I nod, a little sadly. “I think so. Don’t you?”
Tears run down her face. “Do you hate me so much, then? Because I cheated on you?”
I take another bite of my sandwich, chew, and swallow. “I’m sorry, Sarah, but there are scales of justice and only now are we in the balance. You hurt me and I hurt you and now we’re even.”
“I don’t like the new you, Alex. You’re not nice. You’re not nice at all.”
“No,” I agree, “I’m not nice.” I take a sip of water, stand and walk away.
I leave the rose garden. I leave Regent’s Park. I leave Sarah behind me.
truth or consequences
(and not the town in new mexico)
Camilla arrives promptly for once, spurred on, no doubt, by the thought of property appointments. We’re viewing one place in Mayfair and two in Knightsbridge.
She’s showing me the particulars when the office door opens and Sarah enters.
“My, my, isn’t this a cozy picture?” says Sarah. Her tone is decidedly nasty.
“Hello, Sarah.”
Camilla raises one delicately plucked eyebrow. “You know this woman?” Her gaze sweeps up and down Sarah, clearly rating her a step or two below swamp algae.
“This is Sarah,” I tell Camilla. “An old friend.”
I deliberately don’t introduce Sarah to Camilla, but Sarah doesn’t seem to notice.
“A friend? We were more than friends,” says Sarah. “And not that long ago.”
“And why exactly are you here?” I ask.
Camilla checks the time, flashing her Rolex at Sarah. “Is this going to take long?”
“Don’t you want to know the sordid details of Alex’s past?” Sarah’s words are addressed to Camilla, but she’s speaking to me. I’m the one she wants to maim.
“The only thing sordid about my past is you,” I tell her.
Camilla sits in the temp’s empty chair, her lips curled in disdain as she studies Sarah.
“Don’t you want to know how I found you?” asks Sarah. “You can thank your old buddy Kenneth Wilmington-Wilkes. Guess he still has a soft spot for Jed.”
“Why are you here, Sarah? What do you want? Have you come to beg for mercy?”
She flutters her eyelashes. “No, merely to tell you that Jed and I are getting married.”
I burst out laughing. The two failures deserve one another. Will they spend their evenings Alex-bashing? Reliving their shame and defeat at my hands? Sharing their hatred of me? “Is that supposed to make me jealous?” I ask.
Camilla yawns delicately. “We’re going to be late, Alexander.”
Sarah glares at Camilla. “I won’t be long.”
I sigh. “Go away, Sarah. It’s over. We’ve had our vindictive squabbles, it’s time to move on.”
And I genuinely mean it. It is time to move on. We can all have a better future.
Sarah glances between Camilla and me and then she smiles the nastiest smile I’ve ever seen on the face of a woman. She looks evil.
“Alex and I fucked on Friday,” says Sarah.
Camilla leaps to her feet. “You did not. He was with me on Friday. He was with me all weekend.”
“That’s enough, Sarah,” I say, and take a step toward her.
Sarah opens her eyes wide, feigning innocence. “Shucks. Are you sure?” she asks Camilla. “Friday lunchtime? I was sure that’s when he left my bed.”
Camilla whirls on me. “Why, you son-of-a-bitch.”
“We’ll discuss this in a moment, Camilla.” I stalk across the room, grab Sarah by the arm, throw her out of my office, and lock the door behind her.
I want to kick Sarah down the stairs, throw her in the lift shaft and send the lift to the basement, crushing the life from her traitorous bones. But I have control.
I am in control.
What was I thinking? I should have kicked that slut out the first second I saw her. Why did I wait to hear her news? Why was I talking about moving on? That’s Alex-psycho-babble, it’s not worthy of consideration—it’s certainly not worthy of speaking out loud or even believing for one tiny second.
That crazy-speak isn’t me. I’m not like that. I don’t believe in letting bygones be bygones. I’d decided we were equal, that I’d achieved a just and fair amount of revenge against Sarah and Jed, but that doesn’t mean I want to sit around a campfire and sing jolly songs with them. And if another opportunity to do them down arises I’m going to take it. I’m not going to waste my time searching for it, but I won’t turn it down. Vengeance is never really finished. There’s always a little more to be had.
Sarah starts pounding on the door. “How does revenge feel now?” she yells. “Do you like it?” She laughs and it sounds more like a mad howl.
Drop down dead in the street. I hope she has a stroke and falls to the ground and everyone steps around her, avoiding her like the plague, thinking she’s drunk, letting her die. Letting her die alone in the dirt. It’s what she deserves.
I say nothing to Sarah. She doesn’t matter. The only thing I feel for her is disgust.
Camilla stands with her arms crossed in front of her chest.
“She’s lying,” I tell her.
“Is she?”
Sarah’s howls fade away and I think she’s left. Maybe she’ll get run over by a bus while crossing the street if her body isn’t ready to slay her with a stroke. Though I honestly don’t know why her white blood cells have waited this long to destroy her. She’s a virus, isn’t she?
“She’s lying,” I say. Doesn’t Camilla believe me? Aren’t we supposed to have a little trust here? And when exactly did we pledge to be monogamous, hmm? “You’re the one I love, Camilla.”
“Do you?”
No. And right at this moment I want to shove you into that lift shaft with Sarah.
“Yes,” I say. “Of course I do. I said so, didn’t I?”
Camilla shrugs. “How do I know you’re telling the truth? Why should I believe you? Why would she lie? Maybe you did fuck her. I don’t know why on earth you’d want to, but maybe you did. Maybe you wanted a bit of the gutter for an afternoon snack.”
“I was going to propose to you, Camilla, but there’s no point if you don’t trust me.”
She uncrosses her arms. “You want to marry me?”
“I did. Right now I think you’d better leave.”
“Ask me,” she says.
“Ask you what?”
“To marry you.”
Am I suddenly forgiven if I want to marry her?
She crosses the room, stopping six inches away, her face expectant. “Ask me,” she says. “Ask me.”
I need a woman like Camilla. She’d make my transition to a permanent place at the side of the elite so much easier.
I speak between gritted teeth. Is this how she wants to remember this moment? “Will you marry me?” I ask.
“Yes, oh, yes, yes, yes.” A smile of victory, of absolute delight, fills her face and she throws her arms around me. “Yes, I will marry you.”
Has Sarah been forgotten? Will Camilla pretend our spat of a moment ago never happened? Doesn’t she even care if I did sleep with Sarah? Is adultery acceptable as long as it’s actual adultery, marital cheating, rather than mere unfaithfulness? Or is it because it occurred before marriage, which means it doesn’t count? Does she suddenly believe me or does it no longer matter if Sarah was lying or not? Doesn’t Camilla want to hear my explanation? My excuses? My promises that it’ll never happen again?
(It will happen again. Not with Sarah, never again with Sarah, but I have no plans for fidelity to Camilla.)
She presses herself against me, rubbing in all the right places. She’s good at this; she knows what she’s doing. Physically we’ve always been perfectly compatible.
It strikes me that I should have a ring to give her, that a woman like Camilla will want a ring. A very big ring. But let’s face it, this wasn’t exactly a traditional proposal. No lovey-dovey theatrics for us.
“Oh, A
lexander, I’ve been dreaming of this moment for years.”
I bet you have. You and your friends compete with one another for status and a husband is like a gold medal at the Olympics. Especially a rich husband. Alexander is a good catch. I know I am.
“I don’t have a ring,” I say. “I thought you’d prefer to choose it yourself.” I’m lying, of course, I didn’t think anything of the kind. A ring never occurred to me.
She tilts her head back and looks up at me, her eyes sparkling. “That’s perfect. I’d love to choose my own ring. The number of horror stories I could tell you about men proposing with hideous engagement rings.”
She gives a little shudder and I know then that if I’d actually gone out and chosen a ring for her, if I’d bought her a ring and presented it to her on bended knee, she would have smiled and said yes, but she couldn’t possibly wear the ring as it wasn’t big enough or bright enough or it was the wrong shape or the wrong carat or the wrong stone or just too last year.
Amber wouldn’t return the ring. Amber would treasure the engagement ring that had been chosen for her, she’d love it because he had loved it and bought it with her in mind. But I didn’t propose to Amber: Amber isn’t my future, Amber isn’t my fiancée, Camilla is my fiancée.
Camilla is my fiancée.
Maybe I won’t throw her down the lift shaft after all. I need a woman like Camilla. It’d be a shame to have to woo another and let all this hard work go to waste.
Camilla’s still smiling. “Can we look tonight?”
I don’t want to look tonight; I don’t want to think about rings or flowers or colors or hymns or any of that. Right now I just want Camilla naked in my arms. I like her when she’s naked.
“What about our property appointments?” I say, and start to unbutton her blouse.
If anything her smile grows wider. “We’ll look for the ring tomorrow,” she says. “But I can’t wait to tell everyone. I can’t wait to tell Mummy. She’ll be so proud of me.”
I undo her last button and slide the shirt down her arms. And as I lower my mouth to hers I think of my family. What will they make of Camilla? They don’t know the new me, the real me. They’re expecting a girl like Sarah. No, not like Sarah, not like Sarah, like Amber, maybe even Amber herself. But I’m Alexander, I don’t marry girls like Amber. I’m one of the rich and powerful and I marry one of my own. Men like me marry women like Camilla.
She meets my kisses hungrily and I realize I was right. Camilla hasn’t mentioned Sarah since the proposal. It’s like Sarah was never here, like Sarah doesn’t exist. And then Camilla sinks down on to her knees and soon I’m not thinking anything at all.
i’m so happy i’m on top of the world, or make that in the penthouse apartment of a five-floor building
We’re late for our first property viewing, but for once I’m not blaming Camilla. The sex with her has always been incredible but tonight was unbelievable. It was the best ever. I like to think of it as my victory shag. Everything’s going to plan and Alexander is on the ascendant.
The flat is like something out of a television show covering all the things necessary for a desirable residence. It reeks sophistication and money, everything is just so, but I feel like it’s gone through some sort of checklist before being put up for sale: everything is too perfect. Where’s the clutter? Doesn’t anybody live here? Even the bookshelf is filled with leather-bound editions. No messy modern covers for these people, no way.
As we’re being shown through the blue drawing room, the yellow drawing room, the green drawing room, with the estate agent droning on and on about wooden floors, gas fireplaces, reinforced beams to take the weight of chandeliers, Camilla is yapping away on her mobile phone.
“I know, Mummy,” says Camilla, “I’m so excited. We have to get Eduardo for the flowers.” Camilla frowns and speaks to me. “You don’t have any colors in mind, do you, Alexander?”
“No,” I say. I don’t care about colors; I don’t care about the exact details of the wedding ceremony. Let it be Camilla’s day, it’s obviously important to her. What’s important to me is the end result. A society wedding and a society wife.
Camilla flashes me one of her brilliant smiles and returns to her conversation. “No, not lilac. I know I liked lilac when I was ten, Mummy, but it’s simply not me now. No, it has to be white. All white. If you use a color like lilac or pink or green or even black, everything is dated so quickly. Show me a wedding photo, any wedding photo from the last ten years, and I could tell you the year and probably the month of the wedding. These things follow fads, Mummy. I want to be above the trend, beyond it. I want my wedding to be timeless. It has to be perfect. The photographs have to look perfect for years to come.”
The estate agent leads us to the kitchen. It’s very modern and fully equipped and the overwhelming impression is one of chrome. It’s not a cozy kitchen. It doesn’t make you want to bake a loaf of bread or make an apple pie. Ready-made trays of sushi and platters of the latest find from Italy spring to mind. Though it has to be said that it’s larger than the living room in Sarah’s flat. See what you’re missing, Sarah. I smile at the thought of how sick Sarah will feel in the pit of her stomach when she hears of my wedding, when she sees pictures in those glossy magazines she loves so well, when she first learns about the size of my house and guesses at the extent of my bank balance. Maybe the jealousy will drive her insane. My smile widens, I can’t help myself. It’s just too delicious.
The poor estate agent misconstrues my smile and returns it, when he’ll never share in the moment. It’s private. My pleasure in this is very personal and very private.
“This is a state-of-the-art kitchen,” says the estate agent. “Everything is top quality. It’s—”
“I hate it,” says Camilla. “This is a man’s kitchen. It’s disgusting. I’m almost expecting to turn round and see black leather bar stools or barbed-wire frames surrounding photos of concentration-camp victims on the walls. I could never pour myself my morning glass of orange juice in a room like this. It’s such a stereotype. It’ll have to be torn out.”
I peer around. She has a point. It’s too modern. It’s trying too hard. The estate agent looks crushed. Did he expect this kitchen to add fifty grand to the price?
Camilla speaks into the phone. “What, Mummy? No, just some nauseating interior design. Don’t worry, it’d never stay.”
We move on to the main bedroom suite. The dressing room alone is twice the size of my daisy-painted room.
“No, Mummy, no adult bridesmaids, not if I’m having white. I thought we could use Annabelle. She’s only ten so she’ll look cute in white and no one could ever mistake her as the bride.” Camilla listens a moment. “Yes, yes, all white flowers. Only white.” She glances at the four-poster bed and then her eyes sweep the room searching for faults, looking for flaws, however minor. “That’s a window seat,” says Camilla, staring at a charming bay area.
“Yes,” says the estate agent, smiling, not realizing that the flat tone in Camilla’s voice isn’t one of surprised pleasure.
“Window seats aren’t for bedrooms,” she says. Camilla can be very patronizing when she wants to be. “They’re for drawing rooms or the ends of corridors. Not for bedrooms. I don’t want to lounge around in my nightie next to an open window. I don’t want a window seat in my bedroom.”
I like the window seat. You could curl up with a book or bundle yourself in a thick blanket and sit there and watch the snow fall in winter. Or at least hope for a few flakes every year. I like it. Amber would like it.
But Amber isn’t here, Alexander. Amber will never be here. This isn’t her world. It’s Camilla’s. And mine. Amber could enter it only as a mistress and I could never do that to Amber. She deserves better.
“But it has lovely views over the communal gardens at the back,” says the estate agent.
“Communal gardens?” says Camilla. “Communal gardens?”
She’s so stunned, so stricken with horror, that her
mouth moves but no more words come out. I watch her for a moment, forcing myself not to laugh, wanting to store this memory in my mind for later reflection. She’s not quite so perfect when she’s gaping like a goldfish. I decide to take pity on her, as for once we’re in complete agreement.
“No, we couldn’t possibly live somewhere with a communal area,” I tell the estate agent.
“But there’s also a small private garden at the—”
“No,” I say. “It’s not for us.”
And it’s not. I want my privacy. I want no communal areas. I demand a private entrance, a private lift, and most certainly private gardens. I don’t want to share my life, my space, with just anyone. I deserve only the best. And that includes people.
let’s tell the world,
everyone deserves to know tonight
Too small, too dark, too modern, too old-fashioned, view not quite right, needless to say we didn’t find the perfect property tonight. Oh, they were all fine, but none of them will do for Alexander and his bride. We need something grander, larger, stunning. Camilla wants her friends to die of envy. And I want the same. My home should reflect my position of supremacy. Nothing less will do.
We’re back at Camilla’s now and I’m flipping through the latest Hampton’s catalog, hoping to spot the brick and mortar equivalent of paradise. And Camilla? Camilla is on the phone.
“Harriet, you’ll never guess what’s happened,” she says into the telephone receiver, “Alexander asked me to marry him. We’re getting married.” She listens for a moment, grinning widely, accepting the congratulations as her due. “Oh, I wish I could have taped the proposal so you could hear it. It was the most romantic thing.”
Romantic? Has she forgotten exactly how it happened? Has she rewritten history in her mind? By tomorrow will the scene have been transformed into me down on one knee in front of her, begging her to be my beloved wife? Will she think I pledged my undying love? That I said I couldn’t live without her?
“Alexander’s so wonderful and he loves me so much,” says Camilla.
Being Alexander Page 25
