Rebecca is a highly measured person. Bastian is frequently astonished by her levels of self-control. She keeps a rigid routine; Bastian has never known her to be late. She eats healthily and exercises regularly, and is tidy in her appearance and domestic habits. She thinks before she speaks. Her sneezes are a minor aberration; a stray note in an otherwise perfect symphony.
It took Rebecca a long time to allow Bastian to see this part of her routine. They met at Cambridge, during the first week of their first term, and were in a relationship by Christmas. For three years, before they graduated and moved into this flat, Bastian saw neither her un-made-up face nor her un-straightened hair. She brought her makeup box when staying over in his room and, in the morning, she locked herself in the bathroom and emerged as a pristine facsimile of herself from the day before. When they moved in together, she relaxed her regimen but only slightly. She began to come out of the bathroom with wet hair wrapped in a towel, wearing no makeup. Now, she stands in front of him while getting ready.
There is still a lot Rebecca doesn’t let Bastian see, but he finds evidence in the flat. He sees her tweezers lying on a shelf in the bathroom cabinet, and her razor on the side of the bath with spikes of dark hair tucked between the blades. He has opened the lidded basket she placed by the toilet for paraphernalia to deal with her periods. He smells traces of her too. He sometimes smells the odor of menstruation, and the singed keratin of her straightened hair.
Rebecca has moved on to her hair. She feeds strips of her dark brown locks between the hot tongs and irons out any kinks or inconsistencies. Next, she stands back from the mirror and considers her reflection. She flicks a couple of stray hairs into place.
Bastian rises and pats out the creases in his jacket. He swings it around his shoulders and slips his arms into the sleeves. He moves toward the mirror and checks his own appearance. He looks more or less how he wishes to look or, at least, he has come to terms with how he looks.
His face is on the feminine side, perhaps. He thinks he is reasonably good-looking, but he isn’t one of those men who has a large, square jaw and an assured brow.
The suit fits him well. He turns to the right then to the left as he did when he first tried it on. It is nipped in at the shoulders and at the waist. He was told the cut would show off his slender upper body.
Bastian places a gentle hand on Rebecca’s waist then leans in to kiss her cheek.
“You’ll smudge me.” She moves away.
Bastian backs off, frustrated rather than hurt, and moves to the sideboard. He collects his keys and wallet and puts them in a trouser pocket.
They take a black cab to Soho as the wait for an Uber is too long. The driver is from the East End and speaks to Bastian briefly about West Ham football club, before realising his passenger has no idea what he’s talking about. Then he tells them a story about a restaurant he went to where he ate a seaweed soufflé. “Seaweed! A soufflé made out of seaweed!” Then he turns on the radio.
As they cross the Thames, the sun is low over the Palace of Westminster. It carves wobbling halos around the gothic turrets, each a flaming torch. Bastian reaches for his phone to take a photo. The cab slows for the line of traffic caught on the bridge. He sees a bevy of swans in the shadows by the north bank, the largest he has ever seen in the city. There must be at least thirty, bobbing on the water, perhaps a whole extended family of cygnets who never left their parents and grew up, found partners and raised cygnets of their own.
Bastian nudges his girlfriend. She leans over him to look out through the glass and her eyes follow the direction of his pointing finger to the river. She recoils.
“Oh god, Bastian, you know I have a phobia of birds.”
“Sorry.” Bastian turns back to look out at the family group. They bob contentedly on the current.
Rebecca doesn’t have a phobia of birds, she just dislikes them: the way they move when walking or flying; the sounds they make and the parts of the city they inhabit. She considers them to be unclean. She uses the word “phobia” because it lends more gravity to her distaste.
The cab pulls off the bridge and follows a series of back streets, a route known only to the drivers of black cabs and cycle couriers. They pass grand Georgian terraces that have been converted into flats and offices. They filter through tight streets lined with shops and restaurants. They feel affluence and poverty beneath the wheels of the car as they roll over smooth tarmac and pristine paving stones, then stretches of road that are potholed and warped. These paths
