by Nicci French
‘Tell me your name?’
‘Alice,’ I said. I didn’t recognize my own voice.
‘Alice,’ he repeated. ‘Alice.’ The word sounded unfamiliar when he said it like that. He lifted his hands and, very gently, careful not to make any contact with my skin, loosened my scarf. He smelt of soap and sweat.
The taxi stopped and, looking out, I saw that we were in Soho. There was a paper shop, a delicatessen, restaurants. I could smell coffee and garlic. He got out and once more held the door open for me. I could feel the blood pulsing in my body. He pushed at a shabby door by the side of a clothes shop and I followed him up a narrow flight of steps. He took a bunch of keys from his pocket and unlocked two locks. Inside, it wasn’t just a room but a small flat. I saw shelves, books, pictures, a rug. I hovered on the threshold. It was my last chance. The noise from the street outside filtered through the windows, the rise and fall of voices, the rumble of cars. He closed the door and bolted it from the inside.
I should have been scared, and I was, but not of him, this stranger. I was scared at myself. I didn’t know myself any longer. I was dissolving with my desire, as if all the outlines of my body were becoming insubstantial. I started to take off my coat, hands clumsy on the velvet buttons, but he stopped me.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Let me.’
First he removed my scarf and hung it carefully on the coat-stand. Next, my coat, taking his time. He knelt on the floor and slipped off my shoes. I put my hand on his shoulder to stop myself toppling. He stood again, and started to unbutton my cardigan, and I saw that his hands were trembling slightly. He undid my skirt and pulled it down over my hips; it rasped against my tights. He tugged off my tights, collecting them into a flimsy ball, which he put beside my shoes. Still, he had hardly made contact with my skin. He took off my camisole and slid down my knickers and I stood naked in that unfamiliar room, shivering slightly.
‘Alice,’ he said, in a kind of groan. Then, ‘Oh, God, you’re lovely, Alice.’
I took off his jacket. His arms were strong and brown, and there was another long, puckered scar running from the elbow to the wrist. I copied him and knelt at his feet to pull off his shoes and socks. On his right foot, he had only three toes, and I bent down and kissed the place where the other two had been. He sighed softly. I tugged his shirt free of his jeans and he raised his arms like a little boy while I pulled it over his head. He had a flat stomach with a line of hair running down it. I unzipped his jeans and eased them carefully down over his buttocks. His legs were knotty, quite tanned. I took off his underpants and dropped them on to the floor. Someone moaned, but I don’t know if it was him or me. He lifted one hand and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, then traced my lips with a forefinger, very slowly. I closed my eyes.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Look at me.’
‘Please,’ I said. ‘Please.’
He unhooked my earrings and let them fall. I heard them clink on the wooden boards.
‘Kiss me, Alice,’ he said.
Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. Sex had never been like this. There had been indifferent sex, embarrassing sex, nasty sex, good sex, great sex. This was more like obliterating sex. We crashed together, trying to get past the barrier of skin and flesh. We held each other as if we were drowning. We tasted each other as if we were starving. And all the time he looked at me. He looked at me as if I were the loveliest thing he had ever seen, and as I lay on the hard dusty floor I felt lovely, shameless, quite done for.
Afterwards, he lifted me to my feet and took me into the shower and washed me down. He soaped my breasts and between my legs. He washed my feet and thighs. He even washed my hair, expertly massaging shampoo into it, tilting my head back so soap wouldn’t run into my eyes. Then he dried me, making sure I was dry under my arms, between my toes, and as he dried me he examined me. I felt like a work of art, and like a prostitute.
‘I must go back to work,’ I said at last. He dressed me, picking up my clothes from the floor, threading my earrings through my lobes, brushing my wet hair back from my face.
‘When do you finish work?’ he asked. I thought of Jake waiting at home.
‘Six.’
‘I’ll be there,’ he said. I should have told him then that I had a partner, a home, a whole other life. Instead I pulled his face towards mine and kissed his bruised lips. I could hardly bring myself to pull my body away from his.
In the taxi, alone, I pictured him, remembered his touch, his taste, his smell. I didn’t know his name.
Three
I arrived back at my office out of breath. I grabbed some messages from Claudia’s outstretched hand and went into my office. I flicked through them. Nothing that couldn’t be put off. It was already twilight outside and I tried to catch my reflection in the window. I felt self-conscious about my clothes. They seemed strange on me because they had been taken off and put back on again by a stranger. I worried that it would seem as obvious to other people as it seemed to me. Had he fastened some button wrongly? Or maybe some bit of clothing had been put on over some other bit. It all seemed fine, but I wasn’t sure enough. I rushed to the lavatory with some makeup. In the unforgiving bright light I checked in the mirror for puffy lips or visible bruises. I did some remedial work with lipstick and eye-liner. My hand was trembling. I had to bang it against a sink to steady it.
I rang Jake’s mobile. He sounded as if he was in the middle of something. I said that I had a meeting and I might be late home. How late? I didn’t know, it was completely unpredictable. Would I be back for supper? I told him to go ahead without me. I replaced the phone, telling myself that I was just trying to make things neat. I would probably be home before Jake was. Then I sat and thought about what I had done. I remembered his face. I sniffed at my wrist and smelt the soap. His soap. It made me shudder and when I closed my eyes I could feel the tiles under my feet and hear the shower pattering on the curtain. His hands.
There was one of two things that could happen, by which I meant that there was one of two things that should happen. I didn’t know his name or address. I wasn’t sure that I would be able to find his flat even if I wanted to. So if I came out at six and he wasn’t there, it would be finished with in any case. If he was there, then I would have to tell him firmly and clearly the same thing. That was that. It was a mad thing to have done and the best thing to do was to pretend that it hadn’t happened. It was the only sane course.
I had been dazed when I had returned to the office, but now I felt clearer-headed than I had for weeks, full of a new kinetic energy. Over the next hour I had a brief chat with Giovanna and then made a dozen phone calls with no small-talk. I got back to people, made arrangements, queried figures. Sylvie rang and wanted to chat but I told her I would see her tomorrow or the next day. Was I doing anything this evening? Yes. A meeting. I sent some messages, disposed of the papers on my desk. One day I wouldn’t have a desk at all and I’d get twice as much done.
I looked across at the clock. It was five to six. As I was searching around for my bag, Mike came in. He was taking a conference call before breakfast on the next day and he needed to go over things.
‘I’m in a bit of a hurry, Mike. I’ve got a meeting.’
‘Who with?’
For a moment I thought of pretending I was meeting someone from the lab but some flicker of a survival instinct prompted me not to. ‘It’s something private.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Job interview?’
‘Dressed like this?’
‘You do look a bit rumpled.’ He didn’t say any more. He probably assumed that it was something female, gynaecological. But he didn’t go away either. ‘It’ll just take a second.’ He sat down with his notes, which we had to go through point by point. I had to check one or two of them and phone somebody about another. I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t look at the clock a single time. What did it matter anyway? Finally there was a pause and I said that I really had to go. Mike nodded. I looked at my watch.
Twenty-four minutes past six. Twenty-five past. I didn’t hurry, even after Mike had gone. I went to the lift feeling relieved that events had sorted themselves out. It was best this way, all forgotten.
I lay at an angle across the bed with my head on Adam’s stomach. His name was Adam. He had told me that in the cab on the way over. It was almost the only thing he had said. Sweat was running down my face. I could feel it everywhere: on my back, on my legs. My hair was wet. And I could feel the sweat on his skin. It was so hot in this flat. How could anywhere be so hot in January? The chalky taste in my mouth wouldn’t go away. I raised myself up and looked at him. His eyes were half closed.
‘Is there anything to drink?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ he said sleepily. ‘Why don’t you go and look?’
I stood up and looked for something to put around me and then thought: why? There was almost nothing else to the flat. There was this room, which had a bed and lots of floor space, and there was the bathroom, where I had had my shower earlier, and there was a tiny kitchen. I opened the fridge: a couple of half-squeezed tubes, some jars, a carton of milk. Nothing to drink. I was feeling the chill now. There was a bottle of some kind of orange juice on a shelf. I hadn’t drunk diluted orange squash since I was a child. I found a tumbler and mixed some, drank it in a couple of gulps, mixed some more and took it back into the bedroom, living room, whatever it was. Adam was sitting up, leaning against the bedhead. Briefly, I allowed myself to remember Jake’s bonier, whiter shape, the jutting collar-bone and knobbly spine. Adam was looking at me as I came in. He must have been watching the doorway, waiting for me. He didn’t smile, just gazed intently at my naked body, as if he were committing it to memory. I smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back and a feeling of intense joy rose up in me.
I walked across and offered the glass to him. He took a small sip and handed the glass to me. I took a small sip and passed it back to him. We emptied the glass like that, together, and then he leaned across me and placed the glass on the rug. The duvet had been kicked off on to the floor. I pulled it up over us. I looked around the room. The photographs on the chest and the mantelpiece were all of landscapes. There were some books on the shelf and I examined them one by one: several cookery books, a large coffee-table book about Hogarth, the collected works of W. H. Auden and of Sylvia Plath. A Bible. Wuthering Heights, some D. H. Lawrence travel books. Two guides to British wild flowers. A book of walks in and around London. Dozens of guidebooks in a row and in piles. A few clothes were hanging on the metal runner or neatly folded on the wicker chair by the bed: jeans, a silk shirt, another leather jacket, T-shirts.
‘I’m trying to work out who you are,’ I said, ‘by looking at your things.’
‘None of it’s mine. This place belongs to a friend.’
‘Oh.’
I looked round at him. He still wasn’t smiling. I found it unsettling. I started to speak and then he did give a slight smile, shook his head and touched my lips with one finger. Our bodies were close together anyway and he moved forward a couple of inches and kissed me.
‘What are you thinking?’ I said, running the fingers of one hand through his soft, long hair. ‘Talk to me. Tell me something.’
He didn’t answer immediately. He slid the duvet off my body and moved me on to my back. He took my hands in his and raised them above my head on the sheet as if they were pinioned. I felt exposed like a specimen on a slide. He gently touched my forehead and then ran his fingers down over my face, my neck, down my body and they came to rest in my belly-button. I shivered and wriggled. ‘Sorry,’ I said.
He leaned right forward over me and touched my belly-button with his tongue. ‘I was thinking,’ he said, ‘that the hair under your arms, here, is just like your pubic hair. Here. But not like the lovely hair on your head. And I was thinking that I like your taste. I mean, all your different tastes. I would like to lick every bit of you.’ He was looking up and down and over my body as if it were a landscape. I giggled, and he looked into my eyes. ‘What’s that for?’ he asked, with a look almost of alarm in his eyes.
I smiled at him. ‘I think you’re treating me like a sex object.’
‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Don’t make jokes.’
I felt myself blushing. Was I blushing all over my body? ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t. I like it. I feel blurry.’
‘What are you thinking?’
‘You lie back,’ I said, and he did. ‘And close your eyes.’ I ran my fingers over his body, which smelt of sex and sweat. ‘What am I thinking? I think that I’m completely mad and I don’t know what I’m doing here but it was…’ Istopped. I didn’thave words for sex with him. Just remembering it sent little ripples of pleasure through me. I felt a throb of desire again. My body felt soft and new and open to him. I curled my fingers on to the velvety skin of his inner thigh. What else was I thinking about? I had to force myself. ‘I’m also thinking… I’m thinking that I have a boyfriend. More than a boyfriend. I live with somebody.’
I don’t know what I expected. Anger, maybe, evasiveness. Adam didn’t move. He didn’t even open his eyes. ‘But you’re here,’ was all he said.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘God, I am.’
We lay together for a long time after that. One hour, two hours. Jake always said that I can’t relax for long, can’t stay still, can’t stay silent. Now we barely spoke. We touched. Rested. Looked at each other. I lay and listened to the sounds of voices and cars in the street below. My body felt thin and peeled under his hands. Finally I said I had to go. I showered and then dressed while he watched me. It made me shiver.
‘Give me your number,’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘Give me yours.’
I leaned over and kissed him gently. He put a hand on my hand and pulled my head down. I felt an ache in my chest so that I could hardly breathe, but I shook him off. ‘Must go,’ I whispered.
It was after midnight. When I let myself into the flat, it was dark. Jake had gone to bed. I tiptoed into the bathroom. I put my knickers and tights into the washbag. I had a shower for the second time in an hour. The fourth time that day. I washed my body again in my own soap. I washed my hair in my own shampoo. I crawled into the bed beside Jake. He turned and mumbled something.
‘Me you too,’ I said.
Four
Jake woke me up with my tea. He sat on the edge of the bed in his towelling robe and smoothed my hair back from my forehead while I surfaced from sleep. I stared at him, and memory flooded back, disastrous and overpowering. My lips felt sore and puffy; my body ached. Surely he could tell, just by looking at me. I pulled the sheet up to my chin and smiled at him.
‘You look lovely this morning,’ he said. ‘Have you any idea what time it is?’
I shook my head.
He looked theatrically at his watch. ‘Nearly eleven thirty. Lucky it’s the weekend. What time did you get in last night?’
‘Midnight. Maybe a bit later.’
‘They’re working you too hard,’ he said. ‘Drink up. Lunch at my parents’, remember?’
I hadn’t remembered. Only my body seemed to have a memory now: Adam’s hands on my breasts, Adam’s lips at my throat, Adam’s eyes staring into mine. Jake smiled at me and rubbed my neck, and there I lay, sick with desire for another man. I picked up Jake’s hand and kissed it. ‘You’re a nice man,’ I said.
He pulled a face. ‘Nice?’ He leaned down and kissed me on the lips, and I felt as if I was betraying someone. Jake? Adam?
‘Shall I run you a bath?’
‘That’d be lovely.’
I poured a stream of lemon bath oil into the water, and washed myself in it all over again, as if I could wash away what had happened. I hadn’t eaten anything yesterday, but the thought of food was horrible. I closed my eyes and lay in the hot, deep, fragrant water and let myself think of Adam. I must never, ever see him again, that was clear. I loved Jake. I liked my life. I had behaved appallingly and I would lose everything. I must see him
again, at once. Nothing else mattered except for the touch of his hands, the ache of my flesh, the way he said my name. I would see him once, just once, to tell him it was over. I owed him that at least. What rubbish. I was lying to myself as well as to Jake. If I saw him, looked again into his beautiful face, I would fuck him. No, the only thing to do was just turn away from everything that had happened yesterday. Concentrate on Jake; work. But just one more time, a last time.
‘Ten minutes, Alice. All right?’
The sound of Jake’s voice brought me to my senses. Of course I was going to stay with him. We’d get married, maybe, and have children and one day this would be a memory, one of those ridiculous things one had done once before growing up. I sluiced myself down one last time, watching the bubbles stream off a body that suddenly seemed strange to me. Then I climbed out of the bath. Jake held out a towel. I was aware of his eyes on me as I dried.
‘Perhaps we can be a bit late, after all,’ he said. ‘Come here.’
So I let Jake make love to me, and tell me that he loved me, and I lay under him damp and acquiescent. I groaned with pretended pleasure, and he didn’t know, he couldn’t tell. It would be my secret.
∗
We had spinach flan for lunch, with garlic bread and green salad. Jake’s mother is a good cook. I lifted a piece of curly lettuce on to my fork and put it in my mouth, chewed slowly. It was difficult to swallow. I took a gulp of water and tried again. I’d never be able to eat all of this.
‘Are you all right, Alice?’ Jake’s mother was looking fretfully at me. She hates it when I don’t finish meals that she’s cooked. Usually I try to have a second helping. She likes me better than Jake’s previous girlfriends because I usually have a large appetite, and eat several slices of her chocolate cake.
