Cyber Cinderella (31 page)

“I followed you to that bookshop and then the pub after work and then pretended to bump into her. And I heard you and Camilla talking about Maggie’s so I went along. She’d invited Becksy and Molly along, but not me.”

I thought back to that night and how I had come upon her with Camilla and Frank. “What does Frank think of you?”

“Your friend Frank doesn’t like me or any of Camilla’s friends much. They’ve been arguing about us for ages and then they had a row in front of me. Camilla said that he had to be nice to her school friends if he loved her and anyway she had to be nice to me because of OnLove and he said it was creepy how I kept turning up places.”

Of course; I thought back to the atmosphere between Frank and his girlfriend and their overheard remarks. “He said he wasn’t going out with one of Camilla’s school friends, but he was going out with her.”

“Yes, they argue about it all the time. But don’t worry, I think they’re going to get married anyway.”

“Married?”

“Yes, he’s proposed and they were just about to announce it at that party but then they had the argument.”

I always thought I’d mind the moment when Frank said he was marrying somebody else, but I didn’t. “Not quite the little home-wrecker this time then.”

“But aren’t you glad about your and George’s home being wrecked? Don’t tell me your life isn’t better because of me and the site.”

Something about her smugness and her self-belief and everything about the fact that she was right filled me with fury that turned itself into energy. “That’s it. That is fucking it.” And then I started screaming. It wasn’t as if I really felt I wanted to scream, more that I was wondering what I would do if this was happening to me and screaming seemed to be what I or a good actress would do. I couldn’t feel what I wanted to do, only try to think what I wanted to do in such an instance. It was as if I were autistic and had to teach myself human reaction, the whole situation being so far from one that I had programmed instincts for.

After thirty seconds of yodeling I stopped and looked at the horrified faces of Alice and Ivan. “I feel better now.” I did. The weight of curiosity had at last been lifted. I was disappointed that it was Alice, but I would have been more disappointed had it been Ivan, or even Frank. “You’re going to say you’re sorry.”

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

“No.” I was so assertive I thrilled myself. I poked her in the chest. “You are going to say sorry like you mean it and you’re going to make some effort to understand why you should be sorry.”

“Sorry,” she said again.

“And why are you sorry, Alice?”

“Because I made you feel uncomfortable.”

“You freaked me out. You tried to control my life when you had no right to do so. You tried to steal me away from myself. This is not some inoffensive little hobby, Alice, it’s manipulation and you mustn’t ever think otherwise. Don’t you ever dare think you’ve improved me or my life. Don’t you claim credit. It’s my life, my doing. Do you understand?”

She bowed her head and looked at her feet. She was tiny, as was everything about her. How could I not have noticed how small the photographer was in the photo that Ivan had blown up? I hadn’t realized the scale of it. How stupid we had all been, Ivan, Maggie and me. We had looked for someone important, when only someone insignificant would have wanted to do this and would have got away with it.

“But I forgive you.”

Ivan looked at me and raised his eyebrows.

“I forgive you on two conditions.” Alice had reverted back to grumpy adolescent mode and I had a glimpse of what she must have been like as an odd little fourth-former, trying to become me. “You must stop the site, you must get rid of it.” I paused. “But first you must save it for me, is that possible?”

“Burn it onto a CD,” she said.

“That means copy it,” said Ivan helpfully.

“Right, yes, you must burn it onto a CD and then you must destroy the site. You can’t keep your own copy.” She looked up. “No, really, you can’t. It’s not yours to keep. It’s my life. And secondly, you must give me the URLs, izobelbrannigan dot com and izobelbrannigan dot co dot uk. They’re mine, they belong to me and I need them now.”

She muttered.

“What’s that?” I was beginning to enjoy myself.

“You can have the URLs I bought.”

“They’re not yours to be so generous with, they’re mine. Always have been. And if I ever find out that you’ve been following me or taking photos of me again, then I shall make sure you regret it.” How, I wasn’t sure.

She lifted her head up. “All right.” I almost felt sorry for her and then I remembered the raw angry curiosity that had driven me for the last months and the way I had wanted to scratch myself until I bled just to give me something else to fret over. I thought of George and of my job. And then I thought of Ivan.

I looked round at her as we left. She was switching on her computer.

“I don’t understand,” Ivan said to me as we came out onto the street that now chugged with returning commuters and their self-important busyness. It had become a different place to the one it had been before we had entered number twelve. “Is that it?”

“Yes, I suppose it is.” I was a bride after a wedding or an actor after the last night; the project was now over and I felt empty. I wanted to lie down.

“But why? Don’t you think she should be punished a bit more? You were a lot angrier with me when you felt I might be behind it. And, I mean, you split up with your boyfriend over this, didn’t you? The oldest boyfriend in Christendom.”

“George, yes. My inappropriately named boyfriend, my ex. That’s the most annoying thing—she’s right. She is the flipping angel from
It’s a Wonderful Life.
I shouldn’t be with George and I shouldn’t be in my crappy job. I had potential and now I have nothing. That’s why I want to own the URL, because I’m going to need it, when I’m doing my own thing. Which I will do.”

“And that is?”

“I’ve been thinking about what I’m good at and how I can use my qualities.”

“What are you good at, then?”

“I’m good at, well I was, no, I am good at listening to other people. I’m academic, I can learn fast and I’m quick at thinking through problems. I can give useful advice when I think about it hard enough. And I want to help people, I really do.”

“And feed the starving children of the world?”

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not, Izobel. Really, I’m not. Tell me about your plans.”

“OK. I’m good at PR too. I’m used to having to try to sell rubbish products, so now I could try to sell people the best version of themselves. And weirdly, this business with Alice has made me think too. If I could help people to become celebrities in their own lives, then their self-esteem would go sky-high.”

“You’re going to make Web sites about people?”

“No. Well, I might do. I don’t know. I’ll use whatever tools there are, but for a good basis I’m going to do a psychotherapy or psychodynamic counseling course. I’ve been looking into them and you need a degree but it doesn’t have to be science-based. I can do one part-time and it will only take me about four years or so.”

Ivan laughed. “Four years?”

“Yes.” I shrugged. “I can temp throughout and, after all, I’m only thirty. I’ve got the rest of my professional life ahead of me so what’s a few years’ retraining? Besides, it will be so great to use my brain again. Just think how amazing it might be to help people change the way I have. That stupid Alice has made me feel like my own star now. I’m not going to keep bloody Tracy happy and I’m not going to sleep with self-obsessed media types. Artists my arse, they’re all piss artists.”

“My, my, could swath-cutting Soho-working media-man-hunting Izobel Brannigan actually sleep with…” He paused, uncharacteristically lacking in sarcasm.

“A techie? Could I sleep with a techie?” We smiled at one another, mouths-shut shy smiles, the sort that photograph badly. “I’m sorry, Ivan, for doubting you. You’ve been brilliant over all this. I should never have accused you being the site person.”

“That’s all right. It wasn’t that unlikely. I think Alice and I may be your biggest fans. I think you’re amazing and if I was a little bit weirder and a little more inventive then I could have been behind the site. What was it she said, pretty and funny and stuff, you are those things.”

“I am, aren’t I? Well, I think so, I hope so.”

“You’re more like izobelbrannigan dot com than you realize.”

I stood looking at him and purely out of habit stepped outside myself to create the paparazzi shot of us moving toward one another, still figures, mouths meeting, while people jostled past us to get home, like some bad pop video that attempts to express otherness through the contrast.

Chapter Twenty

I
t’s so big and hard. This bed I mean.” We giggled.

Ivan’s bed was indeed comfortable, but I had not slept all night and now we ate stale toast and Marmite with long-delayed hunger at dawn. I hadn’t even ever liked Marmite before. I kissed his fingers and they tasted salty with savory spread and me. It was light outside and I felt it suffuse me with Vitamin D and joy. I was exhausted and elated, desperate to sleep and yet so unwilling. Why would I want to sleep when euphemistically sleeping with Ivan was all that I ever wanted to do? We had tried to switch ourselves off but in doing so we only turned each other on. His skin was much darker than mine and as our limbs entangled we looked like a pornographic Benetton advert.

It was the sweet, perfect moment of excitement, when all is well, when the relationship is all present and future, and both those things are wonderful. If I could jump through the forth-coming scenes what would I see? That Ivan’s niceness and enthusiasm add up to a seductive ploy that would fade as soon as the girl reciprocated? Or me trying to persuade him to follow art not technology because it sounded better, introducing him as an artist much to his annoyance? Him being boorish or me being bored? Him talking about technology too much and my old snobberies returning to reject him? He read and loved sci-fi novels, after all. I should probably give them a try myself.

I knew so little about him. His friends could be leery and leechy, his family clingy or combative, his work oppressive.

And yet then, I could only see the scenes jumping from holidays to weekends spent in bed to introducing him proudly to my friends. I could only see photo-album scenes, the ones you see in other people’s collections that make you jealous of their lives. My, was he handsome.

“More tea?” he asked.

“Hot tea, hot toast…” I replied. It wasn’t hot sex, it was warm, suffused with smiles and giggles and enthusiasm. How did I ever have sex with a straight face? Straight-faced sex was vile, it was like tea without sugar to Ivan and me.

We were right in the heart of the city yet the world seemed far away. The world, what was going on out there? I hadn’t had my mobile on since I had escaped the office and taken flight to Shepherd’s Bush. I rummaged around in my bag and found my phone and switched it on. I shuddered as it told me that we were not alone. Three missed calls and a text message. Damn it. I had been with the only person I might want to call me. I called the voice mail number. Just two messages, the first sent at fifteen hundred hours and twenty-three.

“Izobel, it’s Tracy. We don’t run a policy of everyone pissing off early on Fridays, especially not those already on probation. And especially when we’re having to make expenditure cuts. Which you’d realize if you attended management meetings occasionally. You’re skating very near the knuckle and if you can be bothered to return to the office, I’d like to see you asap.”

She said “asap” as if it was a word, not A-S-A-P. Stupid cow. Save, repeat or delete, my mobile asked. Easy one.

“Hello, it’s me, Maggie by the way, can you give me a ring when you get a chance.”

Then there were a couple more message-less missed calls from Maggie. I put on a toweling robe and wandered into that big marvelous room of Ivan’s, with its kitchen and the installation that had so seduced me that night only nine days ago. He was nakedly putting sugar into our teas. He was naked happy person and I felt overdressed, like a reverse of the classic panic dream about being the only nude person in a room full of besuited others. A laptop was lying open on the coffee table with another of Ivan’s magical blooming installations flowering upon its screen.

“I like your screen saver.”

“It’s my site, my blog. You’re not the only one, you know.”

I noticed the laptop’s lack of spewing guts and ports and frowned.

“It’s wireless,” he explained. “It’s brilliant, you don’t need to plug in a modem or anything but can use it anywhere in the house. I could sit in the bathroom with it if I wanted. Now that’s truly portable. It works by…” He stopped on seeing me put my head to one side. “You think I’m nerdy, don’t you? What will you tell your friends about me? That I’m an artist or a consultant or an entrepreneur? Or will you tell them the truth, that I’m a computer spod?”

“I’ll tell them you’re a techie, my sexy techie.” We had got onto the we’re-going-to-introduce-you-to-our-lives point after just one night. I was just pulling him down toward me when my phone rung with a “private number.”

“It’s me, Maggie. Didn’t you get my text?”

“Hello you, no I didn’t. I mean, I did, but I haven’t opened it up. Sorry, things have been a bit…”

“I can’t really talk,” she said weakly. “Everyone in the ward is listening.”

“Ward?”

“I’m in hospital.”

“God, are you OK? The baby?” I stood up, now robeless.

“We’re fine. She’s fine.”

“She? A girl? You gave birth? You’re not due until next month.”

“Emergency Cesarean. I got these terrible pains yesterday afternoon and a bit of bleeding and they told me she was distressed. So was I by this point, as you can imagine. Not to mention Mick. Still,” she said, sounding brighter, “this is what celebrities do, whip it out a month early so as to save their figure and their relationship but not going through that belly-expanding last bit and the vaginal messiness of a natural birth. I asked them to give me a Cesari-tuck while they were at it.” She laughed and then groaned. “I can’t laugh, it hurts the stitches so much. I’ll never laugh again.”