Love Always (24 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

‘Hi, Nat. Same again?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘Flat white coming up, my dear. Sit back down, it’ll be ready in a minute.’

I sit down at the counter, watching the organised mayhem behind as Arthur, the owner, and his two cohorts juggle with beans, huge silver machines belching steam, frothing milk, and paper cups, as people stand patiently waiting for their orders to come through. I watch the world go by, the smell of fresh bagels from the shop next door wafting tantalisingly in, as Brick Lane slowly comes alive again. I love the early mornings here, before the tourists and the hungry hordes arrive, when it’s just people who live here, work here.

I have been here since it opened at seven, sitting on a tall stool, staring out of the window and trying to read the papers, but I can’t. I haven’t slept yet. It is just after eight.

‘Nat?’ someone behind me says. ‘Hey, I thought it was you.’

I turn round slowly, and look up. ‘Oh, Ben. Hi.’

Ben stares at me. I must look delightful, unbrushed hair, no sleep, bump on forehead, in an assortment of crazy clothes. I had to get out of the flat. ‘How weird.’ He stares at me. ‘I was just thinking about you. We didn’t see you yesterday after lunch. Wondered if you were OK. Tania, look—’

He pats his girlfriend’s arm and Tania looks up. She smiles when she sees me. ‘Nat, how are you?’

‘I’m fine,’ I say. They both look me over. ‘You don’t look fine,’ Ben says. ‘Natasha . . . ?’ I look through the window. Oli is staring at me. He pushes open the door. ‘Where the hell did you go?’ he says angrily. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you, you just ran off—’

‘I didn’t want to wake you,’ I say. I push my hand through my hair.

Ben and Tania are still staring at us, with increasing discomfort.

‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Oli, you’ve met Ben. And this is Tania.’ I wave my arm limpidly at them, as if it’s filled with heavy liquid.

Ben steps forward. ‘Hi, Oli,’ he says. He stretches out one thick, blue jumper-clad arm. ‘It’s good to see you again.’

‘Thanks,’ Oli says, pumping his arm back heartily. ‘Ben – yes, it’s good to see you. We met at that open studio night a few months ago, didn’t we? You’re a photographer, aren’t you, I really liked your stuff.’

This conversation is unreal. I want to pinch myself. ‘Hey. Thanks. Thanks a lot.’ Ben smiles at him, and turns back to me.

‘Tania’s Ben’s girlfriend. She works with him,’ I say. ‘Not any more,’ Tania says hurriedly, as if she wants to fill the void. ‘But we used to.’

Oli waves his hand to attract Arthur’s attention. ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.’ How could I not have noticed she wasn’t working there any more?

‘No, it’s fine,’ she says, smiling. Ben drums his fingers on the counter. ‘Look, we should go,’ he says. ‘Um – good to see you both. See you around, I guess,’ he says to Oli.

‘Sure, mate,’ Oli says, not really listening. ‘Nat – see you at the studio.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘See you – see you soon.’ I watch them go, Ben striding down the street, Tania next to him. It occurs to me then that they didn’t order anything.

‘Weird guy,’ Oli says. ‘Got a crush on you.’

‘No, he hasn’t,’ I say, picking at a napkin. ‘He has. He’s the one who likes Morecambe and Wise, isn’t he?’ He laughs. ‘That hair, and those big jumpers . . . Weird guy.’

‘He’s not weird,’ I say tiredly. ‘He’s lovely. I’ve known him for years, remember. He’s a good man.’

A good man. That’s what he is. I think it now, and I turn to Oli, turn and stare at him. Is he a good man?

‘I’m starving,’ Oli says, patting his pockets. ‘I’m going to order some food.’

Arthur’s voice rises with pleasure. ‘Oli, great to see you again, it’s been a while now. Where you been?’

Oli smiles and pulls out his wallet. ‘Working too hard, I guess.’

‘Neglecting your beautiful wife?’ Arthur is shaking his head. ‘You want to be careful. I’ll snap her up if you don’t watch it!’ He laughs and, of course, we laugh merrily back. ‘Same as usual?’

Oli nods. ‘Yeah. Same as usual.’ He comes back, and sits on the stool next to me. ‘I thought you might be here.’

Before all this, we virtually lived at Arthur’s, which is at the top end of Brick Lane. It’s a little bit Brooklyn New York wannabe, with simple wooden tables, chalked menus, and every third person owns a MacBook, but the food is delicious and the coffee is great. And Arthur is friendly and genuine, and it’s locals of all ages here, not just tourists, and we could sit here happily for hours and read the papers. It’s very lifestyle section. Our life together was, I’ve been realising, very lifestyle section.

I nod. ‘Sorry. I needed to get out. You were still asleep.’ Oli touches my hand. ‘Look,’ he says. ‘You can’t just run away again. We need to talk about this.’

‘We talked about it last night,’ I say, knowing I am being ridiculous.

‘We didn’t!’ Oli raises his voice and people look round. ‘I just didn’t want to talk about it any more,’ I say. ‘Well, locking the bedroom door on me and going to sleep isn’t exactly—’

‘I didn’t sleep,’ I say. ‘I just – I didn’t want to talk about it. Any more.’ I couldn’t. I got into our bed, staring at the ceiling until he stopped knocking, and then there was silence in the sitting room, followed by snoring, and I lay there for the rest of the night, looking at nothing, not crying, not feeling anything. I don’t know why, even. Perhaps I was afraid of what I’d do if I let go, of all the tension, the fear, the rage inside me.

‘You shut the door, Nat. You locked it.’ Because our flat used to be an office, it has locks on the doors. ‘What was I supposed to do, just leave? Don’t you understand what I was saying last night?’

‘Yes, I understand,’ I say in a quiet voice. ‘You want us to split up. Do you want a divorce?’

‘I don’t know . . .’ He runs his hands through his hair. ‘Oh, shit. I don’t know.’ He looks at his watch as he says this and I absolutely know he’s wondering how late he’s going to be for work. Oli is not a workaholic: it’s more than that. He genuinely loves his job. Loves the office, the environment. It’s like a stage for him. He should have been an actor. Last year, he missed his own birthday dinner because he was working. ‘We need to talk, though . . .’ Oli taps my arm, trying to get me to look at him, not out of the window. ‘You do see that, don’t you?’

I take a deep breath. ‘I don’t see what there is to talk about, really,’ I say, my voice very small. I am so tired. ‘You’re in love with someone else, you want a divorce, and there isn’t much I can do about it.’

Oli crunches up one of those shiny brown napkins in his fist. ‘Natasha. Don’t you want to know why?’

‘Not really,’ I say, trying to stay calm. ‘Because look at it from my point of view. I was just going along thinking every-thing’s fine, and the next thing I know everything’s crumbled around us, and I don’t understand why.’ I bite my lip, and I can feel the tears welling up, water swimming in front of my eyes and then pouring down my cheeks, almost as if it’s unconnected with me. ‘I – I know everything wasn’t perfect, but I love you, Ol. So I don’t understand . . .’

He makes a clicking sound with his tongue, and puts his hand on mine. ‘Oh, God.’

I wipe the tears off my cheeks with the back of my hand, but they keep falling, falling onto the pile of brown napkins, into my coffee. ‘I just – I mean, how long’s it been going on?’ I look at him, and see his eyes are full of tears too.

‘I don’t know. Not long. Since that night we had together.’

‘And you really – wow.’ I shake my head. ‘You’re leaving me for her. For
Chloe
.’ I exaggerate her name.

‘Natasha, babe – it’s not like that.’

‘What’s it like, then?’ I say. It’s so depressing, the clichés, the questions you’ve heard asked on TV shows and films a million times before. In a minute, he’s going to say, I love you, but I’m not
in
love with you, and then I really will lose it.

At this exact moment Arthur puts the coffee and toast down in front of us with a smile. ‘Here you go, guys!’ he says.

I turn my head away till he’s gone, waiting for Oli to speak. He runs his tongue nervously, quickly, over his cracked lips, and he says, ‘What’s it like? It’s like, I think our marriage was over a while ago. And we didn’t see it.’ I open my mouth, but he shifts his stool closer to mine and says, ‘I’m gonna say all this now, while I’ve got the chance, before you kick me out again. You’re a hard woman, Natasha. You’re a hard woman to live with. I don’t think you love me, and you don’t respect me. I don’t know if you ever did.’ He has his hand on his heart and his face is only a couple of inches away.

‘You think I’m hard?’ I say in a whisper. ‘Yes – no.’ Oli’s expression is agonised. ‘Maybe it’s because of your mum. Your family.’

‘They’ve got nothing to do with it!’

‘Really?’ Oli says. ‘Honestly? You’ve got this obsession with Cornwall, with the house and all of them, with your grandmother and all your family living this wonderful life that you can’t replicate.’

I tear the napkin in half. ‘That’s crap.’

He sighs. ‘Maybe it’s your mum. Or because you don’t know who your dad is. Maybe you need to find out. I just feel like you’ve grown this shell around you, and I can’t get through to you any more.’

‘You think this is about
me
?’ I can’t believe it.

Oli’s voice is hoarse. ‘I know what I did was wrong. I slept with someone. I lied to you about it, I carried on seeing her. Me and Chloe – it’s different. It’s new, it’s clean, we don’t have all this baggage that we bring to it—’ He mimes a circle around the two of us.

Someone brushes past us, at our cramped window counter, calling out a farewell to Arthur. I lean in towards Oli. ‘Do you love her?’ I can’t believe we’re sitting here, and I’m asking this question. Again, it’s such a cliché. I hate it.

He nods, and says simply, ‘I think so, yeah.’

‘Right,’ I say. ‘Right then.’

‘But it’s different . . .’ He shakes his head. His big blue eyes are full of tears again. ‘We can talk about work, we’ve got loads in common . . . but she’s not you, Natasha. She’s fun and sweet and she can drink me under the table, and she’s lovely. And she thinks I’m great, and it’s great.’ He says this without irony, and I feel a flush of shame at this. ‘But – I don’t know – she’s not you.’

‘No, she sounds much better than me,’ I say. ‘I’m amazed you’re still here, to be honest.’

He ignores this, and frowns. ‘That’s the thing.’ He swallows. ‘You know something? I never even tried that hard to keep it a secret. I wanted . . .’ He stops. ‘No.’

‘What?’

‘No, I’m not going to say it.’

‘Go on,’ I say. I nudge him. ‘Be honest.’

Oli looks at me. ‘I almost wanted you to find out. So you’d show some emotion. I wanted to hurt you. I wanted you to be hurt.’

He looks at me with a kind of expectation, like, That’s it. I get up, a tear running down my cheek. ‘I’m not listening to this.’

He pulls me against him. ‘You’re not leaving now. Dammit, Natasha!’ Arthur looks over at us, blank surprise on his face. ‘You’re so fucking afraid of anything dark or depressing or real, you can’t admit it into your life at all. You can’t even talk about it.’

‘I cried, night after night for you,’ I hiss at him, wrenching out of his grasp. ‘I bloody
fainted
at my grandmother’s funeral. I don’t sleep, I haven’t done for weeks. All I can do is think about you, about us, about where we’ve gone wrong. Everything
is
dark and depressing and real,
that’s
why I’m crying about it! That’s why I don’t sleep! Ben asked me if I was OK the other day, how things were.’ My voice cracks. ‘He did just now! When do you ever
ever
say, What are you thinking, how are you?’

‘All the time,’ Oli says. ‘You just don’t want to tell me.’

‘Who are you?’ I say. I push his hands away and stand there, looking at him. ‘I don’t know you any more.’

‘I don’t think you do.’ Oli looks up at me, and his smile is ugly, his teeth gritted. ‘Because you saw what you wanted to in me, and you took it,’ he hisses. ‘You never saw the real me. You were looking for someone, I don’t know, a daddy replacement? Someone your mum could fancy too? Someone you could live out your little sophisticated London I’m-not-like-my-mother fantasy with. You’re so fucking
hard
, Natasha! You won’t let anyone in!’

‘That’s not . . . true.’ I am speaking in a whisper. ‘It
is
true! I feel like a fucking Italian, you’re so un emotional! Why do you think I asked you for a divorce? To get a reaction out of you, let you know how serious I am about this! You keep everything to yourself, you put this appearance on all the fucking time that it’s all OK! And it’s not! You have to be in control, this goddess no one can touch.’

‘Shut up,’ I say. ‘Shut up, Oli, it’s not true.’ I want to put my hands over my ears.

‘You treat me like a little boy, Nat, like a stupid little boy with a silly job. And I’m not.’ I am shaking my head, and he breathes in, his nostrils flaring. ‘I’m not, not any more. Most people don’t look at me that way. OK?’