Second Life (20 page)

For what? A feeling of otherness, of the extraordinary that resides in the mundane.
For a long time I see nothing that interests me. Half the people on the bridge are
tourists wearing shorts and T-shirts, while the rest sweat in suits. I take a few
shots anyway. I change position. And then I see someone interesting. A man, walking
towards me. He’s in his late thirties, I guess, wearing a shirt, a jacket but no
tie. At first he seems unremarkable, but then I pick up on something. It’s intangible,
but unmistakable. I feel a tingle, my senses are heightened. This man is different
from the others. It’s as if he has a gravity, is disturbing the air as he moves through
it. I bring my camera to my eye, frame him in my viewfinder, zoom in close. I focus,
wait, refocus as he comes towards me. He looks right at me, right down the lens,
and although his expression doesn’t change, something seems to connect. It’s as if
he both sees and doesn’t see me at the same time. I’m a ghost, shimmering and translucent.
I squeeze the shutter release, then wait a second before squeezing it again, and
then once more.

He doesn’t even notice. He looks away, over my shoulder towards Tower Bridge, and
keeps on walking. A moment later he’s gone.

I stay for a while longer, but even without looking at the pictures I’ve taken I
know it. I have my shot. It’s time to leave.

I go through the lobby and up to the room. Lukas comes to the door in a towel; as
usual, he’s poured us both a drink – a beer for him, a sparkling water for me – and
once we’ve kissed he hands me mine. I breathe him in, the deep, woody smell of his
aftershave, the faint trace of the real him underneath, and smile. I put my camera
down on the table. It’s the first time I’ve brought it with me.

‘You took my advice.’

‘I did. An early birthday present to myself,’ I lie.

‘It’s your birthday?’

‘Next week. Next Tuesday, in fact.’

He kisses me again. Tuesday. It’s become our day. We haven’t missed one yet, and
in between we chat online. It’s almost as good, but not quite. We share each other’s
lives. We describe the things we’d like to do to each other, with each other. We
tell each other our most private fantasies. But Tuesday is the day we meet.

‘I should’ve known that. I should know when your birthday is.’

I smile. How could he? It’s something else I haven’t told him, something I’ve kept
for myself, along with my husband’s real name, and the fact that I have a son.

But I have told him the truth about Kate.

I hadn’t intended to, but last week he was telling me how he’d known from the moment
we first began chatting that he wanted to meet me. I felt guilty.

How could I reply? I only met you because I thought you might have some connection
to my dead sister.

‘It’s not that simple,’ I said, instead. I decided to be honest, to tell him the
truth. There’d been enough lies. ‘I have something to tell you. My sister, the one
I told you about? She didn’t kill herself. She was murdered.’

That familiar look of shock. He reached out to touch me, then hesitated. ‘But . .
. ?’

I told him what had happened, that the only thing taken was an earring. I even described
it to him. Gold drop, with a tiny dreamcatcher design with turquoise feathers. I
told him about going to see Anna, the list of names I found in Kate’s things, the
first time I’d logged on to the website. Encountrz.

‘And that’s why you came to meet me?’

‘I’m sorry. Yes.’

He held me close. ‘Jayne, I understand. Maybe I can help.’

‘Help? How?’

‘There are other sites. Your sister might have been on those, too. I could try to
find her.’

It was tempting, but it felt futile, and I wasn’t sure I could go through it all
again. I told him I’d think about it.

And now he’s here, in front of me. Talking about how he hadn’t known when my birthday
was. ‘We’ll do something special,’ he says. He picks up my camera. ‘You’ve been taking
photos?’

Special?
I wonder what he means. Go out for a meal, take in a show? It sounds ridiculous.

‘I thought it was time. See if I’ve still got it.’

‘And do you?’

I shrug, though I’m being modest. Today, on the bridge, I’d felt like the old me,
back when I was in Berlin and taking pictures all the time. I can already feel myself
slipping back into my talent. It’s like going home.

He holds up the camera. ‘May I?’

I sip my drink. ‘If you like.’

He turns it on and flicks through the pictures, nodding as he does. ‘They’re good.’

‘I brought you some of my old shots. Like you asked?’

He puts the camera down and takes a step towards me.

‘Want to see them now?’

He kisses me. ‘Later,’ he says, then kisses me again. ‘God, I’ve missed you.’ He
slips the towel from his waist and I glance down.

‘I’ve missed you, too.’ And even though it’s only been a week since the last time
I was in a room like this – and we’ve talked online every day – I mean it.

We kiss again. I feel him stiffen between us and know that
in a moment he’ll be on
top of me, and then inside me, and then once again everything will be all right.

Afterwards, he stands at the window. A gust of wind lifts the curtains and I catch
a glimpse of the street outside. We’re on the first floor; I see the sky, wisps of
cloud, I hear the murmur of the street, the traffic, the voices. It’s hot in the
room, sticky.

I let my eyes travel the curve of his body, his neck, his back, his behind. I notice
his blemishes, the details I don’t see on the camera and forget every time we meet.
The mole on his neck, the vaccination scar on his shoulder that matches Hugh’s, the
red flush of a birthmark on his upper thigh. It’s been a month now, and these details
still surprise me. I grab my camera; he turns as I click the shutter, and when he
sees I’ve taken a picture of him his face breaks into the same half-smile I used
to see on Marcus.

‘Come back to bed. Let’s look at these pictures.’

We lie, side by side. The envelope I’ve brought with me is between us, its contents
spilled out. My work, my past. A pile of glossy ten-by-eights.

He holds up a picture of Marcus.

‘And this one?’

It’s
Marcus in the Mirror
, and I tell him the same story that I told Anna, more or
less. ‘An ex. That was taken in the bathroom of the flat we lived in.’

‘Also in Berlin?’

‘Yes.’ I’ve told him about my time there. About what I used to be like, who I was
before I became the person I am now.

‘You were happy there?’

I shrug. It’s not an answer.

‘Some of the time.’

‘Why did you leave?’

I sigh and turn on to my back. I look at the ceiling, at the curlicues in the plasterwork.
When I don’t answer he puts the photo down and moves closer, so that he’s right next
to me. I feel the warmth of his body. He must sense my struggle.

‘When did you leave?’

It’s an easier question, and I answer straight away. ‘I went over there in the mid-nineties,
and stayed for three or four years.’

He laughs. ‘When I was at school . . .’

I laugh, too. ‘You were.’

He kisses me. My shoulder. ‘It’s a good job I love older women,’ he says.

And there’s that word again.
Love
. We haven’t used it. It’s something we’ve approached
only obliquely.
I love it when you . . . I love the way you . . .

We haven’t yet lost the verb, the qualifier. We haven’t gone as far as
I love you
.

‘So, I was hanging out, you know. Bars and clubs. Living in a squat.’

‘East Berlin?’

I shake my head. ‘Kreuzberg.’

He smiles. ‘Bowie . . . Iggy Pop.’

‘Yes, though that was years before. I was taking pictures. It started off small,
but people liked my stuff. Y’know? I met this guy who ran a gallery. The picture
editor at this magazine heard about me, wanted to use me for some pictures. From
there it kind of went crazy. Exhibitions, even fashion shoots.’ I pause. I’m approaching
it now, this thing I want to tell him, this thing he might not like. ‘This was the
mid-nineties. Heroin chic.’

He says nothing.

‘And, well, there was a lot of it about.’

A beat.

‘Heroin?’

I want my silence to be answer enough, but it isn’t. I have to tell him.

‘Yes.’

‘
You
took heroin?’

I look at him. His expression is unreadable. Is it that hard to believe? A part of
me wants to rise up, to defend myself. Plenty of people did, I want to say. Still
do. What’s the big deal?

But I don’t. I force myself to take a deep breath. I want to respond, rather than
react. ‘We all did.’ I turn back to face him. ‘I mean, I didn’t at first. I went
over there with Marcus. He was an artist. A painter. Very good, very talented. A
bit older than me. I met him when he was at art school. It was him who encouraged
me to take up photography. When he moved to Berlin, I went with him.’ I nod towards
the pictures between us. ‘We fell in with that group—’

Or they fell in with us.

‘A bad crowd?’

‘No.’ Again that urge to defend. ‘No. I wouldn’t say that. They were my friends.
They looked after me.’ I’m thinking of Frosty, and the others. They weren’t junkies.
Or even addicts, not in the way that he probably thinks of the word. ‘They weren’t
a bad crowd. They were just . . . we were just . . .
different
, I guess. We didn’t
fit in. We all just gravitated to each other.’

I hesitate. It’s easier than you think, I want to say. Taking heroin every weekend
becomes every other day becomes every day. It’s frightening, going back there. Though
not all of my memories are bad, it still feels raw. I’m being dragged back, and down.
It’s not a place I can stay too long.

‘The drugs were only part of that.’

‘So, what happened?’

‘When I left?’

‘Yes. The other week, you said your husband “saved you”?’

‘It got too much.’ I’m being careful. I don’t want to tell him everything, yet I
know I must not lie. ‘I needed to get out. Quickly.’ I hesitate, stumbling over the
name I’ve given my husband. ‘Harvey was there for me.’

My mind goes back to that time. Me in the kitchen, with Frosty. She was making coffee
for me, sipping red wine from a mug. I don’t think she’d been to bed, it was festival
time; the day before we’d been marching with friends of Johan, partying in the bars,
and then a group had come back here. Now the place was quiet; most people had left
to carry on, or were asleep.

Marcus was upstairs, playing a guitar someone had left months ago. ‘There you go,’
said Frosty, handing me my drink. ‘We don’t have any milk.’ I was used to that. We
never did.

‘Thanks.’

‘How’s Marky?’

‘He’s good,’ I said. ‘I think. Although his family are freaking out.’

‘Again?’

‘They want him to go home.’

Frosty gasped in mock-horror. ‘What? Away from all
this
? But why?’ She laughed. ‘I
guess they don’t understand.’

I shook my head. ‘No. I guess they don’t.’

‘Have you met them?’

I put my coffee down.

‘No. Not yet. He thinks his dad might come over. He wants the three of us to go out.
Says we should insist. He wants to show them he’s cleaned up.’

Frosty tilted her head. ‘Has he?’

‘Yes,’ I said. I was only telling half the truth. We’d kicked together, gone through
cold turkey. It’d been a hell of sweating, of vomiting and diarrhoea and stomach
cramps so severe we’d both moan with the pain. Our bones ached, and neither of us
could find relief in sleep. I felt like I was burning up, nothing helped, and all
the time the knowledge that just one more hit would make all the pain go away shone
in front of us. But we were both strong, we helped each other when it threatened
to get too much, and we’d been clean for a few weeks. Now Marcus’s father was on
his way and Marcus had begged me for one last hit. Eventually I’d agreed. One, and
then no more. Ever. We were going to do it later that day, or the following morning
as the sun came up. A final farewell.

I didn’t tell Frosty all that, though.

‘We both have,’ I said. She said nothing, then smiled. ‘That’s good,’ she said, then
changed the subject. We finished our drinks, talking about the partying we were planning
for the weekend. ‘You’ll help me get ready?’ she said, and I said, yes, yes of course
I would.

‘Good,’ she said, but then it happened. Something passed through Frosty; she looked
as if she were somewhere else entirely. It lasted only for a moment, and then she
looked up at me.

‘Honeybunch,’ she said. ‘Where’s Marky?’

I said nothing. The room was silent, and had been for a while. The guitar playing
had stopped.

Now, I look at the picture on the bed –
Marcus in the Mirror
– and then up at Lukas.
He’s shaking his head. I worry that he disapproves, that this conversation will mark
the beginning of our disconnection, yet he deserves my honesty, in this at least.
He takes my hand. ‘What happened?’

I don’t want to go back there; I can’t. Sometimes I think
what I did that night was
the catalyst for what happened to Kate. If I’d behaved differently she’d still be
around. ‘I had a wake-up call, I guess. I left. I knew I had to. But I had nowhere
to go. Not until Harvey rescued me.’

‘You knew him already?’

‘Yes. He was the son of my father’s best friend. The two of us met when I was still
at school and we became friends. He was just about the only person who stayed in
contact with me while I was in Berlin, and when it all came to an end it was him
I called. I asked whether he’d speak to my father for me. You know, smooth the way
. . .’

‘And he did?’

‘He paid for my ticket. He was waiting for me when I got off the plane. He said I
could stay with him, for a few days, until I got myself sorted out . . .’

‘And you’re still there . . .’