The Man Who Didn't Call

by Rosie Walsh

  From inside the container drifted great shouts of laughter and male conversation. A ribbon of shower steam uncurled slowly into the evening air. Martin the team captain was laughing at me, although he did so with kindness.

  I took a deep breath.

  ‘It was a terrible, terrible mistake,’ I said. ‘I was looking for—’ I stopped suddenly. In my horror, I had completely forgotten why I was there in the first place.

  Dear Christ. I had walked into a changing room in the hope of seeing Eddie David.

  I folded my arms tightly across my chest, as if trying to hold the shattered pieces of myself together. What would I have said? What would I actually have done? He could be in there, right now, towelling down after a shower, listening with the growing shock of realization as his teammates told him about the tall girl with the suntan who’d just marched into the changing room.

  Sickness moved in my stomach. Something is wrong with me , I realized. Something is actually wrong with me. People don’t do this.

  ‘Looking for who? Someone in Old Robsonians? Or another team?’

  ‘Old Robsonians, she said just now,’ PAGLIERO told him, stepping outside. Then: ‘Sorry, by the way. That was very bad of me. Although you made the boys’ night. One of our founder members is visiting from Cincinnati – he thinks we hired you especially to welcome him back.’

  I stared at the ground. ‘It was a great joke,’ I whispered. ‘No need to apologize. And I got it wrong. I wasn’t looking for anyone from Old Robsonians, I was . . .’

  ‘Looking for someone from Old Robsonians,’ Martin said. ‘ Who? Everyone’s married! Well, apart from Wally, but he—’ He stopped and stared sharply at me, and before he even said it, I knew what was coming. ‘Are you Sarah?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Er . . . No?’

  Two other men came out. ‘Is it true that—’ one began, and then saw me. ‘Oh. It is.’

  ‘These gentlemen are Edwards and Fung-On,’ Martin said, although his eyes didn’t leave my face. ‘I’m deciding which of them I think should be Player of the Night.’ Then: ‘I’ll help you get back to the road,’ he said suddenly, marching me off towards the entrance lane.

  ‘Bye!’ called PAGLIERO, and Edwards and Fung-On, one of whom would be Player of the Night, gave a salute. I could hear their laughter as they went back into the container.

  When they were gone, Martin stopped and faced me. ‘He’s not here tonight,’ he said eventually. ‘He doesn’t play for us every week. He’s in the West Country most of the time.’

  ‘Who? Sorry, I . . .’

  Martin looked sympathetic, but I could see he knew exactly who I was. And that he knew exactly why Eddie hadn’t called.

  ‘Is he in Gloucestershire, then?’ I blurted. Hot tears of humiliation built in my eyes.

  Martin nodded. ‘He—’ He stopped abruptly, as if remembering his responsibility to his teammate. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t talk about Eddie.’

  ‘It’s OK.’ I stood there, slumped with shame. I wanted to leave, but self-loathing and shock had immobilized my legs.

  ‘Look, it’s none of my business,’ he said slowly, running a hand over his face. ‘But Eddie’s been a friend for years, and he . . . Stop trying to find him, OK? I’m sure you’re very nice, and if it helps, I don’t think you’re mad, and neither does he, but . . . stop, ’

  ‘He said that? He doesn’t think I’m mad? What else did he say about me?’ Tears rolled down my face and fell to the cooling concrete below. It defied belief that I was in this situation. Here, with this man. This total stranger, begging for scraps.

  ‘You don’t want to find him,’ Martin said eventually. ‘Please trust me. You do not want to find Eddie David.’

  And he turned round and walked back to the container, calling over his shoulder that it was nice to have met me, and he hoped what I’d seen in there hadn’t scarred me for life.

  A train hammered along the viaduct bordering the pitches and I shivered. I had to go home.

  The problem was, I didn’t know where home was anymore. I didn’t really know anything, other than that I had to find Eddie David. No matter what this man said.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I pulled running shorts over my legs. It was 3.09 a.m., precisely seven hours since I’d stumbled away from the football pitch. My room was pungent with sleeplessness.

  Sports bra, running top. My hands shook. Adrenaline was still collecting in fizzy pools around my body, dancing over the sickening exhaustion that must lie underneath. Tommy had barred the door when I’d emerged in my running gear after getting back from the football. He’d made me a hot drink and had then ordered me off to bed. ‘I don’t even want to think about what happened at that football pitch,’ he’d told me severely, but within five minutes he’d cracked and knocked at my door, begging me to tell him what had happened at that football pitch.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he’d said softly, when I finished. ‘But well done for admitting something’s gone . . . well, a bit wrong with you. That takes courage.’

  ‘The letters, Tommy, all those letters I sent him via Facebook. Calling his workshop, writing to his friend Alan. What was I thinking ?’

  ‘A silent phone brings out the very worst in us,’ he said. ‘All of us.’

  We sat together on my bed for a long time. Neither of us said much, but his presence calmed me sufficiently to try sleeping .

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I’d said, before he went off to his own bed. ‘I’ve become a burden on you again. You shouldn’t have to spend your life rescuing me.’

  Tommy had smiled. ‘I didn’t rescue you back then, and I’m not rescuing you now,’ he’d said. ‘I’m here for you, Harrington – you know I am – but I’m also certain you can sort this out. You’re a survivor. One of life’s cockroaches.’

  I’d just about managed a smile of my own.

  Now, three hours later, I was trying again and again to knot my laces, but my hands wouldn’t coordinate. Everything was wrong.

  My airport taxi was at five. I had not slept and I wouldn’t. There was plenty of time for a run, a shower, to gift wrap the little lemon tree I’d bought for Tommy and Zoe to say thank you. And I’d only go for a short jog; just enough to help me sleep on the plane.

  I slid out of my bedroom door, grateful that Zoe was away. When Tommy went up to bed, that was where he stayed, but Zoe often got up very early to answer emails from Asia, wrapped in an elegant grey silk kimono. More than once she had caught me sneaking out for a run before the sun had risen.

  Although this, I knew, glancing at my watch – 3.13 a.m. – was not a run. This was a problem.

  I glanced at myself in Zoe’s big mirror in the hallway, framed by wood from a tree from her late parents’ Berkshire garden. Zoe was right: I had lost weight. My arms looked stringy, and my face looked narrower, as if I’d taken out a plug and allowed some of it to drain.

  I turned away, embarrassed to look at myself. Frightened, too. I had often wondered about the degree of consciousness held by the mentally ill as they began to deteriorate. How easily could they recognize a decline? How visible was the line between fact and fiction, before it disappeared completely?

  Was I unwell?

  I stopped in the kitchen for a quick drink of water. My leg muscles twitched impatiently. Soon , I told them. Soon.

  In the kitchen doorway, I stopped dead. What? Zoe? But she was in—

  ‘Jesus!’ shouted the woman in the kitchen.

  I froze. The woman was naked. Another naked stranger, little more than seven hours since I’d seen the last. Synthetic orange light from the streetlamp stippled her breasts and belly as she plunged about, trying to cover herself. A stream of expletives flew from her mouth.

  I turned away, covering my eyes. And then I turned back, because a slender thread in my brain was beginning to unravel: This woman is not a stranger. ‘Stop looking at me,’ the woman snapped, although less ferociously now, and I felt my face slacken with disbelief as I f
inally recognized my oldest female friend.

  ‘Oh my God,’ I said weakly.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Jo agreed, grabbing a Bluetooth speaker from Zoe’s work surface and holding it over her pubic hair.

  ‘Jo?’ I whispered. ‘No. No, no. Tell me this isn’t what it looks like.’

  ‘It’s not what it looks like,’ Jo muttered, swapping the speaker for a cookery book and then giving up completely. ‘I told you to stop looking at me,’ she added, sinking down behind the kitchen island.

  I stood, paralysed, until an angry whisper rose up from the other side of the kitchen. ‘Sarah, can you please get me something to put on?’ Wordlessly I walked backwards into the hallway, where I got a coat off a hook. I handed it to her and slumped down on one of Zoe’s stools .

  ‘What is happening?’ I asked.

  Jo stood up, pulling on what turned out to be an enormous ski jacket. She merely huffed, rolling back the cuffs so her hands could poke through.

  ‘Would you like a pair of salopettes?’ I asked dazedly. ‘Some ski poles? A crash helmet? Jo, what is this?’

  ‘I could ask you the same question,’ she said, frowning in distaste at the coat. ‘Wealthy arseholes,’ she added, presumably about anyone who liked to ski. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m staying here,’ I said. ‘As you well know. I’m going for a run and then I’m going to the airport.’

  ‘It’s quarter past three in the morning!’ Jo hissed. ‘Nobody goes running at that time!’

  ‘You’re naked in Tommy’s kitchen!’ I hissed back. ‘Don’t start!’

  Jo zipped up the coat. ‘Unbelievable,’ was all she could say.

  I took a deep breath. ‘Jo, are you sleeping with Tommy? Are my two oldest friends having an affair? We’ll deal with me shortly,’ I added, before she tried to interrupt.

  ‘I was visiting,’ she said eventually. ‘Tommy said I could sleep on the sofa.’

  ‘Try again,’ I said. ‘Try again, Joanna Monk. Tommy went to bed at midnight, or so I thought. You weren’t here then. But now you are, and you’re naked, and I know how much you love your pyjamas.’

  ‘Oh shit,’ someone muttered. I looked up. Tommy was standing in the doorway, wrapped in his dressing gown. ‘I told you this was a bad idea,’ he said to Jo.

  ‘I needed a drink! I don’t drink from no bathroom taps, Tommy, you know that.’ Her voice was combative, which meant she was panicking. ‘And she should have been asleep anyway, not sneaking out for a run.’ She nodded her head at me.

  I folded my elbows onto the kitchen island. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘I want to know exactly what is going on here. And how long it’s been happening. And how this is justifiable when Tommy is in a long-term relationship.’ I paused. ‘Well, you too, Jo, although you’ll forgive me for caring less about Shawn.’

  Tommy padded across the kitchen floor and sat at the top of the island, next to neither me nor Jo.

  ‘Well, you see . . .’ he began, and then paused.

  The pause became a silence, which hung in the air like fog. He looked at his hands. He picked at a hangnail. He lifted his hand to his mouth and nibbled at his thumb.

  ‘I also want to know why I’m only finding out about this now,’ I added.

  Jo suddenly sat down. ‘We’re having sex,’ she said. Her voice was perhaps a little louder than was necessary.

  Tommy flinched, but didn’t deny it.

  ‘And I’m not convinced you care all that much about Zoe, Sarah, but – for what it’s worth – she’s been sleeping with her client. The director of that company she represents, the one that makes them fitness watches. That’s why she went to Hong Kong. He invited her. And Tommy’s fine about it,’ she added firmly. ‘He came round to my flat the night she told him and we had too much to drink and . . . well.’

  Tommy looked at Jo, as if to say, Really? Then he shrugged and inclined his head, as if to confirm what she’d said. He was puce with embarrassment.

  Another long silence.

  ‘I’m sorry, but that’s not good enough,’ I said. ‘What do you mean, “We had too much to drink and . . . well”? Getting drunk and having sex are not interdependent, you know. ’

  ‘Stop trying to catch me out with your long words,’ Jo muttered.

  ‘Oh, behave yourself.’

  She sighed. ‘It was the night we all came here for dinner,’ she said, not quite meeting my eye. ‘That ramen you made, Sarah. You went to bed, all upset because of Eddie, and I went home. Then Zoe broke the news to Tommy and he stormed out of the flat, but after a few minutes he realized he had nowhere to go. So he called me, rather than storm right back inside. Got an Uber.’

  A smile I wasn’t used to illuminated a corner of her face. She looked at him, perhaps torn between the need to respect his privacy and to say this out loud. To confirm the affair.

  I looked at Tommy. ‘So you got in a taxi to Bow and, I mean, were you planning to . . .’ I trailed off. I couldn’t even say it.

  ‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘Not at all. But that doesn’t mean I regretted it,’ he added, when the smile slid from Jo’s face.

  ‘I see. So . . . is this a – a fling? Or a thing?’ I asked.

  There was a very long silence. Then: ‘Well, I love him,’ Jo said. ‘But I can’t speak for Tommy.’

  Tommy looked up sharply. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You heard what I said,’ she snapped. She furiously zipped and unzipped one of the pockets on his ski jacket. ‘But that’s by the by. The reason we didn’t tell you, Sarah, is that we haven’t told anyone. Zoe’s told Tommy he can stay here as long as he needs to – until he finds somewhere to live. She’s been staying with her fancy man at night so Tommy could tell you in his own time. He thinks she’s being really generous; I think she just can’t stand looking like the bad guy.’

  After a moment’s thought, I smiled. This, at least, rang true .

  ‘But she’s not the issue here. It’s Shawn.’ She stopped zipping. ‘He’s the real problem.’

  ‘Why? What’s he done?’

  ‘It’s what he could do,’ Tommy said, when he realized Jo was struggling. ‘She’s worried he’ll turn the whole custody thing into a nightmare if he finds out she’s been seeing someone else. So she’s going to split up with him, sort out custody, not mention me. Then we’ll . . . well, we’ll see what happens with us, I suppose.’

  Jo’s face gave nothing away, but I saw it – even through my shock, I saw it. She really was in love with him. And she had been for a long time. She was petrified this was just a fling. A rebound. The poor woman could barely meet his eye. We’ll see what happens with us was nowhere near enough for her.

  Tommy, as if sensing the same, moved round the island and sat next to her. I saw her glance down as he placed his hand carefully on her leg, and something tender began to swell in my throat.

  ‘He’s a vindictive fucker,’ Jo said quietly. Shawn was safer territory than her feelings for Tommy. ‘I can’t let him find out.’

  ‘Personally, I can’t see how he’d ever get custody,’ Tommy said. ‘He’s the worst he’s ever been – not turning up to pick Rudi up from school, he’s stoned most of the time, and he even left Rudi on his own in the flat a couple of weeks ago. Rudi nearly set fire to the place, trying to make his own tea. Jo’s dad’s got Rudi tonight.’ He glanced again at Jo, but she had closed down, as she always did when she’d exposed too much of herself.

  Zoe’s trendy wall clock rolled silently to 3.30 a.m.

  ‘So that’s that,’ Jo said, unable to bear the silence. She put her hands on the worktop, two raw little fists. ‘And I managed to bare my soul in the middle of it! Sorry,’ she said, half turning towards Tommy. ‘I really don’t mind if it’s just sex, babe. Forget the love thing. I was just being silly. OTT, you know me.’

  There was an uncomfortable silence.

  ‘I should give you two some space,’ I said.

  ‘Stay,’ Jo barked.

  ‘OK, thanks,’ Tommy said si
multaneously.

  I hovered, halfway out of my stool.

  ‘I’m not very good at this,’ Jo said. Her face was the colour of house bricks. ‘Shouldn’t be left to my own devices. If you go, I’ll only end up saying more stupid things.’

  I sat back down, sending Tommy an apologetic smile, but he was deep in thought, his eyebrows engaged in something that far exceeded my powers of interpretation. I looked away. Ran my gaze across Zoe’s collection of cookbooks aimed at uptight women. At the picture of her and Tommy working out together in Kensington Gardens, back at the beginning of their relationship, when she couldn’t keep her hands off him.

  At the end of Zoe’s road, a night bus whined up Holland Park Road. I wondered who this new man was. Where he lived. Zoe seemed impossibly wealthy to a pauper like me, but this man would blow her and her two-bedroomed flat in Holland Park out of the water. He’d be eye-wateringly rich and well connected. And – above all – right for Zoe. Right in a way Tommy never could have been, no matter how many times she forced him up the career ladder.

  Eventually Tommy took a deep breath. He turned to Jo. ‘Look,’ he said quietly. ‘I do love you. I do love you, Jo. I just imagined telling you in . . . well, other circumstances.’

  Jo, who I suspected had stopped breathing, said nothing. Tommy traced a finger along the edge of Zoe’s kitchen island. ‘ You’re the only person I’ve never felt self-conscious with,’ he said. ‘The only person I can talk to about anything, always. I miss you when you leave a room. Even though you call me a “privileged arsehole” too often. Even though you’re the kind of infuriating woman who makes me say these things in front of Sarah.’

  Jo allowed a trace of a smile, but she still couldn’t quite look at him.

  ‘I thought I was happy,’ Tommy went on, ‘when I first moved in here. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t happy at all, and I haven’t been for years. Even as recently as a month ago, I was able to convince myself that this’ – he looked around Zoe’s immaculate kitchen – ‘this was what I wanted. It’s not. What I want is to be me. In my own skin, laughing, real. I laugh until I cry with you, several times a week. I’ve never done that with Zoe.’