I kept utterly still until I heard the door slam after him. I didn’t start crying until I was quite sure he was gone.
16
Wednesday night is late-night shopping in Cambridge, and I’d been elected by a jury of my peers at school to buy Rosa Vidowski her leaving present. This meant I was back in the car today, as I don’t like cycling late at night, and I’d parked under the Grand Arcade.
I’d no idea why I had been chosen to do this rather than anyone else. I would have made an excuse, but they caught me on the hop. So, after my obligatory and pointless visit to the Examiner offices, with its sudden thickets of letters from people who weren’t Bethan Avery but had something to say on the subject, I found myself aimlessly roaming around the china and fancy goods department of a large department store.
I listlessly sized up saccharine china figurines of beautiful women dancing, flirting, reading and fanning themselves, bedecked in the ribbons and stays of dead ages, the store lights making their glazings gleam. Apparently this was the sort of thing Rosa liked. I could not, for the life of me, imagine why. The glass cabinet that held them slowly revolved, showing them all up to their best ceramic advantage.
I glanced away at a table nearby, where several larger objects in china and metal were displayed. Quite a few of these were representations of women, awful art deco women, nude or almost nude, or wearing carved drapes under which their nipples stood out stiffly, and which were slit open to reveal long bronze or pewter legs. Soft porn in a perfectly respectable department store: some of them were even bent over, or exaggeratedly arched, to hold stupid trivial things in their long thin badly carved arms, objects like ashtrays or sockets for light bulbs.
I was growing angry; a hard, cold anger. I thought of Linda Moore’s book, describing Bethan’s ‘porcelain good looks’, and I looked back at the clay dolls going slowly around in their glass cabinets. They were connected, these china virgins and pewter whores, I knew it instinctively. They were opposite sides of the same coin; they defined women in lies and half-truths; they were Everywoman and consequently No Woman.
Maybe I read too much into things. Eddy always says I do. But how could I misread something so obvious, so tangible? I hefted my bag and walked off, leaving them all in their foolish poses.
I ended up purchasing a pair of fancy glass candlesticks, shot with blue and pink. Well, I liked them, so Rosa better had, too.
I paid for the candlesticks and joined the desultory queue on the escalator down, packing them into my big floppy black bag. I was heading for the doors when the perfume counters caught my eye. I was running out of my regular perfume and fancied a change. Since Eddy wasn’t going to be buying me the usual bottle of Coco for Christmas this year, maybe it was time to update my scent along with my last name.
These thoughts all made something hitch painfully under my ribs.
You could have him back, you know. If you called him, he’d come.
He would.
But would you have him, under such terms?
Perhaps it’s not how you think. Perhaps he’s lying on someone’s sofa right now, mourning your loss, his own foolishness. Perhaps he is missing you. If you don’t yield a little, check in with him, how would you ever know?
Lying on someone’s sofa? In their bed more like. You never did trust him. And with good reason, in the end.
I sighed so wearily that the woman on the escalator ahead of me turned to stare at me as I blinked back tears.
Shopping for things like make-up and perfume has always been tough going for me. I can’t stand a hard sell. So I had to drift lightly between counters, just taking a little squirt out of the tester bottles, then moving off quickly before I got hammered with a strident, ‘Can I help you?’ from one of the breezy girls behind the counters. Obviously they can’t help me. If I’d made my mind up, I wouldn’t have to test their wares, would I?
I was just sniffing something in an outrageously elaborate glass bottle when a man caught my eye. An anomalous enough creature to see in a perfume department, but I’d noticed him because he’d been looking at me keenly when I’d glanced up, then immediately looked away.
Hmm. So much for the art of flirting, I thought, rounding the counter and heading off for the next one, where I tested something that smelled like cat’s urine and violets. Urgh. Definitely not for me.
Or, more embarrassingly, perhaps he’d seen me on the television and wanted to strike up a conversation about it. I was constantly being asked about this ‘new evidence’ that had turned up in the column, and sometimes no amount of declaring that the police had sworn me to secrecy was enough to deter people.
I backtracked as I saw the girl behind the counter put down something in preparation for pouncing on me. I stepped backward and turned, and I saw that the man who’d been staring at me before hesitated, not knowing which way I was going.
He was dressed in a suit and long coat, and he had dark hair and a smooth face. He was following me.
I was breathless, light-headed with fear, and I paused near the counter, clutching the edge, perversely wishing the girl serving would engage with me now so I could whisper to her to call the police.
I stole a glance at him in one of the multitudinous mirrored surfaces on the counter.
It’s not the same man.
I couldn’t tell you exactly how I realized this, but I did. The shape of his face, his build, the way he held himself – it wasn’t the man who’d parked outside my house. I would have sworn on my life.
I started to breathe again.
It struck me then that he didn’t want to approach me, just to follow me. He must have been a store detective, who thought I was a shoplifter. I wanted to laugh suddenly with embarrassment and relief. On the other hand I felt strangely guilty – I don’t know why. I suspect there is a secret shoplifter in me who reacts the same way when confronted by authority. I pulled my bag up on my shoulder as the colour rose in my cheeks.
The cool night air was soft after the air conditioned heat of the shop. I paused outside the door, at something of a loss.
I hadn’t had a very good week so far, and this evening was proving no exception.
I would treat myself, I thought, heading off down Market Street. I would go into Heffers and buy myself a new novel. I would choose one packed with incident, erudition and sex, in a shiny dust jacket. It would be pleasantly heavy in my bag as I walked back to my car, and when I got home I would cuddle up on the sofa with it, with a packet of biscuits and a bottle of wine, and read it right through. It would be a sensual pleasure. The anticipation of it was already erasing my embarrassment.
I walked on past the brightly lit shop fronts, the coyly illuminated pubs and cafes, the stony grandeur of the colleges – Emmanuel, Pembroke, Peterhouse, St Catherine’s, Corpus, King’s, with gargoyles growling at me from their cornices, each splendidly overdressed in fluted railings and manicured lawns. I love this place – opulent, medieval and alien as it is, it nevertheless stretches out its arms and includes me. It was here that I first learned to breathe freely, to express my thoughts with confidence. Cambridge is my alma mater in truth, and I do tend to cling to her skirts, despite Eddy’s disgust. ‘It’s just a bloody school,’ he would say, as gown-clad academics hurried off to some Formal Hall at Christ’s and confused foreign students practically cycled under his front wheels on Downing Street and King’s Parade, only their lack of speed saving them. ‘A school with pretensions.’
‘Yes and no. It’s a world within the world.’
He would merely sigh impatiently. ‘You should try working in it. Your romantic memories of it would last two minutes.’
I didn’t reply. Mother Cecilia had been so happy when I’d told her I’d got in. The memory still made me smile.