My thoughts spiral. I remember Vick’s perception of Tom as a nervy guy. I recall Reg’s declaration that Tom bummed smokes off him. “Was Tom taking anything?”
“Reddys.”
“Speed?” I splutter.
“Red capsules, amphetamines,” he expands.
How could I miss something like this? “Did he take them often?”
“All the time. Good for your confidence, although the headaches can be a bit of a fucker.” He blows out another cloud of smoke, narrows his eyes, reading me. “You really his girlfriend, then?”
Angry tears brim to the surface of my eyes in response.
“Harsh,” he says. “Might have been a bit contained, private like, but I reckon he was fond of you.” Fond, but not in love with. “He hated working really late because it meant you were on your own, see?”
I’m puzzled. “That worried him?”
“Proper mind-fuck.”
“Was he jealous?”
“Tom?” He snorts with a loose grin. “No way. Cared. You on your own and that.” He says it with emphasis as if I am dim as well as deaf. Again, I feel all of my thirty-seven years.
“Ever thought he was about to flit?”
“Not really.” Which is not the same as no.
I hike an eyebrow. “Another woman?”
Stevie pauses. “If there was, he never said.”
“So?”
Stevie looks left and right as if he expects Tom to stride out of the darkness. “He wanted me to do something for him, couple of weeks ago.”
“Yeah?”
“Asked me to buy contact lenses off the net.”
My mouth screws into a frown. “Tom never mentioned a problem with his eyesight.”
“Nah, you know, the ones that change your eye colour.”
Disguise, I think with a thud. ‘For what?’, I say.
“He wanted blue. Tom had– ”
“Brown eyes, I know.” I baulk. By chucking simple details in the air, the bigger picture is about to come crashing down, gashing open my scalp badly enough to require ten stitches.
“Did Tom have enemies?” I’m scrabbling for something tangible to grab hold of, something that makes sense and provides a lead.
Stevie hitches a shoulder. “Never said.”
“Anyone he had a problem with, someone he disliked?”
Stevie considers, his face serious, and then breaks into a stupendous smile. “Yeah, actually.”
“Who?” I catch my breath. Could this be the breakthrough I’m looking for?
“Frank Sinatra. Couldn’t fucking stand him. Shit,” he says, dropping the cigarette to the ground and stubbing it out with the heel of his trainer. “Gotta get back.”
“Thanks,” I call after him, dazed. Like quicksilver, he’s already gone.
Tom smokes. Tom takes drugs. Tom cares about me, but isn’t in love with me. Tom is a jabbering heap underneath a spiky hostile exterior, or so Reg would have me believe. And what’s with the contact lenses? I gulp, for if, as Stevie claims, Tom requested them a couple of weeks ago, Tom’s exit was premeditated. The utter shit planned his getaway. How does any of this fit into the image of Tom, the quiet, solicitous, dependable boyfriend?
Screaming inside, I cut down an alley, something I would never usually do. God help anyone who attempts to mug me.
The rain abates. The wind drops. The pavement is slick with surface water and I splash my way back home.
This time the silence is welcome. I dump my sopping-wet coat, rub a towel through my hair and kick off my shoes. My appetite is non-existent and I put on the kettle and make coffee. No beans. No machine. When I’m done I sit and try to calm down and reduce my anger to a lower level. I should take Reg’s advice. Forget about Tom. Move on. No point seething.
If only it were that easy.
I glance across at the cabinet where we keep our CD’s. One is out, next to the CD player. Paul Weller. My all-time favourite track, ‘You Do Something To Me.’
Our song.
So I thought.
My eyes swim with misery.
For all Tom’s occasional moodiness, his edge and fire, I cannot imagine my life without him. I love the way he talks, how he touches me, his intensity, so much a part of his personality, thrills me. Is it possible to recover from such desolation? Hot tears seep out of the corners of my eyes. Unlike previous encounters, ours was a ‘safe’ relationship that I was sure would run the distance. Certain that this was the man I would have children with, and grow old with. Even my mum liked him, which was a first. I go through it all again and again. I’m not normally obsessive, but I can’t help it.
Damn him.
Relaxed, Tom could be funny and quick-witted. Composed, he could be aspirational with dreams of one day running a restaurant of his own. Calm, he made me feel secure. I thought I did the same for him. I thought I smoothed out his occasional edginess and lightened his life. Racked with misery, I see now that although he lit me up inside, I failed to do the same for him. Fond, Stevie said, like Tom was my elderly aunt and I his niece.
I see now that Tom always had the drop on me.
When will I stop hurting?
When will I quit raging?
Tempted to phone Mum, I change my mind. Currently trogging through Vietnam with Al, she’s probably out of reach of a signal and the last thing I need is a lecture on the grief cycle following another failed love affair, or her views on karma, which, actually, I share.
Fractious, I set the mug down on the table. The magazine and apparent source of all my problems, lies open at the very page in question. But what if it represented a tipping point, what if something else was going on? What might it be? Instantly, I remember the colour draining from Tom’s features at my innocent remark about my visit to the police station.
Maybe, it’s my curious gene kicking in, but I’d rather put my investigative powers to good use than either dissolve in self-pity or self-combust with anger, as tempting as the latter is.
Feeling a little bit more sorted, I reach for, and look at, our picture, really look this time, not through the lens of my own absurd imagining, but with 20-20 hindsight. Sadness washes over me at how happy I appear. My dark hair, natural for once, is swept back from my face, neat chin tilted, smiling lips parted, as if I am about to burst into laughter. Vital and alive, I am the personification of joy.
But it’s Tom I zero in on.
Several inches taller than me, his build is lean and rangy. His short hair seems much darker in a way I hadn’t noticed before, and it’s suspiciously at odds with the distinctive blonde stubble that obscures the lower half of his face. He wears a castaway smile, out of synch with his otherwise strong features. Although his mouth does the talking, the words don’t reach his watchful eyes. There is nothing off-centre about his pose and yet the way he holds himself, shoulders rounded, dropping one knee to disguise his height, suggests a man unhappy with the body he inhabits. This is not a man at ease with himself. My conversation with Reg darts through my mind.