Exquisite

by Sarah Stovell

  – Yep

  – Now?

  – Yep

  – See you in 10 mins.

  – K

  I hauled the television to the bus stop. I couldn’t walk from Kemptown to Brunswick Street East with it, not without attracting attention from someone who would offer to carry it for me and then ask me for a drink and expect sex afterwards. I’d done that before – accepted help from a bloke and then shagged him out of politeness. It was no way to conduct a romantic life.

  I loved Kemptown, would have liked to stay a bit longer. All the crazy shops and quirky bars: Doggy Fashion, where people took their dogs to be groomed and dressed in diamante collars; the bookshop with the art press out the back, where they printed unknown works by artists on the fringe; the Honey Pot, a girls-only bar that sold three hundred different types of gin because the owners thought that was what girls liked…

  But still, I’d met Bo and I was moving to the Lake District. It was astonishing, the turns that life took.

  The bus pulled up beside me. I clambered on, refusing help from everyone who offered, then paid and sat down. It rocked down St George’s Road slowly, a vessel made especially for the conveyance of the elderly and frail. I pulled my iPhone out of my pocket. I’d signed up for it when I left my bedsit and started working full time. £25.99 a month. God, I needed to find work in Grasmere. Was there work in Grasmere? Bo had said yes, but Bo had said lots of things…

  I checked my emails. Nothing from Bo. I looked at my sent items. I’d last emailed her yesterday afternoon:

  From: AlicetheEighth@gmail.com

  Sent: 7 September 2015, 16:22

  To: Bo@BoLuxton.co.uk

  Subject: Wednesday

  Bo, I have no idea what is going on in your head. I’ve tried to cancel the termination of my contract in Brighton, but the agents have someone else lined up to move in soon after I leave, so I would have to find somewhere else. (I am sick about the money this has cost me.) I arrive at Oxenholme on Wednesday at 2 pm. I thought this would be a good time as I will need a lift from the station to Grasmere and had assumed you’d be happy to meet me before the school pick-up and drive me to the flat. I am really hoping that the reasons for your silence will become clear when I see you.

  I put the phone back in my pocket. All I really knew was that Bo wouldn’t do this to me on purpose. She was forty years old and, instinctively, she took care with people. She didn’t carry them, like some dirty angel with prey in its claws, soaring to a great height, and then drop them. That wasn’t who she was.

  So where was she? My mind turned again to Gus.

  I thought, If she is dead, and only the smallest part of her remains, I could still identify her. I would recognise a finger, a knuckle, a nail. I could run my hand over one small patch of skin, and I’d know if it were hers. They could send me her hair. I’d find her in the smell of it.

  Gus, I knew, couldn’t do any of that. I wished he would get Alzheimer’s, forget who he was married to and leave. I’d said that to Bo once: ‘Tell your overbearing pillock to fuck off, so we can be together.’ I fretted about that now. It was spoken in jest, of course, but maybe Bo had been offended. He was her husband, after all. And although Bo said she’d never loved him – never truly loved anyone apart from me – and married him because they got on well, and she knew they could make a good life together, and in exchange for a house all she had to do was fuck him once a week or so … despite all that, maybe I ought to have restrained the urge to insult him. It clearly wasn’t going to make Bo leave him any faster.

  But perhaps something had happened with Gus that meant she couldn’t answer her emails. Perhaps he had deleted her account.

  I had a notepad in my bag and a biro. As the bus faltered along through the traffic, I scribbled a quick note.

  B, I don’t know if you’re getting my emails. I will be arriving at Oxenholme on Wednesday, 9th September at 2 pm. Please meet me on the platform. Can’t wait to see you. Ax.

  There was a newsagent’s near Jake’s. I could buy a stamp and an envelope there and catch the last post. Bo would get my letter the next day. It wasn’t too late to fix this.

  The bus came to a stop at the bottom of Jake’s road. I swung my way to the front, stepped onto the pavement and felt knocked about the face with wistfulness, as though I were walking back into my past life; it was a simpler one, less fulfilling in every way, but reckless and easy.

  I suddenly felt my youth was gone.

  I banged on Jake’s door. He let me in and took the television from me.

  ‘Thanks for this,’ he said. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yeah. I never watch it. No room for it where I’m going.’

  We sat down on opposite sofas. The usual mess of empty mugs, cigarette papers, rolling tobacco, overflowing ashtrays and take-away foils lay on the coffee table between us.

  Jake didn’t meet my gaze as he said, ‘Where are you going, anyway?’

  ‘Grasmere.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A village in the Lake District.’

  ‘Is it where that woman lives?’

  I nodded.

  Jake said, ‘I thought this would happen.’

  ‘Really?’

  He nodded. ‘Yeah. You’re gay as you like, Alice. You love women. Especially literary women. That Shakespeare professor…’

  I ignored him and changed the subject. ‘I wanted to apologise for—’

  ‘Not telling me you’d left?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I think I’m meant to be single. I mean, it wasn’t very nice of me to just go off like that.’

  I brushed it away. ‘Never mind.’

  He rolled a cigarette and offered me the packet. I took it.

  He said, ‘So are you really a lesbian now?’

  I laughed. ‘I don’t know. I suppose so.’

  ‘Isn’t she married?’

  ‘Yeah. With kids.’

  He let out a low whistle. ‘That’s heavy.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So are you moving in with her?’

  ‘And her husband? No. I’ve got a studio flat in the village. It’s just so we can be near each other while she works out what to do.’

  He took a long drag on his roll-up. ‘Wow. Alice the homewrecking lesbian. I never expected that.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘It’s true, though.’

  ‘It’s not that simple.’

  ‘It’s love, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘She must be taking it seriously, if it’s come to this.’

  ‘She is. Well, I thought so. I mean, she’s the one who suggested it, but she’s suddenly gone silent on me. I haven’t heard from her for a week.’

  ‘Blimey.’

  ‘It’s driving me a bit mad.’

  He glanced down for a moment. ‘And you’re definitely sure it hasn’t been a misunderstanding?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just … Are you definitely sure she feels the same way?’

  I felt myself begin to flounder. Was I sure? Yes, I was sure – deep in my gut, I was absolutely sure. But my head was a mess.

  I said, ‘I know she does.’

  ‘Then there’ll be a reason for it. Don’t worry.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t know why she’d be quiet for this long, right when I most need her not to be. It’s a huge step I’m taking – moving to some far-flung part of the country where there’s no work and no one I know, to be with someone who is married … I really need her to tell me it isn’t lunacy on my part.’

  Jake appeared to think about it. Then he said, ‘No one would do all that, or get you to do all that, unless they were serious about it. Really, don’t worry.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. I didn’t mention my fears about Gus. It would have felt like a betrayal.

  ‘But anyway, if it doesn’t work out, you can just come back.�
��

  ‘I’ve got no money, Jake. Everything I owned has gone on this.’

  He shrugged. ‘You can stay here. Really, if it turns out she’s got cold feet or something, you can come back here for a while. There’s only a floor to sleep on, but you wouldn’t need to pay anything.’

  I smiled. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘It’s been driving me a bit mad over the last few days. I keep wondering if I imagined it.’

  ‘Well you’ve always seemed very sane to me. Sensible and stuff. Do you want some coffee?’

  ‘Please,’ I said.

  Cold feet. While he made the coffee, I played these words over in my head. I tried not to dwell too long on them, but it did feel now as though Bo was in retreat, backing off, unable to face me. And I was here, hours away from moving to Grasmere, with no money and nowhere to live if I didn’t do it.

  I would go. I had to. Bo would be there, and we could talk and mend things, and if Bo had cold feet, then I could take on my most irresistibly gentle, understanding way and win her back.

  I would love the fear away from her.

  18

  Once again, I boarded the Oxenholme train at Euston. Once again, I shoved my backpack on the shelf above me and settled down in my seat with my iPad. But this time I also had a package I’d received in the post the previous afternoon.

  It was from Bo’s publicist. The previous week, I’d emailed her and asked for the details of all Bo’s work – stories, novels, poetry – since the start of her career, so I could look them up and make sure I’d read everything she’d ever written. I wanted to trace the emergence of Bo Luxton from unknown but talented scribbler into a world-class, world-famous novelist. Flushed with pride and amazement, I’d thought, This author loves me.

  Back when she still seemed to be talking to me, I’d asked Bo if she’d give me copies of all her work, but she didn’t have it. She said she’d been through so many computers, so many documents, and her earliest stuff – the stories that had been published in obscure magazines – weren’t even written in Word. They were gone, lost to history. She didn’t even have copies of the magazines. She’d been twenty-three when she was first published and had moved house so many times since then … But her publicist would have an index, she said, and told me to contact her. ‘She’ll be able to point you in the right direction. If you say you’re a critic, or an English postgrad with an interest in my work, she’ll probably send you some free stuff – books, story collections and probably things I’ve forgotten about, too. Try it and see.’

  She’d been right. In the post the previous afternoon, waiting for me when I came home from Jake’s, was the parcel:

  Dear Ms Dark.

  Thank you for your interest in Bo Luxton. Please find enclosed photocopies of some of her early work and a copy of her first novel.

  Triumph. Three stories, each about twenty pages long. I couldn’t wait to tell Bo. I’d been too irate and anxious to read them properly, before, but now I had a three-hour journey with no interruptions and I was going to savour every word, and then I would do something with them. I wasn’t sure what yet. Stick them on the walls of my new home, perhaps, or turn them into postcards and send them to everyone I knew to let them know my change of address. Alice Dark has moved to The Studio, High St, Grasmere. She is now a lesbian, hoping to form a civil partnership with the author who wrote the story on the front of this card. Please come and stay.

  The train began its slow movement out of the station and I sat back in my seat and started to read. ‘When I was fifteen,’ the first one began, ‘I spent three months being sick as a dog…’

  I stared at the words in front of me. This wasn’t right, I thought. This wasn’t Bo’s early work. This was something Bo had written recently, only for me.

  The story went on. It was the same, exactly the same. I turned the pages over in my hands, looking for the publication information at the front: ‘Published in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, June 1993.’

  So Bo had lied. She hadn’t written her life story only for me, and she did have copies of her early work, and there had been no need at all for me to contact her publicist. I shook my head in confusion.

  My iPad beeped with the ping of an incoming email alert. Bo, I thought. Please let it be Bo.

  It was.

  My heart began to leap, but then almost immediately, I caught the first few words of her message:

  ‘Alice, I’m sorry. I can’t…’

  I knew what this was. I knew without even opening the email properly, but I did it anyway.

  ‘Alice, I’m sorry. I can’t do this. It’s better for both of us to take some time away and start again at a different place. I have thought of nothing but this for weeks. I know how you’re going to feel when you read this, but in time you’ll see that I’m right. Stay safe. Bx.’

  I felt something bright collapse inside me. A falling star.

  I wrote back. ‘Has Gus found out?’

  She replied, ‘Please leave this.’

  Then I wrote another one. ‘You cannot seriously do this now. I am on the train to Oxenholme. I’ve let my flat in Brighton go. I can’t just turn round and go back. I have nowhere to stay. I think I at least deserve an explanation. Meet me at the station.’

  ‘Alice, please don’t. This isn’t safe for either of us.’

  ‘What do you mean? Has he hurt you?’

  ‘Alice, this is over. I’m sorry, darling. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Can you at least meet me and talk about it face to face?’

  ‘I don’t think I can. I have so much to do today. The girls have swimming after school and I need to keep things normal for them. Please will you delete all my emails, if you haven’t already?’

  ‘Please don’t do this, Bo,’ I typed.

  But there was no reply. She was gone.

  19

  Eight pm. Daylight lasted longer up here. I poured myself a glass of wine, stood at the studio window and lit a cigarette. Still barely dusk. The studio was in the centre of the village, the village enclosed by the darkening mountains, and the evening burning with stars. The beauty and the deep peace of it surprised me, and went on surprising me. It was hard to get used to, after so many years in Brighton.

  I pulled hard on my cigarette. I’d given up smoking, but this was a celebratory one. It marked the fact that I was here, I liked the flat and after all the doubt and despair on the journey up here, everything was alright. Everything would be fine.

  But God, the chaos. The wild rocking of my mind. Bo’s silence, then the messages and all my angry confusion. I had the urge to walk straight to Bo’s house and confront her. It was fervent and intense, this longing to punch her lights out. I’d never felt driven to violence before. Not ever. It was frightening.

  My mind cannot be trusted, I thought. It swings wildly around, as if dangling on a rope, instead of being held firm in a hard case of bone. Bo wasn’t like this. Bo was steady. Her mind would never wander or fail. And her heart was huge and reliable. It didn’t ache and buckle the way mine always seemed to these days. I wanted my old heart back, the rocky one I’d spent a lifetime building up, a heart that was able to tick away time until the day when it would just beat the life out of itself.

  I stubbed my cigarette out on the wall beneath the window ledge and looked again at Bo’s note. It had been on the doormat when I let myself in.

  So sorry, darling. So, so sorry. I can explain it all (though you can probably guess – it begins with G). Settle in and then we’ll find a way of meeting up to discuss this. I’m always at the café round the corner on Saturday lunchtimes with the girls. It’s called The Grasmere Cake Shop, although it sells lots of things other than cakes. We’ll meet there soon.

  The relief was huge. I felt as if I’d been pulled from a crumbling building that was about to collapse and take me with it. I was grateful now to my rescuer. To Bo. Grateful for not having been abandoned. I needed to watch that, I thought, that desire to fall into bed with her and let everything be fine again.
And anyway, why Saturday? Why not tomorrow? Why not now? This minute?

  Because she’s married, I reminded herself. Because she’s married and has two children and can’t just drop everything to have sex with you. You knew this. You knew it from the start.

  But no one had ever left me feeling as humiliated as I’d felt on the train that morning, and then later at the station, where I’d waited and waited until I could hope no more. Bo wasn’t coming.

  I had got into a taxi then, and gave the address of the lettings agent to the driver, then I huddled in the back seat and wept. The driver politely ignored me. He drove down lakeside roads and through market towns and hamlets until finally we came to the place I recognised: Grasmere village and Rydal Fell, halfway up which lurked Bo’s house.

  I wanted to get out of the taxi right there, find Bo and take her away from the horrible, aggressive man she was married to. The only things stopping me were Lola and Maggie. They were children. They didn’t deserve this.

  The driver pulled up in front of the agent’s office. I paid him then went inside, signed the papers and handed over more cash. I’d stopped counting how much all this had cost me now. A lot, I knew that much. More than I could afford.

  A bored-looking woman handed me the key to the flat and told me which way to go. I slung my backpack over my shoulders again and followed her directions, stopping on the way for a bottle of cheap wine and ten cigarettes. A temporary lapse. Just for tonight, while I worked out what to do.

  The flat was above a bakery. Even now, late in the afternoon, the smell of cakes and fresh bread drifted onto the pavement and up the flight of stone stairs that led me to the front door.

  Inside the flat was cold and dark. I turned the light on, dropped my backpack on the floor and looked around. A small studio room with uneven stone walls and beams, and a kitchen off it with just a sink, a mini fridge and a couple of units. It would have been charming and beautiful if only Bo had shown up; if only Bo was here.

  I was crying again. I was angry with myself now for not staying in Brighton when Bo’s emails had stopped. I should have known she was in trouble, should have done things differently, more carefully.