She laughed, but Alan looked away, his mind quickly elsewhere. ‘I want to talk to you later,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you tonight.’
She sighed. ‘I’ve told you, it’s not possible.’
‘After what you told me earlier, I want to call you. I want to know you’re OK. There must be a way. I’ll call at seven o’clock. Rachel? At exactly seven.’
She closed her eyes again, then, fifteen seconds later she nodded slowly.
It was a minute before Alan spoke again. ‘Only trouble is, you smile at anyone at a bus stop in London, they think you’re a nutter.’
This time they both laughed, then rolled together. Then fucked again.
When they’d got their breaths back they talked about all manner of stuff. Films and football and music.
Nothing that mattered.
Alan lay in bed after Rachel had left and thought about all the things that had been said and done that day. He wanted so much to do something to help her, to make her feel better, but for all his bravado, for all his heroic notions, the best that he could come up with was a present.
He knew straight away what he could give her, and where to find it.
It was in a shoebox at the back of a cupboard stuffed with bundles of letters, a bag of old tools and other odds and sods that he’d collected from his father’s place after the old man had died.
Alan hadn’t looked at the bracelet in a couple of years, had forgotten the weight of it. It was gold, or so he presumed, and heavy with charms. He remembered the feel of Rachel’s body against his fingers – her shoulder-blades and hips – as he ran them around the smooth body of the tiger, the edges of the key, the rims of the tiny train wheels that turned…
After his father’s death, Alan had spoken to his mother about the bracelet. He asked her if she knew where it had come from. The skin around her jaw had tightened as she’d said she hardly remembered it, then in the next breath that she wanted nothing to do with the bloody thing. Not considering where it had damned well come from.
Alan put two and two together and realized how stupid he’d been. He knew about his father’s affairs and guessed that, years before, the bracelet had been a failed peace offering of some sort. It might even have been something that he’d originally bought for one of his mistresses. His father had been a forensic pathologist and Alan was amazed at how a man who exercised such professional skill could be so clumsy when it came to the rest of his life.
It wasn’t surprising that his mother had reacted as she had, that she’d wanted no part of the charm bracelet. It had become tainted.
Alan was not superstitious. He sensed that Rachel would like it. He wouldn’t give it to her as it was though. He would make it truly hers before he gave it.
He knew exactly what charm he wanted to add.
From Muswell Hill it was a five minute bus ride to Highgate tube. Rachel leaned back against the side of the shelter. Her hair was still wet from the shower she’d taken at Alan’s flat.
She’d thought so often about how she might feel afterwards. It had been a vital part of the fantasy, not just with Alan but with other men she’d seen, but never spoken to. The sex had been easy to imagine of course. It had been gentler than she was used to and had lasted longer, but the mechanics were more or less the same. Where she’d been wrong was in imagining the feelings that would come when she’d actually done it. She’d been certain that she’d feel frightened, but she didn’t. Fear was familiar to her, and its absence was unmistakable. Heady.
She waited a couple of minutes before giving up on the bus and making for the station on foot. Had there been anybody else at the bus stop, she might well have smiled at them.
Lee didn’t think that he asked too much. Not after a long day talking mortgages to morons and assuring mousy newlyweds that damp was easily sorted. At the end of it, all he wanted was his dinner and some comfort.
He couldn’t stand her so fucking cheerful.
Taking off his jacket and tie, opening a beer and asking just what she was so bloody chirpy about.
Had she been up to those fucking woods again?
Yes.
Who with?
Don’t be silly, Lee.
Sucking off tramps in the bushes, I’ll bet.
Then she’d laughed at him. No outrage like there should have been. No anger at his filthy suggestions, at the stupid suspicions that he’d only half tarted up as a joke.
A jab to the belly and another to the tits had shut her up and put her down on the floor. Now he straddled her chest, knees pressed down on to her arms, his hands pulling at his own hair in frustration.
‘We were going to do the business later on. I was well up for it and tonight could have been the night we did something special. Made a new life.’
‘Lee, please…’
‘You. Fucking. Spoiled. It.’
‘We can still do it, Lee. Let’s go upstairs now. I’m really horny, Lee…’
He shook his head, disgusted, gathering the spit into his mouth. She knew what was coming, he could see it in her eyes and he waited for her to try and turn her head away as he leaned down and pushed the saliva between his teeth. Instead, she just closed her eyes, and he thought he saw something like a smile as he let a thick string of beery spit drop slowly down on to her face.
As soon as the seven o’clock news had begun, Alan reached for the phone and dialled the number.
It was answered almost immediately, but nobody spoke.
Alan whispered, realized as soon as he had that he was being stupid. He wasn’t the one who needed to be secretive.
‘Rachel, it’s me…’
Suddenly, there was a noise, above the hiss and crackle on the line. It was a guttural sound that echoed. That it took him a few moments to identify. An animal sound: a gulp and a grind, a splutter and a swallow. It was the sound of someone sobbing uncontrollably but trying with every ounce of strength to assert control. Trying desperately not to be heard.
Alan sat up straight, pressed the phone hard to his ear.
‘Rachel, I’m here, OK? I’m not going anywhere.’
He watched the comings and goings with something like amusement.
For a fortnight he watched her leave the house in Barnet mid-morning, then come home again by late-afternoon. He stayed with her most of the day when he could, saw her meet him in the woods or sometimes go straight to his flat when they couldn’t be arsed with preliminaries.
When they wanted to get straight down to it.
He watched her leave the flat, eyes bright and hair wet. The smell of one man scrubbed away before she went home to another.
He wondered if the man he saw climbing into the silver sports car every morning knew that he was a cuckold. On a couple of occasions he thought about popping a note under his windscreen to let him know. Just to stir things up a bit.
He hadn’t done because he didn’t want to do anything that might disturb the routine. Not now that he was ready to take her. Besides, mischief for its own sake was not his thing at all.
Still, he couldn’t help but marvel at the things people got up to.
On the day Alan had hoped to give Rachel the bracelet, his mother tripped on the stairs.
So many things that could have been different…
Two weeks before, the jeweller had shown him a catalogue. There had been charms that would have carried more or less the same meaning but Alan knew what he wanted. He’d ordered one specially made. He’d decided against the diamond spots and gone for the enamel, but still, it wasn’t cheap. He’d thought of it as a dozen decent sessions with one of his private patients. He always thought in those terms whenever he wanted to splash out on something.
A fortnight later, half an hour before he was due to meet Rachel in the woods, he walked out on to Bond Street with the bracelet. Then, his mother called.
‘Don’t worry, Alan. It’s just my ankle, it’s nothing…’