I lie in bed, tossing and turning. My head is buzzing and I can’t sleep. I’m too hot and then when I throw off the covers I’m too cold. My legs ache and my temples throb. A niggling tickle irritates my throat and I wonder if I’m coming down with a bug, so I sit up and sip at the glass of water on the bedside table. I fling myself back on the bed. If this is what love can do to you, then you can keep it. I rub at my eyes – they’re gritty and have no desire to close in deep and peaceful sleep.
My mother’s advice keeps playing round in my mind. Am I too harsh on Leo? He’s the one who sails through life as if he doesn’t have a care in the world, while I fret enough for two. I feel that my own body cells weigh me down when we go through yet another spat like this. My mother’s right about one thing. I’m a born worrier. Why couldn’t I have inherited my father’s nose or toes or anything other than his personality? The worry gene is a very prevalent one in my make-up. Even as a child I was always too frightened to play with my dolls for fear of damaging them, so I used to dress them and sit and look at them, while all my friends were tying fireworks to their Barbies’ heads and trying to blow them up. I still blame the sudden disappearance of several of my favourite teddies on the ghoulish experiments of my sisters. Even now when I go to a cocktail party and have a great time, I’ll be worrying the next day whether I’ve been too loud or that I’ve made a show of myself. I worry about the state of the planet, the state of my nails, the United States in general. Daylight Time Saving worries me tremendously: when I put my clocks back, does it mean that I lose that hour forever and, therefore, my life will be cut short? Or do I gain an hour when the clocks go forward, which means I outlive my expectancy? I never know where I am in the equation. But society isn’t like that now – no one gives a damn about anyone any more. People go through life doing exactly what they like, when and where they like. I feel I care far too deeply about everything. The book Stop Worrying and Start Living was written for me, I’m sure. Except that I worry that I’ve never yet found time to read it. No one else in the family is like this. My mother is quietly confident, sure in her own skin, whereas my sisters are – and always have been – confident to the point of boorish. It’s taken me years to realise that my father smothers a whole range of complex anxieties under his bombastic, professional façade.
Wide-eyed, I look at the clock. Leo could have phoned me. Except that he’s probably parted company with his mobile phone once more. He loses them so regularly that he must easily be Vodaphone’s best customer by now. Perhaps if we talk things through, he’ll realise that changes need to be made . . . Oh. I pull myself up short. Hasn’t my mother just warned me that danger lies in that way of thinking? I must accept Leo as he is. As he is and always will be. Could I really do that? It would take nothing short of a major miracle to make Leo change his ways. The thought doesn’t make for a restful night.
Climbing drainpipes wasn’t his forte, even Leo had to admit that. He was sure that he must have a forte – it had just lain undiscovered as yet.
‘Right.’ Leo put down his champagne bottle, ruing the fact that it was empty. C’est la vie. He briefly considered what burglars on television would do. Then he spat on his hands and took a run at the drainpipe, which made him dizzy. Maybe not a run, Leo, old son. Try a slow amble, that’s more your style. Leo tried a slow amble. He gripped the drainpipe firmly and took a deep breath. Emma’s flat was on the third floor. Which looked very high. Very high indeed.
Leo decided it would be a suitably romantic gesture though, shinning up twenty-five feet, maybe more. Especially as he had no head for heights. Best not to think about that. He let out a loud ‘ouff’ as he hoisted himself up.
Struggling up the narrow piping, trying to emulate the style of an ace commando, he scraped his knees on the wall. ‘Ouch. Ouch.’ A pause for quick shouting. ‘Emma! Emma!’
Leo wished she’d answered the doorbell, thus making it unnecessary to put on an impromptu Spiderman performance. He now also wished he’d turned up to her party on time, thus eliminating altogether the necessity to shin up a drainpipe as an overtly romantic gesture. He only hoped that his dearly beloved would consider this superhuman effort as suitable recompense.
Leo looked down. ‘Ooo.’ He’d made it to the first floor. But had no idea how. Huffing and puffing, he heaved himself further up the drainpipe, realising that he wasn’t as fit as he once was. Actually, Leo had never been fit. A window opened above him.
‘Bugger off, Leo.’ That wasn’t Emma’s voice. It was an old person’s voice. ‘Go on – bugger off.’
Leo risked looking up. There was, indeed, an old person in a hideous turquoise negligée with feather trim, looming above him. Mrs Canning again.
‘Hello.’ He tried to sound jolly while remembering not to let go of the drainpipe to wave.
‘Aargh!’ Leo was hit on the head by the irate old person wielding a fluffy slipper. ‘Aargh!’ And again.
‘Why. Can’t. You. Use. The. Door. Like. Everyone. Else?’ More hitting.
‘Emma won’t open it.’
‘Can’t say I blame her,’ Mrs Canning grunted. ‘She could do so much better than you.’
At this point, Leo hoped that his darling girlfriend would open the window and come to his rescue, apologising profusely to the mad old bat and saving her romantic but possibly misguided boyfriend in the process. But, of course, she didn’t.
Leo was hit on the head again. He thought he might have made an enemy of Mrs Canning and his grip on the drainpipe was slipping due to having to hold one hand on his head to stop major brain damage. ‘Aargh!’
Then Leo lost his grip, completely. On his life and on the drainpipe. Leo to earth. Leo to earth. He landed in some sort of scratchy bush. Smashing the pot in which the scratchy bush had resided. ‘Ouff.’
‘I’ll be sending you the bill for that pot too, young man.’
‘Sorry. Sorry. Terribly sorry.’
The window banged shut above him.
‘Goodnight, Mrs Canning. Sleep tight.’ Leo waved affectionately at the closed window. The light snapped off.
With a sigh, Leo climbed out of the bush. ‘Bugger.’ He tidied up the pieces of broken pottery with his foot, sweeping them noisily into the gutter while checking for broken pieces of himself with his hands. Seemed okay. Possible extensive bruising. But all limbs, if not his brain, were functioning. Leo brushed himself down and picked up his champagne bottle. This was too depressing for words. Despite his valiant attempt to win her back it would seem that things really were over between Emma and him.
My mother opens the bedroom door. ‘Can’t you sleep, sweetheart?’
‘No.’ I sit up and switch on my bedside light.
‘I could hear you tossing and turning.’ My mother hands me a mug of hot chocolate. ‘I thought this might help to settle you. It was always your favourite when you were small.’
‘Thanks, Mummy.’
She strokes my hair while I sip at the hot, sweet and comforting drink. ‘It’s nice to have you back in your own bedroom.’ I take in the frilly pink curtains and the gingham duvet. ‘I’ve never been able to bring myself to change it.’
‘It is a bit shrine-like.’
‘Much nicer than going back to that pokey flat on your own while you were upset.’
‘It isn’t a pokey flat.’ Strictly speaking, it is a pokey flat. If you’re into cat swinging then it isn’t the place to live. I prefer to call it ‘bijou’ which essentially is pokey with a great address. My flat is housed in a converted tobacco warehouse, but instead of a sweeping expanse of urban loft living space, I have – or, more accurately, my father has – bought one of the places whose main feature is being as short on space as it’s high on price. ‘And I like living alone,’ I insist.
Do I? Wouldn’t I really rather wake up snuggled down next to someone else? Leo perhaps. ‘Maybe I should have gone straight home.’ I chew at my lip. ‘What if Leo went round there?’
‘Then I’m sure he’ll be sleeping
in the gutter outside your flat,’ my mother suggests. ‘Don’t worry about him. The state that Leo was in, he won’t even know.’
‘I do love him, Mummy,’ I say. ‘Even though he’s a pain in the neck.’
‘And the arse,’ she adds.
We both laugh tiredly.
‘If you really do love him, darling, then perhaps it’s about time you started behaving as if you did.’
‘I just want him to stop treating me like a pushover.’
‘Well, be careful that you don’t push him away completely.’ My mother kisses me on the cheek. ‘Goodnight, darling.’
As she leaves, I turn off the bedside light and slide down under the duvet. I look out of the window and over the rooftops of London and wonder where my maddeningly lovely, unstable and unpredictable Leo is now.
Chapter Nine
It was still a balmy night, but it was way past the time for Leo to be getting home. Already the sky was lightening. He had to go to work later this morning and already he was destined to get too few hours in bed to enable him to sleep off his hangover.
Heading back towards Tower Bridge, Leo resolved to pick up the pace of his stride – but it was such a wonderful night for wandering aimlessly. Leo adored this part of London, particularly at this time of night when it wasn’t crowded with hordes of German and Japanese tourists weighed down with cameras. The skyline was a magnificent blend of old and new – the fine, crenellated turrets of the Tower of London standing proud against the enormous and newly-constructed glass gherkin-shaped office block of Swiss Re, the majestic pinnacle of St Paul’s almost lost amongst the burgeoning tangle of buildings.
As he crossed the road, dodging a lone taxi, Leo glanced towards Tower Bridge. What he saw stopped him in his tracks. He couldn’t believe it. There was a woman standing by one of the parapets. She was wearing a long velvet cloak and stood on tiptoe, teetering on the edge of the brightly-painted iron rail. With one hand she held onto one of the huge white stone pillars that supported the bridge. The other arm was outstretched towards the murky, swirling expanse of the River Thames. She was a tiny little thing – it looked as if one puff of wind would blow her away. Her face was pale in the moonlight.
What was she doing, he wondered. The woman leaned further forward. The breath in his lungs came to a rapid halt. And he had a horrible feeling that she was about to jump. He glanced round, searching for help, but there was no one else there. Anyone with any sense was tucked up in bed by now. There was only Leo. And the woman. A rush of adrenaline pumped through his body. The sort that turned normal, uninspiring men into valiant knights on white chargers. Forcing a breath into his chest, he ran towards the railing. He had to save her.
‘Don’t! Don’t.’ He rushed onto the bridge and the woman turned to look at him.
Careful now. Smile nicely. Don’t startle her. Crikey, why were there never any policemen around when you needed them? Leo wasn’t the heroic sort. Anyone would tell you that. He passed out if he saw even a tiny drop of blood. Spiders? Terrified of them. Emma did all the stuff with the piece of paper and a glass if there were ever any lurking arachnids in the flat. Leo just screamed.
Omigod. Omigod. His breath caught in his throat. The woman leaned out even further and Leo gasped. She could do it any second. Just jump into oblivion.
‘Don’t do it! Don’t.’ Leo held out his arms. ‘You’ll smash yourself to death on the rocks below.’ There weren’t actually any rocks in the Thames, but Leo hoped that in her distressed state, the woman wouldn’t see the flaw in his argument.
‘There aren’t any rocks below,’ she said calmly.
Damn. You couldn’t fool this one. ‘The tide,’ he offered. ‘The tide is terribly dangerous. It’ll drag you beneath the surface and sweep you out to sea and dreadful things like that. Crabs might eat you.’
She looked as if she didn’t believe that either.
‘Whatever,’ Leo said, ‘it would be a deeply unpleasant experience to have as your last one. I really, really would advise against it.’
She smiled at him and let him inch closer. He could nearly touch her. Despite the fact she’d perched on the edge of Tower Bridge hundreds of feet up in the air, he thought that she looked amazingly serene, almost unearthly. Leo noticed that there was a vague, translucent glow around her. Feeling the empty bottle of champagne knock against his thigh, he came to a conclusion. Ah. Maybe she wasn’t really glowing. It could well be an optical illusion brought on by a surfeit of strong drink. That was more likely. People don’t generally glow. Not unless they lived near a nuclear reactor, of course. There was a rumble of traffic and a lorry passed by, making the road across the bridge bounce unnervingly. Leo hoped that it wouldn’t spook her. As was typical in London, the driver didn’t even give them a second glance.
The woman looked at him and smiled again. Leo was relieved to see that she certainly didn’t look startled. Amazingly, she looked very relaxed for a potential suicide committer – if that was the correct term. She was extraordinarily pretty. He was right next to her now and he leaned gratefully on the heavy, solid structure of the bridge, sighing with relief while trying to give off the most casual air he could manage. ‘Don’t jump,’ he said. ‘You’re far too pretty to be fish food.’
The woman laughed at that.
Encouraged, Leo decided to continue in the same vein. ‘You might be desperately unhappy now, but nothing is bad enough to be worth ending your life for. You’ll get over it, whatever it is. Believe me – I know.’
Now she looked surprised.
‘I’ve just been dumped by my girlfriend. Again.’ He flicked his thumb back in the general direction of that awful restaurant and the débâcle that had been his true love’s thirtieth birthday party. Leo cringed, thinking about it. ‘And I’m hardly depressed at all.’ He forced himself to grin widely just to prove it. The woman wasn’t to know that the inside of his heart was like the image in a kaleidoscope, all in the right place, but fractured into hundreds of little pieces. ‘In the morning I’ll have forgotten all about her.’ He sounded far too bright to be convincing; even Leo could tell that. ‘If not in the morning, then fairly soon. A year or two, I expect.’
He gave the apparently suicidal woman a pathetic grin again, in the hope that she’d feel too guilty to kill herself. ‘Come on. Come down.’
The woman laughed again. Not the unhinged laugh of someone on the verge of topping themselves, Leo noted. No, a tinkly happy laugh that made him think that she’d quite probably been at the fizz too. She came towards him and took the hand he offered to her, jumping down onto the pavement as light as a feather. Underneath the velvet cloak she was wearing something that looked suspiciously like lingerie to Leo. Something not nearly warm enough for the weather they were currently enjoying. But then women and their clothing choices had always been a mystery to him. Why would anyone sane choose to wear tights voluntarily? Though he’d always had a bit of a thing for bras.
‘I wasn’t going to jump,’ she assured him. ‘I can fly.’
‘Oh. Me too. If I’ve had enough.’ He held up the bottle of champagne.
‘What are you celebrating?’ she asked.
‘Being a single man, I guess. Want some?’ Leo shook the champagne.
She nodded. Leo thought he’d probably need a drink too if he was in her situation. He went to offer her the bottle and then remembered that it was empty. ‘Oh. Empty. Sorry. Terribly sorry.’
‘That’s okay,’ she said. And from the depths of her velvet cloak she produced a champagne glass and handed it to Leo. Taking the bottle from him, she tipped it up . . . and champagne bubbled into the glass.
Leo’s eyes widened. ‘Bloody marvellous!’ He took the bottle from her and shook it. It was empty. Definitely empty. ‘This must be damn good stuff.’
The woman took the glass from him and sipped from it. ‘It is.’ She poured some more champagne.
Leo looked at her in amazement. ‘That is a seriously good party trick.’
Her
smile was utterly bewitching. Dazzling him. The woman looked very contented. ‘I have lots of them.’
Leo and the woman leaned on the bridge looking down at the black maelstrom of water; the lights on the bridge swayed in the breeze and they shared the glass of champagne. The fleet of sightseeing boats were moored safely in their docks and the river was quiet. In the sky the moon was high, bright. Magical.
‘So why did your girlfriend dump you?’
‘Because I’m a shallow, emotionally retarded, commitment-phobe with a fear of intimacy and a love of strong drink.’
‘Is that all?’
‘And I snore.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘That’s awful.’
Leo puffed out his breath, not realising that he’d been holding it. ‘I think Emma – my girlfriend – just wanted me to be all that I’m not and probably never will be.’
‘Maybe you just haven’t found the right woman.’
‘Oh, she’s the right woman,’ he said. ‘But maybe I’m not the right man. I love her so much but . . . well.’ Leo seemed at a loss.
‘Do you live near here?’
Leo nodded. ‘Not far. Just around the corner. Well, two or three corners. You?’
‘No. I come from a faraway place.’
‘Bummer,’ he commiserated. ‘You’ve probably missed the last Tube. Were you planning to go back there tonight?’ No, of course, she wasn’t, Leo, you prat. She was planning to jump off a bridge – remember? ‘I mean now. After you’ve decided not to . . .’ He twitched his head towards the water.
‘No,’ she said with a wistful shake of her head. ‘I’m not going back to where I’m from. Not just yet.’ She wrapped her cloak around her. ‘I thought you would like it if I came home with you.’
‘With me?’ Leo was rather surprised by the speed of the proceedings, but he wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth, if you’ll pardon the expression. ‘Oh. Absolutely.’
The woman took the champagne glass and threw it towards the river. Then she took Leo’s hand, which he thought must feel big and clumsy and hot beneath her delicate touch. But she smiled at him as if nothing mattered. As if nothing mattered at all. As they headed off, hand-in-hand towards his flat, Leo noticed that his heart was pounding. And his heart would have pounded even more if he’d noticed that as the champagne glass soared through the air it transformed into a tiny silver butterfly which flew away into the dark, forbidding night.
It’s a Kind of Magic Page 4
