by Luke Tredget
‘Of course,’ says Anna, smiling at him. She recognises his counter-intuitive logic as the kind she would pass off in a different context – at work, say, where she likes to be on the subversive side of arguments and to say things that make Ingrid look at her slantwise, unsure if she’s joking or not. It is as if the first evidence of their compatibility has unfolded in front of her, and she thinks that she likes this French guy, likes him already. This thought feels premature, though, and she chases it away by asking if his other four matches have been with English or French girls.
‘English, always. But it is not surprising. I prefer speaking English.’
‘How come?’
‘Speaking French is too easy. It is like—’ He delivers a rapid flurry of French while moving his hand around; he speaks so fast that Anna, who spent the second year of her degree in Grenoble and was once almost fluent, doesn’t catch a word. ‘You see? It comes pouring out, word after word of French. It is like breathing air. With English I have to feel every word.’
Anna asks if he is in London to speak English (‘no, for work’), what his work is (‘sound design’), if that has to be in London (‘it has to be in Soho’), and where he would live if he had a free choice (‘New York’). She asks what he likes about New York so much, and he leans forwards in his chair and says: ‘You ask a lot of questions.’
Without blinking Anna leans forwards as well and says: ‘I’m a journalist.’
This makes Thomas smile and he asks where she writes; she names the website and he seems impressed. She preempts the next question by saying she is a features writer, and that this Friday she’ll be interviewing Sahina Bhutto, and Gwyneth Paltrow next week.
‘Who is Sahina Bhutto?’
‘The architect. You must know. She built the Biscuit Tin. And that building in China that can be seen from space.’
‘My general knowledge is not so good.’
‘Well, she’s a massive deal. And slightly terrifying. And somehow I have to interview her.’
Thomas nods slowly, his mouth downturned in an expression of sombre admiration.
‘You are a real writer,’ he says.
‘I suppose I am. Writing word after word of English. But it’s not like breathing air. It’s more like pulling teeth.’
Anna feels like elaborating on this comment – the fact that Thomas reacted in a muted way to her description of her job makes her think she can speak freely about it, without the need for the effortful smile; she could probably go as far as saying that she isn’t sure she’s up to it, or even if she wants to be. But Thomas immediately moves them onwards by saying he likes that expression, ‘pulling teeth’. He becomes animated for the first time and says that in France they would say tirer les vers du nez – to pull worms from your nose. Anna questions whether the two sayings actually mean the same thing, but Thomas ignores her and names other French idioms: ‘to call a cat a cat’, ‘to put a rabbit on somebody’, ‘to jump from the chicken to the donkey’. Anna tries explaining white elephants and red herrings, which makes them both laugh, and they hold each other’s gaze long after the laughter fades. Anna can feel a powerful stirring in her stomach and wonders if he can as well. His face is blank again, but maybe this belies an abundance of emotion. She has heard of some especially high matches where the couple sat for hours after finding each other, barely saying a word. But this is just a 72, she shouldn’t get carried away.
‘This is going well,’ he says. ‘Have a drink with me.’
The suggestion is unexpected: it is only 5.30 p.m. and not even dark outside. It would be nice to think about it, but Thomas is already pulling his jacket on. Anna watches him fasten the buttons right up to the dark hair on his neck, and says that she really should be going. But even to her own ears these words sound weak and hollow, and as he stands up she is reminded of his height, his rugged good looks, his bright green eyes; the number 72 flashes above his head.
‘Just a quick one,’ he says, wrapping his scarf around his neck. ‘You did say you owed me a favour.’
They walk up Poland Street and cross Oxford Street into Fitzrovia, Thomas half a step ahead. Anna is irked by her shabby boots, which rather than a solid clop release with each step a sad squish, as if a little air is being forced out. They walk in silence until Thomas says she can start acting like a journalist again, if she wants, and she says he still hasn’t answered why New York is his favourite city.
‘What is not to like? I mean, it is New York. I like everything,’ he says, pronouncing it ‘ev-we-sing’.
‘One thing I’m not mad keen on is the layout,’ she says. ‘You know, the streets and avenues, the numbers. The whole grid plan.’
‘You are the journalist that answers back.’
‘All those identical numbered streets, block after block after block. It’s so … rigid.’
‘I haven’t thought about it. It just makes sense, no?’
‘But wouldn’t you find it infuriating, after a while? Having to walk at right angles most of the time?’
‘It just makes sense,’ he repeats, as if in conclusion. ‘Everyone likes the grid plan.’
Anna feels a hardness towards him, which she welcomes as the first steady steps after a spell of dizziness. She’ll have one drink, two at the most, and then leave.
‘Does that mean you’re excluding me from “everyone”?’
He turns away from the question into a doorway that opens to a narrow staircase. They go down to a low-ceilinged bar with chessboard tiles and green leather booths. A waiter in a bow tie takes their order and returns with two small pitchers filled mainly with ice and leaves. Anna finishes hers in four sips while listening to Thomas talk of his work and, at her prompting, his favourite sounds: a musical saw, rain against windows, a mandarin being peeled.
‘A mandarin being peeled? That’s not a sound.’
‘My best of all!’ he says, becoming effusive again. ‘Like Velcro being pulled, but much softer. It has to be ripe though; there must be air between the skin and flesh. You should try.’
The waiter returns and she agrees to one more – which lasts no longer than the first – and then she goes to the toilet and realises she must quite like him, judging by the relief she feels when she sees in the mirror that her fringe has basically behaved itself. When she returns to the table a third cocktail is waiting for her, accompanied by a mandarin that he must have had the waiter fetch. She peels it close to her ear, but can’t hear anything above the recorded jazz and ambient din of the place, and Thomas snatches it back and says it isn’t ripe enough. He finishes peeling it and then they eat it together; the process of him passing her segments which she then puts in her mouth feels indecent, almost obscene, something the people on other tables shouldn’t have to witness. This episode loosens him up further, and he even becomes chatty, until he makes a mistake: when her phone makes her bag audibly vibrate with a call or message, he calls it a baghand rather than a handbag. She laughs and he looks slightly offended, and invites them to speak en français.
‘Pourquoi pas?’ she says. ‘J’adore parler français!’
Thomas seems delighted, and requests that she tell him about herself. Summoning up the remains of her A-level studies and Erasmus year, Anna tells him that she lives in Kilburn but used to live in east London, that she grew up in Bedfordshire, that she has one brother, Josh, who lives in Australia, and – for no better reason than that the French words are there at hand – that her dad died five years ago: ‘Mon père est mort il y a cinq ans.’ She ploughs on past this disclosure, telling him she went to university in Sheffield and spent a year in Grenoble, and that before taking up journalism she wanted to set up her own business or social enterprise. It is a sensual pleasure to speak French after so long, like opening the door onto a hitherto boarded-up part of her brain. Her tongue is loosened by booze and, with the help of hand gestures, she even manages to explain one of her old inventions, the Community Shed, a membership scheme where people would pay a small monthly fe
e for access to a store of high-quality DIY equipment.
‘C’est une super idée,’ says Thomas.
‘Tu penses?’
‘Oui, vraiment.’
Anna wonders if he is just lying to be nice, but she can’t help believing him, especially when he asks questions: how much she would charge people per month, what type of tools it would stock, where it would be kept. It pleases her that he shows more energetic interest in her pet projects than he did in her professional job, and she decides this is no accident – this is probably precisely the kind of value that Kismet knows about him, about her, about them both. He asks why she never launched the Community Shed, and she stops herself about to say again that her dad died since she realises this wouldn’t work as an explanation, in any language.
‘Je ne sais pas,’ is all she says. ‘Sans raison.’
He urges her to tell him another idea, and she tries to explain the online investigation she wanted to launch, to track down the owner of a suitcase that was mysteriously abandoned at Heathrow, and that she later bought at an auction house in Tooting Bec. But the thought of her father was a bump in her flow, has knocked off her fluency, and she struggles to find the words; her mangled translation must do spectacular violence to the intended meaning, for Thomas laughs out loud and says: ‘Ça n’a aucun sens!’ Surprisingly, she is offended by this – it is like protective layers have been removed, leaving her sensitive to feeling mocked. Thomas must detect this dip in mood and, perhaps to make amends, he places a hand on hers and shuffles forwards so that their knees connect beneath the table.
‘Maintenant,’ he says, looking around for the waiter. ‘We go for food, no?’
Anna considers their joined hands and touching knees; from these two points of contact an electrical charge is running along her limbs to the base of her stomach. She imagines going with him for dinner, for drinks, and getting a taxi back to his.
‘I can’t.’
‘I know a great place,’ he says, clicking his fingers for a waiter. Anna tries to rediscover her recent excitement, and focuses on his raised arm and the muscles that undulate beneath the thickly knitted jumper, his green eyes, his height, the number 72. But these observations bounce off glass, create no feeling in her other than guilt.
‘I have to go.’ She checks her watch and sees that she really does: somehow it is 8.17 p.m. She grabs her coat and bag and slides from the booth.
‘But,’ says Thomas, seeming innocently and profoundly confused, ‘this is going well.’
‘Yes,’ she says, sliding her arms into her jacket. Then she sighs and says: ‘It is going well. But …’ She delivers the word slowly, trying to allude to a whole world of invisible considerations.
‘Ah,’ he says, seeming to understand. ‘But.’
‘Yeah,’ she says, taking a £20 note from her purse. ‘Another time, maybe.’
‘D’accord,’ he says, slapping his knees and rising from the booth. She tries to put money into his hand and onto the table, but he refuses to let her, and after kissing him on both of his hairy cheeks, she turns and makes for the narrow staircase.
Anna walks to Tottenham Court Road, in the same thoughtless, almost trancelike state she often experiences in the wake of an intense encounter. The sound of her boots thudding against the pavement fills her empty mind and appears to grow louder until it is almost the only thing she can hear. On the tube she swallows one of her pills with a glug of mineral water, and then watches an abandoned newspaper spread across the empty bench opposite her. The sheets are being fluttered by the wind whistling along the carriage, and eventually the breeze gains enough purchase to turn the page entirely, creating the powerful impression that an invisible man is browsing the paper.
Sooner than she’d like, Anna emerges onto Kilburn High Road and walks south beneath the cavernous, dripping railway bridge. It is only just 9 p.m., but the street is dark and quiet and asleep; most shops have their shutters pulled, other than the twenty-four-hour petrol station and the giant pub that Anna has never considered setting foot in, which is alive with football screens and shouting men. She turns onto Cavendish Road and, after a five-minute uphill trudge, onto Mowbray Road, her own terraced street. It is tempting to keep going and do another loop around to the station to walk off the buzz of the cocktails, but she is already late, and after pausing for a moment with her key pointed in front of her, she turns the lock and enters. The front door opens onto a tiny hall space and two more front doors, and she opens the one straight ahead, for the upstairs flat. She creeps up one, two, three steps, then hears the living-room door open.
‘There she is,’ says Pete, appearing on the landing above her. She reaches the top of the stairs and turns to face him.
‘Here I am.’
The landing light isn’t on, and Pete’s broad frame is backlit from the living room.
‘I was getting worried,’ he says, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall. He is wearing the same stonewashed jeans and T-shirt as he does on almost all study days, since he doesn’t feel the cold, and his stubble has grown curly and tangled, has crossed the threshold between stubble and beard.
‘Worried?’ she says, unbuttoning her jacket. ‘How come?’
‘You didn’t answer my calls. Or get back to me about dinner. I was picturing worst-case scenarios. Blue flashing lights. A policeman knocking on the door.’
Anna looks fixedly at the pegs on the wall above her and feels like the worst kind of actor – a mere puppet aping the actions of a human – as she takes off her coat and hangs it up.
‘Not quite as bad as that,’ she says, trying to sound casual. ‘Just a quick drink with Zahra.’
‘Oh yeah? And how is Zahra?’ He says her name with a slight emphasis that makes Anna look at him suddenly: his face is blank, and his broad shoulders seem to span the width of the hallway, blocking her path. For a paranoid moment she wonders if he might somehow know everything, if he has been tracking her movements, but she quickly rejects this as baseless, the product of alcohol and guilt.
‘Zahra’s good,’ she says, as nonchalantly as she can. ‘She’s busy. Her and Keir are knocking through another wall in their flat.’
‘Another one?’
‘I know, right? It’ll look like a sports hall when they’re done with it.’
‘If it’s standing at all.’
Anna is smiling now, and Pete smiles back in return. It feels like a physical dose of relief to see that he believes her, and has no reason not to. She steps towards him and at once Pete’s broad torso swings aside, showing itself to be less a barrier than an obliging gate; he angles his face downwards to tickle her cheek with a kiss as she passes. In the living room one of his textbooks is flattened on the sofa beside the remote control, while on the television a contestant in some cooking show is looking fearful as the judges discuss her chocolate mousse. Anna goes to the corner between the bookcase and sofa and plugs her phone into the charger that shares a socket with the freestanding lamp. She checks to see if Thomas has already messaged and is pleased to see he hasn’t, since Pete has followed her into the room, and now asks if she wants any of the leftover dinner.
‘What is there?’ says Anna, still holding her phone with her back to him, wondering if it might be better to simply keep the thing switched off.
‘What do you want it to be? Would you prefer meat or fish?’
‘Fish.’
‘If you’d said meat, would you prefer white meat or red meat?’
Anna switches off her phone and turns to Pete, who is leaning against the door jamb, a hint of mischief around his mouth. He is often playful and energetic on the evenings of his study days, when she imagines he probably doesn’t say anything to anyone, other than the few words that are necessary to buy things in shops.
‘Hmm. White.’
‘If you’d said red meat, would you prefer lamb, or steak?’
‘I’d take the lamb.’
‘If you’d said beef, would you prefer steak, or some
kind of mince-based, sauce-drenched, overly spiced meatball thing?’
‘Steak,’ she says, and he claps his hands.
‘Well, my darling, tonight you are in luck.’
She rolls her eyes but can’t help smiling as she walks past him towards the hall, and in actual fact the idea of a meaty, salty steak chimes with some boozy craving. But in the kitchen she is surprised to find a big bowl of green and beige stuff, in which thinly sliced steak is mixed together with numerous pulses and leaves and tiny seeds and that fancy grain dish that Pete and Zahra are always raving about – pearl barley or quinoa or giant couscous – but that obscurely reminds Anna of frogspawn. Pete has followed her and is once again watching from the doorway.
‘It’s cold?’ she says.
‘It’s a salad.’
‘What are those red things?’
‘Pomegranate seeds.’
‘And those little tendril bits?’
‘If you don’t want it, it’s fine – I can have it tomorrow for lunch.’
She stirs the intricate mush with a wooden spoon, and decides that she doesn’t want it; she feels guilty to realise that she’d rather eat nothing at all.
‘I might just make something quick and simple?’ she says, grimacing as she looks at him, as if for permission. ‘Maybe some noodles?’
‘Noodles!’ he repeats, as if he finds the word amusing. She says again that she’d like something light, and shrugs, averting her eyes. He sighs and after a pause in which she can almost feel him manually overriding his annoyance, he says it’s fine, that he can have it for lunch tomorrow. It is a long moment before he speaks again, during which time Anna switches on the radio and opens the fridge and cupboard, gathering a pack of dried noodles, a red onion, half a yellow pepper. As she takes a chopping board and begins dicing the onion, Pete begins telling her about his day, and how the head teacher of a school in Acton where he did work experience has offered him a job once he passes his exams, if he wants it. On Radio 4 is a panel show about the ethics of placebo medicine.