How We Met (26 page)

‘Right, we are going,’ she says, red-faced, through clenched jaw. ‘Fraser, get your stuff.’

He doesn’t know if it’s the caffeine or he just hasn’t grown out of the attitude problem he had when he was thirteen, but he says, ‘No, we’re not going. Why the fuck should we go anywhere?’

Then the man huffs and puffs, before stuffing his things into a laptop bag dramatically and flouncing out like a scorned lover.

‘HAPPY?’ says Anna, and Fraser looks around to see that at least three wooden benches’ worth of students are now staring at them. ‘No, really, we are going this time, Fraser.’ She chivvies him along like a naughty child. ‘Come on. Out, NOW.’

They’re sitting on the piazza, just outside the entrance now, trying to ignore the rain that’s just begun to spot.

‘God, I feel like we’ve been chucked out of a club,’ says Fraser, before stubbing out his cigarette and hugging his knees as he exhales his last lungful of smoke.

Anna scoffs, unamused.

‘YOU feel like that, I feel like I’ve been caught smoking when heavily pregnant – ashamed and humiliated, Fraser. That’s what I feel.’

‘Oh … chill out.’

‘Well, what do you think Liv would think if she could have seen you in there?’

‘She would have applauded me.’

‘She would
not.
’

‘She would! She was my girlfriend, as everyone keeps telling me. I knew her better than anyone else and I can categorically say that actually she would.’

Anna puts her head on her knees and looks at him, side on. There’s a long pause.

‘But did
you
really
know her?’ she says.

‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Nothing, just how well does anyone know anyone? How can you know anyone completely, know what’s going on in someone’s head? That’s all.’

Fraser gives a nervous laugh. ‘You’re freaking me out now.
Basically, all I’m saying is that that man in there was a cock. Anyone could see that. What have I ever done to him – a perfect stranger, lest we not forget – to warrant him telling me off, not once but twice, in a public place?’

‘Karma.’

‘What?’

‘Karma.’ Anna shrugs. ‘What goes around, comes around, what comes around, goes around …’

‘OK, now you sound mad, Anna. Now you sound like
Mystic Meg. Explain,’ demands Fraser. ‘What do you
mean?’

‘I mean, things come back to bite you on the bum, that’s all. Everything happens for a reason, doesn’t it? Life has a habit of … evening things out.’

Fraser rolls his eyes, but inside he feels that familiar tightening. Ever since she’s been seeing Buddhist Steve –
who, in Fraser’s opinion, likes the sound of his own voice rather a lot – she’s been like this, bandying around words like ‘karma’, throwing heavy philosophical questions into perfectly normal conversation. It’s really beginning to get on his tits.

‘
You
need to stop seeing Steve,’ says Fraser. ‘Next, you’ll
be telling me I’m coming back as a widow spider – one shag and I’m dead – and that’ll teach me.’

Anna sighs, wearily, stands up on her long, skinny stalk legs, straightening her skirt.

‘Steve talks a lot of sense, actually. It’s just sense he talks Fraser, nothing more weird than that.’

‘Really? Well, I’m going to the pub – there’s some sense for you – and you can come too if you promise not to mention karma, or to tell me I’m about to face some terrible fate for having a couple of pints.’

He starts to walk, but she doesn’t follow him.

‘Agreed?’ he says, turning back.

‘Yes, OK,’ but Anna is arranging her hair about her shoulders, still thinking.

‘Thank God for that,’ says Fraser, and he starts to walk across the piazza.

But halfway across he hears Anna shout, ‘Look, Fraser,’ and he turns around. ‘It’s not just you I’m talking about, OK? It’s me too.’

They end up in an old pub, a proper boozer, just off the Euston Road.

At first, Fraser finds he is rather enjoying himself. He can’t remember ever being out on a one-to-one with Anna before and she’s good company when she gets a drink inside her: girlish and giggly and – now she’s taken those bloody silly glasses off – much more the Anna of university days.

They talk about her job at the fashion house, her mad boss who starts drinking at 4 p.m., then insists Anna sit in her office, to look at pictures of her dog on her computer.

Fraser tells Anna about his job, too, about misery guts Declan, the veteran of sound recordists, who constantly bangs on about how it was ‘not like this in his day’, and letchy John who spends his days putting cameras down ladies’ tops. ‘Trust me, I’m a sound recordist.’

He confesses how he’s coasting, really, hasn’t taken on any big jobs in ages, but that this suits him at the moment because, almost two years on, he still has too much to think about outside of work.

And this is where it goes wrong. Or perhaps it’s just that Anna’s drunk now, several rum and cokes inside her, but the conversation takes a much more intense turn.

She leans in, across the table.

‘I enjoyed today. It brought back some nice memories. Some
really
nice memories.’

‘Really? Like what?’ says Fraser, hiding his face in his pint glass. He’s not sure he likes the way this conversation is going already.

‘Like reading Wordsworth again. When do I, or you, for that matter, get to read Wordsworth poetry without feeling like a dick?’

‘Oh, no, I did feel like a dick,’ says Fraser. ‘Let’s make no bones about that.’

Anna laughs, a coquettish laugh, but then her smile fades, her face is serious and Fraser gets that feeling again, like he wants to get the hell out of here as quickly as possible.

She tosses her hair, lowers her eyes at him. ‘I didn’t tell you this, because you’d probably think I was being silly – these days you seem to think quite a lot of the things I say are silly, Fraser, to tell you the truth.’

Fraser doesn’t say anything. He smells conflict now and, for once, he’s not getting involved.

‘But I just had this amazing image in my head, when I was sitting in that reading room. The sunlight was coming through the windows, straight onto my desk; it was almost like Liv was there with us, you know?’

‘Really?’

‘Definitely. And I just remembered her then, those times at university, that time we went camping in the Lakes. Do you remember how much she loved water of any kind? Any expanse of water? How she used to just disappear off and we’d find her swimming in Windermere or whatever? You used to joke: “Don’t let Liv smell the water!”’

Fraser does remember that. He has a picture, in fact, of waking up, unzipping his tent, to see Liv’s dark head in the middle of Ullswater, surrounded by sun-dappled rings. ‘Come in!’ It was so cold she was gasping between words. ‘It’s tropical in here!’

But he doesn’t want to talk about Liv right now. He doesn’t want to think about her.

‘Fraser, you know the thing that really gets to me, that I think of when I go to bed at night?’ She’s staring at him intensely now, her blue eyes positively glinting; it’s freaking Fraser out. ‘I think, was she happy when she died? Do you ever wonder whether she was happy when she died?’

Fraser feels the muscles of his face tighten.

‘Well, I guess we’ll never know that, will we?’

Anna pauses.

‘But does that ever worry you, Fraser?’

He blows air through his nose; he can’t believe this. It was like she could read his mind, like she’d found the most tender spot and wanted to stick the knife in. Of course he fucking worried if she was happy when she died. That’s all he worried about. What sort of question was that for his friend, Liv’s friend, to be asking?

He shifts uncomfortably in his chair and then he thinks about it: Why shouldn’t she ask? She didn’t know the demons playing in his mind; she doesn’t know about what happened that night: the kiss, Mia. They were drunk, all of them.

He has played that night and the day before, over and over in his head, examining every little detail, forensically. They’d got up late, as they had every day of the two-week holiday, and he, Mia and Liv had played rummy on the veranda, hung over and in their sunglasses. They’d gone to the beach; just an ordinary day on the beach. Liv had been reading a recipe book – Gary Rhodes and something about a Mediterranean adventure – and they’d all taken the piss out of her mercilessly, because only Liv could bring a recipe book as a beach read.

It was the penultimate night that night, and they’d all discussed how they wanted to save themselves for the last night and had planned a quiet night in, a barbecue at the villa.

Of course, that didn’t happen. They went straight from the beach to a bar. Liv was wearing a white, strappy sundress over her bikini, gorgeous against her two-week tan. They went straight from the bar to a beach-side club. The DJ was playing old skool, 90s tunes. Hands-in-the-air stuff, perfect for their holiday mood.

They were all going for it. The doors of the bar were open, the heady scent of those flowers drifting in. Everything felt good.

He remembers Liv shouting in his ear:

‘I’m going off to swim in Lake Me!’ It was their little joke. ‘Can’t resist that sea a minute longer. Look at it, Frase,’ she’d said, turning towards the beach, ‘isn’t it beautiful?’

And Fraser had turned around too, putting his arm around her to look at the sea, which was almost dancing too, revelling in the moonlight.

Then she’d gone and he hadn’t thought much of it, he’d carried on dancing. The next thing he knew, they were all back at the villa, worse for wear, loud music; they’d brought at least eight randoms with them back from the bar. He has a vague memory of Liv, sopping wet hair plastered to her head, opening the fridge to get a beer out, a puddle of sea water around her feet.

And then of course, hours later, she was gone. That puddle of sea water by the fridge remained. Was she happy? He has no idea. Did she see the kiss? He is almost certain of this.

He says,
‘Look Anna, I don’t know. All I know is that doing this List’ (he was about to lie; he was feeling increasingly more uncomfortable about doing the damned List) ‘is a way of doing the things that
would
have made her happy, and that’s all we can do now. I think it was a brilliant idea of Mia’s, actually. A really thoughtful idea of hers.’

Anna gives a humourless laugh.

‘Yeah, well, you would think that, wouldn’t you?’

Fraser feels the hairs on his skin stand up.

‘What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Why do you keep coming out with this shit?’

‘Well, you know, you and Mia, you seem very close.’

She was very drunk now. Her eyes were swimming.

‘Always having little convos together, hatching your little plans, all that time you hung out after Liv died. You even came to the funeral together.’

Anna was becoming ugly now – why turn against Mia? He didn’t understand.

‘She was Liv’s best friend! My friend. OUR friend.’ His heart was pounding in his chest because he knew no matter how much all these things were true that, in some way, she had betrayed Liv.
They
had betrayed Liv. ‘Why are you being … you’ve gone mental.’

Anna downs her drink in one go, dramatically, affectedly, as though she’s in a film.

Did she order doubles? thinks Fraser. Triples? They’ve only had three drinks and she’s off her head.

He stands up. ‘Look, I’m going. Karen will be wondering where I am and I’m just not up for an argument, Anna. Whereas, I think you might be. I’ll see you soon though, yeah? We’ll meet for a coffee, maybe back here and we can go through the ten lines we’ve learnt then, OK?’

She doesn’t speak, she just sits there, on her stool, swaying slightly, so he pecks her on the cheek and leaves. It’s raining now, a torrential summer downpour, and Fraser stands under the door of the pub, his heart pounding, pulling his jacket o
ver his head.

Just then, Anna comes out.

‘Fraser.’

‘Here,’ he says, ‘stand under here. It’s pissing it down.’

But she doesn’t stand next to him, instead she comes round to face him and, before he can say anything else, she leans in and she kisses him, hard and long on the mouth, so he’s rooted to the spot, he can’t get away.

‘Anna, what the
fuck
?’ He pulls back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and she wobbles, slightly loses her footing on the step and staggers back. She gives him a stunned look, as if she had no idea that was going to happen either,
the rain now coming so hard it’s bouncing off the floor. Then, without saying anything, she runs off, down the lamp-lit street, leaving Fraser standing in the rain, wondering what the hell that was all about.

‘
Espero que todos tenham tido uma boa aula e desejo-lhes um bom fun de semana. O que vocês planejaram?

Translation from Portuguese to English: ‘I hope you all had a good class and I wish you a great weekend. What are you all doing this weekend?’

In a stuffy back room of Lancaster Library, Emilia Neves, six feet plus of Amazonian pedigree – burnished skin, wild green eyes and a cascade of caramel hair – stands in front of her mute class of seven and thinks, How long? How long before I lose my fucking mind with this bunch of imbeciles?

In the corner, Mia sits gnawing on a nail, cringing on Emilia’s behalf, simultaneously regarding her in wonderment. The girl was amazing. She had the patience of a saint. Emilia speaks six languages – Mia knows this because she and Emilia have struck up a rapport, being the only two women in a class of nine. (Perhaps word had got out among the single fifty-something males of Lancaster that a Giselle lookalike was about to take residency in the library.) Her father is one of the richest men in Brazil, and yet she swapped Rio – beautiful Rio, the City of Carnivals and feather headdresses – for this: spending her Friday mornings in an unventilated, provincial library in northwest England, teaching Portuguese to a bunch of middle-aged blokes. Gutted. She must be absolutely gutted. And yet there she is, beaming away, the very picture of sunny, patient encouragement.