The Next Best Thing (15 page)

Three hours later Jane sat on the 49 bus as it crawled its way through the roadworks. New pipes were being laid, or cables, or sewers, in the never-ending upkeep of the
crumbling city. Jane wouldn’t be surprised if the whole lot came tumbling down one day. All those Victorian houses and drainage systems and underground passageways might suddenly reach their
expiry date and collapse simultaneously in a heap of dust.

She hoped she wouldn’t he late. He might not bother with the film if he thought she wasn’t coming. He might ask himself what he was playing at and just walk away. Like she should if
she had any sense. She looked at her watch and frowned. It was a nuisance that the car had refused to start, but at least she’d left home so absurdly early that she had plenty of margin for
error.

The bus picked up speed and Jane relaxed. She was going to make it. Going anywhere in London was an adventure: you never knew how long it would take, or if indeed you would arrive. Buses
inexplicably stopped mid-route so the driver could get off, taking his cash box with him. Tube trains stock-piled in tunnels or were cancelled due to staff shortage or leaves on the line. In any
other country, it would not be tolerated, but the British treated it all as a huge joke and a rich source of stories.

With three minutes to spare, Jane stepped off the bus into a crowd of students from the French lycée who were loafing around on the pavement, smoking cigarettes and fiddling with their
hair. They wore very flared jeans that hung low on their hips then ballooned too wide and too long over their shoes to form flaps that were wet and muddy from the winter puddles. Almost adults, but
clumsy and unfinished, they seemed both exotic and intimidating to Jane, who skirted past them, up Queensberry Place and into the Institute.

Even without looking round too obviously, she could tell he wasn’t there. He must have had second thoughts. She bought herself a ticket and went up the stairs, past the place where she had
dropped her lens a week ago. She was careful not to look back over her shoulder; she didn’t want to appear too desperate.

He was there, watching her coming up from his vantage point at the top of the stairs. She blushed when she saw him, then pleasure gave way to a very faint sense of disappointment that she
remembered from her single days. When you spent all week looking forward to a date, your eager imagination couldn’t help transforming a normal-looking person into a sex god. Inevitably, the
reality fell a little short.

If her disappointment registered with him, he didn’t show it. He smiled at her but made no attempt to come too close. She was glad, it annoyed her the way English people had got so
continental, air-kissing at every opportunity as though they’d been at it for centuries instead of barely a few years.

‘Perfect timing,’ he said. ‘Shall we go straight through?’

‘Kingsley Amis said those were his least favourite words. Along with the question “Red or white?”’

He looked at her in admiration. Will would have sighed wearily, he would have heard it all before.

‘How on earth do you remember what people say?’ he said. ‘I have an appalling memory for words.’

‘I suppose it’s because I work with them. You probably don’t.’

‘No.’

He held the door for her, then followed her down the aisle. They sat near the back, near the centre – there was plenty of choice. For the next two hours, Jane knew she would be sitting
here, regardless of anything else going on in the outside world. That was the joy of the cinema, and it was all the more delicious to be here with this man that she didn’t know, who felt so
comfortable by her side.

He leaned across to whisper in her ear about the last Louis Malle film he had seen. She caught his unfamiliar smell, an aftershave, soap and something indefinable. You either liked a
person’s smell or you didn’t.

He sat back and she was aware of how he filled his seat. Will’s legs were slightly shorter than hers, he never had a problem in aeroplanes. In contrast, this man’s knees grazed the
seat in front, and the breadth of him meant her own shoulder was lightly in contact with his upper arm. In the darkness she found this contact warm and reassuring.

It was odd to experience the intimacy of the cinema with someone new. Jane was conscious of his breathing pattern, the way he shifted in his seat. At one point she stole a glance at his profile,
noticed the point at which the stubble of his beard gave way to the soft skin of his neck. When it got to the part when the child is taken off by the Nazis, she discreetly wiped her tears away. You
couldn’t show emotion in front of a stranger like that, it was worse than stripping off naked.

When the film finished, they sat until the credits stopped rolling.

‘Are you OK?’ Rupert asked, passing her a man-sized Kleenex. ‘It’s always grim, isn’t it, the jolt back to reality. Especially after a tear-jerker.’

Jane dabbed at her eyes impatiently. ‘I’m terrible, I cry at anything. Even the most kitsch and manipulative American piece of saccharine. So it’s even worse when it’s a
good one . . .’ She blew her nose. ‘Let’s go, shall we? Are my eyes all red?’

She held her face up for inspection and he looked down at her. Slowly, he took in her grey eyes, flecked with hazel, the long lashes stuck together by her tears, the fine high line of her
cheekbones, the freckles undisguised by make-up. How could he ever have thought of her as Plain Jane? He sat entirely still, and wished they could stay like this forever. It was as if he’d
been trapped in a stuffy room and had just discovered a way out.

‘No,’ he said eventually, ‘they’re not red, just a bit wet. And I can see both your lenses are in OK.’

‘Good. I won’t be needing you then. To crawl around on the floor, I mean.’

‘I suppose not.’

They continued sitting there like that, then Jane suddenly stood up. ‘Come on, everyone’s gone except us. Shall we go to the café? If you’ve got time, that
is.’

‘Oh, I’ve got time all right. And even if I didn’t, I would make time. Just for you.’

‘Would you?’

‘You know I would.’

How do I know? she thought, as they made their way out. I don’t know anything about you.

They crossed the road and walked down to the café. The same waitress was there; she seemed to recognise them from last time.

‘Two cappuccinos?’ she asked.

‘Yes, thank you,’ said Jane. Then, to Rupert, ‘Scary! Do you think she memorises the orders of every passing customer?’

‘It’s her job, that’s how you get on in the restaurant business. The personal touch, remembering faces.’

‘Yes.’

They both fell silent, they couldn’t think what to say.

‘It’s funny,’ Jane began.

‘Yes?’

‘How you can look forward to something, how our entire lives are geared up to making plans . . .’

‘And you were looking forward to this afternoon?’

‘Yes.’

‘Me too. And now it’s almost over, and we have to think about the next time.’

‘Yes. And it’s ridiculous. It’s not as if . . .’

‘Not as if we’re on a date or anything.’

‘Exactly. There’s nothing between us.’

‘No, nothing.’

She started again. ‘It’s just, you have your life sorted, you get what you wanted, or what you think you wanted. And then you suddenly panic, and turn round and start asking
yourself, is this it? Is this to be my life?’

Rupert couldn’t believe how she’d just put in words exactly the way he felt.

Jane pulled herself up. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I shouldn’t be talking like this. I am happy, really. Or as happy as you can hope to be. I have a good and lucky
life.’

‘Tell me about it,’ said Rupert, already envious because it didn’t include him, ‘tell me about your lucky life.’

‘Well, I’ve got a lovely daughter. She makes me feel very lucky.’

His heart sank. She must be married. She didn’t wear a ring, though, maybe she was a single mum, or divorced, or a saintly widow.

‘That is lucky,’ he said. ‘I’d like to have kids one day.’

He didn’t have children then. For some reason this made Jane glad.

‘And . . . I have my work, which we talked about last time. I work from home which means I choose my own hours and don’t need to get dolled up for the office. I can slouch around
looking ugly.’

His eyes told her this was unlikely.

‘And . . . I have a good social life with my partner.’

Ah, he thought, here comes the sting in the tail. Well, what did he expect?

‘He’s a travel writer,’ she added.

‘That’s interesting,’ said Rupert politely, though personally he didn’t think so. Travel writers generally reminded him of those boys at school who felt they deserved to
be gentleman explorers from a previous age. The sort who used to go off to the jungle for three years and come hack with a loin-clothed manservant and a new species of insect.

‘He thinks so,’ she said. ‘You may have heard of him, his name’s Will Thacker.’

Rupert shook his head, which pleased her.

‘Sorry,’ he said.

‘And he knows everyone,’ she added.

‘Everyone?’

‘Anyone who’s anyone. He’s a journalist as well. Has a column in the
Messenger.’

‘I don’t read the papers any more. I find them boring. And time-wasting. I found I was spending all weekend reading them and then, come Sunday night, I couldn’t remember a
single thing I’d read.’

‘I know what you mean. It’s good for getting invited to things, though, living with a journalist. Especially as I’m pretty tied to the home during the day. Though he goes out
more than me. He’s . . . quite a bit older,’ she added.

‘Is he now?’ Rupert felt encouraged and leaned forward with a surge of youthful energy. Perhaps forty wasn’t the end of the line after all. What did she mean by quite a bit
older? Ten, twenty years? Was he over sixty? Maybe he was a white-haired old darling that she pushed out in his wheelchair to take the air, it could be that sort of relationship.

‘But that’s enough about me,’ said Jane, ‘you still haven’t told me what
you
do for a living. I’m getting another coffee, do you want one?’

‘Yes, I will.’

She signalled to the waitress while he shifted uncomfortably on his chair. It was time to come clean about his so-called career. She was bound to consider him dull beyond belief once she found
out what he did. You could hardly compare number-crunching on incubator funds with the creative scribbling of a famous writer. Not so famous that Rupert had heard of him, but then Rupert
wasn’t a big reader. He pushed his chair back and looked sideways, couldn’t quite meet her eye while he owned up.

‘I run a hedge fund. Or rather, I’m setting one up, with a friend.’

She looked bemused rather than bored. ‘What’s that then, a charity for old gardeners?’

‘Nothing so noble, I’m afraid. The only beneficiaries — if there are any — will be me and my business partner and our investors, who arc already pretty rich otherwise
they wouldn’t be putting money our way in the first place.’

‘So it’s a sort of City job.’

‘Yes. Except it’s in Mayfair, just next door to a gym actually. I go there quite a lot, there’s this rest room with a big sofa that you can lie on and watch fish swimming in a
tank.’

‘Sounds relaxing.’

‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘my job, it’s not really me. I’d much rather be a gardener.’

Her face lit up. ‘You like gardening too? I love it! Will’s always making fun of me for reading H
ortus.
He thinks I’m on a slippery slope to wearing big tweed skirts and
fancying Alan Titchmarsh. My best-ever job was translating a book on the great French gardens, most of them created by English gardeners of course. I thought, if I ever get the time, I’d like
to drive across France and visit them all. You could come with me!’

She was teasing of course, but as he watched her laughing excitedly, he knew that he would like nothing better. They could leave tonight, throw a bag in the back of the car, take the night ferry
and just drive. It was easy. Happiness was always easy, it was there for the taking, so why did people waste their lives getting tied up in knots of misery?

‘You’re on,’ he said.

By the time they came out of the café they had sketched out their entire route, starting at Le Havre and working their way down through Normandy and the Loire valley,
before heading down to the Dordogne and the Pyrenees.

‘We don’t even need to do it now,’ she said. ‘I feel that I’ve already been there.’

He shrugged. ‘I still think it would be better in the flesh.’

She looked at her watch. ‘I have to go, I’m afraid.’

‘Don’t be afraid.’

‘No.’

She wished he would wrap his arms round her and kiss her right there in the street. ‘Better go and get my daughter.’

‘Better had.’ He stood there, hands in his pockets.

‘Next week?’

‘Yes . . . no, I don’t know, I’ve got a thing in the evening, so I really should work all day . . .’

She should take his number, that was the logical thing to do, but she couldn’t do that. As long as it wasn’t properly arranged, as long as it could count as just bumping into each
other, there was nothing to hide. But if you started getting into phone calls and secret rendezvous, then it became something else.

He knew this, too.

‘Maybe we should say Friday week then,’ he said, pulling out the programme, ‘they’re showing
Belle de Jour.’

‘It seems a long way off.’

She blushed then, worried she appeared too eager.

‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Not in the greater scheme of things. Two weeks is no time at all.’

Reliance on fantasy was what kept people going on the whole. You had to have a dream, or else why bother getting up in the morning? It was far more logical to lie there and
wait for death to come.

These were Jane’s thoughts that evening as she wiped down the kitchen table and shook the crumbs from Liberty’s homework book before returning it to her school satchel. She had
already put in an apple and a Penguin biscuit for Monday’s snack. Getting in front, beating the clock, organising the week ahead to avoid an unsightly last-minute panic. The routines of
domesticity were soothing and at the same time insufferably dull. No wonder you needed to project another parallel life, imagining yourself elsewhere. Driving through France, for instance, with a
man whose name you didn’t even know.