The One I Love (11 page)

When he was sitting and puffing, she straddled him. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said.

“I doubt it.”

“You’re thinking, Jeanette is a nice girl and I’m grateful for the tumble, which was badly needed, but how the hell do I get her out of here without making her cry?”

He shook his head, and she smiled. “Something like that,” he admitted.

“I like you,” she said.

“I’m a mess.”

“I know. I’m not blind.”

“I’m married.”

“She’s not here.”

“Please go home,” he said, and she knew she’d spoken out of turn.

“Okay.” She nodded. “I’m sorry.” And she was sorry. She was sorry he was so sad and she was sorry for poor Alexandra and she was sorry for herself because although she was desperate for him to love her she knew he never would.
I had to try
, she thought, as she closed the door behind her.

“Jesus, you could have waited,” Davey said the next night.

“He’s right,” Lily agreed.

Jeanette knew she’d blown it so a phone call from Tom came as a shock. He rang her from his car on the way back from Jane’s.

“Tom?”

“Good news,” he said. “I have a lead on Alexandra. It’s not much but it’s something.”

“Oh, that’s great,” she said, and brightened. “I hope it works out.” She meant it.

“Look, I wanted to apologize for that night,” he said. “I should never have done that.”

Jeanette thought about how kind he was to call. After all, she had preyed on him – he was vulnerable, lost and drunk and she’d seduced him.
God, I love you
. “It wasn’t you, it was me,” she said, “and I appreciate you apologizing but you’ve nothing to apologize for.”

“I wasn’t that drunk.”

Jeanette’s heart leaped a little.

“Could we be friends?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said, “I’d love that.”

“Would you like to come over tonight?”

“I’d love to.”

When she put the phone down she jumped around the place because even if Tom genuinely thought he was looking for a friend he wasn’t, and he might be naive enough to think the night would end with a kiss on the cheek but she wasn’t.

I need to shave. Whoohooooooooo!

Jeanette arrived soaked to the skin. It had been raining on and off since six o’clock and she had left her second umbrella in a month on the bus. Tom opened the door smiling. She shook herself off in the hall before noticing that he was wearing an apron. “What’s going on?” she asked, following him into the kitchen.

“I cooked.” He put on a glove and grabbed a large fork, opened the oven door and turned a roasting leg of lamb.

“I can see that,” she said, sitting at the counter while he opened some wine. She poured it into two glasses and handed him one.

He clinked his glass against hers. “I’m going to find her,” he said.

“Alexandra?”

“No – Amelia Earhart,” he said, and grinned the way he used to grin before he lost his wife.

She wondered who Amelia Earhart was while he attended to the vegetables.

Jeanette drank from her glass until it was empty, then held it out for more. Tom topped it up.

“I’ve met these women,” he said, “and they’re amazing – they’re helping me. I don’t even know them.”

“That’s weird. Why?”

“Jane was Alexandra’s best friend years ago when they were kids and her sister Elle is an artist and she’s going to
do an exhibition. She’s painting the faces of missing people. She’s already painted Alexandra and it’s really beautiful. And Leslie’s set up an incredible website and they’ve got Jack Lukeman on board and now this lead in London –”

“Jack Lukeman the singer? What is he? A part-time private eye?” She was being sarcastic but although Tom noticed he didn’t care.

“No, he’s going to sing at the exhibition. Jane says it will increase media interest.”

“Well, it sounds like you’ve got a lot of new friends, so why did you call me?”

“I missed you.” He wasn’t lying. He had become very fond of Jeanette during the four years they had worked together, and if he was really honest with himself, he missed the attention she gave him. He missed feeling like a man, a sexual being, and even though he promised himself that he would never allow what had happened before to happen again it was nice to be around someone who was attracted to him. Tom missed many things about his wife and one of the things he missed most was being wanted.

“I missed you too,” she said, and in her head she was singing, “Here comes the bride, all dressed in white …”

Later, after they’d indulged in passionate sex, the kind of sex that Jeanette had always suspected Tom was capable of, they lay in silence and darkness just breathing. “What are you thinking?” she asked.

“It’s blissfully quiet in here,” he said, pointing to his head.

She smiled at him, leaned over and kissed his cheek. “You’re welcome,” she said.

She went into the bathroom and he could hear the shower running and he reminisced about the last time he’d
lain in bed and listened to the shower running and his wife was singing “I Can’t Stand The Rain”, attempting a very bad impression of Tina Turner. Tom closed his eyes, just as he had when he was having sex, and for the second time that night he pretended the woman who had been in his bed and was now in the shower was his wife. For the first time in thirty weeks and one day Tom slept peacefully.

Chapter 6

Little Man

Take the world off your shoulders
,

little man, little man, little man
.

         Jack L,
Universe

February 2008

Elle had been lying in bed for twenty days. Twelve days after New Year’s Eve she had taken a taxi to a hotel in Kildare. When she arrived someone took her bag out of the car as she paid the fare. She signed her name on the form that the receptionist handed her, took her key and followed the man with her bag up to the third floor and into her room. She tipped him and he left.

She undressed, put a do-not-disturb sign on the door, and got into bed with the curtains drawn. The only time she had got out of bed in those twenty days was to pee, apart from when the maids came in. They knocked every second or third day and she’d get out of her bed and sit on the toilet while they cleaned the room. When they were finished she’d get back into bed while they cleaned the bathroom. Some days she ate something small and some days she didn’t eat at all. The television remained off and days and nights blended into one. Some days she was numb and without any kind of coherent thought; other days her mind raced so
much that her head hurt and she felt the need to put pressure on her ears. Her phone remained off. There were days that she cried rivers, other days she simply breathed in and out, in and out, in and out, each breath becoming more and more laborious until every cell in her body hurt, so that even lifting her arm was almost impossible.

The manager knocked on her door after she’d refused the maids access for the sixth day in a row. He waited for a response but was met with silence so he knocked again. She was either ignoring him or sleeping so he knocked a third time and louder, and in her head, for the second time, she screamed at him to go away. As the manager didn’t read minds he made the decision to enter the room. He was accompanied by one of the receptionists to ensure that there was no misunderstanding as to the intention of his visit. He entered slowly with the girl following. Elle was lying on her side. He called to her. She remained still. The girl seemed to be of a nervous dispos-ition so the manager smiled at her to reassure her everything was fine. He walked around the side of the bed and Elle’s eyes were open and staring. She was pale and because the blankets were tucked under her neck it was unclear whether or not she was breathing. The girl mistook her for a corpse and screamed. Elle moved her eyes to focus on the screaming girl, whose nervous disposition had been blamed long ago on her twin brother, who had often chased her while pretending to be a zombie. Seeing the corpse’s eyes move sent her over the edge so she screamed again loudly and ran out of the room, down the hall and stairs and out of the front door of the hotel, leaving the manager alone and decidedly uncomfortable.
Thanks for nothing, Sheena
.

“Are you all right, Miss Moore?” he asked.

“How many times have I told you to leave me alone today?”

“None.”

“Are you deaf?”

“I’m not deaf.”

“I just told you to leave me alone at least twice if not three times.”

The manager decided not to argue. “Is there someone I can call?”

Elle slowly raised herself up in the bed; the blanket dropped, revealing her naked breasts. The manager turned red and looked away.

“If I wanted you to call someone I would have asked you to call someone,” she said, leaving the blanket at her waist.

The manager turned from red to a funny purple colour. He covered his eyes because he could still see her in the mirror and she knew he could still see her because she was watching him through that same mirror. “Do you like what you see?” she asked.

“Sorry?” he said, in a voice that had gone up one octave.

“My tits,” she said. “Do you like them?”

The manager did like them. She had a lovely, rounded, pert, full pair but there was no way in the world he was going to say that and he wasn’t going to tell her he didn’t like them either so instead he did what any man in his right mind would do: he ignored the question. “I’m sorry to disturb you,” he said, “but we need to know that you are okay.”

“Now you know.”

“If there’s anything we can do for you?”

“You can go away.”

He nodded and left the room.

She lay down, tucking the blanket up around her chin, and she lay perfectly still in absolute darkness.

When capable of coherent thought Elle reminisced about all the things in Vincent she had loved. His face: she had fallen in love with his face the first time she’d seen him across a crowded bar. It was a strong and pretty face and he had old man’s eyes, deep, dark, chocolate eyes, nestled behind lush eyelashes so thick and long that any woman or drag act would sell themselves for them. His curly brown hair: she loved that it was always messy and sexy and soft, putting her hands through it, playing with it. She loved his height: he was taller than her but not too tall, and they could always kiss comfortably even on the rare occasion she wore flats. She loved his hands: soft and manicured and always perfectly clean. She loved the things he did with his hands and how those hands made her feel. His laugh: when he laughed his eyes leaked water and he threw back his head and slapped his thigh and it was a throaty, giggly laugh that encouraged her to join in. His mind: she missed him reading passages out of newspapers and books to her, she missed watching him read his books and the way he screwed up his face when fully concentrating and bit at his thumb before changing the page. Vincent was never without a book and all his jackets had pockets big enough to hold at least one. She missed the poetry that loving him brought into her life. She missed the fights where they’d scream and roar at one another, where she’d smash a plate and he’d stamp his foot and punch the wall. She missed making up, ripping at one another’s clothes and the heat between them
and the way he often bit her lip and the feel of him inside her, his rhythm and the way he looked at her afterwards when they lay still and sticky. She missed herself: the silly, giddy part of her that she shared only with him.

He had tried to end it in China and, deep down, she had known that he loved what she represented rather than who she was. He was an out-of-work model, studying design by night, and she was a successful artist – and with success came a lifestyle he had become accustomed to. In a small city like Dublin, Elle was a big fish ensuring minor celebrity status and entrance to every VIP room. Vincent loved the champagne lifestyle, not Elle. He had never loved Elle, just as the note had said. He had wanted her, she had always been certain of that, he most definitely had needed her, as she had paid for his lifestyle for years, but he was never going to love her, no matter what she did to keep him. China had been a reprieve and ever since she’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Elle’s love had died and it was all she could do to keep breathing.

The hairdresser put her hands through Leslie’s short crop, and when Leslie confirmed that she had cut her own hair for quite a few years, the hairdresser admitted that the thought had certainly crossed her mind, then called over a fellow professional so that they could confer on the best course of action to minimize the damage Leslie had done.

“God almighty, did you use a bowl?” the other woman said.

“No.”

“Well, you might as well have. I’ve seen Trappist monks with better hair.”

“What’s your name?” Leslie asked.

“Sophie.”

“Well, Sophie, if I wanted to be insulted I’d sing for Simon Cowell. As it is, I just want my hair restyled.”

“Fine,” Sophie said curtly.

“And, Sophie?”

“Yes?”

“No talking.”

“So you don’t want me to tell you what we’re going to do?”

Leslie could tell that Sophie wanted to slap her. “After that,” she said.

The first woman walked away, leaving Sophie to it. Sophie then explained to Leslie that she could no longer get away with black hair because of her age and the pallor of her skin, but she could give her a nice copper tone. Leslie was fine with that. Sophie called over the two young girls, Esther and Julie, and after she’d spent a minute explaining what she wanted them to do she walked away and they got to work. As instructed, they didn’t address Leslie. Instead they chatted among themselves about an apartment block that had gone up near the salon and whether or not Julie should buy a one-bed apartment in the inner city with her boyfriend Joseph for €390,000, especially as it was only possible with a 100 per cent mortgage.

“You should just go for it,” Esther said.