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Authors: Kate Saunders

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“Er …” He was shifty, and I'm afraid I enjoyed seeing him squirm; we never went to his place because he was paranoid about messing it up. “We certainly shouldn't spend all our free time in your neck of the woods.”
“How right you are,” I said warmly. “I haven't explored any other necks, have I? I've been selfish. I'll start making a proper effort to fit into your life. Next weekend, I'll stay at your place.”
“Er …” This wasn't the reaction Matthew had wanted, but he couldn't protest without admitting that he'd been a lying, cheating shit. I often thought I should have been a lawyer.
I couldn't say, however, that I had won this round completely. When I mulled it over at home, in a sickly miasma of ceiling paint, I was depressed. I realized I had given Matthew permission to see me as little as he pleased. My warm, safe future was evaporating before my very eyes.
No, no, NO. It wasn't true. I couldn't let it happen. I wanted to hate Matthew, and I could only love him.
I needed a crisis meeting with Annabel. She was the only person I could expose to the death rattle of my relationship. Unfortunately,
Annabel's brain was out to lunch—the first throes of infatuation made her absolutely gaga. She could not be detached from Fritz, but hovered around him adoringly. Rather surprisingly, Fritz appeared not to mind this besotted clinging. In breaks between rehearsals he would phone Annabel at work and describe, in filthy detail, his sexual plans for the night ahead.
I wish I hadn't had to know about this, but Annabel always sent me an e-mail immediately afterward. Sometimes, I was absolutely faint with envy. Lucky Annabel had a man who loved her and worshipped her body. My body hadn't been worshipped properly for ages. The temple was gathering moss and falling into ruins. When Matthew deigned to spend a night with me, he went about sex as if visiting the gym. Even his orgasms were conscientious. Mine were faked, of course. It's hard to have an orgasm with a man whose mind has left the building.
A woman needs a demanding job at a time like this. Seeing less of Matthew meant I got an amazing amount of work done. Night after night, I would still be hammering at my keyboard when Betsy tore herself away at six. Unable to endure the spinsterish loneliness of my flat, I took to burning midnight oil at the office. Whatever happened in my private life, the double centenary edition of
The Cavendish Quarterly
was going to be a humdinger.
But it was a huge relief when Hazel called. She had returned from the parental home in very low spirits, and she was also trying to bury her feelings under a ton of hard work.
“If I have to spend one more evening in a deserted office I'll go crazy. Let's go out and get disgracefully drunk.”
We met in our usual wine bar, halfway between Hazel's office and mine. In days gone by, we had gathered here with Annabel and Claudette, but Claudette was pregnant and Annabel was lost in new love, and neither had time to bond with her female friends. We didn't say anything, but Hazel and I both felt rather left out and sad—two unclaimed women, caning the red wine because there was nobody waiting at home. Somewhere along the line, I thought, we had slipped into the wrong novel. We'd started out in Helen Fielding, and ended up in Anita Brookner.
Hazel was wearing a plain black shift dress with a red cardigan. She had left off her makeup, and wore glasses instead of contact lenses. As a
consequence, she looked older and more weathered than her usual glossy self. She wasn't so obsessed with her appearance when she was in red-hot working mode. Work always came first with Hazel—I remembered this from college.
“The ad revenues are down, so we're changing the design again,” she told me gloomily, halfway into the first glass of red wine. “Heads are rolling all over the place. At one point, I wondered if I'd still have a job when I got back. How're things over at
Stairlift Monthly
?”
“Never mind me,” I said. “I want to hear about you. How was it at home?”
“Hell,” Hazel said darkly. “I've been interrogated about every single aspect of my life. Why am I not married? Why is my skirt so short? Why do I disfigure myself with this haircut? I tell you, Cassie—you're lucky to have parents who don't try to control you.”
I considered this. My mother had never tried to control me. My father had stopped trying when he stopped giving me money. Their indifference still smarted. I didn't feel lucky.
“Your dad must have been pleased to see you, though,” I said.
Hazel laughed bitterly. “Well, you'd think so, wouldn't you? I'd got him a fabulous flower arrangement. It took up the entire backseat of my car.”
“That must have cost you a bit.”
“Actually, it was a freebie. A tampon company sent it to the office as part of a promotion.”
“Oh well. Waste not, want not,” I offered. “It's the thought that counts.”
“I needn't have bothered. I was hardly through the door before he started saying he was allergic to it. I had to leave the bloody thing out in the corridor.”
“Still, if he's up to criticizing you, doesn't that mean he's feeling better?”
Hazel smiled. “My mum said he needed someone to have a go at. She said it perked him up just to see the terrible color I'd dyed my hair.”
“You'd think he'd be proud of you.”
“But he is, in his way,” Hazel said. “He tells everyone about me,
apparently—the doctors and nurses certainly seemed to know a lot about my CV” She sighed. “I wish he could express it to me, that's all.”
“Is he still in hospital?”
“He came home yesterday—fit as a fucking fiddle and threatening to call the police if I didn't get my rear light fixed—and I took the opportunity to escape back to civilization.”
“It sounds as if you've been behaving like a saint,” I told her. “You need to do something thoroughly self-indulgent. Such as falling in love.” (I was, naturally, thinking about Ben.)
Hazel sighed, and said, “I don't know if I've got it in me any more. Seeing Dad strapped up to a heart monitor—well, it made me think. I know it's a cliché,” she added, “but in that situation, you put your life under the microscope. And I didn't much like the look of mine. Thank God he didn't die, because when he does, half my life will become redundant. I won't know how to fall in love.”
“What do you mean? Why not?”
“I realized that I've always fallen in love to annoy my dad,” she said. “I've been attracted to exactly the type of men he hates—and I was the one who got hurt, so what was the point? I've decided I need to break the habit of a lifetime, and fall for someone kind. How d'you do that, Cassie?” Luckily, she didn't wait for a reply. “Let's have another bottle.”
On the other side of the bar, the door suddenly burst open, and five or six noisy people erupted into the room like a flock of starlings. Shouting and laughing, they all squeezed themselves round one tiny table.
“I bet they're actors,” Hazel said scornfully. “Look at the way they're all talking into the mirror.”
“Oh my God,” I said. They were indeed actors, and one of them was Felicity Peason. Sultry and pouting, she sat with her glossy black hair tumbled over one shoulder. Let's be honest, she was breathtaking. Think of a posher and slightly grungier Catherine Zeta Jones.
Hazel, with her professional eye for the glossy, spotted her at once. “What a great-looking woman. Do you know her?”
“Not really,” I said. “Not enough to want to talk to her.” We were on the other side of the large room, and the actors were far too up themselves
to notice us. I would have liked Hazel to stop staring at them. Before I could distract her, however, her beady gaze darted toward the door.
“That's Fritz Darling, isn't it?”
With no idea that I was watching him, Fritz breezed into the bar and joined the crowded table. He sat beside Felicity. Her cold, sulky face was suddenly transformed by a thousand-megawatt smile. She kissed him on the lips.
“Yes, that's Fritz,” I managed to say. I hadn't yet told Hazel about Fritz and Annabel—and I couldn't talk about it until I was over the shock.
To do Fritz justice, he had jerked his head away immediately after the treacherous kiss. But it was blatantly obvious that Peason was making a play for him, and equally obvious that he was very powerfully attracted. I remembered Fritz's historic talent for ignoring his better self in the face of sex, for binding and gagging his good shoulder-angel. I was on the other side of the room, but I saw and sensed the electricity between them.
I could not tell Annabel anything, however, on the basis of one kiss. And it was always possible that my envy was warping my perception. Wasn't I making too much of this? Weren't actors constantly slobbering all over each other?
“I haven't seen him since college, but I'd know the bugger anywhere,” Hazel said. “He's still gorgeous. You snogged him once, didn't you?”
“Yes, at the party we threw after our A levels.”
“So what happened?”
“I don't know,” I said, deliberately vague. “As soon as we got to Oxford, we went off in opposite directions.”
“What a waste,” Hazel said wistfully. “I snogged him once, you know.”
“Really?” I decided to pretend not to know.
“I often wonder what would've happened if I'd been sober. I wonder if we'd have gone all the way.”
“I'm sure you would,” I said.
Hazel grinned at me suddenly. “Tell me something, Cassie. If Fritz is so easy to get into bed, why haven't you ever tried?”
“Oh, I've never wanted to.”
“Come on,” Hazel said, laughing. “Even lesbians want to sleep with Fritz.”
“We were sort of brought up together. Maybe we've known each other too long.”
“Hmmm. Remind me to put some money in the blind box.”
Across the crowded room, through a forest of heads, I looked at Fritz. He was laughing. Peason leaned against him, seemingly casual. Oh, how I hoped Fritz had acquired enough intelligence to see through her repertoire of smolders and pouts (long hair and generous breasts are essential to carry these off).
“Let's go and find somewhere to eat,” I said, standing up quickly with my back to them. “I'm ravenous.”
I was not ravenous. I just wanted to get out before Fritz saw me. To be honest, I wasn't thinking of Annabel. I just couldn't bear to meet his dazzled gaze when it was full of someone else.
F
or the moment, there was no time for anything except work. My centenary edition went to press, and was printed to (comparatively) huge acclaim. All the broadsheet newspapers suddenly remembered the existence of
The Cavendish Quarterly
and decided it was a national treasure. Phoebe (still rather embarrassingly wedded to scrapbooks of our triumphs) cut out several pictures of me at my desk trying to look intellectual. I appeared on
Late Review
, and was all over Radio Four like a rash.
Even Matthew was impressed, and minded my long words less than usual. He was busy too. We managed sex perhaps four times in as many weeks. One night, he blurted out that he had sold our Salzburg tickets to a colleague—frivolous summer jaunts being out of the question for someone who worked as hard as he did. He was tender because I was good about it, and I was good about it because I was relieved. Cracks were appearing in my culture. A year ago, when Matthew obtained the tickets, I had almost convinced myself that I was delighted. Now I admitted what I had always known: that so many classical music geeks in one place would have driven me over the nearest cliff.
Matthew said, “It's not just my schedule I'm thinking about. I knew you wouldn't want to be away from Phoebe.”
He was right, though I couldn't bear to admit that the sand was running through the hourglass. It wasn't that the decline was visible, or shocking. She tired more easily, and now spent most of her day lying on the sofa in the sitting room. I visited her every weekend, and at least two evenings a week. And each time I saw her, she had faded just a little more.
Annabel often joined us when Fritz was rehearsing. Fritz's rehearsals seemed to take place at all sorts of odd hours. The unpaid production had, apparently, taken a turn for the better.
“He just loves rehearsals now,” Annabel told us happily. “He can't get enough of them.”
Phoebe said, “That's Fritz all over—limitless dedication.”
I kept my lingering suspicions to myself. Only a monster would have tarnished the happiness of these two doting females. I had to listen to endless hymns of praise to Fritz. Phoebe made me lift the big photo albums down from the top shelf in the sitting room, so she could show Annabel pictures of Fritz through the ages.
Actually, that evening turned out to be rather fun. The flood of memories made Phoebe lively. She showed us herself as a bride, doe-eyed and impossibly young. Jimmy, we all agreed, was the image of Fritz. Annabel blushed to see how Fritz might look in morning dress.
On the next page, after some winning pictures of a pregnant Phoebe in a Laura Ashley smock, Fritz made his first appearance. I have to report that he was an absolutely adorable baby—fat and twinkly and curly, crowing in the arms of his laughing young mother (if Fritz had known what we were doing, he would have been mortified). A page later he was a grinning toddler, awkwardly holding a very apprehensive-looking baby
Annabel cried, “Oh, look at Ben! Isn't he beautiful?”
There was a pause in the pictures, while Phoebe listed all the times Fritz had tried to kill or maim his infant brother. I had heard these stories often, and I loved hearing them again. The familiar words were like the sound of the wind in the chimney, or the ticking of a venerable clock. Once upon a time, in the great legend of the past, Jimmy caught Fritz bundling the baby out of the playroom window. In his earliest days Ben had been poisoned with eyedrops, choked with jelly babies and stifled with soft toys.
“And yet,” Phoebe said, “in between all that, Fritz absolutely adored him. I offered to tell him a story once, and he wouldn't let me until Ben woke up, so he could hear it too.”
“How lovely,” Annabel said.
Phoebe giggled. “He spent the next half-hour trying to pinch Ben awake—I had terrible trouble getting that baby enough sleep. Fritz said he was lazy. Look, here they are in the garden. I don't remember when,
but Fritz must be in one of his generous moods—he's allowing Ben to wear his pirate hat.”
I felt the threat of tears at the back of my throat, like dull thunder. There was something desperately poignant about these remnants of the life before death.
At that moment I loved the Darling boys intensely, as if that could help them when they lost everything. I couldn't bear to be suspicious about Fritz. How dared I judge him, or think at all badly of him, when he was the light of Phoebe's eyes?
 
Oddly enough, that unpaid fringe production of
Rookery Nook
turned out to be a good career move for Fritz. At some point during rehearsals, the company had decided to reverse the genders of all the roles. Fritz, though appearing and behaving as a man, was actually playing the runaway girl in pajamas, and Felicity Peason was playing the young man who falls in love with her. On paper it was pointless and pretentious, but it played surprisingly well. The farce is great enough to carry a whole stage full of terrible actors—and Fritz, for once, was rather good. I was impressed by the flirtatious and slightly kinky way he acted up to his silk pajamas. Both the
Telegraph
and the
Guardian
mentioned the “elegance” and “intelligence” of Frederick Darling's performance.
The agent who had expressed an interest in Fritz promptly offered to take him on. He didn't have to wait long for gainful employment either. The sex-change
Rookery Nook
caused all kinds of excitement among the executors of the Travers estate, the controversy generated interest, and the production moved triumphantly to the Gielgud Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue, for a twelve-week run at full West End rates.
But I'm running ahead of myself. Matthew surprised me by agreeing to come to the first night of the unpaid fringe production, though it was a weekday and he didn't like Fritz. I think he was still feeling guilty about Salzburg. He came straight from work, in a pale gray suit from Hackett, clutching his briefcase. I stood guard at his elbow, trying to look as if we belonged together. I was in my jeans and the Paul Smith shirt, so it was tricky.
After the show, which he said he'd enjoyed, Matthew explained that he had to go home, to finish preparing for his early-morning meeting.
“Fuck,” I said. “You mean I cleaned that bath for nothing?”
We were in a packed theater bar, and I only said this because I knew he couldn't hear.
“What?”
I raised my voice. “I said, poor you—you'll miss the party.”
“Oh, I don't think that'll be quite my sort of thing. I never know what to say to actors.”
Once Matthew had pushed himself disdainfully through the shabby crowd, I could let my face relax. I bought myself a large gin and tonic. Fritz and Annabel had driven an exhausted but delighted Phoebe home (Ben was away in Bury St. Edmunds, accompanying Neil at a recital of Schumann
lieder
). While I waited for them to come back, I wove through the forest of braying theatricals, into the comparative peace of the auditorium.
The stage manager and a woman from the cast were lining up bottles of plonk and plastic glasses on the stage, and striking the more delicate pieces of the set. There was to be a traditional first-night party, and I knew what to expect. They would all be aquaplaning with elation, clutching at each other, shrieking company in jokes, and generally ignoring anyone who belonged to the outside world. If Annabel didn't hurry back I'd be stranded here without a soul to talk to.
Peason entered, stage right. She halted under the strongest light to fling her long hair over her shoulder. She was wearing a fabulous dress of heavy scarlet silk. She automatically preened and bridled at the empty seats, then squinted as she saw me.
“Hi, Cassie.”
“Hi, Felicity.” I took a few steps toward her. “That was marvelous. You were brilliant.” (You have to say this, even to actors you hate; it's rather like bowing to the altar in church.)
“I was incredibly nervous,” Peason said. “God, I could murder a drink.” She took a bottle from the table and sloshed red wine into a plastic glass. The stage was only a few inches higher than the floor. Peason stepped off it, out of the spotlight. “So you really think it went well?”
Her smile was attractive. She had learned to put some warmth in it.
“Beautifully,” I said.
“By the way, have you seen Fritz? I've been looking everywhere.”
“He's taking Phoebe home.”
“Oh.” She was put out. “I thought Annabel was dealing with all that.”
“Fritz likes to be sure Phoebe's all right.”
“Oh shit. What a nuisance.” Peason's cold, level gaze locked into mine, and I felt I was looking into the very depths of her black heart. She didn't give a damn about Phoebe, and considered Annabel less than the dust. She hadn't changed one tiny bit, I thought; I was free to dislike her as much as ever.
“You'd think they'd leave him alone on his first night.”
“Maybe he doesn't want to be left alone,” I said. “Sorry, but you do know that Fritz and Annabel are an item, don't you?”
She laughed theatrically, up and down the scale. “An item! God, how sweet. Are they both coming back for the party, do you know? Or will Annabel stay behind to look after the mother?”
“They're both coming back,” I said, teeth gritted.
“Really? I sort of assumed that was what Annabel was
for.
Oh well.”
She undulated past me, in a cloud of scent, toward the bar. The moment she opened the door, there were loud cries (“Felicity! Dahling!”) from the adoring multitudes waiting behind it.
I sat down on one of the seats, to finish my gin in peace. Peason thought she had won. Did that mean she had already seduced Fritz? No, I couldn't believe that. But she meant to have him, and I didn't trust him to resist. I knew for a fact that he fancied her. During the performance, the whole stage had throbbed to their mutual attraction—and Fritz wasn't that good an actor. Poor Annabel.
I was suddenly incredibly lonely. At least poor Annabel had people around her tonight—my Fritz and my Phoebe. I had no one. If I left the party now, nobody would notice. I wouldn't speak to another living soul until half past nine tomorrow morning when I arrived at the office. I ached for a little love, for warmth, for intimacy. I longed for Matthew. At the beginning, when we were first in love, he used to massage my feet if he thought I looked stressed. I had one of those snapshot memories of looking down at the top of his dark blond head, and loving the way his hair was thinning slightly because I was at that stage of love where your lover's flaws pierce you with their sweetness.
We'd made that agreement about “space.” But this was an emergency. I was aching to batter down the wall between us. Perhaps, I thought, he
needs to see how much I need him. Perhaps I've been too independent and self-sufficient. Perhaps he was holding back because I hadn't run out far enough to meet him?
I fought my way through the bar and went out into the street. I rang Matthew, and got his answering service. This didn't mean anything, however. He often unplugged the phone when he had a lot of work on. I decided to buy a bottle of wine and take a taxi to his place. Matthew would be surprised to see me—but very pleased, and possibly sexually aroused by my vulnerability. We would make love, and he would whisper (as he had done once before, long ago), “I want to hold you safe with me forever.”
Please don't laugh. What followed isn't remotely funny.
 
Matthew's pristine flat was an island of gracious living in a sea of urban nowhere. I stood on the street of shuttered shops, craning up at the converted warehouse, which had been expensively carved into yuppie apartments. The lights were on in his windows. I dug around in my bag. The keys to Matthew's flat had hung unused on my key ring since he gave them to me. I used the first to let myself into the hall. I took the lift up to the fourth floor.
I had been here before, of course, but not for many months.
On the dim landing, I heard a cry.
I tried to work out which flat it was coming from, and heard another cry. Then a series of them, rather like a seal barking—sort of “Uff! Uff! Uff!”
I listened, and refused to understand. I was as cold as a ghost, as mechanical as a robot. I simply refused to believe it, until the knife had plunged all the way into my guts. I opened Matthew's door and closed it behind me very quietly. Strange as it seems, my main feeling was intense excitement.
The door to the bedroom stood open at the end of the short corridor.
“Uff! Uff!” cried the seal.
I crept toward the light, my pulse beating uncomfortably in my throat.
When I saw them, the shock whacked the breath right out of my body, so that I gasped aloud. The terrible picture froze (it's branded on my memory to this day, formal and static, like a Renaissance painting).
A woman was sitting on the flat, white, hard bed. She was naked. Her
legs were spread wide, and Matthew was kneeling on the floor vigorously giving her head.

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