found the lyrics on some other website. I spent some time mulling them over to Richard’s puzzlement. He walked over, looked at the screen, but I could still sense him glancing over from the sofa while I remained in a trance-like state, leaning into the laptop with my elbow on the table and head propped in my right hand.

  Bad Boys, Bad Boys…he’s posted a song about Bad Boys.

  The fact that he’s posted this around the same time he’s removed Maddy, makes it feel like his cryptic apology that he didn’t want her to see. Or he’s removed her, to show some kind of loyalty to me. Perhaps guilt has dealt him a hefty blow after he sent that email. Guilt has a powerful way of doing that; it sits heavily on the conscience. As I sat reasoning things through, my instincts were telling me that this was his apology and apologies make it very difficult not to forgive – I forgave him.

  A few days later I found myself sitting and looking through what we had both written on our Facebook pages since my stupid letter.

  The problem with forgiving someone, who also happens to be a person you have humiliated yourself in front of, as much as I had, is you tend to feel quite safe in the fact that there isn’t really much else you can do to make matters worse. This time round though, I was trying desperately hard to view his Wall without decoding his words, and linking them back to my Facebook postings.

  So, just because he’d gone and joined the group Derailed – it didn’t mean that I’d derailed him with my words. And no, my Status hadn’t been remotely connected to his when I wrote: Nicole is sighing…really need to get my head back on track.

  Then I thought about the ‘Vine and The Branches’ and I quickly typed in…

  Why don’t I just beat myself with a stick…better still do the job properly with a branch…having an early night!!!!

  I felt my fingers slamming against the keyboard like stamping feet. This was all bullshit, just like his email. I turned the laptop off and walked through the lounge.

  ‘Where you off to now?’ Richard asked, slightly slurring his words as he lay horizontal on the sofa.

  He’d started calling in at the pub with Blue most nights, pretending that he’d taken him for an extra-long walk. It was his blatant denial that pissed me off the most.

  ‘Bath,’ I said and made my way upstairs.

  After turning on the taps, I glanced at myself in the mirror; wiping away the steam each time it built up. But even the steam could not hide the evident truth. I was getting thinner as each day passed and my face looked so gaunt and pale, but I couldn’t stop my treadmill workout or face the food that I should have been eating.

  I leaned over the side of the bath, swirling the water with my arm, taking pleasure from it m
assaging my skin each time I reversed the direction. I spent a few more minutes idling; playing with William and Elyse’s plastic yacht, which had been left in the bath.

  After a while, I dropped my clothes into the wicker laundry basket which was noticeably over filled and climbed into the bath, sliding beneath the bubbles, closed my eyes and allowed the steam to penetrate my head. I allowed one hand to gently caress my breast while the other hand explored between my legs until the tingling became too much. I knew that if I forced myself to be relaxed I would sleep deeply, and then I would feel no pain.

  I sat back up. My sudden movement caused the water to swish from one end of the bath to the other. I dropped Elyse’s tub of foam alphabet letters into the water. Tell me what I should be doing, I said silently in my head. If there really was some kind of spirit or angel, then surely they could use these letters to spell it out to me. I sat and stared and stared at them floating on the surface. Nothing happened.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Kanye West’s Love Lockdown had been playing on MTV Base most of the week. I’d put the Sky channel on as an alternative to the iPod, since William had smashed the speaker with his tennis ball a few days earlier.

  The thing about MTV Base was that it tended to repeat the same songs over and over, but even then I hadn’t noticed the album title that the song had been taken from, because I never really glanced at the screen; I’d simply been listening to the ironic lyrics as they played in the background while I revised for my exam.

  But Anthony had noticed. His Status read:

  Kanye West’s new album got a buzz…ZZing drum beat – check it out!

  Had he used the emphasis on “ZZ” as in ‘sleepy-head’ because I’d gone to bed early the previous night, or as in busy bee, I wondered. I looked up the album. It was called 808s & Heartbreak. It couldn’t have been more fitting. Anthony was still definitely playing his game, and this time he was playing even harder than before.

  He’d clearly picked up on the significance of number eight or the infinity symbol from my Facebook Wall, and I had said in my ridiculously long and cringeworthy email that I did have some numbers if he wanted them, so a day or so after Anthony had pointed me in the direction of Kanye West, I decided to type in the whole equation so he could see it. A quadratic equation appearing on someone’s Facebook was probably as odd as a Lewis Carroll quote, but I didn’t care, I simply wanted to pass the numbers on to him, I felt as though I was fulfilling some kind of duty.

  I couldn’t tell whether he’d picked up on the equation at the time. All I really noticed was a few more photos taken from his trip to Ireland several months ago. They showed him singing on the stage at what looked like a party. But I couldn’t see how these photos related to the equation.

  The game with Anthony continued in earnest as we hurtled towards Christmas.

  I knew that I should have summoned up every ounce of my strength to stop myself playing the silly game, but Anthony’s hold over me was like a drug. Perhaps we all have our own opium, capable of destroying us, but I desired so badly to smell his skin. Maybe there is something in the research that says attraction is down to a scent that we each have. I couldn’t remember his, not like the way I remembered his voice, but I craved it as though another part of me remembered it dangerously well.

  Each time Richard and I rowed, I immediately retreated to the computer to stare at Anthony’s photos on Facebook or I would quietly sit and sketch the contours of his face as though they held the answers to everything. But that was also when the craving hit the hardest. For the first time in my life, I was facing up to the fact that I wasn’t as strong willed as I’d considered myself to be. The pain of thinking I would lose him from my Facebook, after my letter, was far greater than the pain of him still being where I could see him. I couldn’t take the opium; I could merely keep it close by. He sat behind the screen of my computer as though he had a sign saying In Case Of Emergency Break Glass. But I knew it was highly unlikely that the glass between us would ever be broken

  The Christmas tree had been placed in the lounge and decorated with the collection of red and gold baubles, cherubs and jewels that I’d gathered over the years. Richard wasn’t remotely interested in the tree, but for William and Elyse, it always had to go up early in December because it was a binding contract that Santa couldn’t back out of. Our six-foot tree was, as always, overshadowed by Maddy’s twelve-footer but I had no desire to compete with her over this.

  Having got the December exam out of the way, I turned my attention to getting the Christmas presents sorted. William’s had been relatively easy to get as I only had to shop online with Chelsea Football Club. Elyse was a one-stop shop at Toys-R-Us, but the rest required a trip into the city.

  It had been a good few months since I’d been shopping in the city centre. The Christmas decorations had been put up, but somehow it felt like a quiet fairground that had all the flashing lights and music that continually changed as you moved around, but lacked the vital atmosphere to make it special; it had no pre-Christmas buzz. This could have been my own emotions casting gloomy shadows over the council’s efforts. But I was struck by the lack of people; even parking hadn’t been a problem this year. And I was passing far too many vacant premises. The government’s plan of reducing the VAT down to 15 per cent to boost trade either wasn’t working or it was saving it from being obliterated altogether.

  While I wasn’t too heavily laden with carrier bags I decided to take the five-minute walk to the large high-street bookstore. This was Richard’s favourite shop, and as usual, I hadn’t got a clue what else to buy him. I’d already got him a Swiss Army Knife, the nearest thing to a tool box he would possess and the shop assistant reassured me that 3-inch blades were perfectly legal. But Football was the only sport he was really interested in; he didn’t care about things like the Arts, although apparently in his thirties he did go through a very brief spell of being a fan of Painting by Numbers! But he’d grown out of that one, so interesting books were always a good bet for stocking fillers, along with new socks and pants.

  I wandered around the different floors looking for inspiration. The problem was that there was too much inspiration crammed on the shelves. But then I settled on a couple of Barak Obama books: Dreams from my Father having grabbed my attention first. I placed that and a couple of other books on the counter and got my credit card ready. A young, student-looking guy scanned them..

  ‘Is that it?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. Thank y—’, I began. ‘No, actually…it’s not…can you tell me if you have a book in stock, please?’

  ‘Yes, but I would need to take you over to the other computer screen.’

  I walked around to the other side of the counter.

  ‘The book is old. The author is Anthony Hope and the title is Simon Dale.’ I said, once he’d opened up the right screen. I felt a bit like the old man from the “fly-fishing” Yellow Pages adverts!

  He typed the details in and then turned the computer screen towards me.

  ‘Is that the one?’

  ‘Yes, yes that’s it…have you got it in?’ I asked with a mixture of surprise and excitement.

  ‘No. But I can order it for you. It will take about six weeks to come through. We can post it out to you, or send a note to let you know when it’s in.’

  He was merely trying to be helpful, but I stood looking at him while I considered my options: six weeks, and thud, the book lands on the hall floor and Richard picks it up, or among the mugged mail retrieved from Blue, Richard finds a postcard notification with teeth marks right through Anthony Hope’s name.

  ‘No. Thank you. I think I’ll leave it. I’ll just take the Obama books please.’

  It was another week before I started to wrap the presents and, as I was doing so, my mobile rang. It was Maddy.

  ‘You’re not going to believe this…the school play has only gone and fallen on X Factor final night. Can you fucking believe it? We’re going to be stuck there four fucking hours on
a Saturday night. We’re going to miss the X Factor final!’

  ‘You’re joking? Four hours. We’ve got to sit there through all of the kids’ years, not just William and Henry’s? And on X Factor final night? That’s taking the piss. Why has the school made it on a Saturday night?’

  ‘Fucked if I know…but I’m finding a way out of there. I can’t wait to see Henry and William with their usual one line as sheep or shepherds, and that’s it, after their play I’m off.’

  ‘Yeah well…I’m not going to be far behind you. I don’t think we are being selfish about this. I mean if you didn’t have a child, would you seriously choose to go and watch a school nativity play on a Saturday night…regardless of the X Factor final?’ I said, while I continued to wrap presents, balancing the phone on my shoulder.

  ‘No I wouldn’t…anyway, talking of selfish and stupid. What is going on with your Facebook?’

  ‘It’s Anthony Hope, he still appears to be following me through Alice in Wonderland with things he posts on his Wall.’

  ‘I know what you are doing. It’s the why I’m asking about.’

  ‘Look. When I get to the end of Alice in Wonderland. I’ll stop.’ Considering I still hadn’t fulfilled my last promise of talking to Richard, I avoided sticking one on the end.

  ‘You’ll stop. And then what? Are you going to start another book with him? What have you got lined up next? Are we going to be going through War and Peace? If so I can’t wait for that one, should keep it going a bit…just wake me up when you get to the end though.’

  ‘No more books…anyway you wrote on my Wall that you were going to book me in with a top shrink. I just used it as my Status…Nicole is going to search top shrinks. Feel like falling down large tunnel.’

  ‘I did, didn’t I? Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t worry. It turned out to be quite useful, so thank you. But that’s why I was drowning in my own tears; then Anthony Hope wished he had a key to open all doors!!!!! I wrote twinkle twinkle little bat, how I wonder what you’re at, and that I was curious and curiouser. Apparently he wants to have his cake and eat it and he’s been smoking on a video clip. And now I’m thinking of becoming a Fan of Peppa Pig.’