What You Make It (27 page)

‘No. She told me that she'd taken something. She took something last time as well, apparently.’ I assumed that he was talking about drugs, and was about to wax indifferent when he continued. ‘Last time it was photos.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Last time she stayed round mine, when I was in the shower, she took some photos from the flat.’

‘She did
what?’

‘She had prints done, large prints, and then gave the originals back to me this morning.’

‘Photos of what?’

‘Of me.’

I didn't say anything for a moment. I was reeling slightly. Though I enjoy being proved right as much as the next man, I didn't like the sound of this.

‘Where were they? The photos? I mean, were they just lying around, in a drawer, or what?’

‘They were in an album. It was on my desk.’

‘Did you show them to her?’

‘No.’

‘She just opened it, without permission, and took the photos.’

‘Yes.’

‘That's not ideal, is it.’

‘No.’

‘And now she's taken something else?’

‘Yes.’

‘What?’

‘I don't know. She wouldn't tell me.’

At the weekend Steve called me again. Monica and I were splatted in front of the television, stupefied with pizza. When the phone rang Monica advised me to ignore it, but I find that difficult to do if I haven't spoken to my parents that day, which I hadn't. So I answered it, and on finding it was Steve settled back to banter with half my mind, while trying to keep track of whatever it was we were watching. A documentary on Cane Toads, I suspect – comfort television. Monica had just walked out to make some coffee when Steve stopped abruptly, and said he wanted to ask me a favour. Something in the tone of his voice made me sit up and tune out the toads, despite the fact that they were cutely rolling onto their backs to have their stomachs rubbed, just like my cat used to do.

Steve wondered whether Monica and I could be talked into going out the following night. The fact that he was asking in those terms made it obvious what he was really saying. I asked, and he admitted that a double date was what he had in mind.

I breathed out heavily for comedy value, pretending that what he was asking was a bit of a tall order. Normally, he would have got the joke. He didn't. He rapidly said that he wouldn't have asked, except he didn't know what else to do. Tamsin had phoned him at least three times each day since they last saw each other. He was calling from his office rather than home, late on a Sunday afternoon, because pretending he had work to do was the only way he'd been able to avoid spending the day with her. Nothing else he'd been able to come up with, from the fact that he was tired to claiming that he needed to paint the ceiling, had been
able to dissuade her. Because, after all, she could come and help paint the ceiling. And if he was tired, well, they didn't have to
do
anything, did they? She could just come round, bring some food, and they could curl up together …

When he got to that point, I stopped pretending and rapidly agreed, making it clear what I was doing and waggling my eyebrows at Monica for her approval. She rolled her eyes but then nodded with a smile. ‘MeN’, she was clearly thinking, and who can blame her? I made arrangements with Steve to meet him at a cinema in town the following evening.

When we'd finished I put the phone down and sipped my coffee. Monica nudged me a few minutes later to bring me out of my reverie, but it stayed on my mind. Steve was a calm, level-headed person. He'd known what he was getting into – I'd warned him often enough.

I could understand him being rattled. But he'd almost sounded afraid.

I had to spend the afternoon at a client's on Monday, which I didn't mind too much. It meant I could drink their coffee and waste their time, instead of merely my own. I hung around till half-six and then went round the corner to meet Monica in a pub.

We were both in high spirits when we left an hour later. Neither of us had bothered to eat any lunch, and after three drinks in quick succession peered rather owlishly at each other when we re-emerged into the fading light outside. Hand in hand we walked down the street towards Oxford Circus, and I sent up silent thanks To Whom It May Concern.

There'd been times when I thought I would never have this again, when I thought I would spend the remaining evenings of my life nodding in polite fury at the utterances of someone I didn't really know, never mind like, much less love. It wouldn't have been their fault, nor even mine really. It's simply the way things are when people come together out of hurt rather than happiness. When you try to use people as band-aids you merely
reinfect the wound, and every moment you spend with them is like a speck of glass working itself deeper into your flesh. If it gets in far enough then the wound closes up, sealing the alien matter inside you. Women are used to having their lives and bodies invaded; men aren't, and so I think they struggle against it more. On the outside everything looks good enough, and you are the only person who can feel the fresh little cuts that tear every waking moment. The only way to get it out is to rip yourself apart, and so instead you sit and nod, and pretend that nothing matters.

The difference between that state and the one I felt with Monica was the biggest difference in the world, and as we careered slowly down the pavement towards Piccadilly I gripped her hand very, very tightly.

We were a few minutes early at the cinema, and while Monica went off to the toilet I sourced a large amount of soft drinks from the counter in the centre of the foyer. I considered buying a tray of tacos, cheese and jalopeños, and then patiently talked myself out of it. There are things that one likes that one simply should not have, and in my case thin slivers of green plutonium are among them. As I counted out my change I thought I saw some familiar colours pass on one side of me, but when I looked up Monica hadn't yet returned, and there was no sign of Steve.

I took the drinks, stood next to one of the free-standing ashtrays, and set about mainlining as much nicotine as I could before the show started. It's impossible to find a cinema you can smoke in these days, though I see that rustling, clearing one's throat repetitively and loudly explaining the plot to your neighbours are still very much allowed. Monica still wasn't back, but that didn't surprise me. I know what happens in women's toilets. They step through a portal to another dimension, where they assume their true form and gambol through dream-lit forests, tarrying awhile on their home planet to bask in the last moonglow of autumn, before returning to the cursed twilight of this dread prison world. At least, I assume it has to be something like that. I can't see any other conceivable explanation for how
bloody long it takes. Yes, I know there are often queues, but that's because everyone takes so bloody long, isn't it?

I was halfway through my first cigarette when I spotted Steve on the other side of the room. He was wearing his leather jacket, hands thrust deep in pockets, and craning his neck as he looked round the foyer. People kept coming between us and so I had a minute to observe him, and to see that a woman of average build was standing fairly close to him. She had her back to me, but there was something familiar about her, and suddenly I knew what Tamsin had taken the last time she'd stayed at Steve's. She was wearing one of his sweaters, a sweater that Monica and I had given him at Christmas.

I faltered, stopped waving, and withdrew my hand, needing a moment to assimilate this.

Okay, so it wasn't any big deal. A jury of her peers would be unlikely to give her the death penalty. But it was wrong. It was wrong in some way that seemed to strike at me personally. When Monica and I had chosen the sweater we hadn't been going out with each other for very long, and she'd only met Steve on one rather stilted occasion. Steve and I never exchanged more than perfunctory gifts, and so I'd been surprised at her suggestion that we look for a sweater for him. He'd commented on his wardrobe when they met, apparently, bemoaning the fact that he never got round to buying anything presentable. I understood that Monica's desire was due partly to the fact that she was simply very nice, but also out of a wish to start forging a bond between her and my best friend, so we'd had a merry time trawling round a variety of men's clothes shops before finding one we both thought he would appreciate.

He'd liked it, and wore it often. And now this woman had taken it without his permission, and was wearing it as proof of a relationship which Steve didn't want to have. Okay, it was his fault for not being strong enough to keep away from her. But this was something else, something more than a misjudgement on her part, more than demanding too much too soon. It was invasive.

Steve eventually saw me, and I smiled and started towards them. At the same moment Monica emerged from the women's toilets, and we reached them at about the same time. Doubtless reading Steve's face, Tamsin turned to face us.

When I saw her my heart stopped, and I felt as if I had fallen suddenly into a dream of freezing water. The brief, liquid spell came and went in a moment, and I dragged my eyes off her to listen to what Steve was saying. I heard the words, but couldn't make any sense of them. My mind was elsewhere.

I'd met Tamsin before, and her name was not Tamsin.

When the film finished at half past ten, I wanted to go. I'd spent the last two hours taking covert looks to my left, where ‘Tamsin’ had been sitting, and while the initial spasm of complete panic had passed, I still felt extremely bad. I wanted to say goodnight and go home, but the look in Steve's eyes told me that my job wasn't yet finished.

So, after a pointless few moments of dithering, we went round the corner to a pub Steve and I occasionally drank in. Tamsin took Steve's hand and led him to a table. I asked everyone what they wanted to drink, avoiding Tamsin's eye, and went towards the bar. On an afterthought I diverted my course towards the Gents. What I wanted most of all was a chance to think without anyone being able to see my face.

Inside, I splashed cold water over my hands and rubbed them over my cheeks and forehead. Then I just leaned on the basin and stared at nothing at all.

I'd seen Tamsin before. More than that. I knew her.

Sometimes when you catch a half-glimpse of someone across the street you mistake them for someone else, most likely a person you're missing, or you've just loved and lost. This was not like that. This was not a chance similarity. This was the actual person herself. The problem was that I didn't know who the hell that person was.

When we'd stood in that little foursome in the foyer, Steve making the introductions in an endearingly embarrassed way, I'd felt my mind running at screaming pitch, trying to resolve
the question of who she was. But I knew there was no solution, that however fast my mind ran the wheels were being held off the ground. I had no recollection of this person, except for knowing that I knew her.

My memory's fine, in case you're wondering. I may not always pay my Visa bill on the nail, but I don't forget names and faces. As far as I could remember – no, fuck that: it's for sure, and definite. I'd never met this person. But I knew her. I'd never known her name, but I knew it wasn't Tamsin.

Monica had noticed the sweater immediately, and preoccupied as I was, I'd felt the ambient temperature drop by about ten degrees. She knew about the photos, and about the second ‘borrowing.’

‘That's a nice sweater,’ she'd said, with a smile that was bright enough to blind. The girl had nodded self-deprecatingly, and took a step closer to Steve, who was sending me signals I couldn't interpret.

‘It looks just like one of Steve's,’ I said, woodenly, staring at him. ‘You know, the one Amanda gave you.’

Amanda was Steve's fictitious girlfriend, an imaginary medical student allegedly out of the country doing an elective in Canada. I know it sounds vile to have ploughed straight in like that, but I was all over the place. It was a wonder I could say anything at all, and not surprising that I fell immediately into my programmed role. I had a job to do, and I was going to do it, not least because now I'd seen Tamsin, or whatever her name was, she was sending shivers up my scalp. Something was very wrong, and the worst thing was that I didn't know what it was.

‘It's the same sweater,’ Tamsin said, smiling winningly. ‘Steve lent it to me.’ The look in Steve's eyes as she said this confirmed what I already knew. No, he hadn't. But she'd turned up this evening wearing it, and he could hardly have demanded she take it off. Why? Because she doubtless had nothing else with her, and nothing on underneath. But that wasn't the real reason. The real reason was that you simply can't do that kind of thing.

After all, she'd only borrowed a sweater. It wasn't a crime,
was it? And she'd only done it so she could have something of his with her, so she could smell him while they were apart. That was sweet, loving, a sign of how much she was beginning to care: surely not a reason to be shouted at?

With each moment I spent in this woman's company I was feeling worse and worse. And the next thing that we did, after Steve had stocked up on soft drinks, was to go and sit together for nearly two hours. Tamsin ended up between me and Steve, and I had Monica on my other side. We sat, in the darkness, and the film spooled on, and I have not a clue what it was about. Sitting next to Tamsin felt about as comfortable as sitting next to a corpse, and all I had in my head was one thought.

Why did I think I knew her?

Eventually I left the pub toilet, and bought the drinks. When I returned to the table I was expecting to see Monica sitting with her arms folded, looking stern and ill at ease. Instead I was perturbed to see her chatting affably with Tamsin. Steve looked up, took his drink – and Tamsin's – and then carried on listening to what the girls were saying. He didn't try to catch my eye, and neither did Monica when I sat down. In fact, as far as I could tell, normality had broken out all around me. The undercurrents and strangeness had disappeared, except for in one place. My head.

We stayed in the pub until it shut. I probably said about thirty words while everybody else chatted away, having what appeared to be a good time. I tried to start a subsidiary conversation with Steve, but it petered out almost immediately, partly out of my frustration at his apparent refusal to receive the messages I was sending. He was sitting close to Tamsin, his arm behind her on the bench, and every now and then she'd let her hand fall on his knee. I felt like a jealous lover watching them together, but I simply couldn't understand what was going on. At one point her eyes fell on mine and I looked away quickly, almost as if they'd burnt me.