The Other Side of the Story (19 page)

As soon as she had left, I returned upstairs, took some ragged breaths, then rang Anton on his mobile. 'It's safe to come home now.'

'On my way, sweetheart.'

Ten minutes later he gangled in the door, all legs and elbows. Little Ema was fast asleep, bundled into his chest. Whispering, we lay her down in her cot and closed the bedroom door on her.

In the kitchen Anton took off his coat. Underneath he was wearing the pink cashmere sweater which Dad had sent in case I was invited onto
V Graham Norton
. (Dad did not exactly live in a fantasy world, but he was a regular visitor.) The sweater was much too short and tight for Anton, revealing a good six inches of concave stomach and a line of black hair snaking down from his belly button. Cody had once described Anton as the worst dressed man he had ever met, but I was not so sure. Pink was definitely his colour.

' This is
your
ganzee,' he plucked at the sweater in surprise. 'Sorry, sweetheart, I got dressed in a wild hurry, I thought it was one of my shrunk ones. So tell us, how'dit go with your woman?'

'I'm not sure. Perhaps not badly until she met Mad Paddy.'

'Chr-rrrist! Not again. What happened this time? He didn't ask her out?'

'No, he sang to her. "Santa Claus is Coming to Town".'

'But it's April.'

'She was dressed in red.'

'No beard?'

'No.'

We'll have to move. Any bikkies left?'

'Heaps.'

'I don't get it.'

'Nor me.' The first big interview I had done had shamed me utterly by reporting to the world that I had offered only tea or coffee, no biscuits. Ever since then, in a belated attempt to make restitution, we bought top-of-the-range biscuits each time a jounalist came, but not one of them ate any.

36

About Anton. The important thing to remember is that I am not a seductress. To be honest, I'm the least
fatale of femmes
. If there was a competition, I would come so last a new category would have to be invented specially for me.

A potted history of how all this came about: I was brought up in London and, after several stomach-knotting years, my parents ultimately split when I was fourteen. The year I turned twenty Mum married a dull-but-worthy Irishman and moved to live with him in Dublin. Although I was perfectly old enough to live on my own I also went to Dublin and eventually made friends, one of my closest being Gemma. After being a drain on Mum and her beau, Peter, for a year or so, I got it together, got a diploma in Communications, then got a job writing press releases for Mulligan Taney, Ireland's biggest PR firm. But after working there for five years, I lost my job and could not get another one. This roughly coincided with Mum and Peter separating. Mum returned to London and I — like a malign shadow — followed her. Though my heart was not in it I secured some freelancing work writing press releases, but remained too broke for any weekend trips to Dublin to see my old muckers. Meanwhile, shortly after I had returned to London, Gemma met Anton; though Gemma visited me occasionally, Anton was too skint to accompany her.

So I never actually met him until he had left a broken-hearted Gemma in Dublin and come to London, to set up an independent media production company. (He and Mikey had had enough of making dull infomercials on safety in the workplace and wanted to move into television; it was much more likely to happen in London than in Dublin, they reckoned.)

Anton's version of events was that his one-year relationship with Gemma was over; she said they were just taking a break, that he simply did not realize it yet. Weeping softly down the phone she told me, 'I'll give it two months, then he'll see that he still loves me and he'll be back.'

However, she feared that he might be distracted by a London girlie and as I was
in situ
, I was ideally placed to be Gemma's 'man on the ground'. My brief was to befriend Anton, stay tight and if he so much as looked at another girl I was to 'poke him in the eye with a sharp stick' or 'throw acid in the girl's face'.

I promised I would but to my eternal shame I did neither. I loved Gemma, she had trusted me with Anton, her most precious, and I repaid her trust by betraying her.

It was almost as if Gemma had had a presentiment. Half-apologetically she had said in one phone call, 'I know I'm a neurotic, jealous, mad woman and I want you to stick close, but please don't get too fond of him. You're good-looking, you know.'

'If you like women who're thinning on top.' (My hair is so fine the pink of my scalp sometimes shows through. Other women say if they won the lottery they would buy themselves bigger boobs or a bum-lift. I would have a hair-follicle transplant, even though there is a chance it might get infected, as apparently happened to Burt Reynolds.)

'You never know, he might like slapheads. I can just see it, you and he'll be hanging out, roller-blading, having your photo taken at Trafalgar Square, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace…' Gemma faltered.

'Carnaby Street,' I supplied. 'We'll go there on a red bus.'

'Yes, exactly, thanks. There you'll be, having a lovely platonic laugh. Then one day you get an eyelash caught in your eye, he helps you get it out, then Whoops! You're standing right next to each other, close enough for a snog and you'll see that it's been a slow burn and you've been in love with each other for ages.'

I promised Gemma that she had no need to worry and in a way I kept my word. There was no slow burn and caught-eyelash stuff. Instead I fell in love with Anton the first time we met. But Gemma had also described him as The One. It must have been something he made a habit of.

But that was all ahead of me and I had no idea that any such thing would happen when, two days after Anton arrived in London, I picked up the phone and dialled his Vauxhall number. I had a duty to undertake but how best to keep an eye on him? I could sit in a car outside his flat and stake him out. Except I did not want to. A preliminary meet-and-greet session over a couple of drinks would be the thing, I decided. Depending on how that went, I could introduce him to other people, who might agree to share the monitoring.

We agreed to meet at seven o'clock one Thursday evening outside Haverstock Hill tube station. I was living in a rented hovel in nearby Gospel Oak - walking distance.

As I ascended the hill to the tube station the air was sparkly clean and smelt of lush grass; the cool relief of autumn had just arrived. Day-glo August glare had given way to clear pewter light; the reek of overheated dustbins had been replaced with the musk of golden leaves and a recent rain shower had washed away the last of the summer dust. I was calm now that it was autumn. I could breathe again. Until I realized that, with my typical lack of organization, I did not know what Anton looked like. All I had to go on was Gemma's description, which was that he was, 'Gorgeous. The ridiest of rides.' But one woman's 'ride' is another woman's 'not even if he was the last man on earth'. Arse, I chided myself, narrowing my eyes at the distant station, hoping there wouldn't be too many good-looking men there. (That thought was evidence that I was gearing up for some form of madness.)

But as my eyes searched, I noticed that someone outside the station was watching me. Instandy I knew it was him. I knew it was
him
.

I did not physically stumble but I felt as if I had. In shock, all my thoughts jolted and rearranged and in an instant everything had changed. I know it sounds absurd but I promise it's the truth.

I could have stopped. As early as then I knew I ought to turn back and erase the future, but I continued putting one foot in front of the other, as if an invisible thread led me directly to him. There was clarity and fear and an unignorable sense of the inevitable.

Each breath I took echoed loud and slow as if I was scuba diving and as I got closer, I had to stop looking at him. So I focused on the pavement — discarded tube tickets, stubbed-out cigarettes, crumpled Coke cans - until I was next to him.

His first words to me were, 'I saw you from miles away. Straight away I knew it was you.' He picked up a strand of my hair.

'I knew it was you too.'

While throngs of people hurtled in and out of the station like characters in a speeded-up movie, Anton and I remained motionless as statues, his eyes on mine, his hands on my arms, completing the magic circle.

We went to one of the nearby pretty pubs where he settled me on a bench and inquired, 'Drink?' His soft, melodious accent conjured up skippy sea breezes and misty, heather-drenched air. He was from Donegal in the northwest of Ireland; some time down the line I discovered they all spoke like that there.

'Aqua Libra,' I answered, afraid to order alcohol because the mix was already too incendiary. He leant on the bar counter, chatting with the barman and, in dreadful confusion, I catalogued what I could see. He was all lanky angles and so thin the bum on his jeans bagged, his shirt was a brightly coloured statement, not quite a full-on Hawaiian, but dangerously close.
A geek
. That was how Cody had once described him… But his black hair looked slippery silky, he had a beautiful smile and, really, whatever was going on here had little to do with his appearance.

He returned with the drinks and leant into me, twinkly eyed with pleasure. He was going to say something nice, I just knew it, so I got in fast with something neutral of my own. 'Does your flat in Vauxhall have a microwave?'

'It does indeed,' he said, kindly. 'And a fridge-freezer, a hob, a kettle, a toaster and an extractor fan. And that's just the kitchen.'

Haltingly I asked several more questions, each one more inane than the previous. How did he like London? Was his flat near the tube station? Solemnly, he answered them all.

But the real questions were being asked of myself. I analysed Anton's face, wondering, What is it? What is it about him that has me feeling this way?

I wondered if it was because he seemed to be the most alive person I had ever met. His eyes sparkled and with every smile or laugh or frown the contents of his head were displayed on his expressive face.

Every new thing I noticed affected me — the length of his fingers and the big knuckles so different from mine. The boniness of his wrist caught me with something almost unbearable. I wanted to hold its fragility, so incongruous in this tall, vital man, and weep on it.

But there was one topic which we had not touched on and the longer we chatted the more its absence took on a presence. In the end I lobbed it in, like a conversational hand-grenade. 'How's Gemma?'

I couldn't not ask. She was the catalyst for our meeting and I could not pretend otherwise.

Anton looked at the floor, then up again. 'She's doing OK.'

His eyes were apologetic. 'I'm not worth it. I keep telling her.'

I nodded, took another mouthful of my drink, then my head went light and urgent nausea rose in me. On jelly legs I made it to the ladies', clattered the stall door closed behind me and retched and retched, until there was nothing but bile left to sick up.

I emerged, still wobbly, ran cold water over my wrists and asked my reflection,
What the hell's happening
?

Quite simply, falling in love with Anton had made me sick. All I could think of was Gemma. I loved Gemma; Gemma loved Anton.

I walked back over to him and said, 'I must go home now.'

'I know.' He understood.

He saw me to my door and said, 'I'll ring you tomorrow,' then touched the tips of his fingers to mine.

'Bye.' I ran upstairs to the sanctuary of my flat, but once in, I felt no better. I rattled around, sick at heart, my concentration destroyed utterly. Everything on television irritated me, my book held no interest, I needed to talk to someone… but who? Almost all of my friends were also Gemma's. Jessie, my sister, was travelling around the world with her boyfriend, Julian; their last postcard had been from Chile.

Perhaps my mum… but she was still screening my calls. I suspected she would prefer not to talk to me in case I asked to move in with her again. As for Dad, he didn't believe that God himself would be good enough for me, never mind one of Gemma's seconds. I would get little sympathy from him, either. In desperation I actually considered ringing the Samaritans.

Love at first sight was never meant to be like this — only the most romantic people even believe it exists. Certainly, anyone can fall in
lust
. But at the first look, one knows nothing of a man's capacity to look at other women in restaurants and then deny it. Or to refuse to get into a car if you're the person behind the wheel. Or to promise to pick you up at seven-thirty and instead appear at twenty to ten, reeking of Jack Daniels and Jo Malone scent. (Someone else's.)

But, despite that, I had always been a believer, even though it was almost as infra dig as believing in honest politicians. I fell on any stories of instant love as if they were precious jewels. While working for Mulligan Taney, I had met a man - an important captain of industry, who had the right to hire and fire willy-nilly — who told me how he was almost engaged to one woman when he met the LOHL (love of his life). 'The first time I saw her across the room, I knew.' Those were his exact words.

(Actually, I have no idea how we got on to the subject. At the time we were having a meeting about how best to convince a small community that they had nothing to fear from the carcinogenic toxins the man's company was proposing to pour into their water supply.)

So it had come as a nasty surprise to find, contrary to expectations, that falling in love at first sight was not enjoyable. Instead of my entire life simply clicking into place, rendering me joyously whole, I had been knocked entirely off beam.

Even without Gemma, the situation was confusing. But with Gemma…

I lay on my couch, therapy-style, and tried to remember what she had said about Anton: that he was great in bed and had a big willy, but that was par for the course. She had never mentioned that he was the type of man for whom every woman falls. An Irish Warren Beatty who seduced effortlessly all in his path. I had always loathed those men, and loathed how women rolled over and begged for them. I refused to be just another besotted girlie toppling for Anton like a brain-dead domino, it simply wasn't my style. (I hoped.)

So, thoughtfully, deliberately, I set about wrapping my heart in resistance. I would not meet him again. It was quite the best way and, once the decision was made, I felt better. Bereft but better.

I had just about calmed myself enough to start concentrating on the film on television when the phone rang. I regarded it fearfully, as I would a ticking bomb. Was it him? Probably. The machine clicked in and I almost threw up for the second time that evening when Gemma spoke. 'Just calling for a progress report.'

Ignore it, ignore it.

'Please, please ring me the minute you get in, doesn't matter how late. I'm going out of my
mind
here.'

I picked up. How could I not? 'It's me.'

'God, you're home early. Did you meet him? Did he talk about me? What did he say?'

'That you're too good for him.'

'Hah! I'll be the judge of that. When are you meeting up again?'

'I don't know. Gemma, isn't this all a bit daft, me spying on him…'

'No, it's not. You must meet him! I need to know what he's up to. Promise me you will.' Silence. 'Promise?'

'OK. I promise.' I was glad to. I despised myself.

True to his word, Anton rang me and the first thing he said was, 'When can I see you again?'

My hands became clammy and self-disgust rose. 'I'll call you back,' I croaked, skidding to the bathroom to sick up my breakfast coffee.

When it was all gone, I straightened up slowly and sat on the loo seat, my sweaty forehead balanced on the cool porcelain of the wash basin. Sluggishly I wondered what the right thing was. My promise to Gemma was just a red herring. I wanted to see him, but I was frightened to be alone with him. The best solution would be to dilute his presence with other people.