What You Make It (29 page)

In the end I just sat, staring out of the window. I couldn't see what was beyond the glass, and if the phone had rung I probably wouldn't even have heard it.

I was remembering Jackie, who'd once jumped so massively during a horror film that she'd sprayed an entire carton of popcorn over me and the surrounding rows. She had been really nice, in retrospect, simply a little uptight and justifiably wary of me. I was too fucked up by the time I met her to be able to tell the difference. I was remembering Mel, who kept insisting on taking me to little out-of-the-way upmarket cafés, each full of older versions of herself. Each venue was presented like a prize, and held some glorious memory for her that she would recount at stupefying length while I twisted with boredom in my seat. I was remembering Ginny, whom I'd liked, lying with her head upon my chest in bed one evening and telling me she'd slept with her ex-boyfriend that afternoon.

I was remembering Yvonne, who had a habit of pointing at me whenever she said something, head cocked to one side. At first I'd found this endearing; by the end it symbolized everything I hated most about her. When I thought of the others I could remember the line of their jaws, the curve of their hair, something personal about them and the way they looked. With Yvonne, only coldness and fear and that pointing finger.

I was remembering the fact that she'd rung me up two days after my cat had died, and asked me out to dinner. We'd stopped seeing each other three weeks previously, at my insistence, but we had a quiet and friendly meal. She was very supportive about my cat, because she'd known how much he meant to me.

During the meal she gave me a shirt that she'd bought. She'd seen it in a shop, she enthused, and simply had to buy it for me. The best manipulators are always those who've been manipulated to death themselves. Afterwards, she drove me home, and asked if she could stay. After all, she'd helped me –
surely I could do the same for her? I said no, and eventually left the car, clutching the little bag with my shirt in it. I felt awful, but what else could I have done? I couldn't just leave it there, and even she probably knew in her heart of hearts that she'd only bought it to make me feel I owed her.

I stood in my apartment and watched as she sat crying outside for half an hour, and then she left. She returned at three in the morning, and rang the doorbell until the house shook and I had to let her in. She then very loudly regressed to the age of five on my living room floor, and appeared to think I was her father. She grabbed a couple of knives from the kitchen, offered to cut herself up for me, and when I demurred, tried to cut me up instead.

It was, without exception, the worst night of my life.

It was only much later that I realized that she'd already sounded concerned when she'd rung up to ask me for dinner, as if she knew something would be wrong. Before she could have known I would be grieving for my pet, before she should have been aware that Ginger had died, apparently run over in the street by a car whose driver didn't stop.

I sat there and remembered all these things, watching them process in front of me like ghosts down a spiral staircase. Pieces of glass, still left inside, waiting to be recalled so they could shift and cut again.

But I couldn't remember a single thing about the folder of unnamed letters, or who I'd written them to. And all the time a name kept hammering in my head, a name I didn't even believe in.

Tamsin.

I worked for most of the afternoon on autopilot, bashing together some stuff for one of my major clients. It wouldn't matter that it was a bit below standard. They hardly noticed what I did so long as it was done on time.

Monica got back from work at about seven. It would make more sense for me to cook, given that I'm kicking around the
house all day. But she's better at it and enjoys it, whereas I don't. It's one of the many things I'm completely talentless at. I don't know anything about cars' innards either.

She had the radio on in the kitchen while she was cooking, and when the phone rang shouted for me to get it. I picked it up and walked towards the window in the living room, away from the anaemic single-sex crooning that passes for popular music these days.

When I'd switched the phone on I said hello. There was no answer, and I was in the middle of shrugging and putting it back when a voice spoke.

‘Hello David,’ it said.

‘Hi. Who's that?’ I asked cheerily, assuming it was one of Monica's mates, all of whom are much better at remembering my name than I am at recalling theirs.

‘It's Tamsin,’ the voice said.

There was a very long pause, and I unconsciously moved a little further away from the kitchen door.

‘Oh. Hello,’ I said warily.

She laughed, a sound which had about as much humour in it as a door being shut at the end of a very long corridor. ‘Yes, hello. Are we going to go on like this all night?’

I didn't know what else to say. In the end all I could come up with was an enquiry as to how she was.

‘I'm fine,’ she said, as if sharing a private joke. ‘Excellent, thank you. How are you?’

‘I'm, look …’ At that moment Monica called to me, asking who it was. Without thinking, I said it was a client, and Tamsin's laugh carried to me from the phone. ‘Look,’ I repeated, feeling guilty and implicated, ‘what can I do for you?’

‘I don't know. What do you suggest?’

‘Well…’

‘I was just calling to say hello. After all, we know each other.’

‘Yes,’ I said, guardedly.

‘I got the impression last night that maybe you don't approve of me.’

‘What Steve does is up to him.’

‘I'm not talking about that. You acted as if you didn't like me.’

‘I… look, I hardly know you.’

‘No?’

‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘We only met last night.’

‘That's right. Well, it was nice to talk to you, David.’ At her second use of my name I felt something clench inside me. I'd noticed yesterday evening that she was a little familiar with it, and it's something I don't like. It's too personal, somehow. When someone uses my name like that, it feels like they're claiming squatter's rights on my soul.

‘And you, Tamsin,’ I said.

She laughed yet again, and the line went dead.

I felt like a bastard as Monica commiserated with me over clients who think they can call you up at all hours, but I wasn't going to tell her who it was. I was quiet over dinner, and ate little. For the rest of the evening Monica retreated to the sofa with a book, looking puzzled as I blanked my mind with work.

As soon as she'd gone to bed I called Steve. He sounded a little tired, but I ploughed on regardless. Tamsin could only have got our number from Steve's address book, and I'd come up with a pretext to get him to look for it. After a little preliminary chat I went for it.

He said he'd do it in the morning. I was about to press him, and then realized why he was sounding strange. There was someone with him, and she would have already returned his book.

I apologized for disturbing him, put the phone down and went to bed.

Nothing untoward happened the next day. That's the only way I can put it. I got up, did my work, spent the evening watching a film with Monica, went to bed. That was it.

Or nearly it. Each time the phone rang I expected it to be someone I didn't want to talk to, and after a while I just put the answering machine on and turned the volume down. I even
considered taking half an hour mid-afternoon to go through the box file of letters and mementos I kept in the bedroom cupboard, looking for something, anything. But I didn't. I could remember what was there.

In the evening Steve called, and we arranged to play pool the following evening. I did some more work, and Monica finished her book, and then we went to bed. At some time in the night the phone must have rung, because when I got up the next morning the light on the answering machine was flashing.

Whoever it was didn't leave a message.

Steve got to the pub before me, and was at the bar making short work of a Budweiser when I turned up. We got another round and headed downstairs to the cold and deserted pool room. There was only one table, but as no one else seemed to know it was there, we rarely had much competition.

We didn't say much for a while, as was our wont. Eventually, Steve said I looked tired, and I agreed that I was. I went on to say that he was looking decidedly spruce for someone who was involved in as much nocturnal activity.

He smiled, and straightened up. He looked at me for a moment, paused, and then spoke. ‘Well, you would know.’

‘About what?’

Steve laughed, and appeared to make a decision of some kind. ‘She told me,’ he said. ‘I don't mind.’

‘About what?’ I repeated.

‘About you and her. You could have said, but it's not a problem.’

‘Steve, what are you talking about?’

‘About Tamsin,’ he said, and for a moment he looked annoyed. It took me a moment to realize, because I'd never seen him look like that. Not at me, anyway.

I was completely confused. Okay, so he knew she'd called me. Surely it wasn't that big a deal.

‘Steve, she just called me. To say hello, allegedly.’

‘When?’ he said. ‘When was this?’

‘Last night.’

‘I didn't know about that.’

I stared at him. ‘Well then what the fuck are you talking about? She called me. That's why I wanted you to look for your address book. She must have taken it last time she was at your place.’

Steve just looked at me.

‘Steve, if there's anything else, you're going to have to spell it out for me, because I've no idea what you mean.’

Steve laughed angrily, and slammed his glass down on the table. I jumped, visibly. ‘I'm talking,’ he said, slowly and clearly, ‘about the fact that you and Tamsin used to know each other. That you had an affair. That you fucked each other. Is that clear enough?’

For a brief, absurd moment, I was four years old again.

My parents had a vine in the back garden, back then, on which chilli peppers grew. Time and again I was told not to eat them, and so I didn't. I was relatively well-behaved in those days. Then one afternoon I touched one of the fascinatingly plump and glowing chillies, and a little while later was in agony, my lips burning as if I'd pressed them against an oven door. My parents, of course, assumed I'd eaten one of the peppers. I hadn't. All I'd done was accidentally rub one of my fingers against my lip, and that had been enough. As they applied ice to my lip and ice cream to my mind, my parents good-naturedly said they'd told me so, told me not to eat the peppers. When I protested that I hadn't eaten one they just smiled. The fact that they weren't shouting or angry made it worse. I hadn't eaten one. I hadn't eaten a pepper.

And so with Steve. I denied it. I said I'd never met her before, and it was true, but I felt like a liar. Steve didn't believe me. I tried to tell him about the way it had felt when I'd first seen her, when we'd all met in the cinema, but he took it the wrong way. As far as he was concerned, what she'd told him was the truth. He was the other side of the wall, and I couldn't reach him, no matter what I said. What's more, he now thought that I was trying to reactivate the affair behind his back.

I got angry, furious that he would rather believe someone he'd only met a couple of weeks ago. Again and again I said I didn't know her.

‘Then how come,’ he shouted eventually, ‘how come she knows everything about you?’ He slugged back the last mouthful of his beer, and then he stormed out of the pub.

I sat for a moment, shocked into immobility. Then I grabbed my coat and ran out.

I jogged down the road in the direction Steve would have taken, but there was no sign of him. I walked quickly back up to the pub, struck by the thought that he might be sitting fuming at one of the tables round the other side, but he wasn't. He'd gone.

I did a cigarette's-worth of standing against a nearby wall and smoking, in the hope that he'd reappear, but he didn't. I walked to the nearest phone box, and left a message on his machine saying that I had to talk to him. I didn't have to load fake sincerity into my voice: the real stuff was there in spades. I hoped he'd be able to tell that, even if these days he was choosing to believe Tamsin rather than me.

Then I walked home. There was a tube station nearby, but I couldn't face the thought of going underground and standing fretfully on the platform for ten minutes. I didn't think I could stand still for ten seconds, never mind longer. I turned in the direction of home, and walked stiff-legged up the road.

It was just turning dark by then, and the streets were deserted. I guess it was soap opera time, or dinner time, or some other period where everyone else just happened to be otherwise occupied. I felt utterly adrift, examined and found wanting. I couldn't explain why I'd felt the way I had on meeting Tamsin. I couldn't explain the letters either, but it wasn't as if they were to her. The letters I'd written to Yvonne were called ‘Yvonne 1’ to ‘Yvonne 14’. I'm organized like that. The letters in the folder with no name had no names, so they couldn't be to Tamsin: otherwise they'd be called Tamsin 1-8. They were to someone with no name.

To no one at all.

It took less than half an hour to get home. I was striding quickly, wanting to be inside, anxious to be somewhere where I could be surrounded by things I recognized and understood. I found I was muttering and swearing to myself, on the verge of tears. I hadn't felt like that since the excruciating night nearly four years before when Katy and I had broken up. I was frightened to discover that side of me was still intact, that beneath the carefully cultivated exterior a lonely and hurt little boy was still jabbering and screaming to itself.

By the time I got to our street I was almost running. I scooted up the stairs to the flat, and was fumbling with the keys when the door opened and Monica was standing there, looking sane and wonderful and whole. She was surprised to see me, but as I started upon the drawn-out process of feeling my way towards an explanation, I realized that there was something a little strange about her. Not strange, exactly, but ‘public’. She wasn't being quite herself. I asked her if she was okay, and she nodded vigorously.