Killing Cupid (7 page)

He stood up and crossed the room to the Gents. And I followed, one hand lightly scratching my brow so it hid my face.

He held the door open, not looking at me, and went straight into a cubicle. There was nobody else in the Gents. Perfect. I heard him unzip his fly and let his jeans fall to the floor. He sighed as he sat down. I waited till I heard the first splash.

‘Phil,’ I said, through the cubicle door.

There was a pause. ‘Who’s that?’

‘You don’t need to know my name. You just need to listen. Actually, think of me as a guardian angel – though not yours.’

‘What?’ I heard him tear off a strip of bog roll. I needed to hurry.

‘I know you’ve been lying to Lynn. I know you saw Siobhan the other night. I want you to stay away from Siobhan. Don’t speak to her. Don’t go to see her. If you do, I’ll make sure Lynn finds out about the lies you’ve been telling her.’

‘Who the fuck . . ?’

But before he could clean his arse and fasten his trousers, I was out of there: out of the front door and round the corner. Phil couldn’t come chasing after me because of Lynn. He hadn’t seen my face, so he would have no idea who had been talking to him. And it was true what I said to him: I am a guardian angel. And I’d just helped Siobhan remove an obstacle from her life.

When I got home, I was still excited and pleased with myself. More than anything, I wanted to hear Siobhan’s voice.

I hit 151 first to withhold my number, then dialled Siobhan’s. The phone rang six or seven times. I just had enough time to wonder if she was in the bath, which gave me a wonderful image, her skin made pink by the hot water, her nipples peeking out through a layer of bubbles, when she said, ‘Hello?’

I didn’t speak.

‘Hello?’

God, I love her voice. What a pity I had to put the phone down.

Thursday

Called in sick again. Jackie said, ‘You will be coming in tomorrow, won’t you?’ I replied that I wasn’t sure.

The house was empty, with both Si and Nat at work. I ate breakfast in the nude, then checked Facebook to see if Siobhan had accepted my friend request yet. No luck. But when I looked at her friend list again I noticed that Kathy was now listed. How sickening. Siobhan had confirmed that lezzer's friend request but not mine.

Furious, I stormed into the bathroom and had a wank to calm myself down, unable to stop myself picturing Siobhan and Kathy in a Sapphic clinch. After I came I got dressed and collapsed on the sofa and watched some crappy programme on daytime TV. There was a phone-in about relationships: mainly women calling and complaining about how unromantic their husbands were; about how they never took them out or bought them flowers any more. That gave me an idea.

I headed down to the market. The flowers were so expensive.

‘Have you got anything cheaper?’ I said.

The bloke behind the stall rolled his eyes a bit and said, ‘I’ve got these lilies. They’re a bit limp, but you can have them for a quid.’

They looked alright to me. I decided to take them straight round to Siobhan’s. My plan was to leave them on the doorstep, with a little note. I checked my bag for my pen but it wasn’t there, so I wouldn’t be able to leave a message. Oh well – it would add to the romance, anyway, if Siobhan thought her flowers were from a mysterious admirer.

I reached Victoria Gardens and paused at Siobhan’s gate, which stood wide open. I could hear music coming from inside the house: something I didn’t recognize. I wondered which part of the house she was in. As long as she wasn’t looking out the front window, I’d be okay. I wasn’t meant to know where she lived.

Heart beating fast, I headed up the short path to the front door. I was about to lay the bouquet on her step when I saw a bunch of keys hanging from the keyhole. What was this? An invitation? Turn the key and come straight in, Alex. But no, she didn’t know I was coming. Was she expecting someone else? I was confused. But then I realised it was a sign, and I had another idea.

Taking the keys from the lock, and still clutching the flowers, I turned and ran back towards the main road. There was a heel bar there; I’d passed it on the way up. A sign outside said, KEYS CUT WHILE U WAIT.

I only had to wait five minutes, then I headed back to Siobhan’s house, creeping up to the front door again to replace the keys in the lock. My own copy of her front door key sat snugly in my pocket. Now I would be able to enter her territory and find out more about her at my leisure. I was so excited at this thought that I could hardly walk or breathe. I was tempted to hang around, hide somewhere until she went out, but in the end I thought it would be best to come back another time. Before I went, I left the flowers on her step. Keys and flowers. A gift for both of us.

Chapter 7

Siobhan

Thursday

Class went well last night. I think I’m finding my stride – well, I think we all are. I heard some really promising work. Kathy’s was fantastic. It never ceases to amaze me, how the beauty of words can grip me in the gut and pull me – she read out this piece about yearning, and loneliness, and love, and I really felt choked. She talked about candy floss as ‘tiny threads of twisted pink longing’, and the bone-chilling ache of cold sea water turning her character’s ankles numb.

It reminded me so much of my (one and only) holiday romance, when I was sixteen, with Colin the Glaswegian. We had to communicate in sign language because his accent was so thick. And body language. I wonder what happened to all his letters? I don’t think I have them anymore. Kathy’s piece brought it all back, how I felt when his mum wrote that note to say he’d died in a car accident. Life is so harsh. I often wonder if he and I would have ended up together. I know we were only kids, but I really felt something for him. I can’t picture his face anymore, just that great mop of wind-swept curly black hair, those blue blue eyes, and the clammy feeling of spending too long in a wet swimsuit. Coming back to the hotel at the end of the day all horny and sandy – that’s what reminds me of Colin. I don’t think I’ve felt that passionate about anybody since.

It really makes me think that if love does come along, you have to seize it with both hands and not let it go.

Anyway. Back to the class. Brian didn’t turn up, which gave me a horrible feeling that maybe it was him who sent that card. Phil’s still Number One suspect – and God knows how Brian could have found out my address – but I suppose it is possible. Surely not though . . .

Talking of my various admirers, Alex asked me out. Maybe the card is from him? He must like me. I said no, although I did give it a moment’s thought – it’s not that he’s bad looking, or anything. It’s not even that there might not be a spark, if I let there be. But there’s just something… I don’t know what exactly…which unsettles me about him. Maybe just his own weird energy.

He seemed cool about me turning him down, though, so I’m sure he’ll just move on to his next conquest. He probably doesn’t even like me all that much; probably is just impressed that I’m a ‘faymuss awfor’. Or, rather, an ‘awfor.’

I noticed that he's sent me a friend request on Facebook, which I hardly ever go on. Kathy sent me one too, which was nice. But I am not going to confirm Alex because there are various shots of me on there in my bikini in Malta last summer with Phil. Don't want one of my male students perving over them, do I? Though maybe I shouldn't have accepted Kathy either...

And bloody Phil has unfriended me on there! I know because I tried to visit his profile to see whether he was still listed as 'in a relationship' and I couldn't get onto the page. Guess I must have hurt his feelings more than I thought.

Friday

Dead flowers. Phil has actually left a bunch of dead flowers on my doorstep. I can’t believe it. That’s a really horrible thing to do to somebody. I don’t blame him for feeling fed up – he’s been rejected by me
and
Lynn – but how could he stoop to something so cowardly and pathetic?

It must be Phil. All these weirdnesses can’t be coincidence. Has he totally lost it? It’s so unlike him. There was the graphic postcard. Then hang-ups when I answer the phone, six or seven times in the past couple of days. And now the dead flowers.

The more I think about it, the more angry it makes me. He knows I hate lilies. And these have got brown spots all over the petals, and slimy stems. They stink. What’s that sonnet where Shakespeare talks about how bad lilies smell?

Just looked it up, it’s:

“For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.”

That just about sums it up, Phil, you nutter. I feel like going into his office and ramming them up his –

Maybe I’ll just ring him instead. Tear him off a strip on the phone. It’s not worth the energy I’d expend in going down there myself.

I stuffed the lilies into the bin under the sink, snapping the stems in two, trying to cram them in without letting any of the woody ends rip the bin bag. All the petals immediately dropped off, and that atrociously sticky pollen fell all over my hands, the kitchen floor, the top of the bin. By the time I’d cleaned it all up (which took ages because at first my attempts just left yellow swirly smears everywhere, and I had to practically bleach all the surfaces) I was in such a rage that my best being-rude-to-estate-agents voice came completely naturally:

‘Phil Harmony, please.’

‘Sorry, he’s on holiday. Can I put you through to his secretary?’

This somehow made me even more furious. I can’t bear idiots who give you the wrong information on the telephone. Of course he wasn’t on bloody holiday, his holiday had been cancelled. That receptionist always had been dim.

‘Hello, Siobhan,’ said Diane when I got through to Phil’s office. ‘He’s not here, I’m afraid. He’s on holiday.’

Oh – well, of course, he’d have already booked the time off. I felt bad for mentally slagging off the receptionist. She wasn’t to know. She wasn’t to know I’d mentally slagged her either, so I suppose I didn’t need to feel guilty. I invited the anger back. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll try him at home,’ I said, about to hang up.

‘He’s not at home,’ Diane said, sounding half-puzzled, and half-impatient; sort of, what part of ‘on holiday’ do you not understand? ‘He’s gone to Portugal.’

Suddenly the hand I was holding the phone with began to shake a bit. I’d been chewing gum at the time, and shock made it slide towards the back of my throat, giving me a moment’s panic. I had to suck it back into my mouth again. I grabbed it and pulled it out of my mouth, then rolled it around between my finger and thumb, feeling it change consistency, becoming harder and smoother, like a small lump of fear personified, sticking to my skin.

‘When, exactly?’ I asked, having a weird feeling that the gum was still in my throat, choking me.

‘They – I mean, he flew out yesterday morning. He rang me from the airport.’

‘They? He went with Lynn?’

There was a silence.

I sagged against the back of the sofa, nearly dropping the phone. I didn’t give a stuff that he and Lynn appeared to have got back together – let them baby-talk their way around the Algarve, Philly-willy and Lynny-winny– but my mind was racing, and even while part of me was in denial and trying to figure out why he was still ringing me and hanging up from Portugal, with Lynn there too; or how the flowers could have turned up on my doorstep today…. another more cognisant part of me realized where the fear was coming from.

Because if Phil went to Portugal yesterday, he couldn’t have left the lilies. And if he didn’t leave the lilies, then he most likely didn’t send the card. Or make those silent phonecalls.

But if it wasn’t Phil . . .

Who the hell was it?

I don’t know. Maybe it’s my hormones. I’ve got that weird, slightly unreal feeling that I sometimes get with PMT, like I’m inhabiting a parallel universe, one not dissimilar to this: but hazier, more painful. More frightening. A universe where I want to curl up and sleep and let someone look after me. I keep losing things, too. I lost my keys again, turned the place over looking for them (although ‘turned the place over’ isn’t really the right expression. ‘Picked up, looked, and replaced neatly’ would be more apposite. Dr. Bedford said I have issues with cleanliness and tidiness. I disagree. I think it’s more to do with growing up in a big messy household that nobody could ever find anything in. I never could stand that, even as a little girl).

But the weird thing about the keys was that I’m sure the first thing I did when I realized they were missing was to check the front door, and they weren’t there. I suppose I was a bit distracted, trying to stop Biggles from running out into the street again, but I definitely checked. Went back upstairs, cleaned out the fridge, fed Biggles, checked again to make sure – and there they were, dangling from the lock. It was bizarre. And that was when I found the flowers.

I’d been thinking what a wuss Phil was, to leave the flowers and run away without telling me that my keys were sticking out of the front door – I mean, anyone could have let themselves in!

But the horrible truth is that it wasn’t Phil. Someone else must have seen those keys. Someone else. The same someone who sent me that card, telling me he wanted to fuck me? The same person who keeps calling and hanging up. When I thought it was Phil it was just irritating. But now . . .

Oh God. What if I’m not alone now? What if someone’s standing behind one of my doors, perhaps this one…?

I’m all out of breath. Have just run up and down the stairs with the poker, opened all the doors, looked in all the cupboards. Put on
Combat Rock
at full blast – The Clash make me feel brave. Biggles is disgusted with me. He was chasing up and down the stairs after me with his tail out like a brush. At first, being paranoid, I thought that he could sense something strange. Then I thought, yes of course he can: me, charging around like a maniac with a poker while listening to music loudly enough to make his fur stand on end.