Killing Me Softly

Ten

Unexpectedly I had a spare few minutes before a meeting, so I dared myself and rang Sylvie. She is a solicitor and I had generally found it difficult to be put through to her in the past. It was usually a matter of her calling back hours later, or the following morning.

This time she was on the line within seconds. ‘Alice, is that you?’

‘Yes,’ I said limply.

‘I need to see you.’

‘I’d like that. But are you sure?’

‘Are you doing anything today? After work?’

I thought. Suddenly things seemed complicated. ‘I’m meeting… er, somebody in town.’

‘Where? When?’

‘It sounds stupid. It’s at a book shop in Covent Garden. At half past six.’

‘We could meet before.’

Sylvie was insistent. We could both leave early and meet at a quarter to six at a coffee shop she knew off St Martin’s Lane. It was awkward. I had to rearrange a conference call that had been scheduled, but I arrived at twenty to six, breathless and nervous, and Sylvie was already there at a table in the corner, nursing a cup of coffee and a cigarette. When I approached she stood up and hugged me. ‘I’m glad you called me,’ she said.

We sat down together. I ordered a coffee. ‘I’m glad you’re glad,’ I said. ‘I feel I’ve let people down.’

Sylvie looked at me. ‘Why?’

This was unexpected, and I didn’t feel prepared for it. I had come in order to be given a hard time, to be made to feel guilty.

‘There’s Jake.’

Sylvie lit another cigarette and gave a half-smile. ‘Yes, there is Jake.’

‘Have you seen him?’

‘Yes.’

‘How is he?’

‘Thin. Smoking again. Sometimes completely quiet, and sometimes talking so much about you that no one else can get a word in edgeways. Weepy. Is that what you want to hear? But he will recover. People do. He won’t be wretched for the rest of his life. Not many people die of heartbreak.’

I took a sip of the coffee. It was still too hot. It made me cough. ‘I hope so. I’m sorry, Sylvie, I feel as if I’ve just come back from abroad and I’m out of touch with what’s going on.’

There was a silence that obviously embarrassed both of us.

‘How’s Clive?’ I blurted desperately. ‘And what-sername?’

‘Gail,’ said Sylvie. ‘He’s in love again. And she’s good fun.’

Another silence. Sylvie fixed me with a pensive expression. ‘What’s he like?’ she said.

I felt myself going red and oddly tongue-tied. I realized with an ache of something I didn’t quite understand that it – Adam and me – had been a hidden activity and none of it had ever been put into words for the benefit of others.

We’d never arrived at a party together. There was nobody who saw us as a couple. Now there was Sylvie, curious for herself, but also, I suspected, a delegation despatched from the Crew to forage for information she could bring back for them to pick at. I had an impulse to keep it secret for a while longer. I wanted to retreat back to a room once more, just the two of us. I didn’t want to be possessed and gossiped and speculated about by other people. Even the thought of Adam and his body sent ripples through me. I suddenly dreaded the idea of routine, of being Adam and Alice who lived somewhere and owned possessions in common and went to things together. And I wanted it as well.

‘God,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what to say. He’s called Adam and… well, he’s completely different from anybody I’ve ever met before.’

‘I know,’ said Sylvie. ‘It’s wonderful at the beginning, isn’t it?’

I shook my head. ‘It’s not like that. Look, all my life everything has gone more or less to plan. I was quite clever at school, quite well liked, never bullied or anything like that. I got on all right with my parents, not brilliantly but… well, you know all that. And I had nice boyfriends, and sometimes I left them and sometimes they left me, and I went to college and got a job and met Jake and moved in and… What was I doing all those years?’

Sylvie’s well-shaped eyebrows shot up. For a moment she looked angry. ‘Living your life, just like the rest of us.’

‘Or was I just skating along, not touching anything, really, not letting myself be touched? You don’t need to answer that. I was thinking aloud.’

We sipped our cooling coffee.

‘What does he do?’ Sylvie asked.

‘He doesn’t really have a job in the way that we all do. He does odds and ends to raise money. But what he really does is, he’s a mountaineer.’

Sylvie looked authentically and satisfyingly startled. ‘Really? You mean, climbing mountains?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t know what to say. Where did you meet? Not on a mountain.’

‘We just met,’ I said vaguely. ‘Just bumped into each other.’

‘When?’

‘A few weeks ago.’

‘And you’ve been in bed ever since.’ I didn’t reply. ‘You’re already moving in with him?’

‘It looks like it.’

Sylvie puffed at her cigarette. ‘So it’s the real thing.’

‘It’s something. I’ve been knocked sideways by it.’

Sylvie leaned forward with a roguish expression. ‘You should be careful. It’s always like this at the beginning. He’s all over you, obsessed with you. They want to fuck you all the time, come in your face, that sort of thing –’

‘Sylvie!’ I said in horror. ‘For God’s sake.’

‘Well, they do,’ she said pertly, relieved to be back on familiar territory, reckless Sylvie talking dirty. ‘Or at least metaphorically. You should just be careful, that’s all. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it. Enjoy. Do it all, go wild, as long as it isn’t actually a physical risk.’

‘What are you talking about?’

She looked prim all of a sudden. ‘You know.’

We ordered more coffee and Sylvie continued to grill me, until I looked at my watch and saw it was just a few minutes until half past. I reached for my purse. ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said quickly. After I’d paid, Sylvie followed me out on to the pavement. ‘So which way are you going? I’ll come along with you, Alice, if that’s all right.’

‘Why?’

‘There’s a book I need to buy,’ she said brazenly. ‘You’re going to a book shop, right?’

‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘You can meet him. I don’t mind.’

‘I just want a book,’ she said.

It was only a couple of minutes’ walk away, a shop that specialized in travel books and maps.

‘Is he here?’ asked Sylvie, as we walked inside.

‘I can’t see him,’ I said. ‘You’d better go ahead and find your book.’

Sylvie mumbled something doubtful and we both wandered around. I stopped in front of a display of globes. I could always go back to the flat if he didn’t show. I felt a touch from behind and then arms around me, someone nuzzling my neck. I turned round. Adam. He put his arms round me in the way that felt as if they were wrapped around me twice. ‘Alice,’ he said.

He let me go and I saw there were two men with him looking amused. They were both tall, like Adam. One had very light brown, almost blond hair, smooth skin, prominent cheekbones. He wore a heavy canvas jacket that looked as if it should have been worn by a deep-sea fisherman. The other was darker, with very long wavy brown hair. He wore a long grey coat that reached almost down to his ankles. Adam gestured to the blond man. ‘This is Daniel,’ he said. ‘And this is Klaus.’

I shook their very large hands in turn.

‘Good to meet you, Alice,’ said Daniel, with a little bow of the head. He sounded foreign, Scandinavian maybe. Adam hadn’t introduced me but they knew my name. He must have told them about me. They looked at me appraisingly, Adam’s latest girlfriend, and I stared right back, willing myself to hold their gaze and planning another shopping spree very soon.

I felt a presence at my shoulder. Sylvie. ‘Adam, this is a friend of mine, Sylvie.’

Adam looked round slowly. He took her hand. ‘Sylvie,’ he said, almost as if he were weighing the name in his mind.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I mean, hello.’

Suddenly, I saw Adam and his friends through her eyes: tall, strong men who looked as if they had come from another planet, dressed in odd clothes, beautiful and strange and threatening. She stared at Adam, mesmerized, but Adam turned his attention back to me. ‘Daniel and Klaus might seem a bit out of it. They’re still on Seattle time.’ He took my hand and held it against his face. ‘We’re going round the corner. Want to come?’ This last was addressed to Sylvie and he looked sharply back to her. I swear that Sylvie almost jumped.

‘No,’ she said, almost as if she had been offered a very tempting, but very dangerous, drug. ‘No, no. I’ve, er, got to…’

‘She’s got to buy a book,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said, falteringly. ‘And other things. I’ve got to.’

‘Some other time,’ said Adam, and we left. I turned and gave Sylvie a wink, as if I were on a train that was pulling out of a station and leaving her behind. She looked aghast, or awestruck, or something. As we walked Adam put his hand on my back to guide me. We made a few turnings, the last of which took us into a tiny alley. I looked questioningly at Adam but he pressed a bell by an anonymous-looking door and when the catch was released we walked up some stairs to a snug room with a bar and a fire and some scattered tables and chairs.

‘Is this a club?’

‘Yes, it’s a club,’ said Adam, as if it were too obvious to need mentioning. ‘Sit in the next room. I’ll get some beers. Klaus can tell you about his crappy book.’

I went through with Daniel and Klaus to a smaller room, also with a couple of tables and chairs. We sat at one. ‘What book?’ I said. Klaus smiled. ‘Your…’ He stopped himself. ‘Adam is pissed with me. I’ve written a book about last year on the mountain.’ He sounded American.

‘Were you there?’

He held up his hands. There was no little finger on his left hand. The ring finger was half gone as well. On his right hand half the little finger was gone.

‘I was lucky,’ he said. ‘More than lucky. Adam pulled me down. Saved my life.’ He smiled again. ‘I can say that when he’s out of the room. When he comes in I can go back to telling him what an asshole he is.’

Adam came into the room clutching bottles, then went out again and returned with plates of sandwiches.

‘Are you all old friends?’ I asked.

‘Friends, colleagues,’ said Daniel.

‘Daniel’s been recruited for another Himalayan package tour next year. Wants me to go along.’

‘Are you going to?’

‘I think so.’ I must have looked concerned, because Adam laughed. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘That’s what you do,’ I said. ‘There’s no problem. Just watch your step.’

His expression became serious and he leaned in close and kissed me softly. ‘Good,’ he said, as if I had passed a test.

I took a sip of beer, leaned back and watched them talking about things I could barely understand, about logistics and equipment and windows of opportunity. Or, rather, it wasn’t that I couldn’t understand them, but that I didn’t want to follow what they said in its details. I felt a glowing pleasure in seeing Adam and Daniel and Klaus discussing something that mattered intensely to them. I liked the technical words that I couldn’t understand, and sometimes I sneaked a glance at Adam’s face. The urgency of his expression reminded me of something and then I remembered. It was the expression he had worn when I had first seen him. When I had first seen him seeing me.

Later, we lay in bed, our clothes scattered where we had thrown them, Sherpa purring at our feet – the cat came with the property, but I had named him. Adam asked me about Sylvie. ‘What did she say?’ he asked.

The phone rang.

‘You get it this time,’ I said.

Adam made a face and picked it up. ‘Hello?’

There was a silence and he put it down again.

‘Every night and every morning,’ I said, with a grim smile. ‘Somebody with a job. It’s beginning to give me the creeps, Adam.’

‘It’s probably a technical fault,’ Adam said. ‘Or someone who wants to speak to the last tenant. What did she say?’

‘She wanted to know about you,’ I said. Adam gave a snort. I gave him a kiss, biting his lovely full lower lip slightly, then harder. ‘And she said I should enjoy it. So long as I didn’t actually get injured.’

The hand that had been caressing my back suddenly held me down on the bed. I felt Adam’s lips against my ear. ‘I bought cream today,’ he said. ‘Cold cream. I don’t want to injure you. I just want to hurt you.’