Because She Loves Me (6 page)

Towards the end of the afternoon, Charlie said she was going to run back to a shop we’d looked in earlier, and left Tilly and me alone.

‘So?’ I said.

Tilly raised an eyebrow. ‘You mean, what do I think of her? She’s lovely. Amazing. Sweet and gorgeous and a real laugh. Where on earth did you find her? Did you make her in a lab like those boys in
Weird Science
?’

I was thrilled to hear this. ‘I’m worried she’s too good for me.’

‘Well . . .’ Seeing my face she added, ‘I’m only kidding, Andrew. The two of you look awesome together. It’s great to see you so happy.’

‘Thanks, sis.’ I paused. ‘What about you? How are you doing at the moment?’

‘Me? I’m fine.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Why are you asking?’

‘Oh. I don’t know. I just thought you seemed a bit down over Christmas.’

She looked at me suspiciously. ‘Did Rachel say something to you? Only, she was acting very suspiciously when she came back from dropping you at the station. Plus she took ages. I thought the two of you had eloped. And then she was ultra-interested when I told her I was coming up to see you today.’

‘No. She didn’t say anything.’

‘Hmm. Well, I’m honestly fine. I was seeing this guy and was upset when he gave me the heave-ho, but I’m not depressed or anything like that.’

‘But . . .’ I decided to come clean. ‘Rachel told me you’re on antidepressants.’

Tilly’s face was stony. ‘Did she? For fuck’s sake. I wish she’d keep this,’ she touched her nose, ‘out of it.’

‘She was worried about you, that’s all.’

‘So you decided you needed to do something to cheer me up? The poor crippled charity case.’

I was mortified. Her voice was loud and people around us, in the street, were gawping. ‘Tilly. It’s not like that. Rachel told me you were down and I felt bad that I hardly ever see you. It’s not a charity thing. Come on, you know me better than that.’

She calmed down. ‘OK. But, listen. Yes, I have been depressed. It happens. It’s not something you can fix with a day out, but it’s not a huge deal. I cope. I have medication which makes me feel better and I’ve actually been feeling pretty bright since Christmas. Looking forward to a new year.’ She gazed into the crowd. ‘And I really appreciate you trying to cheer me up. It’s been a brilliant day and, despite being a bit useless when it comes to emotional stuff, you are a good brother, OK? Now give me a hug.’

I stooped to embrace her.

‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered.

‘You’ve got nothing to be sorry about. But you can’t fix me. You just have to be there for me.’

When I straightened up I saw Charlie standing a few metres away, watching us, a serious expression on her face. When she realised I’d seen her she came over.

‘I’d better be getting back,’ Tilly said.

We got a cab to Victoria and Charlie and I waited on the platform with my sister.

‘Please don’t sack Rachel,’ I said. ‘She cares about you.’

‘Don’t fret. I won’t.’ She looked up at Charlie, who was holding on to my arm. ‘Be good to my brother. He can be an idiot but he deserves to be happy.’

I expected Charlie to crack a joke but her response was earnest.

‘I’m going to make him happy,’ she said. ‘Don’t you worry about that.’

Six

Hiya. Haven’t heard from you since Xmas. You OK? Been trying to call. Can we meet up? I need to see you. Call me! S Xx

Charlie and I were in bed, again. Since our day out with Tilly we’d barely left the flat, only popping out to buy takeaways and wine, along with condoms and candles, which Charlie had insisted on for the bedroom. She’d bought scented bath oil too and some new pink-and-black underwear that had a Viagra-like effect on me. A couple of times, she’d popped back to hers to get clothes, check her post and so on, and I’d made a few solo trips to the off licence when it was raining outside, leaving Charlie snuggled on the sofa watching reruns of
Sex and the City
.

I felt drunk. When I closed my eyes, Charlie’s face or body – her pierced belly button winking in the candlelight, the
mermaid
tattoo, the little chains of freckles that dotted her fle
sh –
would swim into my vision. My jaw ached from grinning so much. My muscles and skin felt alive in a way they never had before.

It was as if a chemical explosion had gone off in my flat, Charlie and I the willing, happy victims. She didn’t have to go back to work till January 4th, which was now only two days away. I was going to have to call Victor, start doing some work too. I was dreading it. I wanted to stay with Charlie in our little bubble forever.

My phone chirped and Charlie, who was closest to the bedside table, leant over and picked it up, passing it over. I read the text message.

‘What’s up?’ she asked, reading my expression.

‘It’s Sasha. She wants to see me.’

‘Oh – is she all right?’

‘I’m not sure. Sounds like something’s wrong. I’d better call her.’ I kissed Charlie’s cheek. She smelled of fresh sweat and lavender soap. ‘I feel terrible. I haven’t spoken to her all week. I didn’t even send her a happy New Year message.’

Charlie and I had been planning to go out for New Year but had spent the night inside instead. Charlie said she wanted to be making love to me at the stroke of midnight, that it would be the best possible way to start 2014, and I had to agree.

Charlie sat up and pulled on a long T-shirt. ‘I’m going to take a shower.’

I sat up too. ‘Are you annoyed with me?’

‘No, of course not.’ She sounded irritated. ‘Why do you ask that?’

‘Oh, no reason.’ I smiled at her and watched as she left the room, worrying a little about her sudden change in mood. But I set the worry aside – it was probably just me being paranoid. Harriet was always telling me that I was too quick to guess her moods and try to fix problems that didn’t exist.

I called Sasha. She answered on the second ring. We arranged to meet that night.

‘So?’ Charlie said, when she came back into the room, damp from the bath, a towel wrapped round her. ‘What’s up with Sasha?’

‘Boyfriend problems, by the sound of it,’ I replied. ‘She’s been seeing this guy called Lance. He’s married.’

Charlie pulled a face. ‘Messy.’

‘Yeah, it is. Anyway . . . I’m going to meet her at seven in Herne Hill.’ I checked my phone. It was three now, just gone.

Charlie lifted the towel to dry her hair, giving me a full view of her naked body.

‘That’s cool,’ she said, rubbing her hair. ‘I have some stuff I need to do, anyway. Like ironing all my work clothes.’ She groaned. ‘I’ll get dressed and go now.’

I reached out for her. ‘Don’t get dressed yet.’

She looked hesitant, just for a moment. Then she pulled the quilt aside and slipped underneath with me, her damp hair cold on my hot skin as she trailed kisses down my torso.

Before she left, she walked round the flat taking photos with her phone: the rumpled bed, the kitchen, which was full of empty wine bottles, the sink piled high with washing-up, even the bathroom.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

‘You’re going to think I’m a real sap, but I want to be able to picture you here when I’m not with you.’

‘What, among all the mess?’

She put her arm around me and held the phone up to take a snap of us together.

‘Say sausages.’

She took the snap then told me she needed the loo before she went. I sat and flicked through the newspaper, becoming absorbed in the latest news about the Dark Angel serial killer who had been found guilty of the murder of twenty-three elderly people. There was a photo of the guy who had discovered what she’d done, a former neighbour of hers. He said he hoped she would rot in jail and then burn in hell. Not for the first time, I was glad my neighbours were agreeable.

Charlie came back into the room, smelling of perfume. For a moment, she was caught in the sunlight coming through the window.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ she asked.

‘Just . . . because.’ I stood up and pulled her close to me, peering into her eyes, pretending to examine her. ‘Are you real?’

She squirmed away. ‘What do you mean, you idiot?’

‘You seem too good to be true.’

I had expected her to treat what I was saying jokily but she was surprisingly serious. ‘I’m really not that good.’

Apart from some of the more intense moments in bed, most of our exchanges over the past week had been light-hearted and playful. This new gravity took me aback.

‘I was only messing around,’ I said and, after staring at the carpet thoughtfully for a few long seconds, she finally smiled.

‘I just want you to know that—’ she began. ‘Oh, this is crazy.’

I took her hands. ‘What is?’

‘Nothing. I’m being stupid, that’s all. Ignore me. I’m about to start my period and it’s making me feel a bit girly and emotional. Please stop me before I say something I regret.’

We hugged and I didn’t want to let her go. But Sasha needed me, and it was time I stopped being such a bad friend.

As I was about to leave, my doorbell rang. It was Kristi, my cleaner.

‘I completely forgot you were coming,’ I said.

Kristi was from Albania, a slim woman in her early twenties with black hair cut in a bob, dark eyes and a prominent scar that ran down her left cheek. Of course, I’d never asked her about the scar, though I wondered about it in the same way I’d wondered what she would be like in bed when she had first started working for me. I’d hired her during a period when I was crazily busy with work, last spring, and had got used to her weekly visits, during which she mostly did my ironing, half-heartedly. She wasn’t a very good cleaner, but I liked her and imagined a terrible background in which she sent home the pennies I gave her to a poverty-stricken mother, so I kept her on, always paying her slightly too much and telling her to keep the change.

‘You want me to go?’ she asked.

‘No, no, come in.’ I glanced around the flat. It was a mess and I noticed how Kristi wrinkled her nose. What did it smell of? Perfume? Sex?

‘I will tidy up, yes?’ she said, frowning.

‘Yes please. Let yourself out, OK?’

I followed her gaze. There was a black, lacy bra on the sofa.

‘Um . . . Maybe just do the dusting and hoovering? I’ll tidy up later.’

I left her looking disapprovingly around the room. It was weird. Before meeting Charlie I thought Kristi was hot. Now she looked rather plain and uninteresting.

‘Oh God, Andrew. Why am I such a cliché?’

‘You’re not. Well, you are, but these things don’t feel like clichés when you’re living them, do they?’

‘That’s almost wise.’

We were sitting in The Commercial, opposite Herne Hill station, pints half-full on the table before us.

I met Sasha at university. She was the girlfriend of a guy on my course whose name I could barely remember now. I got on with her much better than I did with him. We liked the same things – the same books, music, art, all the things Charlie had said made life worth living – and shared a sense of humour. We just clicked. But we didn’t fancy each other, even though Sasha’s boyfriend thought we did, and everyone said we should be together. It wasn’t like that, though. I loved Sasha, but in a purely platonic way. This wasn’t because she wasn’t fanciable, either. She was very attractive, with straight dark hair, trendy dark-framed glasses and a curvy figure.

‘If I was a bloke or a lesbian I’d be all over her like a rash,’ Tilly said. ‘Actually, she makes me come over all bi-curious.’

Yet another occasion when my sister made me cover my face with my hands.

Sasha was a web developer, a bit of a geek, who also loved science fiction and video games. She was recovering from a teenage obsession with
Buffy
and
Angel
.

The married-man thing was so unlike her. But this guy, Lance, was a programming genius, apparently, and had a touch of the Steve Jobs about him. Sasha told me she’d been unable to resist his advances, had tried not to think about his wife, whom he portrayed as a cold-hearted bitch who didn’t understand him.

It was clichéd, all right.

‘So what happened? Did his wife find out?’

She nodded glumly. ‘How did you guess?’

‘It had to be either that, or he decided he loved her and could never leave her.’

Sasha took a big swig of her pint. The lenses of her glasses were filthy, like they’d been splashed with tears. ‘She phoned me. The wife. Her name’s Mae. She said that if I went near her husband again, her brothers would track me down and, I quote, “cut off my tits and sew up my cunt”.’

‘Jesus.’

‘It was really scary. I’m so glad I don’t work with Lance anymore.’ Her lower lip wobbled. ‘I miss him, though.’

I trotted out all the stuff friends have to say in these circumstances: you deserve better, you need someone who really loves you. But I meant them, because as I said the words all I could think of was Charlie.

‘He was kinky,’ Sasha said, after she’d sunk another pint.

‘Do I want to hear this?’ I asked.

‘He liked having USB sticks shoved up his bum. You know, dongles.’

I spat out my beer. ‘Dongles up his bum?’

She creased up with laughter. ‘Yes. But the plastic end, not the metal USB end.’

‘Oh, that’s all right then. Anything else?’

‘Well . . . He liked wearing a nappy, and pretending to breastfeed off me.’

‘What?’

She smiled. ‘I’m joking.’

‘Thank God.’

‘About the nappy part, anyway.’

I went to the toilet, checking my phone while I took a leak. A couple of texts from Charlie, one saying that she hoped Sasha was all right, the next telling me she missed me and had been thinking about me. As I was leaving the gents, my phone flashed again. It was a photo – a selfie, of a topless Charlie.

‘So what have you been up to?’ Sasha asked when I got back to the table. ‘Why have you been incommunicado?’

‘Huh?’ I was distracted, thinking about the picture I’d just received.

‘What’s going on with you?’

I stuck my phone in my pocket. ‘I wasn’t sure if I should tell you, what with your whole Lance thing. But . . . I’ve met someone.’

‘Wow. Really? What’s her name, what’s she like and does she have any interesting fetishes?’

I told her all about Charlie. Twenty minutes later, after I’d paused for breath, Sasha said, ‘She sounds . . . lovely.’