Second Life (13 page)

For the first time I don’t know immediately, I have to work it out. I’ve stopped
counting the days and weeks; perhaps it’s the first evidence of progress. I’m strangely
pleased.

‘Almost five.’

She smiles sadly. I know she understands how I feel, more than most. A few years
ago her stepfather died suddenly, a heart attack, while he was driving. They’d been
close; the intensity of her grief had shocked her.

‘Are they any nearer to working out what happened?’ For a moment her expression seems
to change; she looks almost hungry, unless I’m imagining it. I’ve seen it before,
it’s the journalist in her; she can’t help herself. She wants the details.

‘You mean, who did it? Not yet. They’re not really telling us very much . . .’ I
let the conversation evaporate. It feels like every week that goes by makes it less
likely they’ll catch them, but I don’t want to put that into words.

‘How’s Hugh?’

‘He’s okay, you know?’ I think for a moment. I can be honest with her. ‘Actually,
sometimes I think he’s almost glad.’

Do I? Or am I just saying that because sometimes I still worry that I am?

She tilts her head. ‘Glad?’

‘Oh, I don’t mean glad that she’s dead. It’s just . . . sometimes I think he just
likes the fact that it makes things simpler, I guess. With Connor.’ I hesitate. ‘Maybe
he’s right. They’ve certainly seemed much closer, recently.’

I look up at Adrienne. She knows that I’d been worried that if it ever went to the
courts they’d uphold Connor’s right to choose.

‘I’ve known Hugh since for ever, Julia. He’s always liked things to be neat and tidy.
But he’s not glad. Don’t be too hard on him.’

I feel empty, like I want to share everything with Adrienne, to offload it, to hand
it over and find some peace.

‘He’s not even there most of the time.’

‘Darling, hasn’t he always been like that?’ She drinks some of her wine. A wave of
desire hits me, the first for weeks. I tell myself to ride it out. She carries on
speaking, but I have to struggle to concentrate. ‘They all are. We marry them because
they’re successful, ambitious, whatever. Then that’s the very thing that takes them
away from us. It was the same with Steve, and now it’s the same with Bob. I barely
see him, he’s so busy . . .’

I centre myself. It’s different for her. She has a challenging career of her own.
She can take herself away from her husband as easily as he takes himself away from
her. But I don’t want to argue.

‘You’re seeing someone?’

I feel myself recoil. She knows, I think. About Lukas. Even though there’s nothing
to know. We’re still chatting regularly, and though I try to tell myself there’s
no reason to think so, I keep thinking he must’ve known Kate. I can’t work him out,
and so I keep going back.

‘What—?’ I say to Adrienne now, but she interrupts.

‘A therapist, I mean?’

Of course. My panic recedes. ‘Oh, right. No, I’m not.’

There’s a moment of silence. She doesn’t take her eyes off me; she’s appraising me,
trying to work out why I’d reacted as I had.

‘Julia? If you don’t want to talk about it . . .’

I do, though. I do want to talk about it, and she’s my oldest friend.

‘You remember I said I might go online? To get the list of people Kate was talking
to?’

‘Yes. You said you’d changed your mind.’

I’m silent.

‘Julia?’

‘There was someone I wasn’t sure about.’

She puts down her glass and raises her eyebrows. ‘Go on . . .’

‘He visits Paris. He messaged me. I convinced myself he might be someone Kate was
talking to. Someone the police don’t know about.’

‘So you gave his details to the authorities?’

Still I say nothing.

‘Julia . . . ?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Why?’

‘I need to be sure . . . I’m just talking to him. I’m trying to find out what he
knows.’

‘Darling, are you sure that’s a good idea?’

‘What’s the alternative? Give his name to the police—?’

‘Yes! That’s exactly what you should do!’

‘I don’t want to frighten him off and, besides, they’d probably just ignore it.’

‘Of course they wouldn’t ignore it! Why would they do that, Julia? They have a duty
to investigate it. He lives in Paris, it should be easy enough.’

I don’t tell her he lives in Milan. ‘I know what I’m doing. We’ve only chatted once
or twice.’

It’s a lie, an understatement. I’m trying to backtrack. Things have developed. He
turns his video on now and has asked me to turn mine on, though I haven’t, yet. He
tells me I’m beautiful. He tells me he wishes there could be a way I could be there
with him, and even though I feel guilty for lying to him, I tell him I wish that,
too. Our conversations end with him telling me he’s loved talking to me, that he
can’t wait until we can chat again. He tells me to look after myself, to be careful.
And because it would be impolite not to, because I just can’t figure him out, I say
the same things to him.

It feels cruel, sometimes. I don’t mean it, and yet he clearly likes me, or likes
the person he thinks I am.

‘He knows where you live?’

I shake my head. The other day I made a mistake and mentioned the tube. I’d had to
confess that I was in London, not Paris, but he knows no more than that.

‘No, of course not.’

There’s a long pause. ‘So, what do you talk about?’

I don’t reply, which is an answer in itself.

‘You are very vulnerable right now, Julia. You’re sure you know what you’re doing?’

I nod. ‘Of course.’ But she doesn’t look convinced.

‘You like him.’

I shake my head again. ‘No. It’s not like that. It’s just . . . there seems to be
a connection there. And I wonder whether that connection has anything to do with
Kate.’

‘In what way?’

‘You know how close we used to be. It felt almost psychic. And, well—’

‘You think if you feel a connection with this man then it must be relevant?’

I don’t answer. It’s exactly what I think. She has no idea what a difference it makes,
this feeling that I’m at least doing something useful, something that might lead
Connor and me to resolution and a place of safety.

‘Julia.’ She looks stern. ‘You look like a teenager who’s got a massive crush on
a boy in the next year up.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’ I mean it, but I don’t sound convincing, even to myself. Is
it really how I feel? I can’t deny I’ve looked forward to Lukas’s messages.

Maybe it’s not about the investigation at all. Maybe it’s because now I know how
Kate must have felt, chatting to those men; I can feel closer to her. I know her
world.

‘You know,’ I say, ‘even if it is futile, a waste of time, so what? I’m just trying
to do something to get over the death of my sister.’

‘So you told this guy about her?’

I say no, but I’m lying. The other day I’d had a bad morning after a sleepless night
and I couldn’t stop thinking about Kate. He could tell something was wrong. He kept
asking me if everything was all right, whether there was anything he could do. I
couldn’t help myself. I told him.

He said he was so sorry to hear my sister had died, and asked me how. I was about
to tell him the truth when I realized it would be a mistake. I told him it was suicide.
There was a long moment when I wondered what he was going to say, and then he said
again how sorry he was, and that he wished he could put his arms around me, be there
for me.

He said he understood, and it’d felt good. For a moment I almost felt bad for wondering
whether he might be somehow involved in my sister’s death. Almost.

‘Well, that’s something, at least. Are you having sex?’

‘Of course not!’ I say, but I’m thinking about how it makes me feel when he turns
his camera on, when I can see him
respond to my messages, smile at me, wave at me
when he says goodbye. Do I want him?

I think about the other night, in bed. Hugh and I had made love, for the first time
in months, but it’d been Lukas I was thinking about.

Yet at the same time it wasn’t him. The man I was imagining, dreaming about, was
a fantasy. My own construction, almost completely divorced from the Lukas I chat
to, the one I see on camera.

‘He knows about Hugh?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I want him to think I’m available. Otherwise, how will I find out whether
he is who he says he is?’

‘Right.’ She looks at me, dead in the eye. ‘And what do you think Hugh would say?
If he found out?’

It’s not the first time I’ve considered it, of course. ‘But I’m just trying to find
out what happened. If nothing else, to help Connor.’

She looks properly exasperated, now. It’s as if she thinks I’m stupid. Possibly she
does. Possibly I am.

Our food arrives. I’m grateful. There a diffusion of tension as we arrange our napkins
and begin to eat. ‘Look,’ I say. ‘It’s not like there’re any feelings attached to
any of this. It’s just words on a screen . . .’

She forks her salad. ‘I think you’re being naive. You’re getting sucked in.’

‘Can we change the subject?’

She puts her fork down. ‘You know I love you, and support you. But—’

Here we go, I think. ‘What?’

‘It’s just . . . it’s surprising what people give away online, without knowing it.
How easily it can feel real.’

‘Adrienne. I’m not an idiot, you know.’

‘I just hope you know what you’re doing.’

We finish our meal and have coffee before we leave. It’s another warm night; couples
meander through the city, arm in arm. The air is full of laughter, of possibility.
I feel unsteady, almost as if I’ve had a drink. I decide to take the tube home.

‘It’s been great to see you.’

‘You, too.’ We kiss, but I’m disappointed. I thought she’d see my chats with Lukas
for what they are, even give me support. But she hadn’t. She doesn’t. ‘You be careful,’
she says, and I tell her I will.

I reach the platform just as a train pulls in. It’s pretty full, but I sit down on
one of the few remaining seats and, a moment too late, realize it’s sticky with spilled
beer. I take my book out of my bag, but it’s a defence. I don’t open it.

At Holborn there’s a commotion. A group of lads get on, teenagers, or early twenties;
they’re wearing shorts, T-shirts, carrying beers. One of them says something – I
don’t hear what – and the others laugh. ‘Fuck!’ says one; another says, ‘What a cunt!’
It’s loud, they’re making no effort to tone it down; there are children around, despite
the time. I catch the eye of the man sitting opposite me and he smiles and raises
his eyebrows. For a moment we’re united in our disapproval. He has a long face, cropped
hair, glasses. He holds a briefcase on his lap, in soft leather, but is wearing
jeans and a shirt. The train pulls away. He smiles, then goes back to his paper and
I open my book.

I can’t concentrate. I read the same paragraph, over and over. I can’t pretend I’m
not hoping I’ll have a message from Lukas when I get home. I keep thinking about
the man sitting opposite me.

I sigh, look up. He’s looking at me again, and now he smiles and holds my gaze for
a long moment. This time it’s me who looks away first, to the advert above his head.
I pretend to find it fascinating; it’s a poster for one of the universities. B
E WHO
YOU WANT TO BE
, it says. A woman wears a mortar board, clutches a scroll, her grin
wide. Next to it is a poster for a dating agency. W
HAT IF YOU KNEW THAT EVERYONE
IN THIS CARRIAGE YOU FANCY IS SINGLE
? What if I did? I think. What would I do? Nothing,
I don’t suppose. I’m married, I have a child. I glance down, just briefly, away from
the poster; he’s reading his paper again. I find myself looking at his body, at his
chest, which is broader than his narrow face would suggest, at his legs, his thighs.
Although he looks nothing like him, I start to see him as Lukas. I picture him, looking
up at me, smiling the way I’ve seen Lukas smile on Skype so many times over the last
few days. I imagine kissing him, letting him kiss me. I imagine dragging him into
one of the stairwells at the next station, unzipping his jeans, feeling him grow
erect in my hand.

Suddenly I see myself as others see me. I’m shocked at what I’m thinking. It isn’t
right. It isn’t me. I look down at my book and pretend to read.

Chapter Twelve

I think he’s there again. Standing not quite under the light. Watching my window.

There, yet not there. When I look directly into the shadows I can convince myself
it’s nothing, a trick of the light, an optical illusion. Just my brain, seeking order
in chaos, trying to make sense of the random. Yet, as I look away, the figure seems
about to come into focus. To declare itself as real.

This time, I don’t turn away. This time, I tell myself he’s real. I’m not imagining
it. I stay where I am, watching him. Last time I’d told Hugh and he said it was nothing,
a trick of the light, and so tonight I want to burn his image on to my retina, take
it again to my husband, show him. Look, I want to say. This time, I’m not being absurd,
I’m not imagining it. He was there.

The figure doesn’t move. It’s utterly still. I watch, and as I do it seems to recede
somehow, into the shadows. There, yet not there.

I turn and wake my husband. ‘Hugh. Come here. Look. He’s here again.’

Reluctantly he gets up. The street is empty.

Maybe Hugh’s right. Maybe I am being paranoid.

‘Hugh thinks I’ve lost my mind,’ I tell Anna. We’re on Skype, I’ve finished adding
some images to my website, tidying
things up. Her face is in the window in the corner
of my screen.

‘Could it just be someone walking their dog?’

‘There’s no dog.’ She begins to say something, but the video freezes and I don’t
hear it. A moment or so later it resumes and I carry on. ‘He’s standing outside my
house. It creeps me out. If I turn away, to fetch Hugh or whatever, he’s always disappeared
when I turn back.’