You Can’t Fall in Love With Your Ex (Can You?) (24 page)

“It’s
zone two,” Felix said, as if reading my thoughts. “It’s a highly desirable
area.” His fingers put quotes around the words, and I realised he was mocking
me.

I
felt suddenly ashamed, conscious of the bubble of privilege in which I lived.
It hadn’t been that long ago that I’d bought Darcey’s clothes on eBay and
scoured the supermarket for discount packs of nappies. But within just a few
years, I’d left all that so far behind I could barely remember it.

Felix
turned down a side road lined with what must once have been grand homes for
prosperous Victorian families. Now, their stucco fronts were peeling and
multiple bells jostled for position at their front doors.

“Nearly
there,” he said.

Since
we’d got off the train, I hadn’t said a word. My mouth was dry and tasted sour;
I wished I’d accepted his offer to get me a cab and gone home. I could have had
a cold shower, made some coffee and been early to fetch Darcey from school. 

“Felix,
do you mind if I…”

“Here
we are,” he said. He pushed open one of the heavy front doors, which had an
ornate, if tarnished, brass knob at its centre, and led me into a carpeted
lobby. There was a makeshift reception desk squeezed against one wall, so
tightly that the disinterested concierge sat next to it in a shabby office
chair.

“Hey,
Danielle,” Felix said, and she looked up from filing her nails, her face
lighting up.

“Hiya,
Felix, lovely day,” she said.

“Isn’t
it? This is my friend Laura. Laura, Danielle.”

“Hello.”
I shook her soft, cool hand, and she gave me a brief smile then returned to her
manicure.

Felix
led me up the stairs, which were covered in the same worn, figured carpet as
the hallway. We hurried up three flights, until my thighs were tired and my
lungs staring to burn. It was airless and very hot; a smell of burned toast and
unwashed bedding seemed to have seeped into the wallpaper. Then he turned on to
the landing and fitted a key into one of three identical, scuffed white doors.

“After
you,” he said.

Through
the fug of vodka, I realised what must be happening. This place – this was one
of those hotels you read about that rent rooms by the hour, where people come
with prostitutes, or to have sordid, illicit sex when they have nowhere else to
go. And the way the woman downstairs – Danielle – had greeted Felix, clearly he
was no stranger to this place, or this kind of transaction. My stomach lurched
with horror, there was a sudden flood of saliva into my mouth and a rush of
sweat down my back, and I realised I was going to be sick.

“Where’s
the bathroom?” I gasped. “Please, Felix, quick.”

“Laura,
what’s…” The he looked at me, realised, and took my arm again, bundling me
upstairs to a half-landing and through a door with a ‘Ladies’ sign on it.

I
fell to my knees on to the cold tiled floor and vomited gruesomely, while Felix
held my hair and patted my back. When the first spasms had passed, he said,
“I’ll be right back,” and closed the door behind him.

I
straightened up, feeling suddenly much, much better, and glanced in the mirror.
God, I was a sight – my skin greenish-pale in the harsh light that bounced off
the spotlessly clean white walls, my hair limp around my face. Before I could
start any emergency repair work, there was a tap on the door and Felix’s voice
said, “Only me.”

He
opened the door a crack and passed me a tube of toothpaste and a brush still in
its blister pack, a parcel of wet wipes, a clean towel and a bottle of water.

“Will
you be able to find your way back to my room? I’ll wait there for you. It’s
four B; I’ll leave the door open, okay?”

“Okay,”
I said faintly.

I
cleaned my teeth, depositing the toothbrush in the bin, cleaned my ravaged
make-up off with the wet wipes and smeared some handcream from the tube in my
bag on to my tight, flushed skin. I had the wherewithal to do a pretty decent
repair job: a sample size of foundation, lipstick, an eye crayon – but what was
the point? My dignity was well and truly gone, flushed down the loo along with
all the vodka.

So
I combed my hair, gulped some of the deliciously cold water and made my way
only slightly shakily back to room four B.

I
realised as soon as I pushed open the door how wrong I’d got it. This wasn’t a
room Felix rented by the hour. It was bare and tidy, certainly, but someone
lived here. A laptop was open on the bedside table. The hook on the back of the
door was laden with clothes on hangers. A stack of books was piled almost as
high as the small, wall-mounted telly.

Felix
was lying on the bed, his legs outstretched and his hands behind his head.

“Okay?”

“Better,”
I said. “I’m really sorry. God, I’m so embarrassed.”

He
held out his arms, and I moved in for a hug, then lay down next to him.

“Laura,
please. It’s my fault.”

“It’s
not. I drank too much, and then you brought me here, and for some reason I
thought…”

“What?”
He rested his warm hand on my cold, clammy one.

“I
thought it was some kind of… I don’t know… flophouse.”

I
turned to look at him, just in time to see him suppress a wave of laughter.
“Flophouse? How retro of you! To be fair, two of my neighbours are on the game,
but they don’t transact here – they’d be chucked out sharpish if they did.
Amour and Summer – which aren’t their actual names, obviously. But they live
here, and I do, too.”

“I
know,” I said. “I get that, now. But I didn’t understand – you said you were
living in a hotel, and I thought…”

“What?
Malmaison? The Savoy? Sweetheart, you know better than that.”

“I
do now,” I said again, hunching my shoulders and squirming a bit with
mortification. “But I was thinking… I kind of pictured you living like we
always imagined we would. All glamorous and… you know.”

“And
I still am,” Felix said. “Imagining it, I mean. That’s what I wanted you to
see. You asked about living the dream – and this is it, right here. I’m living,
and I’ve still got the dream, the hunger I’ve always had. I’m going to make it
big, I know I am. And even if I don’t, I wake up every morning knowing
something amazing is going to happen to me.”

“Really?”

“Hell,
yes.” Felix laughed, and pushed back his hair. “Let me tell you a story. I went
to a casting a couple of weeks ago. My agent said they wanted a guy who could
play a wizard, and I thought, great, I can do magic, I can nail this part. So I
turned up, and there was a whole row of us sat there, actors like me. And right
at the end, there was this bloke with long white hair and a beard down to his
waist. And I thought, what am I even doing here?”

I
laughed. “Did you get the part?”

“Of
course I fucking didn’t. But I’m still laughing about it. I’m still standing.
And I know I’m ready now, Laura, ready for something huge. The Flight of Fancy
Dream
is going to New York, and they want me to go too – I’m leaving in a couple of
weeks. So I don’t mind living in a flophouse for now.”

“You’re
going to New York?” I said. “Next month?”

Felix
said, “Yes, why?”

Knowing
I shouldn’t, I said, “I’ll be there. I’ll be there in August, too.”

And
I told him the dates.

We
lay there on the narrow bed, looking at each other. I’d stopped feeling drunk
or sick; I wasn’t aware of anything, really, except the sense of infinite
possibility Felix said he felt. For a moment, I saw the world through his eyes
– a place where dreams could come true, where material things were unimportant,
where happiness was found in an alternate reality, on a stage where, for a brief
while, hundreds of people loved you more than anything else in the world.

My
breathing deepened thinking about it, remembering it. I closed my eyes and for
a moment I was back there, on stage, on pointe, applause ringing in my ears. I
could even feel rose petals brushing my cheeks.

Then
I realised it was Felix’s fingers.

“Laura,”
he said. “Wake up.”

I
was snapped back to reality as abruptly if an elastic band had twanged my face.

“Shit!
What time is it?”

I
glanced at my watch, panicked, and called Zé.

“Listen,
I’m really sorry, but I’ve been held up. Please could you collect Darcey and
take her back to yours?”

“Sure,”
she said, as if it were nothing at all. “Juniper was asking if she could come
over after school anyway. There’s some new YouTube thing, evidently. Want me to
give her supper?”

 I
thanked her over and over, then called nursery and grovelled, saying I’d be
late to pick up Owen, too.

Felix
watched me silently.

“So,
I guess I need to go now,” I said, once my calls were made.

“Of
course you do. Want me to walk you to the station?”

I
didn’t. I wanted to stay here, in the surprisingly clean room, and draw the
curtains and take him in my arms and for our clothes to magically vanish, and
for the dream I’d had and lost to penetrate me when his body did, and for my
life to somehow, suddenly, change to one in which there were no kitchen
worktops to buff, no shirts to iron, no future to worry
about.

“No,”
I said, “It’s fine. I can find my way.”

And
so I kissed Felix chastely goodbye and walked blearily to the Tube and endured
the journey home, feeling sick, anxious and guilty as sin for what I’d allowed
myself to imagine. Once the children were in bed and I’d received the expected
text from Jonathan saying how terribly sorry he was, he’d been held up at work,
and we’d celebrate my birthday properly another night, I made a pot of tea and
sat outside in the garden, looking into the darkness, thinking and thinking
until I couldn’t put off going to sleep any longer.

It
was the last day of term before the start of the long summer holidays. In just
a week, Jonathan and I would be departing for our holiday, leaving the kids
with Sadie and Gareth. Instead of last-day-of-term excitement, I was filled
with a weird sense of dread that I couldn’t quite put a name to. Was it worry
about leaving the children? But we’d left them before, when we’d escaped for a
weekend in the Lake District last year. They were fine – they loved staying
with my sister and her husband.

It
was Felix, I realised. He hadn’t contacted me since my birthday – I didn’t know
whether I was relieved or disappointed. What I did know was that I was on a
constant knife-edge of tension, my stomach lurching every time I heard my phone
ring, my checking of email and Facebook becoming not so much frequent as
obsessive.

I
checked them now, walking slowly away from the school, but there was nothing – no
message, no text, no missed call. Then I heard the sound of pounding feet
slapping the pavement behind me, and almost jumped out of my skin.

But
it was Zé, in running kit, her hair in a swishy ponytail.

“Laura!
I thought it was you. I spotted you from way back – no one else has such
amazing posture – and sprinted to catch you up. Come in for a coffee? My
machine makes killer espresso.”

“I’d
love to,” I said. “You nearly gave me heart failure – I thought you were a
mugger or… something.”

She
laughed, wiping the sleeve of her top over her sweating face. “If only I could
run that fast! Ten k in an hour is about my limit these days. Come on in.”

Across
the road, I saw Amanda and Sigourney watching us, their heads close together as
they whispered to each other. Fuck it, I thought – let them gossip. I was
allowed to have other friends, wasn’t I? I smiled sweetly and gave them a
little wave.

“I’d
love a coffee,” I said.

We
walked back towards Zé’s house, and I noticed with envy how quickly her
breathing returned to normal. God, I needed to get fit again. But what was the
point? I supposed Owen would reach a stage at which he could outrun me in the
park, but he hadn’t yet, and when he did he’d be grown-up enough for it not to
matter.

“Here
we are. Shall we sit outside? Then I can have a fag when I’ve put the coffee
on.”

“Great
idea.”

She
grinned. “It’s reprehensible, isn’t it? But I only ever smoke outside. And only
after my workout, and when Juniper isn’t here. And I don’t think she knows. And
I can stop any time I like, right?”

“Yeah,
right,” I said, and she laughed.

“I
won’t be a second.”

I
sat on one of the cushioned benches surrounding the small, splashy water
feature. Although the house was just feet from a main road, it seemed to be
totally silent here. Then I realised, when I listened carefully, I could hear
the traffic, but the sound of the water, the rustle of the bamboo plants that
lined the lawn, and a chorus of birds from somewhere – had edited it carefully,
unobtrusively out. My friend’s garden, like her house and her clothes, was a
masterpiece of design.