A Certain Chemistry (38 page)

“You poor bastard.”

“I know. Pathetic.”

Amy shook her head. “No. It’s . . . what about you and Sara? Think you can fix it?”

“I thought so at first, but now . . . No, I can’t see her taking me back. Why should she?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Whatever.”

“It’s a bit shitty for you all round, then, really?” She reached across and put her hand over mine, giving it a tiny squeeze. Funny—we’d been kissing each other’s cheeks for years, but I think this was the first time our hands had ever touched. I was ludicrously grateful for the contact. I turned my hand over and squeezed hers back—too hard, I think, a little desperately. I just wanted someone to hang on to. Amy smiled. “Oh well,” she said with a sigh. “It’ll pass, eventually. You’ll get over it, and at the end of the day, you still got to poke Georgina Nye—no one can ever take that away from you.”

Everything in the house heckled me. The sofa called, “This is where you and Sara used to sit together”; the wardrobe nagged, “Get your clothes out of me—I’m for Sara alone now”; the grill cackled, “Won’t be making any cheese on toast under me again. Twat.”

I’d come to collect some more of my stuff, and it was awful. On a specific level, it put a hollow ache in my stomach to walk around in a place so familiar, so ours, that now seemed resolute in excluding me. Every thing was a thing lost. More generally, it made me confront the fact that I would have to make a declaration of defeat soon. Okay, I’d got an attractive sum heading my way for
Growing,
but I couldn’t afford to live in a hotel—even a not-very-nice hotel—forever. And, even if I could have, there wasn’t room for all my things. I’d have to find a bedsit or a flat or something. Doing that would be a practical admission, to myself, that Sara and I weren’t going to be getting back together. The tricky thing was that I wanted to give it time; it’d been less than a week,
maybe
Sara would soften. But she’d told me that anything I hadn’t removed by Friday night she’d destroy or throw away. And I believed her. I believed her because of everything she’d said to me, and the absolutely unwavering way she’d said it. I believed her because she now wasn’t saying anything to me at all. And I believed her because of the answerphone.

Sara had dug the old answerphone out of the attic. With our both having mobiles, we didn’t really need it anymore, so we’d thrown it up there along with every other electrical appliance we owned that had outlived its era. We kept the land line, though, for my Internet access and so that people could call us without having to pay mobile rates all the time. I went over to the answerphone and pressed the “announce” button . . . just to hear Sara’s voice. After a whirr and a click its tinny loudspeaker crackled, “Hi, this is Sara. I can’t get to the phone at the moment, but if you’d like to leave a message, then speak after the tone. Unless you’re Tom, in which case, please just fuck off.” The announcement—though somewhat indicative of her feelings—wasn’t the crucial thing. Nor was the fact that the only credible reason for her to have reattached the answerphone was so that she could hear who was calling before picking up the phone and, if it was me,
not
pick up the phone. No, neither of those things was the real kick in the stomach. What hit home was purely that she’d brought it down and set it up. Sara had never been able to set it up—nor program the timer on the VCR, nor use any of the zillion different food type/defrost settings on the microwave. Just being in the
same room
as our digital camcorder used to make her angry. Had I been there, I know she’d have insisted that I “set this bloody stupid thing up.” There used to be no middle ground between it being set up by me, or Sara outside on the lawn, hitting it with a shovel. But now, here it was. Sought out, attached, and set up perfectly. The answerphone was Sara psychologically accepting that I wasn’t there, and then tacitly announcing that it wasn’t a problem. You know how some men are threatened by their wife having a vibrator? Well, that’s nothing to how comprehensively redundant this answerphone made me feel. Jesus. Rate
that
for depressing. In the movies electronics don’t show you how expendable you are until they achieve sentience with the awesome artificial intelligence of HAL or that military computer in
WarGames
or something. I was being put in my place by a bloody answerphone.

I gathered two suitcases full of belongings and called a taxi to take me back to the hotel. While I waited for it to arrive I wrote a note to Sara (telling her how I loved her and how I hoped we could work things out) and left it on the table in the dining room. When I closed my eyes, I could imagine her—so strongly I could hear the fabric of her coat and smell the scent of her skin—coming home from work, seeing my note lying there, and throwing it unread into the bin.

Paul reached across the table and shook my hand with great enthusiasm. Tosser. Anyone would have thought that
he’d
called the meeting and was buzzing with delight to see me. Amy had said that he hadn’t wanted the meeting until she’d hinted at my writing about what had happened. “Wouldn’t have met me if his bollocks had been in a vise,” she’d said with an acrid laugh. “But as soon as I made the tiniest wee threat of you leaking things about Nye . . . well, he simply couldn’t
wait
to meet.” So, here we all were, just a few days later. Paul’s aim was clearly to control those events he couldn’t avoid. His smiles and expansively open body language were ribbons and bows on a dog turd. George, on the other hand, didn’t rise from her seat when Amy and I came in and didn’t look at me as I sat down. She just gazed off to the side at nothing fascinating and absently twiddled with a strand of hair that was dangling out from under her hat.

We’d deliberately come to an out-of-the-way restaurant very early in the day. I suppose the owners hoped a few people might arrive later for lunch, but for now we were the only ones there.

“Good to see you again, mate,” said Paul. “Amy?” He raised a wine bottle questioningly. Amy nodded and he filled a glass for her. “Tom?”

“No thanks,” I replied.

He sat back in his chair and clapped his hands together. “Okey-dokey. So . . .”

Amy lit a cigarette. “Paul,” she said, “we wanted this meeting so we could get a few things straight.” There was, obviously, no reason at all for this meeting. Amy had the task, therefore, of rambling on pointlessly for a while, just for the look of the thing. “I’m sure you know what I mean,” she added, meaningfully.

“I’m not sure I do, darling. We’ve got everything signed and sorted, haven’t we?”

“Absolutely—abso
lute
ly . . . but there are other issues. Personal issues.”

I fixed my eyes on George, hoping she’d look towards me on hearing this—out of reflex if nothing else. But she continued to stare away from the table.

“Oh, I reckon it’s always best to keep that stuff private—you know what I mean?” replied Paul. “Personal stuff’s personal, isn’t it? It’s
well
poor if you start chucking all your personal affairs about. Makes for an ugly situation all round.”

“That’s all very well, Paul. But I think some acknowledgment, just between the parties involved, would be, um . . . decent. Let’s say, a way to put things on good terms, for the future?”

Paul kept his gaze locked on Amy for a few seconds of serious thought and scratching himself under the armpit. Amy stared back equally unblinking.

“I’m sure my client never intended to cause any distress,” said Paul at last.

“You tell us that, but my client is naturally going to
be
distressed when he finds himself in such a situation and yet receives no explanation of how it came about,” Amy replied.

“Perhaps my client has been a
bit,
erm . . .”

“Upsettingly cold?”

“I was going to say ‘unforthcoming.’ But, given my client’s position, it’s, you know, an instinctive response.”

“But how do you think that makes my client feel? My client is in exactly the same position and has precisely the same fears, yet suddenly has no idea where he stands.”

I thought this was pushing our case a tad hard; I could hardly argue that I was in “exactly the same position” as George and, because that wasn’t true, I couldn’t really claim to have “precisely the same fears” either. But Amy was certainly making the argument with impressive passion, so I didn’t really care. Her delivery alone would surely keep the meeting going a little longer. Hopefully long enough so I could get George to look me in the eyes. That was all I wanted: one genuine moment of contact.

Paul dropped his gaze to the table. “My client is sorry if your client took it the wrong way.”

“How the fuck was my client
supposed
to take it?” Amy refilled her wineglass. “Eh? This wasn’t something my client was used to doing, or did casually. You know that. But he took the chance, exposed himself because he thought it was worth it and might really be going somewhere . . . and then the next thing he knows, it all ices over and he’s left standing there like a fucking idiot.”

Had I been talking to Paul, I wouldn’t have been quite
that
unflinching in the characterization of how I was left, I must admit.

“Your client never looked like an idiot,” Paul replied quietly.

“Well, he certainly
felt
like one!”

“Amy—” I began, but she hadn’t finished.

“The biggest fucking idiot in Edinburgh.”

“I wouldn’t exactly—” I said, but she didn’t appear to be listening.

“Everyone laughing at how silly and naïve he’d been. ‘Ha ha—what a sucker.’ ”

“No one was laughing—no one even knew,” said Paul. “And did your client think for a second that my client might have clammed up because
she
was scared she’d been naïve and left herself open?”

George had stopped peering determinedly away now. Instead she was staring at Paul. She put her hand on his shoulder, but he took no notice at all and continued talking to Amy.

“My client has to be careful—my client has her client to think of,” he said.

Now that didn’t even make sense.

“And my client doesn’t?” replied Amy, with bitter, mock surprise.

“Oh, come on, love—it’s hardly the same level, is it?”

“Right, so my client’s shite? Is that what you’re saying? I have a worthless, unimportant client? I’m small-time?”

“Don’t get hysterical. I didn’t say that at all. Be realistic, though. If you stay calm and look at it—”

“I’m
sick
of staying fucking calm! Calm, businesslike Amy.
She
won’t cause any bother—she’s so
realistic
and bloody bollocking
calm
!” Amy chewed at her lip and began, clumsily, trying to scramble another cigarette out of her packet.

“Amy, I never—”

“You never
anything
. That’s the problem.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I said, slapping my hand down on the table repeatedly. “Hold on a bleeding minute.” Without looking at him, because I was focusing on Amy, I pointed a finger at Paul. “Have you and him been at it?”

Amy didn’t reply but merely thumbed her lighter furiously (and fruitlessly—it rasped and shot sparks, but no flame came).

“I don’t
believe
it!” I said. “You and him have been at it! Jesus. You’ve been at it, and you didn’t tell me.”

“So?” said Amy, rather annoyed. “You didn’t tell me you were poking her.” She jabbed a finger towards George.

“That’s completely different.”

“How is it?”

“Because you’re my bloody
agent
—you
have
to tell me who you’re sleeping with.”

“Bollocks do I.”

“You do if you’re sleeping with the enemy.”

“Paul?” asked George, clearly as an abbreviation of all sorts of questions.

“Yes . . .” Paul said to her, awkwardly. “We had a thing.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, amazed.

“Christ!” He nodded sharply at me. “You didn’t tell me that
he
was poking you!”

“Can everyone,” insisted George, “stop saying I’ve been ‘poked,’ please?”

“How
could
you?” I said to Amy. “He’s a wanker.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Paul stiffen a little as this escaped from my mouth. I turned to placate him. “That’s what
she
said, I mean.
She
said you were a wanker; she was always saying it.”

“I didn’t say he was a
wanker,
” mumbled Amy.

“You bloody did.”

“Well, even if I did . . . you know . . . what you say to people—and to yourself—and what you feel don’t always end up matching, do they?”

George tugged at Paul’s sleeve. “When did this all happen, Paul? Paul?
Paul?
Answer me. How long . . . I mean, when did it end?”

“End?” said Paul with a snort. “Ask her.”

“Amy?” said George.

Amy looked off to the side and shrugged with massively theatrical carelessness. “Ask
him
.”

I wearily blew air out between my lips and then glanced back and forth between Amy and Paul. “Look . . . you pair—sort this out, okay?” I looked at George, caught her eye, and jerked my head in the direction of the door. “We’ll give you a couple of minutes alone. Get your problems—”

“
I
don’t have a problem,” Amy cut in, smiling humorlessly.

“Well,” began Paul.

“Both of you,”
I said sternly. “Get your problems under control. You’re supposed to be
agents,
for God’s sake—behave like them.”

I stood up and looked at George again. She was hesitant, but she eventually stood up too and followed me out of the restaurant.

I paced about outside, glancing back through the large glass front window at Amy and Paul. Paul was saying something and touching Amy’s hand. She wasn’t responding, but she wasn’t withdrawing either.

George was standing indicatively away from me, looking off into the distance with her arms folded across her chest. She was rocking slightly from side to side, transferring her weight alternately from one foot to the other like someone might do if they were trying to keep warm. I knew I’d been wrong in my assumption (well, let’s be honest, “my dreamy hope”) that Paul had made her stop seeing me. Her body language here was all her own, and it clearly said she wanted to be somewhere I wasn’t.