I left Rob so I could have tea with Greg and say goodbye. He told me again that I should think about grad school and said some nice things. He also gave me a hard time about Rob’s age and asked why I didn’t bring him to introduce them. I’m going to miss Greg horribly.
Boston, MA
Rob and I took the Chinatown bus to Boston and arrived in the late afternoon. We found his bus and went to the infamous Regina’s Pizza, followed by a little café for tiramisu. When we returned, we made a bed in the back of the bus. I guess it’s pretty hot and kind of kinky with Rob, but it feels tender and good too.
This morning we went out for breakfast and have been all lovey-dovey, sexy and sad. Now we’re driving in the bus to New York, where I’ll meet my mum and he’ll head off on the next trip.
Last night I had a nightmare involving Matthew, and when I woke up I was so happy to see Rob. I feel safe with him. I know he’s older and I’m a little stupid, but this is mutual and non-manipulative and so much more innocent. He makes me feel good and my own person. He’s a goof and a dork and it’s not serious, but, Hell, it’s fun and I’ve finally started to come! And he rides bikes with me. And he just kissed me.
New York City
I’m sat in the hotel with my mum now. I just had a fifty-minute phone conversation with Rob because he won’t leave my head. I woke up in the night expecting to see him and I missed him in all the places we went today.
Kissing him goodbye was dreadful. Luckily Mum was jetlagged so I had some time to shower and feel sorry for myself last night. Today we woke early and were some of the first people up the Empire State Building. I looked down at Manhattan and tracked our cycle path around the city. It wasn’t a perfectly clear morning, but it was fun to see this city that I’ll miss from on high.
I took Mum for bagels in Starbucks and shopping in Macy’s at her request. After that, we rode the Staten Island Ferry to see the Statue of Liberty. We ate lunch in Battery Park and walked to Wall Street and Ground Zero.
I’ve promised Rob I’ll come back to the States next month for another trip. I wish I could tell Mum about him, but I’d forgotten how silent and awkward we are about my love life. It’s odd that we can discuss our mutual appreciation of Anaïs Nin, but I can’t tell her I’m a little bit crazy over Rob. It’s my fault, I suppose, for weaving so many secrets and lies between us. I also spent the past few months working up the courage to tell her I’m gay, but I don’t suppose I can do that now either.
A whirlwind tour of Times Square, followed by Lou Donaldson at the Jazz Standard. They played ‘Falling in Love with Love’, which of course made me think of Rob. He’s haunting me in this city. It used to be mine but now I pass the Papaya King and glimpse the Empire State and he’s all my mind can handle.
I fantasise about blurting out to my mum, ‘I usually date women but right now I’m a little bit stupid over a guy who lives in California.’ I don’t seem able to, though.
Still, I feel better about the next few weeks. Perhaps I can even handle the Hell of facing Matthew. Perhaps.
I have to stop myself daydreaming about a future I’ll never have with Rob. Silly girl that I am.
How can I have spent eighteen years in Sussex and one in Durham and feel completely groundless, but two weeks on a bus and miss it like it’s home?
MoMA today. A picnic lunch in Central Park and goodbye phone calls. I cried a little in the park and vaguely told Mum about Rob. She got all parental and said she hoped I was being careful. I blushed but muttered that she didn’t need to worry about that with Rob because of his vasectomy. Mum and I are closer than we’ve been for years, which makes me happy, but I can’t help thinking she’d disown me if she knew the truth.
Delaware County, New York State
It’s odd to see the Rosella campus empty. I gave Mum a tour, followed by chess and chai in my favourite café for the last time. I said goodbye to Jess and tried to wash this place out of my system.
I fly tomorrow … but I’ll be back.
*
My mum and I landed at Heathrow on 19th July. We crammed my four bulging suitcases into the back of a taxi and both dozed through the two hours back to Sussex. I said hello to my dad and glanced at the pile of envelopes with my name on, but essentially slept and cried for two days. On the third day, my birthday, I booked my flight back to San Francisco for 23rd August, where I’d stay with Rob before going with him on another tour. My mum took me out for lunch, and my dad and I propped up the bar in the pub down the road until closing time. I woke with a hangover and began packing my things into boxes for uni. Explaining that I wanted to go to Durham early to find a job, I persuaded my mum to drive me and my stuff up the M1. Tim had emailed a few months ago asking if I fancied being the fifth person in their house and I’d jumped at the opportunity to not return to college accommodation. The house had been ours since 1st July, but nobody was moving in until term started in early October. Still, an empty house in a pretty city was preferable to a month of holding my breath every time I walked out my door in Sussex. Apart from a brief tea party at Valerie’s the day after my birthday, where Matthew and I chatted stiffly about The National’s autumn programme, I managed to avoid him.
Once I got to Durham, I didn’t look for a job. I reasoned there was no point if I was leaving in a month. I read and wrote and went for long walks. I tried to cook Jambalaya for myself and took long bubble baths. Eventually 23rd August arrived.
In my daze of nervous expectation, the journey went quickly. I was frisked twice and had my ChapStick confiscated by security, which caused me to worry more about developing a coldsore halfway across the Atlantic than the class-orange terror alert announced days before my flight. In the very furthest seat in my row with nobody next to me, I spent London to Chicago curled up in three blankets listening to the flight attendants bitch about the passengers. From Chicago to San Francisco, I had a window and watched as the land changed. As we began our descent, I was treated to the sun setting over the Bay.
Rob walked past where I sat and I saw him anxiously scan the screen for my flight number. Leaving my bags, I ran to him and he turned just as I jumped into his arms. Our awkward embrace made us laugh and we smiled giddily as we walked back to my stuff. Rob drove us home in his beat-up truck, and halfway through the journey I slid along the seat to lean on his shoulder. He talked the whole way back, babbling about the city, giving me a night-time tour. I was high with energy for him and waffled words I’ve now forgotten, giggling and apologising for my incoherence. We ate cereal after I’d showered and sat shyly together on his bed. Finally, after being awake for twenty-eight hours, I fell asleep in his arms.
The following day I woke smiling and we went out to shop for supplies. After a late lunch, we went back to bed. We woke hours later having missed the party we were supposed to attend. Instead, Rob took me out for fries and a shake followed by a movie. Our first real date.
Before the trip departed, we rented bikes and cycled over the Golden Gate Bridge and around Sausalito. Our mornings were frittered away lying in bed talking of showering and doing active things but instead melting into each other without urgency. When we finally got up, we made coffee and eggs and sat on rusty garden chairs on his patio. He showed me around San Francisco on foot; we found pizza, new glasses and a Giants game for him, and a dress, Vietnamese food and a terrible piece of In-Yer-Face theatre for me.
The sex was better than before and I wrote silly things in my journal about my newfound orgasms. Rob told me he was a little scared, that he was trying to keep his feet on the ground, but it wasn’t working. I doodled some more about wishing I could erase the past and offer myself to him fresh, about feeling suddenly so normal that it seemed abnormal.
We picked up the passengers and the other driver, Louisa, at the meeting point and I sat up with Rob as he drove out of San Francisco. This trip took us on a daredevil hike to Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park; to the neon cheesiness of Las Vegas in atrocious heat; to the Grand Canyon exac
tly one year after my arrival in the US; to breakfast at a cowboy town called Tombstone; to a ‘clothing optional’ hot spring in New Mexico; to the snow-like dunes of White Sands National Monument; to the mud bath that marks the Rio Grande in Big Bend National Park; to ride the Dillo and eat tacos in Austin; to a bar serving Bloody Marys at 10am in New Orleans; to see dolphins in St Andrew’s State Park, near Panama City; to another sprawling beach in North Carolina; and to a final campsite next to the Delaware River.
By the end of the journey, I’d visited thirty-two different states, had sex in eight national parks and swapped ‘I love you’s from Florida to Massachusetts. When I thought about going back to Durham, I remembered I was twenty and a kid and a dork. I spoke to Jess on the phone and realised I envied her for being able to accept she was different, that she wanted Angelo and didn’t care if she fitted in or not. But, as hard as I tried, I couldn’t picture Rob visiting me in Durham. Nor could I picture myself as I was now – the person who had sat on a bus in the Grand Canyon wearing a scruffy pair of shorts, Rob’s arm around me as he dozed – back at university in England. I was confused. I had too many personas, too many worlds. The normal student in Durham was still entwined with the bizarre child-woman who had been involved with Matthew. However, this intense, satisfying, fun and innocent relationship with Rob left a trace of a similar kind of sordid embarrassment when I tried to reconcile his age with the real world.
We spent my final week in Boston and New York. We hired bikes to see Cambridge, Queens and Brooklyn, sampled tiramisu in every deli we passed and called in on Jess who was settling in as a grad student at Harvard. In New York, we stayed with one of Rob’s friends in Astoria, where we tried to make the most of our final few days.
I cried at JFK, unsure if I could force myself to get on the plane, incapable of imagining a day without Rob. I’d slept badly, waking up to look at him until the alarm went off at 4.30am. He drove me to the airport, but there was no parking, so he had to drop me off. Tears rolled down our cheeks as we clung to each other on the sidewalk.
I cried in the line to check in, pulling my hat low over my face and shaking with self-pity. I rang a friend in England, wanting to ask him to come give me a hug at Heathrow, but realising it would be a ridiculous request. I rang Rob, who was stuck in traffic and shouldn’t have answered his cell phone, but did.
‘I want to be with you,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to be with anyone else.’
‘So don’t,’ he replied and I heard tears in his voice.
‘Okay.’ I smiled, in spite of myself. ‘I’ll call you when I’m in England.’
I thought about the bus I had already booked back to Durham and the empty house I’d be in when I arrived. I wondered if I should have planned to return to Sussex, to curl into my mum’s cuddles and eat homemade food. Home. But not really. Durham would be safer.
At Victoria Coach Station, unsure who to turn to, I rang my dad’s ex-girlfriend, April. We’d stayed friends and often talked about love. Of anyone, I felt she’d understand. She tried to persuade me to go to hers in Guildford instead of Durham. I thought about how much a train ticket would cost and thanked her but declined. Next I rang my mum and she said it must be sad for me, but perhaps I could see him again. I said goodbye and wished I hadn’t called her.
I arrived in Durham at 11pm to a quiet house with no internet, so I paid full international rates to let Rob know I’d arrived. I got his voicemail.
Waking to an empty house – an empty bed – was more than I could handle. After less than twelve hours in Durham, I jumped on a train heading south to spend a few days with April and try to sort out my mixed-up head.
A woman on the train asked me if I had a boyfriend. I stumbled at how to explain that yesterday morning I’d woken in the naked arms of a perfect man in Queens and today I was stuck on a delayed train, travelling 300 miles for a cuddle from someone who cares.
23
Term began and I applied for a job at a coffee shop. I loved my first term’s class, which was about feminist literature depicting New York City, and I got on well with the other students Tim and I were sharing the house with. Daniel, whom I’d worked with on Clouds, asked if I’d like to produce his production of David Hare’s Skylight, so I found my way back into the drama society. Rob and I made plans for him to visit me in Durham for a whole month just after Christmas, and I called my mum to arrange to introduce them in London after New Year’s.
I missed my friends in the US and tried to email Greg and Jess as much as I could, but logging-in to my email always came with an element of dread. Matthew’s messages had dried up over the summer when he realised I wasn’t responding, but we had seen each other for the first time since Christmas at a tea party at Valerie’s house. The encounter was civil, each of us adopting perfect personas, but it prompted the resumption of his daily email attacks. In my replies, I attempted to reason with him, to be polite and to offer him friendship, but everything I typed became fuel for more viciousness. At present, though, they were just words. Words that cut, got inside my head, and made me cry in my bedroom alone; but, thankfully, also words that could be made to disappear with the touch of my laptop’s power button.
Then the first letter arrived. Double enveloped. Forwarded from Matthew. Using my real name on the external address.
Rupert Cochrane
F&R Solicitors
PO Box 101
London
SWxxxx
Harriet Moore
Care of Albert Sumac
PO Box 666
London
SWxxxx
31st October 2004
Dear Ms Harriet Moore
It is my duty to inform you that, as requested in the will of Rose Shaw, we are bound to enquire about the status of your relationship with Albert Sumac as of November 2004. At the reading of the will in December 2003, Mr Sumac requested you not be made aware of the terms of the document in case they influenced any decisions you might make, but now it is imperative I bring certain details to your attention.
As laid out in the will of Rose Shaw, written and signed 8th September 2003, Harriet Moore and Albert Sumac were bequeathed (and I quote):
a rental legacy of £53,000, specifically to be used for a house or flat in Durham.*
a theatre and foreign travel legacy of £12,195.*
* These sums are to be paid one year after the testator (Rose Shaw)’s death on the sole condition that the beneficiaries are in a committed relationship. Should this not be the case, all funds should be donated to the Cats Protection Agency.
Thus, it is my duty to enquire whether or not you are currently in a ‘committed relationship’ with Albert Sumac. I have already contacted Mr Sumac and he has responded in the negative, but I need written confirmation from both parties before I may proceed with executing Ms Shaw’s last wishes.
As such, I would appreciate it if you could respond to my query as soon as possible using the above address.
Yours
Rupert Cochrane
F&R Solicitors
One week later, I received another typed letter:
Natalie
You will be hearing from my solicitor, but I thought it polite to inform you myself first. Under advice and with little choice given your inability to discuss such matters reasonably, I am in the unfavourable position of having to take legal action against you (see enclosed).
As I’m sure it will yours, this breaks my heart. I have tried to reduce the sum as much as possible. All the legacy items have been halved, though, of course, you have already lost your own half, and so your total deficit is nearly doubled. I wish it could have been different.
I have also halved the rental cost of the Kew flat, because in theory we were living there together, though, of course, we both know I left for half the summer because you became unbearable. Gas and electricity are difficult to calculate for the period, so I have let you off there.
My sadness is in knowing that none of this would have been necessary ha
d you been able to show me some respect and follow through on your offer of friendship. I have tried to settle with you, but your stubbornness has made you unable to recognise a friend when you need one, and this, I’m afraid, will now have to serve as another part of your learning process. A lesson more expensive than any of those at Rosella. Perhaps now you will understand that getting your own way and having everything on your own terms is both expensive and lonely. Perhaps, anyway. No doubt you will find a way to blame this on me.
I am willing to discuss this:
alone
with my solicitor present
with your mother present
with your bus driver present (yes, your Ma has been blathering about your latest bedfellow)
or any combination of the above
I am sorry it has come to this. I tried not to believe it for a long, long time, but I fear I was avoiding the truth: you are cold, Natalie. You give me goose-bumps.
Yours sincerely
Matthew Wright
Details of funds to be recovered from Natalie Lucas of 30 D***** Road, Durham, DH** 4**
Rental legacy Durham flat/house
@ 50% of £53,000 26,500
Furniture (private purchase) 1,254
Travel to and from Durham
(two visits with regard to the rental legacy) 150
Decorations/books, etc. 70
Three months’ rental of Richmond flat
@ 50% of £2,550 1,275
Theatre and foreign travel legacycd
@ 50% of £12,195 6,097
GRAND TOTAL £35,346
What’s your reaction after reading this? Do you laugh? Is your mind’s mouth hanging mid-air in amazement? Are you incredulous? Do you have the number of a good lawyer in your address book?
You, reader, whatever your reaction, would surely have known what to do next. But, just in case my powers of authorship have failed thus far, I must reiterate certain details about the girl who found these letters on the doormat of her third-year student home – about me:
Sixteen, Sixty-One Page 22
