picture him. I mustn’t talk to him on the telephone. I mustn’t see him. Cold turkey.
At eleven o’clock I closed the blinds against the grey, drizzly day, just in case he came to the office and stood outside waiting for me. I didn’t look down into the street. Claudia brought me a list of people who had called and left messages; Adam hadn’t tried to phone. Perhaps he was out, and still didn’t know. Perhaps he wouldn’t get the note until he came back to his flat to meet me.
I didn’t go out for lunch, but sat in my dimmed office staring at my computer screen. If anyone had come in, they would have assumed I was busy.
At three, Jake rang to say that on Friday he might have to go to Edinburgh for a couple of days, on business.
‘Can I come with you?’ I asked. But it was a stupid idea. He would be working all day; I couldn’t just take off from Drakon at the moment.
‘We’ll go away together soon,’ he promised. ‘Let’s plan it tonight. We can have an evening in, for a change. I’ll buy us a takeaway. Chinese or Indian?’
‘Indian,’ I said. I wanted to throw up.
I went to our weekly conference, where Claudia interrupted us to say there was a man who wouldn’t leave his name but urgently wanted to speak to me. I told her to say that I was unavailable. She went away, looking interested.
At five, I decided to go home early. I left the building by the back entrance, and got a cab home through the rush hour. I put my hands over my face and closed my eyes when we drove past the main entrance. I was first home, and I made it to my bedroom – our bedroom – and lay on the bed, where I curled up and waited for time to pass. The phone rang and I didn’t answer it. I heard the letterbox flap, something hit the mat and I struggled up. I had to get that before Jake did. But it was just junk mail. Did I want all my carpets specially cleaned? I went back and lay on the bed and tried to breathe calmly. Jake would be home soon. Jake. I thought about Jake. I pictured the way he frowned when he smiled. Or the way he poked his tongue out slightly when he was concentrating. Or the way he hooted when he laughed. Outside it was dark and the street lamps glowed orange. I could hear cars, voices, children chattering. At some point I fell asleep.
I pulled Jake down to me in the darkness. ‘The curry can wait,’ I said.
I told him I loved him, and he told me that he loved me too. I wanted to say it over and over, but I stopped myself. Outside it rained gently. Later, we ate the cool takeaway from the silver-foil containers or, rather, he ate and I picked, washing it down with large mouthfuls of cheap red wine. When the telephone rang I let Jake answer, although my heart pounded furiously in my chest.
‘Whoever it was put the phone down,’ he told me. ‘Probably some secret admirer.’
We laughed together merrily. I imagined him sitting on the bed in his empty flat, and took another gulp of wine. Jake suggested going to Paris for a weekend. You could get good deals on Eurostar at this time of year.
‘Another tunnel,’ I said. I waited for the phone to ring again. This time I would have to pick it up. What should I do? I tried to think of a way of saying, ‘Don’t call me,’ without Jake being suspicious about it. But it didn’t ring. Maybe I had just been a coward and should have told him to his face. I couldn’t have told him to his face. Every time I looked at his face I climbed into his arms.
I glanced across at Jake, who smiled at me and yawned. ‘Bed-time,’ he said.
I tried. Over the next few days, I really, really tried. I wouldn’t take any of his calls at the office. He sent me a letter there, too, and I didn’t open it but tore it into shreds and threw it into the tall metal refuse container by the coffee machine. A few hours later, when everyone else was at lunch, I went to retrieve it but it had been emptied. Only one little piece of paper was still there, with his slashing handwriting across it: ‘… for a few…’ it read. I stared at the pen strokes, touched the scrap of paper as if a bit of him was left on it, indelible him. I tried to construct whole sentences around the three neutral words.
I left work at odd times, and by the back entrance, sometimes in great protective crowds of people. I avoided central London, just in case. In fact, I avoided going out. I stayed at home with Jake, closing the curtains against the vile weather, and watched videos on TV and drank a bit too much, enough anyway to send me blundering to sleep each night. Jake was being very attentive. He told me that I had seemed more contented over the past few days, ‘not always rushing on to the next thing’. I told him that I felt good, great.
On Thursday evening, three days after the note, the Crew came round: Clive, Julie, Pauline and Tom and a friend of Tom’s called Duncan, Sylvie. Clive brought Gail with him, the woman who had grabbed his elbow at the party. She was still holding on to his elbow now, and looking a bit bemused, as well she might, since it was only their second date and it must have felt like being introduced to a whole extended family at once.
‘You all talk so much,’ she said to me, when I asked her if she was okay. I looked around. She was right: everyone in our living room seemed to be talking at once. All of a sudden I felt hot and claustrophobic. The room seemed too small, too full, too noisy. I put my hand up to my head. The phone was ringing.
‘Can you get that?’ called Jake, who was getting beer from the fridge. I picked up the receiver.
‘Hello.’
Silence.
I waited for his voice but there was nothing. I put the phone down and went dully back into the room. I looked around. These were my best and oldest friends. I had known them for ten years and in ten years’ time I would still know them. We would still meet up and tell each other the same old stories. I watched Pauline talking to Gail, she was explaining something. She put her hand on Gail’s arm. Clive approached them, looking nervously self- conscious, and the two women smiled up at him; kind. Jake came across and handed me a can of beer. He put his arm around my shoulder and hugged me. Tomorrow morning he was off to Edinburgh.
After all, I thought, it was beginning to get better. I could live without him. Days were going past. Soon it would be a week. Then a month…
We played poker: Gail won and Clive lost. He clowned around for her benefit and she giggled at him. She was nice, I thought. Better than Clive’s usual girlfriends. He would go off her because she wouldn’t be cruel enough to keep his adoration.
The next day I left work at the usual time, and by the main entrance. I couldn’t hide from him for the rest of my life. I pushed my way through the doors, feeling dizzy, and looked around. He wasn’t there. I had been sure he would be. Maybe all those times I had sneaked out of the back he hadn’t been there either. A terrible disappointment rose in me, which took me by surprise. After all, I had been going to avoid him if I saw him. Hadn’t I?
I didn’t want to go home, nor did I want to wander across to the Vine to meet everyone. I suddenly realized how tired I was. It took an effort to put one foot in front of the other. I had a dull thudding ache between my eyes. I drifted along the street, jostled by the rush-hour crowds. I peered into shop windows. It had been ages since I bought any new clothes. I made myself buy an electric-blue shirt that was in a sale, but it felt a bit like force- feeding myself. Then I dawdled along in the dwindling crowd, going nowhere in particular. A shoe shop. A stationer’s. A toy shop, where a giant pink teddy sat in the middle of the display. A wool shop. A book shop, although there were other objects that gleamed in the window, too: a small axe, a coil of thin rope. Warm air gusted from its open door, and I went in.
It wasn’t really a book shop, though it had books in it. It was a climbing shop. I must have known that all the time. Only a few other people were in there, all men. I gazed around, noting the nylon jackets, gauntlets made from mysterious modern fabrics, the sleeping bags stacked on a large shelf at the back. There were lanterns hanging from the ceiling, and small camping stoves. Tents. Vast, weighty boots, gleaming and hard. Backpacks with lots of side pockets. Sharp-looking knives. Mallets. A shelf full of adhesive bandages, iodine swabs, latex gloves. There were sachets of food, energy bars. It looked like equipment for people venturing into outer space.
‘Can I help you?’ A young man with bristly hair and a puggish nose stood by my side. He was probably a climber himself. I felt guilty, as if I were in the shop under false pretences.
‘Um, no, not really.’
I sidled across to the bookshelves and let my eyes slide over the titles:
