One Night (29 page)

‘Is that a good sign?’ Abieda
asked.

‘You’re asking me? I don’t know. I
suppose it is.’

‘He’s too good to be true,’ she
said with envy. ‘I wish I could meet a man who didn’t think he was put on earth
to tell me what to do.’

I had to think I was lucky in that
regard. Jake never told me what to do. In fact, he never told me much of
anything. Sometimes we would speak of his past but I learnt to avoid the topic
because it seemed to engender an edge of bitterness in him that was unsettling.
And sadness remained in those dark eyes no matter how hard I tried. Jake was
trying to put things behind him just as much as I was. We were survivors – the
enlightened. We no longer expected life to be good just because we existed. We
had learned the hard way that choice and consequence go hand in hand. I
understood his caution – and loved him out of something that I could only
describe as comradeship. We’d seen hell together and knew how close it could be
at any given moment.

When Jake took me in his arms with
that strange look of both care and concern in his eyes, it was like he
understood the fragility of life, the tenuousness of connection. His lovemaking
was warm and passionate but without exuberance. I liked this. It made me feel
settled and protected. My beautiful monk-like man was a bastion against dark
memories; we could be different and still be happy.

That’s what I believed.

Until something happened.

One wet Friday we went round to Shannon’s for supper. She was keen to meet the
new love in my life and had inveigled Rowdy to make up a foursome. We had Irish
stew and a well-matured red wine in front of a fire.

At the first opportunity she could,
Shannon hissed at me, ‘Jees, good-looking! I wouldn’t mind meeting him in a
dark wood.’

‘We’re friends,’ I said stupidly.

She looked at me blandly. ‘Oh,
yes?’

‘We share a history.’

‘Hope that’s not all you share.’

I grinned. ‘We’re crazy about each
other.’

She pursed her lips. ‘Crazy is not
the word I would use near that man. He’s so perfectly contained. I love the way
he keeps looking at you for assurance. Makes my knees weak.’

We creamed the coffee and took it
through to where the men were arguing mildly about the impact of the internet
on the publishing industry. Jake was explaining the ease of uploading and Rowdy
was saying he preferred paper and that was that.

‘That’s the artist in you,’ I said.

‘Have you seen his latest work?’
Shannon jumped up and came back with a small portrait of a little girl in an
old-fashioned mop cap. ‘Isn’t this cute?’

I was amazed by the realism. ‘Looks
like a photograph.’

‘I’m a technical artist,’ Rowdy said
modestly.

‘You should do this for a living.’

‘Acting is still my first love. As
an artist, I start to get too many faces in my head.’

‘I suppose you’ve got one of those
photographic memories for faces. You know – you can remember a face but never
the name!’

He laughed. Rowdy was rake-thin
with a mass of untidy mousey hair, black horn-rim glasses on a narrow, beaky
nose. ‘That’s true enough.’ He looked across at Jake. ‘I’ve seen
your
face somewhere before.’

There was a vibrating pause. Jake
stiffened. ‘I can’t imagine where.’ Then he remarked, ‘Unless it was a
mug-shot.’

There was the tiniest awkward
silence. Then we all laughed.

But Rowdy persisted, ‘No, really. I
know your face. I have seen you before. Have you done any stage work?’

‘That sounds like my life story,’
Jake said wryly.

‘Well, as Casey says. I don’t
forget faces. I think I have every one I’ve ever seen etched in my memory.’

‘That must be rather awful,’ Jake
said, with a touch of irritation. ‘I’ve got a very ordinary face.’

Rowdy responded candidly, ‘Well,
you’re good-looking – and that’s distinctive enough. But the secret to good
looks is average. Did you know that?’

He looked at us. We stared back.

‘When a person’s face is averagely
featured, averagely balanced – then you have a perfect face. The right face. A
face with nothing to remark upon becomes a face that we admire but a face that
is forgettable in many ways. No squinty eyes, no skew nose, no big mouth or
jutting chin. Just average.’

‘That means you wouldn’t want to
paint him?’

Rowdy grinned. ‘I’m afraid not. I
need some characteristic in a face to inspire me.’

‘Thank God I’m dead boring then,’
said Jake, clearly put out.

Shannon laughed. Her cheeks were flushed.

‘C’mon guys, let’s finish this
bottle of wine!’

On the way home I noticed Jake was too quiet. Distracted almost. I had the feeling
he hadn’t appreciated Rowdy’s forthright discussion of his appearance. It had
nettled him. All the way back to my flat he hardly spoke. He left me at my door
with a mumbled goodbye. As he turned away, I felt I owed some apology. After
all Shannon and Rowdy were my friends and I didn’t want him to think any
offense had been intended.

‘Don’t mind Rowdy. Or Shannon for
that matter. You know what these artistic types are like.’

Jake was on the stairs. He turned
to look at me. ‘I didn’t like them very much.’

I was taken aback. ‘I thought the
evening went very well.’

‘Really?’

‘We don’t have to visit again, if
you don’t want.’

He looked as though he was giving
this some consideration. ‘Perhaps not.’

I felt odd. ‘Goodnight.’

‘Night.’

He turned and began descending the
stairs in neat, sharp steps, his back broad and straight.

And suddenly there was something
between us, thin as a membrane, and cold to the touch.

My mother thought Jake was wonderful. And no reason she shouldn’t. He had,
after all, saved me from Matthew Bunting’s murderous hands. Here was an
eligible man simply by respect of his arrival. Tall, gentlemanly, with those
calm eyes, she was smitten. And of course she was delighted that I had someone
in my life, and – as she saw it – a protector against any harassment from Brent.

Her first words with regard to Jake
were: ‘He’d look gorgeous in a tux!’ Which made me question my mother’s grasp
of reality. Sometimes I think she suffered under the delusion we were one door
from Downton Abbey.

What she liked particularly about
Jake was his grasp of the internet and his enthusiasm for an internet-run
business. ‘I’d like to do something like that,’ she mused one evening after
supper, nursing a liqueur from the fancy bottle Jake had kindly brought. ‘I’d
like to sell something over the Net.’

‘Marketing is the key, Mrs Blaydon,’
said Jake. ‘What were you thinking of selling?’

‘Good luck charms.’

‘What?’ I gasped, half laughing. ‘A
load of rubbishy trinkets?’

She gave me a look. ‘People like
that sort of thing. You know – a rabbit’s foot, an Egyptian’s eye, an ankh.
That sort of thing.’

‘Not a real rabbit’s foot?’ I
asked, not even wanting to contemplate the origins of the Egyptian’s eye.

Jake guffawed with laughter. It was
a rare thing. I saw him glance at my mother. And then they both looked at me
with merry eyes. For a moment I felt I was the object of their collusion. It
was odd; a feeling of displacement that made no sense.

‘You’re a gem, Casey,’ my mother
said, filling up her glass for seconds. She glanced at Jake. ‘Isn’t she, Jake?’

Jake looked at me, eyes honey-dark.
‘Yes,’ he agreed easily. ‘Yes, she is.’

One Friday evening, walking back from a local pizzeria, Jake took me firmly by
the arm and whispered, ‘Trust me.’ He pushed me sideways until we were several
steps down a dark alley.

‘
Jake – !
’

‘Shush,’ he whispered. ‘Just be
quiet.’

I was thoroughly rattled and
annoyed. ‘Someone you don’t want to see?’

He eased up, eyes watchful, looking
toward the head of the alley. Then he sighed and let me go. ‘Someone who I don’t
want seeing me.’

‘You owe money?’

‘No. It’s someone I ratted on.’

‘You mean in prison?’

‘Yes, I paid my dues by providing
information.’

‘Oh!’

His eyes were bleak in the light
filtering down from the street. ‘I’m not a criminal, Casey. So I wasn’t
breaking any ‘code’ so to speak.’

I felt as though I’d just swallowed
a lump of cold dough. It seemed the past was never going to let us go.

‘Must I be frightened?’

His teeth were a flash of white in
the gloom as he grinned. ‘Never,’ he said. ‘Never with me.’

And the thing was, I wasn’t frightened, I was disappointed. And if I wanted to
count disappointments, I could add up a few. And none of them would have been
fair. Jake was good to keep close, but somehow managed to remain distant. He
had refused my offer that he move in with me. He didn’t like my best friend. He
had an unsavory past which might dog us both for who knew how long. And, of
course, he seemed to get along better with my mother than I did. None of this
should have meant anything, and yet somehow in the great scheme of trivia, they
meant more than they should. It was as if I was trying to paste Jake into a
particular perception and he just wouldn’t fit. And when you are that off-key
in a relationship, you always blame the partner. I was like a plane on a runway
about to take off with one engine shooting sparks. Doubt had a way of stalling
things.

And then, three weeks before the
hearing, Stephen phoned.

‘How’ve you been?’ he asked.

His voice seemed to fill up my
senses. For a moment I couldn’t speak. I would never have believed memory and
longing could be this bad. I thought I’d left him behind. But in truth, as I
stood there holding the phone to my ear, knowing his smile, his twinkling green
eyes were just on the other side of a few buttons, I knew it was he who had left
me behind.

‘I wanted to phone before,’ he went
on ‘but I didn’t want to interfere in your life.’

‘A phone call is hardly
interference.’

‘It can be badly timed.’

I laughed. ‘Have to agree with
that.’

‘Todd been around recently?’

I told him what had happened in the
lift. He was silent for a moment. I don’t think the depths of Todd’s behaviour
had impacted before. Now his anger reverberated.

‘If I catch that bastard hanging
around you again, I’ll make an end to him.’

‘You going to stand on guard
outside my door?’

‘I’d have to see you first.’

I paused. What did he mean? ‘You’re
always welcome to pop around, Stephen. You know that.’

‘Really?’

‘Of course.’

‘Casey – ’

‘Yes?’

‘Nothing.’ He said emptily, ‘I saw
Shannon.’

‘Oh.’

‘And she tells me you’ve got someone
new. The chap who saved you in the woods.’

I grimaced. ‘Yes, my knight in
shining armour. Jake.’

‘He stole my role.’

Little space.

‘Would it have been your role?’

‘Yes. If you’d given me the
chance.’ His voice was edgy. This call hadn’t been easy. He was looking for
cracks that would prove we were officially done. I took a breath.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t call you,
Stephen. More than I can say.’

‘Yes, well. So am I.’ Gruffness now,
smothering a note of hopelessness rather than regret.

My heart swelled. I felt I had been
wrung out and left to dry. From nowhere my voice came in a jumble, ‘Stephen,
I’d like to see you.’

There was a hair-breath hesitation.
‘When?’

‘Anytime,’ I said. ‘Anytime you
like.’

I clicked the phone off and set it
down. With his voice gone the flat suddenly seemed empty and soulless. That
brief connection had been like a glimpse of home after a long journey. Why did
I still feel like that after all this time? Why? Why had I invited him back? Didn’t
want the answer.

Friday night was my birthday. My mother said she would light a candle in the
local church as a humble request for my imminent maturity. When I protested,
she said, ‘Well, twenty-seven, Casey. Got to be sometime when you grow up.’

‘Well, I did grow up, mum. Just a
couple of months ago. Remember?’

‘Yes, you did. I have to give you
that. Not many people would be able to do what you did.’

‘Well, then. Go blow out those
candles.’

Unhappily, she said: ‘It’s all this
stuff about Todd and stamping flowers into garbage cans, and throwing gifts
down the stairs. I mean, really, Casey – it doesn’t matter how bad someone is,
that’s just childish.’

I looked at her and was sorry I’d
told her about the incident. She had no clue how dangerous Todd Pennington was.
And maybe that was good. She wouldn’t be phoning me at four in the morning to
find out if I was alright.

‘How’s this for grownup – Jake is
taking me to a swanky Chinese restaurant. We’re going to eat prawns and drink
champagne.’

She was thrilled. ‘That’s
wonderful, Casey. For heaven’s sake, behave like a lady.’

I’d bought a little black number for the occasion. Off the shoulder,
figure-hugging, with a tiny spray of diamante across the right breast. I put my
hair up in one of those face-lift tight knots and wore silver stud earrings. I
had a midnight green velvet jacket with an antique diamond brooch from my
great-grandmother. My shoes were stiletto, pencil thin heels which managed to
remain attached to my feet by a single, slender strap around each ankle. I was
as grownup as I could get.

Jake arrived looking extremely
dashing in a dark suit with a dark blue shirt and colourful, matching tie.
Everything had a crisp freshness that spelt new. He’d spent money – and this
knowledge made me feel awkward rather than happy. In his hand was a delicate bouquet
of six red roses.

‘You look amazing,’ I said. ‘You
shouldn’t have spent all this money on me.’