Our Kind of Cruelty(45)

Kaitlyn blushed when she saw me and kept her eyes down every time she walked past, which was also unduly depressing. Without Kaitlyn, I realised, I had almost no one to speak to.

After lunch I messaged her:

Thanks for supper last night. I had a really nice time.

No worries. I probably shouldn’t have said so much.

Don’t be silly. It’s all forgotten. I just don’t want it to be awkward.

Of course it won’t be.

Thanks.

But I think maybe you should consider how healthy a relationship is where one person holds all the cards.

????

I just mean, she has quite a hold on you. You should trust yourself more.

I do.

Sorry, not my place to comment.

It’s fine. Friends?

Friends x.



It was odd because what Kaitlyn was saying should have irritated me, but I found myself strangely elated by her words.

I also sent an email to Daniel Palmer, offering my sincere apologies for everything I had said. I explained that the stress of the job sometimes got to me and that firing people was a terrible consequence of what we did. I said I’d been having some personal issues and that I’d said things to him that I really wanted to say to myself. I hoped very much he could forgive me and that we could move forward and find the best solution for him and his employees.

An hour later the chairman called me and said he was pleased I’d had a good session with Dr Ellin. He wanted to reassure me that my work was of the highest standard and that they liked to think of themselves as more of a family than a business at Bartleby’s. The only reason he had referred me to Dr Ellin was that they wanted the best for me. Our working relationship was not, he hoped, short-term, but something we were both in for the long haul. He understood that I was going through some personal issues, and maybe I hadn’t had the best start, but he was impressed with how I handled myself. It took a big man to apologise, he said. I mumbled and acquiesced in all the right places and I got the impression that he left the conversation satisfied.

Everything is a game, V used to tell me; only stupid people forget that.



V was wearing her blue dress with the white flowers on it when she left work that evening and it made my heart surge for two reasons. Firstly, I had been with her when she bought it from a little shop in Brooklyn. And secondly, I had been right to tell Anna to go with blue and white planting, which meant I clearly knew V’s tastes better than I realised. Or maybe we were simply telepathic. Maybe she had spoken to me as I sat at my desk without me even realising.

‘V,’ I shouted, bounding across the street from my bar.

She turned and her face contracted slightly. ‘Mike, what on earth are you doing here?’

‘I just wondered if you had a moment. If we could perhaps have a chat.’

She looked round. ‘Have you come here to see me?’

‘Yes. I really need to talk to you.’

She stayed standing, her feet resolutely where she had placed them. ‘What about?’

I hadn’t anticipated it being hard to get her to agree to a simple chat. ‘The emails. And other stuff.’

‘I …’ She looked down, then up again. ‘I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, Mike.’

‘Please, it won’t take long. There are just some things I need to say.’

She bit the side of her cheek as she always did when she was thinking and twisted her mouth to one side. ‘Just quickly, then.’

‘There’s a Lebanese restaurant round the corner.’

‘That bar’s fine.’ She pointed to my bar across the street. The thought of going back in there with her was horrible, mixing my thoughts of her with the reality of her, but I sensed the tenuousness of the situation, so I let her lead me across the road. She asked for a vodka and tonic, so I had the same and carried both our drinks to a table in the corner, far away from my usual one in the window.

As we sat I saw she was wearing the eagle round her neck and my heart did another tiny jig. Her hair was loose and her beauty left me slightly light-headed. It made me want to reach out and touch her, made me want to check she was made of the same flesh and blood as the rest of us.

‘So?’ She sounded tired.

‘I just wanted to apologise for that email I sent you when you were on honeymoon.’

‘Which one?’

‘The first one, obviously.’

‘So you don’t think you need to apologise for the second one? The one in which you talked about me leaving Angus?’

‘I know you think you love him.’

She laughed, but the sound was hollow. ‘I know I love him.’

‘I don’t think you do. I think you still love me.’

We looked at each other across the table and I thought that from the outside we must have looked like lovers. We always shared a bubble, V and I, we were always a unit against all those awful people outside our Crave.

‘Mike,’ she said. ‘I love Angus.’

‘I know I hurt you very badly and I will go on saying sorry till the end of time, if that’s what it takes. But you don’t love Angus. You’re using him to get over me.’

I saw her eyes flicker. ‘Are you OK, Mike? I’m worried about you.’

‘If you can’t admit you love me now, will you admit to loving me once?’