Miss You (23 page)

‘Never,’ I said.

‘Oh. It’s just last time, you said you’d been to the National.’

Last time? Did she mean that first Christmas after Ross? It was nearly four years ago and it seemed longer. I’d been just a boy, all enthusiastic about what London had to offer. I
couldn’t believe she’d remembered.

‘. . . so I assumed . . .’

‘Yes, well, I still like the theatre,’ I said. ‘It’s just I never go.’

‘We should see something,’ she said.

I looked at her empty Martini glass, and thought I wasn’t the only one not making sense. Was she flirting with me?

‘Another?’ she asked.

‘Why not?’

I’d reached the level of drunkenness just before oblivion sets in, when you feel absurdly in control.

I can’t remember how many more we had, or how the bill was settled, or what we talked about before I found myself walking with her, past the little Tudor folly in the middle of Soho
Square, across a deserted Oxford Street and along a street parallel to Tottenham Court Road which was lined with Greek restaurants and pizzerias, all closed.

‘Charlotte Street . . .’ I read the street sign, wondering, not for the first time, whether I was dreaming.

‘Yes, perfect, isn’t it?’ she said, with her breezy, disparaging laugh. ‘This is me.’ She pointed at a door beside a newsagent.

I vaguely remembered her telling me at some point in the evening that she’d moved from Battersea to be near the hospital, but my brain took a moment to catch up.

‘Are you coming up for coffee?’

It was a studio flat on the top floor with cupboards into the eaves and a big dormer window with French doors out onto a small roof terrace.

‘Have a seat,’ Charlotte instructed, as she went to put the kettle on. The tiny kitchen was too low for me to stand up in.

The only place to sit was at a small circular table with two bentwood chairs, or on the queen-size bed, which was covered in a heavy white cotton and lace bedspread. There was a chandelier
dangling from the ceiling with coloured glass flowers. The style of the room was rather like one of those exclusive antique shops in the backstreets off the Boulevard Saint-Germain, the sort that
don’t look as if they’re open to the public.

Charlotte returned with mismatched porcelain cups.

‘It’s not much more than a pied-à-terre, really, but come and see the view.’ She brushed past me to open the French doors.

One way, the Telecom Tower, amazingly close and huge; the other, rooftops, surprisingly dark for so near the centre of London. There was an almost suburban stillness here that there hadn’t
been on the roof in Soho, with only the occasional distant sigh and clank of trains coupling on the mainline out of Euston, which we could hear from our flat when we had the windows open in
summer.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I think it’s probably time I went home.’

‘Oh . . .’

Not OK. Just ‘Oh . . .’

The roof terrace was so small, I could smell the camomile steam from her cup, mingling with a powerful blast of her perfume. Had she squirted herself with scent just now? Why would she do that?
Did she like me? Of course not! Not like that. So, was this all a joke? Downstairs, my mind had been very clear. I thought I’d walked the vodka off. But now, reactivated by the hot, dark
coffee, the alcohol seemed to have gained new momentum. I felt jittery, almost frightened, because I somehow sensed that if I turned towards her, even one degree, I would be in danger.

She was the one who moved, walking inside, kicking off her shoes, sitting on the bed and pointing a remote at the television.

‘Jesus!’ she said.

‘What?’ I perched on the bed beside her.

On the television were images of the towers coming down, those great, symbolic towers collapsing into ruins and people running in the street pursued by a monstrous tsunami of dust and debris,
images that meant that the world would never be the same again.

We both stared silently at the screen and then Charlotte turned towards me, fear making her face even more beautiful, and I knew, suddenly, that I could. Then we were kissing, eyes tight closed
as if to obliterate reality, as we tore at each other’s clothes.

They were stockings, the kind that stay up on their own, with a broad band of lace around the thigh.

Fucking Charlotte was as surreal and thrilling as fucking a film star. Her pliant body, her hungry mouth, the wilful act of succumbing to temptation carried me to a place on the cusp of pleasure
and exquisite pain that I’d never been to before, nor even knew existed.

I lay spreadeagled with my brother’s lean and stunningly beautiful girlfriend stuck to my chest, unable to believe what had happened, unwilling to move in case the fantasy would suddenly
dissolve into sticky embarrassment.

Charlotte finally lifted her face, her lips dark from kissing, her long hair falling untidily around her shoulders.

‘You’ve certainly grown up,’ she said.

I didn’t dare to speak.

She rolled off me, moving my arm to allow her to lie next to me.

‘You know what . . .’ She took my hand and guided it between her legs. ‘I think there’s even more.’

Sinning is like lying. When you’ve done it once, it doesn’t seem any more sinful to do it again.

The first time, my mind was so focused on trying to sense what she wanted, I’d kept my eyes shut. Now I saw the wonderful moment she disappeared into climax and I never wanted it to stop,
my fingers wet with her, my head full of her gasps.

‘Thank you,’ she said afterwards.

What was I supposed to say? I said nothing.

‘You’ve got handsome. Did you know? Definitely improved with age.’

‘Like cheese?’

‘Or wine,’ she laughed.

I tried to think of something to say to her, but every compliment I rehearsed in my head seemed crass or underwhelming. I didn’t want to be naked and disdained.

‘I have to go . . .’ I kissed the cute tip of her nose.

‘Really?’ She drew a sheet over her perfect little round breasts.

Was she slightly annoyed? Because I was going? Because I’d said it, not her?

‘Really,’ I said.

She watched me dress.

‘I’ll see you around, then,’ I said.

She said nothing.

I let myself out and ran down four flights of narrow stairs.

Dawn was breaking as I walked home. I went straight to the bathroom and ran a deep bath and lay in the purifying water, unable to believe what I’d done.

It was the accident.

It was the vodka.

It was the apocalypse in New York.

It would never happen again.

So, how much, or how little, was I going to tell Lucy? It began to dawn on me that in a moment of sheer intoxication I had jeopardized my whole life. The strange thing was that I hadn’t
felt guilty until then because Charlotte was so separate from my life with Lucy. If I had betrayed someone, it was Ross.

Should I confess everything and get it over with? I was almost sure Lucy would forgive me, if I explained. Or would she? Why hurt her? It was never going to happen again. I hadn’t
encountered Charlotte until now, so it was unlikely I’d run into her again. If we did see each other, she’d behave as if nothing had happened. We both would. She was probably regretting
it already. It was a blip on the timeline of our lives. A wave from the past had rolled into the present, broken with a thunderous splash, then ebbed away again.

As I towelled down, I began to work out what I’d say. Not the sex, so not the rooftop apartment, so not the club, so not Charlotte. Cupping my hands over my mouth, trying to smell my own
breath, I wondered if I could get away with not mentioning the alcohol? No. In my account of events, maybe I’d put a bottle of vodka in the hands of the male nurse who had given me a
cigarette. It had been a traumatic day, we’d needed a drink after work.

I lay down on the sofa in the living room and when Lucy woke me up a couple of hours later from a dead, dreamless sleep, nothing about the previous evening seemed to have any reality at all.

‘It was very considerate of you to sleep in here,’ she said, presenting me with a cup of hot tea. ‘But I honestly wouldn’t have minded being woken.’

So I didn’t say anything at all.

My head felt peculiarly clear but I was jittery and a little clammy, as if sweating vodka. I guessed that the alcohol level in my bloodstream was still way above any sensible level for treating
patients, but there was no way I could call in sick in my first week, so I made myself toast and scrambled eggs with lots of butter while Lucy ate a bowl of muesli.

‘Isn’t it awful?’ she said as we listened to the news on the radio.

‘Unbelievable,’ I said.

For the rest of the day, my hangover was only a heartbeat away from palpitations. When my shift finished, I left immediately, walked back to the flat and was asleep long before
Lucy arrived home. I woke before dawn and decided to go for a run, my first that week, and when I returned, I showered, and made pancakes for breakfast and it felt as if all the bits of me that had
been blown apart were melded together again.

We spoke about going back to Lucy’s parents’ house in Broadstairs if the weather stayed nice for the weekend. Walking away from me at the junction with Euston Road, Lucy raised her
arm and waved. The world had not ended. Everything was fine and normal. I promised myself I would never again drink Martinis, Grey Goose or any other brand.

Halfway through the afternoon, I was listening to a small boy’s chest with a stethoscope, which still gave me a childish thrill, when my pager went. I ignored it while speaking to the
boy’s mother. His chest appeared clear, so we needed to investigate the possibility of asthma. The alarm on her face made me remember what Lucy had been saying about dealing with parents.
Adults are generally far more stalwart hearing about their own diagnoses than they are listening to their children’s.

My pager went again. The message said there was a call on the internal phone for me.

‘Have you got five minutes, Dr Macdonald?’

Charlotte’s brusque tone immediately made me think I must have done something wrong.

‘I’ll meet you on the top floor,’ she said.

The lifts were notoriously slow so I took the stairs, which allowed me to observe her in her buttoned-up white coat and stockings for a second or two through the glass door on the landing. There
was an impatience about her, as she moved from one foot to the other, checking her watch. ‘Dr Grant?’

‘Dr Macdonald,’ she said, swivelling on her heels as I surprised her. ‘There’s something I’d like your opinion on. Follow me.’

She led me back through the door to the staircase, but instead of going down to the wards, we went up a flight, to another landing where there was an emergency exit onto the roof. Leaning back
against the door, she took my hand, and guided it under her white coat.

I could hear the clatter of people running up and down the lower flights, and the hum and whirr of the lift. As she began to pant short, sharp breaths, I instinctively held my other hand over
her mouth to stop the noise, which drove her even wilder. Ripping down my zipper, she clamped her legs round me, pinioning my buttocks with the pointed heels of her shoes, giving me no choice but
to thrust and spill into her as she rode waves of climax.

I’d never done it standing up before. I’d never done it with my clothes on. I’d never done it in a hospital or on a landing against a door with a green running man in front of
my eyes. It felt dirty and wrong and fantastic.

We stood, locked together, breathing against each other’s necks until she nudged me away. I zipped up and watched her combing her fingers through her hair, securing her chignon, smoothing
down her white coat.

‘Do you ever wear anything under that?’ I asked.

‘I don’t do this all the time, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

It wasn’t. But now it was, and I didn’t know if that made it better or worse.

‘I can’t do this,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a girlfriend.’

‘And that’s a problem because . . . ?’

‘I love her,’ I said.

There was just a hint of a raised eyebrow. Enough to make me feel a hypocrite.

‘Well, that’s a shame,’ Charlotte said. ‘We’re good together.’

She reached up to touch my face, the caress of her hand on my cheek almost more intimate than anything else we’d done. So I had to kiss her again. She was brilliant at kissing, slow and
temptingly sensual.

‘You’re the loveliest thing,’ I said.

‘You too,’ she said. ‘You’re the best, Angus. The best ever.’

For our third anniversary, Dave surprised me with a weekend in London. He fixed up for Hope to sleep over at Anne’s, where Dad was living virtually full-time now, and
he’d consulted Doll about where we should stay, all without me knowing. We caught a train full of Arsenal supporters drinking lager at nine o’clock in the morning, so Dave had a great
time comparing statistics and predicting the score. When we got to London, and all the red-and-white shirts swarmed merrily towards the Tube, I knew he would have loved to follow along with them to
the match.

Doll had apparently offered to book us into the Hilton, and I was relieved that Dave hadn’t accepted, generous though the offer was. But the hotel he had chosen on Southampton Row was a
bit shabby and impersonal, so I felt disappointed for him. Our room looked out over a grimy well in the centre of the building, where ventilation ducts from the kitchen were pumping out blasts of
bacon.

‘We won’t be spending much time in here anyway, will we?’ I tried to make the best of it. ‘It’s so exciting! I’ve never stayed a night in London before. And
the flowers are beautiful!’

Dave had rung in advance to get white roses in the room, which were what he always gave me on our anniversary because they had been in the wedding marquee where we’d had our first kiss, so
I’d never mentioned that we’d had white roses on Mum’s coffin.

For lunch we had a sandwich and a cappuccino in Costa, still a bit of a treat in the days before every other shop had an espresso machine with a milk frother. Dave said what we did for the rest
of the afternoon was up to me because I was more familiar with London.