by Luke Tredget
‘No,’ she says, surprised by his ignorance. ‘It knows we’ve met.’
‘It knows? This is all new to me.’
‘Of course. I’ll be in your list of contacts, under Anna 81.’
‘Anna 81,’ he says, and smiles. ‘It knows a lot, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ she says, smiling back, imagining the number flashing above his head. ‘Apparently it knows people better than they know themselves. According to Raymond Chan, that is.’
‘Oh yes. That guy. I suppose I’d give him that one. Although it isn’t saying much. Most people don’t know themselves at all.’
They smile at each other a moment longer, then he makes a little shrug that ushers the farewell ceremony to a close. Now is the time to tell him that she won’t see him again, that she can’t see him again. But he is already leaning down for a goodbye peck on her cheek and is then walking off towards the taxi.
Anna climbs up the stone steps to London Bridge, her head feeling curiously empty. She pauses on the final step, watching the stream of people walking along the pavement towards the station; there are so many of them it is like an alternative river running perpendicular to the Thames. She wonders if these meetings with Sahina and Geoff will make it easier or harder to sleep. She checks her watch and sees it is 5.07 p.m., the start of rush hour. Like a car at a junction, she waits for a gap in the rapid procession of commuters and then finally steps out, having to do a little run in order to keep pace with the surging crowd.
Sunday
On the 21st the clocks go forward, and the additional hour of afternoon light, along with the unseasonably warm weather, feels like a gift from upon high, an invitation for people to enjoy themselves, to celebrate. Anna stands at her living-room window, surveying the scene on Mowbray Road. David, the elderly Jamaican from the flat below, is leaning against the front wall while speaking on the phone in a lilting accent or perhaps even patois; the smoke from his cigarette is rising straight and silver, like a pencil line up into the sky. Further along the street, three children are riding around in circles, the oversize frames of their bikes glinting in the sun, and their shouts arrive at Anna’s ear with remarkable clarity, as if there is no air or atmosphere to restrict the sound waves. A family is also walking past with a buggy and a toddler sitting on the father’s shoulders, and all these things – even the new tomato plant that Pete has installed on the windowsill, which is giving off a fertile, greenhouse smell – seem to correspond with each other, as if they are different ways of expressing gratitude for this archetypal Sunday afternoon, and their collective victory over a bleak and dark winter. Anna stands there musing on this, her fingers running up and down the tomato plant’s prickly stem, until she snaps out of it, remembering she is in the middle of something.
She pushes the dining table against the front wall, rolls up the rug and goes to retrieve the suitcase from the space beneath the boiler. She heaves it into the centre of the living room, and then steps back from the case and looks at it, as if for the first time. It is large, heavy, musky-smelling, and made of a dark and scuffed plastic material, polyester perhaps. The only remarkable thing is the lack of distinguishing features: there are no buckles, side pockets, brand names. It is by no means a classy or expensive-looking piece of luggage, yet its having remained closed for so many years gives it a special potency – it almost appears to throb with its own dense energy.
Anna takes a photo of the case using her old digital camera, since her phone is charging upstairs. She takes more pictures from all angles and a close-up of the remaining stub of the snapped name tag, then puts her camera down and crouches beside the case on the balls of her bare feet. There are two zip tabs, and she unzips one around to the left, the other to the right. Already a smell is leaking out, a stronger version of musk; it is like she has cut into a wheel of cheese. She ignores this and, after a moment’s pause, flips the lid. Before her eyes can make sense of the dark contents, a rotten smell fills her nostrils and she is standing up and turning away, her hand covering her mouth.
‘Mould,’ says Pete, leaning against the doorframe. Anna looks at him for a moment, wondering how long he’s been standing there watching, and then back at the case. The black contents appear to be various items of clothing pressed together, and she pinches a crease gingerly, like someone retrieving a soiled nappy. A pair of black jeans peels away from the rest, releasing a cloud of dust and a dank, wet stench.
‘Ewww,’ she says, dropping them and shaking her hand.
‘Mildew,’ says Pete. ‘Really quite a lot of mildew.’
‘Why don’t you do something useful? I need rubber gloves, freezer bags and the laundry basket.’ Pete salutes, and by the time she has opened both sash windows he is back with the required items. Anna spreads yesterday’s Guardian across the table and, wearing the gloves, removes each item of clothing: a heavy knit fleece, two wool jumpers, a dark grey hoodie, another pair of jeans, five T-shirts, and what seems to be the main source of the smell: a pair of swimming shorts that are entirely consumed by a pale mould as thick as moss.
‘Some of this stuff would fit me,’ says Pete, behind her, and she tells him to shoo. She takes a photo of each item and checks the pockets before dropping it into the laundry basket. As she works though the contents her imagined person at the carousel begins to take shape: it is a man with a penchant for wearing black or dark grey, and while everything is an M size, the cut of the T-shirts and vest suggests he has big muscles. In the jeans there is a torn piece of newspaper crumpled into a tiny parcel. She unwraps it and finds a dried piece of chewing gum and half a sentence of what looks like Spanish – quando você encontrar a melhor maneira – and a date: 12/02/13. She photographs this and puts it in a freezer bag, as she does with the other small items lying loose in the case – flattened packets of aspirin, swimming goggles, a pocket calculator, some pens and pencils, a torch that still works. She takes all the clothes to the kitchen and puts them on to wash, cleans her hands, makes a cup of tea and brings it back to the living room, where she sits sideways on the sofa with her laptop. Her computer and digital camera take a moment to become reacquainted, but soon they transmit data back and forth, and when the first pictures appear she feels a sudden dose of pride. She is doing it. Not thinking or talking or planning, but actually doing it. It is the final culmination of the last two days, which have been simultaneously enjoyable and relaxing and productive, and where every hour has been squeezed for its usefulness; it feels as if, for the first time ever, she has realised what weekends were designed for.
On Friday evening, after leaving Geoff, Anna returned home to find Pete sitting on the sofa, with one of his textbooks beside him. Her guilt this time manifested itself as a sudden and overwhelming tenderness for him, which prompted her to hug him for a long time. He immediately knew something wasn’t right and she told him, not untruthfully, that the interview had been awful, just awful. Pete succeeded in making her calm down – he has always had a knack for doing so, even during their early days, shortly after her dad died – and persuaded her to come with him to the new Vietnamese in Kentish Town, where they could ‘talk it out’.
During dinner they discussed nothing else. She relived the interview in excruciating detail, explaining how Sahina refused to answer her questions until the very end, when her answers went entirely against the brand values the article has to promote. When she finished Pete didn’t give any direct advice, but instead told her about a ‘thinking tool’ called the ‘problem-solving loop’, that might help her find a solution. She knew he was feeding her techniques from his textbooks, designed for slow or unruly fourteen-year-olds, but it still gave her cause for a little optimism.
For the rest of the evening she sent Sahina’s quotes and the Romont brand values around the problem-solving loop, and must have continued doing so while she slept, for when she woke on Saturday morning the answer was there waiting for her: she would do both. Her article would juxtapose the undeniable success of Sahina’s career – whi
ch epitomises the Romont values – with the subversive things she was saying during the interview, and by flitting between these two apparently contradictory narratives, she would demonstrate a complex, conflicted character. Anna jumped out of bed and in her vest and shorts she scribbled this into her notebook, right there on the floorboards of the bedroom, as if worried the idea might evaporate or fly away. After breakfast she went to work properly, writing up the transcript and chopping it into segments that spliced into chunks of Sahina’s back-story. By lunchtime the skeleton of the article was in place, and she was so excited that she decided to give herself the rest of the weekend off, and go for a run. She made it twice around the Heath, bought a newspaper on the way home, and after a quick shower began cleaning the entire flat. She moved the hoover and cloth and spray from room to room, scrubbing and dusting herself into a state approaching euphoria. She barely thought of her phone, or Kismet, or meeting an 81, and when she did it was to congratulate herself for not thinking about it. She didn’t pause until she rediscovered the little dish of foreign coins in their bedroom, which had been hidden beneath a lingering Christmas card from Pete’s parents. She sat on the bed and fingered through the dusty forints and rupees and kroner and euros and quarters, all overlapping and mixed together. A rapid slideshow of images rushed through her mind: hotel rooms, beaches, tuk-tuk rides, jungle passes, mediaeval city squares, day-long bus journeys, haggling in souks, aggressive stray dogs, airport lounges, and of course restaurants – endless, countless restaurants. These snapshots could not have been more varied in terms of climate and colouring and content, yet all seemed to equally capture the tantalising sense of being away, and free, and alive, and were also linked by the presence of Pete: he was there in each scene, curiously always to her left and just out of sight, but a solid reassuring presence, their union a fulcrum around which the rest of the world was made to pivot.
She put the dish back and carried the hoover down the ladder. Pete was beginning an elaborate dinner – he’d bought a whole duck from the local butcher – and Anna stood within the kitchen doorway and watched him.
‘What?’ he said, when he noticed her standing there. She had no trouble formulating her thoughts into words – she was thinking how clever and skilful he was, how good he was at so many different things – but she kept these to herself, preferring to try and convey the same ideas telepathically; he smiled as he moved around the kitchen and called her a weirdo, as he grated and chopped and peeled, and it seemed like he understood.
The next morning she cancelled brunch with Zahra so they could have a lie-in together, and when she did finally get out of bed she didn’t really get up, just sat on the sofa in her dressing gown with a coffee and the various sections of the Guardian spread around her. Not that she read any of them. Instead she sipped her coffee and took to studying Pete again, this time as he set up the tomato plant on the window ledge. There was something mesmerising about the way he knotted the fragile stem to the bamboo with little pieces of string. His fingers worked delicately yet decisively, simply yet skilfully, and she found herself thinking of all the hours and weeks and years of practice that had gifted him with this deft touch and instinctive knowledge, at the garden centre and before that, growing up at his parents’ house in Hampshire with the acre of land out the back. Conversely, she thought of all the time she had allowed to slip through her fingers, as she agonised over what seemed like major decisions between various directions in life, when in fact there was nothing stopping her doing any of the things she might like to. She could still have fun and go out and do what she liked, while also slowing down and having a secure home life. She could work hard and be a successful professional while also making a go of her side projects. She could explore the world while also making a nest for herself. All these things were there for the taking, if only she made use of the ample time and benefits and privileges at her disposal. She resolved to start doing this, from that very moment.
Anna uploads the pictures to a new Instagram profile and links this to a Twitter account, which she considers naming @the_pipe, but quickly decides to call @a_hard_case instead. She uses a photo of the unopened case as the profile picture, and drafts a series of tweets that explain the concept and focus on two major clues: the scrap of newspaper with the date, and the curious variability of the clothing, as if the user was prepared for all climates. After a while Pete comes in and sits on the end of the sofa, taking her bare feet into his lap. He asks for an update, and she tells him the newspaper is in Portuguese, not Spanish. He is holding one of his textbooks, but she can tell he just came in to speak to her.
‘Won’t Zahra see this and know you lied to her about brunch?’
‘She’d have to follow me first. The only thing she thinks about is knocking down walls. No one will follow me, most likely.’
‘Maybe not. But the important thing is you’re doing it,’ he says.
Anna nods and realises she is rubbing her heel absently against his crotch. She removes her feet from his lap and begins writing a tweet of all the countries that speak Portuguese, then Pete shuffles and clears his throat.
‘She texted me yesterday.’
Anna stops typing and looks at him.
‘Zahra did?’ she says, and he nods. The old jealousy expands within her, as if a candle in the vicinity of her heart has been breathed on and briefly flares. ‘Why?’
‘She said we should hire a boat for your birthday.’
‘Oh,’ says Anna, her jealousy deflating. The feeling was surprising in its strength, reminding her of that time last year she came home and found Zahra already in the flat, carrying the sick bonsai tree she hoped Pete could cure; it is refreshing to feel this again, like the restoration of her appetite after an illness. ‘Did she?’
Pete puts down his textbook and turns his whole body to face her.
‘Look: it’s your birthday, and if a boat trip is what you want, then we should do it.’
Anna looks down at her laptop, then at Pete, then at her forgotten, now tepid cup of tea. The reasons that made hiring a boat seem a good idea feel distant and obscured, like the half-remembered fragments of a dream.
‘I’d forgotten all about it.’
‘Even so, if that’s what you want, we should organise something now. It will be expensive, and perhaps it will get booked—’
‘No,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘It was a silly idea. Hamza was the only person who liked it. A dinner party is fine.’
‘Just fine?’
‘More than fine,’ she says. She imagines the dinner party, and Pete getting down on one knee afterwards, and as always it creates a sort of inner chaos, but this time not in a bad way. It will be fine. Everything will be fine. ‘It’ll be good. Great.’
He slumps back into the sofa cushions and releases a massive sigh.
‘You should send out the bloody invites, then.’
‘I will.’
‘It’s five days away!’
‘You’re like an old woman, you are,’ she says, kicking him softly with her heel. He catches her foot in his hand and places it in his crotch again. She doesn’t resist, indeed pushes downwards into the fleshy contents, which stir and harden in response.
‘You almost done?’ he says, looking at her, his voice thickened. She looks back at him and resists the urge to pull her foot away, to nip this in the bud.
‘Just a minute. I need to write out the countries that speak Portuguese.’
With one hand Pete presses her foot downwards, with the other he begins kneading the smooth pliable flesh of her calves and then thighs, the pads of his fingers still dark from pressing soil. Anna tries to block out these fingers spidering around her legs, and looks at the list of countries. Wikipedia taught her there are nine, but in her list there are only eight – Cape Verde, Timor Leste, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Brazil, Angola, Equatorial Guinea, and São Tomé and Principe. The final one eludes her. Pete’s fingers are already teasing the hem of her knickers beneath her shorts, sendin
g a shiver up through her groin. Then he puts his textbook down and gets up on his knees and comes towards her, a great dark shape blocking her view, and she looks up at him and smiles, remembering the Portuguese-speaking country she couldn’t remember: Portugal.
Twenty minutes later they are upstairs, lying on their backs, atop the sheets. Pete made it all the way to being naked, Anna still has her knickers on. Anna gazes up at the Velux window; although it is almost 8 p.m. it still frames a rectangle of bright pink sky, as if the light itself is stubbornly refusing to dissolve into night. Pete is breathing heavily, every other breath a sigh through his nose, and she knows she should speak first.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says.
‘Don’t be.’
‘I did want to. In my head I wanted to. But when we actually started …’
She searches for a tactful way to put it, and then he supplies a more honest formulation.
‘If the feeling’s not there, it’s not there.’
Anna props herself up on an elbow and lays a hand on the flat of his hairy chest and looks down the length of his naked body; his deflating cock has fallen sadly onto its side.
‘It’s not like there’s a reason. Not a conscious one, anyway.’
‘I know,’ he says. ‘These things come and go. In phases.’
‘Like that time last summer,’ she says, surprising herself. ‘When you didn’t want to so much.’
Her saying this makes his head jerk; it is a sudden trespass into something they never discussed at the time.
‘Yeah. I don’t know. I suppose I didn’t. Sure. Maybe I didn’t.’
‘That wasn’t for any sort of reason, was it?’
‘No,’ he says, immediately. His head has turned further away from her, towards the exposed brickwork at the far end of the room.