Our Kind of Cruelty(7)

‘Where’s home?’

‘A tiny village in the south of Ireland. You won’t have heard of it.’

‘Is your family still there?’

She nodded and I was struck suddenly by the thought of her flying across the sea to this harsh London life, away from the coast and the hills.

‘What brought you here?’

She shrugged. ‘Oh, you know, life. Ireland’s beautiful but it’s not the easiest place.’ For a terrible moment I thought she was going to cry, but she laughed instead. ‘I bet you have one of those gorgeous double-fronted houses on Windsor Terrace.’

‘How on earth did you know that?’ I asked too quickly, wondering if she’d been looking through my personnel file or something.

But she laughed again. ‘Because that road is just one long line of bankers, that’s why!’

I tried to picture some of my neighbours, but realised I couldn’t. I hoped she was exaggerating. Because if there is one thing V hates it’s unoriginality. And what could be more unoriginal than working in the City and living on a road of bankers? I could feel Kaitlyn looking at me but I refused to return her stare, feeling my cheeks colour under her scrutiny. I hated her at that moment, with a deep, horrible passion. Because how dare she come along and piss on my bonfire? My beautifully laid, perfectly proportioned bonfire.

It took me all the evening until my walk home from the Tube to realise that what Kaitlyn had said didn’t matter anyway. V wasn’t a banker, so she wouldn’t know if all her neighbours were bankers. I breathed more easily as I walked, but still I peered into all the windows without their curtains drawn. And it didn’t make me feel much better, because I saw a lot of similar rooms, not just to each other, but to my own. A lot of dark walls, industrial lighting, expensive modern art, sleek corner sofas, state-of-the-art media systems, stripped floors. I also saw a lot of bloated middle-aged men in half-discarded suits and thin blonde women in pale cashmere, holding glasses full of what would undoubtedly be the finest red wine.

I poured myself a glass of my own fine red when I got in, loosening my tie and throwing my jacket over a chair, kicking my shoes into the corner. I knew V would hate that, but she wasn’t there to see it and I also knew I would never behave like that once she moved in. I wandered into the drawing room and put Oasis on the media system. Oasis are V’s favourite band; mine too. Before I met her I only listened to bands like the Clash and Nirvana and Hole. I liked to lock myself away with music and let it thunder in my ears while I beat a frantic imaginary drum on my bed. V said I should listen more to the lyrics because that was where the beauty lay. She allowed Nirvana, but she couldn’t believe I didn’t own any Beatles or Bowie, any Lloyd Cole or Prince, any Joni Mitchell or the Carpenters. But mostly she couldn’t believe I didn’t own any Oasis. Noel Gallagher writes the best love songs in the world, she said, which made me feel jealous of him, that he could make her feel something I couldn’t.

V’s wedding invitation taunted me from the mantelpiece and I felt an overwhelming urge to break the rules and contact her. I got my laptop out of the cupboard and sat with it on the sofa. First I googled her name, but as usual nothing came up. Her Facebook profile was still deleted and she had never been on public social media sites like Twitter or LinkedIn. She had, of course, changed her phone number after the American incident and I didn’t even know her address. The only access I still had to her was by email. Between January and February I had emailed her every day, sometimes more than once a day, but she never replied, not until the one I’d sent about coming home. Which meant that my breaking off contact had been the right thing to do.

I realised as I sat there that I had partly stopped emailing her to make sure she didn’t delete that account as well. Because if she had done then I would have had very little link left to her and that thought was too terrifying to contemplate. Naturally I had also recognised that I needed to get myself together and set up back in London before I could present myself as a realistic proposition to her again. I glanced back up at the shiny white invitation and the rage I felt was so pure and intense I was surprised the paper didn’t combust. It had taken her only a couple of months to meet and agree to marry this man. It was possible she had fallen so in love she had been what they call ‘swept off her feet’.

I stood at this thought, knocking my laptop to the floor, and paced the length of my drawing room once, twice, three times. I had to stop then and bend double, placing my hands on my knees and retching. I stood and leant my head against the wall, knocking it slightly as I did, although that felt good, so I did it again, then again, the thump I was feeling reverberating pleasantly through my body. When I stood back I saw some blood on the newly painted walls, so I went into the kitchen to get a cloth. The half-finished bottle of red was on its side so I picked that up as well. But as I was crossing the hall back to the drawing room there was a ring on the doorbell. It was past midnight and V was the only person I could imagine calling at this time. She was practically the only person who knew where I lived.

I rushed to the door and threw it open, but it wasn’t V, just a small, slightly overweight woman, dressed in what looked like pyjamas.

She took a small step back as I opened the door.

‘Oh, sorry. Are you OK?’ she asked, gesturing to my forehead.

‘Yes, yes, it’s nothing,’ I said, realising as I spoke that I was still holding the bottle of wine and the cloth. ‘Walked into a door.’