The Case of the Missing Boyfriend (48 page)

‘Yes, well, now you know,’ I say.

‘The thing is, CC,’ he says.

‘That you’re not available,’ I say. ‘Yes, don’t worry. I got that.’

And then I realise why. Of course. I’m too late. I would be. Victor has met someone else. At that second, I am so disgusted with my own stupidity I could throw myself off a cliff there and then . . . well, except that there isn’t a cliff in the restaurant of course. But really, I could. For this guy, this gorgeous, smiling, clever, beautiful guy has been asking me out for nine months . . .
nine months!
And all the while I have been hunting high and low . . . I have been to speed dating, I have followed random perverts to Nice, and he was here; Victor was here in front of my very eyes from the start. Only I was too goddamned stupid to see it.

‘You’ve met someone else,’ I say. ‘Of course.’

Victor frowns. ‘What ever happened to women’s intuition?’ he asks.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Never mind . . . No. Look, that’s not it at all. It’s just that I’m leaving.’

‘For France.’

‘Mark told you?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you know,’ Victor says with a shrug. ‘I just don’t see . . . unless . . . Are you one of those hopeless cases who never grabs at anything until it isn’t available any more? Is
that
why this is happening now? Because it’s bloody irritating.’

And he has me almost convinced. For a minute I think,
Maybe yes. Maybe that’s my problem.
‘I . . .’

‘Sorry, that was rude,’ Victor says, laying his right hand over mine. ‘But it’s just so . . .’ he shrugs.

‘I really thought you were gay,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry. Otherwise I would have . . .’

‘You could have just asked me,’ Victor says.

‘I just assumed.’

‘Anyway, yes. The timing’s . . . well, impossible really. Because I’m going to France. As soon as the sale of my share of the practice is signed. I’m hoping in a couple of weeks, or at worst by the end of the year. I’ve been dreaming of this forever, and, when Darren died . . . well, it makes you think about things, something like that; it makes you want to get on with things.’

I pull my hand away. ‘I understand entirely.’ I consider telling him about my own dreams of another life, but realise that it will come across as cloying. He could only end up thinking that the real reason I’m approaching him now is because, like Saddam, I see him as a ticket to a new life; because I want to hitchhike a lift on the back of his adventure.

I sigh deeply. ‘Look, I’m so sorry, can we please try to forget all that and just have lunch?’

Victor nods. ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘That would be sweet.’

‘So tell me about your farm.’

‘Well it’s not really a farm. Not yet,’ Victor says.

And so he tells me all about it. He tells me of the tumbledown farmhouse he has bought and all the work that needs doing on it. He tells me of the land he has bought from the ageing neighbours. He tells how he’s been to visit a friend’s smallholding in the Lake District to learn how to rear goats and make cheese.

I half listen, merging in my mind’s eye Victor’s dreams with my own. And with the other half of my brain, I desperately search for a way to salvage this stupid silly missed opportunity. But his departure is too soon, and everything has happened the wrong way around, and the one phrase that is pulsing through my brain like tribal drums is the one phrase that I can’t say, the one phrase that on a first date would make
any
man run a mile. And so, as I watch him waving his hands around as he describes the shape of the outbuildings, as I watch his gleaming eyes, his face ever more youthful as he explains the project with a crazy level of excitement, it is all I can do to stop that internal chant spilling out from between my lips.
Take me with you. Take me with you
, it goes.

Seize the Day

By the time I get back to Primrose Hill, I’m feeling thoroughly desolate.

I dump my bag on the kitchen table and head through to the lounge and hurl myself onto the couch. I feel swollen like a balloon, as if the pressure of my unexpressed desires, of the words that pride and reason would not let me pronounce has made me swell and stretch to bursting point.
Take me with you. Take me with you. Take me with you.
I can still feel them, lodged in my throat, suffocating me. But of course there was no way to say them without sounding desperate, or needy, or indeed, utterly, utterly crazy.

And now there is nothing left to do except sit on this sofa and wait, like Tom Hanks on a beach, for the tide to bring something else, another chance meeting with Victor, or another Victor perhaps, and hope that, just maybe, next time, I won’t be so stupid.

But being honest with myself, what are the chances of either now?

I hear my BlackBerry ringing but ignore it. Without even looking, I know it will be Mark enquiring after my lunch-date.

I sit, numbly, my hands folded on my lap, and my eyes start to water and then my throat constricts and I blink, and tears start to dribble down my cheeks. I hear the voice of the shrink saying, ‘That
is
crying,’ and think,
Some victory.

I hear the mobile ring again in the other room but ignore it. Then my body shudders and with a juddering gasp – even though I’m not entirely convinced that I shall ever get back out again – I let go of the ropes and allow myself to fall into the pit. I weep for Victor and then Dad and Waiine, and Darren, and for every aspect of my stupid, stupid fucked-up life.

I cry self-indulgently for an hour or so and then, a little surprised, note that the flood has abated, and that the stock of tears was, apparently, finite after all. But I’m left feeling emptied and numb – not better at all.

I blow my nose and return to the kitchen and wash my face at the kitchen sink. The tap water seems to dance with an unusual sparkle, and I realise that a square of sunlight is illuminating one corner of the sink. It only covers a couple of square feet, but it’s been years since I have seen direct sunlight in my kitchen. I peer out at the Leylandii and see that the branches are drooping unusually, and that some of the lower branches even look a little brown, and I remember Darren offering to kill it for me, and remember jokingly saying yes, and wonder . . .

I shake my head and glance back at the shimmering tap, at the light glancing off the BlackBerry’s screen.

I pick it up and listen to my messages.

The first is from Mark saying that Victor is asking him for my number and asking if he can give it. ‘Why on Earth didn’t
you
give him your number?’ he says. ‘You’re useless. You’re completely useless.’

The second is from SJ asking me to call her back. ‘I have some news,’ she says, simply.

As I position my finger over the button to call her back, I hear a knock at the door, and thinking, ‘Mark! The tenacious bugger,’ I sigh and cross the hallway to turn him – as gently as possible – away.

When I open the door, however, it’s not Mark that I find on the doorstep but Victor. He looks serious. Stressed even.

‘Victor?’ I say.

‘Sorry, I’m disturbing you,’ he says.

‘Are you OK? You look funny,’ I say.

‘You look worse,’ he says.

‘Shit,’ I say, rubbing at what I don’t doubt are my panda eyes. ‘Bloody mascara,’ I say.

‘Are you OK, CC?’ he asks, reaching out to touch my shoulder. ‘Because you look like you’ve been . . .’

And then my face collapses anew, and my body shudders. Victor steps forward and first rubs my shoulders tentatively and then, as I continue to sob, wraps his arms around me, and I think,
Nice one CC. That’ll seduce him.

‘Hey. Hey!’ Victor says.

‘I never cry,’ I gasp.

‘No. I can see that,’ he says. He just sounds embarrassed.

‘It’s just . . . bloody . . . everything. I’m just so useless. I’m completely useless.’

‘You’re not,’ he says, rubbing my back and pressing the side of his head against my wet cheek. ‘You’re beautiful and funny and smart, and a surprisingly good salsa dancer.’

I manage to merge a laugh and a gasp into an entirely convincing but not very seductive piggy noise.

Victor steps back and looks into my eyes with wry amusement, then, glancing behind me, leads me into my lounge.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I say. ‘It’s just been such an awful few weeks. With work, and stuff with my mother, and Darren, and now today . . .’

He sits me on the sofa, reaches for the box of tissues and then crouches in front of me. ‘Here,’ he says, proffering the tissue.

‘I’m not like this,’ I snivel. ‘Honestly I’m not.’

‘I know,’ he says. ‘I’ve seen you being not-like-this, remember? But shit gets us all down sometimes.’

I blow my nose. ‘Sorry. Jesus! So . . . what? How come you’re here? Did Mark give you my address?

‘I called him, but he wanted to ask you first. He’s loyal that one.’

‘He is.’

‘So no. I called the office and got it from your file. Are you OK now?’ he asks. ‘Is there something . . .’

‘No, I’m fine. I’ll be fine, really. It must just be hormones or something. I’m all over the place at the moment.’

‘OK. Sure. Well . . . maybe now’s not the time.’

‘For what? Why are you here?’

‘I just didn’t want to . . . well, to leave things like that.’

‘Meaning?’

‘I . . . Well. I really like you, CC. A lot. I always did. And it’s stupid, I mean, just because I’m moving . . . I . . . I don’t know what you think, but maybe . . . I just thought, perhaps we could stay in touch. Maybe you could even visit me . . . and if, say, suppose you like it down there . . . . Oh, I don’t know. This sounds stupid now.’

I’m aware that I’m grimacing, my teeth clenched against a stupid smile and/or a new flood of tears. And then, I can hold them no longer, and a fresh batch of them rolls down my cheeks.

Through my blurred vision, I see Victor look confused, and then disappointed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I knew it was stupid even before I came here. I sound like a bunny-boiler. I should go.’

But as he stands, something in me shifts. I think,
No, not this time.
I hear Darren, his voice clear as a bell. It sounds like he’s in the room. ‘If you do know what you want, then seize the day, CC,’ he says.

‘No,’ I say quietly.

‘No?’

I stand and throw my arms around him. ‘No,’ I say, again, my tears now wetting his cheek.

‘CC?’ he asks, trying to pull away to look at me. ‘You’re freaking me out now.’

‘I can’t let you do that,’ I say. I lean back and look at him and start to smile.

‘You can’t?’ he says

‘No,’ I say. ‘I can’t.’

And then, bracing myself for the prickle of his stubble, I do it. I kiss him.

The kiss is my first ever sober kiss with Victor, but amazingly I remember the feel of his lips, I still remember the physical sensation of the last time at Mark’s party, and it feels comfortable, it feels like home.

Victor laughs and then brushes his nose against mine, and then I slightly part my lips and lean into him again, taking his bottom lip gently between my own.

‘God,’ he groans.

I pull away and smile at him, and we look deeply into each other’s eyes.

‘I
am
going, though,’ he says, after a few seconds.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I am going. To France. Whatever happens, you can’t expect me not to go.’

‘I know,’ I say.

‘If we do . . .
do
this, you can’t then ask me not to go. I’ve been planning it for years.’

I shrug. ‘Maybe I don’t care,’ I say.

‘You say that now, but once I’m in the Alps and you’re in . . .’

I raise a finger to his lips to silence him. ‘Shush . . .’ I say. ‘Maybe I need a change too.’

Victor frowns at me, then raises one eyebrow. ‘Really?’ he says.

I nod. ‘Really,’ I say.

‘Well then that’s something we can work with,’ Victor says.

‘It is,’ I agree.

And then he grins, and leans towards me again. ‘In the meantime,’ he murmurs, putting one hand behind my head and reeling me in.

The Day Before You Came

An hour later, once Victor has gone, I sit on my sofa and think about phoning SJ but decide that I can’t call her without telling her what’s happened, and that it’s premature to tell her what
has
happened. I need to wait at least until I see if he returns.

I look around the room.

With the exception of Victor’s scarf which he has forgotten, nothing in my lounge has changed. And yet, everything looks different. The scarf changes the entire room, in fact,
I
feel like a completely different person.

I am CC Kelly who seizes the day. I am CC Kelly who, incredibly, unbelievably would appear to have a new boyfriend: a beautiful, wonderful man with dreams of farms, and plans to make those dreams come true. A beautiful man with olive skin and a stubbly chin (
just
within acceptable limits, it turns out) who is coming back in two hours’ time for dinner, and who, if I have anything to do with it, will be staying the night.

As I shower and change, and fix my face, I can hardly believe it’s true. When did that happen?

It was Brian who taught me that nothing is permanent, and of course, Victor could still panic and change his mind. He could still phone and inexplicably cancel. He could still decide that it’s all a bit too heavy, and do a runner.

But as I rummage in the freezer for something for dinner and hesitate with the thought that perhaps I shouldn’t defrost two tuna steaks until he returns, I decide that no, this
will
happen. The act of putting the two steaks out to defrost, of laying the table for two, of cooking courgette gratin for two feels superstitious – it feels in fact like black magic.

Once everything is ready I lean back against the counter-top and dare to look at the kitchen clock. It’s five past eight. He should be here by now.

And at that instant, there’s a knock at the front door. I cross the hall and open it.

Yes, it was Brian who taught me that everything can change in an instant, Brian who taught me that no matter how good things are, all it takes is a gust of wind and the whole shebang comes toppling down.