The One Before the One (10 page)

‘Are you sure?’ I say. I know when Martin’s made his mind up, it’s best to just get it over and done with.

‘Yeah, course, not a problem.’ The man has rather nice deep creases around his eyes when he smiles.

The man’s sliding his chair back under the table now. The girl is gathering her bags. She hasn’t said a word.

‘That’s really kind of you, thank you,’ says Martin, standing up to shake the guy’s hand. Martin’s handshake is a both-hands-nearly take-your-arm-off kind of shake but the man reciprocates graciously.

‘Sorry about him,’ I whisper as I make my way to the seat, our chests almost touching. He smells distinctive, a woody, earthy smell like he’s been sitting around a campfire. ‘Awfully fussy.’

He laughs as Martin calls behind him: ‘Kettle, black, Caroline Steele! Kettle black!’

We’re finally seated now, menu in hand, a glass of wine down, and I’m aware of a lovely feeling, of being utterly and totally myself. I look over at Martin. He’s studying the menu in that way he does, head in hands, as if it was a medical consent form and the choice he has to make is a life and death matter, and I think how he is really the only person in the world that I feel that way with.

I’m not myself with my parents, with whom I seem to regress to teenager mode since I didn’t get much of a chance to do that when I actually was one. I’m not with Lexi, since she
is
the teenager and therefore I have no choice but to be the grown-up, even though I didn’t exactly offer myself up for that role. And, I realize now, I’m not even myself with Toby, any more, trying desperately to exude an air of not being governed by irrational emotions when I’m beginning to feel anything but. God, it’s exhausting.

So yes, Martin is a very rare thing, a true friend, a soul mate, really, and I don’t know what I’d do without him.

‘So, why don’t you go out with her?’

It comes out of nowhere.

‘What?’ He laughs. ‘Why don’t I go out with who?’

‘Polly,’ I say, dipping my bread into the oil. ‘Why don’t you ask her out on a date?’

‘She
is
a lovely girl.’

‘Well,
you
obviously think so.’ I seem unable to fully eradicate the spikiness from my tone. ‘So why don’t you ask her out?’

‘Oh, it’s complicated …’

‘Come on, Martin.’ The wine’s gone to my head and I’m full of bravado. ‘You either fancy her or you don’t.’

‘Oh, I do fancy her.’

‘Oh.’

‘What?’ he says.

‘Nothing!’

‘Why are you so desperate for me to ask her out?’

‘I’m not!’

‘You’d rather I didn’t then?’ Martin puts the menu down and cocks his head.

‘I don’t care either way.’

‘You girls …’ Martin smiles at me – I’m not sure what sort of smile but it makes me feel a little uncomfortable – and polishes off his wine before pouring us both more. ‘You think us blokes can’t see right through you.’

The starters come. Olive tapenade for Martin, a confit of duck for me. Martin approves of a restaurant with confits and tapenades on the menu. I’d be quite happy with bar food at the local, but Martin is very suspicious of any establishment that serves ‘bar food’ and considers a carvery as criminal as, say, organ trafficking. It’s something I always found both exasperating and attractive about him. A man with high standards.

Martin picks up the menu again and peers over it at me.

‘So, what about you?’

‘What about me?’

‘Been seeing anyone lately?’

My stomach turns to liquid.

I don’t know what goes on in Martin’s head, to tell you the truth, and I’m not sure I want to. As far as I can tell, he’s okay, he’s getting on with his life, he seems happy with his job at BT and his ongoing dream of opening a restaurant. Yes, he compliments me often, which I love, I have to admit – what
girl wouldn’t? But I don’t think he’s still in love with me. It’s been a year now, anyway, and he seems to be getting back into the dating game, which is good, isn’t it? Great. Yes, fantastic. Good for you, Martin! Way to go!

Oh, who the hell am I kidding? The thought of him falling for another girl fills me with a sickening dread, not really because I can’t stand the thought of him having sex with another girl; strangely that doesn’t seem to bother me, but because, deep down, in the part of me I don’t like to venture often, I can’t stand the thought of him telling another girl he loves her. Also, I know that the minute he gets a girlfriend – or I get a boyfriend, for that matter – we can’t carry on like this, that never works in the long run. But Toby doesn’t count as a boyfriend, does he? He is someone else’s husband, so how could he?

Martin gives a little laugh, breaking my train of thought.

‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ he says. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have quizzed you like that. You don’t have to answer that question.’

‘Yes, you are quizzing me, Martin Squire,’ I say. ‘But no, no I’m not seeing anyone.’

‘Great!’ says Martin. ‘I mean, not
great,
but you know cool, as in cool, that’s cool … Shall we just change the damn subject?’ He laughs and I laugh too, relieved that’s over.

‘So dare I ask, how is Lexi?’ asks Martin as we’re tucking into our pudding. ‘After her run in with Mr Banks?’

‘Well, after a full scale row outside Shoreditch House where she called me a frigid cow then proceeded to throw up all over the taxi, I think I got the message through to her that Tristan did not have her best interests at heart.’

‘You’re joking?’ says Martin. I don’t tell him about the pregnancy test, that would be one step too far.

‘Unfortunately not. Although now we seem to have another problem with some ex called Clark who keeps calling her and
something’s obviously happened between them because she never wants to talk to him.’

Martin pauses. His bread halfway to his mouth.

‘Wait a minute, did you just say Clark?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘Clark Elder?’

‘Yes, that’s his name. I saw him as one of her friends on Facebook.’

Martin sucks air in between his teeth, which Martin always does when he’s about to offer some sage advice, which he does often.

‘She wants to watch herself with him,’ he says. ‘He was notorious in Doncaster: drug-dealing, fraud.’

‘You’re joking? Shit!’

‘He was inside for a while, think it was GBH. And he’s definitely done time for drugs.’

‘Fuck, that’s awful. I wonder if Lexi knows all this,’ I say. ‘Either way, she’s worked out he’s a baddun because she doesn’t want anything to do with him, thank God. He seemed so charming when I spoke to him on the phone.’

‘Oh yeah, he was always good at
that,’
says Martin. ‘That’s why he’s probably got hundreds of illegitimate children running around Doncaster.’

I think about the pregnancy test. My stomach turns inside out.

‘And I think he was associated with date rapes some years back.’

‘Okay …’ I think about this for a minute. ‘Well, I’m not going to worry too much because Lexi wants nothing to do with him. She won’t even take his calls.’

Martin is an excellent drinking partner. A
bon-vivant
boozer who only gets jollier the drunker he gets. We drink two bottles of red wine. We laugh, we talk so easily it’s like old times but
better, more special; the kind of special things become when the pressure to make things work has gone, but the mutual love and respect remains.

It’s funny, isn’t it, how the things that make you fall in love with someone often become the things that make you want to hit them over the head with a mallet in the end?

When I met Martin, when he was a youth worker and I was a swotty sixth-former doing my Silver Duke of Edinburgh Award, I fell completely in love with his resourceful spirit. Him erecting a tent in a force ten gale could leave me nauseous with desire. He was three years older than me, twenty-one to my eighteen and the sight of his bottom, so hunky and capable in his combat trousers, was, to me, the epitome of manliness.

I would marvel at how pleasant he was to his parents (something I still struggle with now), how he could put up shelves whilst talking on the hands-free to his mum, in fact, do
anything
whilst talking to his mum.

That was probably the first niggle I had with Martin – his obsession with his mum. Martin’s parents, Martin and Martine (all true! It was like they were a species in their own right) are lovely, lovely people; it’s just that whilst I could accept that Martin was his father’s best friend, I never quite understood why this meant I had to be his mother’s best friend too.

When Martin played golf with Martin Senior, Martine and I would be expected to go shopping. When Martin booked a golfing weekend at a country hotel with his dad, Martine and I were booked in for facials. Eventually, we could hardly put the bins out without it having to coincide with a visit to his parents. (They moved down south to be with us a year after we went, which was the first nail in the coffin.) What with Sunday lunches, Saturday teas, shopping trips and facials, there wasn’t much time for friends of our own age. They were all too busy doing what normal twenty-somethings do,
like spending Sundays hung over in bed with their other halves, not in Morrissons watching him agonising over the three-for-twos.

I began to feel stifled, embroiled in a relationship where the dynamics were all wrong. Perhaps it was that, deep down, I knew that Martin loved me more than I loved him. But it’s been two weeks since I’ve seen him and I’ve missed him. When the rest of my life is so complex, so unsure, Martin is a constant, and sometimes, when I’m being drunk and nostalgic and when I put on that wedding dress, I see it as the biggest tragedy of my life so far that things didn’t work out between us.

‘We’re okay, aren’t we?’ I say, putting my hand on his. I’m aware of the echoing clatter and chatter around us and yet it feels, like it often does with Martin, that we’re the only people in the room.

‘What do you mean?’ he asks, putting his hand on mine.

I send a finger around my wine glass.

‘I mean, you’re okay, aren’t you? You know, about us, the wedding. I still feel sad about it, Martin …’

‘Now, Caro …’ Martin pats my hand. ‘Don’t start getting maudlin. It’s fine. I’m okay. I’m getting on with my life and we still get to do this, don’t we? I still get to see you …’

‘You’re lovely, Martin.’ I’m drunk now, and nostalgic and sentimental.

‘Thanks. And you, too, my dear, you too.’

‘I’m so sorry it didn’t work out and that I hurt you, it. I … I think about you every day.’

‘
Caro
liine
.’ Martin lifts up my chin. ‘I thought you promised you weren’t going to get maudlin?’

‘Sorry, it’s just sometimes …’

‘What?’

I look at his eyes, those grey, kind eyes that look at me with a love that nobody’s matched since.

‘Well, I wonder if you know, I was just too scared …’ Oh God, here I go.

Martin shrugs.

‘Maybe you’re right.’

I feel my eyes fill up with tears. Don’t cry, not now.

‘Oh, Caro,’ he says. ‘Don’t be sad, hey? It’s all right, you’ll be a spinster till you’re seventy and then, one day, you’ll wake up and think, you know, that Martin bloke wasn’t all that bad after all.’

I laugh, shyly, and wipe away a tear. Then he says:

‘You haven’t told Lexi it was your decision, have you?’ It comes out of nowhere and catches me off guard. ‘She thinks I called off the wedding. That’s why she’s rude to me, she’s mad with me, isn’t she?’

‘No!’ I say. ‘No, no, no …’

Shit, shit, shit.

‘Course I told her, back when it happened. She’s just a teenager that’s all. And teenage girls are the worst. Very moody for no apparent reason.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Course I’m sure,’ I say, thinking, that’s it. I really have to get round to it. What’s the big deal, anyway? So I broke it off. I failed at something, it happens. Then he says:

‘Oh well, you’ve still got me, haven’t you? I always want you in my life, even if just as friends.’

‘Me too,’ I say, raising my glass. ‘To friends. Special friends.’

On the following Saturday, when Lexi is working on the stall with Wayne, I decide to go and
introduce
myself. That’s what it was. It wasn’t prying. Prying would be sneaking around and watching her from afar, getting on the same bus as her and following her there, like a paranoid mentalist of a big sister. And I wasn’t paranoid – was I? Only a healthy amount. I just wanted to suss him out, that’s all. He could be any old unsavoury market trader.

Anyway, she knows I’m coming and she’s really excited.

‘Wayne’s the business, you’re gonna love him,’ she keeps saying, which for some reason is making me nervous, ramping up expectations. What if I positively hate him? (Don’t be ridiculous, I keep telling myself, Why on earth would I hate him?) But I’ve always had this slight nervy thing about meeting new people – I get it from Mum. Not so much cynicism, as a lack of confidence – will he like
me?
Or does he already have me down as a list-obsessed, anally retentive freak who is masking some terrible unhappiness?

Either way, I realized as I sat for what seemed like an eternity on the Northern Line, I hadn’t even been to Camden Market before. In ten years of living in this city, that particular cultural attraction had never been ticked off. I worked out that that
was because I’d lived with Martin for all that time and Martin is a particular breed of conventional man who thinks that Camden Market is full of ‘crusties’, people with ‘dreaded locks’, as he calls them. It was the same with Spitalfields or Portabello, and God forbid I wanted to go to Notting Hill Carnival. ‘Just so predictable, so touristy, Caro,’ he’d say, ‘and full of ethnitat.’ I guess when you spend ten years with someone, attitudes like that begin to rub off and I, too, had become suspicious of anything second-hand, of leather jackets that smell of joss sticks.

So it’s a surprise to me that I love Camden Market. Can’t get enough of it. I feel like the kid of a health freak let loose in McDonalds. I love the stalls selling chunky silver jewellery and necklaces with enormous coloured stones that look like boiled sweets. I lose an hour in the shops selling frosted glass bottles and bongs and wondering how you used one – was it too late for the Bong Years? I am entranced by the raven-haired, kohl-lined stallholders with their piercings and their funny fat trainers; the punks and goths and gangs of teenagers wearing Ray-Bans who look like they’ve just come straight off the set of some beatnik film.

I wander for an hour, forgetting even to look for Lexi, immersed in a new, psychedelic London that makes me feel strangely alive. It’s warm and the scent of food is everywhere. Any kind you want: golden crepes sizzling on a plate, huge terrines of bubbling curries from goat to mutton to dahls and baltis; pizzas and fragrant vats of creamy, Thai curry. There’s a squat, muscly man tattooed from head to toe, (including his face), shouting, ‘Encilladas! Two for a pound!’ I buy one, dripping in soured cream. Why had Martin never brought me here?

I lose at least fifteen minutes at a stall selling old books, thumbing through first editions of Thomas Hardy novels, deliciously yellowing copies of Shakespeare plays and sonnets of the Romantic Poets. I keep my eyes open for Lexi, but it
seems like every stall is run by a hip, pretty young girl, sitting in the sun, and I decide there’s no rush anyway, I’m having a ball all on my own. I wander on, spotting an archway that looks intriguing, dimly lit, like a rabbit warren, with emporiums of books and clothes and records branching off a main gangway. There’s a stall on the left, a little shop in its own right with dinky, frosted windows, like an old Dickenisan curiosity shop. Music is coming from inside – something soulful and crackly, playing on an old gramophone. I stick my head in and it goes back far further than the front would suggest. It sells mainly vintage furniture: a couple of beaten leather sofas, old-fashioned hairdryers and retro coffee tables. In the far right corner, a single, antique bed is elevated like it’s been hurled about in a typhoon and landed there. There are shabby-chic standard lamps lighting every corner and piles of vintage Wedgwood china stacked precariously in any spare space. Near the back there are rails of leather jackets and fur coats in all colours, vintage shoes lining the floor, and sparkly, embroidered handbags dripping off every hanger. It’s the sort of shop Martin would drag me from, tutting: ‘What is it with girls and their obsession with stuff their grandma would wear?’ It’s also the kind of shop that makes me feel vaguely intimidated, whilst at the same time tantalized, like will they sniff me out in a second? In my George at Asda sundress?

There doesn’t seem to be anyone there though, so I venture in, self-consciously eyeing up the leather coats, stroking the dresses in all their strange, coarse, patterned fabrics. ‘Looks like a pair of old curtains.’ I can hear my mother now.

But I’ve always secretly admired those girls who can wear vintage; those girls who have a ‘statement look’ or who can pull off hats like they were born wearing them. The sorts of clothes Lexi wears. I have never been very good at fashion. Not for want of trying. I’d go out shopping, determined that,
this time, I’d get an ‘outfit’, a ‘look’, wow my friends with some left-field, edgy ensemble, then come back with another beige cardigan from Next.

But I’m feeling adventurous today – maybe I could pull off a vintage dress after all? Perhaps Toby would find me irresistible in a cute, insouciant Sixties number? I leaf through the rails, feeling self-conscious.

I find a fur coat – toffee colour, amazing – and hold it up to me in front of the mirror, then put it back when I try and fail to imagine me walking around SW11 wearing anything of the sort. But this!
Drool
… I pull it from the rail: A gorgeous little Sixties shift dress. It’s midnight blue with cute capped-sleeves and a wide, boat neck with leaf patterns in silver thread. I take it off the rail, stand in front of the mirror, holding it with one hand, piling my hair on top of my head with the other, imagining how it might show off my clavicles. My strong point, Martin once told me.

‘You can try it on, if you like,’ says a sudden voice behind me. Flat northern tones. Yorkshire. Can spot it a mile off.

‘God, you nearly gave me a heart attack.’ I laugh, turning crimson. What was I doing in the mirror? Was I actually
pouting?

‘I was pouting, wasn’t I?’ It just topples out.

The man – I assume it’s the stallholder – leans against the clothes rail and laughs, a throaty genuine laugh.

‘Yeah, proper fancying yourself in that, you were,’ he says, and I feel my face burn. ‘I bet you’d look great in it, go on, try it on.’

He’s wearing a faded grey, vintage T-shirt, jeans and trainers – blue and bright green, with the laces trailing.

‘Oh no, I won’t …’ I feel suddenly mortified. The fact he’s so handsome isn’t helping one bit. Tall, pale-green, searching eyes with deep creases around them so that when he smiles – which is often – they meet up with the creases
around his mouth. There’s something about those creases that are familiar. I bet he does loads of outdoor pursuits, I think. Skiing? No. Too bourgeois. Probably kayaking or mountain climbing, or maybe those laughter lines come from riding a motorbike for hours at high speed on the open road.

His hair is straw-coloured, highlighted by the sun and unconsciously bouffant against a swarthy, slightly oily complexion. But it’s his smile that gets me – I can’t stop looking at it: wide, mischievous with a slightly chipped front tooth. One could get lost in a smile like that, I think. Hours could be lost.

He walks off, sipping from the takeaway coffee, as if he’s just had an idea. ‘Here,’ he says, coming back seconds later with a large floppy hat and a scarf, ‘try this.’ He puts it on me.
‘Very
Marianne Faithfull,’ he says, ‘very foxy.’

I shake my head.

‘Oh no. I couldn’t. I could never carry off something like that.’

He folds his arms, stands with his feet apart and looks at me intensely so that I laugh nervously and look away. ‘Actually, I beg to differ,’ he says. God, was he flirting with me?

I look at myself again. I’d never be seen dead in it, but it was cute. Very cute … ‘You reckon?’

‘Reckon?
I know,’
he says with mock-seriousness.

‘Oh, go on, then,’ I groan, coyly. ‘Your flattery sales technique’s working a dream on a sucker like me.’ And then I take the dress to the dressing room – a bit of old curtain pulled-to at the back of the shop. What the hell. Live a little, Caroline. So what if it ends up at the back of your wardrobe? Maybe you could save it for the book club. For Toby’s eyes only. I feel naughty at the thought, and even have a little hum to myself as I shimmy out of my Asda dress, and pull
the shift dress over my underwear (dodgy and not matching today, which somewhat spoils the experience). I look around for the mirror. No mirror. Shit. Now I’m going to have to go out and greet him without being able to check for any obvious problems like bra fat or the fat you get when your knickers dig in. Still, you can’t stay here all night, Steeley, I say to myself, taking a deep breath. Come on, got to
do
this. I pull back the curtain and walk out.

He’s sitting on a chair now, looking very serious. It makes me giggle.

‘Okay, you’ve got to get the dress. With legs like that? Wow.’

I roll my eyes, but I was secretly loving this. ‘Now you’re just flattering me to get the sale. I may be blonde but I’m not dumb.’

‘Oh come on! Get the damn dress. Anyone can see you look utterly gorgeous.’

I fight it, but a smile spreads involuntarily across my face. Gorgeous? Utterly so?

‘Are you always like this with your female customers?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘Absolutely not.’

I tut coyly and go back to looking at myself in the mirror. My legs did look quite good, quite shapely. Goddamn it … maybe he was right.

Then suddenly, from the back of the shop: ‘Oh, you met each other then?’ And my sister emerges from a rail of clothes.

‘Lexi!’ I pull at my hem. I feel like a schoolgirl caught snogging behind the bike sheds.

Wayne looks at me, amused realisation creeping across his face.

‘Wayne, this is my big sister, Caroline. Caroline, this is Wayne … Quite literally, the coolest boss in the world.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Caroline.’ Wayne presses his lips together like, ‘Oh dear, we got that wrong didn’t we?’

‘What, you didn’t know who each other was?’ says Lexi.

‘No, um no.’ I am trying to ignore the fact that I am blushing furiously. ‘But I was just admiring Wayne’s stall. Great stall, Lex. Love it, some really cool stuff.’

‘Your sister was particularly loving our Sixties collection,’ Wayne says, suddenly businesslike.

‘So I see.’ Lexi looks me up and down. ‘Are you going to buy that dress?’

I look down at it and suddenly come to. What was I thinking? Toby would
hate
it. He’d think I shopped in a jumble sale. I have a sudden urge to run into the changing room and rip it off

‘No,’ I say, making towards the changing room. ‘I think I’ve changed my mind.’

We’re all sitting down in the middle of the shop now, clutching cups of tea.

‘So, how did you two meet again?’ I’ve been staring at Wayne since I realized who he was. How on earth could someone that good-looking be called ‘Wayne’?

‘Right here, Lexi was browsing round the shop,’ says Wayne.

‘Is it your shop?’

‘No, it’s Dave’s – the guy I live with – but he doesn’t like being front of house so I do all the selling and he does the business side.’

‘Oh,’ I say, slightly disappointed. So it wasn’t even his own shop.

‘Anyway,’ says Wayne, possibly sensing this, ‘I knew Lexi had the killer sales instinct even then, didn’t I?’ he says, nudging Lexi, and the creases in his eyes get deeper as he smiles.

‘Oh my God!’ It suddenly comes to me.
‘That’s
where I’ve seen you before. Last week. The Duke of Cambridge? You gave up your seat for us.’

Wayne frowns.

‘Oh yeah,’ he says, eventually. ‘You were with your boyfriend.’ Lexi coughs.

‘He’s not my boyfriend,’ I say.

‘Really? You looked like girlfriend and boyfriend.’

‘Yeah, they’re weirdos,’ says Lexi, and I shoot her a look.

‘No, we’re not. He’s just a friend, a very good friend.’

‘Cool,’ says Wayne, nodding like he knows he’s touched a nerve and needs to change the subject, sharpish. ‘Just a friend, that’s cool. That’s absolutely great.’ There’s a rather too long pause, then Lexi says, ‘So anyway, what do you reckon to the furniture? This is the stuff I’m mainly selling, isn’t it, Wayne?’

She gestures to a pearl-coloured standing lamp. ‘I think you’ll find this is Danish mid-century,’ she says, doing her best
Antiques Roadshow
voice now, ‘And this, madame, is an original Borge Mogensen 1960’s sofa.’

I look at Wayne for approval – she’s only worked for him a short time, surely she couldn’t know that much already?

‘She’s spot on.’ He shrugs. ‘I think she’s really got something. The selling X-factor. A head for design and strange Danish designers!’

Lexi’s face lights up every time she speaks to him, but not in any sexual way, I am confident of that. Yes, Wayne is gorgeous, if one can overlook the Eighties name (and a total flirt, it turns out, but we’ll brush over that) but I think I’m a good judge of character and he’s a good guy, anyone can see that. I’m glad she’s found him.

‘Really? Wow. Could we have a Sales Person on our hands?’ I say. ‘That’s so cool, Lex.’

‘I know,’ she says, grinning.

I feel a bit awkward, like now we’ve done our introductions I should go and leave them to their thing.

‘Well, I should be going,’ I say, standing up. ‘Great to meet you, Wayne, seems like you have a very willing apprentice there. I’ll see you back at home, okay, Lex?’

‘Hey, but wait,’ says Wayne as I make to leave. ‘If you fancy – I mean, I’ll be shutting up shop in an hour – you could come round to mine for a beer on the deck? I don’t know if Lexi told you, but I live on …’

‘A boat near Chelsea Pier. Yeah, she did,’ I say, (as well as the fact you’re from Sheffield, are a Sagittarius, think people who make lists are masking a deeper unhappiness. Although, having met him now, I found it hard to imagine him being judgemental.)