The image of you, p.25
The Image of You, page 25
‘I can’t hear what you’re saying. Come in here.’
Blindly, he followed her instructions and sheepishly pushed the door of the bathroom open. She was wiping herself. He could smell her urine. Sweet, yet vinegary. Contradictory. He should have felt repelled but he was drawn in. He swooped down on to his knees and started to kiss between her thighs. She moaned, allowed it. She placed her cut hand on his head. He looked up to see if he was pleasing her. He wanted to please her. She treated him to one of her slow, private smiles.
All thoughts of the taxi were forgotten.
Thirty-Five
Anna
‘What’s up with you, girl? You look awful.’ Vera, as ever, was straight to the point. ‘You look like you’ve done twelve rounds with Mike Tyson,’ she joked.
Anna gave an almost imperceptible shrug of her skinny shoulders. She’d woken in a dreadful mood. She couldn’t quite explain it and she couldn’t get past it, so it was the worst type of mood. She’d quickly calculated whether her period was due; it wasn’t. Yet she had the sort of dull, dragged-down feeling that she often associated with that time. ‘I didn’t sleep well.’
Vera waved both her hands in the air and shouted, ‘No, no, no, no. Don’t go showing off. Are you going to tell me it was because you had fantastic sex with your fiancé all night? That is not kind. Remember, some of us have a love life that is so dry, it’s a desert.’ Vera had been single for four years now. Most of the time this didn’t bother her much, her two boys provided all the love and testosterone she needed in one household, thank you very much. Even so, no one in her position wanted to hear the intimate details of other people’s sex lives.
‘I didn’t see Nick last night,’ Anna replied.
‘So that’s why you’ve a long face. You miss him.’ Vera plonked herself down in the other chair on the reception, next to Anna.
It was early. Drop In was open although, except for one or two of their regulars who slept on the street and sometimes came in for an early shower, the majority of people tended not to come by until around ten.
‘I’m fine, absolutely so,’ Anna lied. She forced one of her bright smiles and looked Vera in the eye; Vera was harder to fool than most, but Anna was keen to manage it. ‘I went to a lecture at Conway Hall. It was very thought-provoking; my mind was whirling all night. That’s why I didn’t sleep. I’m just a tiny bit tired.’
It was more than that, however Anna didn’t know how to get into the conversation. Oddly, sadly, Anna had found since she’d got engaged to Nick that she hadn’t been quite as honest with Vera as she had beforehand. Even though she’d thought about it a lot over the past couple of weeks, she had not told Vera about the wedding-dress incident. It was too weird. She hadn’t told Nick either. No one would understand. Nor had she ever found a way to tell Vera what she’d heard Nick say to his friends in the pub, all that hurtful nonsense about fidelity. There had been so many occasions when she’d just wanted to blurt it out. Maybe she should have said something at the time, instead of bottling it up, trying to deal with it on her own. Looking back now, she realized that Vera would have given her some clear advice and direction, but she hadn’t said anything and the moment was long past. It wasn’t that she wanted to be secretive, as such, it was as though in order to move closer to Nick she had to put a barrier between her and Vera. It was a shame because, maybe, if she had spoken to Vera she wouldn’t have felt a need to unburden herself to Zoe, something she deeply regretted. Zoe had a way of wheedling out every last thought in Anna’s head, whether Anna wanted her to or not.
It had been a dreadful mistake confiding in her. She’d gone berserk. Rather than offer any reassurances, as Anna had hoped, Zoe had simply tried to stir up Anna’s insecurities by insisting that Nick was bound to prove to be a faithless womanizer and that Anna would sooner or later regret her choice. She’d wanted to hear something soothing like, ‘Oh, don’t worry, he was probably just behaving laddishly in front of his friends, of course he’s trustworthy.’ Wearily, Anna admitted to herself that her hope that Zoe might be soothing or calming, rather than disturbing or destructive, was truly a matter of faith over experience. Sometimes it seemed that all she could do in relation to Zoe was ignore her.
Anyway, she had put all that behind her now.
Well, almost.
She hadn’t told Vera that neither her parents nor her sister were attending the wedding. It sounded so pathetic. So loserish. Anna felt bitterly disappointed that her parents had decided not to support her decision to marry Nick. She couldn’t understand why they didn’t just come along, plaster on smiles and suck it up. Plenty of parents disapproved of their children’s life choices but managed to show some support. They never had.
Desolate, Anna flicked through the responses to her wedding invitations. Other than Vera, her boys, a few people from the Drop In and a couple of girls she’d done a Spanish evening class with, there would be no one on Anna’s side of the church. She didn’t have any living grandparents; there were distant relatives back in Manchester but she hadn’t seen any of them since she was a young girl and had felt it would be peculiar to send them an invite out of the blue, especially as they were bound to ask why her parents weren’t attending. None of her friends in America saw fit to fork out thousands of dollars on air fares just to see her walk down the aisle. She’d received a dozen polite refusals, citing work commitments, previously booked holidays and challenging childcare arrangements.
Vera couldn’t know exactly what was getting Anna down but she knew something wasn’t right. She patted Anna’s hand. ‘Wedding planning, lectures, your work here. You’re run off your feet, girl.’
Anna stared at her friend’s warm, black hand on her own cool, pale one. It was somewhat reassuring, somehow tempting. The air changed, tightened. She would like to confide in her. Tell her everything.
‘I suppose we’re both very busy at the moment, we’ve seen a bit less of each other recently. The wedding planning is a joy but it’s time-consuming, and Nick’s got some big deal or other going on.’
He hadn’t been specific. The part that she just couldn’t bring herself to add was that even when they were together she’d started to think he was acting a little cooler with her. Almost distant. That was in her head, right? It had to be. Of course they were fine.
‘And how is that sister of yours? When’s she going to come and say hello?’
Anna knew that wasn’t going to happen. Zoe wouldn’t be seen dead in a place like this. Giving back wasn’t her thing. She hadn’t planned on telling Vera about Zoe at all. As much as Anna loved Zoe, she wasn’t fool enough to not realize that Zoe caused complications wherever she went, and Anna had learned through bitter experience it was sometimes better to keep her sister separate from the rest of her life. People had to be pretty tolerant and understanding to accommodate Zoe. Vera was both things. Still, why complicate the life she was building here? Zoe had wrought enough destruction on her in the past. Anna was not in the blame game; she knew her loyalties lay with her sister, but she had lost friends, jobs and even family relationships because of her. It had been such a risk introducing her to Nick, but what else could she do? Zoe was part of Anna. Twins were like that. A particular, unbreakable bond.
Vera only got to hear about Zoe through Nick. A couple of weeks back he’d called to check some arrangement or other, Anna had been on her lunch break and so he’d got chatting to Vera. Nick had mentioned Zoe. Naturally.
Anna shrugged. ‘I honestly don’t know. She seems to be pretty busy.’
The truth was Zoe was being almost as elusive as Nick at the moment. Other than their trip to the bridal boutique, Anna had hardly seen her and, considering how that had turned out, maybe it was a good thing. Anna had feared that Zoe’s temporary move to the UK would result in greater confusion and intrusion. How could it not? She’d expected Zoe to be constantly in her life; nagging, poking fun, criticizing. She’d expected that she’d be called upon to bail her out of tight spots on a more or less continuous basis; the way it had always been, back in the States, when they were in their twenties and Zoe partied hard whilst Anna cleaned up after her. However, Zoe had been distant and uncommunicative since she arrived, which was strangely emancipating and unnerving at the same time. It was peculiar that in the past Anna had sometimes secretly wished for a level of independence from Zoe, and yet she was now surprised to discover that she felt cut adrift when faced with Zoe’s relative silence.
It seemed as though it was something to do with her engagement to Nick. Certainly the timing coincided. It was as though they were going their own separate ways; even though Zoe was now here in London, Anna found she couldn’t talk to her so easily. Couldn’t reach her. Was that coming from Anna herself? Could it possibly be the case that she was subconsciously pushing Zoe away, distancing herself as she moved closer to Nick, a little like she was doing with Vera? If that was the case, her parents would say, ‘Not before time.’
Or was it Zoe building walls? Anna remembered when they were kids and Zoe first started dating—if you could call what she did something as homely as dating—Anna had felt lonely, excluded. Maybe Zoe felt the same now. Or maybe it was just that Zoe was settling in quite well here in London; she’d apparently made friends. She must have, because she seemed to have a full social life, she was never available when Anna called on her. Still, Anna knew that something was amiss. Zoe had never made the right sort of friends, the right sort of choices. She feared Zoe was drinking again, possibly doing drugs. When they did talk, Zoe had seemed secretive, deceptive. She was hiding something.
Anna had wanted to confront Zoe about the wedding-dress incident but she found she couldn’t. She remembered her blood slowing, her heart pounding as she absorbed Isobel’s thinly veiled accusations; the humiliation was immense, the cruel disappointment was breathtaking and she found she couldn’t pass it on, didn’t want to. She was pretty certain Zoe had been responsible for sabotaging her preferred dress but it was an impossible thing to accuse anyone of. You’d have to be mad to do such a thing. Mad or riddled with jealousy. But the dress wasn’t ripped into pieces through rage; a section had been calmly, deliberately chopped out. The dress had been sabotaged. Whichever way you looked at it, it was all too appalling to think about, much less talk about.
Anna and Zoe had endured countless difficult conversations and situations in the past. They’d seen one another at their most base and detestable. There had been a number of times when Anna had discovered Zoe lying in her own urine and vomit. One time she’d dragged her, kicking, screaming, swearing and scratching, from her dealer’s frankly terrifying house, and she’d sat through endless substance-induced rants in which, uninterrupted, Zoe had poured out ceaseless vile insults and filthy claims and recriminations. But Anna had endured it because Zoe had been there for Anna too. When she’d scurried home from Yale, not much more than a pitiful sack of despair and disillusionment, Zoe had been about the only person Anna could face. Refreshingly, Zoe did not judge or even bother to dis. All she said was that John Jones would eventually get what he deserved.
When everyone else was frustrated and disappointed with them, the twins had each other. Absolutely. Always and for ever.
Things weren’t the same any more, though. Anna felt they had entered a new stage in their relationship.
‘It’s a shame that she didn’t want to stay with you,’ commented Vera.
‘I don’t really have the space, she’d have had to sleep on the couch. And her boss is paying for her hotel, so it seemed silly to pass up the chance of all that luxury.’
‘Fair enough, I can see that clean sheets and minibar chocolates could replace family,’ said Vera, and then she hooted with laughter, thinking of her own much-loved boys and what she wouldn’t do for a night alone in a luxury hotel; someone else making breakfast and the bed.
‘We’d probably have got on one another’s nerves, living in such close proximity again after so much time apart. Funny, though, because we used to be inseparable. When we moved to America our parents put us in the same room, even though there was space for us to have a bedroom each; it was what we wanted. They got us bunk beds. I got the bottom bunk, Zoe bagged the top one. But we soon found out neither of us could sleep that way.’
‘Why? You wanted the top bunk?’
‘No, we needed to be side by side. When we’d had single beds next to each other we’d slept face to face. In the night we’d reach out a hand to check the other was still there. So every morning my parents would find us curled up in one bunk bed together.’
‘Oh, cute! In which bed?’
‘That was the funny thing. It didn’t matter whose bed. Sometimes it was the top bunk, sometimes it was the bottom. We used to say we were going to get a house together when we got older.’
‘You never did?’
‘No, we never did.’ Anna hoped that she didn’t sound as wistful as she felt.
‘Maybe, but it might have been nice if she’d given it a go for a night or two.’
‘She said she needed to be where things were happening. My apartment is a bit out of the way. Zone three. And she wasn’t prepared to be bored by wedding planning details twenty-four/seven. I know I can be a bit boring.’ Anna shrugged her shoulders, as if she was trying to dislodge the issue.
Anna spent the rest of the morning filing, essentially avoiding any more probing questions from Vera. Just before lunch, she received a call.
‘Nick!’ She was happy and somewhat surprised.
He’d stopped calling to ask her to grab a sandwich with him at lunchtime a few weeks ago—because of all the work he had on his plate, obviously. Her heart plummeted a little when she noted that he didn’t return her glee.
He sounded strained. ‘Can we meet for lunch? There’s something I want to talk to you about.’
She deliberately ignored the ominous tone in his voice. ‘Lovely.’
‘Villandry, St James’s at one p.m.’
That’s where they’d had their first date. Was that significant? Or had Nick simply suggested it because it was his favourite place, or was it just because it was more or less equidistant between both of their workplaces and so reasonably accessible for both of them? Following that fabulous first date, Anna had started to think of Villandry as her favourite restaurant too; she couldn’t stand the idea of it being tainted, and she suddenly feared Nick’s need to talk might ruin everything. The four-word combination, ‘We need to talk,’ was one of the worst sentences in romantic history, rivalled perhaps only by, ‘Let’s just be friends.’
‘Oh, it’s so hot, I can’t face sitting in a restaurant.’
‘They have air con,’ he said with a stoniness that she wasn’t used to.
‘Even so, wouldn’t you like to get some fresh air?’ Whatever he had to say would be even more stilted if they were conscious that other dinners were listening. ‘I’ll put together a picnic,’ she added winningly.
‘Fine. I’ll meet you at Green Park tube. We’ll go there.’
* * *
The heat was beginning to char her shoulders and arms; strappy dresses, whilst undoubtedly pretty, had this drawback. It was a miserable, excessive sort of heat. Beads of sweat were pooling at the base of her back, under her arms, even on her eyebrows. Maybe they should have gone to the air-conditioned restaurant after all. She sighed heavily; this sort of heat was only fun if you were at the beach and had covered yourself in Factor 30. Her head started to pulse painfully. She feared the veins would burst through her skin. She could step into the shade, but would he still spot her? To distract and cheer, she watched little kids messily eating ice creams; it was adorable. Was she so wrong to want it so badly? A husband and a couple of cheeky, rosy-faced kids? Seemingly everyone else managed it quite easily. Why wasn’t she entitled to it too? She noted that some kids sat quietly whilst others tore around their pushchairs and ignored their parents’ half-hearted urges to ‘play nicely’.
It put her in mind of herself and Zoe when they were kids. She was always careful, thoughtful, considerate and polite. Zoe was a risk taker. Stubborn, selfish and wild. The thing most often said about Anna was, ‘She’s a good girl.’ The thing most often said about Zoe was, ‘That one will end badly.’ She wondered whether the adult predictions, scattered down on them like liberal handfuls of confetti, had in some way sealed their fates. Did they both simply fulfil other people’s expectations? Was it all predestined and unalterable? Rather than find their own paths, were they pushed down certain routes? Anna taking hesitant steps, Zoe charging full pelt, certain to trip up and end up bloodied.
Whilst half dreading it, she also wished Nick would hurry up, but a glance at her watch showed he was just two minutes late. She was always pathologically early. It was a poor life choice; it created the impression that everyone she knew was forever irritatingly late, indicating that they valued her time less than their own, leaving her with a sense of frustration and resentment, even when they were fairly prompt and respectful. The string of the paper bag from the deli dug into her fingers. She’d picked up some delicious treats. Crusty loaf, hummus, pre-chopped carrots to dip, an assortment of spicy meat cuts and ripe cheeses, and a bottle of mineral water. She had considered buying a bottle of chilled wine with a convenient screw top but dismissed the idea. True, big talks were often more palatable when accompanied by a Chardonnay, but they were also often more messy and emotional. Besides, Nick had to get back to work this afternoon and drinking wasn’t very sensible. Anna was, above all, beyond anything, sensible.
