The Cupid Effect (12 page)

‘Guess who I got a postcard from?' he stated to the room. It'd filled up a little, but not much. Not enough for him to be making such a big-voiced announcement, anyway.

‘Who?' Gwen replied for the room. Her demon year group forgotten.

‘Eva.'

The name sparked a couple of ‘awwws' and some interest around the room. A couple of people – mugs in hands – wandered over, others looked up from what they were doing to listen.

‘Listen,' Mel said, cleared his throat.

‘Cheeky cow,' Mel muttered.

A few pleased sighs went around the room. Eva was the woman who'd kindly vacated her position about three days before I wrote to the college.

‘Wish I was travelling,' Gwen mumbled, a petulant tone in her voice.

‘Have you been travelling before?' I asked, grateful that we didn't need to talk about the demon year group any more.

There were inherent dangers in any Gwen-related dinner invitation: if the chintz her house would surely be decorated in didn't burn the retinas off my cornea, then the smoke would get me. And if her husband smoked half as much as she did, I'd end the night in an oxygen tent. Of course, there was also the small talk factor. ST had never been my forte. It was pretty unnecessary when most people came out with deeply personal stories from the off. But I didn't want that with my boss.

You needed a little mystery with the people you worked for. I remember when I'd been a secretary during the summer holidays from uni. I got to know far too much about my bosses. One boss in particular when I temped in a media agency used to take me out for drinks to whinge on about her relationship. She often told me things my fragile mind didn't ever want to hear. I suppose the bedrock of my unshockability came from that summer, with her. I'd lie for her when her partner called, I arranged her life, I even cleared out her office when she moved floors. And the stuff I unearthed in there unsettled me. Let's say, I'd never seen things like vibrators or crotchless knickers up close until I worked for her. I came to her a non-virgin innocent. I left knowing too much about sex – like how having a threesome with your partner's best friend could really mess you up emotionally.

Basically, there was no mystique between us and that's necessary in a boss-employee relationship. How could you take seriously someone shouting at you for being late when you knew she'd once cried in the street because Shelley's had sold out of white stilettos?

I did not want to cross that line with Gwen. Having said that, guilt gestated in my conscience. I wanted to go back in time and warn her about the coming student revolution. That they were not going down the
coup d'état
route – they wanted blood and beheadings. I couldn't go back though, despite all
Star Trek
had led me to believe, so I had to be nice to her in the present. ‘What does your husband do?' I asked, risking the dinner invite.

‘Do? He doesn't do anything. Whatever do you mean?'

‘You said about your careers . . . I just wondered . . .'
Freako
, I thought.

‘Career? He's a banker. One of the top executives in the City.'

‘Right. Sounds interesting.' I.e. boring as tooth plaque. Although, I shouldn't malign tooth plaque – under a microscope it was probably more interesting than her husband's job.

‘Vernon seems to suit it.'

‘But you'd rather be travelling?'

‘No, no, of course not. It's just a pipe dream that we, well, I think about. Sometimes. Only sometimes. How can you not when you hear postcards like that? Of course I wouldn't rather be travelling. I love my life. I love my life.'

Chill baby, you don't have to convince me of owt. I don't care if you travel or stay in Leeds
. ‘I see,' I replied, absently. I'd tuned out, fuzzed my brain to Gwen, focused instead across the room on Mel and Claudine.

Claudine and Mel sat alone at the table at the left end of the SCR, while he described something on the front of the postcard to her. He'd obviously been to Barcelona, his right index finger traced something along the postcard, every two microseconds his eyes would go up to her face, keen to ensnare her in his tale. She, while clearly interested, kept her dark eyes focused on the postcard, nodding to show she was following him but studiously avoiding eye contact.

There was something going on there. Yes, she told me that last week, after the gym, but there was something more going on between them. It wasn't purely body language that gave the game away. Not with them, not with other people.

It was the way people looked at each other in unguarded moments. The way they didn't look at each other in guarded moments. I'd become a bit of an unintentional expert in nonverbal communication over the years. I'd studied people on the sly, listened to their tales and watched them afterwards. Despite what people pretended, despite what people said to my face, they couldn't stop those tell-tale signs showing through.

With Mel and Claudine it wasn't as simple as the picture she painted for me the other night. I'm sure they had ‘got physical', but
how
physical was still up for debate. Not that Claudine was a liar, she wanted to believe what she told me, which was why she'd been able to look me in the eye as she said it; you can lie if you want to believe the lie enough. Maybe more had happened, maybe less had happened. The point was: something had happened. And they were both struggling to deal with the consequences of it. Claudine, from the way she was behaving and talking the other night, was clearly racked with guilt over whatever it was. (I'd personally not worked out how anyone could cheat. It was far too much guilt to live with on a day-to-day basis. To look in the mirror day after day, knowing what you'd done . . . that was too much like hard work.) And, like I said to her, she was waiting for the answer to her dilemma to fall into her lap so she could decide what to do.

Then there was Mel. Sitting beside Claudine. Nice guy Mel who'd cheated on his wife with his best friend. Those weren't the actions of a nice guy. But, as I'd found over the years, nothing was as simple as we all hoped it would be. You could rarely point your finger at the average person in the street and say, ‘All bad.' ‘Completely evil.' It was only the people who'd gone out of their way to cause destruction and death and hurt and pain and ignorance who could be classified in such terms. Most people, your average Joanne Public, your next-door neighbour, your lecturer in the common room, had levels of behaviour, levels of badness, reasons for doing the things they did. Even if they did destroy other people's lives. Mel was one of those people.

Take the way he was with Claudine now. How he was looking at her, how he was talking to her, he cared about her deeply. If he and his wife only split up a few months ago,
after
his indiscretion with Claudine, then that would mean he couldn't be feeling rebound love for Claudine. He'd most likely loved her for years. If he'd loved her for years, then why wait until he got married to make a move on her? And
then
finish with his wife and tell Claudine how he felt. Something more was going on. It was more complicated than love. Love was great. Love was everything as far as a lot of people were concerned, but with Claudine and Mel, it was more complicated than love. They had depth of friendship; years seeing other people; a present that meant working together. For them, love was only a small element of it, a tiny piece of the Mel and Claudine jigsaw. If love was the be all and end all in their case, they'd be together, wouldn't they?

Mel and Claudine. Claudine and Mel. I really needed to hear his side of the story to get the fuller picture of their jigsaw. However, it was nothing to do with me. At all. It was j—

‘Well, would you?' Gwen asked, impatiently.

I turned to her, smiled. I trawled my memory for what she'd been saying while I'd been observing Mel and Claude. I'd heard it, but not enough. And Gwen's face, lined and freckly and obscured by cigarette smoke as it was, hung on a precipice of either pleasure or upset. The guilt that had been gestating earlier was almost ready to come out, kicking and screaming the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I was very close to either telling her I'd known about the students hating her, or I'd invite her to dinner myself.

‘Why not,' I replied, careful to keep my tone ambiguous so she wouldn't know I'd completely tuned out.

Gwen's face broke into an unexpected grin. I'd never seen her grin before, it suited her. She should smile more often. She should probably relax more often, too. ‘Fabulous. I'll let you know,' she squeaked. ‘It'll be within the next month or so. I'll have to check with Vernon, but I'm sure he'd love having you over for dinner.'

chapter ten

Tea Circles

Mel was the new Levi's type. The kind of lad who always had the latest style of Levi's, two minutes after it hit the shops. I bet he had the latest DVD machine, the toppest-of-the-range stereo. I'd heard, though, he'd supplemented his wages by giving private A-level sociology lessons.

Currently on Mel's wear list, as he stood at my front door, was the distressed blue denim with the twisted seams. Jeans and jacket. He'd teamed them with a black polo neck. He didn't look like a dork, though. I'd always been theoretically against putting same-coloured denim together, it looked like you were trying to wear a casual suit. But what did I know? I lived in combats, jeans and long-sleeved tops.

I smiled a welcome at Mel, he grinned at me. Maybe he didn't look like a dork because he stood erect, showing off all of his six foot frame. Or, possibly because of the chaotic way his brown hair curled on his head. Or maybe it was his light hazel eyes. Whatever it was, Melvin looked at ease in his gear. He always did. When he had his large blue rucksack slung casually over his shoulder and he wandered the corridors of the college, he seemed more student than lecturer, which was probably why so many of the students looked genuinely pleased to see him, why he often stopped for a quick chat and why he got invited to lots of student parties. He was Mr Popular, not only at our college, but also at The Met.

His popularity at The Met was how I'd found out so much about him. I'd mentioned to Ed and Jake a nice young sociology lecturer who'd helped me on my first day. When I said he was called Mel, they told me they knew him from playing footie at The Met. When I'd said we'd sat at lunch together, they'd sat me down and imparted every morsel of info about him they knew. There'd been more than a hint of the ‘you get in there, girl' as they told me about him. ‘He's single now, you know,' Jake and Ed had said at various points.
If only you knew
, I thought back at them.

Mel had never shown up at Ed and Jake's before then – over a week after I'd been for a drink with Claudine.

‘Come in,' I said, stepping aside to let him into the warm hallway. The mid-March air still had a winter's bite about it and I'd begged and begged Jake to let me have the heating on. He'd relented but he and Ed took to walking about in shorts. Ed, though, still wore his red and black lumberjack shirt. I was pretty sure he'd die wearing that shirt.

‘I forgot you lived here,' Mel said, taking off his jacket and loosening his scarf.

Lie. Total lie. I mean, if he'd truly forgotten, then why no surprise when I opened the door? In the hundred watt lighting of the hallway, I could see the different shades of pink that made up Mel's blush. He knew I knew he was lying so he avoided eye contact as he handed over his jacket, then took it back to stuff his scarf in the side pocket. The blue scarf spilled out like the jacket's guts were falling out. I draped it over the hook.

‘Who is it?' Ed called from the depths of the living room. We'd all settled down to watch the second instalment of
It
. (When I'd said that if I watched the film I'd end up sleeping on the floor of one of their rooms, because I didn't ‘do' horror films, they'd both laughed like broken drains. ‘You think I'm joking,' I said. ‘Wait till you wake up and find me kipping on your floor with a teaspoon for protection.')

‘Mel,' I called back.

‘All right mate,' Jake called.

‘All right,' Mel replied, sticking his head around the living room door. ‘Room for a little one?'

‘Depends if you've brought any stuff,' Ed replied, putting his forefinger and thumb close together and moving them towards his thin lips.