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Authors: Sabine Durrant
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arrival. I’d give it to my mother.
I turned. Tina was standing at the top of the basement stairs. Had she seen me? No, she was smiling, but as if she didn’t want to be, and she was making a nervous action with her hands, splicing her fingers together and then pulling them apart, sharp cutting movements.
She said: ‘Are you serious about Alice? I’m sorry I have to ask.’
I let a beat pass. ‘Of course.’
‘It’s just you won’t hurt her, will you?’
I managed to restrain myself. ‘Of course not.’
She took a step forward and grabbed my sleeve. ‘I know you’re not the sort of man who usually . . . well, perhaps not what she needs. But . . . we . . . whatever happens, however it pans out, just don’t do any damage, will you?’
I made a small bow. My teeth were gritted, but I hid them with a smile. ‘My intentions, I assure you, madam, are entirely honourable.’
She looked at me for a long moment and then, as if she were satisfied with what she saw, said: ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. Andrew worries, that’s all. She deserves to be happy.’
‘And so do you,’ I said pointedly.
I smiled as pleasantly as I could and walked past her to the bathroom, hoping I’d unsettled her.
How dare she, or Andrew, make judgements about what kind of a man I was, or wasn’t? It was none of their business what I did. I had no intention of hurting Alice, and even if I had, she’d be fine. She was the one with the house, the friends, the money. I was the one who had nothing . I sulked for the rest of the evening, and, in the flurry of my own self-righteous indignation, managed to bury the thought that Tina might be right.
Chapter Six
Greece, after that, was all I could think about. It nagged away at me like a toothache.
I lay in my single bed at my mother’s house and churned with resentment.
I listened to the kid playing in the next door garden, the thock-thock of wet Swingball on plastic bat, the yapping of a Yorkshire terrier two doors down, my mother’s radio, Simon Mayo, up loud, and thought about ten years before. A package deal with a girl called Saffron. A cheap flat on the main drag, a hotspot of nightclubs (Let Zeus blow your mind) and pool-bars and Irish pubs; lights flashing neon outside the window, a smell of fried fish and diesel, mopeds screaming.
We bought tickets for a boat trip and I remembered the rough grip on your forearm as the captain helped you in, the tip and swell of the deck, the push of people, knees and foreheads, and sunburnt cleavage. The cold green bottle jolting against my lips, and the music, ‘Zorba the Greek’, loud and jangly and scratchy, that we took out of town with us, and onto the sea, the rising bouzouki, and the water, away from the scum of touristville, an extraordinary aquamarine blue: patches of clarity, between the dark rocks, moments when you could see down twenty feet to white sand, small fish flashing. And teenage girls in bikinis, and the nail-varnish-remover tang of retsina at the back of my throat.
The bad afternoon, the one I had tried to forget, came in fragments – drink and an argument, Saffron’s hand in the air, a bottle at my head, the naked limbs of another woman.
I opened my eyes and the room closed in on me: a box of Mansize Kleenex my mother had left helpfully on the bedside table, the three framed photographs of ‘Old Sheen’, nailed slightly too high on the wall, the small useless wrought-iron fireplace, painted gloss white, the spider plant in its grate.
Why shouldn’t I be part of Alice’s plans? Why shouldn’t I go to Pyros? I was her boyfriend now. Wasn’t it my due?
At Michael’s for Sunday lunch, I could talk of nothing else.
‘I can’t believe you want to go,’ Michael said. He had cooked roast chicken with all the trimmings in his Sunday uniform of sweat pants and slippers and was now picking at the bits in the pan. ‘You don’t like holidays, and you don’t like leaving London.’
‘I
I turned. Tina was standing at the top of the basement stairs. Had she seen me? No, she was smiling, but as if she didn’t want to be, and she was making a nervous action with her hands, splicing her fingers together and then pulling them apart, sharp cutting movements.
She said: ‘Are you serious about Alice? I’m sorry I have to ask.’
I let a beat pass. ‘Of course.’
‘It’s just you won’t hurt her, will you?’
I managed to restrain myself. ‘Of course not.’
She took a step forward and grabbed my sleeve. ‘I know you’re not the sort of man who usually . . . well, perhaps not what she needs. But . . . we . . . whatever happens, however it pans out, just don’t do any damage, will you?’
I made a small bow. My teeth were gritted, but I hid them with a smile. ‘My intentions, I assure you, madam, are entirely honourable.’
She looked at me for a long moment and then, as if she were satisfied with what she saw, said: ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. Andrew worries, that’s all. She deserves to be happy.’
‘And so do you,’ I said pointedly.
I smiled as pleasantly as I could and walked past her to the bathroom, hoping I’d unsettled her.
How dare she, or Andrew, make judgements about what kind of a man I was, or wasn’t? It was none of their business what I did. I had no intention of hurting Alice, and even if I had, she’d be fine. She was the one with the house, the friends, the money. I was the one who had nothing . I sulked for the rest of the evening, and, in the flurry of my own self-righteous indignation, managed to bury the thought that Tina might be right.
Chapter Six
Greece, after that, was all I could think about. It nagged away at me like a toothache.
I lay in my single bed at my mother’s house and churned with resentment.
I listened to the kid playing in the next door garden, the thock-thock of wet Swingball on plastic bat, the yapping of a Yorkshire terrier two doors down, my mother’s radio, Simon Mayo, up loud, and thought about ten years before. A package deal with a girl called Saffron. A cheap flat on the main drag, a hotspot of nightclubs (Let Zeus blow your mind) and pool-bars and Irish pubs; lights flashing neon outside the window, a smell of fried fish and diesel, mopeds screaming.
We bought tickets for a boat trip and I remembered the rough grip on your forearm as the captain helped you in, the tip and swell of the deck, the push of people, knees and foreheads, and sunburnt cleavage. The cold green bottle jolting against my lips, and the music, ‘Zorba the Greek’, loud and jangly and scratchy, that we took out of town with us, and onto the sea, the rising bouzouki, and the water, away from the scum of touristville, an extraordinary aquamarine blue: patches of clarity, between the dark rocks, moments when you could see down twenty feet to white sand, small fish flashing. And teenage girls in bikinis, and the nail-varnish-remover tang of retsina at the back of my throat.
The bad afternoon, the one I had tried to forget, came in fragments – drink and an argument, Saffron’s hand in the air, a bottle at my head, the naked limbs of another woman.
I opened my eyes and the room closed in on me: a box of Mansize Kleenex my mother had left helpfully on the bedside table, the three framed photographs of ‘Old Sheen’, nailed slightly too high on the wall, the small useless wrought-iron fireplace, painted gloss white, the spider plant in its grate.
Why shouldn’t I be part of Alice’s plans? Why shouldn’t I go to Pyros? I was her boyfriend now. Wasn’t it my due?
At Michael’s for Sunday lunch, I could talk of nothing else.
‘I can’t believe you want to go,’ Michael said. He had cooked roast chicken with all the trimmings in his Sunday uniform of sweat pants and slippers and was now picking at the bits in the pan. ‘You don’t like holidays, and you don’t like leaving London.’
‘I
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