‘Hmm. What do you think, Serena? Should I give them all the lowdown on our sex life? How we popped each other’s cherries in my caravan? How once I’d popped your cherry, you were like a bitch on heat? How you liked trying it on top?’
‘How you still prefer the missionary position?’
We glare at each other across the chipped Formica table. A few people turn and look at us arguing over the condiments. Over the crumbs of cream bun left on the plate.
What do they see? In headline terms? Handsome, rough-hewn local hack seen arguing with red-head city girl.
‘Still? What do you mean, still? We’re history, remember?’
A week is a very short time in the search for fame and fortune.
‘I saw you. An hour ago. In the caravan with your new tart!’
We gape at each other. The tea urns behind the counter hiss and steam. The small audience props their chins on their hands, turned fully round now to listen.
‘I know the window is extremely grubby, but if you were watching closely, Folkes, you’d have seen that it wasn’t the missionary position after all. She’s very nimble, that one. Very flexible. When she rides me like that I come in seconds. I don’t know what it is, special internal muscles, a technique learned in a Chinese massage parlour, whatever, but she’s always gagging for it, she’s brilliant at making me come. She’s a sexy little thing. So much better than you!’
He jabs his biro at me like a dart, tips his chair forward on its front legs, and I slap him across the face. The silence in the cafe is equally sharp.
‘My God. There’s fire in that belly of yours. You’re not jealous, are you?’ He tips backwards, holding his sore cheek. I can tell he’s trying hard not to yelp with the pain. ‘You’re the one who ran out on me, remember? You’re the one who grew too big for her boots.’
‘I’m the one who dumped you, yes. But that doesn’t mean you can go around saying foul things about me. It’s offensive. You hit a nerve. All that intimate stuff about what I was like in bed!’ I clasp my hands together and shake my head to calm myself down. ‘I shouldn’t have hit you, and I’m sorry. But I’m not jealous. Get that into your head once and for all. I’m happy for you, Jake. You’re a great guy, and she’s a lucky girl. You and me, we’re over. So let’s leave our sex life out of it, OK?’
‘Says the woman who’s been creeping round spying on people!’
‘Write what you like about me! Kiss and tell! There’s no such thing as bad publicity, and sex sells, doesn’t it, however kinky or sad? You know that better than anyone!’ I fire it all back at him, then lay my hands flat on the table between us. Lower my voice. ‘I’ll just have to trust you.’
‘That could be interesting.’ He sticks the biro behind his ear and uses the movement as an excuse to touch his red cheek. ‘There’s always another tack. I could tell my own story, how I rescued you from your abusive parents? How the first time I saw you you were twelve years old, cowering outside the pub, in the rain, while they sat in there drinking like fishes?’
‘Fish.’
‘Or the time I found you sleeping on the beach, covered in bruises?’
I sigh and hold my hands up in exasperation. ‘Perfect! A shameful stick to beat the new talent on the block. Why would you do that?’
‘It’s what they want these days. Misery memoirs. It’ll add to your mystique, Serena. They’ll sit up and take even more notice. And if you want to be really pretentious about it, it’ll explain why so many of your pictures show the archetypal light and shade. Mostly shade.’
‘You have a point, actually, but you haven’t seen the half of them. The ones I took in Venice and Paris, they’re really dark.’ I narrow my eyes at him. Try a different tack. ‘But you are right. You know me better than anyone, Jake. You know what lies behind those photographs. What drives me. I’m trying so hard not to be bitter and poisonous. I had no-one except you and your family to teach me how to be the opposite of them. So you also know how ambitious I am to fly above all that. You did help me, and you did rescue me, but when fate stepped in and took those bastards away, the world turned a little more, and I decided to get off. Please don’t waste your life being angry with me.’
I push my chair back after my little speech. It’s late. It’s getting dark outside. Jake remains slumped in his chair, sweeping his recorder and his other things across the table and into his bag.
‘Show’s over,’ he growls.
The other punters resume their drinking and gossiping.
I step out into the cold street, into the shrill column of air where the sea breeze and the wind from the moors always clash. I’ve been rude and abrasive to my first and only love, but I feel strangely liberated as well. Jake’s a big boy. He can take it.
I wrap my blue scarf more closely around my neck and square up my shoulders to move on.
A leather-clad arm blocks my path.
‘I didn’t mean that. About you being no good at it.’
‘At what? Photography?’
Jake plants himself in front of me. He looks down at the ground and shuffles in the kind of kicked-dog way he has when he’s saying sorry. ‘Sex. I was lashing out just then. Seeing you down here again so soon has thrown me, I guess. You’ve obviously moved on with your new life, your career and all, but I’m not quite there yet. I feel as if we’ve only just said goodbye. Anyway, just want you to know I didn’t mean it about you being selfish in bed.’
I stop and button on my new blue leather gloves. ‘This apology sounds good. I’m listening.’
He looks up sheepishly. ‘I should have told you, bigged you up more at the time, but you were, you are, red hot. Despite the efforts of your family to crush you, you were like those flowers that come up again and again, even on a rock.’
I shake the hair out of my eyes and laugh. ‘Never had you down as a poet, Jake.’
‘Just hear me out!’ He coughs awkwardly, still scuffing boyishly at the kerb. ‘I won’t get the chance to say this again. But you blossomed, Serena, and now you have the body of a goddess. Every inch of you. You were dynamite in the sack. I’ll never forget that, and I’ll never forget you.’ Jake looks up, takes my face in his big hands. Thank God already the gesture feels platonic. ‘Some lucky geezer is going to find that out about you very, very soon.’
Once again I’m on the train. He’s not seeing me off this time. He’s got an article to file. An ex-girlfriend to eulogise. A new girl to get back to, keeping his caravan warm.
And I’ve got a patron to please. He was proud of me at the private view. I know that much. I saw it in his eyes, in the way he introduced me, walked around the room showing off my work, watched me as I stood against the wall remembering that night in the Venetian convent. I’ll tell him all about that when we’re alone together. Every detail. Maybe I’ll even take him back there to Venice, and show him.
When I get back to London he might tell me what he wants. And I’ll do it, whatever it is. I’m desperate to get back to him. He has something he needs to get out of his system, maybe the ex-wife, maybe something else nasty that’s lurking in his woodshed.
The train gets underway, the rumbling tug vibrating through the seat as it pulls us out of the station, out into the countryside, it thrums up my legs, right up into me, making me vibrate in time. I’ll move in tomorrow. I’ll get my stuff, and use this key. And then I’ll set out to please him. How will I do that?
How about I arrange myself on my bed up there in the attic, ask him to bring me up a glass of water or a candle, let him find me stretched out on the bed, the white negligee half on, half off, perhaps pretending