The A-Z of Us (19 page)

‘Is… er… is Ian around?'

‘I don't think he's up yet.'

‘Oh.'

Molly looks flustered. I wonder about waking Ian and acting as a peacebroker in the Kofi Annan mould. Then an idea flashes brightly in my head.

‘Have you plans for today?'

Molly shakes her head, looking puzzled.

‘Well, you could talk to him on the way down to Brighton.'

It's perfect. If Molly drives us to Brighton, she and Ian will be stuck in the car together and will be forced to be civil, in deference to me and my potentially life-changing quest. And having the tension of their fractured relationship around me will help take my mind off my meeting with Neil.

‘Brighton?'

‘We're going to find Neil. Neil Farrelly.'

Molly looks confused, which is an expression I enjoy witnessing on my elder sister's face. At that moment, Ian appears in the doorway.

‘Molly?'

I turn to my best friend with a big smile.

‘Molly's driving us to Brighton. Won't this be fun?'

Nobody talks for the first hour, which suits me just fine. My heart is beating so loudly I'm amazed Molly and Ian
can't hear it. Then the fear returns, the steel slice of doubt. I have to remind myself – the reality of my situation is complex and painful. It won't be easy or smooth. There's so much that needs to be untied.

I stare out of the passenger side window, at the people for whom this is just another Saturday. I look at the south London mothers with their children and wonder how they manage to look so normal, so in control, holding hands, scolding, shouting, laughing. How did they get to such a place in their lives, moving beyond the uncertainty of initial attraction, past the decision to commit to another person with secrets and troubles as yet uncharted, and through the insistent battles between personal ambition and relationship sacrifice? They seem so foreign, these smiling ladies with their scampering children, with thoughts, needs and rituals as alien to my own as those of Chinese hill-tribe women or Kenyan farmers.

It's then, somewhere on the A23 between Brixton and Croydon, that Raj's face appears. I wasn't thinking about him or my marriage, I was simply surveying the passers-by, trying to analyse and understand them. But he appears behind my eyes, inspecting me with a deep brown gaze that exudes confusion and hurt.

Poor Raj. He doesn't deserve this. He didn't ask for it. If he knew I was going to Brighton to see Neil Farrelly he would divorce me on the spot. Perhaps he'd do worse, striking me or hurling me to my death. Not that Raj has the temperament for such heartfelt violence. His aggression is purely passive – silence over shouting, withdrawal over surging advance.

He doesn't have the passion.

He's too controlled.

We turn onto the motorway after Croydon, and still Ian and Molly are silent. Ian has been staring out of the left-hand window for the entire journey. I wonder if he hates me for inviting Molly along.

But I can't help them. I'm separate, I have to lose myself in the hum of the tyres and the way the sun glints off the wing mirror. I put on my sunglasses. I have to prepare.

I imagine Neil's wide-eyed reaction when he sees me, his stammering greeting. We will go for a drink, the words will pour out as quickly as our thoughts. At some stage, an hour or so into our meeting, he will slide his hand across the table and take mine. He will suggest a drive up to the Sussex Downs, where we will stroll hand-in-hand. He will kiss me in the sunshine. I will feel electrified and calmed in the same moment. Perhaps we will book into a small hotel, hidden in the hills. Perhaps I will call in sick on Monday morning. Perhaps I will give up London and move to Brighton, for ever. Perhaps, in the mighty arms of the Scottish vet, I will recover and never feel pain again.

Then I see the first signpost to Brighton and feel breathless, then sick. My thoughts turn, the coin spun. Suddenly, I know that Neil will have difficulty even recognizing me after eight years. It will be so embarrassing, I will have to remind him who I am, blushing red, only for him to inform me, coldly, that he's blissfully married, with children on the way.

Suddenly, the plan that seemed so exciting, so novel and dangerously mature, seems tawdry and foolishly childish.
Brighton is so unoriginal. If this were one of the romance novels I used to read, I would groan at the heroine heading to the south-coast resort, renowned for a century or more as the English capital of ‘The Dirty Weekend'. It's to Brighton that all Londoners head to embark on crude affairs with people they've met in offices, supermarket aisles or suburban health clubs, a place of shabby one-night stands and smelly guest-houses with sheets that are boiled every morning.

Am I a bad person? I never thought so in the past, despite my mother's insinuations. In fact I've been long convinced of my unique inherent decency, which, I realize now, has left me bordering on smugness. Perhaps this is how bad people live with themselves. They never see their own cruelty.

I wonder if I can ask Molly to keep driving on, past Brighton, keep driving along the southern coast of England until we get to the end, wherever that is, Cornwall, perhaps, and I can run from the car into the waves. All at once I want to flee; that's the word, isn't it, with its connotations of haste and lack of preparation? Flee like a refugee, taking nothing, destination unknown, simply moving because I need to escape from where I am.

I try to force myself to look at the countryside, the speeding green of hills and woods. England seems so spacious outside London. I wonder whether the capital, which I've not left for almost an entire year, is not really England at all. Perhaps it's a different country altogether. These white chalk hills and fields dotted with sheep are as distant to my everyday Hackney life as paddy fields or coconut palms. They're something I see on television.

Thinking about the hills and the sheep leads me to unpleasant memories from yesterday. Duncan Archer is a self-professed lover of the English countryside, and often exhorts his staff to take weekend trips out of London to see the ‘great open spaces' which he feels influence so much of the country's urban architecture (no one does except the interns, who still believe, naively, that emulation might lead to promotion).

I don't know why I shouted at him. It was as if whatever is inside me is seeking my destruction on every level.

It happened so swiftly. He sidled up to me, reeking of deodorant and cigarettes, and asked whether the revised drawings would be ready by Monday at ten, because he wanted an hour or so to review the project before the lunchtime client meeting. Then he placed his hand on my arm, and I turned and pushed him away, screaming that he had no idea how hard I'd been working, that he was out of touch with his project managers, that there was a complete lack of respect for junior staff in an office that professed to promote equality and the sharing of ideas, and that he was a lecherous, pompous, deluded old bastard!

To be fair to the KPSG department head, he remained stoic-faced throughout the tirade. When I finished, my hands shaking, my face shining crimson, he nodded slowly, tugged his left earlobe and said, ‘You look exhausted, Gemma, why don't you take the rest of the day off…'

He said it so softly, so sincerely, that I nodded, picked up my things and departed, feeling Sophie's victorious stare as I headed for the door.

As the BMW purrs to a stop at some traffic lights, I wish suddenly that I'd travelled to Brighton on my own.
I don't want anyone to witness my failure. I don't want Molly's covert satisfaction and Ian's over-attentive compassion when I fall short.

I feel stiflingly hot. I push the button to open the windows.

‘Leave it! The air conditioning is on!' barks my sister, speaking for the first time in what seems like hours. This makes me push the button harder. All four windows speed swiftly downwards in a whir of German technology, and the car is filled suddenly with fat bursts of wind. In an instant, the map print-out that's been lying on Ian's lap is tugged from him. It shoots through the window and away.

‘Shit!' Ian shouts, his hands pawing at empty air. ‘The map!'

I glimpse the papers pirouetting like leaves over the car roofs behind us. It's a strangely beautiful sight.

‘Shut the window!' hisses Molly.

‘Sorry…' I mutter, and the apology seems to be for everything I have ever done.

‘What are we going to do now?' Ian asks, and there's something in his tone, a whining, that irritates me. ‘We don't have a map.'

‘Why did you have it on your lap?' I ask angrily. ‘It's not like we're even anywhere near Brighton!'

Ian doesn't reply, and we drive on in silence, each listening to the hum of the wheels on the newly asphalted road.

My first impressions of Brighton are not favourable. It seems to live up to my expectations of seediness. The outskirts are dominated by dull lines of Edwardian semis with net curtains, and sad little public parks with brick
box lavatories splattered with graffiti, where old men walk old dogs. As we near the centre, the houses become shabbier, with broken windows and blankets where curtains should be, where numerous homeless people loiter in the sunnier doorways. In upper windows, figures lurk behind uneven blinds, no doubt making low-budget porn films on second-hand video cameras.

I want to plead with Molly and Ian to turn around and return to London. In two hours we could be home. I try to find the right words, the right tone in my head to convince them, and then, just as I'm about to turn and declare that it has all been a bad idea, and we have to go back home, Molly slams on the brakes and declares, ‘There it is!', as if she's just discovered Tutankhamen's tomb.

It's a blur. We walk into the reception of South Coast Vets and Molly asks for Neil Farrelly. The receptionist looks up, gives us the once over, smiles and informs us that Mr Farrelly is out on his Saturday morning house calls but will be back after lunch. She inquires whether another vet might help, and Molly smiles like a big sister and explains that Neil is an old university friend and it would be great if our visit could be kept a surprise, until we return after two. The receptionist looks us up and down one more time, evidently amassing enough evidence to believe in our authenticity, and agrees that she won't say a word.

‘Were you, er, close friends?' she asks, with a raised eyebrow. I look away. Molly glances at me and says:

‘Close enough.'

The pub is surprisingly smoky considering it's only lunchtime, populated by old men and peroxided women in
tracksuits. Outside, the late summer sun bakes the beaches and people are swimming in the English Channel without a shiver, but inside the bar, a fog of nicotine obscures time and climate.

Ian and Molly are not talking. Ian offers to buy drinks. Molly mutters ‘diet coke' and I order a tomato juice, then change my mind and ask for a Bloody Mary. The palms of my hands are damp with sweat. Neil is married, I'm sure. He's the sort of man who would have sought out marriage like a woman, who would have craved the stability and compassion of married life. He likes to take care of things, whether people or animals. And he believes in the power of rings – he wore a signet that had once belonged to his great-grandfather. Whenever we talked about weddings, he'd always say that he would love his future wife to wear his grandmother's emerald engagement ring, as a symbol of the eternal power of love. I was thrilled by this idea, that a ring could connect the past to the present and the future. I pictured its sparkle, its smooth interior, polished by years of loving wear. I've seen it, felt it on my own finger.

I picture the ring now, on the finger of a tall redheaded woman, which is how I imagine Neil's wife. She's Scottish too, I think, with a pretty smile and pale freckled skin. They've been married two years, and are thinking about having children soon, although Neil is more keen on this idea than his wife. It surprises me how clear this image is. I wonder whether I want Neil to be married, so that I can forget all about him and return to the familiar country of east London where I can hide away for ever.

I wonder about calling Raj. I hate myself for thinking this, but I can't help it. It's my habit, learned over almost
three years of knowing him. When things are bad, I call him, and if he has a moment he gives me a short lecture on how I have to put things in perspective, to get through the day, because tomorrow will be better.

I imagine he'd have a lot to say in this instance. When he came back down off the ceiling.

‘Look, I don't think this is such a good idea…' I say falteringly, twisting my wedding ring round and round my finger. My sister frowns – a look that suggests she's been waiting for this moment. But she doesn't interject. Ian is silent, almost as if he's sulking in my sister's presence. I continue, ‘I mean… he wasn't there. Maybe it's a sign. I'm not sure if I can…'

Molly puts a hand on my hand. My sister's palm is hot and soft. She was always a hot child, I remember. I used to cuddle up to her in the tent when we were little, instinctively seeking out her hand to hold against the darkness and chill of the Brittany night.

Molly does not speak for a moment, and I wonder if I should pull my hand away. But it is soothing to have my sister gently clasping my fingers.

‘You know, Gem, I couldn't have done what you did, telling Raj what you really felt, even though God knows I should have done…' My sister's voice is quiet and measured. ‘I couldn't be doing this now. I really admire you. You don't know how it's going to work out, but you know, deep down, that you have to give it a go.'

Molly releases my hand. I look at her. Somewhere behind me, a fruit machine jingles and coins spit into the metal bucket. I nod, slowly.

*

The receptionist seems pleased to see us.

‘He's just with a client. I'll ask him to come out when he's finished.' Then she adds, with a grin and stage whisper, ‘I'll tell him he needs to sign a drugs order.'