Suckers

He might have been trying to soften the blow, but only succeeded in making it that much more crushing, when it finally came. He should have been brutal to start with. Here we were in this sandwich bar, and in between eruptions of steam from the Gaggia, I could hear Steve Harley singing 'Come up and see me, Make me smile', and I could hear Duncan saying how terribly fond he was of me, and he didn't want me to get hurt, and that was why we should stop seeing each other.

I couldn't believe my ears. I thought I was going to have a hysterical screaming fit, right there in the sandwich bar. Then something snapped, very quietly, like an old elastic band which had been stretched too long and too tightly in my head, and I felt my entire life shift into a different gear. I could see Duncan's lips moving. I could hear the traffic, and the patter of feet on the pavement, the murmur of voices and the distant wailing of a siren, and all these things were leaving vapour trails of noise. In that instant, my mind separated from the rest of me and struck out on its own. From then on, I was like a movie to which the wrong subtitles had been added; the written words bore no relation to what the voices were actually saying on the soundtrack. I was screaming inside, but it was with detached fascination that I could hear myself saying in a mild and reasonable voice, 'Yes, but we can still be friends.'

This was about a week after the note. When Friday evening came, I'd tried casually to entice him away from his rendezvous. With what had seemed like genuine regret he told me he had a prior commitment, an arrangement to meet with an old family friend, and in the morning he had to leave for Yorkshire — something about visiting his sick uncle, the one who owned the flat he was renting. Next Saturday, he promised, it would be different. Next Saturday we would go somewhere nice.

All right, I thought, let him go out with this woman if he wanted. An old family friend — maybe even old enough to be his mother. I thought of the bridge-playing turkeys my parents had always hung around with and decided she could pose no possible threat to me. I felt secure in the knowledge that I was someone special. Women like me didn't come along twice in one man's lifetime.

I was already aware of Duncan's habit of keeping in touch with ex-girlfriends. There were several of them around — strange women who drifted in and out of his life, who made guest appearances in his photographs every now and again. He said, only half joking, he had always found it difficult to let go of the past — he worried that a clean break would make him lose his grip on the present as well. So it didn't seem odd he should want to keep in touch with an old family friend. Especially since there didn't seem to be a lot of family left.

The Casa DeMille was an upmarket spaghetti house. It was only later (much later) that I found out nine o'clock on Friday night was when it all began. It wasn't the first time they'd met, not exactly, but it was the first time she'd had a chance to talk to him properly, adult to adult as it were. If only I'd tried harder, I could have put a stop to it before it had even begun. If only I had destroyed the note — no one need ever have known. There were many 'if onlys'. In the days and nights to come I would be replaying them ceaselessly in my head.

And now I could hear myself saying, 'Yes, but we can still be friends.'

He looked embarrassed. 'Dora, it's finished. I feel really bad about it.'

I reached across the table and squeezed his hand. He started to pull away, then thought better of it. 'When I say friends, I mean friends,' I babbled, 'no strings attached.' The words tumbled out. I was surprised at how easy it was. 'There's no point in us going on if you're in love with someone else. But I don't see why we shouldn't see each other again.'

He looked doubtful. I was no longer of any interest to him, and now all he wanted to do was extricate himself as tactfully as he could. But still I ploughed on. 'I mean, I never thought we were going to get married or anything. But I don't see why we can't meet for lunch, and things. Unless of course you can't stand the sight of me…'

'Good God, Dora, no.' Oh no, Heaven forbid I should think something like that. 'But I wouldn't want to take advantage of you.'

But you already have taken advantage of me, I thought. He was sounding like a character from a Victorian novel. 'You couldn't take advantage of me if you tried,' I said in a flippant, slightly breathy way, my every word weighted with lightness. 'Of course, it goes without saying I'm immensely jealous of this person, whoever she is, and I wish you'd told me about her before.' And I paused, and added, 'What's she like?'

I'd caught him on the hop. He frowned, and for the first time I noticed that little crease between his eyebrows, the one that would get deeper over the years. For a moment or two, he looked as though he'd forgotten what we were talking about. 'You mean Violet?'

'Is that her name?' I asked ingenuously. 'How unusual.'

'I don't think it's her real name, but it's what she calls herself.' He looked at me pleadingly. 'I never intended to fall in love.'

I couldn't think of anything to say to that. Haltingly, in order to fill the ghastly silence, he told me what he knew, which wasn't much, though I gathered they'd already spent an entire weekend in each other's company. So much for the sick uncle. By the time we'd finished our third cup of coffee, and he'd pecked me goodbye on the cheek, and we'd parted to go our separate ways, I'd formed a clearer picture of what I was up against.

She called herself Violet Westron because her real name was too difficult to pronounce — she was part-Czech, or part-Romanian, or part-Russian, he wasn't sure which. She was fluent in several different languages, including English. She had once been a singer, but she'd got fed up with it and retired. She'd told him she'd been around — she'd spent time in Prague, and Paris, and Berlin, and she knew Venice like the back of her hand. She'd had affairs with one or two famous artists and musicians, and even with a head of state, but she was cagey about their names. She let slip she'd once had her portrait painted by Fernand Khnopff, a painter whose name sounded vaguely familiar, though he wasn't what you'd call a household name. She'd appeared in a couple of films by a well-known German director, though when Duncan had demanded to know which one she'd shaken her head and laughed. It was almost certain all the prints had been destroyed, she'd said, and she thanked the Lord for that.

I said she sounded like a busy little bee.

She wasn't enormously wealthy, Duncan reckoned, but she had resources. He couldn't tell whether it was a wealthy patron, or an employer, or an ex-lover, but there was definitely someone in the background who was bankrolling her expensive taste in clothes. She had come to London in order to set up some sort of business deal, but when Duncan had pressed her further she'd laughed again and changed the subject. He'd asked how long she would be staying, and she'd said, 'For as long as it takes.'

And that was all he knew about her, though she already seemed to know everything there was to know about him. It was uncanny, he said, they'd only just met and already she knew him better than he knew himself. But then she was an old family friend.

I wondered aloud whether she would be going away once her business had been completed. Duncan wasn't sure, but I didn't have to ask what he would do then. I knew, because I knew all about obsession. He would follow her, even if she went to the ends of the earth.

She would be a tough nut to crack, but I didn't think she'd be impossible. In my more optimistic moments, I saw Violet Westron as a challenge.

I was besotted all over again, and it was worse than before. I couldn't concentrate on anything else. I went home and drank a bottle of cheap wine. For the first time in my life I bought a packet of cigarettes and painstakingly smoked every last one of them, even though they made me cough and splutter. I awoke in the middle of the night with a parched throat and a throbbing headache, and all I could think about was the memory of those eyes. There had been danger in them, yet I had chosen to ignore it.