Love Rules (40 page)

She's the love of my life.

Will you fight for her?

I wish I could.

Why don't you?

No. I can't. She knows. Don't you see? She knows but she doesn't know that I know that she knows.

Do you not believe you can somehow get round that?

If she ever knows that I know that she knows, her self-respect will be compromised. The subject will be open for discussion and dissection and what good would that do? No amount of debate can repair us or soothe her. So I've decided it would be best if she never knows that I know that she knows.

So that's it? You'll let her end the best two and a half years of your life? Strike out that match made in heaven? Are you sure you're not just being a coward – justifying what can be seen as an avoidance of confrontation?

You don't understand. I know that girl. I know that her trust in me has gone. I don't want to be only half loved. And I know she won't settle for half her dream.

Here she is, Saul. Can you hear her coming up the stairs?

Please use your keys. Please let this still be your home.

The doorbell rings out. Reluctant but resigned, Saul goes to answer it.

‘Hiya,’ he says, his heart rejoicing at the very sight of her, despite the thud of imminent futility throbbing in his head.

‘Hullo,’ Thea says. She doesn't want to look at him. It's too painful. He was her dream come true but she was plunged into a nightmare and it's time to make sure she's wide awake. She stands awkwardly, as if she has an infernal itch at the back of her knee, a stiff neck, slight paralysis of the face. It makes Saul feel discomfited but impotent: if he makes it easier for her she'll know he knows she knows and yet he's convinced that ultimately that will be worse for her. Though Saul would be pleased to fall on his sword right now to save her the agony of what she needs to do, he can't help her. The balance of her future, the ease of her upturn, is what matters to him most.

‘Babe,’ he says quietly, hoping he's managed to etch a look of concern over the expression of dread he's keen to conceal. ‘What's up?’

Thea shakes her head and regards her toes. ‘I can't,’ she croaks, ‘I have cold feet.’

Should I ask her why? I would, wouldn't I – if I didn't know that she knows.

‘Why?’ Saul whispers, taking her hand. ‘I can warm them up – your cold feet.’ Thea keeps staring at her toes, peeping prettily through sandals. She's been incapable of planning what to say. ‘Thea, please,’ Saul pleads, ‘don't.’

Fuck it. I don't care now what she finds out. I just need to keep her. I must. She has to keep me.

‘Saul,’ Thea whispers, ‘something's not right.’ She glances up at him and looks away. ‘It's better this way – before things get messy with mortgages and stuff. It's just not right.’ The silence that ensues is so loaded it's deafening and time stands still, choked by the fog of neither person knowing what to do or say next.

‘You know, Thea – nothing you can do could make me love you less?’ Saul declares, gripping her arms to pull her close. ‘Do you want some space? Some time out? Take what you need, sweetie. Anything. And I promise you I'll back off – but I'm telling you, I won't stop loving you.’ He steps towards her and gently touches her chin.

Tell me it never happened, Saul. Tell me I'm mistaken. Promise me you've been faithful to me. Promise me you're an ordinary, good boy. Say it out loud and I'll believe you because I believe you'd never lie to me so if I ask you, you'll tell me the truth.

But Thea knows what the truth is so she encircles his wrists to keep him at bay – it would be too easy to melt into his arms and then too difficult to extract herself again. ‘I'm not as tolerant as you,’ she explains. ‘I can't love you unconditionally.’

‘Have I ever given you reason to doubt the sanctity and totality of my love for you?’ Saul asks her hoarsely. ‘Have I ever given you
direct
reason?’ Saul emphasizes. He needs to be pedantic and semantic because otherwise he knows she can say to herself yes yes yes you have you whoremonger.

Let her go, Saul.

‘Saul, please,’ Thea starts to cry.

Please Saul, let her go.

‘I don't love you enough,’ Thea sobs, ‘I don't love you in the way you love me. I don't love you enough to allow you your entire personality.’

Saul, you have to let her go.

‘Will you change your mind?’ Saul asks. ‘Ever?’ He pulls Thea towards him and she yields into his embrace. He is not going to let her go. ‘Please, Thea. Just take time out – as much as you need. I'll wait. You can't let Us go.’ She buries her face in his chest and he kisses the top of her head. He's always loved kissing the top of her head. He's always marvelled at the way they fit. Snug. They're just right. They're
just so right. But it's all gone horribly wrong. ‘I'll wait,’ Saul repeats.

‘Don't!’ Thea cries.

‘You come to love not by finding a perfect person but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly,’ Saul proclaims. Thea raises a tear-stained face to him. ‘It's a quote,’ he admits with a humble grin, ‘I found on the Internet.’

How very Saul, Thea thinks.

Once upon a time it would have made me love you even more.

‘I can't go through with this,’ Thea says, ‘I can't.’

‘Please, please don't do this, Thea,’ Saul begs. ‘Whatever has happened, I can fix. Whatever's happened, we can get through.’

Thea shakes her head.

‘Talk to me,’ Saul implores. He's ready for anything. He's fighting for his life. ‘Thea, think about it – your flat sale, all that stress. You sell in three days' time. We're days from exchanging. You can draw a line under whatever it is. Let's just go for it. Start our life.’

‘I don't want to live there,’ Thea says. Looking alarmed, as if she'd forgotten all about the place of their dreams being at their fingertips.

‘OK,’ Saul says, ‘it doesn't matter. We'll let it go. We'll buy somewhere else. It doesn't matter where. We just have to stay together. Don't let Us go.’

‘Let me go,’ Thea pleads sorrowfully, imploring him, seeing eye to eye. He looks six years old, with his blotched cheeks, twitching lips and eyes springing with tears. The last time she saw Saul cry was at Juliette Stonehill's baby blessing. He looked so happy then, when he was crying. He looks devastated just now. Really wrecked. Thea shakes her head. And Saul shakes his.

WHAT CAN I DO?

You can let me go.

Saul lets her slip from his hands. He has to. He has no choice. He has no control over this decision.

Tomorrow, Thea will move in with Alice and Mark for a fort-night or so until the nice rented flat in a mansion block in Highgate Village found by Peter Glass becomes available. Yesterday, she walked away from Saul. Tonight, she is sitting in the middle of her landing, appreciating a final moment or two of Lewis Carroll Living. Actually, there's no room to sit in the living room anyway, it's piled high with packing boxes. Sitting there, on the landing, with the doors closed in a teasing whirl around her, she spies a bent nail lying on the floor. She looks up at the wall and deduces that this nail is the one that held up her framed autographed photograph of David Bowie. She picks up the nail and fiddles with it absent-mindedly, her mind ricocheting from one monumental issue to the next yet unable to alight constructively on any. It's too strange to think philosophically that her flat is sold, it's no longer her home, bye-bye. It's too soon to consider she'll need to tick the ‘single’ box when filling in forms. It's too raw to realize she has no soulmate called Saul, no soulmate full stop, no more soul-mate. It's not possible to think straight at all, really.

Time for bed. It's late and tomorrow will be tiring and trying. But she wants just to sit here a while longer. It's nice and quiet – and anyway, every decision she makes – even to stand from sitting – necessitates untold energy.

The pain weighs heavy. Crying hurts. The pain under-scores everything she does. It's the punctuation mark at the end of every thought. It catches in her throat and alters the timbre of her voice. It stumbles her walk and has decimated her posture. It prevents her digesting her food. It inhibits her hearing the loving support of Alice, of Sally, of Souki, though she attempts to listen. It is the bed of nails on which she tries but fails to sleep. It hurts, it hurts. It hurts all the time.

Thea looks at the nail, bent and discarded. With a calm, considered intake of breath, she scores along her roping scar with the nail. She doesn't need to puncture deep enough to draw blood; a simple, long, sharp scratch through the sensitive and fragile keloid surface is sufficient agony. The immediacy and the shock and the uncompromising reality of pure physical pain somehow provides instant respite from the agonizing twist of emotional anguish.

Avon Calling

Thea regarded her two holdalls which contained everything she'd possibly need for the moment. She now thought she probably could have been far more ruthless when packing up her flat. The local charity shops hadn't done very well by her at all yet the storage company was making a fortune out of her. Each bag was heavy, yet when lifted one in each hand, the weight evened out and dispersed a little. There was a sense of symmetry, a feeling of balance. Anyway, she wasn't walking far, just downstairs to the waiting taxi.

Thea had said goodbye to her flat so many times over the last few weeks that when the time came she found it quite easy to simply lock up and leave. There was just time for a backward glance and surreptitious little wave as the cab headed off. Thea had two sets of keys in her hand, one to be relinquished at the local estate agent for the new owner of the Little Bit of Lewis Carroll Living, the other set to let her into her temporary home with the Sinclairs in Hampstead.

‘Love, I'm going to have to put the meter back on in a minute,’ the taxi driver cautioned as Thea sat still and continued to stare at Alice's house. Suddenly, she was feeling peculiarly light-headed and refreshingly unburdened. Her
belongings were in storage, she was rid of her mortgage and had been given time off work on compassionate grounds with the Being Well's blessing. There wasn't much to do at all really. Apart from watch daytime television on Alice's vast plasma until she came home from work. Or, God forbid, mope.

‘Actually,’ Thea said, as a thought seeded itself, ‘drive on, please.’

‘You pay for this journey first, young lady,’ the cabbie retorted gruffly, ‘and then I'll drive you wherever you want.’

‘Fine,’ said Thea, refusing to round the fare up to the nearest pound, let alone add on a tip.

‘You women,’ the cabbie muttered with intentional audibility, ‘you can never make your bleeding minds up.’

‘Oh yes I can,’ Thea muttered back, certain that she didn't want to watch daytime television and definite that she didn't want to mope. ‘Drive on.’ She texted Alice to tell her of her change of plan and then she switched her phone off before Alice could call her to workshop it.

‘Are you going somewhere nice for the weekend, dear? They say the weather is to be very good. I'm going to stay with my son for a week – see my grandchildren.’

Thea turned from gazing out of the train window to regard a neat elderly lady, who must have boarded the train at Reading, sitting opposite her and keen to make conversation. Thea accepted a digestive biscuit and settled herself in for light chat about this and that as Great Western rail continued to carry her away.

‘I'm going to see my mum,’ she told the lady. ‘I haven't seen her since Christmas, it's a surprise visit.’

Gloria Luckmore didn't much like surprises. She liked arrangements and she liked them well in advance. She liked to be able to balance the kitchen calendar with her pocket
diary and she did not like having to cross things out. Gloria did not like mess. She would always pencil something in, in the first instance, then carefully rub it out and rewrite it in black ink once it had been confirmed. She considered impromptu to be the bane of modern living. She deemed the concept of popping in or just dropping by to be insulting – something a person decided to do at the last moment because they had nothing better to do. Despite her stringent parameters for socializing, Gloria Luckmore's calendar and pocket diary were actually extensively crocheted in black ink. However, she never organized anything for six p.m. She had a permanent arrangement with herself for that slot – the meticulous ritual of a gin and tonic sipped listening to the Radio 4 news whilst looking out of the sitting-room French doors to the garden. Thus, she felt sheer indignation that her doorbell should compete with the Greenwich Mean Time pips. Defiant, she sipped her drink and listened hard to the headlines, blocking out another round of ringing. What Gloria loved about Radio 4 was the dignified pace of announcement which bestowed equal dramatic impact to each news headline. Nothing could possibly be so important as to interrupt it. Whoever wanted her at her front door would jolly well have to wait. She sipped and listened and ignored the rapping of her letter-box.

‘Mum?’

The voice drifted through the hallway and suddenly filled the living room, interrupting the radio voices and rendering Gloria's G & T temporarily undrinkable.

‘Thea?’

Gloria went to her front door, slightly alarmed. She didn't need to consult her calendar or her diary. She knew her timetable by heart and a visit by Thea hadn't even been suggested, let alone arranged. Why was her daughter outside at six p.m. without warning, request or invitation?

‘Hullo, Mum.’

With two large holdalls.

‘I was going to ring but –’

And significant weight loss.

‘I need somewhere –’

And a dullness to her eyes, dark shadows surrounding them, alluding to much crying and little sleep.

‘I broke up with Saul.’

‘Come in.’

‘My flat was sold today.’

‘Come on in.’

‘I've been given time off work.’

‘In, darling, in.’

It wasn't as if Thea had nowhere to go – Alice and Mark had been looking forward to laying their home and their friendship at her disposal for the couple of weeks before the rented flat was available. It wasn't as if Thea had bolted back to her childhood home to snuggle down in her old bedroom, to be surrounded by furling posters of David Bowie left in situ over the years, shelves brimming with the friendly familiar faces of dusty soft toys, dressing-table drawers revealing a treasure trove of forgotten trinkets, boxes under the bed containing teenage diaries and years of letters. Thea had never actually lived in this house – her mother had moved here from London once Thea had left home for university. So it wasn't the reassurance of nostalgia that Thea craved. It wasn't even as if Gloria was her enduring confidante – as fond of each other as mother and daughter were, they were actually pretty self-sufficient and private. However, as Thea unpacked in the small spare room, she felt pleased to be there. It was nice to look at the old framed photographs – when she still had a pony-tail, her brother long before he grew his terrible beard. This wasn't running away, this wasn't hiding in the past, this was
instigating some space from London, putting necessary distance in time and miles between what was and what soon would be. This was a prudent thing to do. However long she decided to stay, Wiltshire would provide a sensible hiatus. A breather between the chapters of her life.