Stuart and I were walking to the Tube. It was still so early it was only just getting light, the streets quiet because it was Saturday and we were both up and out of the house already.
“I thought you weren’t talking to me,” I said at last, trying to keep up with him. My teeth were chattering.
“What?” he said. “What gave you that idea?”
“I thought you were pissed off with me walking out on you on Christmas Day.”
“Oh, that. Not really. I’d probably just had too much wine. Anyway, that was ages ago.”
He’d sent me a text last night, the first one since the
whatever
.
C—any plans for tomorrow? If not I’m taking you out. Be ready at 7 a.m. S x
Half an hour later we were at Victoria Station looking up at the electronic board. I was wrapped in Stuart’s huge jacket, the one that looked as though it was supposed to be for exploring the Arctic, because it was still below freezing and I couldn’t seem to warm up. The jacket came down to just above my knees. I must have looked like a kid, but at least I’d stopped shivering. He’d put a beanie hat on me as well, and some fleece gloves.
At least it was getting light, weak winter sun outside, skimming the underside of the dark gray clouds. The station was still quiet this early on a Saturday, just a few tourists and brave pigeons snacking on bits of pastry, and a lone cleaner driving a bleeping floor polisher. I watched him for a while. He seemed to be deliberately driving it at people who were standing looking up at the giant board, waiting for information, making them pick up all their bags and move.
“Platform fourteen,” Stuart said, “come on.”
The train was warm. We fell into opposite seats and then almost immediately I had to unwrap myself from the huge jacket, pull off the hat. I got down to my fleece underneath and Stuart stuffed the jacket into the space overhead.
“I’m probably going to end up carrying that jacket around all day, aren’t I?” I said.
“No, you wait. It’ll be windy. You’ll be glad you brought it.”
He was right, of course. It was cold and drafty in the station at Brighton, but as we walked down the hill toward the sea the wind got stronger and stronger. By the time we got to the seafront I was even pulling the hood up over the top of the woolly hat, and Stuart was holding my hand tightly in case I blew away. The sea was gray and furious, a white wind of spray and foam stinging our cheeks. We stood for a while clutching on to the blue-painted railings separating us from the shingle and the turmoil beyond, and felt the force of it.
Stuart said something that I couldn’t hear, the words snatched out of his mouth and carried away. Then he took my hand and we went back toward the shelter of the back streets.
It was still early, but even so the stores were busy with people looking for January bargains. I pulled Stuart into a camping store and bought another hat, a smaller navy blue one that came with free gloves, so that Stuart could have his back. We walked around for a while, then found our way into the Laines. It was still busy here, busier in fact because of the narrower spaces between the stores, but the wind wasn’t so fierce, the atmosphere was more relaxed.
But I was expecting to see Lee.
I’d already had a few moments: a man who passed us on the train, bulky blue jacket, blond hair at the top—I never saw his face, but the shape of him was enough to give me a start; as we stood facing the gale on the seafront a man and a woman walking a dog, an Alsatian, along the promenade. It couldn’t possibly have been him, a woman and a dog for heaven’s sake, but even so it made me feel ill.
It was almost ten o’clock—time for tea. We found a café, in the Lanes, just off a small square where a busker played into the cold air, fingerless gloves on an acoustic guitar, a rock voice with no drums or band to support him. We had a cafetière and a pot of tea between us, a small table of dark wood with wooden seats, tucked into a snug corner. Then a man came in, passed our table and walked toward the back of the café. I shrank back into my seat, turned my head.
“What?” Stuart said. “What is it?”
I recovered. “I’m sorry. It’s nothing. What were you saying?”
“That man?” he asked, lowering his voice.
I nodded. “It’s fine, honestly. Sorry.”
“What was his name?” Stuart asked.
I didn’t say it for a moment. I looked away, tried to work out if I was ready for this, ready to share. He didn’t stop looking at me, his gaze steady, unflinching. He wasn’t going to leave it. He wasn’t going to rush me, either, but he wasn’t going to leave it be.
“Lee,” I said. “His name’s Lee.”
He nodded. “Lee. You think you see him.”
“Yes.” I was looking at my hand, in my lap, the nails digging into my palm.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s all part of it, the healing.”
“I saw him even when he was still inside. It’s why I don’t go out much.”
He smiled at me. “You need to let these thoughts come,” he said. “Don’t fight them. Just let them come, accept them, don’t feel guilty or bad. It’s all part of it. Fighting against them will make it all harder.”
He looked over my shoulder at the man I’d seen. “He’s reading the paper,” he said. “Why don’t you take a look?”
For a moment I looked at Stuart as if he’d gone completely mad. His expression didn’t change. “I’m here,” he said. “You’re safe. Have a look, go on.”
Not quite believing that I was actually doing this, I turned and peered around the edge of the wall toward the back of the café: more dark wood tables, couples having lunch just like us, a family with two children eating ice creams of all things, and right at the back, a fair-haired man with a steaming cup in front of him, reading a copy of the
Daily Express
.
My breath caught in my throat and my instinct was to turn, to hide. But I kept looking. It wasn’t him. I already knew it wasn’t him, but it hadn’t stopped the fear, the sudden panic. Now I could see it wasn’t him—he was older, his hair was more gray than blond, the skin around his eyes wrinkled, his face thinner. He wasn’t as bulky as Lee; in fact, without his jacket this man was slender.
He felt the force of my stare and looked up from his paper. There was a moment of eye contact and he smiled. He actually smiled at me. And then there was suddenly no resemblance to Lee at all, and he was just a stranger, a friendly man who was enjoying a coffee and smiling at me.
I smiled back.
“Better?” said Stuart, when I sat back in my chair.
“Yes,” I said.
“You can do this, you know,” he said. “You’re braver than you think you are.”
“Maybe,” I said, drinking my tea. It was warm and delicious.
I was still smiling when we went out of the café back into the Laines. The sun was shining, weakly, but it cheered everything up. We walked back down toward the pier.
The wind had dropped a little but it was still gusty on the pier. We sat in a shelter on the quiet side, watching the waves and the gulls trying to balance on the railings. Out at sea the clouds were black and immense, behind us the sun making everything bright and shiny, reflecting off the wet planks with glistening brilliance.
“Bit breezy, innit?” an old chap said to me. His hat was pulled down low over his ears, fluffy tufts of gray hair waving madly. His glasses were flecked with spray from the waves.
“Just a bit,” I agreed.
He was holding tightly to his wife’s hand. Their hands were old, the skin spotted and wrinkled, his wife’s wedding ring worn paper-thin and loose behind the big knuckles. She had rosy cheeks and blue eyes, a patterned headscarf keeping her hair neat and her ears warm. He chuckled and pointed as a juvenile gull, all brown spots and huge webbed feet, blew off the railings and took flight, swooping madly and fighting against the wind.
We continued walking as far as we could go. The fairground rides were mostly closed, tarpaulins flapping and seats wet. Walking down the other side of the pier was madness—the wind whipping our jeans around our legs, the spray like horizontal rain. The ghost of the West Pier floated on the surface of the rolling sea like the bones of some long-dead sea monster.
We crossed back to the other side and walked back to the seafront, into a steaming fish and chip shop full of people in damp coats, laughing about the wind. We had a big portion of chips out of the wrapper and sat on a wall outside, eating chips with our fingers and listening to the gulls shrieking and calling around us, waiting for us to drop one. I was half expecting one of them to actually snatch a chip from my fingers.
I was listening to Stuart telling me stories about seaside trips he’d had as a child, penny arcades at the end of the pier, sunburned legs and fishing nets on bamboo poles.
“What happened to your parents?” I asked.
“My mum died of cancer when I was fifteen,” he said. “Dad lives near Rachel. He’s all right—getting on a bit. I saw him a couple of months ago, briefly. I’m going to see them next month, I’ve got a few days off from work.”
“Rachel’s your sister?”
“Yes. Older and much wiser. What about your mum and dad?”
“They died in a car accident. I was at university.”
“That must have been tough. I’m sorry.”
I nodded.
“No brothers or sisters?”
“Just me.”
We were down to the last few chips, the rock-like bits at the bottom. Ignoring the signs about not feeding the seagulls, Stuart emptied the last few into the gutter and put the paper in a trash can.
“I feel like booking a vacation,” he said, as we walked back up the hill toward the town center. “Let’s go and find some brochures.”
He took me straight home, which was both good and bad. I didn’t even know what it was I wanted anymore.
We didn’t speak all the way home in the cab, even though he was holding my hand, gently but firmly. I kept my eyes focused out of the window, looking but not seeing as the raindrops chased their way across the window, sparkling like orange jewels in the light from the streetlamps.
He took my keys and opened the front door for me, standing to one side and letting me go first. I didn’t sit down, and neither did he. I caught a glimpse of his face, and to my surprise he looked so broken that I couldn’t look at him again.
“I think we should cool it a bit,” I said. As soon as the words were out of my mouth I felt a flood of relief.
“What?”
“I said—”
“I heard what you said. I’m just not sure I believe it. Why?”
“I just feel—I just think I need a bit of space. I want to go out with my friends more. I want some time to myself. To think.”
I sat down then, perched on the edge of the sofa, knees pressed tightly together. I could feel the tension in the air rising like a tide.
“You get lots of time to yourself when I’m at work.”
“I know,” I said, “and I like it. I don’t like coming home and finding you’ve been in here while I’ve been out. I want you to give me my spare key back.”
“Don’t you trust me?”
“I just like my own space. I like to know where everything is.”
“What the fuck’s that got to do with anything?”
“You coming in here when I’m out. Leaving me messages. Leaving that picture of me under the duvet.”
“I thought you’d like that. Don’t you remember what happened when I took that picture? What we were doing? I remember it. I think about it all the time.”
“I remember you telling me you’d deleted it. You obviously didn’t.”
He didn’t answer.
“I’ve been scared, Lee. Since the burglary. I don’t like you coming in here when I’m not at home. It’s as though my house isn’t mine anymore.”
There was a pause. I could see him in my peripheral vision, standing to my left by the door. He hadn’t moved a muscle, he hadn’t taken his coat off. He was like a solid shadow, a black ghost, a nightmare.
“You want to go back to screwing anyone and everyone,” he said, his voice like ice. “You want to go back to that.”
“No,” I said. “I just want a bit of space, that’s all. I don’t want to see anyone apart from my friends. I just want to—think. To be sure that this is right.”
He took a step forward then, suddenly, and I think I must have flinched or something because when I looked up at him he’d frozen again. His face looked calm, impassive, but his eyes were raging. Without another word he took a step back again, out of the door. I heard the front door open and shut again with a soft click.
He was gone.
I sat motionless for a moment, waiting for something to happen. I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe I thought he was going to come back. Maybe he was going to come back and hit me, or throw something at me, or yell and swear.
Eventually I got up, went upstairs and got changed out of that stupid black dress with its stupid sparkles that I’d already decided I was never going to wear again. It was going in the first bag I took to the thrift shop, no matter what it had cost me to buy. Along with the red one. I wanted to be rid of them both.
It was hours later, when I was lying in bed still wide awake wondering what on earth had just happened, how it had happened, that I realized that he hadn’t given me my key back.
Caroline and I were on our way to Windsor for a meeting with the senior management team. She was supposed to be talking about budgets, and I was there to present the recruitment plans for the new warehouse that was opening in the new year. Caroline was driving and chattering on about work as we sped along the M4. I was exhausted, my throat sore.
Going out of the office is never a good thing for me. It upsets my routine. Already I was planning the checks for when I got home, telling myself that I would have to do it right, do it properly, so that I didn’t end up doing it all damn night again, making a racket that Stuart could hear through the floorboards.
“You look worn out, love,” she said then.
“Do I?”
“Late night, was it?”
“Not really. I think I’m getting a cold or something.”
I went back to gazing out of the window. If only I could sleep, just for a few minutes, I would feel better.
“How’s things going with that adorable man upstairs?”
“Oh. Well, he’s still talking to me after all, it seems. He took me out for the day.”
“That sounds promising.”
“It was nice.”
“You don’t sound sure.”
“We’re just friends, Caroline,” I said.
“Bollocks you are,” she replied.
I laughed, in spite of myself. “He’s not up for anything else, I’m telling you.”
“I wish you’d stop pacing around each other and just get on with it,” she said.
“Look,” I said, “nothing is going to happen. If it was going to happen, it would have done by now. I do like him, at least I think I do. But I prefer being on my own.”
“Don’t you get lonely sometimes?”
“No.”
“Oh, I do. Since Ian left—it’s miserable really. I try to hold it all together for the kids, but you know, when they go to their dad’s at the weekends, the house is so quiet. I was thinking of joining a club, or something. What do you think?”
“You mean like a singles thing? A dating agency?”
Her cheeks were pink. “Well, why not? It’s not easy meeting nice guys, is it? I was kind of hoping—maybe . . .”
“Maybe what?”
“Maybe you’d come with me?”
I stared at the side of her head while she kept her eyes on the road, her fingers gripping the steering wheel. I tried to think of something to say.
“We’re here,” she said, pulling into the parking lot. “Are you ready to face the lions?”