Our Kind of Cruelty(48)

I spent the rest of the day and night trawling his Facebook page, reading every comment and post. The past year was dominated by Verity, with shots of them in various locations, with people I didn’t know, in places I couldn’t make out. He had been tagged in endless shots of their wedding, so I was treated to the first dance I missed in actuality, the cutting of the cake, the throwing of the bouquet. It was easy to tell how happy he was, but I thought V’s smile seemed a little bit forced, her eyes not quite as sparkling as they should have been, as if she was holding back in a way only I would recognise. And the more I looked and the more I read, the more I realised what a prize idiot Angus Metcalf was. How everything he did was clichéd and contrived and designed to be noticed. His life appeared to be nothing more than one big boast, one big lampooning monstrosity. He enraged me, so that my blood danced in my veins and my head throbbed with a deep, sickening beat. I felt violated by him, as if I had somehow let him inside me, as if his existence on the computer alone was an outrage.

I snapped the lid shut but it wasn’t enough, I knew he was still there, still existing within the virtual wires. I picked the laptop off the table and felt its lightness in my wrist, so light I could lift it up and over my head easily, my muscles tensing and readying. I hurled it through the air, watching it arch and fall, watching it connect with the wall, splintering and shattering, all its innards tumbling to the ground. The floor was strewn with a mess of glass and wires and pieces I didn’t even recognise. Nuts, bolts, circuits, letters, numbers, signals – it was all there but would never go back together again.



I arrived outside V’s house early on Sunday morning, but the curtains and shutters were still drawn so I went to the park, where I walked along the deserted paths. Kensington Palace was right there, overlooking everything in its grandeur, and it struck me as outrageous how it just existed, amongst all us normal people. How it didn’t fence itself in or cower behind walls. How it assumed its right to be there, and so it was. And I was aware as I walked round ponds and up and down giant alleyways that we were all trespassers in this private garden, and that the residents of the palace had had to make compromises as well.

The curtains and shutters at number 24 were still drawn when I got back, but I couldn’t wait any longer, so I knocked on the door. I could hear the sound echoing inside and I knew suddenly that V wasn’t there. My heart sped at the thought that she might not be where I had placed her in my mind.

I bent down and lifted the letter box, but all I could see was the black insides of a metal box. I straightened up and leant over the stone balustrades, cupping my hand against the glass. One of the wooden slats of the shutters hadn’t quite met its partner and I could see a sliver of the drawing room beyond, some pale sofas, a streak of a fireplace, nothing more. I ran down the stairs and into the basement area again, but this time there was a blind across the window, its billowy fabric concealing everything. Finally, I went and stood on the opposite side of the road once more, against the ivy wall, looking up at the tall house. But it was still and silent, giving nothing away. I wondered if she had gone to Steeple House for the weekend and I considered for a moment getting on a train and joining her there. But I knew that would be all wrong and that Suzi was the last person I would want witnessing our reconciliation.

I walked instead towards Islington and our old flat, the thought of not seeing V so disappointing that I had to find some way to be close to her. I hadn’t seen the flat for ten months now, hadn’t even been there when V had packed it up and left. It looked no different from the road, dark windows reflecting the sky, and yet I was filled with a strange longing just by looking up at it. I crossed the road and pressed our old buzzer, still nameless. A woman answered and I nearly walked away, but by then it seemed imperative that I stand once more inside the place where V and I had been our happiest. I told her a stupid story about how I’d used to live there and my girlfriend had lost a very precious ring and how I’d suddenly had a brainwave that it might have fallen between the loose floorboards in the kitchen. She sounded dubious but I guess knowing about the floorboards must have done the trick because she buzzed me in.

A man opened the door to the flat. He extended a skinny arm towards me and tried to hide his nervousness behind his beard. But I was as friendly and calm as possible, as we all knew I could have snapped them both in half in a minute. We went to the kitchen and looked under the floorboard and there was nothing there and I said it had been worth a shot and they agreed. I told them I liked what they’d done with it and she said she was an artist, so she loved experimenting with colour, and I had to hide my smile because of how much V would have hated the bright tones. I shook their hands and thanked them as I left and I really meant it, because it was like the flat still retained our energy and I had sucked it all up, storing it deep in my stomach.

I bought a new laptop on the way home as it was stupid not to make use of the gift of Angus’s Facebook page. But he still hadn’t posted anything new, which I found surprising, expecting a barrage of photographs of him in LA. But then again what would be the point of pictures without V in them?

There was one Crave V and I never did. She said she’d always had this fantasy about fucking a really disgusting man. Her idea was to go to some shithole of a bar and pick up an ugly freak whom she would take back to our flat. I obviously would follow close behind and let myself in with our keys. She didn’t actually want to go as far as having sex with him; she wanted me to pull him off her just moments before. It was never a serious suggestion and never something we were actually going to do. We’d talk about it sometimes, lying in bed, but we both knew it wasn’t going to happen. It was just one of those fantasies we liked to bat about between our brains.