After You'd Gone (14 page)

I O I

parcels of food. He'd winked at her while their mothers chatted and she'd surprised herself - and him too, no doubt

'Do you always get called Elspeth?' he'd asked. 'Not always. Some people shorten it to Ellie.'

'I bet you don't like that,' he'd said, leaning his elbows on the railing next to her.

She'd shaken her head. 'No, I don't.'

'I thought so. You don't suit a shortened name.'

He'd taken her out on to the point beyond the swimming pool and she'd sat with her arms around her knees, slightly nervous of the swell and fall of the waves that slapped the rocks so close below them and the stiff breeze that whipped her hair around her face, listening to him tell her how he wanted to go into the church and be a missionary.

'My father wants me to go into the family business, but I just don't think it's for me. I don't see how I could be happy doing that. That's what should be your priority, shouldn't it, Elspeth?' He'd stopped tossing pebbles into the greenish sea at that point and looked at her. She'd said nothing, her mouth dry, thinking only, what on earth will my parents say?

'Don't you think, Elspeth, that you should always be as

happy as you possibly can be?' he'd asked again.

She'd raised her chin to meet his insistent gaze. 'Yes. Yes, I think you should.'

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He'd squatted down on his haunches, so that he was on a level with her. 'Are you really going to marry Robert?'

'I don't know.'

'Don't marry him. Marry me,' he'd said. Then he'd crawled over the rocks and did something that Robert had never done - kissed her full on the lips.

Elspeth shades her eyes from the sun and turns her head to look east out to the Bass Rock. Farther off down the path, where the trees and undergrowth were thicker, she sees an unmistakable flash of blonde hair and a familiar, petite figure. Ann. Elspeth feels a slight stab of confusion. Didn't Ann say she was going into Edinburgh today? But Elspeth sits forward on the bench, raises her hand to wave and draws breath to call her name - but the shout never comes.

With her arm still raised, she watches as a dark-haired man she'd assumed to be just a passer-by pulls Ann towards him. Sunlight is eclipsed between their bodies and they kiss. Elspeth lets her hand fall to her lap and looks down at the ground. Was it here that she first met Gordon? Or was it farther towards that oak tree? She looks back down the path again. Their bodies are parting now. There is sunlight between them again. They are talking. Ann cups her hand around his jaw. It is a gesture so familiar to Elspeth: she has seen her do it to the children, to Ben.

The man walks off quickly, away from Elspeth. Ann sets off in the other direction. Elspeth watches her daughter-in-law walk more slowly down the winding path within a hundred yards of her, then disappear out of the Lodge gates. Elspeth looks again at the receding back of the man, then she stoops as if she's experiencing physical pain, pressing the ball of her fist into her closed eyes. An even worse thought has suddenly occurred to her.

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Two days later Alice answered the office intercom in the middle of the morning.

'I'm here to see Alice Raikes.'

The line crackled and the sound of traffic in the street came booming down the line. She couldn't place the voice. 'Who is it?'

'My name's John Friedmann.'

She slammed down the handset at once. 'Oh, shit.'

Everyone in the office looked up. Then she pressed the button to let him in. 'Oh, shit, shit.' She tore open her bag and seized her hairbrush and began sweeping it through her hair in long, urgent strokes.

'Who on earth is it?' Susannah shouted across the office.

Anthony, the new director, appeared out of his room. 'What's going on?' he asked mildly. 'Why is Alice running around?'

'Oh, God. Don't ask . . . bugger . . . What am I going to do? How do I look?' Alice appealed to Susannah.

'Completely mad.'

She galloped down the first flight of stairs then slowed her pace so as not to appear red in the face and panting when she saw him. He was standing at the bottom of the stairs, reading one of the literacy posters stuck on the wall.

'Hello. '

He turned and smiled as if he'd been caught doing some thing wrong. She tried to ignore her stomach, which was trying to cram itself up into her throat. 'Hi, ' she said, leaning in what she hoped was a casual manner on the banister. 'What are you doing here? Did you forget to ask me something for the interview?'

He shook his head.

'Did you read the book?' 'No. Not yet.'

There was an agonising pause. She fiddled with her hair and put a strand of it into her mouth.

'I was just passing through Covent Garden and . . . ' He stopped, sighed and cast his eyes up at the ceiling. Then he slung his bag to the floor, looked at her and said, 'I think we both know that's a lie.'

A curious thing happened to Alice's face. The muscles around her mouth, the ones that controlled her smile, seemed to go into spasm and she had to bite her lips so as not to appear to be grinning in a rather brainless way. She looked at the floor. A taxi rumbled past outside. He rubbed his hand against the weft of his stubble. 'You have to come and see a film with me tonight. '

Her smile disappeared immediately. 'What do you mean, I "have to"? Aren't you supposed to say things like "please" and "would you like to"?'

'No. Why should I when it's perfectly obvious to me that you are a witch and that you've put some evil spell on me?' He came towards her. Oh, my God, was he going to kiss her? Right here? She panicked and backed into the stand holding poetry competition leaflets. He came so close that she could feel the sweep of his breath on her neck: she was sure that he would be able to hear her heart pounding. She forced herself

to hold his gaze without smiling. 'I love it when you're angry,' he whispered.

Her laughter burst out of her like water from a dam and she thumped him hard on the chest. 'You are the most infuriating man I have ever met. I would never go to the cinema with you! Never! Not even if . . . if . . .' she floundered for the most outrageously hurtful situation '. . . not even if it was my favourite film playing for the last time ever and you had the last spare ticket. Not even then!'

John rubbed his chest where she'd hit him. 'Every time I see you I get injured in some way. But I'm optimistic. Not even a witch can do much damage in a cinema.'

'I'm not coming!' she shouted. 'Yes, you are,' he shouted back.

'I'm not! I'd never go anywhere with you.'

She sees him first, outside the cinema in Shaftesbury Avenue, his head bent over a newspaper, frowning slightly. He glances up the street in the opposite direction to the one she's coming in. She sees that he's resting one foot on the bridge of the other, that he's quite tall, and the anxiety in the curve of his neck as he cranes to see up the crowded pavement.

'Hey,' she says, tapping the newspaper, 'you're off-duty, you know. You can put that away now.'

Relief floods his face as he turns towards her. They

don't touch, but stand apart. 'You're late, Alice Raikes. I thought'

'I'm always late.'

'I'll remember that

She sees that he was about to say 'next time' but stopped himself.

'Do you want to go in, or shall we just stand and smile at

each other all evening?'

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He laughs. 'We could, but I'm afraid you'd get bored.

Let's go in.'

Alice walks beside him, her hands in her jacket pockets, talking about the film. When she is emphasising a point she turns her body towards him and says, 'Don't you think?' She is wearing dose-fitting, dark navy jeans and heavy-soled boots with metal heels that flash in the neon signs of Soho. Outside a Japanese noodle bar she stops and inhales, closing her eyes.

'What is it?' he asks. 'I love that smell.'

John sniffs but can only smell the bitter-sweet stench of rotting vegetables and the acrid , burnt smell of stir fry.

'It really reminds me of Japan,' she says.

'You've been there?'

'Yeah. I spent about a month in Tokyo. ' 'Really? When?'

'During one of my university holidays. I did lots of travelling then those long holidays were the best thing about being a student. '

'Did you like Japan?'

'I loved it. It was very exciting. I was ready to leave when I did, though. Tokyo's such a frenetic city. We went straight from there to Thailand, and spent a few weeks recovering on a beach. '

We? John thinks.

'Who were you with?' he says casually. 'An ex-boyfriend of mine.'

He has to swallow hard to stop himself from shouting, who was he? did you love him? how long did you go out with him for? when did you split up? do you still see him?

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'What would you like to do now?' he asks instead. 'Don't know. Got any ideas?'

'I've got a problem, rather than ideas.'

'What?' She looks at him sideways through her hair which she must have loosened sometime during the film. When she arrived earlier, it was knotted at the nape of her neck. Sometimes he finds her gaze a bit unsettling.

'Well, because I spent quite a lot of my day running around Covent Garden in a state of teenage angst about some woman . . .' he looks at her carefully; she has bowed her head and the curtain of hair has slid further over her face '. . . I got no work done. I have to have a two-thousand-word article about independent American cinema in by nine tomorrow.'

'I see.' She shakes back her hair. 'That is a bit of a problem.' .

'Mmm. At least I can kid myself that I was doing research

for it tonight.' He nods in the direction of the cinema.

'We-ell,' she rocks back and forth on her boots, 'I think I'll head home, then.'

'Where is it you live?'

'Finsbury Park. How about you?' 'Camden. Can I give you a lift?' 'You've got a car?'

'Yes. It's my one luxury in life. I need it to get to assign

ments, or that's what I tell myself. Do you disapprove?' 'Not at all. It's pure envy.'

'Would a lift help you with your envy, or make it

worse?'

He sees her hesitate, unsure. 'Alice, don't worry, I haven't been drinking. I'm not a mad axe murderer and I solemnly promise not to molest you.' Unless, of course, you want me to, he adds mentally.

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She lets herself get as far as closing the car door before she says, 'Do you want to come in for a minute? If you need to get off, then maybe-'

He is out of the car in seconds and even takes the keys out of her hands and opens the door for her. 'Up here?' he asks, heading for the communal staircase.

'Right at the top.'

He waits by the flat door for her. 'Do you live on your own?' he asks, only a little tensely.

'Yeah. I prefer it. I shared with some friends for a while

but found I never saw them apart from when we met to argue over whose turn it was to clean the bathroom. Then I lived with my boyfriend, my ex-boyfriend I should say, which didn't exactly work out. ' She says this avoiding his eye, feeling his interest crackling between them. 'This place is only supposed to be temporary, but I've been here five months already.'

She is surprised at how curious he is, poking his head into each room of the tiny flat.

'It's a bit grim, isn't it?' she shouts.

'It's OK. I've seen worse.'

He comes into the kitchen. 'Is that you?' He is peering at a photo of her and Beth on a beach. They are in swimming costumes, lying on their stomachs in a rock-pool.

'Oh, God, don't look at that.' She comes to stand behind him, looking over his shoulder. 'I was about eighteen, I think. That's my younger sister, Beth. I always liked that photo of us and I lost the only copy I had ages ago. Beth sent me this reprint last week. It's funny, I never thought then that it was one of the last times I'd be living at home with my sisters. I was desperate to leave home, but didn't really notice when I did. It just kind of happened.'

He has pulled it off the wall and is holding it close to his

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