Exposure (15 page)

Consequently love had always sounded to him like a semi-religious experience, a displacement of the ego, an absorption into another. In other words, love was the exact opposite of the power he had over Lucy. All he wanted was to get closer—always closer—to Arianne. He could not bear to lose her for even a second to any of her modes of escape.

By the end of the month, Luke felt his arrival at work noted in a way it never had been before. He saw the way ambitious younger colleagues looked up, then quickly down again as he rushed in late, saying, 'Sorry, guys,' aware that he smelt of cigarettes and that he had toothpaste at the corner of his mouth.

He began to eat lunch at his desk to show dedication. Twelve thirty came and, very conspicuously, he
didn't move.
The others all got up, of course, but he merely clickety-clicked his mouse and called out, 'Have fun, you lot,' to the frivolous young. He felt like an idiot behaving this way. Eating at your desk was miserable and he spilt soy sauce right into his keyboard where it congealed into a tar-like substance, which, it occurred to him, also looked disturbingly like dried blood.

During one of these desk-lunches, his assistant, Jenny, came over and told him, with a mixture of concern and spite, that his absences had been mentioned in a board meeting. Perversely, faced with fact rather than paranoid fantasy, he found it hard to care. He offered her a California roll.

'Oooh, yummy, thanks. So, what's going on?' she said. He grinned at her and she shook her head. 'Oh dear. I hope it's legal.' She put the roll into her mouth. 'They're good, these. You go to that posh place on the corner, don't you? How the other half live.'

She looked plump and forgiving in her straining pink shirt, the black trousers taut round her crossed legs. He appreciated her gentle mockery—mostly because he was beginning to feel afraid that he was losing control of his job and her winking and smiling somehow domesticated this fear. He wanted to think of a reason to ask her to stay, to eat her lunch at the desk with him, be an ally against the younger faces, who were all plainly wondering if Arianne was going to leave him. (No, that wasn't it. They knew nothing about Arianne, for God's sake. He had to get a grip.)

But it turned out that Jenny had her own work to get on with. She slid off the desk with a tight scrape of the lining of her trousers against her tights. 'Righty-ho. Shall I print off that file Damian Green sent or shall I just email?'

Her sudden professionalism hurt his feelings. 'Oh. Um—just zap it out. I've got a copy. Yes, do that. Thanks.' He wanted her to ask him again if everything was OK, because just then he would have liked to tell her all about Arianne. He would have liked to go out for coffee with smiling, plump Jenny and tell her about his intense fear of losing his girlfriend. He would have liked to hear her smiling, plump interpretation of it all. Was it normal, the panic he felt when Arianne looked away, out of a window or deep into her glass? Was it standard, during supper, to feel you were plummeting down a lift-shaft?

A few nights before, in one of her desperate moods, Arianne had said, 'I
have
to get my fucking
life
together, Luke. I need some stability. I have to set up some things I can believe in. You know? Why is it so fucking hard?'

She hurled a hairbrush against the wall and it bounced back on to the floor and skidded towards them on its bristles. They watched it slow down and stop.

'Hey, you've got me, Arianne. I'm stable, aren't I? I
love
you.' He tried to undo the shirt she was putting on and she slapped away his hand.

'I'm being serious, Luke. I mean
real
stability—
money, career.'
She sighed deeply and slugged back her wine.

Luke thought how much he would have liked to see Jenny's face listening, nodding, the shiny pink lips pressed together in sympathy. Could he look pitiful and regain her attention? He watched her walking away across the open-plan office, the whistling prairie. Was it normal, this desire to ask everyone what they thought of the most private details of his life? Perhaps he should call his mother, he thought. He looked at his phone to see if Arianne had sent a text message. She had not.

Why?
Why
had she not sent a text message? Just three weeks ago she had sent him one or two an hour.

He tried to control his breathing and opened an email from Lindsey Wicks at Calmaderm.

 

Without discussing it, Arianne and Luke began to see friends together, rather than spending all their time alone. Luke thought the stimulation would do her good. In fact, he found it did him good, too. One night, at a dinner party at Ludo's flat, he was happily surprised to see Jessica, who had recently been working all hours on some kind of a film and was known to refuse all invitations if she had a job.

At the start of the evening, looking disappointed, Ludo had told Luke that Jessica couldn't make it because of work. But at around ten thirty she called and said she had finished early and were there any leftovers? Ludo told her to come quickly because the tiramisu looked positively X-rated. It turned out she was already on the doorstep with a bottle of wine.

It was typical of her. She was ravenously hungry and she happily ate the tepid remains of the couscous and two helpings of tiramisu and Luke spent the rest of the evening catching up with her. She was co-producing a documentary and the things she told him about the filming genuinely fascinated him. Luke loved taking photographs and had once dreamt of doing a course, but it had not been something he felt he could mention to anyone. He had taken a lot of photographs during his gap-year, and he still did whenever he went on holiday, but it was a peculiar fact that he had never taken any in England. Not a single shot. Somehow, in his own country, he was always conscious of the judgement of his father or his sister—and he felt sure that even his mother would think photographs were just a big nothing in comparison to oil painting. And, anyway, he knew perfectly well that he wasn't creative. He was an account manager.

He and Jessica had a natural, easy friendship and, for a few moments, he was consciously glad to be free of the obligation to please Arianne. He felt himself relax and simply enjoy another person's company. Talking to Jessica was like crossing the equator to a temperate climate.

'God, you two have been in your own little world, haven't you?' she said. 'You're missed, you know. I'm not being all preachy, but friends are important.'

'Yes, I know,' Luke said. He felt close to tears. What a wonderful, peaceful,
simple
thing friendship was. He couldn't believe how much he had undervalued it these past weeks.

'You are OK, aren't you, babe?' Jessica asked him. 'You look all sad and tired. Do I need to worry?'

'Oh, God, I'm fine. I'm just—I'm just
feeling
so much, these days. You know what I mean?'

'I think so,' she told him. This was so unlike him that she wondered if Arianne had got him doing too much coke. She considered Luke to be incredibly restrained and English, really—like his mother. She couldn't account for this outburst. 'Babe, you'd always call me if you needed anything, wouldn't you?'

He studied her gentle, intelligent,
forgiving
face. 'You're so fantastic, Jess,' he said.

When they said goodbye, he and Jessica hugged each other for a long time. She whispered, 'That's a very highly strung girl you're involved with.'

'Yes, I know,' he said. 'It's a bit difficult sometimes. But love's supposed to be sort of demanding, isn't it? And I mean just look at her.'

She didn't look at Arianne but smiled at him and although he smiled back, she couldn't help but be struck by the gloomy incomprehension in his eyes. He seemed mystified by this girl. 'Oh, Luke, do be careful. You must remember to look after yourself. You're no good to her if you don't.'

'No, you're absolutely right. And I am,' he assured her.

Arianne was silent on the way home. She had accused him of ignoring her at dinner. She had hissed at him in the hallway. The way her tiny ponytail bounced as she trotted down Ludo's stairs ahead of him was the most frightening thing Luke had ever seen. And now that they sat in the back seat of a mini-cab, he watched the streedights running over her closed eyes and her beautiful, passive face in increasing panic. When they got back she went straight to the bathroom and locked the door.

This was the first time she had shown a desire for privacy. Luke sat in the kitchen, listening resentfully to the water pouring over her body. He was astonished by how jealous it made him feel. He actually considered turning on the cold tap to see if the water would blast out hot on her, making her jump out, breaking up the lovers' tryst. Then he thought he must be going mad and he laughed and massaged his temples and poured himself a large gin and tonic. Was he jealous of
water?

But he felt uneasy until he heard the shower stop and the door open. She came into the kitchen, naked, a white towel wrapped round her hair. The heat came off her skin and she smelt of shampoo and body cream. She paused by the fruit bowl and rolled a grape between her fingers.

'Arianne?' he said.

She rolled the grape down her arm and flicked it from her elbow into the palm of her hand again. Her actions were all this precise. What on earth were her thoughts like? She was supple, glowing from the shower.

'Look, I'm really sorry,' he said—though he was not at all sure what he had done wrong. Surely she didn't think he was interested in Jessica.

'I don't know your friends, Luke.'

'You know Ludo and ... well, you know Jess.'

'It's not being a gentleman to leave a woman alone in that way. It's not
manly.'

He couldn't understand what she meant. She had been sitting between his friends James and Joe, who were both great fun and Joe had plainly thought she was stunning, which always pleased her. But he had not been 'manly' in some way. He took her word for it and was appalled. 'I'm so sorry,' he said. 'I won't let it happen again.'

She put the grape into her mouth. 'OK.'

'I really am, Arianne. I never want to upset you.'

'It's OK. Stop apologizing. I'm a bitch. Forget it all.'

'But I've hurt you.'

'No, you haven't. I'm just—I'm just crazy.' She covered her face with both hands. 'Ugh—just don't listen to anything I say! I'm horrible and you're lovely. I'm an evil bitch and you're a good, honest man. And now we're going to go to bed and I'll do anything you want, OK? Anything. I don't even care if it hurts. In fact, I want it to hurt.'

He stood up, a little uncertainly, and held her in his arms. He kissed her for a moment, and the kiss contained the full, singing force of a last-minute reprieve, a note delivered to the executioner. Then she swivelled round and leant over the kitchen table, turned her head back and smiled broadly at him as her hands gripped the aluminium legs.

 

It would have been hard to say at that stage which was the expression and which the reality of his love—sex or emotion. His mind and body were inextricable. Emotion characterized sex and sex reiterated emotion. There was no sense of release from either. Afterwards he lay beside her, thinking and feeling, feeling and thinking in the tangled sheets.

It seemed natural to him to assume responsibility for all Arianne's practical concerns. He felt it was the least—while fearing it was the most—that he could do. He guaranteed a loan for her from her bank, which had been sceptical about the financial reliability of hopeful young actresses. 'You're my guardian angel,' she said, 'aren't you, baby?' and Luke knew he had never felt more pride.

He made sure the local deli delivered all her favourite food: plain yoghurt and bran sticks, double chocolate fudge ice-cream and vodka; apples—green, not red
ever,
he had made this fatal error once—and butter and honey and crumpets. It was all wildly inconsistent.

'I think it balances me,' she explained. 'Maybe not. Anyway, who cares?'

He adored watching her eat—anything, really, but particularly crumpets. She spontaneously toasted them in the middle of the night after a bubble bath. She sat on the window-seat in her knickers. Her mouth shone with butter and she let him lick the drips of warm, buttery honey off her bare legs, giggling at him. 'Oh, Luke—it
tickles!'

'Sorry, darling. Should I stop?'

'No, no. You can carry on—"
darling
",' she teased, with the rest of the crumpet stuffed into her mouth.

He paid for cabs to take her to her drama class and to bring her back home again. They were booked in advance. She did not walk anywhere if she could help it. The swelling had gone down on her foot, but she still limped heavily. She refused to see a doctor, saying she was sure it was healing perfectly normally. Did he think there was something
wrong
with her, she wanted to know, that she was somehow too
incompetent
to get better without some
man
in a white coat? It was sexism!

'Look, you don't have to carry me if you don't want to—if that's what this is
really about,'
she said. 'But you'll just have to allow extra time when we go out or whatever, because you know I can't do anything quickly, Luke. Not with the pain.'

He felt terrible. She always wondered what people's words were 'really about'. She had no faith in the literal. She expected lies and subtext.

'Hey, don't be silly, darling. I'm just worried about you, that's all. I love carrying you up the stairs. It's romantic.'

She smiled at him—a sad, unconvinced smile.

He castigated himself. What had he been thinking? Again he had let her down with his mundane nagging about doctors. He deserved the flash of fear, the shock of anxiety her words 'allow extra time' had sent through him.

What '
extra time
'? he thought. Already he was spending it all on her. He had no time to work, less time than ever to see his friends. She demanded everything of him. And when she looked away sadly, beyond what he was already doing, he followed her gaze to a wasteland of his own inadequacy. He must not give her reason to doubt he could cope, not for one second.