‘There are some things that go beyond the realm of reason,’ he said seriously. ‘Sometimes we just have to live with that. Even in accountancy, sometimes the columns just don’t add up.’
And at that moment, in the soft lighting, her senses pleasantly numbed by the conversation, and the food and the wine, and the nostalgic melodies filling the room with sound, she thought maybe, just maybe, she could begin to let it go and start over. She was the one to hold out her hand and take his.
‘I don’t believe in ghosts, but I do believe in angels,’ he said, gazing deeply into her eyes. She couldn’t deny that it was an unusually good chat-up line, especially coming from an accountant. She felt herself melting. It was time to move on from the shame and the pain. She was ready to take her chance – to reach out and choose happiness.
It was Steve who pulled away first. ‘I’m forgetting the pudding,’ he said. He stood up to turn on the oven. ‘I decided we’d go for comfort food tonight. And I remembered you said you loved your gran’s blackberry crumble.’ On their last date, Celeste had told him how she used to love blackberrying along the lanes in the Surrey Hills with her little brother. ‘I had to use frozen berries at this time of year but hey! It’ll be a taste of late summer.’ Celeste was touched. He was the first man she had dated who would admit to baking crumble!
*
Now they had moved to the sofa – and still she was OK with it – comfortable. One of the big romantic anthems popular when she was ‘sweet sixteen’ was playing on the CD. His hand was gently rubbing up and down her stockinged thigh in time to the music and he was kissing her, and his mouth was wet and warm, and he smelt nice and there were stirrings deep inside her that she hadn’t experienced in a long time. It was unexpected and it was good. Her body at one with the rhythm of the melody, she was kissing him back and breathing in his aftershave and wanting to touch him in ways that were new to her. She had lost track of time – and it seemed so had he.
And then the music changed…
The rap section came to an end and now it was Rihanna’s beautiful, resonant voice coming in with the heart-rending refrain: ‘Just gonna stand there and watch me burn, that’s all right because I like the way it hurts.’ Celeste shoved him off and moved away from him on the sofa. Her heart was racing, and her breathing came in shallow gasps.
‘Something’s burning!’ she shouted. ‘I can smell smoke. Something’s burning.’ ‘Just gonna stand there and hear me cry, that’s all right because I love the way you lie…’ Those hateful words seared through her brain. Here they came again, relentless, pounding: ‘Just gonna stand there and watch me burn.’
She leapt up, covering her ears with her hands. ‘Turn it off, turn the bloody music off. That song…’
Steve didn’t move for a second. He sat there confused, watching her in amazement. She grabbed the speaker and threw it to the floor. The music kept playing.
He stood up, spun her round and held her firmly in his arms. ‘Stop! What did I do wrong? What the hell’s got into you?’ He shook her hard.
She stared at him with terror in her eyes. His face had changed. He’d become someone else. Not the placid man she knew as Steve. His features had morphed into those of a monster.
‘Get off me,’ she screamed. ‘Let me go.’
At that moment, a shrill alarm rang out, drowning out the pop song with its deafening insistent bell. Steve loosened his grip and turned his head to look at the smoke coming out of the oven. ‘Shit, I forgot the crumble.’
While he turned to look at the oven she struggled out of his arms, her arms flailing and punching wildly at his chest. A sharp blow from her elbow caught his cheekbone and he pushed her away roughly, sending her stumbling back against the wall.
‘What the fuck!’
She grabbed her bag and shoes and ran for the door, which Steve being security-conscious, had double-locked on the inside. She grappled wildly with the key, yanking the handle and trying to force the lock. At last, the key turned, and she flew down the stairs like a bat out of hell.
PRESENT
19
At least You don’t stay the night.
I can’t face going back to my room, so I go to buy a takeaway and then return to his address and spend the next two hours roaming up and down his street like a stray dog.
It’s bitterly cold in London tonight and I blame You for my frozen hands and feet. It will be your fault if I get sick.
Less than two hours later, You are throwing yourself out of his doorway like a woman possessed. I stop feeling sorry for myself.
What did he do to You? Your hair is a mess and your shirt is undone and You come down the steps in black-stockinged feet and You left your coat behind even though it is now minus three degrees with a cold easterly breeze.
Did he rape You?
I’m torn between battering down his door and beating him to a pulp or racing after You and bundling You into a taxi and taking You home.
I hesitate for too long. When I emerge from my hiding place behind the bins, the pavement is empty.
You are gone.
*
It was a bad start to the week. Celeste was feeling fragile and depressed after her disastrous date on Saturday evening. After a sleepless night, she had stayed in her bedroom all day on Sunday with the door shut, still in her pyjamas. She’d been too agitated to work or even to read. She’d switched off her phone and all her social media (she couldn’t face seeing messages from Steve), and passed the day dozing and watching mindless movies on her laptop. She’d pulled herself together sufficiently to cycle into work on Monday morning but couldn’t disguise the fact from Meghan that something was wrong. She was deathly pale, with dark circles under her eyes and that absent, closed look, familiar to Meghan from the early days after the tragedy.
Celeste wasn’t in a fit state to welcome customers or deal with the regular weekly stock deliveries of fresh flowers and floristry supplies, so Meghan sent her into the office to sort out some of the admin and check for any new online orders. Celeste started with the Seventh Heaven website (still in need of upgrading), which had a basic online ordering service for home and office deliveries of floral bouquets as well as weddings and funeral flowers. There were only a few orders – a glitzy restaurant on the Kings Road wanting themed flowers for a private event at the end of the week, three orders for hand-tied birthday bouquets to be delivered to office premises in Victoria on Tuesday and Wednesday, a late order for christening flowers for the following Sunday at St Gabriel’s Anglo-Catholic church in Pimlico, and an enquiry about wedding flowers for a marriage ceremony at the end of May to be held at the fashionable Chelsea Register Office.
It was easy enough to process the orders, check supplies for the arrangements, diarise the deliveries, and respond to the queries. It was when she turned on her laptop and clicked to open CelestialHeadstones.com that the trouble started. It was impossible to get into the website. It had crashed. All she could see was a message on her screen with the words:
‘Sorry, the website CelestialHeadstones.com cannot be found…’
and then, below that, those two infuriating words: ‘Server error’, followed by a series of unintelligible letters and symbols. However many times she refreshed the screen or switched her laptop on and off in growing frustration, it was hopeless. It was impossible to get the website up and running.
Although she hated having to ask for his help – again! – there was nothing for it. That kid in her class at college had practically designed the whole website for her. She didn’t have a clue where to start. He would be the best person to fix it. And what’s more, it was his responsibility to fix it. If the website had crashed, the most likely explanation was that something had gone wrong with his software.
‘Now, what was his name?’ she said to herself. She switched on her mobile to scroll through her contacts and send him a text. It had been switched off since Saturday and when she powered it up, it started to ping, as nine texts from Steve loaded onto th
e screen. Barely glancing down, she deleted them all. She didn’t want anything more to do with him. Now she was focused on the task in hand. ‘Theo – that’s the one,’ she said to herself with satisfaction as she got to the ‘T’s’. His number was saved in her contacts.
Over the course of the next two hours, she sent Theo seven texts, increasingly demanding and insistent, when he failed to respond immediately. Eventually a message came through as she was on her way to the deli to buy a vegan wrap for her lunch.
‘Sorry to hear about your technical issues. I’m out of town until Friday but I can see you after class. Bring your laptop. I’ll run some diagnostics on the system. I’ll need access to my desktop to check the software so come to my student accommodation – Flat 9, Staircase 3, the Cavendish Building. See you there, 2pm.’
*
The days seemed to drag by. Celeste was impatient to get CelestialHeadstones.com back up and running again, disappointed to think that she would be losing clients just when the business was beginning to grow wings. She was desperate for the distraction of being busy with work. She tried to block the memory of Saturday night from her consciousness. She was embarrassed but she was also angry. It wasn’t Steve’s fault, but the unlucky coincidence of the song and the situation had opened the Pandora’s box of bad feelings that tormented her – sorrow and shame and guilt – and (though she knew it went against all the received tenets of psychotherapy that urged everyone to ‘get in touch with your feelings’), the only way she could cope was to seal them up again inside a box in the back of her brain.
There was only one problem. In her panic to leave his flat on the Saturday night, she had run out without taking her coat that Steve, who was so tidy and organised, had carefully hung up for her in the hallway cupboard. It was the only smart coat she owned, designer label, three-quarter-length, in a black wool-cashmere mix. She wore it very rarely. She couldn’t understand what had possessed her to wear it for the date. But she had to have it back. Her father had given it to her for her seventeenth birthday – but that was of no importance – another one of his extravagant, guilt-laden presents. She had worn it to her brother’s funeral service – that in fact being the first and last time she had worn it, until the date with Steve. That was why she had to have it back.
Steve wouldn’t stop texting and tweeting and FB messaging. So, she had decided to ghost him. Before she did so, she sent him one last text, asking him to drop off her coat at Anya’s place of work, a law firm near London Bridge. By Thursday morning, she decided ghosting wasn’t good enough – he wouldn’t give up and leave her alone. She blocked him on all her social media platforms and deleted him from her contacts. From now on he was a non-person, she decided with satisfaction. Her foray into romance had turned sour. She would stay happily single or stick to soulless one-night stands from now on. She had no intention of allowing anyone to get emotionally intimate with her again.
Steve had other ideas. He was genuinely shocked and disturbed by what had happened and wanted an explanation.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon on the Thursday and Celeste was standing behind the counter, making up a hand-tied arrangement for one of their regular customers, when she heard the doorbell jangle and looked up to see Steve walking into the florist’s, holding her black coat folded over his arm. He stood there, quietly watching, while Celeste put together the flowers and tied them with twine. Her hands were shaking so much that it took her three tries to tie the bow and she dropped the scissors as she trimmed the bottom of the stems. But there was nothing she could do. He was a silent witness to her discomfort. She couldn’t run away or tell him to leave, with the customer standing right next to him.
‘I thought I should return this to its rightful owner in person,’ he said when the door finally closed on the customer. They were alone in the shop as Meghan was delivering flowers to the hospital. He held out the coat.
Celeste couldn’t look at him as she took it. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be at work?’ she said.
‘Why didn’t you return my messages?’ said Steve.
‘I’ve been busy,’ said Celeste.
‘Come on! I sent you a hundred messages. It would have taken twenty seconds. And now you’ve blocked me, without a word of explanation. Why? What have I done wrong?’ He raised his voice in exasperation.
She looked up and noticed dark shadows below his eye on one side – he was recovering from a black eye. Celeste heard Meghan coming in through the back entrance and moving around in the cold room. She didn’t want her to hear the conversation.
‘Look, all I know is one minute we’re having a great time and the next minute you’re whacking me in the head and running for the door.’ He gestured to his eye. ‘Look what you did to me. What happened? This isn’t you, Celeste.’
‘Please,’ said Celeste. ‘Leave me alone. I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘I don’t deserve to be blanked out of your life without knowing why. I don’t understand. Did I come on too strong? I thought you were feeling it too.’
‘Well I wasn’t. And I don’t want anything more to do with you.’ She turned away to return some unused stems to the steel buckets. ‘Thank you for bringing my coat. Please go away now. I need to get on.’
For a full minute Steve stood watching her in silence. Celeste could sense Meghan hovering in the doorway behind her.
‘Actually, I’d like to buy some flowers please,’ he said. ‘To brighten up the flat.’
PRESENT
20
I go back to the address in Putney at the crack of dawn on Sunday and install myself in a nearby café in the hope of intercepting your aggressor. I sit at a table by the window checking every passer-by. In the course of the morning I consume six espressos and the ‘Mega All-Day Breakfast Combo’. I get nothing for my efforts apart from indigestion and a searing headache. I can’t be sure who You met last night though the apartment building looks rather modest and functional for someone who drives a red Ferrari.
I repeat the exercise every morning the following week with no success. I have to know. By Saturday I am cranky and tired and two kilograms heavier. I feel like I’m wasting my time.
It turns out I’m not wasting my time though, because just as I am settling my bill, here comes that man from the cinema approaching along the pavement dressed in a suit and dragging a small black suitcase. So, your new man is not the driver of the red Ferrari. Cinema man looks tired and worn at the edges today. Has he been away on business? Come in on a transatlantic red-eye? Or was he thrown out of some other woman’s bed? It comes as no surprise to find out that it’s him You were running away from. I never did like the look of that dude.
*
Celeste didn’t want to make a scene while Meghan was working in the cold room, within easy hearing range.
‘What would you like?’ she said with icy calm.
‘You choose,’ he replied. ‘You’re the expert.’
He watched her intently as she selected foliage and stems in dark greens, purples and blues to complement the neutral colour scheme of his flat.
‘I could have reported you to the police, you know… for assault,’ he said. Celeste kept her eyes down as she placed the flowers in an aesthetically pleasing bouquet in her left hand. Steve spoke very quietly as she worked in silence. He seemed to be captivated by the graceful movements of her fingers and the enticing fragrance of the blooms. It created an intensity between them. He didn’t seem to want to embarrass her either. ‘If this was anyone else, I’d delete her number and move on – but it’s not someone else. It’s you. I can’t just turn my feelings off. I like you. Even after the way you behaved on Saturday night. I can’t walk away. I thought we had a good thing.’
Celeste snipped the ends of the cord and placed the flowers on the counter.
‘No, we didn’t,’ she said. ‘It’s not going to work, Steve. Trust me. I can’t be with you.’
‘Why? Why? How can you be so cold?’ he said passionately. ‘Wha
t made you panic? I’ve been going over and over it in my head. Did I say or do something to offend you?’
‘What do you want from me?’ said Celeste in exasperation.
‘The truth,’ replied Steve. ‘What are you hiding? Is there someone else?’
Suddenly she’d had enough. She didn’t owe this man any explanations. If she had to hurt his feelings to get rid of him, so be it. Forgetting about Meghan, she raised her voice.
‘Yes, there is someone else,’ said Celeste. ‘There always has been and there always will be. Whatever happens, whatever I do, he’ll always be here inside my head.’ She tapped her fingertips against her temple. ‘Do you understand? Now, can you leave me in peace?’
‘I understand perfectly,’ he said grimly. ‘Perhaps you should have thought of that before you put your profile up on Tinder.’
He slapped a twenty-pound note down on to the counter, picked up the flowers and opened the door.
‘Keep the change,’ he said.
There was a metal wastepaper bin screwed to a lamppost a little further along the pavement. Through the glass frontage of the shop, Celeste watched him shove the bouquet into it as he walked briskly away.
*
‘What’s going on?’ said Meghan as she came into the shop front carrying a bucket full of closed daffodils that she had divided up into bunches of ten. ‘Wasn’t that the guy you’ve been dating?’
‘It’s over,’ said Celeste.
She had thought she didn’t care but suddenly she was choking back her tears.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Meghan.
‘It’s OK,’ said Celeste. ‘It never really started.’
Tears were streaming down her face.
No Smoke Without Fire Page 11