‘It was thirty degrees in the shade and you packed a woolly hat because you thought Prague was snowy all year round, didn’t you?’
‘You patronizing ratbag,’ I said, hitting him. ‘Don’t forget that you thought Adrian Mole was a real person writing real diaries until you were sixteen.’
‘I wish I’d never told you that.’ He kissed me. ‘Hmm…’ he said, a moment later. ‘What were you saying before the glove debate, bobble-hat girl? Who’s here?’
I remembered. ‘Urgh, yes, Lisa Garratt. Does she work with you?’
‘You know her?’ David said. ‘Don’t you like her?’
‘She’s the original frienemy,’ I said.
‘The what?’ David said, kissing my neck. ‘Let’s go in. Lisa’s OK. I’ll fetch you your gloves if you get cold. How’s that for a deal?’
‘I’m sure she is. It’s just I’ll have to pretend we’re really friendly and I don’t like her much. Hey,’ I pressed closer to him, feeling his hard chest and strong arms round me, ‘I’ve changed my mind, let’s go home and have sex all night. I want to try the thing with the ice cube and the needle now.’
But David broke away from me and took my hand. As we pushed through the crowd he said, slightly brusquely, ‘Come on, Lizzy, we’re here now. She’s nice, honestly. A real laugh. Hi, Garratt. How are you?’
Lisa was still the original boys’ girl. She was a massive flirt, the biggest drinker, likely to start a fight, and to wear slaggy clothes. Because she was a real lad the blokes loved her company, and because she was a real sex bomb they all wanted to shag her, but thought it was OK because they could explain her away as ‘one of the lads’. I’d never liked her at university and I didn’t now. I saw her appraising me as she smiled a sharky smile and slapped David on the back. I saw her deliberately exclude me in the subtlest of ways as she drew David and the other men into her group. Jokes about the office, about the subway ride into work that day, about what was on TV last week. I couldn’t make a fuss about it because I wanted David to be happy and have friends.
The rest of the weekend was fine, but it wasn’t as wonderful as I’d assumed it would be. We didn’t mention the future, although I was wearing the ring. I didn’t know what it stood for, and I couldn’t bring it up without sounding either ungrateful or hysterical. The thin end of the wedge was already there. It wasn’t Lisa. I don’t blame her. Well, I do, the evil whore: she was a woman on a mission. But it was other things too. We were separated, leading different lives. And neither of us noticed until it was too late.
A month after I got back from New York I had a bad row with David. It started when he told me he wasn’t coming over for a friend’s wedding, and escalated into all sorts of things. I missed him; I was miserable. He told me he missed me too. But while I was still living the same life, if without him, I’d heard enough to know that he was having a great time, try as he might to deny it. And, of course, I wanted him to – I wanted him to be happy. So I felt guilty about being jealous of him, and he – well, I don’t think he missed me that much. I think he got along just fine without me.
He had this thing about how us being together was a big step – ‘It’s a big step’, ‘We’re taking a big step’, ‘Our relationship is a big step’ – which made the word step lose all meaning for me. I found it vaguely amusing, but now, in the cold, Davidless light of day, I realized he was trying to tell me that he wasn’t in serious-long-term-relationship mode. So while I think he bought the ring meaning to propose, he must have bottled out at the last minute. And that says all there is to say, really, so the row ended with us both half-heartedly saying sorry and ringing off. What I should have done was call him back; I should have been the bigger person. But I didn’t. I was afraid, and so I bottled it.
Then, three days of silence later, Miles rang up and took me out to dinner. Miles and I had been friends when we were teenagers; he’d lived in Spain with his and David’s father till he was fourteen, then come back to Wareham, which was when Tom and I became his pals. David was at university then, in Edinburgh.
In addition to having a variety of jobs to pay his way up there, he volunteered to visit an old couple twice a week, did their shopping, and was on the committee for rag week, stuff like that. He rarely came back for the holidays, and when he had we’d never met him. I remember saying to Miles that he sounded like a Goody Two Shoes, and Miles offering me a Mayfair cigarette and saying, in a bored tone, that he was, and it was annoying to have such a girl for a brother.
Miles, Tom and I thought we were a right cool teenage gang. On my eighteenth birthday I went to the Neptune in Wareham with them and some friends from school, and got royally drunk. Miles and I even snogged. In fact, in the summer of our first year at university we nearly slept together, but Miles got stage fright and his enthusiasm, as it were, wilted. He was mortified, but I told him I took it as a sign that we were meant to be friends and that was what we became. Of course, it was a bit different after I’d met David and fallen in love with him, but old friends stay old friends whatever happens. They’re there for you when things go wrong. They’ll tell you what no one else will because they love you.
So, over dinner, with anguish on his face and in his voice, Miles told me that David was sleeping with Lisa, that she was virtually living in the apartment, that – and even now I think he could have spared me this bit – they had been caught in the photocopying room together. My David cautioned for fucking a colleague at the office, with his trousers round his ankles.
I called David, and he was out. I left him a message. I couldn’t bring myself to mention her name. I just said that because of what had happened it was over and I never wanted to see him again. So, theoretically, I dumped him by leaving a message on his answering-machine, which is something you do to someone you barely know, not someone you’d wanted to spend the rest of your life with.
I had an email from him in reply, just as I was leaving work.
Lizzy
If you say it’s over, then it’s over. I think it’s for the best and you obviously do too. I’m sorry for what’s happened. Anything else sounds trite.
For what it’s worth, I never thought this would happen. I’ve missed you.
D
And then another, thirty-two seconds later:
PS Keep the ring. I don’t want it.
Lisa emailed Emma, a mutual friend from university, and told her (really – what a total cow): Emma rang and asked Georgy was it true about Lizzy and her boyfriend? Georgy happened to be at my flat trying to cheer me up. I could hear Emma’s braying, strident tones from my end of the sofa, the first of what would be too many calls and questions about what had happened. Georgy looked at me – what should she say?
I leaned forward. ‘Tell her it’s not true. Tell her it was Lizzy’s ex-boyfriend. Because he’s not my boyfriend any more.’ The Rough Guide was lying on the floor. I picked it up and put it on my bookshelf, the spine facing away from me and since then I’ve tried not to think about David and anything to do with him at all. I try not to. But, occasionally, I dream about him again and it all comes flooding back.
This time I dreamed we’d just split up because we’d both received anonymous letters saying we hated each other, and then David’s father had died and he had to scatter the ashes in my flat, and I kept saying I needed to Hoover them up and he kept yelling that I was insensitive and horrible for not understanding those were his father’s ashes.
I woke up as David was coming towards me in my flat, smiling at me with his dark eyes and kind, stern face and banging the anonymous letters together incredibly loudly. (It turned out Jaden had sent them out of jealousy. I know, I know.) I could feel myself swimming back into consciousness, as you do when you wake from a deep sleep, and I rolled over and looked at my watch.