Another Life

by Jodie Chapman

  I shut the door and heard a playful scream outside. Through the open window, I could see Mathilde sitting on Sal’s lap, screaming with pleasure and fear as he tickled her. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t love it,’ he was saying softly, and she was slapping him as he burrowed his fingers under her top.

  Mathilde straddled him. She whispered in his ear and they looked at each other for a moment before kissing passionately. Sal held her face in his hands.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Laura, waiting for me to step aside before taking a cloth from the drawer. She turned her back to the garden and wiped down the side. I opened the fridge and took out another beer.

  ‘Well done,’ I said. ‘That was nice.’

  She said nothing as she wiped the crumbs into the sink. I watched her rinse round and wring out the cloth, then fold it in half and drape it over the tap. We could hear Mathilde still laughing.

  ‘Good.’ She coughed. ‘Shame the burgers were burned.’

  Laura and I rarely argued, but we did that night.

  ‘Sorry if I’m being weird,’ I said as we undressed. ‘It’s just her. I wish Sal would see it.’

  She laughed. ‘See what? He’s happy. If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you were in love with her.’

  My mouth dropped open. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Don’t worry, we all know who you’re really in love with.’ She kicked off her jeans into the corner of the room.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘For all Tilly’s rudeness, I actually quite like her. It’s refreshing being around someone who says what they think and isn’t scared of what might happen. Perhaps that’s why you hate her so much. She’s too brave for you.’

  Laura pulled the sheet up to her chin, reached out to the lamp and the room went dark.

  I stood there for a minute, my arms folded. The music from a house party down the street drifted in through the open window.

  I picked up my pillow and went downstairs.

  2010

  The Wedding

  I was two days past thirty when I next saw Anna.

  It was at the wedding of a childhood friend. Dan was a boy from school who morphed into a drinking mate down the pub and would later become a friendly face on the football circuit. He became good friends with Sal.

  Sal and I headed up to the wedding together. It was at a small, dark registry office in North London, with tatty red chairs and heavy curtains. I’d spent the morning deciding which suit to wear. Grey with a faint red check or a navy. When Sal arrived, he took one look at them laid out on the bed and said, ‘Grey.’

  I looked at him. ‘Is that seriously what you’re wearing?’

  He glanced down at his clothes – a Hawaiian shirt, blue trousers and a pale pink jacket. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  I picked the navy.

  We arrived as a white hackney cab was pulling up. Taking our seats in the ceremony room – packed with grey suits and colourful hats – I tried to ignore the call of the Marlboros from my jacket pocket.

  When the music started, we stood and turned to face the entrance, and that’s when I saw her. Across the room in a red dress. Staring straight at me.

  I don’t know whether she smiled or waved, because I instantly put my hands in my pockets and looked at the bride. I don’t remember anything about the ceremony. I was just conscious of the back of my head and that I was glad I’d worn the navy.

  They vowed and kissed and walked back out, and I could finally have my cigarette.

  The procession outside didn’t seem to be moving, so I took the side entrance and slipped out into summer.

  I lit up and took a deep drag. There. Instant release between the shoulders. I walked along and stood at the corner where I could watch the crowd milling around the registry steps. There she was, at the back. Alone.

  After the confetti throw, there were happy whoops and the crowd began to disperse. Someone shouted ‘Anna’ and she turned, smiling, and caught sight of me in the background. I didn’t look away this time. The power of a cigarette.

  When she reached me, she folded her arms and said, ‘Hello, stranger.’

  I leant in and gave her a hug, holding the cigarette away. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Still killing yourself,’ she said with a friendly smile.

  I took a final drag, threw it on the ground and immediately regretted it. What a waste.

  ‘Bride or groom?’ I said, playing with my collar which refused to sit over my tie.

  ‘Jess and I were at art school together,’ she said, watching me fumble. ‘I’m a painter now.’

  I acted like this was a surprise. ‘What do you paint?’

  ‘Theatre and film sets, mainly. But I paint my own work too. Here, let me.’ She reached out and smoothed my collar with a steady hand. ‘You here alone?’

  I nodded in the direction of the crowd as Sal came towards us. ‘You remember my brother?’

  ‘Of course.’ She smiled as he reached us. ‘Hello, Sal.’

  I watched the recognition cloud over Sal’s face, and he looked from her to me and back again. ‘Anna! Look at you. Still gorgeous, I see.’ He gave her a long hug. ‘It must be, what, five years?’

  ‘Seven,’ I said.

  ‘You always were a charmer, Salvatore,’ said Anna, laughing. She smoothed her hair and I saw the flash of gold on her finger.

  ‘I hate to be the one to break up the party,’ said Sal, casually draping an arm around her shoulders, ‘but as is the custom with modern nuptials, we’re being herded on to a red double-decker and shipped off to the reception. I don’t know about you kids, but I’m dying for a drink. Shall we?’

  Sal swung Anna around and began walking with her towards the bus, his finger looped through his pink jacket over his shoulder. I took another look at the cigarette on the ground – definitely not salvageable – and began to follow. Anna was laughing as he whispered in her ear. Sal had always been the one who could talk.

  The reception was near Tufnell Park at a twenty-first-century incarnation of a pub, with farmhouse tables and walls in fashionable grey. The food was served on chopping boards, and trays were filled with jam jars of Pimms with polka-dotted straws.

  When we arrived, Sal immediately disappeared in a crowd of footballers watching the match on someone’s phone. I fetched Anna and myself a drink and nodded towards an obliging wall outside.

  ‘So where’s your plus-one?’ I said.

  She hitched up her dress and carefully inched on to the wall. ‘Not his vibe. I knew they were tight with numbers, so I said I’d come alone.’ She smoothed her lap. ‘You know I got married?’

  ‘I did.’ I lit another cigarette. It would be a day I’d regret not bringing a second pack. ‘Why’s it not his vibe?’

  She sipped her wine. ‘He wouldn’t know anyone. Some people are like that, I guess.’

  ‘Not much fun going to a wedding on your own, though.’

  ‘I can take care of myself.’

  I smiled. ‘Oh, I know you can.’

  Across the road, the photographer was arranging a family line-up, and the bride’s grandparents were loudly complaining that the backdrop was of a laundrette.

  ‘If I did it all again, it would be like this,’ said Anna.

  ‘Swearing grannies?’

  She smiled. ‘Pub lunch, laundrette, sirens raging. It’s more real, somehow.’

  I couldn’t bring myself to ask, but she went on anyway.

  ‘Mine was all the trimmings. Stately home, fancy car, second cousins. My mother-in-law wouldn’t have had it any other way.’ She made a face and drained her glass.

  ‘I can’t imagine you taking orders from a mother-in-law.’

  Anna shrugged. ‘How many twenty-year-olds can afford a wedding? I wasn’t footing the bill so I went along with it. And everything went to plan. The sun shone, my bridesmaids looked perfect, everybody danced. Then just before we left, I hugged someone and said, “I can’t believe it’s over.” And they
replied, “Over? It’s only just begun.”’

  We looked at each other.

  ‘Drink?’ I said.

  When I took my seat for the meal, I found myself between Sal and a nice-looking blonde. I introduced myself and decided that for the next two hours, I would be the attentive and interesting Nick. I’d clocked Anna’s location when we sat down, and throughout all three courses, I didn’t look at her once.

  The pavement outside was packed with smokers and the drinks were kicking in. Sal held forth, loudly recalling a winning goal. I got a drink from the bar and went towards the staircase at the back. Tables were being pushed to the edges of the room as the band tuned up for the first dance. I climbed the stairs and moved towards the open window, and there was Anna on the balcony, watching the crowd, alone.

  I cleared my throat. She turned.

  ‘Room for one more?’ I said, stepping through. I passed her my glass to hold as I cupped my hands and lit my final cigarette.

  ‘There’s something incredibly arrogant about a person who lights up next to a non-smoker.’

  I exhaled into the sky above her head. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ she said, handing me back my drink.

  ‘I wish I could stop.’

  ‘But you’re addicted.’

  I looked at her. ‘I’m addicted.’

  She glanced over the balcony. Her skin was backlit from the fading sun between the buildings. ‘You’re a man, aren’t you?’

  I coughed. ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Explain something to me.’ She gestured towards the crowd below. ‘Their conversation is all we thrashed you, you dived, we’re above you. It’s relentless. Why do men talk like that?’

  I leant next to her on the balcony and our arms touched. ‘About football? Something to talk about, I guess. A language. It means we don’t have to talk about anything real.’

  ‘But it’s out of your control. None of them scored any goals. Some millionaire did. Why talk with such passion about a result you have no involvement in?’

  My eyes fixed on Sal, chatting animatedly and passing around a joint. ‘I call it healthy competition. Which would you rather – they talk about football or kick each other’s heads in?’

  She nudged me with her elbow. ‘Stop making sense.’

  There was a pause, and I wished I could have leant across and kissed her. Instead, I said, ‘So really, how are you?’

  She pulled at the end of a ribbon tied to the balcony and gave a wry smile. ‘How long have you got?’

  ‘How are you getting home?’

  She didn’t reply straight away, curling the ribbon between her fingers. ‘I’m at a hotel. You?’

  ‘Same.’

  There was a shout from below, and the drunken beginning of a football chant.

  ‘There’s something I’ve wanted to say to you for years,’ she said, turning her body to face me. The strap of her dress had slipped from her shoulder, and she was so close I could pick up her scent. Jasmine.

  ‘Those nights when I stayed at your house … You never pushed me into doing stuff. I want to acknowledge that.’

  I reached out and lifted her strap on to her shoulder. Seven years since I’d touched her skin. ‘No problem.’

  She looked at me, long and hard. That’s the only way to describe it.

  ‘That day at the lake …’ she said, and then a loud voice announced the first dance.

  The crowd began moving in. We waited until the pub door slammed, the howling subsided, then we climbed back through the window.

  After the bride and groom had performed their choreographed dance, the party began. I stood by Sal and watched Anna dance. She threw up her arms as she spun round and I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

  Later, I went outside for a bummed smoke. It was dark except for a lone streetlight and the warm glow through the windows. I watched Anna move through the room in her red dress and hug the couple. Then she was at my side.

  ‘Listen,’ she said, taking my arm. ‘If you’re not busy tomorrow, let’s meet up? Unless you have plans. It just feels like there’s more to say.’

  ‘Where shall we meet?’

  She smiled. ‘Your number’s still the same? I’ll call you.’ She put her hand out for a passing black cab, then she jumped in and was gone.

  Anna said to meet her at eleven at the Sir John Soane’s Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. It was raining.

  At a quarter to eleven, I got out of the cab and ran up the entrance steps. It was the kind of rain that soaked within seconds, and I was glad of the umbrella I had swiped from the hotel.

  Of course she was late.

  I saw her rushing down the square on the side of the park towards the museum. The rain was fierce by now, and she held a thin jacket over her head as she ran. She wore a white summer dress, drenched. I jogged down to meet her with my umbrella, and she smiled when she saw me.

  ‘Quick, quick,’ she said as we ran through the puddles.

  We stood in the doorway, laughing, her wet dress clinging to her skin.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ she said. ‘What a state I am.’

  When she came out of the restroom a few minutes later, her hair hung long and black around her face, and I thought to myself, This is what she looks like wet, this is what she looks like. A familiar picture appeared in my mind of her in a bikini, swimming in a lake. And then there was a sinking feeling in my stomach, hard and heavy. I didn’t know what to say, so I stood there with my hands in my pockets and looked at the floor.

  The museum was the home of some dead architect who’d bought three townhouses and knocked them together. It was just like Anna to meet me here. She could talk me through the rooms, point out facts, feel satisfied that I was completely out of my depth.

  We walked silently through the rooms. A narrow winding staircase led downstairs and my hand followed hers down the banister. We stepped into the crypt – a series of dark, cave-like rooms crammed with ancient artefacts, pots, friezes and a sarcophagus covered in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Light streamed through the domed window in the ceiling two storeys up and bathed it in a churchy glow.

  ‘I’m trying to understand why you’ve brought me to a tomb,’ I said, peering inside the bath-like structure.

  ‘My first kiss was in a graveyard.’ She smiled. ‘I was twelve and he was fifteen. We leant up against a headstone and smoked a joint, then he kissed me and put his hand up my top.’

  ‘Did you slap him?’

  She looked at me with stars in her eyes. ‘I loved it.’

  We stepped out into the sun. The rain had moved on but the sky was black, and the rays streaming through made everything seem unreal. Ever since that day, I’ve noticed that after it rains, there’s often the most glorious light.

  We stood on the pavement, a few feet apart. Her dress was almost dry and no longer clung to her legs, but I looked at them anyway.

  ‘So,’ she said – and I’m sure she caught me looking – ‘Where do we go from here?’

  From there, we went to Hoxton Square.

  Scattered about the park were groups of people, enjoying lunch in the midday sun. The cloud must have missed the square, because the grass crunched beneath our feet.

  We chose an empty corner under a leafy tree. I thought about offering my jacket as a blanket, and although you never know which way that’ll go, I did it anyway. She accepted. I unscrewed the cap on the bottle of rosé we’d bought from the corner shop and handed it to her for the first swig. I made a joke about being like teenagers. She laughed and a blush crept up my neck.

  ‘So what happened to Nick the writer?’

  I took a long sip. ‘What happens to all of us.’

  ‘Which is …?’

  ‘Life?’

  She tutted. ‘Pathetic excuse.’

  I nodded in agreement. ‘And hardly true of you. The girl who said she wanted to be a painter has gone on to be exactly that.’

  Anna pushed her palm out further on the grass so it al
most touched my elbow. ‘I sometimes write too.’

  I raised my eyebrows, although nothing about her surprised me. ‘I imagine you’re very good at it. Far better than me, no doubt.’

  ‘So you don’t write at all any more?’

  ‘Sal gave me a notebook for my birthday a few years ago and I write pages if I’m in the mood. Something tells me I’ll write a few tonight.’

  I brushed her fingers as I passed the bottle.

  ‘I find writing so cathartic,’ said Anna. ‘It feels similar to painting, except you hold a pen instead of a brush, and it’s easier crossing out words than scraping paint off canvas.’

  ‘I’d like to find a way of saying my stuff out loud and poetry seems to help.’

  ‘We should do a swap,’ she said, raising the wine to her lips. ‘Send me some words and I’ll do the same.’

  I shook my head. ‘No chance.’

  She pulled at the grass and the blades fell through her fingers. ‘I saw you looking yesterday.’

  I took a sip from the bottle and said nothing.

  ‘At my hand.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Some people never take it off,’ she said, playing with the ring on her finger. ‘From the second it goes on, they keep it there all their lives. Superstition. Isn’t that funny?’

  ‘And you?’

  She took the bottle and smiled. There was sadness to it. ‘It’s just a ring.’

  We passed the wine between us and watched the park thicken with hot, suited bodies and plastic-wrapped food. The air hummed with the easy laughter of the Friday crowd, and I noticed a young couple nearby, out of earshot, lying next to each other in a tangled embrace. The way they lay, parallel to the earth, eyes only for each other. It brought to mind memories I couldn’t forget.

  ‘I was a mess after that summer,’ I said, turning the empty bottle over in my hands. ‘I thought you’d come back to me. Give her space, I thought, and she’ll come back.’ I looked at her. ‘And you never did.’

  She gave a quiet shrug. ‘I made it clear I had to get married. You made it clear you never would.’

  ‘We were so sure of everything back then. How we wanted our lives to be.’