Second Life

by S. J. Watson

  I shake my head, even though I want to. I want to so much, but I know I mustn’t. Not now. Now I know what might be possible. Ride it out, I tell myself again. Ride it out.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I can’t.’

  He puts his hand on the table between us. I can’t help myself. I put mine on top of it. ‘I’m sorry.’

  He looks up, into my eyes. He seems nervous, hesitant. ‘Jayne. I get that we hardly know each other, but meeting you feels like the best thing that’s happened since my wife died. I can’t just let you go.’

  ‘I’m afraid . . .’

  ‘Are you saying yesterday was a mistake?’

  ‘No. No, not at all. It’s just . . .’

  It’s just more complicated than that, I want to say. It’s not just about me, and Hugh. There’s Connor, too, and what’s happening in our lives. Kate’s death. Hugh’s case. It’s not an easy time. Nothing is straightforward.

  I find I want to tell him the truth about Kate. Maybe he can be there for me. Impartial. Supportive. He’s lost his wife, after all. He might understand in a way that Hugh, that Anna and Adrienne and the others can’t.

  ‘Just what?’

  Something stops me.

  ‘I don’t want to jeopardize my marriage.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to leave your husband. I’m asking you to come upstairs. Just one more time.’

  I close my eyes. How do I know it’ll be one more time? I remember telling myself that once before, as the needle bit into my flesh for the second time, and then again when it did for the third.

  ‘No.’ And yet, even as I say it, I’m thinking of afterwards, as we lie together, the two of us wrapped in the sheets. I can picture the room, the high ceiling, the gentle draught of the air conditioning. I can see Lukas, sleeping. There’s the tiniest sound as his chest rises and then falls. For some reason, despite the path that’s brought me to him, I realize I feel safe.

  Soon I will go home – back to my real life, back to Hugh and to Connor, back to Adrienne and Anna, back to a life without my sister – but perhaps if I do this first it’ll be different. The pain of her death will not have faded, but it will be blunted. I won’t care quite so much that the person who took her life is still free. Instead I’ll be thinking about this moment, when everything feels so alive and uncomplicated, when all my pain and sorrow have shrunk down, condensed and transformed to this one thing, this one need, this one desire. Me and him, him and me. If I sleep with him again there’ll at least be one more brief moment when there’s no past and no future and nothing else exists in the world except for us, and it will be a tiny moment of peace.

  He takes my hand. He speaks softly.

  ‘Come on. Come upstairs.’

  PART THREE

  Chapter Seventeen

  My new camera arrives. It’s a Canon, a single-lens reflex, not quite top of the range but smaller and lighter than the one I’ve been using for the last few years. I researched it online and ordered it a few days ago. I don’t need it, it’s an extravagance, but I want to get out more, take more photographs on the street, like I used to. It was Hugh’s suggestion that he buy it for my birthday and he looked delighted with himself when he handed me the package on Saturday.

  I opened it later that day, upstairs, and alone, and then took it out, on Upper Street, around Chapel Market and the Angel. I tried a few test shots, and as I brought it to my eye the action felt intuitive, instinctive. When I looked through the viewfinder it felt almost as if this is how I prefer to see the world. Framed.

  I take it out again now, slung round my neck, with a zoom lens I ordered at the same time. It’s very different taking pictures on the move. I have to spot a potential shot among the chaos, and then wait for the perfect moment, all while trying to stay inconspicuous and unobserved. My shots on Saturday were poor; I was indiscriminate. I felt rusty, like a singer who’s spent years in enforced silence.

  I tried not to be disappointed, though. I told myself that once I’d regained my confidence I’d find my subject; for now I just need to take photos and develop my eye. The joy of these shots is in their taking, less so in how they end up.

  But then, that’s how it always was. I think back to the pictures I took in Berlin. It was easy, there. The friendships we forged were deep, people were drawn to us, our place quickly became a refuge for the rootless and abandoned. It was filled with artists and performers, with drag queens, junkies and prostitutes; they came for a few hours, or a few days, or months. I found I wanted to document them all. They fascinated me: they were people for whom identity was fluid, shifting, something they chose themselves, without being constrained by the expectations of others. At first some treated me with suspicion, but they soon realized that, far from trying to pin them down, I was attempting to understand and document their fluidity. They began to trust me. They became my family.

  And always, in the centre, was Marcus. I photographed him obsessively. I took pictures of him as he slept, as he ate, as he sat in a bath full of cool water that ended up looking like sludge, as he worked at a canvas or sketched on the war-scarred streets of what used to be the East. We cooked dinners for everyone, huge pans filled with pasta, served with tomatoes and bread, and I took photos. We went to the Love Parade and took ecstasy and danced to techno with the other freaks, and still I took photos. All the time. It was as if I didn’t consider a life lived unless it was also documented.

  Today I’ve come to the Millennium Bridge. It’s mid-afternoon and very hot – on the walk here the city steam seemed to rise from the streets – but at least here on the bridge there’s a breeze.

  I crouch down to make myself as small as possible and set up my equipment. I drink some of the bottled water I picked up on the way here, then my hand goes back to my camera. I’m scanning faces, looking for the shot, waiting.

  For what? A feeling of otherness, of the extraordinary that resides in the mundane. For a long time I see nothing that interests me. Half the people on the bridge are tourists wearing shorts and T-shirts, while the rest sweat in suits. I take a few shots anyway. I change position. And then I see someone interesting. A man, walking towards me. He’s in his late thirties, I guess, wearing a shirt, a jacket but no tie. At first he seems unremarkable, but then I pick up on something. It’s intangible, but unmistakable. I feel a tingle, my senses are heightened. This man is different from the others. It’s as if he has a gravity, is disturbing the air as he moves through it. I bring my camera to my eye, frame him in my viewfinder, zoom in close. I focus, wait, refocus as he comes towards me. He looks right at me, right down the lens, and although his expression doesn’t change, something seems to connect. It’s as if he both sees and doesn’t see me at the same time. I’m a ghost, shimmering and translucent. I squeeze the shutter release, then wait a second before squeezing it again, and then once more.

  He doesn’t even notice. He looks away, over my shoulder towards Tower Bridge, and keeps on walking. A moment later he’s gone.

  I stay for a while longer, but even without looking at the pictures I’ve taken I know it. I have my shot. It’s time to leave.

  I go through the lobby and up to the room. Lukas comes to the door in a towel; as usual, he’s poured us both a drink – a beer for him, a sparkling water
for me – and once we’ve kissed he hands me mine. I breathe him in, the deep, woody smell of his aftershave, the faint trace of the real him underneath, and smile. I put my camera down on the table. It’s the first time I’ve brought it with me.

  ‘You took my advice.’

  ‘I did. An early birthday present to myself,’ I lie.

  ‘It’s your birthday?’

  ‘Next week. Next Tuesday, in fact.’

  He kisses me again. Tuesday. It’s become our day. We haven’t missed one yet, and in between we chat online. It’s almost as good, but not quite. We share each other’s lives. We describe the things we’d like to do to each other, with each other. We tell each other our most private fantasies. But Tuesday is the day we meet.

  ‘I should’ve known that. I should know when your birthday is.’

  I smile. How could he? It’s something else I haven’t told him, something I’ve kept for myself, along with my husband’s real name, and the fact that I have a son.

  But I have told him the truth about Kate.

  I hadn’t intended to, but last week he was telling me how he’d known from the moment we first began chatting that he wanted to meet me. I felt guilty.

  How could I reply? I only met you because I thought you might have some connection to my dead sister.

  ‘It’s not that simple,’ I said, instead. I decided to be honest, to tell him the truth. There’d been enough lies. ‘I have something to tell you. My sister, the one I told you about? She didn’t kill herself. She was murdered.’

  That familiar look of shock. He reached out to touch me, then hesitated. ‘But . . . ?’

  I told him what had happened, that the only thing taken was an earring. I even described it to him. Gold drop, with a tiny dreamcatcher design with turquoise feathers. I told him about going to see Anna, the list of names I found in Kate’s things, the first time I’d logged on to the website. Encountrz.

  ‘And that’s why you came to meet me?’

  ‘I’m sorry. Yes.’

  He held me close. ‘Jayne, I understand. Maybe I can help.’

  ‘Help? How?’

  ‘There are other sites. Your sister might have been on those, too. I could try to find her.’

  It was tempting, but it felt futile, and I wasn’t sure I could go through it all again. I told him I’d think about it.

  And now he’s here, in front of me. Talking about how he hadn’t known when my birthday was. ‘We’ll do something special,’ he says. He picks up my camera. ‘You’ve been taking photos?’

  Special? I wonder what he means. Go out for a meal, take in a show? It sounds ridiculous.

  ‘I thought it was time. See if I’ve still got it.’

  ‘And do you?’

  I shrug, though I’m being modest. Today, on the bridge, I’d felt like the old me, back when I was in Berlin and taking pictures all the time. I can already feel myself slipping back into my talent. It’s like going home.

  He holds up the camera. ‘May I?’

  I sip my drink. ‘If you like.’

  He turns it on and flicks through the pictures, nodding as he does. ‘They’re good.’

  ‘I brought you some of my old shots. Like you asked?’

  He puts the camera down and takes a step towards me.

  ‘Want to see them now?’

  He kisses me. ‘Later,’ he says, then kisses me again. ‘God, I’ve missed you.’ He slips the towel from his waist and I glance down.

  ‘I’ve missed you, too.’ And even though it’s only been a week since the last time I was in a room like this – and we’ve talked online every day – I mean it.

  We kiss again. I feel him stiffen between us and know that in a moment he’ll be on top of me, and then inside me, and then once again everything will be all right.

  Afterwards, he stands at the window. A gust of wind lifts the curtains and I catch a glimpse of the street outside. We’re on the first floor; I see the sky, wisps of cloud, I hear the murmur of the street, the traffic, the voices. It’s hot in the room, sticky.

  I let my eyes travel the curve of his body, his neck, his back, his behind. I notice his blemishes, the details I don’t see on the camera and forget every time we meet. The mole on his neck, the vaccination scar on his shoulder that matches Hugh’s, the red flush of a birthmark on his upper thigh. It’s been a month now, and these details still surprise me. I grab my camera; he turns as I click the shutter, and when he sees I’ve taken a picture of him his face breaks into the same half-smile I used to see on Marcus.

  ‘Come back to bed. Let’s look at these pictures.’

  We lie, side by side. The envelope I’ve brought with me is between us, its contents spilled out. My work, my past. A pile of glossy ten-by-eights.

  He holds up a picture of Marcus.

  ‘And this one?’

  It’s Marcus in the Mirror, and I tell him the same story that I told Anna, more or less. ‘An ex. That was taken in the bathroom of the flat we lived in.’

  ‘Also in Berlin?’

  ‘Yes.’ I’ve told him about my time there. About what I used to be like, who I was before I became the person I am now.

  ‘You were happy there?’

  I shrug. It’s not an answer.

  ‘Some of the time.’

  ‘Why did you leave?’

  I sigh and turn on to my back. I look at the ceiling, at the curlicues in the plasterwork. When I don’t answer he puts the photo down and moves closer, so that he’s right next to me. I feel the warmth of his body. He must sense my struggle.

  ‘When did you leave?’

  It’s an easier question, and I answer straight away. ‘I went over there in the mid-nineties, and stayed for three or four years.’

  He laughs. ‘When I was at school . . .’

  I laugh, too. ‘You were.’

  He kisses me. My shoulder. ‘It’s a good job I love older women,’ he says.

  And there’s that word again. Love. We haven’t used it. It’s something we’ve approached only obliquely. I love it when you . . . I love the way you . . .

  We haven’t yet lost the verb, the qualifier. We haven’t gone as far as I love you.

  ‘So, I was hanging out, you know. Bars and clubs. Living in a squat.’

  ‘East Berlin?’

  I shake my head. ‘Kreuzberg.’

  He smiles. ‘Bowie . . . Iggy Pop.’

  ‘Yes, though that was years before. I was taking pictures. It started off small, but people liked my stuff. Y’know? I met this guy who ran a gallery. The picture editor at this magazine heard about me, wanted to use me for some pictures. From there it kind of went crazy. Exhibitions, even fashion shoots.’ I pause. I’m approaching it now, this thing I want to tell him, this thing he might not like. ‘This was the mid-nineties. Heroin chic.’

  He says nothing.

  ‘And, well, there was a lot of it about.’

  A beat.

  ‘Heroin?’
>
  I want my silence to be answer enough, but it isn’t. I have to tell him.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You took heroin?’

  I look at him. His expression is unreadable. Is it that hard to believe? A part of me wants to rise up, to defend myself. Plenty of people did, I want to say. Still do. What’s the big deal?

  But I don’t. I force myself to take a deep breath. I want to respond, rather than react. ‘We all did.’ I turn back to face him. ‘I mean, I didn’t at first. I went over there with Marcus. He was an artist. A painter. Very good, very talented. A bit older than me. I met him when he was at art school. It was him who encouraged me to take up photography. When he moved to Berlin, I went with him.’ I nod towards the pictures between us. ‘We fell in with that group—’

  Or they fell in with us.

  ‘A bad crowd?’

  ‘No.’ Again that urge to defend. ‘No. I wouldn’t say that. They were my friends. They looked after me.’ I’m thinking of Frosty, and the others. They weren’t junkies. Or even addicts, not in the way that he probably thinks of the word. ‘They weren’t a bad crowd. They were just . . . we were just . . . different, I guess. We didn’t fit in. We all just gravitated to each other.’

  I hesitate. It’s easier than you think, I want to say. Taking heroin every weekend becomes every other day becomes every day. It’s frightening, going back there. Though not all of my memories are bad, it still feels raw. I’m being dragged back, and down. It’s not a place I can stay too long.

  ‘The drugs were only part of that.’

  ‘So, what happened?’

  ‘When I left?’

  ‘Yes. The other week, you said your husband “saved you”?’

  ‘It got too much.’ I’m being careful. I don’t want to tell him everything, yet I know I must not lie. ‘I needed to get out. Quickly.’ I hesitate, stumbling over the name I’ve given my husband. ‘Harvey was there for me.’