Killing Cupid (16 page)

I’m quite proud of myself, actually, managing to tell him that he has to pay me back. I want him to know I mean business, so yesterday morning I looked up his address in my student files and wrote him a note, a brief but businesslike letter reminding him of the exact amount he owes me for the clothes (£324.98), and that he is barred from my class. If he shows up again, I will not only explain to the college exactly why I barred him, but I will also go straight to the police. Ditto if I don’t receive the money within one month.

I’ve changed the lock on the front door too, just in case he had two copies of my key made. Coming home after my first post-Alex venture out, I convinced myself he’d got into the house again. Got in a bit of a state, actually. The air in the hall had that sort of occupied feel to it; an unnatural kind of stillness to the dust as it hung there, lit up by the sun through the stained glass panels.

Mind you, I thought I sensed it before I even opened the front door. I’d turned the key and crept in, really quietly, with my can of pepper spray at the ready in one hand (Jess bought it for me), and my tallest, most pointy stiletto in the other, ready to sink it into his head the second I saw him. But nothing. I tiptoed (well, as much as you can tiptoe wearing one stiletto and holding the other. I kept the other one on in case I needed to kick him in the nuts) round the whole place, but found nothing except a large spider in the bathtub, and Biggles, rolling his eyes at me, in the bedroom.

Actually, Biggles and I had a bit of a drama the other day. I’m sure this was Alex’s doing too. I was just sitting at my computer, trying to think of something interesting that my characters might say to each other, when I heard from upstairs the unmistakeable and depressing sound of a vomiting cat. I ran up the stairs, two at a time, and sure enough, Biggles had chucked up enough of his guts to string a tennis racket. All over my bed. He was heaving and shivering, and he had that terrible ashamed look that they get. So of course we had to dash for the vet’s, with him hawking and groaning all the way there. I was terrified that he was going to die, and that he had been poisoned. But the vet said that this was extremely improbable, and that it was more likely to be a virulent strain of cat-flu that’s going around. Or a bad mouse. I still have my doubts though, and I disinfected all Biggles’s bowls and threw away his opened Munchies when we got home. The vet gave him the world’s most expensive injection – the feline equivalent of Botox, costwise cc for cc, and he seems fine now. It probably wasn’t anything to do with Alex, but everything seems so…I don’t know…amplified at the moment. I can’t seem to help but jump to conclusions.

Funny that I haven’t been able to write about it since it happened; not until now, that is. I haven’t written anything for a week.

I think I know the reason though. It’s just that I always leave my diary face-up on my bedside table, and when I came in from tennis that day, it was face-down. I’ve got a horrible, horrible feeling that Alex might have been reading it. In a way, that’s almost as bad as rape. I mean, I know this diary is more Bridget Jones than Proust, but it’s still totally private. The thought of anybody else reading it makes me feel violated and sick. Every time I’ve reached for it in the last week, I’ve seen it through the eyes of somebody else: flicking through the pages, noting all the banalities and shallownesses.

Ironic, really – being stalked is about the most bloody interesting thing that’s ever happened to me. Was it Dorothy Parker who said, ‘Only good girls keep journals; bad girls don’t have the time’? Probably.

I shouldn’t have the time to keep a journal. I should be hacking through the rainforest with a machete, or building clean-water wells in Africa. Or writing that novel. Or, at the very least, be run off my feet by a couple of small children and a weary but affectionate husband.

But I’m doing none of these things. I’m moping around self-indulgently, blowing some relatively small incident – from which I emerged completely unhurt – into some giant event.

Still, look on the bright side. Everyone is being so supportive (apart from Phil, who’s still not returning my calls. Well, sod him). Mum and Dad wanted me to move home, but I couldn’t face it. They eventually stopped banging on about it after I got the lock changed, and Paula stayed with me a couple of nights after it happened. I even had lunch with Jess and Tom the other day, which was when she bought me the pepper spray. My godson is really sweet. He sits up in a high chair and bangs spoons now – last time I saw him, all he could do was loll around farting (not unlike Phil then, really. No wonder I wasn’t much cop as a godmother). I’m definitely going to try harder to keep in touch with them, and Jess was all ears to get the latest in the Alex saga.

But apart from the thoughts of Alex buzzing like a bluebottle stuck inside my head, life continues the same as ever. I write about 75 words a day on the book. I play tennis with Dennis. I lock up the house like Belmarsh every night, get cabs home, rush to the post to see if Alex’s cheque has arrived – but nothing. No hang-ups on the phone, no skulking outside the curtains. He’s got a month to pay me back, then I really will go to the police.

I think.

Nobody questioned it at the writing class when I said that Alex had left. The heart’s kind of gone out of that class since Kathy died, anyway.

Although we had quite a decent session last week. My heart was in my mouth as I got out of the car in the college car park, but if Alex was there, he was hiding himself very efficiently in the bushes. I felt horribly nervous, going back into the classroom, but again, all was the same. Barbara still had her great big purple veiny calves sticking out from under her polyester skirt. Jane’s phone still vibrated noisily in her bag until she turned it off and apologised – this happens every week. The worst thing that happened was my feeling of missing Kathy – it just seemed so weird that she wasn’t there. Even weirder than Alex hiding in my house when I was in the bath, somehow.

Anyhow, I got through it. I burbled a lot about knowing when to write dialogue scenes, and when to use a narrative voice; that kind of thing, then we did an exercise, and then the time was up.

Frankly, I’ll be glad when I can stop teaching this course..

Chapter 16

Alex

I heard someone come home at about 6.30 this evening. I didn’t really feel like seeing anyone; I just wanted to sit in my room and think about Siobhan and what the hell I was going to do next. Siobhan’s letter – her invoice, I suppose you’d call it, with the amounts I’d spent on her card neatly totalled – lay on my desk. I had read it over twenty times, trying to take it in, desperately attempting to come up with a solution. How could I turn things around with Siobhan? By getting the money. How could I get the money? By getting a job. But how could I get a job when I felt like this?

I was fretting and re-reading the letter when I heard a cry come from the living room: a high-pitched yelp followed by a gasp. I stood up. Were Natalie and Simon having sex in there? No, I had only heard one person come in and this hadn’t sounded like a cry of ecstasy.

I ran out of my bedroom and into the living room.

Natalie was sitting on the sofa, leaning forward, her head between her knees. She was panting.

‘Natalie?’

She looked up. Her face was awash with sweat, her eyes narrowed as if I was a brilliant light. She said something in French.

That’s when I saw the blood – a trickle running down the inside of her leg, creeping down from beneath her short skirt towards her trainers.

‘Fuck.’

I swivelled and grabbed the phone, pressing 999. I told the operator I needed an ambulance. They asked me questions:
What’s the problem?
My friend’s bleeding.
Is it an emergency?
Yes, of course it fucking is.
Calm down, sir.

They told me the ambulance would be with us soon. I dropped the receiver and went over to Natalie, leaning down and touching her on the shoulder. ‘It hurts,’ she said. Her voice was like a little girl’s.

I grabbed the phone again, punching in the number of a local taxi company. ‘I need a taxi now. To the hospital. Please.’

The woman on the other end was kind, concerned. She promised a cab would be with us within two minutes. I went and sat beside Natalie, putting my arm around her, telling her that it would be okay, that a taxi was on its way. She nodded, sweat dripping from her nose and chin. She looked like she was giving birth or something, and as I thought that, I realised what was happening.

I heard the taxi pull up outside, and ran to the front door, showing the taxi driver that we knew he was there. Next, I ran to the bathroom and grabbed a towel. Then I helped Natalie up off the sofa, not knowing if this was the right thing to do, just knowing that I had to get her to the hospital, all these horror stories about hour-long waits for ambulances floating through my head. I helped her to the taxi and put the towel on the back seat, worrying that the cab driver wouldn’t let us in if he thought we were going to get blood on his upholstery. I was trying to think of everything.

The taxi sped us to the hospital. As it turned out of our street I heard the wail of an ambulance behind us. Holding Natalie’s hand, I thought about Siobhan, about how proud of me she’d be if she saw me now, helping my friend out. She had spoken to me as if I was a monster… a stalker, for fuck’s sake. But I was just a boy in love, following a long tradition of people gripped by love, by the madness and passion invoked by that emotion, obsessed – I admit it – but dangerous?

I turned to Natalie, whispered, ‘Hang on, hang on, it’s going to be okay. Hold on, Siobhan...’

She leaned against me. She was warm, and I closed my eyes and imagined that this was a normal taxi ride home, that the girl leaning against me was in love with me, that we were going back to her room where she would undress and wrap herself around me, soothe me with kisses, her body a balm for my wounds.

‘We’re here,’ the taxi driver said, and I was startled from my reverie, remembering where I was, who I was with, what I was doing. The taxi driver and I helped Natalie to the entrance of Accident and Emergency.

I grabbed a nurse and said, ‘She’s having a miscarriage.’ And then she was swept away, down a corridor that stank of medicine and death and blood and life. They would make her better now. Make it all better.

I looked up and realised the cabbie was still standing there.

‘Oh.’ I reached into my pocket and pulled out all the money I had. £2.37. And a couple of furry bits of chewing gum.

The taxi driver tutted and shook his head. ‘Forget it,’ he said, and walked away.

I hung around in the waiting room for a long time, watching the weak and the wounded trail past, each begging in turn for help, the meek and the belligerent, the accident-prone and, being stretchered past, the just plain prone. I was amazed how many drunks there were milling around, demanding attention, breathing foul fumes over the other patients, considering it was only early evening. I wanted to go home, back to my cave to mope and think, but I couldn’t leave Natalie. I hadn’t even known she was pregnant. Maybe she and Simon hadn’t known… Suddenly, I realised I hadn’t called him. Shit. The doctors might have called him, but Natalie hadn’t been in a lucid enough condition to tell them his number, and they probably assumed I was her boyfriend.

I waited for a Scottish drunk to stop shouting at his wife on the only visible pay phone (he and I must have been the only people there without mobiles) then called Simon. The phone’s mouthpiece stank of stale whiskey. It made me want to puke, but at the same time made me think how nice it would be to have a drink. God, I could taste it – bottled oblivion, calling my name.

Simon arrived within 15 minutes, his face as pale as a hospital sheet, and he immediately spoke to the receptionist and disappeared up one of the corridors.

I waited a while longer, really craving that drink now, thinking that maybe I’d end up here again later, another ranting drunk who lost a fight with his dignity. Then Simon came out and found me. His eyes were pink and moist, and he put his hand on my shoulder.

‘Thank you for getting her here,’ he said.

I nodded. ‘Was it . . ?’

‘A miscarriage. There was some medical term they used but,’ he touched his head, ‘I’m finding it hard to retain information right now. I was only just starting to get used to the fact she was pregnant. We were going to tell everyone about it this weekend.’ He blinked at me. ‘They said she was in danger... and that it was lucky she got here when she did. So, thank you.’

I thought he was going to hug me, but he just squeezed my shoulder again, his eyes shining.

‘Do you want me to hang around for a while?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘No, it’s fine. You can get going, if you like.’

‘Okay.’

I turned to go, and he said, ‘Alex.’

I looked at him.

‘Thanks, mate.’

I nodded. ‘No problem.’

I walked home, feeling strange and lightheaded, the adrenaline settling in my system. I wondered if there was some protocol I should be following right now. A card? Flowers? I decided to leave it. Cards and flowers usually got me into trouble.

I reached the flat and watched TV for a while. At about eight, Simon rang.

‘How is she?’ I asked.

‘They’re going to keep her in overnight, so I’m going to stay here for a while, until they chuck me out. Look, I called to ask if you could do us a favour. Nat was supposed to be going out with Emily tonight and I don’t have her number on my phone. Can you find it for me? It’s pinned up on the notice board.’

‘Sure.’

I went into the kitchen and located the scrap of paper that showed Emily’s number. I took it down, went back into the living room and read out the digits.

‘That’s great.’ He paused. ‘Actually, you should give her a call yourself.’

‘Who?’

‘Who do you think? Emily.’

‘Sorry? Why?’

‘Because she likes you, brains. Listen, do you want me to send her round?’