by India Knight
‘Morning,’ says Frank. He is sitting at the kitchen table eating a piece of toast and wearing a clean grey T-shirt with arms, and a purple T-shirt on top of that. I look around the room for Louisa – everywhere, even in the broom cupboard – and when I don’t find her, I scan the garden through the French doors.
‘Lost something?’ says Frank. ‘And do you want some tea?’
‘Where’s Lou?’ I croak.
‘Lou? Search me. Home, I expect.’
Oh, thank God. Oh, thank Mary and Joseph and all the saints and you, lovely lovely baby Jesus. Thank you. Thank you.
‘And Honey?’
‘On the Heath with Mary. They’re having lunch at Kenwood House and then Mary’s taking her to the party of some kid from playgroup – Perdita, is it?’
‘What’s the time?’
‘Just after twelve.’
‘My head. Been up long?’
‘A while. Some evening, eh?’
I nod, and pad over to the fridge for the milk.
‘I always had you down as a sophisticated type,’ says Frank.
‘I have hidden depths. Hidden shallows, rather.’
‘You were great,’ he laughs. ‘I love all of that myself. Oh, and I’m sorry it didn’t work out with the DJ.’
‘Don’t be.’
I take a sip of tea; it hurts me to swallow.
‘Are you really sorry?’ I ask him.
‘Yeah, of course.’
I put my cup down, spilling Earl Grey everywhere.
‘Really, Frank? Really? Why?’
‘What?’
‘Why are you so, so sorry?’
‘I’m not so, so sorry,’ he smiles. ‘But if you liked him, then I’m sorry, you know, that it didn’t work out.’
‘Frankie,’ I say, ‘we need to talk.’
‘Talk away.’
Time seems to be of the essence. I don’t really have time to beat about the bush, and besides, my chronic hangover means I can’t think of a delicate way of phrasing what I need to say.
‘I think,’ I tell him, holding my head in my hands, ‘that I fancy you.’
Frankie spits out a great big splurt of tea.
‘What?’ he says, looking at me hard. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said, I think that I fancy you. Amazing, but true. Take me, Frankie.’
‘Don’t bugger about,’ says Frank irritably. ‘Christ’s sake, Stell.’
‘I am not buggering about,’ I protest. ‘I mean it. I fancy you. I don’t know why. So take me.’
‘Stop saying “take me”, will you?’ says Frank.
‘This is wrong,’ I say, feeling a bit huffy. ‘You’re supposed to leap over the table and tongue me.’
‘Stella! Will you stop pissing about, you mardy cow?’
‘Look, I’m not feeling very articulate this morning. But it’s been building up for a while. I didn’t see it coming – it’s taken me by surprise too. But I really, really like you. I have the best time with you. You make me laugh. And never mind about the rest. I’m not saying, let’s get married, Frank. But I am saying, let’s go to bed.’
‘What do you mean, “never mind about the rest”?’
‘I think we both know what I’m talking about. And you see, I must really like you a lot, because to me that kind of thing is unoverlookable.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Stell,’ says Frank, looking bewildered. ‘None of it. I don’t understand a word.’
‘Forget the other thing. I’m saying, do you think we could go out? Have a proper date and then, you know, go to bed? Tonight, maybe? Or, um, now?’
Frank sighs, and runs his hands through his hair.
‘No,’ he says. He has really beautiful eyes, and he is looking at me all softly and sadly. ‘Stell, is this one of your jokes? Tell me.’
‘I am completely serious.’
‘Then I am very flattered, but the answer’s no.’
‘No?’
‘No. I can’t.’ He reaches over and strokes my face, just once, with his thumb.
‘I thought maybe you fancied me a bit too,’ I say. I try and give a casual laugh. ‘On account of me having a vagina. And secondary sexual characteristics.’
‘I …’ says Frank, sounding strangled.
‘But never mind,’ I lie grossly. ‘I think I’ll go and have a bath now. And then maybe ring Lou. Meet up for lunch. Or something.’ My voice fades away. I need to get out of the kitchen, because I’m going to cry.
‘Stella,’ says Frank. ‘Don’t go.’
‘I feel all grubby,’ I say. ‘Need a bath.’ I clear my throat. ‘Sorry about that. Guess I misread everything. Sorry, Frankie. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.’
‘Lou’s coming over,’ he says.
‘Oh. When?’
‘She just went home to change. I said I’d take her to lunch.’ He is looking straight at me, and his face is white. He shrugs helplessly.
I actually feel weak about the knees, like in an old film. I feel faint.
‘You … you slept together?’
‘Yeah,’ says Frank.
‘Was she a dirty ride?’ My eyes are welling up like a baby’s. I have to get out of here.
‘Don’t, Stella.’ He reaches for my arm. ‘Come here.’
‘Don’t touch me,’ I yell, like a maniac. And I run upstairs.
Well, that was magnificently handled, was it not? Well done, Stella. Bravo. Now what? Oh, God, how embarrassing. How excruciating. How desperate.
Bloody Louisa. I know Frank is so feeble that he can’t say no (except, evidently, to me), but she should have known better. She’s my friend. My only friend, really. How could she go and jeopardize a thing like our new, lovely, happy friendship for a bloody shag from bloody Frank, who is bloody ginger and has a bloody family buried away somewhere and fucks everything that moves, not including me? And it’s not as though I didn’t warn her.
Of course, she did ask me if I minded a couple of times … Well, she should have known. If she’s my friend, she should have known that I was hardly likely to turn around and say, ‘Actually, I do mind.’ Of course you say you don’t mind, just as in England you say, ‘I couldn’t possibly,’ before helping yourself to thirds of pudding. It doesn’t mean it’s true. A proper friend would have recognized that. Which means she isn’t a proper friend. Which means I am friendless and alone, alone, all all alone. If this bath were a sea, I’d swim away from all this with Honey on my back, like a sea-cow or manatee. I’d swim to kinder shores. Oh, fuck. What’s going to happen now?
There goes the door. I can’t skulk up here, hiding, in my own house. I get out of the bath, reluctantly, and throw on my clothes again. I have to go and face them now, otherwise I might as well hole myself up here for ever.
It takes all the courage I can muster, though. Frank and Louisa are standing in the middle of the living room, by the yellow sofa. She looks blissfully, deliriously happy, and I realize I can’t really be angry with her; he’s looking at her sort of quizzically, as though he can’t quite believe that she exists.
‘Stella!’ she beams. ‘Have you slept it off yet?’
I grunt a greeting and nod.
‘What a night! What a night! We’re just off to lunch now.’
I grunt again, and bend down to pick up bits of Honey’s tea-set off the floor.
‘I saw Adrian as I was leaving the flat. He wasn’t looking too happy.’
‘I is fed up with him,’ I say. ‘I is not wantin’ to be his bitch.’
This elicits a wan smile from Frank, which makes a nice change, as ever since I came downstairs he has been looking at me as though I were ill, with a puzzled expression that really sticks in the craw and makes me furious.
‘Will you join us?’ asks Louisa. ‘We’re just going down the road, to the pub that Frankie says does nice food. The Duke of something.’
‘Cambridge,’ says Frank. ‘Stell?’
‘No thanks,’ I say. ‘Can’t quite face it
.’
‘Well, you know where we are if you change your mind,’ says Louisa, who is bouncing around the room like Tigger, so happy that she doesn’t seem to notice my somewhat surly, offhand manner. Frank goes off into the hall to find his jacket, and she suddenly hurls herself at me, raising two thumbs right into my face.
‘What, Lou? Fandabidozi?’
‘Well, yes,’ she whispers. ‘You said I wouldn’t get a second date, but look, here I am.’
‘I’m very pleased for you.’
‘Not as pleased as me, Stell. Last night was … well, it was just fantastic. He …’
‘Spare me the details, Lou.’
‘But he was so amazing. He …’
‘Better than Thomas the Tank?’
‘Yeah,’ she grins. ‘You could say that.’
‘Probably more practised,’ I nod. ‘Though who knows?’
‘Come on,’ says Frank. ‘Let’s go. See you later, Stell. Will you be OK?’
‘Why shouldn’t I be? I’m not ill, Frank. I just feel a bit crap. It’ll pass.’
‘Yeah,’ says Frank. ‘It will. See you later.’
I go back to bed for the rest of the afternoon and emerge at tea time feeling mighty refreshed. I cover Honey, not seen since last night, with tickly kisses, give her her bath, play tea-parties with her at enormous length, read her an extra-long bedtime story about a blue kangaroo, and tuck her up at seven o’clock. My baby. I love her more than anything.
‘Fwankie?’ she says, just before settling down. I promise he’ll come and kiss her later.
Fwankie reappears about an hour later, alone. I am, as usual, eating – a small, lonely bowl of noodles, in this instance – and he comes into the kitchen just as I am slurping up a particularly long tangle of strands. There’s miso broth all down my chin.
‘Do you want a drink?’ says Frank, who doesn’t look all that sober himself, interestingly. ‘Hair of the dog. Might help you. Helps me. Here, have a napkin.’ He tosses a piece of kitchen roll at me.
The idea of a drink makes me want to gag, but he has a point. I could drink myself into a stupor, like the tragic abandoned housewife I am, and then fall into bed and into a dreamless, Frankless sleep. I wipe my chin.
‘Why not? A glass of red, maybe. Where have you been?’
‘In the pub,’ says Frank.
‘With your girlfriend.’
Frank doesn’t smile; his jaw perceptibly tightens.
‘Whatever,’ he says. ‘Something like that.’
‘With your girlfriend of love,’ I say sadly, except it comes out more facetious.
Frank sighs, does the thing with his jaw again and stares at me greyly.
‘Don’t look at me like that, please. You look like a wife-beater.’ And you probably are, I add to myself. ‘Like you might raise your hand to me.’
‘Here’s your wine.’
‘I’m going to drink it on the sofa. Are you coming? As the Louisa said to the Frankie.’
‘I am,’ says Frank, allowing himself one unamused little smile.
I curl up on the sofa, pulling a fleecy throw off the back to cover myself in and rearranging the cushions for maximum nestiness. The sofa is one of those outsize numbers, so that although Frank joins me on it, our limbs don’t touch: there’s a good couple of feet between us. He perches a massive tumbler of neat whisky on the sofa arm and reaches for the television remote.
‘Where’s Louisa, then?’ I ask, like a broken record. I can’t help myself.
‘At home with Alexander. What do you want to watch? A movie?’
‘Anything soothing. Why aren’t you there with her?’
‘Because I’m here with you. Can you shut up about it now, Stell?’
‘Not really,’ I say, hoping he’ll admire my honesty – slim chance of this, though, looking at his thunderous face: he looks almost scary. I take a sip of wine, he takes a massive gulp of Scotch and flicks through the channels, looking angry. ‘I need to know, Frank. I need to make plans.’
‘Why?’
‘I just do. I need to prepare myself mentally. Is she going to be here all the time?’
Frank rubs his face. ‘I don’t know. How the fuck would I know? Bloody hell,’ he says. ‘Look at that.’
‘What?’ I look up at the television: we’re on Cartoon Network. ‘It’s just Betty Boop.’
‘You missed the title. Guess what it’s called?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘The Bum Bandit. Does that count?’
‘Rispeck, Frankie,’ I say. ‘I didn’t know about that one. Very good.’
Frank laughs and presses the ‘I’ for Information button on the satellite remote. ‘1931,’ he says. ‘It’s about a train robbery.’
‘That goes straight into the top ten, though I still think Unlawful Entry occupies the number-one slot, don’t you?’
‘Definitely Dark Passage, for me.’
‘Speaking of which …’
‘Leave it.’
‘Speaking of which …’
‘I said, leave it.’
‘I’m not asking for a blow by blow account, Frank. I just want to know if … if your intentions are honourable.’
‘What are you now, the father of the bride as well as the matchmaker?’ He takes another huge glug of whisky.
‘What do you mean, the bride? Are, are, are you planning on marrying her?’ I feel as though I’ve been punched in the stomach.
‘Don’t be thick, Stell. I was joking.’
‘Are you going to keep on living here?’ I’m so relieved by the non-marriage news that I finish my wine and stretch out a bit. ‘Do you mind if my feet are on you?’
‘Live here? Yeah. Unless you don’t want me to,’ Frank says, which seems a bit melodramatic to me.
‘Look, I just offered you a shag. And you turned me down. Fair enough. Mad of you, but fair enough. It doesn’t mean I am carrying an enormous torch and am going to stagger around the house weeping, you know.’ I won’t have Frank walking about coatlessly, on his long legs, pitying me. ‘So living here is probably safe,’ I say sarcastically. ‘I might just be able to control myself. Just.’
‘I know,’ says Frank.
‘I wasn’t planning on proposing to you.’
‘I know,’ says Frank.
‘Or on having ginger children with you.’
‘I get the picture,’ says Frank, raising a hand.
‘I just wondered what it would be like if we shagged.’
‘OK,’ says Frank. ‘Shut it. I understand.’
We sit in silence for five minutes: is it my imagination, or has the air thickened?
‘Why did you really want me to shag you?’ says Frank.
‘ ’Scuse me?’
‘Why did you want a fuck from me?’ He sounds much more northern than he did five minutes ago, and it’s not just the air that’s thickened, it’s his voice, too.
‘Why not?’ I reply breezily. ‘Everybody else has had one. I feel a bit left out.’
Frank tuts exasperatedly.
‘Well, it’s true,’ I lie.
‘Don’t you see,’ says Frank, ‘that it would ruin everything?’
‘I don’t, actually,’ I reply, still keeping my voice airy and carefree. ‘As I say, I wasn’t planning on marrying you.’
Frank is facing me, sucking in his cheeks and looking flintier than ever. I meet his eyes for a second, and then look down again, because – sorry to be crude – the look in them practically makes me come. Frank drains his glass and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘Go on, then,’ he says.
‘Go on, what?’
‘Let’s go.’
‘Where?’
‘Upstairs,’ he says, getting up. ‘To fuck.’
‘No thanks,’ I say, with extraordinary restraint. ‘I don’t want a pity-fuck.’
‘It’s not a pity-fuck. Come on.’
‘Well, if it’s not a pity-fuck, then judging by the look on your face, it’s a
hate-fuck. So thanks, but, you know, no thanks.’
‘What the fuck’s a hate-fuck?’
‘When you hate the person so much you have to sleep with them. It’s fucked up. I used to do it quite often at university.’
‘Oh, yeah, I’ve had those,’ says Frank. ‘Terrible. But often quite good at the time. The sex, I mean.’
‘Exactly. Awkward to share one’s house with the hate-fuckee, though, so as I was saying, no thanks.’
‘I’ve always fancied you,’ says Frank. ‘Since the day I met you. Since Paris. It wouldn’t be a hate-fuck. Come on.’
‘No.’
‘I don’t fucking believe you,’ says Frank. ‘What are you, some fucking schizo?’
‘What about Lou?’
Frank sighs. ‘What about her, Stell?’
‘She wouldn’t like it.’
‘No, I don’t expect she would. Will you tell her, or shall I?’
‘You, Frank, are a pig bastard.’
‘I am not a pig bastard,’ he says. ‘I am offering you the shag you claim you want.’
‘Poor Louisa. She’s going out with a pig bastard.’ I really like saying ‘pig bastard’ to Frank.
‘We’re not “going out”. She threw herself at me. And you stood there and pushed her into my bed, more or less. What did you expect me to do?’
‘Fuck her,’ I shrug.
‘Exactly. Which is what I did. And then she bugged me to take her out to lunch, so I did that too. Because she’s your mate. So don’t take the moral high ground with me. I’m not the one that flirted with me all last night to annoy her friend.’
He has a point, even though annoying my friend was only the half of it. There’s only one thing left to say, really.
‘OK,’ I say, draining my glass. ‘You win. Let’s go.’
17
We get up in silence and go up the stairs in a mini-Indian file, with no physical contact whatsoever.
‘Condoms?’ I say.
‘By the bed.’ He opens the door to his bedroom, which he keeps very nice, I must say: all white and clean and stripped back, with – natch – a giant, outsize oak bed with cream linen sheets. One of the walls is pinned haphazardly with sketches of wild flowers.