They had exchanged a look.
“He’s all right,” said Pat. “But it would be nice to talk.”
“I can tell you all about everyone on the stair,” promised Domenica. “Not that there’s much to relate, but there is a bit. You may as well know about your neighbours before you meet them.”
Pat had been told to ring Domenica’s doorbell at six-thirty, which gave her time to get back from the gallery and have a bath before she crossed the landing. Bruce had already arrived at the flat when she came home and he was sitting in the kitchen reading a catalogue.
“Sold any paintings today?”
“No.” She paused. “Well almost, but not quite.”
Bruce laughed. “I don’t think that gallery is going to do spectacularly well. I was hearing about him, you know, your boss, Matthew. Walking cash-flow problem. It’s only the fact that his old man pays the bills that keeps him going.”
“We’ll see,” said Pat.
“Yes,” said Bruce. “We’ll see. And if you need a new job, I can get you one. A friend of mine needs somebody to do some market research. He said . . .”
“I’m fine,” said Pat.
“Well, just let me know,” said Bruce, returning to his catalogue.
“And by the way, have you seen my hair gel?”
For a few moments Pat said nothing. She opened her mouth, but then closed it again.
“Well?” asked Bruce. “Have you seen it?”
Pat swallowed, and then replied. “I broke it,” she said. “I’m very sorry. I’m going to buy you some more. I’ll get the same stuff if you tell me where to get it.”
63
Bruce lowered his catalogue. “Broke it? How did you do that?”
Pat looked up at the ceiling. She was aware that Bruce was staring at her, but she did not wish to meet his gaze.
“I was looking at it,” she said. “It fell out of my hands and it broke. I was going to tell you.”
Bruce sighed. “Pat,” he said. “You know that it’s very important to tell the truth when you’re living with people. You’ve got to tell the truth. You know that. Now, what really happened?
Were you using it?”
The accusation made her feel indignant. Why should he imagine that she would use his hair gel? And why would he imagine that she would lie about it? “No,” she said. “I did not use it.
I was looking at it.”
“Is hair gel that interesting?”
“Not yours,” she snapped.
Bruce looked at her and wagged a finger. “Temper!” he said.
“Temper!”
Pat looked at him scornfully, and then turned and made her way back into her room slamming the door behind her. He was impossible; he was self-satisfied; he was smug. She could not live with him. She would have to move.
But if she moved, then it would be his victory. She could just imagine what he would say when he showed the next person her room.
She sat down on her bed and stared down at the bedside rug.
There is no real reason to feel unhappy, she thought, but she did. She had a job, she had the place at St Andrews for next October, she had her supportive parents: she had everything to look forward to. But somehow her life seemed to be slow and pointless: it seemed to her that there was a gap in it, and she knew exactly what that gap was. She wanted a boyfriend. She wanted somebody to phone up, right then, and tell about what Bruce had said. And he would sympathise with her and ask her to meet him for dinner, and they would laugh about Bruce over dinner, and she would know that this other person – this boy –
regarded her as special to him. But she had none of that. She 64
just had this room, and this emptiness, and that sarcastic, self-absorbed young man out there, with that look of his, and his eyes, and his
She stopped herself thinking about that. Her father had once spoken to her about unwelcome thoughts; thoughts that came into one’s mind unbidden. They were often rather disturbing thoughts – thoughts about doing something outrageous or shocking – but this was not something to be too concerned about.
The whole point about these thoughts was that they were never translated into action because they did not represent what one really wanted to do. So one never discarded one’s clothes and ran down the street, nor jumped over the waterfall, nor over the cliff for that matter, even if one thought how easy it would be to throw oneself over the edge, and to fall and fall down to the very bottom. So easy.
