The Cupid Effect (19 page)

‘You wish,' I replied. ‘Oh God, he's coming over.'

‘Hide!' Jess shrieked quietly. For a women of her age, she moved with lightning speed, but she wasn't quick enough for me. I grabbed her arm, held her in the booth. ‘You're going nowhere, lady,' I whispered, then: ‘Smile for the nice gentleman.'

‘How you ladies doing?' the man said in the fakest American accent I'd ever heard. His eyes sparkled in Jess's direction.

Neither of us spoke. Shock, I think. It's not every day you're confronted with a man who sends over drinks, wears light-reactive suits and talks with a fake accent. ‘Fine,' I finally said. I was, after all, far more used to this than Jess.

I kicked Jess. ‘Ow!' she said. ‘Ow, I'm fine.'

‘Do you mind if I join you?' he asked Jess.

Jess's head swung round to look at me.
Rescue me
was written in her eyes.

Not on your life
, I said back. I'm sure there was something I needed to get her back for. ‘If you'll excuse me, I'll just be off to the
bathroom
,' I managed with a straight face, slid out of the booth and went prancing off to the toilets.

I took my time returning from the loo. Jess, who I was sure never fully appreciated what it was like to be constantly approached by weirdos, needed time. To learn. As I reached them, her eyes swung up to look at me.

‘I was just telling our guest here that we're off to meet our husbands for dinner, aren't we?' she beseeched. She was two seconds away from throwing herself on her knees at my feet and begging me to get her out of there.

‘Yeah,' I replied, trying to keep a straight face. ‘I just noticed in the
john
, that we'd be late, if we didn't leave now.'

Jess grabbed her bag.

‘We could finish our drinks though, if you want,' I said.

‘No, no, you know how my other half gets when we're late.' Jess shot out of the booth.

‘At least let me have your phone number?' the man begged.

I felt a little sorry for him then. He wasn't just some weirdo, although he was a weirdo – nobody persisted with that fake accent unless they were a little strange – he genuinely liked Jess. I could sense that. He thought she was beautiful, he liked the way she laughed and had watched her for a while before sending over the drink.
That
was why he'd sent over the drink. He liked the way she pushed me away when she really laughed. The way her hair flowed down her back, the way her eyes were intense when she was listening.

‘Oi,' Jess said, shaking me, ‘come back to earth, we're leaving.'

‘Sorry?' I said, struggling to focus on her.

‘You checked out of reality then. We're going to be late.'

‘Yeah, right,' I said. For a second, I hadn't been myself. Now that was weird, that was an out of body experience. The way I expected drugs to feel. How I felt then was the reason I didn't take drugs – I always wanted to be in control of who I was.

‘Have I seen you around The Met?' The guy was very good-looking. Shaved head, brown skin, very dark eyes framed by long black eyelashes. And he was, of course, talking to Jessica Breakfield. A woman who was clearly old enough to be his mother. Not that I was bitter or jealous or anything.

‘Maybe,' Jess replied, cautiously.

The guy took this as a green light and sat opposite her at our table. ‘You're in the psychology department, aren't you?' he said keenly.

‘Have you been stalking me?' Jess asked.

‘No, I've just seen you around college and always wanted to come talk to you but never had the courage and here you are in my local.'

‘You want to talk to me about psychology? I only do that Monday to Friday between nine and six.'

‘Not particularly. I just want to talk to you.'

I was whistling silently, checking my nails, running my tongue around my teeth because it made no difference if I was there or not.

‘Can I get you a drink?' the guy asked.

‘Erm, Ceri, do you want a drink?' Jess asked.

The guy looked at me, surprised. He really hadn't noticed I was there, all he saw was Jess. ‘I'll have a double vodka and coke,' I said. If you're going to ignore me, you're going to pay for the pleasure.

‘I'll have the same,' Jess said.

‘Two double vodka and cokes,' he said and toddled off.

I turned to say something to Jess and found another man had appeared. He was crouching down beside her, grinning, talking to her.
God, it's going to be one of those nights.

I glanced around the pub, drinking in the atmosphere. I liked the Black Bull. It had an old worldliness about it. Twee with its flowery curtains and matching flowery seats and flowery carpets. All worn with constant use. The bar, which was down the steps from where we were sat, was a big square overcrowded with its drinks and hanging glasses and peanut packets. At this time of a Monday evening, the pub was quite empty. A few people stood in groups, others stood alone.

Unexpectedly I was confronted by a pair of eyes. Eyes that were staring straight into mine.

I tore my eyes away, but too late. Too late. The damage was already done, the eye contact already made. And, from the corner of my eye I saw he was coming my way. Maybe if I just kept my eyes down and looked like I didn't want company he'd just walk on by. Y'know out through the wall and window behind me.

‘Hi,' a voice said beside me.

I looked up from my drink and found myself looking into deep, dark eyes.

‘Hi,' I replied.

‘Do you mind if I join you?'

A lot of words telling him to go away came out of the great big mouth in my head, but they didn't come out of my mouth in reality. I glanced over at Jess, with her four men chatting away to her. ‘If you want,' I said.

‘You looked so lonely sat here on your own.'

‘Me and the Lone Ranger, we've got a lot in common. Except I can't ride horses. And, of course, I don't do the mask thing.'

He laughed. ‘I know a lot about loneliness,' he said.

‘Why, are you the real Lone Ranger?' I asked facetiously.

‘In a way, I suppose.' His tone was so serious I wondered for a moment if he was the Lone Ranger reincarnated. If the original one was dead, not that I knew. ‘I was just stood over there, watching you and thought, She looks like a woman who knows a thing or two about loneliness.'

This was true.

‘It hurts, doesn't it? Being alone and lonely and not really knowing when it's going to end.'

‘I suppose.'

‘I did find a way out of it, though, in the end.'

‘Really? How?'

‘I turned to God.'

So this is it, is it? Jess gets three, no, four good-looking men clambering over each other to get her attention while I get some kind of soldier of God, who goes out to pubs to recruit his victims.

‘I found a group of people who showed me the true way forward. They became my family. My salvation. The ones who I turned to in my hour of need.'

And, I'm sure they don't ask you to give them lots of money, try to distance you from your family and brainwash you into doing whatever they decide
The Bible
says you should do.

‘Do you believe in God?' he asked.

‘I was brought up a Catholic.' Y'see, at this point, most people would be lying or saying get lost. Not me. Heaven forbid that of me.

‘And do you still go to church?'

Lie. Just lie. ‘Not as often as I should.'

‘Maybe you should give our group a try. We meet once a week down in Headingley. Maybe I can give you the address?'

‘Yeah, why not,' I said.

He pulled a card out of his jacket pocket, started writing on the back.

‘My name's Brad. Can I look forward to seeing you there?'

‘Maybe,' I said. ‘Possibly.'

He grinned. Far too wide for someone who'd only secured a possible maybe out of me. Maybe because he'd got that far in his spiel. I'll bet few people gave him that long. Certainly not in a pub.

‘Anyway, Brad, it's been nice talking to you, but I think I should rescue my friend over there.'

Brad and I both looked over at Jess, who currently had four men around her. Each talking, trying to get her attention.

‘She might not need that much rescuing,' Brad replied as Jess and her admirers laughed, quite heartily. ‘Why don't we talk some more about loneliness.'

‘Yeah, sure, why not?'

‘It were you,' Jess said, gesticulating at me with her half-smoked cigarette gripped between her forefinger and middle finger. ‘It were. That's the only explanation for it. I was fine until you got here. No, actually, I wasn't fine, I was perfectly happy. And, suddenly, we go out for a few drinks and I'm being chatted up left, right and centre.'

‘But—' I began.

‘No.'

‘But—'

‘NO!' She punctuated this with her cigarette.

Jess had spent the rest of the night fending off the advances of the four men; I sat sipping my drinks supplied by her admirers, talking to Brad The God Botherer about loneliness. Jess got to have her ego flattered by young good-looking men desperate for her to choose them; I got to hear all about his salvation. From being a lonely boy to a lonely man who thought he was homosexual but was saved from all that by the group.

Then, to add insult to injury, ten hours later, Jess had reassessed the situation and decided it was all my fault.
MY
fault.
MY
fault that I had to drag her out of the pub after last orders and pour her into a taxi while she was wailing, ‘Let's go to their party. I'm sure it'll be fun.' And
MY
fault I'd also had to hold her hair while she threw up in the gutter outside her house. How, exactly, it was my fault I wasn't sure. I hadn't sent the men to come talk to her. I hadn't forced alcohol down her neck. I'd been the one trying to go home at nine o'clock, only to be told no by a certain Dr Breakfield.

‘How—' I began.

‘No,' Jess said firmly, her finger silencing me. ‘It were you. I'm old and happily married. I don't need you dragging me out and letting me drink too much, making men fancy me. You are a bad influence, Ceri D'Altroy.'

Jess drew long on her cigarette, expertly flicked ash into the ashtray. ‘You know, Ceri, you're my best friend and all that, I love you and all that, but God, I'm not going out drinking with you again.'

‘Fine by me, Dr Breakfield,' I said, lying back on the floor. ‘But just remember, it was your idea to go out in the first place. And there's another two weeks left of the Easter holidays.'

summer term

chapter seventeen

Collision

I always leave it too long.

Always. Right to the point where I have to run the last bit while trying to cross my legs and think of deserts and dried earth and other things desiccated. In this spirit, I hit the door of the staff loos on the top floor with the speed and force of the London to Leeds Intercity Express at full speed, thereby causing somebody who was trying to leave the toilets to reel back. Luckily, she wasn't knocked over, but her bag flew out of her hands, its contents exploding over the white tiled floor. We both stopped, startled still, for a second.

‘Ohhhhh, I'm sooooo sorry,' I said, coming alive and going to her. She was the colour of new-fallen snow, her body trembling as she held onto the basin nearest the door. Her grip on the basin anchored her as she said, still shaken: ‘It's all right.'

Clearly it wasn't. I'd never seen someone the colour of new-fallen snow. So white, so pale she was almost luminescent. ‘I'm so, so sorry,' I repeated. ‘Are you OK?'

‘I'm fine.'

My need to pee wasn't gone, simply postponed. It pressed on my bladder, wanting to be let out. ‘Here, let me help,' I said.

I bobbed down, gathering her belongings: battered diary, three blue pens, one red pen, black leather purse, four 2p coins, bulging make-up bag, No7 mascara, toothbrush, black mobile, Clear Blue pregnancy test. The usual stuff you found in a woman's handbag. Apart from the pregnancy test, obviously. Or maybe it was just me. Maybe I was behind the times and every sexually-active woman carried pregnancy tests as well as condoms.

As I retrieved each item, I placed it on the side of the basin. She hadn't moved, she still stood with both her hands behind her as she clung to the basin for dear life. ‘Um, is there anything else I can do? Can I get you a drink of water or something?' I asked. The word ‘water' instantly shrank my bladder and doubled its contents. I tried not to do a ‘gotta pee' jig as I stood beside her, but I probably swayed a little.

‘I'm fine. Really.' She turned to face me. ‘I'm fine. You go.'

‘Sure?' I replied, not too keenly I hoped the second the word was out of my mouth.

She bent stiffly and picked up her bag. ‘Absolutely. I'm fine.'

‘OK.'

I ran to the nearest stall, almost ripped off my jeans. I probably even let out a sigh as I relieved myself.

When I finally left the stall she was still there. She'd put most of her belongings back in her bag, but was staring at the pregnancy test as though it'd threatened to kick her head in if she so much as moved.
Now what do I do? Ask her if she's OK again and embroil myself in someone's drama? Or walk away, leave her to it? Not in my nature, obviously
. But, I was already in the Mel and Claudine drama. It'd been more than two weeks since I listened to Mel's tale after the party. And then there was Jake's drama. (He was walking around putting a brave face on things. He'd even declared to Ed and me, ‘The Git is dead to me. We do not mention him in this house, we do not think about him in this house. He is gone from my life.' I don't know if Ed was convinced. Because I was. Not.)

Could I take any more?
Should
I take any more?
Walk away
, one part of me said.
Just dry your hands and back away from that upset woman.
Another part of me argued:
Can't just leave her here. She needs a friendly shoulder, someone who cares.
Sickness speared my stomach unexpectedly, almost kicking the lunch out of me. The sickness pangs of someone who was so scared, lonely and damaged they could hardly breathe, gripped me. I reached out to the sink for support. This was the sickness of someone who was just about keeping things together. Every part of them was on the verge of cracking.