The pin from her name badge scratched my cheek.
It was a little bit relentless.
But consistent — all nothing.
Then he’d woken on a Sunday early, been dressed and spruce at breakfast, as if he’d had an appointment. Indeed, he’d taken advantage of the day’s suggested shape and tone — it seemed spruce and forthright, somehow — and had claimed — why not — that he was suddenly needed at the office and would nip out while Pauline set forth to tend the weeds.
Plants — she tends the plants.
She kills the weeds.
As far as I’m aware, she does it that way round.
I told her a chef — controversial, but adored by female readers — had forgotten to tell us that he was dyslexic/thick/on a bender — I wasn’t listening at the time so I’m unsure of my final choice — and would fail to provide 900 pithy words about something or other I couldn’t recall. I didn’t think it related to cooking. Probably he was attempting to reposition his persona. Pauline is fascinated by B-List hubris and so this entertained her.
I said it was best to show my face, go in and deal with the minor disaster, catch up on my expenses — they’re more like begging letters now — and be the chap on hand for any further emergencies. We lived in straitened times, even then, and I needed to seem flexible and willing.
I also did honestly want some fresh air.
No, I didn’t.
I wanted to keep an appointment I hadn’t made.
He’d caught the Tube.
Piccadilly Line: convenient and it’s my favourite shade of blue.
He’d stepped into an empty carriage.
And she followed.
That was you.
That was you, Emily.
That was you.
She’d sat opposite, a tiny clumsiness in her movements that lit him, put him on alert, even though she’d been unremarkable in many ways.
Sweet Jesus, that was you.
An over-large biker jacket had made her seem round-shouldered.
As if she was shy about having breasts.
Emily.
That was sweet and you.
Her costume fought ungracefully to combine revelation with concealment. She’d made a series of unimaginative and self-punishing choices in red and mainly black: holed black tights and layers of equally wounded T-shirts, short denim shorts and high-lacing boots with industrial soles. One hand was curled intently round a can of cider.
Didn’t know your name, but that was sweet and you.
Mark had watched her face, its flickers and hints as it flirted with insecurity, or gave him little signs of pride — the happy and personal victory that was her cider, the wish to be challenging.
Lowered eyes and faking that I wasn’t there for you, but I already was. Immediately.
And then she made a small retreat into hurts, or the threat of hurts, their memory, and into some variety of fear. He’d shivered with a vast and irrational compulsion to disclose and remove every wound for her.
Sweet you.
Now and then she had the expression of someone preserved in an untouched space, of dispassionate observation. Her skin was pale as paper and not especially clean and clearly the cider was there to help her up out of the night before, to remove a disreputable pain, but there was so, so much strange purity there, too. He would come to define this sanctity and distance as her principal characteristics. That morning they simply caught him, along with the rest. She was twenty-two — not genuinely young — but the grace of childhood hadn’t faded on her.
Like all the proper ones — the real alcoholics, before they blow — she had this weird perfection, was flawless because of her flaws and made them a beauty.
She was angelic.
Stupid word.
My angel.
Shining with each of the obvious violations.
She was self-inflicted.
He had known how catastrophic she would be, a coma patient could have realised that Emily was dangerous. He hadn’t been deterred.
Quite the reverse.
The first thing she’d said to him was ‘Perv’. But she’d made it sound affectionate — warm and for him in the empty carriage — and they’d stayed where they were, discarded any prior plans and ridden out to the terminals at Heathrow — not particularly speaking, only being with each other, rocking onwards inside the shudders of the carriage. The seats around them gently silted up with voyagers and their unwieldy bags and then mostly emptied as people Mark felt were entirely unnecessary left for exciting, or happy, or business-related destinations. By Turnham Green she’d come to him, switched places and sat at his side.
On their way back into town — the line had returned them, as if it approved of Mark’s intentions — he’d taken her hand, completely unsure of whether she’d consent. He hadn’t a clue how to play her.
She stole my game.
But by Covent Garden he’d risked standing and leading her out and away through the station and up to the fast-breathing world.
There I was with Emily and the sky not the same as it had been and the structure of myself softly altering and rampaging.
He’d found them a fairly quiet bar where he drank cider with her — he detested cider — so their mouths would taste the same.
I knew wherever she lived would be appalling and indiscreet, so I picked her a hotel.
Without bags, unwieldy or otherwise, I got to enjoy an amount of lying at the check-in desk. They sold me a pair of toothbrushes to replace the ones we hadn’t lost in a spurious suitcase that hadn’t been misdirected to Tenerife. I held both the brushes together in one hand, made sure they touched as we strolled to the lift.
All concerned were under no illusions about what we were going to do.
She didn’t seem to mind and didn’t seem not to.
Three weeks after my fortieth birthday and I got myself a twenty-two-year-old.
Or she got me.
Beyond the fantasy luggage, I didn’t lie about anything else when I was with her. I made it a rule from then on. I told her about Pauline. I told her I’d have to leave way before the morning. I told her about my habits. I told her about me.
It was a first.
Nothing changed.
Nothing was absolutely changed.
Almost immediately, his enthusiasm for the others dissipated. He had a handful of repeat offenders, but he simply didn’t ring them any more and, as a consequence, they drifted. He’d been a man who was mainly attracted to passing trade and he let it pass.
He had Emily.
It was a devotion of sorts.
There were slippery, sick days when she didn’t answer his calls. She never explained why. He decided to assume the problem was related to technical issues and bought her a new phone. It was pink, which made it a joke, but he also meant it very much and didn’t want her to lose it — hence the ghastly colour. Before he handed it over, he’d stood in the shop and nestled the thing beside his cheek.