The Exchange (4 page)

‘We’re friends of Rochelle’s. We thought you might be lonely. We’d like to show you around town.’

I paused for a moment, and then I took a deep breath and spoke into the intercom:

‘Come up,’ I said.

Kyle did come back, though I didn’t phone, and when he did, I was glad. It was hard, not knowing anyone, but I didn’t dare go out alone, for fear of myself and getting into scrapes. It was the story of my life, but this was a new start for me and I was determined not to blow it.

I kicked my heels around Rachel’s flat, looking at her books, mucking around on my laptop, chatting to a few friends back in Paris on Skype, trying not to sound as lost as I felt. I went out, of course, but not far – for brief strolls in Hyde Park, to a bookshop in Notting Hill, and – one day – through Portobello Market. There, trinkets and baubles glittered on stalls, winking at me lasciviously, as if they knew me, knew my lack of willpower. I bought a vintage purple paste ring that was going for a song, but I resisted the rest – the silk slips, the feather boas, the aubergine ruched-velvet elbow-length gloves. I had enough, I kept telling myself. Why gorge myself on stimulation, and why fill Rachel’s apartment with more stuff? Why not try and just
be
? Only then might I find myself.

I was beginning to get bored, and that’s when Kyle called – as if hearing my unconscious call. He said he was still at a loose end, that a mini-tour had been cancelled after a soprano had fallen ill. He said he was missing Rachel, and that it’d be a real pleasure to show me around.

When he picked me up, he suggested – given my lack of knowledge of London – that we get tickets for one of those hop-on hop-off sightseeing buses. It would give me some sense of where things were in relation to one another, he said – something one remained remarkably ignorant about if one travelled about by Tube, as most people did. And getting one’s bearings, he said, was crucial.

I agreed – it was a sunny day and it sounded like fun to sit on the open-air top deck and see the sights with minimal effort, especially since he’d offered to pay for the tickets. We could get off, Kyle reminded me, if I wanted to see anything in greater depth.

We climbed aboard and headed upstairs, his hand at my elbow. I admit I wasn’t wearing the most sensible shoes. In fact, I don’t have any sensible shoes, period. But his gesture seemed a little over-intimate. I remembered his face of a few days before, when he’d suddenly seemed to take interest in me, a girl so ostensibly different from him she could have been from another planet. I wondered if I’d done the right thing in accepting his invitation.

We sat down, and the bus rumbled along the Bayswater Road towards Oxford Street. It looped around Marble Arch and began to go down Park Lane. I clutched at the side of the bus, staring at the luxury car showrooms but mostly at the hotels. The Dorchester, The Metropolitan, The Four Seasons – all were places of almost mythical significance for me. Within them, I thought to myself, deals were made, marriages began and ended, affairs were committed, and a thousand debaucheries took place. Night after night after night, the beautiful, the bold and sometimes the damned come to this stretch of road to play out their dramas against a background of wealth and glamour. But it was an allure that had a seedy side to it, something grubby, and that was what made it fascinating to me. The rich, I knew from experience, were dirty bastards too – in fact, they could be the dirtiest bastards of all.

Kyle’s hand on my shoulder startled me from my reverie. He was gesturing over to a pair of elaborate stainless steel and bronze gates giving access into Hyde Park.

‘… the Queen Elizabeth Gate,’ he was saying, ‘built in honour of the Queen Mother.’ He gestured in front of him. ‘And now we’re coming up to the Wellington Arch, which was …’

His words – together with those of the live onboard commentary – faded in the buzz of traffic as I turned back to ogle the hotels. I wanted to be inside them, not sitting next to this well-intentioned but ultimately rather dull violinist, listening to him crap on about London’s history. Who really cared about that? What I wanted to know was what was going on in those hotel rooms and bars, and what exactly I was missing out on.

As we halted at the bottom of Park Lane, waiting for a break in the traffic before continuing our tour, I looked at Kyle a bit sheepishly. I hoped he didn’t think I was rude. I
was
grateful that he was making time to take me in hand like this, whatever his motive. And perhaps I was just being vain and presumptuous, thinking that he was at all interested in me.

I smiled at him. ‘So,’ I said. ‘Were you and Rachel an item?’

He blinked at me, surprised more, I imagine, by my directness than by the question itself.

‘We were.’ He stared off into the distance, seemingly unwilling to divulge any more. I didn’t push it, but after a few minutes he spoke again.

‘We were together for a few years,’ he said. ‘I did think it would be for good. But then suddenly it was over – pffff’ – he mimicked the action of someone extinguishing a candle with both hands – ‘and she didn’t want to know any more.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘That must have been hard. Was it long ago, that you split up?’

He shook his head. ‘Only a couple of months. And we stayed friends – still saw quite a lot of each other. So I was kind of living in hope that she was just going through a weird phase – that before long we’d get back together. But then suddenly, this … this exchange or whatever you want to call it.’

For a moment he looked at me almost reproachfully, as if it were all my fault. I shook my head, about to tell him that I didn’t force Rachel into this lifeswap, when he spoke again.

‘What about you?’ he said.

‘Me?’

‘Anyone special in your life?’ he prodded, and I couldn’t swear to it but it seemed to me he blushed.

I looked away too, more for his sake than mine. ‘I have a boyfriend, yes,’ I responded at length.

‘What’s his name?’

‘Konrad,' I replied, adding in explanation, ‘He’s half German. A model.’

Kyle turned back to me, and his next question startled me with its vulnerability.

‘Is he very handsome?’ he said, and though I nodded, what I really wanted to do was to grab his hand and say,
But so are you, Kyle. In many ways you’re much more handsome than that pretty-boy preener
.

But as soon as the instinctive movement made itself known to my brain, I almost recoiled in horror. Handsome Kyle might be, but he was not my type. For all his good looks, he was a square.

I forced a smile, gesturing in front of me. ‘Nice house,’ I said, and Kyle laughed politely as the bus pulled up in front of Buckingham Palace for photo opportunities.

***

Kyle was well aware that I didn’t know a soul in London, and so I found myself without a ready excuse when he invited me, at the end of our bus tour, for dinner at his flat in Hampstead a couple of evenings later. A couple of friends were going to be there, he said – an opera singer and a dancer at Sadler’s Wells. They were intrigued about me, he said.

I raised an eyebrow. I couldn’t believe that he had told them what I did for a living, and I wanted to ask him what they did know about me. I wasn’t going to pretend to be something I wasn’t, but I didn’t want to be an object of prurient scrutiny either. I kept quiet, however, deciding to play it by ear.

And after a couple more days of loafing around the flat and aimless walks in Hyde Park, resisting the call of Park Lane, I felt glad of the offer of company and was actually looking forward to the dinner party. I was also, in a contained way, looking forward to seeing Kyle again. I didn’t know anybody who moved in high cultural circles, like he did, and I found myself interested in him. What would his flat be like? What were his friends like? What was his background, and how had he arrived where he had?

I had long been fascinated by other people’s career paths, never having had one of my own. Life, I often felt, was just something that happened to me, without my really thinking or planning. It had always been this way, and until recently it had never occurred to me to be any other way. But looking at Kyle I felt the strength of having a trajectory, a calling. Kyle, it seemed, knew where he was going. His plans weren’t failsafe, of course – hence his crumbling when Rachel dumped him. But in general he seemed like someone with an overview, a direction in life. He certainly wasn’t the kind of person who would suddenly find himself in a strange city, knowing no one, going half out of their mind with boredom and longing to stir something up, no matter what.

I dressed demurely, for me – there was very little that could be described as toned-down in my wardrobe, but with an uncharacteristically minimal use of accessories and good underwear I found that my black-lace pencil dress didn’t look too sluttish. I went relatively easy on the make-up too. It wasn’t that I was trying not to be me, but I was trying to think about context: a dinner party with a classical music crowd in Hampstead required a little restraint, in some respects.

I arrived on time too, which was virtually unheard of: in Paris, my lateness was a standing joke with Konrad, friends, and the other girls at the club, many of whom found themselves covering for me when I rolled in half an hour after a shift had started. I didn’t mean it to happen, but as Konrad often pointed out, I had trouble ‘getting my shit together’. Not that he could talk, but that was another story. Wherever I seemed to go, chaos inevitably followed, and that went for my time-keeping too.

Kyle answered the door, dressed in snug navy chinos and a well-pressed white shirt. I smiled indulgently, and at once felt like a wife must do who makes the same old excuses for her husband all her life. He was a boring dresser, but underneath it he was a lovely guy. And perhaps I was using his clothes to judge him unfairly and quite wrongly.

I thought of Rachel. Rachel knew what Kyle was like in bed. Not that I could ask her. I hadn’t even met her – I knew her even less than I knew Kyle. Our conversations, via Facebook, had been relatively brief, lacking in intimacies.

We’d had no contact since taking over residence in each other’s home, in each other’s
life
, though of course the opportunity was there. I wondered if that was because Rachel had just breezed into my life, found her feet without hesitation. Here I was, stumbling around, while she just got on with it.

I wondered what she was doing right now, and whether she’d be jealous that I was at Kyle’s house. Presumably she wouldn’t, given that she was the one who had split up with him. But then people still get possessive about their exes, sometimes, even when it was them who called it off. I also thought, for the first time, about my flat and about how Rachel must be coping with it in all its disarray and dishevelment. Of course, I’d tidied up and cleaned it before leaving. But someone like Rachel would find it very difficult to cope with all that stuff, of that I had no doubt. I thought I might Facebook her the next day, find out how she was in general and let her know that I didn’t mind if she wanted to box some stuff up just to get it out of her sight and make the place her own a little more. I didn’t want her feeling as out of place as I did.

Kyle was just showing me into his kitchen, which smelt of tomatoes and basil and fresh pasta, when the doorbell rang.

‘That’ll be Morg and Tats,’ he said and, telling me to take a seat, he headed back towards the front door.

I felt too uncomfortable to sit down, so I wafted self-consciously around the kitchen, stirring the bubbling pasta sauce, sniffing the mozzarella that lay neatly sliced on the chopping board like a row of creamy white coins.

Then they were there, in the doorway, and Kyle was doing the introductions.

‘Rochelle – Morgan and Tatiana,’ he said, gesturing back and forth between us.

Tatiana stepped forward into the room, one hand extended. My first impression was of a glacial blonde, perfectly groomed, probably swimming in money, with a chip of ice where her heart should be. Of course, it’s ridiculous to make judgements like that about people, but I’m just relating my first impressions. Tatiana had an uptight little smile on her scarlet lips and the aloof air of someone who thinks they’re on a completely different level to you. Which she undoubtedly was. But that’s not the point.

Morgan followed in her wake, a hand hovering in the small of her back. His hair was greying but expensively styled, and a deep, rich, designer cologne matched his navy linen suit, unruffled. His manner, like Tatiana’s, was only superficially warm.

I looked at Kyle. Already I wished I hadn’t accepted this invitation. These people thought I was a piece of shit and could barely hide their feelings. What was Kyle doing even inviting me here? I was not part of this world, and trying to bring me into it – even out of kindness – was a huge error of judgement on his part.

Kyle moved his head slightly from side to side, as if discouraging me from bailing out. His eyes urged patience and calm. I forced a smile.

‘So nice to meet you,’ I said. Then looking at Tatiana, I added, ‘Kyle tells me you are a ballerina.’

She smiled haughtily, inclined her head slightly in confirmation.

I looked to Kyle for help, but he was already pulling back the chairs, gesturing to us all to take our seats, then proffering bottles of wine.

‘Red or white?’ he asked us all as we sat down. ‘We’re keeping it simple tonight: buffalo mozzarella and roasted artichokes, then pasta with a chilli tomato sauce. And lastly my famous home-made chocolate mousse.’

As he began plating up the starters, Kyle continued to chat, probably aware that I was out of my depth. Not that I couldn’t talk to these people, of course – it wasn’t as if I was shy or lacking in chutzpah. But their
froideur
had raised my hackles: why, I thought, should I do all the running where they were intent on showing me that I was uninteresting to them?

The talk, through much of the meal, was of the classical music and dance worlds, and of mutual friends of the three of them. It was mind-numbingly boring and I didn’t listen to much of it. I wasn’t inclined to intervene and set the conversation on a more interesting course either. Instead, I drank a little too quickly and I gradually zoned out, thinking instead of what might be happening at the club that night. I didn’t miss it, exactly, but I missed the camaraderie with the other girls, the sense of community. For the first time in my life, it occurred to me, I had belonged somewhere. And then I had thrown it all away, in favour of …
this
.