The A-Z of Us (21 page)

‘This is Brighton, not LA,' the voice in my head informs me, a voice which sounds not unlike Gemma's.

‘Look… you were right,' Molly says suddenly, interrupting my planning. ‘It's getting late. We should go and find somewhere to stay.'

She turns to me.

‘I'm sorry about… you know. Will. I should have told you about meeting him earlier. I've just been so confused…'

‘It's okay…' I lie.

She shakes her head in self-admonishment, a gesture I recognize from her younger sister.

‘People think I'm this happy-go-lucky chick, but I'm not. I'm not that girl…'

She stops. Suddenly, she seems about to cry.

‘The truth is, I don't know what I'm doing most of the time. I worry so much. I have to plan everything, secretly, so I feel in control, so I can appear impulsive…'

She glances at me. I nod for her to continue.

‘The shrink said that I reacted to my father's death by becoming fixated on taking control. She said that was one reason my marriage failed, I could never just let things be…'

Her voice wavers. She takes a quick gulp of air.

‘So I've been trying to… you know… let things be… and then Will called and…'

There are tears in her eyes. This is not the Molly I know. I'm a little shocked by how swiftly she's been transformed from an ebullient, forthright chatterbox into a thin, tearful trembling woman. I begin to wonder at the depth of emotion she's been containing, the residual pain that won't dissolve away. During the eight months we've been dating, we haven't talked about her divorce. To be honest, I haven't really thought about it.

Molly's lower lip trembles, and in that instant I see her as a teenage girl, trying to be strong in the face of her father's sudden death. I want to kiss her more than ever. And at once I have a revelation, a Damascene moment, that I can be there for her, like I've been there for Gemma – the head of the escape committee, tunnelling under prison walls.

I try to shuffle towards her, to bring myself within distance of her arms, but my leg is so heavy and awkward that
I feel like some nineteenth-century monster about to assault the beautiful heroine on the pier by the crashing sea. She looks at me. I hesitate. She steps to one side, gazing beyond towards the shimmering lights of the promenade.

‘I'm cold. Come on. Let's go and get organized.'

The first two Bed and Breakfasts we try are full, and Molly starts to worry. As she becomes more concerned about where we are going to stay, I become increasingly fascinated at the change in her – she seems far from the cool
über-babe
I have always seen her as. It's empowering, seeing someone you've always felt a little intimidated by showing human weakness.

I feel like singing.

The third B&B, The Admiralty, is run by a middle-aged man with an earring and bleached blonde hair. He has just one room left, he says, with twin beds, the best room in the house. He looks from Molly to me, as if seeking an instant and complete history of our lives, and Molly nods and says, ‘Great, we'll take it.'

The room is minimalist, but clean, with old-fashioned floorboards painted shining white. There's a small shower room which seems new and the towels are soft. It's not the Paris Ritz, but it's pretty nice. And affordable. I close the door behind us. Molly sits down on the bed.

‘Do you think we should call Gemma?' she asks, before I can say anything.

‘I don't know.'

‘She'd call us if she needed to, wouldn't she?'

I nod, warmly pleased that she's deferring to my greater Gemma knowledge.

‘Yeah. Of course. I bet she's just having fun…'

I sit down on the other bed nearest the door, facing her. The mattress sags suggestively. Our knees almost touch. I stretch out my plaster limb and wriggle my toes.

‘Cold?' she asks.

‘A little. You?'

She doesn't reply.

‘Can I sit next to you?' I hear myself asking, like a child on the first day at school. She says nothing. I wonder if she can hear my heart pounding.

I stand slowly, as if stepping forth into some formal dance. I take one step towards her, turn and sit down beside her. Except that as I plant my plaster foot, the heel slips on the shiny white floorboard, my posterior misses its target, and I slice down the side of the bed until I hit the floor, thump, and sprawl at her feet.

‘Shit!' I exhale.

‘Are you okay?' she exclaims. I look up and from my horizontal position I can smell the leather of her boots.

‘Shit, I'm so fucking clumsy…' I grin and reach up and rapidly take hold of her arms, pulling her down towards me. She does not resist. I kiss her. It's short, and sharp, and hot. She pulls away, about to say something but I reach up and grasp the back of her neck, kissing her throat and cheeks, and she doesn't protest. We turn on the floor, our bodies jammed against opposite beds, shoulders against the floor and I know my plaster foot is stuck under one of the beds but I can't tell which one and I don't care, I'll tear it off if I have to. We kiss again and my head is swimming, I feel suddenly drunk, and I press my face against hers, my tongue seeking to part her lips. Her hands
push on my stomach, underneath my shirt, and then they're flickering up my naked chest, tiny hot wings beating.

‘Ohhh…' I groan, and it seems too guttural and rude, but I'm hot, all heat, on fire, I need her to keep me burning, have to, must, must, must… My hand grasps hungrily at the back of her small thin neck and I pull her lips towards my face again and her hips push into me, instinctively seeking a mould, a fit, a home, her hard flat belly against my hardened penis.

‘Ohhh…' I groan a second time, her soft hair dancing into my face, and in that moment Molly's mouth is hot against me.

‘Ian…'

‘Molly, yes…'

I reach down the back of her skirt seeking flesh, at the same time opening my mouth and kissing the curls of her hair and suddenly she yelps and pushes off me, bounding like a spring.

‘What?'

‘What the hell is that?'

‘What is what?'

‘Something in your pocket! It really hurt!' She pulls up her shirt, rubbing her hip bone, and I marvel at her pottery-white skin and the red blemish, in the centre of which is a tiny prick of blood. Molly puts her hand to her chest, her eyes wide.

‘Oohh…' she mumbles. It doesn't sound good.

‘Oh, shit…' I mutter, reaching down and foraging into my jacket pocket, snatching out the yellow tube the size of a thick marker pen. Sure enough, at the grey end where the plastic tapers is the tiny tip of a needle.

‘My epi-pen. For my nut allergy. I hadn't put the top on properly.'

‘What? It stabbed me?'

‘Er… yeah. You just got a shot of adrenalin.'

Her face is wide with angry fear.

‘I don't feel good…'

Her hands are fluttering, her eyes white and wide, her cheeks drained of colour.

‘Look, it's all right…'

‘Oh God, my heart is racing…'

Now I'm angry, my neck and face burning red. Goddamn it! Bloody fucking hell! Why? Why, why, why?

‘Look, lie down. It's just adrenalin, your heart will beat a bit faster for a while, then you'll be fine. Just try and breathe normally…'

She looks at me, her pretty face an ugly twist.

‘What the hell were you thinking? You stabbed me!'

‘It's for my allergy. Look, just lie down…'

‘I don't want to lie down! God, my heart, it's hammering…'

‘Try and be calm…'

‘BE CALM?'

‘I'm just trying to help…'

She turns, snatches up her bag and goes to the door.

‘Where are you going?'

Molly turns and glares at me.

‘TO THE FUCKING HOSPITAL!'

‘I'll come with you!'

‘Piss off, Ian!'

In an instant the door slams shut and she is gone. I hobble to the landing as the front door closes. I'll never
catch her. I turn, in despair, and realize that I'm now locked out of the room.

Bollocks.

I lie on the bed watching the shadows on the bare wall opposite. I wish now I'd accepted Neil's offer of pyjamas. I am cold and naked in my underwear and T-shirt, my arms and legs alive with goose bumps. A car passes, the flash of headlights like a searchlight sweeping. I feel alone, in a foreign country, where the beds are large and made of pine, with wooden balls crowning the bedposts like trophies, and the mattresses are lumpy and the sheets don't match, and strange, jagged silhouettes tip-toe up the woodchip wall.

What am I doing?

I'd expected everything to be clear. Standing there, frozen in the corridor of the South Coast Veterinary Practice like a rabbit about to be neutered, I'd waited for it to hit me. But there had been no lightbulb flash of certainty, no shattering realization.

Instead I'd felt a surge of attraction that I'd not felt since teenage years, followed by instant guilt and self-loathing. I was happy and furious and hugely sad. I felt like fainting. None of them exactly diamond-cut emotions.

After leaving Ian and my sister at the pub, we went for another drink in a city centre club, not a fancy place, but the sort of student hangout we used to frequent, where I felt older than the other drinkers. I enjoyed being led, not knowing where I was going for the first time in years.
At the bar we continued to talk and reminisce, and I remembered things about Neil that had been lost – his laugh, his habit of scratching his nose, the way he said ‘don't you think?' at the end of every statement. These things made me feel secure, at least while we talked and drank.

I liked him still, that was sure. He was funny – he told a story about a colleague who'd tried to put down an old lady's budgie quietly by breaking its neck while she was in the kitchen making tea, only for the budgie's head to fly off under the television, out of his reach. He was gentle – he nodded and did not speak while I recounted a short and highly edited version of my break-up with my husband. And he was strong – he went to the bar each time, and people parted to make space and he was served almost immediately, which never, ever happened to Raj Singh, not since that first time I met him, at the bar in Hoxton.

Yet, as time passed, the clock on the wall flicking towards 1 a.m., I found that I liked myself less. Every anecdote I told seemed forced, I tried to make jokes, to be light, and Neil laughed each time, but I knew he was just being encouraging, sensing my discomfort. I heard myself say things that sounded like another person, like ‘whoopee' and ‘fantastic' and ‘shoulder-to-shoulder'. It was as if I were watching a younger, more naive, clumsy Gemma make a great fat fool of herself.

At least Neil saved me each time I sensed panic rising, by saying something or making a joke that quelled my anxiety. At such moments, I had to admit, amongst the fear and the guilt, there were pangs of desire. I wondered, as he stood at the bar ordering our last drinks, whether I
could just throw caution and my knickers to the wind. I wondered if I could let him fuck me. The sound of the word excited me. It was one I never used when thinking about Raj.

Yet when we walked from the club, out into the rain, and I heard the drunken shouts of Saturday night revellers and police sirens, and saw the takeaway boxes and vomit and a small pile of dog crap sitting insolently in the middle of the pavement, I felt irredeemably… dirty. It was a word that disgusted me.

We stood for a few moments in silence. Then Neil said, ‘Maybe you should call your sister?' and I said, ‘Yes, you're right.'

So I took out my phone and called Molly's number but there was no reply. I left a message. I called Ian, but similarly got through to voicemail.

‘The bastards. I wonder if they're shagging?'

Neil laughed, a little too loudly.

‘Do you think so?'

‘I wouldn't put it past my sister. She screws her ex-husband while Ian's away, then decides she likes Ian after all. She never knows what she wants.'

‘Really?'

I didn't answer, aware that I had only said this about my sister because I was feeling so dubious about myself. Then I started to cry.

He did not hesitate. He put his arms around me, and they were big and thick and strong and I wanted him to crush me, to squeeze until I felt my ribcage crack, keep squeezing until he crushed my lungs, my liver, my heart, my breasts.

‘Tighter,' I whispered. But he didn't hear me.

‘Come on,' he said. ‘Let's head back to mine. I'll make us some coffee and you can try your sister again.'

I wondered as we entered the 1930s-style house a ten-minute cab ride from the city centre whether Neil was as innocent as I'd chosen to believe. I'd followed him so easily, so unconsciously. But I continued to believe in him, even if I no longer believed in myself.

We drank coffee (instant, but I needed the caffeine and the heat scorching my fingers) and I called my sister and Ian once more. Still the voicemails.

There was silence. A clock ticking somewhere.

‘It's great to see you again, Gem,' said Neil softly.

I looked up and he was smiling again, gently.

‘Yeah. You too.'

‘Look, I don't know what brought you down here, but I think… maybe it's fate, you know, I was planning to go to Canada and…'

I nodded, although I was surprised at the way his words made me feel. Anxious. Fearful. Desperate to be elsewhere at an earlier stage in my life when I could have done everything differently. He looked down.

‘But…'

I stopped nodding.

‘What?'

‘Look, it's great to see you… but… I think we should just start to get to know each other again… take it slowly. I mean, you've obviously got things to sort out back in London…'

‘My marriage?'