Virtual Strangers (11 page)

‘No kids yet.’

I could hardly bear discuss this. ‘Exactly.’

‘And they’re both workaholics. Though it tickles me to think of Adam Jones holed up in his study, furtively sending you emails.’

I wasn’t sure
I
felt tickled. ‘There was never anything furtive about it,’ I reminded her.

Rose laughed. A dark chocolate laugh, swirled with nuggets of emphasis. ‘Not for you, maybe, but certainly for him,’ she purred. ‘Don’t forget,
he
knew who he was sending them to.’

My father tootled in a half hour or so later, bearing tea and the pained look he’s recently developed and could possibly patent.

‘What on
earth
is that smell?’ he whinnied, casting around.

Distracted and impatient, I shrugged irritably at him. ‘What smell?’ I barked.

‘
What
smell?’ he countered. ‘Goodness me, Charlotte, has your nose gone on holiday?’

Regrettably, no. I exhaled then inhaled. Still breathing at least. Still functioning. Just. ‘But
what
smell? What sort of sme –‘

‘Ah! Here’s the culprits! Charlotte, what on earth have you been doing? look at these!’

He bent down and picked up the blow-heater. Plus my flip flops. Which were spot-welded to the top.

Note; must make an ENT appointment sooner rather than later as I suspect I have suffered necrosis of the nasal mucus membrane, by spice.

Midday.

Am tempted to attach my hand to the kitchen door handle in order to stop a new and disconcerting involuntary log-on spasm, which is threatening to take over my entire day. Fortunately, I have a diversion in place, as my father is making a big splash at the Cefn Melin Xmas Food and Craft Extravaganza this afternoon with entries in several categories of the preserves section.

Also I am belatedly (oh, be still my beating heart!) re-aware that the Phil situation is still unresolved. Am tempted to surf the net for obscure Brontëan factual trivia (as a lie-detector) but am deflected by the realisation that it is simply a symptom of the same involuntary log-on spasm. I’m anticipating a call from Phil with a mixed bag of irritable/nonchalant mind-sets (though my mind is almost fully occupied with the Adam Jones Development) and am actually, I realise now, dreading a bona fide explanation for his movements.

Am also tempted to email Daniel to glean pointers to his Possible Christmas Movements. But I know without doubt that any enquiry about Possible Christmas Movements will elicit a cavalcade of diatribes about personal space and its importance in parent/child duty related negotiations (followed by a long period of non-contact as penance). Therefore I must accept that this is simply yet another symptom of my involuntary log-on spasm also, as I’m generally very mindful of filial sensitivities.

Early evening
- bleak and cheerless time of early winter afternoon, during which all hope seems lost; all optimism pointless. Must beware of getting SAD – should I book a low season week in Benalmadena, perhaps?

Dad won in both the chutney and the jam categories, and his lemon cheese came a respectable fourth in Miscellaneous Preserves (respectable because this, he told me, was his second only venture into the world of curds). We celebrated by sitting in the warm, dusky kitchen and eating an entire whisked sponge.

‘The secret,’ he told me, ‘where lemons are concerned, is to look out for the ones with the really thin skins and to keep a tight rein on the temperature.’

All of which looked like becoming uncomfortably pertinent when Phil’s car pulled up outside some moments later.

He hadn’t called. And it had already struck me that whatever he’d been up to on Friday night it wasn’t simply a case of him drinking. Phil drank, but only in the most social of settings, and even then, only in small, straight sided glasses. Him being drunk then, was not actually about drinking, but more likely about wanting to be drunk. For which he must have had a reason. And if it was a reason he felt disinclined to share with me, then it must have been
about
me. Or, more precisely, about someone else. Though we’d only been seeing each other for a while, I’d known Phil, in a chit chat at parties kind of way, for ages. And as far as I knew (God, how little I
did
know), he really only drank when he was unhappy. As the security light illuminated his slim form on the driveway, I had the uncomfortable sensation that whatever manoeuvres I’d had in mind about ending things, I was about to be beaten to it.

‘How Haworth?’ I sang as I answered the door. (Bizarrely, some part of my brain seemed to think that a jocular tone was required.)

‘Oh,’ he said, wrong footed, as he wiped his feet rhythmically. ‘Oh, er. Small, dark, atmospheric. Um.’

He hovered in the hall while I entirely neglected to usher him anywhere - busy as I was with the diversionary tactic of straightening the ruck in the doormat. Phil had never really become
truly
comfortable in our house; never taken his shoes off or made himself tea, for instance. I’d taken this to be more about having two proprietorial young males (and latterly, an aged one too) prowling around than about not actually
feeling
comfortable - Phil was always sensitive to proprietaries - but seeing him now, I decided it wasn’t about that at all. There were, it suddenly seemed, other forces at work. His eyes were the colour of sticky toffee pudding; dark lashed and intense, and quite his best feature. Looking back, I could now see it was the eyes that had swung it. The carpet, tonight though, was the chief beneficiary.

‘And so
on
,’ I repeated, for no good reason. ‘Kitchen? Cake?’ I started moving down the hall, but was immediately aware that he wasn’t following. I turned around.

‘Charlie, I need to talk to you,’ he said quietly.

I said ‘Ah!’ (Why, exactly?) then, ‘It’s okay. Dad’s watching
Your Favourite Hymns
.’ I beckoned to the kitchen. ‘And Ben’s at Francesca’s.’

Seemingly satisfied that we wouldn’t be interrupted by requests for cheese strings or cups of tea or throat lozenges, he followed me in and perched himself up on the stool by the fridge. Where he sat and said nothing for a good fifteen seconds, having decided, I presumed, that my ‘ah!’ was indicative of the fact that I already knew what he was going to say and that I’d therefore take the conversational lead. Which I decided I’d better, or we’d be here all night. I said ‘Ah,’ again, but this time without the exclamatory nuance. Then ‘Well? So?’, which seemed to gee him up a bit.

‘You know my weekend?’ he began. I folded my arms and nodded. He slapped his hands down on his knees, as if starting a symphony. ‘Well, I didn’t actually go on it.’

He paused to let this sink in. As I’d already suspected as much, I nodded again, fairly immediately. ‘I know.’

He looked startled. ‘You do?’

‘You were spotted in the Flag and Fulcrum. Late Friday night. And you didn’t phone at all, so I was pretty sure. Why didn’t you go?’

He jerked his head up and looked as shocked as if I’d just suggested energetic sex on the vinyl. Which, in other circumstances, would have been faintly amusing. What did he expect me to ask?

‘Because Karen’s been in touch. She’s back. And we...and she –’ He stopped here and peeled my flexible
You Fat Cow
fridge magnet off the fridge. Then stuck it back on higher up. Karen, then.
Karen.
As in the-ex-wife. As in the- no-go-discursive- region. As in - well, anyway. I had to find out about her sometime. It may as well be now.

‘Well, anyway,’ he said. ‘She’s back–’

‘Back?’

‘Back. In Cardiff. She- we- well, since the divorce she’s been living in Bristol. But she’s got a new job - the hospital. She’s a nurse. She –’I nodded. This much I recalled. ‘Anyway,’ he went on awkwardly. ‘She wanted to talk, so I met up with her on Friday evening and, well, I’ve been giving things a great deal of thought and I don’t think you’d disagree that things haven’t been all they could be between us lately, and I, well, I –’

‘Think we should stop seeing one another.’ I took a breath. ‘So do I.’

‘You do?’

‘You seem surprised.’

‘No, I...Well, yes. I suppose I am. This is all a bit sudden, isn’t it? I mean, I only really began to think in those terms on Friday. You know, with Karen and everything. I suppose it hadn’t occurred to me that –’

I unfolded my arms. I needed to move. ‘Sure you wouldn’t like tea?’ I asked. Somehow, conversations of this nature were more palatable with a side dish of routine domestic pottering. I pulled my sleeves up. ‘I’m having one.’

‘I don’t think so,’ he said, while I slopped out the teapot. ‘I have to be getting back. I have a...well, it’s of no consequence really, is it? Charlie, look. Did you really mean what you said? Were you already thinking we should, you know, call it a day? Because I feel pretty bad about…well, we’re neither of us getting any younger. It’s not as if we...well, I just hope you don’t feel I’ve...Well. The thing with Karen and me, well, it’s never really gone away, has it? I mean, I know we’re divorced now but, well... Well, it’s never really been sorted out, has it?’

How would I know? It had never even been
alluded
to, as far as I could recall. What a very dark horse. I shrugged. He sighed. ‘And I feel bad about that,’ he went on. ‘I would hate to feel you’re just putting a brave face on things.’

He paused (for breath, presumably) and then slid from the stool. I took a mug from the dishwasher and wondered how best to deal with this slight. It was one thing to have your control of the situation usurped by a pre-emptive strike; quite another to be assumed not to have had any in the first place. But to say ‘yeah, well, I’d gone off you anyway’ seemed, though compelling, rather needlessly juvenile. So I settled for,

‘Not at all. It’s the right thing for both of us. I think we both knew it wasn’t really going anywhere, didn’t we?’

I’d stressed the ‘both’ - and the ‘didn’t’, and he nodded gravely. Then tipped his head to one side.

‘I suppose we’re all looking for that elusive
something
, aren’t we? Doesn’t matter how old, how wise, how pragmatic we get, we still want perfection in our relationships. And why shouldn’t we? But the problem is, have we a right to expect it?’

Which strange and unsettling piece of wisdom was not only the most profound exchange of thought we had ever shared as a couple, but also seemed to signal the end of our brief entanglement, as he then re-sited the fridge magnet again (why? With what significance?) and made all the movements that herald a parting; saying ‘anyway’, ‘right-ho’, and patting his keys. I followed him back through the hall, still digesting his words.

‘I think we have every right,’ I said. ‘But whether we find it or not is quite another matter. I hope you do, Phil. I hope things work out with Karen this time.’

Her name felt unfamiliar on my tongue, and I half wished it didn’t. Why had we never talked about this?

‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘We’ll see.’

I opened the front door and watched him stride down the path. In retreat mode he seemed somehow more elusive and desirable, but even as I stood and absorbed the loss of a man I never really had in the first place, I knew the feeling to be treacherous; as borne out by the memory of countless failed re-kindlings of teenage affairs. I brought to mind our brief history of sexual encounters. His flat. My house. His flat. My house again. Two beds. Two bodies. Two very separate people. No rush of desire, no wild passion, no great
need
. I’d never really desired Phil as wholeheartedly as I ought to have done. Just convinced myself I had, in the way that you do when you face the stark possibility that fluttering hearts are the exclusive domain of the young.

We did all the waving and earnest cheerio-ing that the situation called for, then I shut the front door on the dour winter night.

Back in the kitchen, two things occurred to me. One was my magnet - now positioned top left - and the peculiar part it had played as we talked. The other, and altogether more...more... well,
something
, was the feeling that skirted the edge of my stomach when the words ‘Adam Jones’ floated back into my mind. Not a fluttering exactly, but a definite stirring. Affirmation, at any rate, of a functioning heart.

My father slopped in. (Oh dear. Men in mules. Yeuch.)

‘Look at that,’ I said, pointing. ‘Take a set square to that magnet, you’d be hard pushed to better it. Perfectly perpendicular with the top of the fridge.’

‘Do what, my love?’

‘Right angles, Dad. Their importance in the scheme of things. Or lack of. Just thinking about the big picture. You know?’

Anal. Just like I’d said all along.

Midnight.

A half dozen hours down the line and I look into my heart and do not like what I see. I suppose I expected to feel something a little more meaningful than just plain old non-plussed about Phil, but why? Why should I? I was non-plussed with him; now I’m non-plussed without him. No big difference there. The real trouble is the something else that’s whizzed in where the feelings of loss and aloneness should be. Hmm.

In short, I have taken to bed an emotion that I don’t quite know what to do with, plus cocoa in a stupid, difficult to drink out of, lump-of-chocolate shaped promotional mug. Plus I’ve also taken to bed a print out of email from Dan to Ben (Hi Short! How you doing? Twisted Mum’s arm yet ?etc. etc.) and (ohmyGod) another email from griffith. Or Griffith? Or Clam Digger From Tenby, perhaps? Every incarnation is markedly less stressful-to-deal-with than ‘Adam Jones; friend, shag listee, General practitioner,
boss’s husband’
etc. Whatever.

The email reads;
Charlie, don’t quite know what to say, except how sorry I am. And that it seems such a shame we have to stop all this now. It’s been fun, hasn’t it?
Thank you
. Adam.

I experience a smidgin of irritation at that specific underlining. Thank you for what? A good laugh at my expense?

I creep mournfully under a blanket depression at the futility of hearts stirring/fluttering (indeed doing anything other than that which is strictly necessary for pumping blood about )
per se
. And Benalmadena is clearly impossible due to big lack in Everest/MFI fund. No. Everest fund, period. I am an unstructured free spirit and have no need of round nosed granite effect worktops or shaker style pale mustard cupboard fronts. Rose? Canterbury? Ben/Dan reunion? I think yes.