Tandem

by Alex Morgan

  “Hello,” she called uncertainly.

  He looked up and took a step forward. “Hello, Paula.”

  “Put this on.” Mrs McIntyre held out a fuchsia pink candlewick dressing gown.

  Paula stepped back into the bathroom and swapped her towel for the dressing gown. She took the stairs two at a time.

  “That’s a very attractive garment.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know why I’m so pleased to see you. I really shouldn’t be.”

  “I’m just glad that you are.”

  She led him into the sitting room and they sat on the sofa.

  “So why are you here?” she asked.

  “Mrs McIntyre tracked me down in the Yellow Pages. She was very enigmatic. She said something odd about having called the wrong one and that my presence was required urgently.”

  “Oh.” Paula couldn’t hide her disappointment.

  “I wanted to apologise, too, though. I shouldn’t have stormed off like that.”

  “I deserved a chance to explain.”

  “I know. I don’t know what came over me.” He examined his fingernails. “I was jealous, I suppose. I’m so glad she phoned. I didn’t want to leave things the way they were. It’s not my style to sleep with someone and run.”

  Paula smiled. “I’m glad to hear it.” She leant towards Andy, fingers outstretched. At that moment, a movement outside the window caught her eye. A white car skidded to a halt on the loose gravel by the gate. A huge bunch of pink and white flowers leapt out and sprinted towards the door, and behind them came the very last person she had expected, or wanted, to see.

  “Oh Christ,” she began, but Ollie was already in the hall and striding into sitting room. When he saw Andy, he let the flowers drop to the floor.

  “I’m Ollie. Ollie Matraszek. Paula’s boyfriend,” he said, far too loudly for the small room. “And I’m guessing you must be Andy.”

  Andy stood up. “Andy Parker.”

  “Andy Parker.” Ollie seemed to be rolling the words around his mouth. “I get the feeling, Andy Parker, that Paula may have failed to mention our relationship to you.”

  “She did mention it, but …” Andy’s voice was steady, but when he glanced over at Paula, she could see the shock and pain in his eyes.

  “Well, then, I think you’d better go.”

  “Maybe I had.”

  “Good decision.” Ollie stepped back to let him pass.

  Andy turned on the threshold. “Goodbye, Paula. I’m sorry it turned out this way.”

  She got to her feet. She knew she was supposed to respond, but what could she say? The air between the three of them was so heavy with words spoken and unspoken, all tangled up in a mess of past and present, of anger, need and so many other things she couldn’t name, that she could barely pull a breath into her lungs. She wanted to elbow past Andy and run out into the street. To get away from both of them, to find oxygen and space and clarity.

  So she offered the only words that stood out clearly. “I’m sorry too.”

  Andy stepped into the hall and pulled the door shut behind him.

  Ollie lowered himself onto the sofa. “Just when you think things can’t get any worse.” He cocked his head expectantly. “So … Sandy? Andy?”

  Paula found herself staring at the print above the fireplace. A thatched cottage surrounded by a garden of lupins, foxgloves and sweetpeas, one corner dappled with mould where a tide of seaside dampness had crept under the glass. “So,” she echoed.

  This was her cue to join him on the faded chintz, to confess the terrible wrong she had done him and be contrite. To let him shout and then negotiate for his forgiveness. To draw a straight black line under everything, unequivocal and final. Then she would pack up her things, stow Andy away in the box marked Memories: no longer needed along with Pete and everything else from the past, return to London with Ollie and get on with the rest of their lives. It was the opening she had been looking for, the one that really could lead to space and clarity.

  She sat down and, with her gaze on the hideous swirling carpet, waited a few seconds for the sentences to assemble. She opened her mouth and the first of them came out.

  “I saw what you did in the garage.”

  Her head jerked up at the shock of her own words and their eyes met. The last time she had said it, he had stormed out of the room, gathered his belongings and set off back to London without a single word. And now she had brought it up again. Ollie looked baffled. He had returned to patch things up. This wasn’t the right script and they both knew it.

  “What did you say?”

  The words came out again. “I saw what you did.”

  “And? Are you trying to tell me that justifies whatever you’ve been up to here?” He was incredulous. “If that’s what you’re saying, you’re even crazier than I thought.”

  This – she – was crazy. That much was obvious, and she needed to fix it before she blew her chance. “No, not at all. I don’t know what made me say that.”

  “Well, since you did, maybe it’s time we addressed it.”

  Paula put her hands over her face. “No, please. We don’t need to. It’s in the past. Why do we have to go back there?”

  “I don’t know, Paula. You tell me.” He took hold of her wrists and pulled her hands into her lap so he could look into her eyes, but she turned away.

  “What exactly is it you think I did?” he persisted. “There was no I. It was we, us, Pete and me.”

  “No!” She hauled her hands free and covered her ears. She was desperate to get up and run but her legs wouldn’t co-operate.

  “Tell me,” he demanded. “What did you actually see? We kissed, and you can’t bear it. Your precious little twin and me, together, with no place for you. It’s been gnawing away at you ever since.”

  “No, no, no, no …” she chanted but Ollie would not be drowned out.

  “Pete and I kissed. Or, if we’re being strictly accurate, Pete kissed me. In that moment, he wanted me. He wanted me in a way you and he could never share. All you could do was look in through the window, and what made it even worse was that you knew we could see you. We knew you were there and it didn’t stop us.”

  “Liar,” Paula shrieked. “You didn’t see me. Pete didn’t kiss you. You kissed him. It was all you. I saw you pull him towards you.”

  “Oh, Paula.” Ollie’s voice was strangely quiet now. “You know that’s not right. You must have wondered why his girlfriends never lasted. Why a good-looking bloke like him made it to nearly thirty without a serious relationship. Have you never thought what he was hiding?”

  “I’ll tell you who’s doing the hiding,” she yelled. “You! I saw your hands on him, your fingers in his hair, but he didn’t want you. Not like that. He never wanted you, and that’s the only reason you wanted me – because I was the nearest you could get to him.”

  “That’s not true. What happened between you and me has nothing to do with Pete. How could you think that? You’re the only one I ever felt that way about. Pete saw you that day because he was facing the window, but he didn’t stop because he didn’t want to. He initiated it.

  You’ve twisted it all round in your head, remembered it the way you want it to be. I had my back to you and that means it was his hands you saw, not mine. His hands in my hair, but you can’t bear to remember that because you think it should have been you he was kissing. That’s why I could never be good enough for you, because I wasn’t Pete. But you know what, nothing more ever happened between us. And shall I tell you why? Because I didn’t want it to. Pete did, but I didn’t.”

  “How dare you,” Paula screamed. “How dare you tell such lies?”

  “Because they’re not lies. Every word is true and you know it. Pete kissed me. He kissed me, not you, and you’ve been eaten up with jealousy ever since. We never stood a chance you and me.” Ollie got to his feet. “How could we? I wasn’t Pete.”

  I wasn’t Pete … I wasn’t Pete … The words played over and ove
r in Paula’s head, drowning out the sounds of the front door slamming and Ollie’s car screeching away.

  Voicemail

  A clear plastic sandwich bag lay on the doormat. Inside was a mobile phone. Paula picked up the bag and turned it over in her hands. It looked like her old phone, the one she had hurled into the sea, but it couldn’t be. She took it back to the sofa, where she had been curled up for most of the day. Mrs McIntyre had found her there a couple of hours after Ollie left, shivering and sobbing. Her landlady made her a cup of sugary tea and tucked her up with a tartan rug and a hot water bottle. The warmth had drawn her back down into the blissful freedom of a dreamless sleep. Woken by the sound of something dropping through the letterbox and urgently aware she needed to pee, she staggered out into the hall in the fading light, legs stiff as an old woman’s. The bag caught her eye as she returned to her refuge.

  Paula switched on the standard lamp and gathered the rug back around her. She opened the bag and took out the phone and a small square of lined paper. The note was written in purple felt pen. It said, “Thought U might want this.” She didn’t recognise the writing.

  She pressed the on button and the phone beeped into life. A scroll through the contacts proved the impossible: it was hers. And it was fully charged and working. How could this be? She had heard it drop into the sea with her own ears.

  A crunching noise on the shell path outside the window startled her, and she looked up to see Sanders peering through the gap under the net curtain. She held up the phone and mouthed questioningly, “You?”

  He nodded.

  When she let him in, he pointed at the pink candlewick dressing gown. “Stylish.”

  “Never mind that. Are you okay?”

  He shrugged. “S’pose.”

  “Mrs McIntyre said you slept in a cave. Your mum must’ve been frantic.”

  “When I went home she yelled and cried a lot.”

  “I bet she did. So what on earth were you doing with my phone?”

  “Long story.” He stared at his trainers, which were shedding sand on the vestibule tiles. “I’ll tell you another time.”

  “You’ll tell me now.” Paula pulled him into the sitting room.

  “Please don’t be cross,” he whimpered, sinking down onto the carpet. He wrapped his thin arms around his torso. “Bovis is really sick.”

  She knelt beside him. “Oh, Sanders, I know. I’m sorry.”

  He leant against her as tears dribbled down his cheeks.

  Paula gave him a handful of tissues from the box Mrs McIntyre had left. She put her arm round his shoulders. “How’s she doing?”

  “Mum thinks she escaped from the garden to look for me when I didn’t come home on Saturday. The vet says she was probably hit by a car near here and she looked for somewhere familiar to hide.” He took a gulping breath. “Paula, the vet had to cut off her back leg. Bovis has got three legs and it’s my fault because I ran off and everyone was panicking and she must have realised something was wrong and she wanted to help find me …”

  Paula hugged his shallow chest to her. “Shh now. It’s not your fault. It was an accident. Terrible things happen sometimes.” She gazed over his head to the window and the rapidly darkening street.

  When his tears eventually subsided, she said, “Pete and I had a neighbour with a Dalmatian when we were little. He was called Doobry and he was stone deaf.”

  Sanders blew his nose. “That’s a silly name.”

  “It was. Doobry ran into the road one day and got knocked down by a van. He lost a leg but, you know, it was amazing how quickly he adjusted. He just got on with life. Animals are very good like that. You’ll be surprised how fast Bovis recovers.”

  He looked up at her. “Do you think so?”

  “I know so. She’s going to be fine.” He didn’t need to know that Paula had never had a neighbour with a three-legged dog called Doobry or anything else.

  “I don’t want her to hate me.”

  “She’ll never hate you.” Paula breathed back more tears of her own. “Bovis loves you more than you’ll ever know.”

  She passed him some more tissues and he dried his face.

  “Now tell me something honestly. Did you write me another note, on the night of the gala?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “Aye. Why?”

  Paula shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. It’s nothing.”

  “I’m sorry about the phone. I shoulda given it back before.”

  “Where did you find it? I threw it in the sea. It shouldn’t be working.”

  “It didn’t go in. I made the splash.”

  She let go of him and sat back against the sofa. “You were there, watching me? Spying on me?”

  He nodded miserably. “I was sitting on the other side of the rocks. I saw you come and sit down with your chips. I was worried about you. You seemed so sad, so I watched for a bit. You were checking your messages and then you started talking to yourself and threw the phone. It landed beside me. I thought if I listened to it I’d find out what was wrong, so I splashed in a rock pool to make you think it’d gone in the water.”

  “I see you’ve kept it charged.”

  “Mum’s charger fits it.”

  “So have you been listening to my voicemail?”

  He looked sheepish. “I thought I’d better in case there was anything important. That Ollie called a couple of times, said, ‘please call me, I love you’, stuff like that.”

  “And you didn’t think to tell me?”

  “I reckoned if he loved you, you’d already know he wanted to speak to you, so I deleted them. Well, except the text asking where you were. I answered that one before I realised who it was.”

  “Sanders! I was blaming my poor mum for telling him I was in Craskferry.” Paula’s head felt as if it was clamped in a giant vice. She massaged her temples with her fingertips.

  “I said I was sorry.”

  She sighed. “Why give the phone back now?”

  “Some bloke called Andy just left a message. It sounded important – I saved it for you.” He got to his feet. “Mum’ll be wondering where I am.”

  When he had gone, Paula dialled 121. The recorded voice said she had two saved messages. She closed her eyes and waited for the first one to begin.

  “Hiya, babe.” It felt like a lifetime and no time at all since she had heard Pete’s voice. It seemed to fill her, as if it was coming from somewhere way down inside her own chest. She mouthed the words along with him. “You all set for tomorrow morning? We’re gonna be great. They won’t see us for dust. Don’t forget you said you’d get more High5 for the bottles. I’m just going for a quick blast on the solo. Call me when you get this.”

  She resaved it and, shivering again, reached behind her for Mrs McIntyre’s rug. The second message began.

  “It’s Andy. God, Paula, I don’t know whether I’m coming or going with Ollie turning up like that.” The pause was so long she thought he had hung up. Then he spoke again. “I probably shouldn’t be phoning you, but I’m going to make one last try. I thought we had something. If you think it’s worth talking about, call me. If you disagree, just delete this. I’m staying with my friends in Edinburgh tonight and heading back to London in the morning. I won’t call again.” He paused again. “That’s it, I suppose. Take care.”

  “End of messages,” the recorded voice intoned. “To return this call press five.”

  Paula paused, her thumb hovering over the number five.

  Letting go

  Her mother smoothed a wrinkle out of the folded T-shirt and added it to the stack on Pete’s bed. Paula watched as she touched each of the other piles – sweatshirts, pants, socks, shorts and trousers – checking them off a mental list. “There,” she said, “that’s everything.”

  “What about a hankie?” Paula said.

  “He can use paper ones, like he always does.”

  Paula pursed her lips. “He should have a spotty one.” />
  “What on earth for?” Her mum returned an unwanted T-shirt to a drawer. “He’s not going to catch a cold in France in summer.”

  “But he might need to run away and come and find us,” Paula explained gravely. “He needs a spotty hankie to wrap his things in and tie to a stick. That’s what people do when they run away.”

  Her mum sat on the bed and patted the duvet beside her. “Sit down for a minute.” She put an arm round Paula. “Remember when we talked about this before, and I said that Pete isn’t going on holiday with Ollie because he doesn’t want to be with you? He loves you, but Ollie’s his friend and it’s okay to go away with him.”

  Paula gnawed a fingernail and didn’t say anything. She hated Pete for agreeing to go to France with Ollie. He was her little twin and he should always want to be with her. He couldn’t possibly want to be with Ollie more than her. Ollie must have made him do it. That was the only answer – it was all Ollie’s fault, and she would never forgive him for it.

  “Pete isn’t going to stop loving you just because he doesn’t see you for three weeks,” her mum continued. “We’ll miss him, and he’ll miss us sometimes, but we’re all going to have a lovely time, and nobody’s going to run away.” She gave Paula a squeeze. “Okay?”

  Silence.

  “Okay, Paula? Look.” Her mum opened a drawer and brought out a parcel wrapped in Happy Birthday paper. “Pete got an early birthday present for you. I don’t think he’d mind if you have it now.”

  Paula stared at the package.

  “Go on, open it.”

  She didn’t move.

  “I’ll do it then.” Her mum tore the paper off. It was a stuffed toy. It looked like a rat. “See, it’s a dormouse. He chose it himself.”

  Paula took the animal and hurled it across the bed, knocking neatly folded clothes onto the floor.

  “Paula!”

  “I hate you and I hate Ollie. I hope he dies in stinky France and never comes home.” She ran across the landing into her own room, slammed the door and flung herself onto the bed.

  Ollie and his parents arrived early the next morning. Paula watched from the porch as Pete climbed into the back of the Volvo next to his friend. Mrs Matraszek twisted round in her seat and said something to the boys. They all laughed. As Pete replied, Ollie looked over at Paula. His expression was just the same as the day the headmaster announced at school assembly that he had collected more money than anyone else for the orphans in Africa. Mr Matraszek stowed Pete’s bag among the camping gear in the back, returned to the driver’s seat and started the engine. Pete and Ollie waved with both hands. Pete and Ollie. Ollie and Pete. Before that moment it had always been Pete and Paula, Paula and Pete, but Ollie had spoiled it and things would never be the same again.