White Bodies(9)

He roars with laughter. Really roars. “Crazy choice!” he says good-heartedly, while I assess his demeanor. I’d say he’s genuinely relaxed—I’d thought he might react with at least some element of suspicion or negativity.

“Just kidding . . . I got this.” I laugh with him and show him the book, which is a Scandinavian thriller I’m reading—The Artist.

“Where’s Tilda?” It strikes me as odd that she answered the buzzer but isn’t here to greet me.

“She’s taking a shower,” says Felix, glancing at the shut door. “She won’t be long I’m sure. Would you like something? A glass of wine? I’ll join you.”

“Okay.” I watch him open a kitchen cupboard and see that Tilda’s hotchpotch glassware has been replaced by four tasteful, thin-stemmed glasses in a row; tiny ballerinas posing with their feet turned out. But it’s not the neatness that alarms me: it’s the fact that there are only four. Plainly Felix isn’t planning any social gatherings at the flat.

We sit side by side. He’s kind of spread out—one big foot resting on the other knee, one arm along the back of the sofa—and I’m kind of prim, upright in the corner, my wineglass juddering slightly in my hand. The momentary silence signals that my only option, until Tilda comes, is small talk—I don’t want to challenge him when she’s not there.

“Busy at work?” I ask.

“Horrendous . . .” He says it like he’s amused rather than troubled. “And you?”

“You know—the bookshop is never busy, as such. My boss spilled her coffee on a customer last week. That’s as stressful as it gets.”

I hear sounds from the bedroom, or maybe the en suite bathroom beyond, and I look over the back of the sofa to see if Tilda’s coming. But she’s not.

“What are your builders going to do to the flat?” My voice comes out a little fake and overly focused, and I realize I’ve changed the tone of the conversation.

“I guess they’ll update it a little. Introduce a better color scheme, and some new furniture. It’s not a bad space, good high ceilings, well proportioned.”

I’ve never really considered the proportions, and I say so. Then Tilda appears at the door to the bedroom but doesn’t come in to join us. She’s wearing just a white knee-length robe and has wet hair and bare feet. Under her eyes her skin is stained watery black, her mascara I suppose, but it looks like black tears, like sadness and crying.

“What are you up to?” she says to me shakily. “You never do this.”

Felix stands up and stares at her. I gawp over the back of the sofa. She seems weak, like she might collapse, leaning against the doorframe like it’s the only thing holding her up. Her face is dead, as though she doesn’t have the energy to form an expression, and the word that comes into my head is damaged. A burning ball of anger forms in my stomach and rises to my throat, and in my head my sleepless night and nine solid hours of reading about sickening abuse makes my thoughts scrunch together into a surge of fury. I stand up too and face Felix:

“Look at her! This is your work. You’re going to destroy her!”

He says nothing; he’s stunned. Tilda pulls herself upright, the life snapping back into her body, and she shrieks at me, “Un-fucking-believable! What’s wrong with you, Callie? What the fuck are you on about? Lay off Felix and get out of here, right now!”

She comes at me, taking my elbow, marching me out of the flat, closing the door on me. As I descend the stairs I’m beating myself up, thinking what an imbecile I’ve been, blaming my sleep deprivation for my outburst, thinking now that maybe she was just weary, like normal people get weary from time to time.

I make my way home on the bus, calling Tilda’s phone five or six times as I travel and texting her, saying sorry. But she doesn’t reply.

? ? ?

A week later Tilda finally answers my call and accepts my apology. But she’s short and businesslike with me, not understanding at all, and after she hangs up I feel even worse.

Everything changes between Tilda and Felix and me; it doesn’t happen at once, but step-by-step. I’m no longer invited to spend evenings at Curzon Street, or to accompany the two of them on outings. And our phone calls change. Tilda and I used to chat on the phone fairly regularly, and at the end of our conversations she would say, “Felix wants to talk to you,” and he’d ask how my week was going, or for my opinion on something they were discussing, like whether green olives were nicer than black olives, or whether some TV comedian was funny or just annoying. Small things. But Felix doesn’t ask to talk to me anymore, and Tilda seems happy for weeks to go by with no contact between us.

On the few occasions when she does actually answer the phone, Felix is her only topic of conversation—how he’s taking her to a private viewing at an art gallery, or to a new restaurant or the opera. (I’ve never known her go to the opera before.) In May, she stays in his flat in Clerkenwell for a couple of weeks so that the builders can start their work in Curzon Street; then in June the two of them drive to Provence in the Porsche for their holiday, and Tilda is out of touch altogether, not even a postcard and she doesn’t reply to my texts. When she returns, I phone and suggest that she come round for a movie night, but she makes excuses, saying only “Sometime soon,” and that she’s busy at the minute because Felix is moving into her flat and they’re “rationalizing our belongings.” I feel that I’ve been eliminated from her world, and that makes me scared. The Controlling Men website has warned me about how predators try to isolate their prey, cutting them off from their friends and family.