These Days of Ours (23 page)

1995 was as vivid to her – no,
more
vivid – than yesterday. Kate could see herself and Becca in that shoe shop. She inhabited her younger point of view as nineties Kate stared
down at her foot, the ankle skinny as a stem in the heavy lace-up under consideration. Kate’s body remembered its physicality. Lighter, with a higher centre of gravity.

Becca, her bob falling over her face, had asked the question so tremulously. Did Kate mind that she’d met Charlie for a coffee?

No wonder Becca had been tremulous. Present day Kate closed her eyes and punched the steering wheel.

I reassured her, said of course I didn’t mind.

The ravenous way Becca insisted she open the note Charlie had sent, that she read it right there and then had looked like concern.

I
t was fear
, thought Kate.
Fear that her scheme would fall apart
.

The scrawled message Becca handed over in the shoe shop was a short and pithy dissolution of their relationship. Writing it, Charlie believed that Kate had already read his longer letter.

He thought I ignored this beautiful cry from the heart.

Their go-between, far from ‘brilliant’, had fooled them both, withholding the initial letter and only delivering the second, brutal one.

Time travelling again, Kate was at Aunty Marjorie’s fancy dress party, as Charlie handed her this declaration of his feelings, for what he assumed was the second time. Charlie, unaware
that she thought it was his crushing rejection all over again, must have been astonished by the violence of her reaction.

I snarled at him
.

Kate shook her head, rearranging her thoughts in the light of this new evidence. From now on she must stop referring to Charlie’s note – his second note – as a rejection. It
was instead an acquiescence. Charlie’s surrender to the inevitable.

He thought I didn’t love him any more
.

It was too late. The words, so carefully chosen, so very Charlie, had been robbed of their power by the passing years. By the time he finally put it into her hands at the fancy dress party it
was no more than a poem.

The motorway was a black carpet, rolling towards London. Kate was desperate to get back to her flat and close the door behind her. Tomorrow she’d email Warren and bow out
of his erotic fantasy world; tonight there was no space in her head for anything but the evil prank Becca had pulled so long ago.

In slow motion, as if her past was a cheesy TV movie, Kate saw young Becca handing over the momentous note to young Kate.
I was unformed, embryonic.
Kate had been unable to countenance a
life without Charlie squarely at the centre of it.

Taking her exit from the motorway, the tick-tick of the indicator filling the car, Kate considered the flimsy nature of Becca’s plot.

One phone call would have blown it out of the water. A chance meeting on the street. Charlie casually recalling two notes instead of one. Kate recalled how she’d stared and stared at the
phone, pride and doubt conspiring to stop her dialling Charlie’s number.

It couldn’t happen now.
People were so interconnected with texts and Tweets: all it would have taken was one late night, drunken
I love you come back
and there would have
been a frantic reunion.

But none of these tiny, ordinary things had happened. Becca’s gossamer structure, so typical of her hubris, was as sturdy as a castle.
She didn’t even try to keep us apart!
Kate was stupefied by Becca’s insistence that they remain a tight-knit trio.
She was so sure of herself
.

At each step of the way, Kate had colluded unwittingly with her cousin, reinforcing the bars of her own cage, making sure Becca’s deceit stayed hidden.

Finding their way back to cordiality, Kate and Charlie had played into Becca’s hands, roping off certain areas with the emotional equivalent of crime scene tape. When Charlie had finally
broken through and handed her the original letter, she’d refused to read it.

Was he declaring himself to me afresh? Was he reaching out?

Anger glowed bright and hard within Kate, turning her heart to concrete. She felt white hot contempt for Becca, the flipside of which was pain. A horrible pain, such as Kate had never felt
before; the product of a beloved confidante setting out to hurt her in cold blood.

If Kate had burned it, as planned, she could have gone to her grave without knowing.

But what
do
I know?

Streets shaped up through the windscreen. Kate was back to the stop/start traffic of town.

All she really knew for sure was that Charlie had loved her a long time ago.

Wrapped up in the past, at first Kate didn’t hear the phone. Stationary at a red light, she looked at the image taking up the screen. Charlie, Lucy and Flo sitting at a bistro table; Flo
wearing Lucy’s on-trend sunglasses; Charlie waving; Lucy laughing so hard her eyes are slits. Flo looked thrilled to be out so late with the grown-ups.

The contrast between the wholesome scene and the debauchery Kate had left behind wasn’t lost on her. A pattern was emerging: an independent woman, more than capable of
making sensible decisions, sleepwalks into situations because it’s easier to conform with the Greek chorus around her than listen to her gut.

Beyond the surface sexual attraction, Warren hadn’t interested her. He was, she could now admit, a bore. If he went missing Kate could tell the police only his approximate height and hair
colour; she was unsure about his eyes. Blue? Brown? They could be tartan: Kate had never looked that hard.

Although after tonight I could tell the cops he was a swinger.

The commonplace lust Warren had inspired fell away the moment she saw him creepily play-acting over the spread-eagled body of that disturbed young woman, laid out like a buffet.

Kate didn’t want Warren any more than she wanted the other men she’d whistled up from the ether of the internet. Kate would, as planned, cancel the one date pencilled in for next
week: not because she was ‘going exclusive’ but because, it was clear, love was not to be found online.

Or anywhere.

Love was not for Kate. It seemed simple for others. She knew people who had to fend off love, disentangling themselves from one liaison in order to dive, head first, into the next
one
.

For me
, thought Kate,
love is a pair of heels disappearing around the corner.

As the drivers behind her beeped their annoyance at Kate’s failure to notice that the lights had changed, alternative realities reared before her eyes.

A youthful Kate and Charlie making up. Falling back into step. Drifting, entwined, through their twenties. A low-key wedding on the spur of the moment. Perhaps no wedding at all. An adopted
little chap underfoot. Sharing the cooking and bickering about whose turn it was to take out the bin.

It was a far more cosy scenario than sitting shoeless and tear-stained in a getaway car, the memory of Warren’s breath on her neck burning like a brand.

The cacophony of car horns brought Kate to her senses. With a karate chop, she changed the indicator and took a sharp right, in the opposite direction to her house.

Love eluded Kate for one simple reason: she already had the only love she’d ever need. Charlie was a mountain, one she could not go over, round or through. He blocked out all the
light.

Charlie had moved on, no longer the boy who wrote that note; he’d got over Kate because he had to.

Cold facts insisted she face them. Whatever Charlie meant by handing her the note at the party, when he finally left Becca, he hadn’t turned to Kate; he’d found somebody new.

Scrabbling for a tissue, Kate blew her nose. She coughed and shook her shoulders as the car passed familiar scenery.
If love is not for me
, she thought,
I’ll stick to what I can
see and touch and understand.

Kate had to grapple her life into a shape that made sense to her, not to her Greek chorus. She would focus on something simple and clean; a possibility emerged from her fog of dark thoughts
immediately.

Untainted by crossed wires, Yulan House provided her with challenges and joy. It was mutually beneficial: Kate saw how her own efforts impacted on the children and staff. No potential for
betrayal there, just a pure transaction based on respect.

Yulan House needed help. Kate needed purpose.
What if I borrowed Dad’s dream?
Her own boss in all senses of the word, with no partner or child, Kate was in a privileged position.
She could make sweeping changes without seeking anybody’s permission. She could grab her tawdry, monochrome life by the scruff of the neck and shake it. Light-headed at the thought of paring
down her business life and ramping up her charity work, Kate murmured
‘
Come
on
,’ under her breath as she waited for the car in front to join a roundabout.

Before a new chapter could begin, before Kate could draw the dividing line between the day she knew nothing and the day she knew
everything
, there was a task to be taken care of. She
champed at the bit, ready to expend her hectic intensity on this detail.

Slowing outside Becca’s gate, Kate looked up at the cottage’s lit windows.

I won’t knock.
She would bang on the front door, like a bailiff.
I’ll tell her I know
.

Kate’s bare feet made no noise on the path. She stood at the door, devising several grisly modes of murder. The bloodier the better.

All that was vengeful fantasy; more realistic was the justice Kate would mete out.

I’ll out her
. Everybody would hear of Becca’s cruelty. The whole family. Charlie. Even Flo would know one day what a witch she had for a mother.

I’ll take back all my love. I’ll rescind the protectiveness. I’ll spit on the shared memories
.

And then Kate would drive home and never speak to her cousin again.

A light that bright doesn’t just go out.

The setting was perfect, as if somebody had bottled Christmas and sprinkled it over the room.

Beyond the shuttered window, the empty street was sharply drawn in cold grey light. Even Soho’s naughty teeming thoroughfares are quiet on Christmas Day.

Within, the Grade II listed panelling and the leaping fire made the salon feel like a private sitting room, although the bar at the back of the long double room debunked that illusion. Dressed
up, holding a sherry and feeling festive, Kate was glad of the locked front door. Today the club was not a public place. Today its comforts and delights were for invited guests only.

A tousled head bobbed up from behind the bar. ‘Where oh where is the sodding decanter?’ There was no heat in his bad language: Angus adored Christmas.
Angus
is
Christmas!
thought Kate, watching him drop things and exclaim and help himself to a sneaky sip. Tall, wide, with an extravagant belly, he could have been a shop-soiled Santa were it not for
his hair.

The absurd halo of white blond hair (quite natural, despite its detractors’ claims) was impossible to domesticate. It exploded constantly, a nuclear fission on his head. As befits such a
Dickensian character, Angus’s clothes were not recognisably modern. The tweed and velvet, flecked with ash and riddled with rips, could have been filched from a country house wardrobe at any
stage during the past century.

‘Why,’ roared Angus, ‘won’t it snow?’ He was speaking to nobody and to everybody. Kate didn’t feel obliged to answer. Astor House was a success only partly
because of the noble bones of the building. The real secret of its enduring popularity was Angus.

Like him, the club was louche but inoffensive. Grand but jolly. It welcomed all-comers, but booted out the rude and the snobbish. High jinks of all sorts were indulged; a member could be
blacklisted for sexually harassing a woman but applauded if he started a food fight.

‘Door!’ bellowed Angus at the sound of the bell. ‘Get that, somebody!’

Kilian O’Brien was shown in by a mohawk-haired member of staff, one of three on duty and earning triple rate. An ebullient girl, she was unusually quiet.

Kate understood. Although Angus was no star-chaser – he routinely turned down boorish celebrities’ requests for membership – his hospitality attracted many well-known folk and
Kilian’s star shone brighter than most. The daintily built actor unwound a long long scarf and surrendered to a bear hug from Angus.

‘You came!’

‘Of course,’ smiled Kilian. He was dark, neat, and pulsing with the charisma that is the natural atmosphere of idols. ‘Who in their right mind turns down an invitation to one
of your infamous Christmas lunches?’

‘You’ve met my girlfriend, Kate?’

‘Yes.’ Kilian turned his green eyes to Kate. They were like jewels. He recalled they’d discussed China. ‘Merry Christmas,’ he said in a dancing Irish accent, and
kissed her, shyly, on the cheek.