by Paige Toon
We get up to his room and he indicates one of his armchairs, sitting down in the other. The firework sounds are muted, but still present in the background.
‘I need to tell you something,’ he says. ‘About a girl I know in Germany.’
My nausea steps up a notch.
‘Her name is Rosalinde,’ he explains grimly. ‘I’ve known her all my life. She’s from a very good family.’
Why is he telling me this?
‘It has always been assumed that I’ll marry her.’
I put my hand to my mouth. He regards me with compassion.
‘I don’t want to marry her,’ he adds, ‘but it’s complicated.’
‘I don’t understand. You have an arranged marriage?’
‘Not exactly.’
So he doesn’t live in the Dark Ages.
He continues. ‘But my parents expect certain things of me. It’s how I was raised. To break off my engagement to Rosalinde—’
‘You’re engaged?’ I ask sharply.
‘It’s not like that. I have never proposed to her, but we have always had an understanding.’
‘Have you slept with her?’
Please say no, please say no, please say no . . .
‘Yes.’
‘Oh. So she’s your girlfriend?’ What does that make me?
‘No, she’s not. As I said, it’s complicated.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me about her before?’ I whisper.
‘I was going to. That day I invited you to lunch after our first date. But Harry came along and we seemed able to move on without me going into . . . details. I didn’t know how things would pan out between us.’ He motions to the two of us.
I stare at him. ‘And how have things panned out, exactly?’
‘Alice . . .’ He gets up and comes to me, kneeling on the floor and gazing up at me earnestly. ‘I love you. You know I love you. I want to be with you. I don’t want to be with Rosalinde.’
‘Could you stop saying her name?’ I wince. I know it’s just a name, but I already have a picture of her in my mind and she’s perfect and beautiful.
He takes my hand. Mine is shaking, but he seems very calm. Freakishly calm, considering.
‘We have never talked about our previous relationships,’ he says seriously.
It’s true. I’ve been curious about his past – it’s clear from our lovemaking that he has vastly more experience than me – but I don’t want to open up this particular can of worms, because talking about his past would inevitably mean talking about mine.
‘But perhaps that was a mistake.’
I take a deep breath. I don’t want to speak to him about Joe, but this is serious. If any time calls for complete honesty, it’s now.
‘Rosalinde—’
‘Stop!’ I hold up my hand.
‘How do you want me to refer to her?’ he asks gently.
Good point. ‘Okay.’
‘She was my first,’ he continues.
God, this hurts. I’m slightly taken aback by how much, actually.
‘We grew up together, we played together as children; she was my friend. Our parents used to tease us about being boyfriend and girlfriend, but it wasn’t until we turned sixteen that things grew serious . . .’
He gives me a meaningful look and the pain is intense. I didn’t think I cared about him to this extent.
‘We both went back to boarding school after the summer, and the next time I saw her something had changed. I don’t know if she’d met someone else, but it was another year before we became friends again. Perhaps it was the pressure from our parents, but we made a pact that, if we got married, it would be our choice. And first we agreed we needed to live a little.’
Wait. ‘Is that what you’re doing with me? Living a little?’ A lump forms in my throat.
‘No.’ He shakes his head resolutely. ‘You’re different to anyone else I’ve ever known.’
Tears trek down my cheeks. The fireworks have ended and now we can hear the music from the main stage. I think Mark Owen is playing.
‘Have you told your parents about me?’
‘I’m going to tell them when I go home. I’m going to tell everyone.’
I hadn’t felt too bad about not seeing him this summer. Now I feel nauseous at the thought of him going back to Germany. No wonder he never asked me to go with him.
‘Come here,’ he says, pulling me out of my chair.
We don’t make love that night. We don’t even get undressed. We lie on the bed, him holding me from behind as I listen to the sound of the college balls still going strong by the river. He didn’t even ask me about my past. I didn’t have to talk about Joe. But that doesn’t mean he’s not on my mind. Early the next morning when I walk home, I look like any other female student who has stayed up all night – one of the six o’clock survivors still wearing her ball gown. But inside I feel more dead than alive.
It eats me up that summer. It infests me. Lukas rarely rings – he sends the occasional text, and if I try to call him, his mobile diverts straight to voicemail. I return to my dark place. I lose myself in it for weeks, until Jessie and Emily intervene, but not before I’ve gone to London. Searching, never finding.
At the end of August, Lukas flies back to England. He’s like a stranger to me. It feels like Groundhog Day.
‘Did you tell her?’ I ask him across the kitchen table. He seems to have expected the coolness of my behaviour, but he’s going with it. He has no other option.
‘You know that I did,’ he replies reasonably, reaching forward to take my hand.
‘That’s right. One of your texts,’ I say sarcastically, snatching it away.
He sighs and slumps back in his chair, but doesn’t take his eyes from mine. ‘It was hard to talk.’
‘Clearly.’
‘But we can talk now.’
‘Maybe I’m not in the mood to talk now.’
‘Don’t say anything, then. Just listen.’
I’m not in the mood to listen, either, but I can’t be bothered to get up and leave the room.
‘My parents already knew.’
What? ‘How did they know?’
‘Klaus.’ He gives me a hard stare. ‘I suspected he’d squeal.’
‘That’s a horrible thing to say.’
‘It doesn’t mean it’s not true.’ He taps his fingers on the table. ‘Of course, I knew he’d tell them about you after the ball, but I had already decided to confess by then.’
Am I supposed to feel comforted by that thought?
‘In fact, I believe he revealed your existence after our first date. No wonder my mother gave me such a trying time about not going home for Easter,’ he muses, staring out of the window. ‘She must have known my plans involved you; that our relationship was serious.’ He looks back at me.
I shift in my seat. ‘Are they really that unhappy about us?’
‘They’re not pleased.’ He shrugs. He seems different – more aloof, or harder, somehow. ‘Anyway,’ he says, resting his elbows on the table, ‘Klaus has gone back to Germany now, so we won’t be bothered by him. It is a shame about my car, though. It’s ridiculous that I’m not allowed to keep it here,’ he snaps petulantly.
‘Bloody hell, Lukas, I think we’ve got bigger things to worry about than your car,’ I say crossly.
He regards me with irritation. His eyes fall to my collarbone, where his necklace is absent. ‘It seems that every time I go away from you, your affections for me diminish.’
I cast my eyes heavenwards. ‘Can you blame me? For all I knew, you weren’t coming back!’
‘When did I ever give you that impression?’ His tone is icy.
He has a point. I’m comparing him to Joe. I look away, guiltily.
‘How did Rosalinde take it?’ I finally find my voice.
‘It’s hard to tell with her.’
I bet she’s cool, calm and collected. Or perhaps she’s just cold and efficient. I hope it’s the latter.
; ‘She’ll move on,’ he adds, gazing out of the window again. ‘She probably already has.’
‘When was the last time you slept with her?’ I ask, a horrible feeling settling over me.
He frowns. ‘Why is that important?’
Talk about deflecting the question!
‘Are you going to answer me?’
‘When was the last time you slept with someone?’ he asks nastily.
‘Before I met you!’ I exclaim. ‘Can you say the same thing?’
‘No, as it happens.’
The blood drains from my face. Suddenly he looks sympathetic. He reaches across to touch me, but I shove my hands under the table.
‘It was before we were together,’ he says gently, holding eye contact. ‘The summer after I first met you, before we had the rooftop picnic.’
‘Is that why you acted like you did? You didn’t kiss me; you drove too fast; you seemed angry . . . Were you thinking of her?’
He hesitates before nodding. ‘Yes.’
I can barely speak. ‘What about at Christmas?’
‘No,’ he says abruptly. ‘Nothing happened then.’
I so want to believe him . . . My eyes fill up with tears.
‘Alice,’ he says softly, holding his hands out to me. I slowly take mine from underneath the table and he grips them tightly.
I hear the front door slam and turn to see Jessie appear from the hall.
‘Are you okay?’ he asks me directly, his stare accusatory as it darts towards Lukas and back again.
‘Yes,’ I answer. Lukas lets go of my hands and sits back in his chair.
And so, after a shaky start, our relationship returns to normal, although ‘normal’ has changed somewhat. Lukas no longer lives in his bedsit on Trinity Street. Now he’s moved closer to his campus, to Burrell’s Field. It’s on the western side of the river, further away from town. Unfortunately, he still has a single bed, so I don’t stay over very often. And, thanks to Jessie’s cold shoulder, he doesn’t stay at mine very much, either.
Two weeks before I’m due to start my third and final year at Anglia Ruskin, I bump into one of my tutors in town. Mitch Turville is my favourite tutor, and I’ve always done my best in his classes. Even when I was practically catatonic in my first year he managed to coax an A out of me.
‘Alice!’ he says. ‘How are you?’
‘Good!’ I reply. ‘How’s your summer?’
‘Excellent, excellent. Spent a lovely couple of weeks in Spain with the family. You?’
Mitch is in his late forties and has thinning brown hair and glasses. Sometimes he has a beard, sometimes not. Today he appears to be at the halfway stage.
‘Actually, I’m glad I bumped into you,’ he says after I’ve responded to his question. ‘Did you ever put any thought into becoming a member of the literary society?’
Before we broke up for summer he asked me if I’d like to be involved, but I never got back to him. Between punting, reading zillions of books and seeing Lukas, I don’t have much spare time.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I wasn’t sure if—’
‘Because we could really do with someone like you to get involved,’ he interrupts, sensing my reluctance and refusing to accept it. ‘Victoria, Rachel and Kelly are keen for another person to help out during Freshers’ Week. Can I tempt you?’
And so it is that I find myself dressing up as Alice from Alice in Wonderland during Freshers’ Week and helping to rope in new recruits. Victoria, Rachel and Kelly have been friends with each other since the first year. They’ve always been nice to me and I like them a lot. I haven’t actually lived a proper student life in the respect of having a group of fellow students for friends, and it’s something that I’ve suspected I’ll regret. It was with this in mind that I agreed to Mitch’s request.
Victoria is dressed up as Dorothy, Rachel as the White Witch and Kelly as Little Red Riding Hood. We manage to sign up an impressive forty-three undergraduates thanks to our enthusiasm, and the day is much more fun than I expected it to be. When our work is done we decide we’ll stay in character for a laugh and head to the pub to celebrate. I text Lukas to let him know that I probably won’t be able to see him tonight after all, and then set about helping the other three to clear up. It’s not until we’re walking towards the main entrance that I think to check my phone and see that I have seven missed calls from him. No voicemails, though. How odd. I’m about to call him back to ask him what’s wrong, when I hear the sound of several car horns beeping.
‘Who on earth is that?’ Victoria asks, but my face has already flushed with embarrassment because that, my new friend, is Lukas.
He has pulled up on the double yellow lines on the main road outside college – in his Porsche, no less – and is being persistently tooted at by cars trying to get past him. I want to bury my head in a sandpit.
‘God, sorry,’ I say to the girls. ‘That’s my boyfriend. I have no idea what he’s doing here, but I’d better go.’
‘Can you join us later?’ Kelly asks hopefully.
‘I’ll try,’ I say, running towards the car. Lukas leans across the passenger seat and pushes open my door.
‘What are you doing?’ I hiss, climbing in because I have no other choice. The people in the cars behind are getting increasingly angry and right now I want to be as far away from here as possible. Lukas screeches away from the kerb and goes straight through an amber light.
‘Why didn’t you answer your phone?’ he snaps, putting his foot down.
‘I didn’t hear it!’ I reply indignantly. ‘I was about to call you.’
‘Too late. I had to resort to this.’ He glances across at me with a look of distaste. ‘What the hell are you wearing?’
Anger rushes through me. ‘I told you about this! Alice from Alice in Wonderland? Children’s Literature is one of the modules of my degree.’
‘That’s right,’ he sneers. ‘I remember thinking how ridiculous that sounded.’
‘What would you know?’ I demand. ‘You’ve never been in the slightest bit interested in any of my studies!’
‘Oh, and you’ve been interested in mine?’
I ignore that comment and continue with my rant. ‘Or my work!’
‘Work?’
‘Punting!’
‘You call that work? You wouldn’t know what work is.’
‘Oh, and you would? Poor little rich boy!’
He slams on the brakes.
‘Good! I wanted to get out, anyway!’ I reach for the door handle, but he grabs my elbow and roughly pulls me back.
‘That hurt!’ I scream, hitting him on his arm.
‘STOP!’ he shouts, grabbing my wrist.
‘WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?’ I’m feeling a bit hysterical now.
‘MY MOTHER IS HERE!’ he shouts back.
That stuns me into silence. He lets go of me. Suddenly he looks crushed.
‘What’s your mother doing here?’ I ask.
‘She wants to meet you,’ he replies, white as a sheet. ‘You’ll need to get changed.’
Frau Heuber – that sounds scarily austere – is currently in a limousine on her way to Burrell’s Field. I get changed quickly into my smartest skirt and a white blouse, while Lukas waits outside in his Porsche. I haven’t even asked him where he got the car from – I thought he gave it up after Klaus left.
His mother called Lukas en route to let him know she was on her way. I have no idea why she thought it was a matter of such urgency that she couldn’t give us more than an hour’s notice, but perhaps she wants to catch us out. Perhaps we should be grateful that she decided to call at all.
We go back to Lukas’s room and wait apprehensively. I sit on the bed and fidget, before thinking it might look better if I relocate to a chair – I don’t want to appear too comfortable. Eventually Lukas can stand the suspense no longer so we both go downstairs to keep an eye out for her. She arrives ten minutes later in an enormous, shiny black limo. The driver – wearing a navy suit
and a proper chauffeur’s hat – gets out to open the door for her. I don’t know what I expected. A grand woman in a fox’s fur, or something similar, flouncing out and pretending that I don’t exist . . . I wasn’t expecting this.
Lukas’s mother is short and, for want of another word, fat. She’s wearing a large brown and pink floral dress and she looks like she should be in a kitchen baking apple pies and other yummy, heart-warming things to eat. I can’t for the life of me work out why he seemed frightened of her – until she looks at me.
Ice. That’s the word I would use to describe her eyes. Cold, blue ice, and now my stomach feels full of the stuff.
Lukas steps forward to greet her and kisses her hand. Not her cheek. Her hand. I can’t imagine what she’d do if I gave her a hug – probably keel over. Now, there’s a thought . . .
‘Mother, this is Alice,’ he says in English, turning to look at me. I’ve never seen him so nervous.
‘Hello,’ I say, my smile wavering. She doesn’t offer me her hand, which is a relief, because I’m not sure if she’d expect me to kiss it too.
She redirects her gaze to Lukas without responding, and says something in German.
‘Not yet,’ he replies with an awkward smile in my direction. ‘I believe she starts her course next week.’
I think she’s asking if I can speak German. I haven’t decided for sure, but I’ve been thinking of switching from Mandarin to German. Lukas’s comment at the ball got to me.
A lot of tutting commences when we go inside. From what I can gather, she doesn’t approve of Lukas’s room.
Lukas asks her a question with an uncomfortable glance at me, and after that she converses in perfect English.
‘I was telling my son that his room is too small,’ she says with a look of disgust on her features. ‘How can you bear to stay here?’ Her question appears to be directed at me.
‘Well,’ I glance at Lukas self-consciously. ‘I live in a house with two friends.’
‘You must think I’m naive,’ she snorts.
‘What? No!’ I exclaim. ‘I mean, I do stay here, just not very often.’
‘Humph.’ She turns away from me.
God, this is awful! First Joe and now Lukas! Why can’t I be like Lizzy and have a nice potential mother-in-law? She recently joked that Callum’s mum is her second-best friend. After me, I hope.
