Killing Me Softly

I pulled out a couple of books at random and looked at their index under the Ts. There he was, in On Top of the World, a coffee-table book about Himalayan climbs. Just the sight of his name in type made me shiver and feel queasy. It was as if I had been able to pretend he didn’t exist outside that room in Soho, didn’t have a life except for the life he spent with me, on me. The fact that he was a climber, something I knew nothing about, had made it easier for me to treat him as some kind of fantasy figure; a pure object of desire, only there when I was there. But he was in this book, in black and white. Tallis, Adam, on pages 12–14, 89–92, 168.

I turned to the section of colour photographs in the middle of the book and stared at the third one, in which a group of men and a few women in nylon or fleece jackets, snow and rubble at their backs, smiled into the camera. Except he wasn’t smiling, he was gazing. He hadn’t known me then; he had a whole other life. He probably loved someone else then, though we had never talked about other women. He looked younger, less bleak. His hair was shorter and had more of a curl to it. I turned the pages and there he was, on his own and looking away from the camera. He was wearing sunglasses, so it was difficult to make out his expression or what he was looking at. Behind him, in the distance, there was a small green tent, and beyond that a swoop of mountain. He had thick boots on and there was wind in his hair. I thought he looked distressed, and although that was long ago, in another world and before me, I had an intense desire to comfort him. The agony of my renewed desire took my breath away.

I snapped the book shut and put it back on the shelf. I took out another book and again looked in the index. There were no Tallises there.

‘I’m sorry, we’re closing now.’ The young man was back again. ‘Do you want to buy anything?’

‘Sorry, I didn’t realize. No, I don’t think so.’

I made it to the door. But I couldn’t do it. I turned back again, snatched up On Top of the World and took it over to the till. ‘Am I in time to buy this?’

‘Of course.’

I paid and put it in my bag. I wrapped it in my new blue shirt, so that it was quite hidden.

Seven

‘That’s it, pull the left string down a bit, careful not to collide with that other one. There, isn’t that satisfying?’

In each hand, I held a spool of string that twitched and snagged in the gusts of wind. The kite – Jake’s present to me from Edinburgh – swooped above us. It was a rather swanky red and yellow stunt kite, with a long ribbon that slapped when the wind changed.

‘Careful now, Alice, it’s going to crash. Pull.’

Jake had an absurd bobble hat on his head. His nose was red in the chill. He looked about sixteen, happy as a boy on an outing. I tugged on both strings randomly, and the kite veered and plummeted. The strings went slack and it accelerated into the ground.

‘Don’t move. I’ll get it,’ yelled Jake.

He went running off down the hill, picked up the kite, walked with it until the strings were taut again, then sailed it up into the low white sky once more, where it pulled at its reins. I thought of trying to explain to Jake that the good bits of kite-flying – that is, when it was briefly airborne – didn’t, as far as I was concerned, compensate for the bits where it was lying on the grass with the line having to be untangled by clumsy numb fingers. I decided not to.

‘If it snows,’ said Jake, back beside me and panting, ‘let’s go tobogganing.’

‘What’s got into you? You’re a bit energetic, aren’t you?’

He stood behind me and slid his arms around me. I concentrated on steering the kite.

‘We could use that big kitchen tray,’ he said, ‘or just some large bin bags. Or maybe we should buy a toboggan. They don’t cost much and it would last us years.’

‘In the meantime,’ I said, ‘I’m starving. And I can’t feel my fingers.’

‘Here.’ He took the kite from me. ‘There are gloves in my pocket. Put them on. What time is it?’

I looked at my watch. ‘Nearly three. It’ll be getting dark.’

‘Let’s buy some crumpets. I love crumpets.’

‘Do you?’

‘There’s lots you don’t know about me.’ He started reeling in the kite. ‘Did you know, for instance, that when I was fifteen I had a crush on a girl called Alice? She was in the year above me at school. I was just a spotty little boy to her, of course. It was agony.’ He laughed. ‘I wouldn’t be young again for anything. All that worry. I couldn’t wait to grow up.’

He knelt on the ground, carefully folded the kite and put it away in its narrow nylon bag. I didn’t say anything. He looked up and smiled. ‘Of course, being grown-up has its problems too. But at least you don’t feel so awkward and self-conscious all the time.’

I squatted down beside him. ‘What are your problems now, then, Jake?’

‘Now?’ He frowned then looked surprised. ‘Nothing, really.’ He put his arms on my shoulders, nearly unbalancing me. I kissed the tip of his nose. ‘When I was with Ari I felt I was always on trial, and was never quite coming up to scratch. I’ve never felt that with you. You say what you mean. You can be cross, but you’re never manipulative. I know where I am.’ Ari was his previous girlfriend, a tall, big-boned, beautiful woman with russet hair, who designed shoes that I had always thought looked like Cornish pasties, and who had left Jake for a man who worked for an oil company and was away for half the year.

‘What about you?’

‘What?’

‘What are your grown-up problems?’

I stood up and pulled him to his feet. ‘Let’s think. A job that’s driving me insane. A phobia about flies and ants and all creepy-crawly things. And bad circulation. Come on, I’m freezing.’

We really did have crumpets, horrid plasticky things with butter running through the holes making a mess. Then we went to see an early-evening film, and there was a sad bit at the end which allowed me to cry. For once, we didn’t join everybody for drinks at the Vine or a curry, but went to a cheap Italian restaurant near the flat, just the two of us, and ate spaghetti with clams and drank abrasive red wine. Jake was in a nostalgic mood. He talked some more about Ari, and about the women before her, and then we did the whole how-we-first-met routine again – which is every happy couple’s best story. Neither of us could remember when we had first set eyes on the other.

‘They say the first few seconds of a relationship are the most important ones,’ he said.

I remembered Adam, staring at me across a road, blue eyes holding me. ‘Let’s go home.’ I stood up abruptly.

‘Don’t you want coffee?’

‘We can make some at home.’

He took it as a sexual invitation, and in a way it was. I wanted to hide somewhere – and where better than in bed, in his arms, in the dark, eyes shut, no questions, no revelations? We knew each other’s bodies so well it almost felt anonymous: naked flesh against naked flesh.

‘What on earth is this?’ he said afterwards, as we lay sweatily against each other. He was holding On Top of the World. I’d pushed it under my pillow last night, when he was away in Edinburgh.

‘That?’ I tried to sound casual. ‘Someone at work lent it to me. They said it was brilliant.’