‘Is this . . . Oh! This is it?’ I asked. ‘We’re here?’
‘Of course this is it,’ he said, sounding annoyed for the first time since I had met him. ‘What were you expecting? Buckingham bloody Palace?’
‘Oh, no . . . just . . . nothing so posh,’ I lied. ‘It looks brand new.’
‘It is, pretty much. I bought it on spec. Got a good deal because the developer was going bust.’
I’d expected his ‘cottage’ in Sturry to look, well, like a cottage. I’d had visions of thatched roofs and low beams, of open fireplaces and those ancient panes of glass that make the world outside look wrinkly. Instead, Ant lived in what could only be described as a new-build bungalow.
Once inside the PVC front door, the surprises kept coming: perfect beige walls, pretty pastel vases, generic art and built-in mood lighting that changed colour at the press of a button. The furniture was modern and looked as if it came from Ikea but was, Ant informed me, Italian. ‘It’s a damn sight more expensive, of course,’ he said, ‘but much better quality, too. I like to have the best of everything. It’s my philosophy in life.’
I padded on after him (he’d made me leave my shoes in the shoe rack in the hallway) over carpets so thick that walking on them made me feel seasick. In the lounge he proudly showed me enough hi-fi to fill the shelves of a small electrical store, even pressing a button to reveal a cinema screen that dropped from the ceiling.
I pretended to be impressed, but a wave of anxiety was rippling through me. As far as I could see, other than wanting to own the most expensive model of everything, Anthony didn’t have any taste at all.
He showed me the bedrooms – they were hotel-like and immaculately tidy (the bed had an electric sitty-uppy device, which he proudly demonstrated) – then the fully equipped kitchen (the fridge was empty – I checked), and then out on to the patio to view his fake plastic lawn.
‘I don’t have time for gardening,’ he explained, ‘so this is ideal for me.’
‘It’s quite realistic,’ I said.
In theory, we’d stayed at mine because it was easier for me to get to work, but now I was beginning to question if that was the real reason. The place looked so much like a show home that I was wondering if it was even his.
Anthony slid the window closed behind us – it was freezing out there – and led me back to the front door, where he handed me my shoes from the rack. ‘Are we leaving?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, sorry, I need to see Mum this afternoon,’ he said. ‘Did I not mention that?’ The answer was that, no, he hadn’t mentioned it, and I was pretty sure that he knew it.
‘You’re not upset with me or something, are you?’ I asked.
‘Nope,’ he said, stepping back outside and jangling his keys. ‘Why? Should I be?’
Those early days, I tried to put my fears into words, but it was hard, as they weren’t that clearly defined even to me. I tried to talk to Mum, to my sister Kerry and to Sheena about it all. But context, I have discovered, is everything, and identical words carry entirely different weights depending on who exactly is speaking them.
So if you’re known to have been single for years, for example, or to have run away from multiple encounters with the opposite sex, it’s hard to sound sane when complaining about your new boyfriend, whatever the cause.
‘He’s too tidy, you say?’ Mum said, and in her echoing of my words down the phone line, I could hear exactly how delusional I sounded. ‘He has too much hi-fi . . . right,’ Kerry would say flatly, valiantly struggling to understand, and prompting me to drop the subject immediately.
These days, things have changed, and I seem to have earned the right to have a judgement on such matters. So when I tell the story, instead of frowning at me, people repeat my words in horror. ‘His CDs were in alphabetical order?’ they gasp. ‘His books were organised by colour? That should have set alarm bells ringing – didn’t it?’ But back then, it really wasn’t the case.
‘You’re having doubts because he has two soap dishes?’ I remember Sheena saying mockingly. And though she was missing the point of how utterly, freakily terrifying it was for a thirty-eight-year-old man to have two soap dishes so that he, or rather his cleaner, could cycle them twice-weekly through the dishwasher, I’d replied, ‘You’re right, I’m being silly.’ And faced with so much doubt, I did my best to convince myself that this was true.
‘But is he nice to you?’ Mum had asked me, interrupting me during one of my rambling whinges. And the only honest answer I’d been able to give at that point was, ‘Yes, he’s nice to me.’
‘Well, then!’ she had said. ‘Think yourself lucky. A kind, sober man is a rare find. And if anyone knows that, it’s me.’
Ant’s niceness towards me continued for a while, and everything he had said turned out to be true. He did work in property development, the bungalow was his, and he did visit his mother on Sundays. For a while, my doubts eased and I started to luxuriate in the entirely novel sensation of being in a relationship.
I started staying over at his place on Friday and Saturday nights. Most times he’d drive me back and forth between Sturry and Canterbury, adjusting his working hours to fit my own without complaint. When he couldn’t, I’d catch the train.
Though he did seem to have a surprising number of rules about things: the soap dishes, for example; putting plates in the dishwasher straight after eating; and squeegeeing the glass shower partition immediately after use . . . He also began paying me lots of compliments, telling me how pretty I was, or how turned on he was
