Our Tragic Universe (34 page)

‘You don’t want to use firelighters, mate,’ Christopher had said to Drew. ‘Bad for the environment.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, not knowing what I was talking about. ‘Aren’t you supposed to use kindling or something? Or twisted-up bits of newspaper?’

‘Firelighters are more efficient,’ Drew said.

Christopher went out of the room, and when he came back he had a bottle of vodka, a box of matches and the review section of that day’s
Observer
newspaper. Drew still hadn’t found the firelighters, and sighed while Christopher screwed up individual pages of the newspaper into little balls and threw them into the fireplace around the logs. Then he poured half the bottle of vodka over the whole lot and set it alight. For a few moments the contents of the fireplace burned like a Christmas pudding, and then, just as suddenly, it went out. We looked into the fireplace and saw a mass of newspaper pulp and wet logs. The whole house smelled of vodka. Drew rolled his eyes at me and I followed him upstairs. As we went I looked back at Christopher. He was pushing the wet logs around with his foot, coating his trainer in vodka and ash and mumbling something about how stupid everything was. I remembered quite clearly thinking at that moment that I was lucky to be with someone like Drew, who did things sensibly and carefully and never lost his temper, and that someone like Christopher, sexy though he was, would be too complicated and high-maintenance and you’d never know what he was going to do next. When we went upstairs, Drew sat on the bed, put his hands in his lap and said, ‘You don’t think he’s attractive, do you?’

‘Who?’

‘Christopher.’

‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘Why?’

‘Most women think he is.’

‘Well, I don’t. Well, perhaps objectively. But he’s not my type. You are.’

In Torcross, in what I was already thinking of as my new home, I used firelighters on my fire: two at the bottom, underneath several of the smaller, drier logs. I left some space for air to circulate, and then put a bigger log on the top. The fire, when it got going, smelled earthy and wintry. The kettle whistled, and I went to the kitchen and made myself some tea and toast with prawns, pepper and lemon. B lay in front of the fire concentrating on her chew. It was only one o’clock, but through the bay window I could see the sky hemmed at the bottom with pale light and then the thin band of the horizon, almost black against it. Then the grey-blue sea creasing a little and then breaking in lacy ruffles onto the shingle. I watched the sea like this, dressing and undressing, for a long time.
What if?
I thought, in time with the waves.
What if?

About an hour before I went to Libby’s I opened up my laptop. The sound from the fan immediately replaced the gentle sound of the waves outside. I logged into my bank account and selected
Transfers
. Christopher’s name was there at the top of my list, and I transferred
£
1,000 to his account. Then I spent a while browsing beds on the Greenfibres website and once I’d decided which one I wanted to buy, I set about composing my reply to Rowan.

‘You’ve done what?’ Libby said.

We were in her kitchen, with nine fish lying in front of us, intact, on the worktop. Their eyes bulged, and they each looked as if they’d been just about to say something important when they were caught. Inside their open mouths were perfect sets of miniature teeth. They were freaking me out a bit; reminding me of why I’d once become a vegan. I turned away. B wasn’t at all interested in the fish. She’d insisted on bringing her chew from Torcross and was lying in the middle of the kitchen floor with it, looking as if she couldn’t wait to get to the end. I turned back to the fish. Libby was still looking at them as well, holding a knife but not doing anything with it.

‘I’ve rented a cottage,’ I said. ‘At Torcross. I’ve spent most of the day sitting there by the fire watching the sea come in and then go out again. It was amazing. You know those rocks at the end of the beach? When the tide goes really far out they look like a dragon’s bony foot splayed in the water, and you can actually walk around them to the next cove. I never realised that. I usually only walk the dog from the car park to the monument and then back.’

‘You’ve left Christopher?’

‘I’m not entirely sure. The plan was that I was going to just use the cottage to work in, but I almost ordered a bed today. I rented the place on a whim yesterday because, well, it was there, and not damp, and it has an open fire, and I could suddenly afford it. Christopher doesn’t know about any of it.’

Libby giggled. ‘We’d better have a drink,’ she said. ‘Why did I not get them to fillet these?’ She waved her knife over the fish.

‘Because you were planning to bake them?’ I said. ‘You won’t
need nine any more, by the way, because Christopher’s not coming. What are they?’

‘Sea bass.’

‘Bake them.’

‘You think?’

‘Yeah, definitely.’

She got a bottle of white wine out of the fridge. ‘This’ll be nice,’ she said. ‘It’s a very expensive Sauvignon Bob doesn’t know I took from the shop. God. I don’t know what’s wrong with me at the moment. Of course I should bake these. That’s such a sensible thing to do. So why do I want to fillet them all?’

‘Because that’s the way you are. But we’re baking them.’

‘Are we?’

‘Yes. I’ve had a massive row with Christopher, and I may have left him. I’m not sure about that bit, but anyway, at the same time, I’m thinking about having an affair – which by the way will remain an affair even if I do leave Christopher, because the, um, third party has got a partner as well. So I’m going to be very distracted, and if I have to fillet a fish I’ll probably leave bones in it and kill Bob’s aunt. Also, you look like you’re waiting for an executioner to turn up or something. Where’s Bob?’

‘At the shop still.’ She poured the wine. ‘So tell me everything.’

While she covered the fish in oil, a different white wine and orange zest, and I chopped herbs, I told her about my row with Christopher, and my meeting with Milly and the day I’d kissed Rowan, although I didn’t name him. I said that I couldn’t get him out of my head even now, a year later.

‘Be careful,’ she said. ‘You probably won’t end up leaving Christopher.’

‘I don’t know about that. But yes, I am planning to be.’

‘Just make sure you don’t turn into me. Remember you said that you find people more exciting before you actually get to know them.’

‘Oh.’ I sighed. ‘You’re right. Well, it’s only lunch.’

‘You were the one who used the word
affair
,’ Libby said.

‘What’s wrong with this as a hypothetical model: I do find this man exciting, even though he’s too old for me, and so let’s say he kisses me again – not that he will, and I don’t even want him to – ’

‘You so do.’

‘Well, say it happened and then after some modest amount of time we slept together and fell passionately and tragically in love …’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, no one would have to know.’

‘I’m just not sure it really works like that. You can’t really be in love with one person and officially living with another; it has to be both at once. Well, if you’re a woman. Do you want some more wine?’

‘Yeah. Thanks. God, you’re probably right.’

‘You’ll keep fancying other people all your life. But if you’re going to work things out with Christopher you can’t go off with someone else at the same time. You have to do one or the other.’ She laughed. ‘I know the theory. I just can’t put it into practice myself. It’s like playing pool. I could always tell someone exactly how to pocket the ball, but not always do it myself. Did I ever tell you about the time I really fell in love with this guy who was, like, the king of pool at my local pub when I lived in Bristol? What was his name? Oh – Ollie. Right, so I loved Ollie,
and he slept with me and then broke it off. He had the most amazing dick – suntanned, can you believe it? – and a lovely smile, and he wanted to be a writer. God, I loved him. He had four friends, one dark, one blond, one redhead and one bald guy. They were like a boy-band. I went through them all one by one after Ollie rejected me. With the first three I convinced myself I was in love each time. One of them liked Hawkwind, though, and was obsessed with curry. The next one had a really tiny dick and horrible carpet and used to tell his own mother to fuck off. The one after that I can’t much remember. But seriously, each time it was like, “He’s got nice hair, and reads books; he’ll do,” or “He’s got really good taste in music and likes Buffy,” and I’d convince myself he was the one for me. I didn’t fancy the bald one at all, but one night he was the only person left to walk me home from the pub, and when we got there he came in, dropped his trousers and tried to put his dick in my mouth. There was no conversation, but I understood, and he understood, that I’d had all his friends and now it was his turn. I sucked him off and then never went back to that pub again. They must have thought I was a right slag. Which just goes to show.’

I laughed. ‘That’s like some kind of weird Zen story, almost.’

She laughed too.

‘So what’s happening with Mark?’ I asked.

‘Well …’ There was the sound of a key turning in the lock. ‘That’s Bob. I’ll tell you later.’

The three of us spent the next hour preparing food and setting the table. Bob had brought oysters from Joni for a starter, and a lemon tart from the shop for pudding. He put on some Britpop album from the nineties, and we all sang along and
danced around the kitchen. They cracked me up: every time a song had two singing parts they’d automatically take one each and harmonise. We moved on to the soundtrack of some big film from the eighties with lots of harmonisation possibilities, finished the bottle of Sauvignon and started another. B had finally got to the end of her chew and went to sleep it off upstairs. By the time Bob’s parents turned up everything was ready and we were all knackered and a bit pissed, sprawled on the sofa, listening to a new jazz band that Bob was really into. He and Libby had started a long conversation about this band. Did she know they’d been nominated for the Mercury Prize? Yes, she did, but she hadn’t known he had the album and had wanted to get it herself. I was wondering just what was so wrong with their relationship. It wasn’t just the harmonies and the easy conversation. I noticed the way they refilled each other’s wine glasses, and how Libby, when moving a book of Bob’s from the coffee table, carefully inserted a bookmark so he wouldn’t lose his place. Did Christopher and I seem like that to the outside world? Probably not. He’d never refilled my wine glass in his entire life.

Bob’s father, Conrad, was German and still spoke with a slight accent that I felt I knew from someone else but couldn’t remember who it would be. His wife, Sacha, had been a model years ago, but now worked on local art projects and made sculptures from driftwood. I sometimes bumped into her at Blackpool Sands when I was there walking B in the mornings. She had wild, dyed red hair, and a low, confident voice that reminded me of Vi’s. Conrad and Sacha were both in their sixties, but looked a lot younger. Bob told some anecdotes about his recent trip to Germany, and brought his parents up to date with news
of his great-aunt and -uncle. Just as Bob was talking about his journey back, and his plane being diverted to Exeter, the doorbell went and Libby jumped up to answer it. It was Mark, wearing unironed jeans, a new-looking shirt and black shoes that had mud around their edges. Once he was settled on the edge of a sofa on the opposite side of the room from Libby he asked Sacha some polite questions about what she did, and where she grew up, and then told us all about how his parents still lived on an island in Scotland as part of a hippy community they’d both joined when their marriage hit the rocks when they were in their fifties and Mark was finishing his GCSEs in Newcastle. Mark had ended up having to sleep on a friend’s floor through his A-levels. Sacha kept asking things about the island, like ‘Isn’t it cold?’ and ‘Is it true there are no trees?’ Conrad laughed every so often and at one point said to Bob, ‘See, I’ve always told you that having crazy parents is a good thing.’

‘What did you do at university?’ Sacha asked Mark now.