“There’s a lot in there I’d like to take issue with.”
“Feel free.”
“In order, (a) I don’t like to think you’re the opposition. That is not how I think of you, and (b) that whole thing of ‘getting a life.’ I’d like to think you had one already, even before we split up. And, as I have been trying to explain to you, I’m not sure I do have a life. Not in the sense you mean. Anyway. We’re getting away from the point. The point being, you’ve met somebody.”
“Yes.”
“Do I know him?”
For a moment, Annie was tempted to upbraid him for his presumptuous use of the masculine pronoun, but she couldn’t have fun both ways: she couldn’t expect much mileage out of the photo on the fridge if she also wanted to convince him that she’d become a lesbian.
Did Duncan know him? Well, yes and no. Mostly no, she decided.
“No.”
“That’s something, I suppose. Had you…”
“I’m not sure I really want to talk about my situation, Duncan. It’s private.”
“I understand. But it would help me if you could answer one more question.”
“Help you how?”
“Had you met him before we… before I… before recent events?”
“We’d had contact, yes.”
“And does he…”
“That’s it, Duncan. Sorry.”
“Fair enough. So where does that leave us?”
“Pretty much where we were, I’d have thought. You’re seeing someone—living with someone—and I’m seeing someone. Someone looking at the situation from the outside would say that we’ve moved on. Especially you.”
Annie hoped that this outside observer spent more time looking through Gina’s window than her own.
“I know that’s what it looks like, but… Oh, God. Are you really going to make me go through with this?”
“With what?”
“Gina.”
“Duncan, will you listen to yourself?”
“What have I said?”
“I’m not making you do anything. If you don’t want to be with Gina, you should tell her. But it’s nothing to do with me.”
“I can’t tell her. Not if there’s nothing to tell.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, if I went back and said, you know, ‘Annie and I are getting back together,’ or, or, ‘Annie’s suicidal and I can’t leave her,’ I’m sure she’d understand. But I couldn’t just say, you know, ‘You’re mad,’ could I?”
“Well, no. I’d hope you wouldn’t say that to anyone.”
“So what should I say?”
“It sounds to me as though you’ve moved too quickly. You should tell her that… Oh, Duncan, this is absurd. A couple of weeks ago you told me you’d met somebody else, and now you want me to script the breakup.”
“I’m not asking you to script it. I just need a rough outline. Anyway, if I do say something to her, where am I going to live?”
“So you’d be prepared to carry on with her forever rather than look for a flat.”
“I was hoping to come back here.”
“I know, Duncan. But we’ve split up. It wouldn’t be appropriate.”
“Half this house is mine.”
“I’ve applied to increase the mortgage and buy you out. I don’t know whether they’ll let me, but the guy at the building society thought I had half a chance. And if you need to borrow some money before that, I can help. It seems only fair.”
The longer this conversation went on, the quicker Annie’s ambiguities and confusions cleared up. Duncan’s obvious regret helped immensely, in the usual unhealthy way. Now that she wasn’t actually being rejected, it was quite clear to her that she didn’t want to be with him a moment longer, and her sense of grievance gave her a force and clarity that she wished were always accessible to her.
“I never thought you’d be so…
“And I’m tough because I’ve just offered to lend you money?”
“Well, yes. You’d rather lend me money than have me back.”
And another thing: he was stingy, on top of everything else. Duncan would much rather stay in a relationship with a woman he didn’t like than lend her a few quid.
“Make me another cup of tea, will you? I’m just nipping upstairs to the loo.”
She didn’t need to go, and she didn’t want another drink, and she didn’t want Duncan to stay. But he’d have to go to the fridge for the milk, and if he went to the fridge, he couldn’t fail to notice the photo.
By the time she came back he was staring at it.
“That’s him, isn’t it?”
“I’m sorry. I should have taken it down.”
“I don’t wish to be rude. But… is that his son? Or grandson?”
Annie was momentarily disconcerted: she had got lost in all the layers of irony. Duncan was missing so much crucial information that all he’d been left with was a photo of a bespectacled, silver-haired man with a young boy.
“That is rude, actually.”
“I’m sorry. It just wasn’t immediately obvious.”
“It’s his son. He’s only your age.”
He wasn’t, but he could have been. More or less.
“He’s probably been around the block a couple of times, then. Any other kids?”
“Duncan, I’m sorry, but I think you should leave. I’m not comfortable with these questions.”
It really hadn’t been as much fun as she’d hoped.
She still had his e-mail, though, and she’d only read it through once. She’d printed it at work, along with the photograph, and she’d put it in an envelope, to keep it from getting dog-eared and dirtied by all the detritus at the bottom of her workbag. After she’d made herself something to eat, she sat down and unfolded it, but stood up again when she decided she’d like to wear her reading glasses. She hardly ever bothered with them.
She was reminding herself of somebody. The letter (because that’s what it was now), the glasses, the armchair… How many times had she watched her mother and grandmother sit down to pay proper attention to something that had come in the mail? And who were all those people who wrote to them? Names started to come back, names she hadn’t heard in years: Betty in Canada—who was Betty? Why was she in Canada? How come Gran knew her? Auntie Vi in Manchester, who wasn’t an auntie… When Annie was in her mid-teens, and had thus become surly and superior, she couldn’t keep herself from feeling that there was something depressing about the good cheer that invariably accompanied the arrival of those letters. Who cared if Betty’s niece was pregnant, or if Auntie Vi’s grandson was a trainee vet? If Mum and Gran weren’t so isolated and bored, none of this would be regarded as news.
And now here Annie was, allowing her day to become gloriously colored by a communication from a man she’d never even met.
In the last e-mail Annie had sent Tucker, she’d posed the following question:
