After the Party (7 page)

But now, not only are those shoes empty, but their owner is lost and Jem's heart is aching for him. She fails to understand how their perfect love story could have come to such an abrupt and almost incomprehensible pass.

Jem walks into Ralph's living room and sees a room left in a hurry. There is a pile of crinkled cotton sheets draped halfway between the tumble dryer and a basket. The sink is full of plates and mugs. Assorted newspapers, magazines and etchings have been piled haphazardly in the middle of the coffee table and a pair of Ralph's socks sit in unfurled coils on the carpet.

It is clear that Ralph knew he was going away, but that he possibly imagined he'd be back fairly soon. There is a bad smell coming from the fridge and Jem reveals a piece of unwrapped Cheddar and an old packet of smoked salmon to be the culprits. She tips the lumpy dregs of a plastic bottle of milk down
the sink and wrinkles her nose at the rank sourness, and then she finds a shopping bag and empties the contents of Ralph's fridge into it. She pulls open the door beneath the sink, where Ralph keeps his trash can, and is about to drop the bag into the can when something catches her eye. It is a note, crumpled up, with Ralph's handwriting on it. It has been torn into numerous pieces and some of the pieces are discolored where an old tea bag has soaked into the paper. Jem tries to reassemble it and ends up with a message that reads:

You are so beautiful. I will take your beauty with me . . . You are a pure and sweet and perfect human being . . . coming to me last night. I will never ever forget it . . . I have to go now . . . There is something I have to do . . . and start the whole thing all over again . . . I'll be gone for a while . . . You are an angel . . . Ralph x

Jem gasps and feels the room start to spin slightly. She feels she might faint and slams her hands against the table's edge to steady herself. There is a love note in Ralph's trash, a love note that has been ripped into pieces and screwed up in anger. Who was it written to? It must be Sarah. Jem feels suddenly filled with rage and hatred. Whoever this Sarah is, she has Ralph's heart and for that, she despises her.

She goes into Ralph's bedroom. She has never been into Ralph's bedroom before. It is smaller than she'd imagined. It is not airy and white and full of billowy curtains and soft sheepskin rugs, as she has imagined, but small and cramped, with an unmade bed in one corner, a cheap teak-effect wardrobe in the other and a rather small window overlooking the side return, which is where the household keeps its rolling trash can. One of
Ralph's paintings hangs over his bed. It is not one of his “Jem” paintings, the famous collection he painted while he was aching with unconsummated love for her. Those were all sold a long time ago, for vast amounts of money, save for one that Jem keeps above her own bed. Rather it is one that he painted just after he got back from California, after his ill-fated trip to see Smith last year. It is a dove, painted in thick scrapings of off-white paint, its wings outspread, its oversized beak wide open as if in a silent scream. Below the disturbed dove lies the footprint of a city, painted in black, brown and scarlet squares. It is not clear whether the city is alive, on fire or razed, postapocalyptically, to the ground. The expression on the dove's face would suggest the last.

The painting is ugly. She hates the stuff that Ralph has been painting lately. It makes her feel sad. Jem turns her head from it and looks around for clues. The first thing she sees is a bracelet, on the bedside table. It is silver with small blue and rose-pink beads hanging from it. She picks it up. It is very light, cheap, probably cost a few quid from River Island. She holds it to her nose and breathes in—it smells of skin. Her skin. Sarah's skin.

Jem knows nothing about Sarah. Blake and Scarlett have never met her. Jem has seen only her car, a neat Ford Fiesta in a strange shade of lime green, with a pair of sage-green Wellington boots and a large umbrella on the back shelf. A year ago, Jem could have pictured the sort of girl that Ralph would want to be with if he wasn't with her. A year ago she could have described a thin, wispy blonde with a difficult personality and a fondness for black eyeliner. But now . . . all she knows is that Sarah has Hunter Wellingtons in the back of her car, that she wears cheap, flimsy, not especially stylish jewelry. And now, clearly, that she has shared a bed with Ralph.

Jem puts the bracelet back on the table. She feels shivery with distaste and sadness. Ralph. Her Ralph. With another woman. She aches for him. She misses him.

Jem returns to the living room and heads for the answerphone. She sees it flashing and presses play.

“You have five new messages.”

Two of the five messages are from Philippe, Ralph's agent, wondering how he is and if he has anything new he would like to show him. His voice is slightly high-pitched and laced with barely concealed frustration. The first message is Jem's, the one that she left last week when he didn't come for the children. The fourth is from Ralph's dad, saying that he'd just spoken to Jem and that everyone was a bit worried about him, and the last is from her, from Sarah.

She is American.

“
Hi, Ralph, it's Sarah. Sorry not to have been in touch, things are crazy round here. Anyhoo
”—Jem wrinkles her nose at the “anyhoo”—“
would be gorgeous to see you. Give me a ring. See ya
!
”

Jem shudders. But then she has a thought. The message was left yesterday. But if Sarah is the same woman who was in Ralph's bed last week, the recipient of the love note, she seems very upbeat about things, all of a sudden. How did she go from tearing up love notes into bitter shreds to leaving jaunty answerphone messages? Is it possible, she wonders, that Sarah is not his lover? Is it possible that the woman with the bracelet is someone else altogether?

She presses 1471 and takes down the last number to have called Ralph's. Maybe this Sarah, whoever the hell she is, might be able to help her find her missing partner.

One Year Earlier

R
alph felt himself re-forming as he took his seat on the plane and tucked his rucksack under the chair in front of him. He had a window seat and the flight was half empty so he stood a good chance of not having to sit next to anyone.

Saying good-bye had been tough. Tough and unsettling. Jem had been tight-lipped, clearly resigned to his going but not about to let him go without letting him know how lucky he was that she'd let him. Which he was. He was a bright man. He knew he was pushing his luck. He knew that he hadn't done anything to deserve this break. He knew that in the bank account of their relationship, Jem was very much in credit. But still, the force of whatever strangeness lay within him had been strong enough to propel him away from a sobbing Scarlett and a resentment-storing Jem and on to the Heathrow Express with a rucksack and a cheery farewell. He'd felt sad for about forty-five seconds and then he'd felt euphoric. The image of his small son stayed longer in his consciousness than those of Jem and Scarlett, maybe because he knew that Blake was the only one of the three who would be markedly different when he came back or maybe because he felt the most guilt about leaving him.
His son, so new he barely knew him, and yet he was running away from him, glad to be gone from him, happy not to have to think about him or consider him for the next seven days. He felt relieved. Yet he didn't know why. It wasn't as if Blake was his responsibility anyway. Jem did everything for him. But still Ralph found his presence vaguely oppressive. Maybe, he mused, it was not because of what he needed from Ralph now, but what Ralph knew he would expect from him in the future.

Ralph enjoyed the flight to LA. He got slowly and pleasantly drunk, he read half a David Baldacci novel, he ate something with chicken in it and an actually quite nice raspberry trifle, he listened to some music and watched an episode of
The Office
and a not particularly brilliant film called
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
, which had that weird Russell Brand bloke in it who Jem seemed to think was incredibly funny. And then he had a little sleep. An undisturbed, indulgent and completely guilt-free sleep.

Ralph liked to fly.

He didn't like to take off, which always felt somewhat unlikely, and he didn't like to land, which always felt somewhat rash, but the bit in between he enjoyed very much. He and Jem had flown to Italy when Scarlett was two. It was the first time either of them had flown with a child and it was the last time he would do it for a good long time.

As they'd disembarked from the plane at Pisa airport Jem had said, “Well, that wasn't so bad.” Ralph had raised an eyebrow and said, “Define bad.”

But this, just himself, nobody wanting to be taken to the toilet, nobody constantly dropping crayons underneath the seat in front, nobody spilling orange juice all over themselves and
nobody screaming when their ears popped on landing, not to mention nobody giving him filthy looks when he attempted to flick through the in-flight magazine and hissing, “You think you're going to
rea
d
? Are you
serious
?” at him—this was good.

Smith was there when he left Customs.

He was wearing a black suit, a gray T-shirt and black sunglasses and was holding a sign that said: “MR. DICK SMALL.”

Ralph smiled when he saw him. “A-ha ha. And ha,” he said, bringing Smith to him in a one-armed man-hug. “Good to see you.”

Smith patted him back solidly. “Bloody good to see you too,” he said. “It's been bloody ages.”

“Four years and three months to be precise. New Year's Eve 2003.”

“Oh, yeah, that's right, we went out in Croydon, didn't we, trying to recapture the old days?”

“Yeah, and ended up feeling like we were about sixty.”

“Yeah, well, you may as well be sixty if you're over thirty in Croydon on New Year's Eve. Christ, that was a shit night.”

“Totally,” said Ralph. “You're looking good.” And he was. Smith had always been a good-looking man, but in a careworn way. He'd always looked as if he was in need of the love of a good woman, to feed him properly and make him smile. Now he was fit, his skin glowed, his hair shone. He looked well, very well.

“Thanks, mate, not sure I can return the compliment.”

“What!”

“London boy.” He punched his arm affectionately.

“I've just spent ten hours on a fucking plane, what do you expect?”

“Yeah yeah. You just need some sunshine and some exercise.”

Exercise? Ralph smiled mockingly. When he and Smith had lived together in Battersea all those many years ago, the concept of exercise had been about as alien to the two men as the concept of vegetable carving. Or indeed the concept of Reiki therapy, the discipline that Smith now practiced for a living.

“Come on,” he said, taking hold of Ralph's hand luggage, “let's get back to mine.”

•  •  •

Smith lived in a very small but well-furnished apartment in Santa Monica, three blocks back from the sea. The building was quite scruffy, painted white and a sickly apricot and centered around a dull-looking swimming pool, but Smith had done a good job with the interior. It wasn't minimalist and blokey, it was tasteful and comfortable, and remarkably tidy.

“Do you always live like this,” asked Ralph, lowering his rucksack to the floor, “or is this on my account?”

“Bit of both, really,” said Smith, dropping his front door keys into a large glass bowl. “It's easy to keep the place tidy when it's just me. And I've got a cleaner.”

Ralph raised his brow in surprise. It seemed odd to him that Smith was functioning out here, alone, without him. He couldn't imagine Smith sauntering around a department store picking out glass bowls and velvety cushions. He couldn't see how he'd have found a cleaning lady, how he'd have engineered a conversation with someone about how often he'd like his toilet bowl cleaned and how much he would pay her to do it. None of it made any sense. Ralph had always been the practical one when it came to domestic matters. He was the one who'd remember to buy bleach and vacuum under the sofa and get the windows cleaned once a year. Smith had just coasted along, paying his way, offering the occasional “cheers” when he could sense that Ralph had put himself out.

“It's a nice place,” he said. “What's the rent like?”

Smith blew out his cheeks. “You don't want to know. Too much.”

“So, you're doing all right then, with the old . . .” he waggled his fingers, “Reiki business.”

“Yeah”—Smith ran his hands over his hair—“not bad at all.”

“So, where shall I . . . ?” He pointed at his rucksack.

“Oh, sure, yeah, you're in here.”

Smith led him through a narrow corridor, painted white and hung with panels of patterned glass.

“Bathroom here,” he said, opening a door and pulling on a light switch to reveal a plain white bathroom, clean and fragrant, equipped, Ralph was impressed to note, with more than one bath towel. “Your room here.” He opened a door at the end of the corridor, revealing a small white room filled with a large white bed, a pale ash console table with a flat-screen TV on it and a wall of fitted wardrobes. Over the bed was a large canvas of a small hand holding three fat peony blooms.

“Ha!” Ralph said, putting his rucksack on the bed. “One of my Jem paintings.”

“Yeah,” said Smith, his hands in his pockets. “I've hidden it in here.”

“Yeah, charming, I noticed.”

“Well,” he said, “it's a great painting but it's a bit, you know . . .”

“Yeah, whatever.”

“No, really, I wouldn't have paid a thousand fucking quid for it if I didn't like it. It's just a bit girly, that's all. And I think it goes in here . . .”