The Love Market (28 page)

‘That’s not bad,’ he says. ‘They can’t take their masks off. If they hit it off with someone, they can only see them when they go out on a date.’

In the main cabin, about fifty feet away from Aimee’s, I don’t feel so bad about the noises I make when he makes love to me, because she won’t be able to hear us. As Patrick kisses my shoulder and writes letters on my bare back, he writes the same words he wrote with the tip of a dried-up leaf in the sand, while Aimee suntanned and read a book beside us. ‘I love you,’ he wrote, then once I’d read it, he smoothed it away with his hand, as though perhaps he’d never declared it.

‘I love you,’ he writes now, only this time he doesn’t rub it out.

It’s our last night before we return to the city. So I am naturally gloomy. In two days time we will be flying home.

‘What are we going to do?’ I whisper. This is becoming our anthem.

‘I don’t know,’ he says. For a second he stops touching me. Then he turns me onto my back, making me look at his face in the moonlight. ‘There is part of me, Celine, that says you should come live here. Aimee could go to school here, it’s not like you’d be moving to a country where they didn’t speak English. You could get a job, or try out your business here, or maybe be happy to not have to work for a while. I’d be earning enough.’ His three fingers do a rapid pitter-pat on my shoulder: still this nervous energy in him. ‘Aimee could go back to England as much as she wanted—you both could, any time.’

His fingers stop moving and hover a couple of inches above my skin. ‘But it wouldn’t be reasonable to drag Aimee away from her father, would it? And well, even for my own reasons, I’m not sure I can have you come live here.’ He rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling. His eyes look deeply set, and shadowed. ‘I did that with Anya, moved her away from her life. Dragged her off into the unknown. Made her put me and my career ahead of everything else.’ He turns to me now, with unfettered honesty written all over his face. ‘It wouldn’t be that much different would it? You’d be in the same position as she was in, and I have a feeling it would be doomed. And I just can have the responsibility of that on me. I just can’t, Celine.’

I’m gutted by him saying “doomed”. Followed by the fact that he’s just admitted I’d be a responsibility. I’ve never felt like someone’s responsibility before and it just feels like another way of calling me a burden. ‘But surely the difference is that you love me and you know we are meant for each other—we have to be, don’t we? After all this. Whereas you didn’t feel that with her.’

It kills me that he doesn’t instantly agree. He seems to give it too much thought, then says, ‘I’m not sure that is the difference. I think it’s more about putting too much pressure on the situation. Too much pressure on me to make it work out.’

Too much pressure on him?

He watches me as I clamber over him. ‘What are you doing?’

I pull on my knickers and a sweater. ‘I need air.’

‘I’m just trying to be honest with you...’

I am already outside, taking a deep breath, refusing to cry. And of course he’s right. I couldn’t drag Aimee away from Mike. Never. So why am I reacting this way?

He doesn’t instantly follow. I sit on the sundeck and stare at the moon, which appears to be suspended by invisible cords on the top of the water, wishing I could undo his words. A thought goes through my head. I want the impossible. That’s my trouble. I always did.

Then he’s standing behind me. He watches me for ages but I won’t look at him. There is nothing to say. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. I would love to promise you that we can do this, and it will all work out.’ He sits down beside me, gazes at my profile. I won’t look at him. ‘I have no doubt in my mind that if we’d both lived in the same country—in the same place—it would work out. Not a doubt. But…’ He gives up explaining.

We stay like this for a while, sitting beside one another, not saying anything, just processing all that has been said. Then he stands up, looks down at me for a few moments, then says, ‘Will you come back to bed?’

We go back inside. Back to bed. Patrick holds me, but it no longer feels the same.

~ * * * ~

Something is gone from the holiday. Even Aimee senses it. She draws and colours-in quietly. Quite a collection of shoes she’s got now. I wonder if she’ll tire of shoes the second we’re on the plane then she’ll want to start painting waves again, with her granddad. By the time we’re back in Toronto, and I am packing our bags in Patrick’s apartment, a part of me can’t wait to get on that plane.

I remember my father saying something to me once, recently. That for him it was always the thrill of the chase. ‘You can chase dreams as well as people,’ he said. ‘The dreams are usually better.’

Driving to the airport, it feels like a long time since we were here nine days ago, maybe because we’ve done so much. Aimee stares out of the back window but with less of a curiosity about Canada than she had when we arrived, her travel bug now satisfied. Patrick and I say very little in the car. In fact, so little that he ends up switching the radio on to fill the silence.

When the girl at the check-in desk asks me my destination, I find myself saying, ‘Newcastle,’ a little too affirmatively.

‘Look, do you want to grab a coffee before you go through security?’ he asks, something urgent in him—an urgency, almost, to change the way things seem to be now.

‘No,’ I say. ‘Best not.’

‘Hey,’ he kisses my downturned lips, as Aimee trots off to the toilet. He lifts up my chin with his index finger, so I have no choice but to look in his eyes. His face is drawn, and as handsome as ever. ‘I’m not giving up on us, Celine. You might, but I’m not.’

‘I’m not either,’ I lie, brightly.

When Aimee comes back from the toilet, Patrick reaches a hand to the top of her head. ‘Thanks…’ she says, and smiles. ‘I’ve had a really nice time. It’s been really great.’

‘You’ve been lovely to us,’ I tell him. ‘You couldn’t have handled us better, or given us a better time.’ I smile. ‘We won’t ever forget Canada.’ My eyes are telling him so much more, but if I say any more I’m going to cry.

His intense dark eyes look so damned sad. He kisses me again, as I fight back tears. Handing over our passports before we go through the security gate, takes me back to years ago, to leaving Vietnam. Only he wasn’t there to look at. He’d already gone. A part of me felt I’d dreamt him, and I could still be dreaming him.

Before we disappear, I turn and look at him and he holds up his hand in a wave. And I take a mental picture of him, knowing I probably won’t ever see him again.

I never imagined that I’d find myself celebrating my sister leaving me. But here I am, on this early September day, along with twenty-two other close family and friends, at Blackfriar’s restaurant in Newcastle. It also happens to be her 33rd birthday. My eyes move on a continuous loop from Aimee beside me, to my sister at the head of the long medieval table, to the suckling pig on my plate, and the monks and buxom wenches serving us, to Mike and Jennifer, to my father and Anthea, who has brownish lipstick on today.

Mike keeps catching my eye across the table. And then we both sharply look away.

Jennifer has tiny hands, like a child’s. Her emerald green jumper stretches snuggly over her big boobs. Mike has an arm draped over the back of her chair. Whenever Jennifer talks to me, I feel Mike’s eyes on me again. Just as I’m about to ask her how she made out with her pitch to the Director of Sales for National Express East Coast, Jacqui chinks the edge of her wine glass.

Jacqui has noticeably lost weight since leaving Rich. In a clingy dark brown wool dress to mark the sudden significant turn into autumn, her chest looks bigger, her waist smaller, her hair somehow shinier, and her eyes even more luminous. But sitting here appraising her, I wish so much that she wasn’t going that I just want to got and hide behind coats in the cupboard and cry.

‘I’m standing here and I’m still rocking on both feet, it’s been such a whirlwind from my applying for the job, to the interview, to my hearing I’d got it. Then the trips down to London to find a flat.’ She swipes a hand across her brow, ‘Phew! But I’m excited! This is what I haven’t felt in a long time. About anything. But it certainly does feel good.’

Her gaze swings itself past me, taking everybody in, including a couple of her friends whom she hesitated before inviting: friends who weren’t so supportive about her leaving Rich. ‘In getting here I’ve had to recently make a lot of very tough decisions in my personal life. Ones that some people maybe still don’t understand,’ she pointedly looks at the naysayers. ‘But believe me I have lost sleep over it all, as I take my actions very seriously. Much as I’m excited to move to London, and much as I tell myself I’ll be back up here every weekend, and nothing’s really going to change, I also know that a lot is.’ Her gaze slides to me. ‘The one thing I would love to be able to do, and know I can’t do, is put Celine in a bag and bring her with me, with Aimee.’ She smiles, and her eyes fill. ‘Because I’m going to have to find somebody else to drop in on at all hours of the night, somebody else to pop for a pint with on the spur of the moment, somebody else’s personal crises to balance out my own, and absolutely no one is going to measure up! When I’ve needed a friend, there’s not one I could imagine unloading on in quite the same way as I have done to Celine. To me, the fact that we don’t actually come from the same parents was just an accident of birth.’ She wipes a tear. Then she picks up her wine glass and raises it, surveying the table again. ‘I just want you to know that you’re all welcome in my new flat in Hammersmith. Only not all at the same time, as it’s only a fraction bigger than my car.’

She flops back down in her chair and some of her friends whoop up applause, and my eyes go over to Mike’s only to find him watching me again. We hold eyes for a few moments. Then I try a smile and he matches it for effort.

~ * * * ~

Aimee and I start planning the Love Market’s party, which we have now changed from Christmas to New Year’s Eve. As soon as I told her it was a masked ball, Aimee thought it grandly exciting, and wanted in on all the preparations. I thought I’d put her artistic leanings to good use and I’ve got her started designing the invitation.

‘Doesn’t one of your rich clients own a big castle or something?’ she says, when I bemoan the fact that so many of the good venues around town are already booked up. If only I’d thought of the party idea sooner.

The penny drops. ‘Gosh! Yes! David Hall, the man who doesn’t wear underwear owns the spectacularly fabulous Strickley House!’ I had the pleasure to visit it once, and felt like I’d died and been born as royalty. After Kim dumped him—apparently she never saw his house, and I often wonder that if she had, things might have been different—I set him up with Paula Nicholson, a forty-three-year-old wedding photographer who was the granddaughter of the chauffeur to the Duke of Northumberland. I don’t know why, but I thought the connection was neat. Plus, when she’s not shooting a wedding, she has a thing for artistically capturing stately homes and castles. She had an exhibition of her photography a few months go, in Newcastle. I went to see it, and contemplated inviting my father. But only briefly.

So far her relationship with David Hall seems to be going well. ‘Well, it’s a long shot but I could try to find a way to tactfully tell him that I am desperately seeking a venue for the party—to which he is, of course, invited.’

Aimee scowls. ‘Why doesn’t he wear underwear?’

~ * * * ~

Patrick wants us to go there for Christmas.

Even though we’re only in September, he says he wanted to plant the seed early. But my head feels like it’s spinning, given that we’ve really only just got back from Canada. Contemplating another trip is… Impractical.

Me, who has craved more adventure in my life, doesn’t know what to do with it when I get it. I pace in front of our window, staring out at the rain over the misty moors, holding the phone. Then I tell him all the reasons why I don’t think we can come. Aimee will want to see her dad over Christmas. Obviously. I have the party, and the invitations are about to go out. So there will be a tonne of things to do. No one likes travelling in the winter.

‘I miss you,’ he says, cutting me off. ‘At least in the summer I had your visit to look forward to. No I don’t know when I’m going to get to see you.’

‘Maybe Easter,’ I tell him, feeling defeated by the logistics of a long distance relationship. Yes they can work. If they are a means to an end. Not if they are an end in themselves. ‘How’s your book?’ I try to change the subject.

‘I can’t focus.’

‘Are you looking forward to starting your job?’

‘No.’

It’s not fair that he loves me, I think. The Beatles were wrong. Love isn’t all you need.

‘Hey,’ he says, brighter. ‘I was looking up long distance relationships on the Internet. We should go on a date.’

‘Date?’

‘What we do is, we pick a time. We both make the same meal. We buy the same bottle of wine. Then we rent the same movie and watch it at the same time.’

I find myself smiling. ‘What? And then let me guess, when the movie is over, we have phone sex?’