Because She Loves Me (13 page)

By the time Charlie came round, I had made up my mind. I was going to accept the offer Victor had emailed to me.

‘The money’s excellent,’ I said to Charlie. ‘And it’s secure. I won’t have to take on shitty little jobs like the one for Karen where I end up doing twice as much work as I’d originally estimated.’

Charlie sat down at the table, bottle of wine already open. Her cheeks were pink from her walk from the train station through the bitter cold. Snow was forecast for tomorrow and England was bracing itself, unprepared as usual.

‘I understand about that bit,’ she said. ‘But otherwise I think you’re mad.’

I was disappointed. I wanted her to be enthused. ‘Really? Why?’

‘You don’t know what it’s really like, working in an office. You’re so lucky being able to work here, and for yourself.’

‘But the people at Victor’s office are cool.’

She furrowed her brow.

‘Not as cool as you, obviously.’

I was trying to make her smile but her expression remained grim.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m in a bad mood. Shitty day at work.’ She sank half a glass of wine. ‘Go on, tell me all about it.’

I did, recounting the entire conversation with Victor, explaining my reasoning, telling her that I was sick of being on my own all the time.

‘Maybe I should quit my job and then we could spend the days together,’ she said.

I laughed. ‘Yeah, right.’ I was fired up with excitement. ‘It will also be great for me professionally. I’ll learn so much working for Victor, and just being around other designers.’

She looked at me over her wine glass. ‘Sounds like you’ve made your mind up already.’

My gaze slipped away from hers. It was awkward, what I was going to say. It made me uncomfortable. ‘Charlie, before I met you, I lived in a kind of self-imposed solitary confinement. I found going out into the world . . . difficult.’

I was speaking so quietly that she leaned closer, straining to hear. ‘I’ve been like that since my parents died. It’s hard . . . it’s hard to explain, but I shut down after that. Like a flower closing up.’ I illustrated this by clenching my fist. ‘Even at uni I kept to myself, studied hard, didn’t make many friends apart from Sasha. I say I fell into freelancing, but I also allowed it to happen because it suited me.’

Charlie stretched out her hand to take mine.

‘But since meeting you – and I know it hasn’t been long – I feel . . . stronger. More, um, equipped to go out into the world. Like I’m finally unfurling.’ I opened my fist, fingers curling outwards. ‘It’s all thanks to you, Charlie.’

She nodded, slowly, squeezed my fingers. ‘I was the same,’ she said, ‘after I lost my parents. Like, if I’m an orphan, I’m
really
going to be an orphan, you know?’ I thought she was about to tell me more, open up about her past. But she said, ‘It’s great . . . it’s really great that you feel better, or different or whatever, because of me.’

There was an extended silence.

‘So you’ve made your mind up?’ Charlie said, startling me out of my thoughts.

‘I have. I’m going to accept. I’ll text Victor now.’

I sent the text then held up my drink. ‘A toast? To orphans, making it in the big bad world.’

She arched an eyebrow. ‘How about just a toast to us?’

After dinner, we watched TV for a while then went to bed and made love. I suggested to Charlie that we watch our DVD, which she had edited at home and presented to me as a gift, but she said she was too tired. I drifted off.

An hour later, I woke up. Charlie wasn’t in bed.

I went into the living room, where she was sitting at the computer. This was starting to become a habit: me getting up in the night to find my girlfriend doing something in the dark in the front room.

‘Charlie?’

She didn’t respond. Getting closer, I saw that she was on Victor’s company website. Old Street Design. Specifically, she was on the ‘Meet the Team’ page, an area of the site that profiled the staff. Each person who worked there had a photo along with their name, job title and a couple of factoids: favourite cartoon character, what they wanted to be when they grew up, that kind of thing.

‘So this is who you’ll be working with,’ she said.

She scrolled up and down the page.

‘Does Victor only employ attractive young people?’

‘Not only,’ I said, feeling groggy. ‘But yeah, I guess mostly.’

She glared at the screen. ‘He should be taken to a tribunal. I bet if he interviewed two equally qualified women he’d give the job to the prettier one. Actually, he’d probably give the job to the prettier one even if she was less qualified.’

‘I don’t think that’s true,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you come back to bed?’

‘I wish you weren’t going to work there,’ she said.

‘You’re being stupid,’ I said. I was tired, fed up. This was the harshest thing I’d ever said to her. ‘And it’s too late now. I’ve already told Victor I’m going to accept the job.’

I went back to bed, leaving her clicking around the screen, zooming in on the images of one young, attractive woman after another.

The next morning, I woke up to find Charlie sitting on the bed holding a plate loaded with scrambled eggs and toast, a steaming mug of coffee already on the bedside table. As I pushed myself into an upright position, she handed me a folded-over piece of paper. On it she had drawn a caricature of herself, a frowning girl with a tear rolling down her cheek, an arrow pointing to her with the word IDIOT.

Inside, it said SORRY. C xxxx.

‘I love you,’ she said. ‘And I really am sorry. I know it’s a brilliant opportunity for you.’

I kissed her. ‘Why were you so weird about it?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I guess I don’t like change.’

‘But it’s change for me, not you.’

She took the plate and set it to one side. ‘Let’s leave it, can we?’

She slipped back into bed beside me. ‘I’ve got five minutes,’ she said.

Fourteen

I left the flat not long after Charlie had headed to work, the taste of her still on my lips. The parked cars had thick ice on the windscreens; the woman in the flat downstairs worked on hers, scraper in one gloved hand, a big can of de-icer in the other.

‘It’s going to snow,’ she said, flicking a glance towards the sky.

I looked down at my inappropriate footwear: trainers, more like plimsolls, really. I ought to go back up, change into some boots. But I couldn’t be bothered to go back up four flights, so decided to risk it.

My eyes had been bothering me, feeling dry and scratchy for the last few days, so I went to the optician’s in Brixton to get some drops. Apparently, this was a common after-effect of the kind of operation I’d had. Floaters came and went too, each one making me worry that it was going to happen again. But apart from that, I was in high spirits.

I wanted to buy Charlie a present, so I spent an hour or so browsing around the shops and exploring Brixton Market. Although she’d bought me lots of presents, I’d hardly bought her anything apart from a couple of books – a volume of love poetry and an erotic novel that we read to each other in bed – and a cuddly dog that she called Bones.

I didn’t feel confident about buying her something she’d like. In the end, I found a silver locket in a vintage shop that was probably over-priced but that I thought she’d love. I bought a silk scarf too to wrap it in.

After that, I headed on the Tube to Oxford Circus. I needed some new clothes for work. I didn’t want to turn up on the first day wearing my holey jumper and paint-splattered jeans. I was going to be working with lots of trendy kids and I wanted to fit in, though I didn’t want anything too self-consciously hip.

I was deep in thought about clothes and work and what it was going to be like on my first day – my mouth went dry when I contemplated it – but when I emerged from the Tube station into the open air I gasped.

Snow was flurrying down, flakes as big as moths spiralling towards the pavement where it attempted to cling on, only to be trampled underfoot by the crowds. It was beautiful, like a scene from a Christmas movie, and I knew that in most other, less-frenetic places across the capital, the snow would by sticking to the ground. Children would be crossing their fingers for a day off school. Trains and buses would be cancelled. The usual chaos that erupted across Britain whenever it snowed heavily would ensue. As a nation, we moaned about it but we loved it really.

I hurried into Top Shop, where Charlie and I had gone that first night. It seemed so long ago but was only, what, four weeks?

Four weeks! My relationship with Charlie had got very serious, very quickly. I was deeply, seriously in love with her, beyond lust or infatuation. Already, I couldn’t imagine a future without her. Her comment that morning – ‘I don’t like change’ – made me believe that she felt exactly the same way. I had no doubt that she liked me as much as I liked her, and that made me feel secure and happy.

Perhaps, by most people’s standards, it had moved too fast. But I really didn’t care. We felt how we felt, and it wasn’t like we were talking about eloping or even moving in together. I was, however, planning to ask her if she wanted to go on holiday at Easter, somewhere warm. I was also thinking about taking her to see my mum and dad’s graves, down in Eastbourne, the closest I could get to introducing her to my parents. Or was that too morbid? I wondered if she’d want to do the same with her own deceased parents. Things like that, the coincidence of us both being orphans – though I hated that word – made me think that our relationship was serendipitous. The same with us having such similar surnames.
We were meant to be.
Charlie whispered that to me all the time.

‘You know the Greek myth?’ she asked. ‘That Zeus split humans in two and that we all wander the earth looking for our lost half? Well, we’re the lucky ones, Andrew. We found our missing half, the half that makes us whole.’

In addition to embracing Greek myths, like many couples we mythologised the beginning of our relationship.
If I hadn’t dropped that coin. If you hadn’t had to wait so long at the Tube station.
And then Charlie had lost her phone, been unable to contact me. What if I’d met someone else during that short period? Oh, we had overcome so many obstacles to be together, laughed in Fate’s cruel face!

I mulled all this over as I explored the shops of Oxford and Regent Street. By the time I had finished shopping, the rooftops were white with snow and the pavements were slippery with slush. It seemed like lots of people were leaving work early, keen to get home before public transport shut down, keeping their fingers crossed for a snowed-in day tomorrow.

I joined the crowds pushing into the Tube station. I was already beginning to regret buying so much as I was laden with bags full of shirts and jumpers and shoes. My pathetic trainers were soaked through, my socks damp and cold. The snow was still coming down hard.

To enter Oxford Circus station, there are several stairways that lead down from the intersection of Oxford and Regent Street. We were lined up six across to get into the station. I wondered if it would be more sensible to get a bus back to Tulse Hill. But I was caught up in the crowd now, bodies pressing behind me. It was like leaving a football match or stadium gig, everyone trying to get into the station at the same time. I hoped commuting wasn’t going to be like this or I might regret my decision.

I finally reached the front of the crowd at the top of the steps that led down into the belly of London. From in front of me I could hear shouting; someone had slipped on the concrete steps.

A voice shouted, ‘Hold up!’ from below. I stopped, allowing the stairs to clear in front of me. I was stuck in the middle of the crowd, halfway between the wall on one side and the central handrail on the other, unable to use my hands because of all the bags I was holding. I hesitated – and as I did I felt the crowd surge behind me, could hear shouting, the pedestrian equivalent of cars sounding their horns in a traffic jam, the thin veneer of civilisation being torn down by impatience and anger.

What happened next has replayed itself in my dreams many times since. I started to descend the steps, putting one soggy foot in front of the other, head down, treading deliberately and carefully.

And then I was falling, arms flailing, a whoosh of air in my belly as I went down head first, unable to stop my fall because of my full hands, and in a blur of darkness and light, I tumbled, fast, trying to grab hold of the rail, my foot jarring on a step, knee twisting, the bright flash of agony shooting up through my leg, and then I was lying on the ground at the bottom.

I remember flickers of what happened next. How most of the people in the crowd poured past and over me, so that I seriously feared I would be trampled to death. How a young black man pulled me to one side and his girlfriend fetched a couple of Underground workers, who acted like I was causing them a massive inconvenience. Then someone was asking me if I could walk. I couldn’t; my knee felt like it was on fire and the slightest pressure sent spears of pain through me. I was carried out of the station by a pair of paramedics and taken to the nearest hospital where I joined a queue of people in A&E who’d slipped in the snow, the nurses looking harassed as the walking wounded were brought in one after another.

In the chaos, I had lost my shopping bags, which concerned me even more at that point than the pain in my knee. I texted Charlie, playing down what had happened, telling her I’d see her at the flat later if she could make it round. Then, finally, I was wheeled in to see the nurse and made to wait some more for an X-ray.

‘You’ve sprained a knee ligament,’ the nurse said, eventually. ‘Nothing too serious, but you’re not going to be able to walk on it for three to four weeks. Are you on your own? Do you have someone who can come and help you get home?’

This was just like when my retina had detached. Except this time, I did have someone who could come and be with me. I called Charlie and told her what had happened.

‘Oh, Andrew! I’ll be right there.’

Two hours later I left the hospital, my swollen right leg swaddled in a tight bandage, on a pair of crutches. I had ten days’ supply of codeine, forty pills, and instructions to rest. ‘For goodness sake, don’t go out on your crutches in this snow and ice,’ the nurse said, looking at me as if she was sure that was exactly what I was intending to do.

Charlie called a minicab which took us home. My street was carpeted with snow and the taxi could barely get up the road, the driver complaining and cursing as he inched his way towards my flat, headlights illuminating the swirling snowflakes. Charlie insisted that he take me to my front door. Then came the worst part: getting up the steps, all four flights. I did it backwards, on my bum, pushing myself up, trying not to bump my leg, shards of white-hot pain exploding every time I did. By the time we reached the top I was almost in tears, sweating and shaking.

Charlie, her face etched with concern, helped me onto the sofa, pushing the coffee table away so I could sit with my leg propped up on a cushion.

‘My poor wounded soldier,’ she said.

‘I need a drink,’ I said.

‘Is that wise, with the codeine?’

‘I don’t care. Please.’

She opened a bottle of red and I gulped down a glassful quickly. I had taken two painkillers at the hospital and they were finally kicking in.

It was so good to have her beside me. What would I have done without her?

‘You really must be more careful,’ she said, smiling gently. ‘I’ve only just got you. I can’t bear to think of losing you.’

‘I’m sure,’ I said, ‘that someone – some bastard in the crowd behind me – pushed me.’

She looked shocked. ‘Did you see them?’

‘No. But I felt hands on my back. I’m sure I did.’ My blood chilled as I thought of it, like the snow was inside the room; inside my veins.

I looked down at the bandage on my leg. Outside the window, the snow was falling even more heavily. Four flights of stairs, and outside, the pavements were slick with ice. With a sinking heart, I realised I was trapped.