River Deep (5 page)

‘Erm, I’m Pete Hardcastle?’ Pete held out his slim hand. ‘I spoke to someone called … Falcon about the room? Mike Cohen arranged it for me? Through the university?’ Pete ran out of prompts and stuttered to a halt.

The semi-naked man regarded him for a moment before reaching out and shaking his hand firmly, breaking into a grin. ‘Oh yeah, all right man. Come in. I’m Falcon.’

Pete detected a Midlands accent as he entered the musty hallway of the three-storey Victorian terrace. At least he wouldn’t be the only one here from north of Watford.

‘Sorry, man, you must think I’m right ignorant.’ Falcon gestured that Pete should head up the stairs. ‘It’s cos I was drumming, and when I get in the zone it takes me a while to get out again. I’m in a punk band. We play at The Horn of Plenty up the road twice a month. We’re called Fatal, you won’t have heard of us. Do you play?’

Falcon had stopped outside the front bedroom and pushed open the door. Pete walked into a largish double room with an old bed fitted into the bay of the window, a desk and one of those small seventies wardrobes, the kind you only ever find in rented accommodation.

‘No, no, I don’t play. I wish I did, man. It’d be banging.’ Pete hoiked his backpack on to the bed and looked around.

‘You travel light then.’ Falcon nodded at the backpack in approval.

‘Oh, the rest of my stuff is coming tomorrow. Actually I’ve got quite a lot of … equipment.’ Pete wasn’t sure if he should mention his astrology addiction to this huge man. It might seem a bit geeky, potentially anoraky and sort of lame. In his experience it was usually a good idea to keep yourself to yourself until you knew the lie of the land. And besides, since Stella’s departure he had only wanted to look at his immediate surroundings. The infinite possibilities that the night sky seemed to reflect back to him, images of what she might be doing or thinking beneath it somewhere else, terrified him. It was ridiculous, he knew, but he felt as if looking into the telescope right now might tell him more about his future than he needed or wanted to know.

‘Well, that’s it, then.’ Falcon shrugged. ‘Phone bill is itemised, leccy and gas are paid monthly and that’s included in your rent. Hot water’s on all the time and if you want a shower in the morning make sure you get in before Angie, otherwise you’ll stand no chance until midday. Oh, and there’s a telly downstairs, we’ve got cable. I’ll leave you to it. If you fancy a pint later I’m going to my local, it’s a rank old pub but at least they still sell real ale and not all this French shit. Otherwise Ange’ll be in here the minute she knows you’ve arrived with a full guided tour and a four-course meal. She’ll love you, she’s a sucker for a pretty face.’

Pete laughed uncertainly. ‘I’m engaged anyway,’ he said, wishing he had something like a ring to prove it.

‘Oh yeah?’ Falcon asked him. ‘Where’s the Mrs then?’

‘Away. For a year,’ Pete told him, waiting for the usual stream of incredulous enquiries that followed this bit of information.

‘Nice one. A year-long stag night. Laters,’ Falcon said before closing the door.

Pete climbed across the bed to look out of the window. It was an overcast afternoon and all he could see was the steady stream of traffic on the Hatfield Road. He thought he might like Falcon and, although he wasn’t sure about the name, it gave him hope. On his way here he’d been seriously worried about the whole escapade. He wasn’t sure if he was imagining it, but the people down south seemed harder somehow, less human than he’d expected. What with that and the woman he’d almost bumped into on the high street, he’d felt really unsettled. She’d been crying, sobbing her heart out like no one could see her, and most of the other passers-by had acted as they couldn’t. He’d wanted to say something to her, but she’d seemed so completely wrapped up in herself he thought he would just be intruding.

If this place made her, a local, so unhappy, God knows what it would do for Pete. He looked up into the densely clouded sky and tried to visualise the stars that would be burning brightly above it.

‘So what have you got planned for me?’ he asked the universe nervously, and then he started to make his bed.

By the time Maggie had walked the length of the high street to meet Sarah at The Maltings, her face had cleared of blotches, even if her mascara had run slightly into her lavishly applied concealer, giving her skin an oddly greyish tint. In fact she felt positively calm, just like that little cloud her mother had described to her earlier.

She could see Sarah waiting for her outside HMV, her sunglasses on despite the overcast day and her shirt tied in a knot beneath her breasts. As always Maggie felt a slight twinge of jealousy at Sarah’s curvy hips and the slight bloom of her tanned stomach over the waistband of her jeans. If she mentioned this to Sarah, however, she would scoff and laugh at her as she always did. ‘You’re the original model six, love! Everything you wear fits you!’

Maggie knew Sarah was right, but still, after years of hanging around her voluptuous friend it had taken a long time for her to feel that her gamine physique had any perks at all; actually it had taken up until she met Christian, who’d loved it. He’d loved her hand-span waist and her minimal bottom. Her ‘subtle décolletage’, as he’d once called her breasts, drove him mad with desire. ‘Girls like Sarah,’ he’d told her, ‘they’re all out front, if you know what I mean, like a market stall with everything on show. You’re more mysterious, classy and delicate. You’re a new land waiting to be discovered and explored, inch by inch.’

Maggie felt the familiar swoon and flip of her heart that the memory provoked, but followed it swiftly with a brutal new censorship. She bit her lip as she approached Sarah and blinked hard. Would there be a time when it would be OK to remember the good times with Christian, or would she have to go on banishing moments like that from her mind for ever? No, Maggie resolved in that instant, because they were not going to be apart for ever. This was just a blip, she was sure of it. She
felt
it, and the fact that she felt it was pretty much the only thing pumping the blood through her veins right now.

‘So? What did you get, then? Did you get the sofa?’ Sarah was referring to the chocolate Italian leather one that Maggie had slept on the night before Christian told her he didn’t love her any more. From the moment they’d imported it two years earlier, Sarah had coveted it for the salon. ‘A touch of class, that’s what I need,’ she’d said. But she’d been horrified at the cost – just under four grand – and had had to make do with DFS instead. Now that the sofa was up for custody, she was hopeful again.

‘I don’t get anything, except my stuff back and twenty grand,’ Maggie said absently as Sarah marched her into Miss Selfridge. ‘Are you sure about this? Aren’t I twenty years too old for this stuff?’ She gingerly picked up a pair of voluminous pink silk combat trousers.

‘Did you say twenty grand?’ Sarah stopped two paces behind her, open mouthed.

Maggie turned round to look at her. ‘Yeah, it’s not much for six years, is it? Just about two-thirds of a year’s wages.’

Sarah raised an eyebrow and thought ‘you lucky cow’, but she supposed it would be less than tactful to accuse your recently dumped best friend of being lucky. After all, Maggie, the silly mare, would rather have Christian back than his cash. Imagine wanting that overblown wanker over cold, hard, sexy cash?

‘Anyway,’ Maggie said, picking up a deep pink top with an asymmetrical neckline, ‘it won’t come to that. To the cash, I mean. I won’t need it.’

Sarah propelled her friend towards the dressing room, aware of her lunch hour speeding by.

‘What do you mean, you won’t need it?’ she said incredulously. ‘Have you won the lottery? Can I have it?’

Maggie laughed and tried to work out the various bits of string and ribbon on the top that Sarah had handed her.

‘I must admit,’ Sarah added, ‘you seem remarkably calm. I’d expected you to be a gibbering wreck and in need of a stiff whisky.’

Sarah sounded slightly regretful, Maggie noted, as she eyed herself in the mirror and then pulled off the top it had taken so much skill to put on, dropping it to the floor in a crumpled heap.

‘Well, I was for a bit. I went to pieces in the street right beneath his window, but after I got that bit out of the way … well, you know what, Sarah? I think there was still something there. I think he still feels something for me, I really do.’

Sarah put her hand on her friend’s bare arm and turned her to face her. ‘Maggie, what do you mean? Did
he
say that?’ Sarah shook her head in disbelief. If he had said that then he was mucking Maggie around more than Sarah could stomach.

‘Not exactly, but I can just tell, I know it. He still loves me. All I need is a plan. A plan to get him back.’

Maggie’s smile was so fragile, Sarah was afraid to say anything except for ‘Oh.’ She handed her a black halter neck, and wondered if she could allow herself to be relieved that her friend wasn’t being emotionally toyed with by her ex. When the real problem was that she was being completely delusional.

‘Do you remember Aidan?’ Maggie asked, watching Sarah in the mirror as she applied colour to her hair, neatly folding strips of tin foil over each carefully sectioned piece.

Sarah paused momentarily and scrutinised her friend’s face. She didn’t seem to think she’d said anything stupid, so Sarah decided to give her the benefit of the doubt, on the grounds of her hopefully temporary insanity.

‘Well, he is kind of hard to forget,’ Sarah attempted a laugh, ‘He is Becca’s father!’

Maggie bit her lip. ‘Oh God, sorry, I forgot. Well, I didn’t forget exactly, I just didn’t think for a second!’

Sarah waved her comb in a nonchalant way. ‘No worries,’ she said, but even now the sudden mention of his name dealt her a painful blow. She’d been out with more boys than she’d had hot school dinners back then, but Aidan … well, Aidan was Aidan.

Maggie gave her a wry smile in the mirror. ‘Look, if you’d rather not …’ Maggie checked Sarah’s glassy expression in the mirror. ‘Talk about him, I mean?’

Sarah did not look up. ‘Knock yourself out,’ she said, with a shrug. ‘Besides, I can’t wait to see how Aidan Carter and me have any relevance to Christian and you!’

If there was a slight tension in Sarah’s tone Maggie did not detect it, and she went on, blithely indifferent to her tact bypass.

‘He had really curly hair and he kept trying to grow it long, and he used to stick it behind his ears with soap, remember?’

Sarah couldn’t help smiling as she thought of Aidan at fourteen, trying desperately to keep his naturally Kevin Keegan locks in check.

‘Yeah, I remember,’ she said, the sharply wistful note in her voice evaporating in the air over Maggie’s head. ‘It started when I sat next to him in assembly once, purely by chance. Remember we had those long wooden benches we had to sit on? and I felt his leg pressed against mine, and I had this sudden kind of physical jolt all through my body. It was the first time I’d ever felt anything like it. I thought I was going to wet myself.’ The two women laughed together, unaware that by now the rest of the salon had fallen into silence, listening to them. ‘I was only thirteen,’ Sarah grimaced. ‘All lumpy with a thick greasy fringe over my eyes and thick glasses. All the girls loved him and he never noticed me, not once.’ Sarah concentrated again on the foils, surprised by the strength of emotion this impromptu reminiscing was triggering.

‘Yeah, but you got him in the end, didn’t you? It took you five years, but you got him.’

Sarah glanced at the ceiling, where even now Becca was religiously straightening her riot of natural curls with a furious frown of concentration. ‘You can say that again,’ she said wryly.

‘Remember how we used to sit in my room planning ways for you to get his attention? Remember how you saved up your paper-round money for contact lenses and you kept them hidden round my house so your mum’d never know? And how you grew your fringe out and grew your hair long? And you and me went to dance-aerobics once a week for two months until you lost a stone. You must remember!’

Sarah bit her lip hard. In actual fact she’d spent most of the last fourteen years trying, and failing, to forget. But she nodded reluctantly, sensing that this wholesale trampling of her feelings was leading somewhere.

‘Yeah, I remember,’ she said with a shrug.

‘And all the boys started to fancy you ’cos you had these enormous tits. And you went out with all of them, didn’t you? Just to make him jealous and he never turned a hair.’ Maggie’s eyes were lit up with the memory, maybe because her own school memories faded into one seamless effort not to be singled out by anyone. ‘And then one morning you said to me, “Mags, I’ve got it sorted. I know how to get Aidan.” And I asked you what you meant and you said, “I’m going to be his best friend. I’m going to let him get to know me so well that one morning he’ll open his eyes and really look at me and he’ll just see. He’ll realise that he’s been in love with me all along, like that story in
Jackie
last week.”

‘And you did. You two spent hours together hanging out. He started coming round with us whereever we went, all “just mates”. And then you phoned me that night in the summer, after ten it was, and you told me he’d told you he was in love with you. Two days before your eighteenth birthday, and you’d finally got your man.’

Sarah froze for a moment, caught in the unbidden memory of the first kiss that had meant so much to her, moved her in a way she’d never dreamt was possible. She remembered Aidan’s green eyes as he looked into hers and told her he loved her. For one marvellous magical evening they had lain on the grass together, under the moonlight, and she’d believed him. She’d really believed that her five years of planning had at last paid off. She finally had the man she loved, and despite all those other boyfriends, he had been her first, right there in the park under the moon. That was the last time she’d believed any man about anything.

‘And then he knocked me up and scarpered to Florida with his parents, never to be seen again,’ Sarah said, bludgeoning her own feelings with practised brutality. ‘Your point is?’