“Yes. He got really angry, and said it was none of my business. He shouted at me and told me to stop being ridiculous. The next day he sent me flowers again, came round and was so bloody nice it almost made me sick. One day he was a right bastard, the next day he was Mr Nice, willing to do anything for me. Which, of course, I let him do. Exactly what I wanted,” she says, blushing and smiling.
I laugh. “Well, every cloud has a silver lining. Doesn’t it?”
“The point is, his behaviour is getting really weird. Maybe it’s always been weird. But one minute he’s up and the next he is down…”
“It sounds a bit like he might be taking cocaine with his mates on Friday night then…”
“You think so?”
“Maybe. I knew some people at uni who were like that. These mood swings are a classic sign.”
“What should I do?”
“I don’t know. Who am I to advise anyone? I’m not exactly the world’s best agony aunt am I?”
“Come on, Andrew...”
“I can’t tell you. Not if you love him. I mean, I’ve already told you that if the pain is worse than the gain, there isn’t any point to it. Talk to him, and if he won’t be more open with you, or stop whatever it is he is doing that is wrong, then stop seeing him. It’s the best I can suggest.”
She is silent.
“Let’s order lunch,” she says, rather sheepishly.
We both go for the usual: cod and chips and the speciality mushy peas. With two mugs of steaming hot tea.
“So what about you and Slávka then?” she asks, calmly.
“She’s great,” I reply. “We had a fantastic time.”
“Where did you go again?”
“We went to Slovakia. She was planning to go anyway, and after Thursday and what happened with Sal, she asked me to go along too. So I went. And it was…great.”
“Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Did you …?”
“Did I what?” I ask, playing with her, but not quite sure if I want to tell her.
“Come on, you asked me if I was sleeping with Ben, so I was just wondering how serious it was getting between you and Slávka…”
“I don’t know. It’s good, but I don’t want to jinx it at all by saying anything too prematurely about it.”
“Did you or didn’t you Andrew. I just want to know….”
“Let’s just say, that we didn’t not do it. And whatever it was that we didn’t not do, it was very, very good!”, and I laugh.
“She’s a lucky woman.” Gail replies, and then goes quiet.
So we eat, finish our lunch, and then go back to the office. Gail doesn’t say much more. When we are approaching the reception she says, “Can I still call you if I need to talk to you?”
“Absolutely,” I reply.
“Good,” she says, “because I like you Andrew, and I still want to be able to talk you now that you have met someone else.”
“And I like you too.”
She looks at me, her back to the entrance to the building, the revolving doors behind her.
“I’ve been thinking about it and maybe I was stupid before. Perhaps I made a mistake…Slávka’s very lucky.”
“What do you mean?” I start to ask, but it’s already too late. Gail steps back into the revolving doors and I have to wait for a few people to come out in the other direction before I can follow her in, by which time she is in the lift on the other side of the security gates and the doors are closing. She waves at me, and the lift goes up.
Just then my mobile bleeps and I get a message from Slávka.
“Missing you, Mr Blue Lips. My parents want know why I smiling all time. What I should say?”
I quickly type out a reply, forgetting all about Gail and what she just said.
“It’s smiling all ‘the’ time…and I think you should just say you have met a very handsome Scottish man, that wants to see you on Saturday night as soon as you get back to London, so that we can have some more, mind blowing sex.”
As I am getting out of the lift, I get a reply.
“Good. I take advice from you, as you say, and told parents what you said I must. My father, he is now polishing ‘the’ shotgun that he has in house. Not happy man. He want meet you very much. Ha Ha.”
The rest of the afternoon goes quickly, and in spite of the stressful private life I seem to be immersed in since I arrived in London, I manage to lose myself in my work. If anything, five-thirty comes far too soon. Ben shuts down his PC, pats me on the shoulder and says, “See at 8.30?”
“Yup.” I nod, “The Lemon Tree.”
Guy is already waiting for me at the bar of the Piano and Pitcher near Charing Cross, and he beams at me when I walk up to join him, eagerly picking up the cold pint of Stella he already has waiting for me.
We ‘Cheers’ each other, and then Guy opens the conversation.
“So who is this Slowca woman? You kept that a big secret?” he asks, nudging me playfully.
“You had other things on your mind. I thought I’d wait until the appropriate time.”
“Listen, I meant what I said the other day. I am really very bloody sorry that you arrived in London to escape your own shit, only to end up being drowned in mine. But I really really appreciate everything you have done for me and Sal. I mean it. I will never forget it. Honestly,” he says very warmly, resting his hand on my shoulder and gripping it tightly to emphasise the sincerity of what he is telling me.
“Forget it. You would have done exactly the same for me, if it had been the other way around. Anyway, here’s to a speedy recovery and happiness for you both!”, I say, raising my glass to him and waiting for him to return the salute.
Clink.
“So, now let me ask you a question. Now Sal is talking again, has she given you an answer to your question?”
I see a little shadow cross Guy’s eyes, although he blinks it away and resumes his bright disposition before it can settle on him.
“Not yet. But I don’t think it’s anything to worry about. She said she’s just really confused just now, because she can’t remember everything that happened immediately before and after the attack. She wants to get her memory back and start feeling her old self again before she can even start thinking about the rest of her life. I can totally understand her point of view. It must be incredibly scary to have lost your memory, and she’s been through a hell of a lot...A hell of a lot.”
We sit for a moment in silence, each contemplating our beers, and taking a few refreshing sips.
“Guy, I’ve got to ask you this question, because I want to know if it’s just me, or are other people feeling like me too. One of the reasons I went to Slovakia for a long weekend was just to be able to get out of London. Since the bombings I’m too scared to travel on the underground. I even worry about just being in London. Do you not think about it all? I mean, for you, what with what happened to Sal, it must be ten times worse! Are you not scared?”
“No. Not really. I mean, there have been a couple of nervous moments on the tube, but when they happened I wasn’t really thinking about me, I was just trying to imagine what it must have been like for Sal. I was trying to go through the whole experience in my mind, so that I could understand what she must have gone through. But apart from that, I haven’t really given it so much thought yet,” he replies, staring at his pint of beer, and playing with the thin white head of froth on the surface with his finger tip. “Maybe I’ve just been so busy worrying about someone else that I haven’t had the chance to worry about myself yet. But the interesting thing will be when Sal get’s better and she can walk again. What will it be like the first time she has to go on the underground again? Will she be able to cope? That’s what worries me. Probably more than anything else.”
“Do you think she will want to carry on living in London afterwards, or will she want to leave?”
He looks at me.
“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about that, but wha
tever she decides to do, when we get married, if she decides that she has to get out of London, I’ll go with her. Wherever she wants to go. If she wants to live in bloody Timbuktu, I’ll be right there with her.”
“What happens if she says she doesn’t want to marry you?...” I ask, almost regretting the question as soon as it leaves my mouth.
His face goes white for a moment, and he looks up and past the other people in the bar, staring off into the distance. “After having had to go through the past few weeks, there’s one thing I’ve realised, and that’s that I can’t live without her. I love her…If she says no….”
I can see the pain that is hovering on the edge of the thought, and I know it’s not a place that Guy is ready to go just now.
“Don’t worry,” I say, patting him on the back. “It was a stupid question. Forget it.”
“Maybe it wasn’t. I just hope she says yes. And if she does, I’m telling you Andrew, she’ll never, ever regret it!”
“But will you?” I hear the words uttered silently in my mind, but which, thankfully, don’t make it to my lips.
.
--------------------------
.
I leave Guy shortly afterwards, and as he walks out of the pub and over to Trafalgar Square to catch a bus up to the hospital, I walk around the corner to meet Ben in the Lemon Tree.
I find him upstairs sitting alone at one of the tables in the corner, and even as I walk over to him I can see that he is already far gone, two empty beer glasses sitting in front of him on the table, and a third in his hand, almost finished.
“Watcha, Andrew!” he shouts at me as I sit down beside him. “I hope you don’t mind, I sort of started without you.”
“No problem,” I reply. “I’ve had a pint already with my flatmate too. He’s just gone up to see his girlfriend in the hospital.”
“Yeah,” he replies, “What a fucker that must be…I mean, having your girlfriend blown up like that. Fuck. What a bastard…” the word bastard shouted rather too loudly across the room of the pub.
A girl at a table opposite looks across at us, scowls, and then turns back to talking to her female friend.
“Oops,” Ben says, mimicking the face of a little boy who has just been told off. “I musn’t fucking swear so loud.”
He reaches slowly over to his glass of beer, but knocks it clumsily. The glass topples a little, but having tracked his drunken arm movement with an increasingly worried eye, I manage to reach out and grab the glass and stabilise it before spills all over the table. Some beer splashes over towards me, but I move quickly and it doesn’t hit me.
“Oops again. Fuck, I must be getting hammered,” he says, laughing.
I look at him, noticing the way his eyes are beginning to relax and unfocus, and I wonder just how many beers he has had before I got here.
Just then, one of the regular Polish barmaids comes across and picks up the two empty glasses from our table, looking at me expectantly and asking me if I want anything to drink. I notice she does not look at Ben.
“A pint of London Pride, please,” I ask, and she scurries quickly away.
“This is nice, you know. I mean, we never talk, do we? Don’t know why. You seem like a nice bloke. And Gail thinks fucking highly of you. Always talking about you. Always comparing me with you…” He says, a slight undertone of malice coursing through his words. “Still, fuck, and why not. You’ve gotta be a nice guy. Otherwise, otherwise, Dianne wouldn’t have wanted to fuck you so much either.”
“Listen,” I say, trying to quickly turn the conversation around on to a more comfortable track,- I am beginning to feel really uncomfortable the way it’s heading-, “Sleeping with Dianne was a mistake. And I can’t believe she told everyone in the office about it. What was the point of that?”
“Didn’t stop you from shagging her again, though? Did it? And then again after that!”
My beer arrives, and I take it from the waitress and sip it quickly.
“So…”, Ben continues. “What was it like then?”
“What?” I ask, wiping the froth from my upper lip.
“You know, …fucking her? Was it good?”
“I’d rather not talk about it. It’s best forgotten.”
“She’s got a great pair of tits. Almost as nice as that Polish bird that works here as the barmaid. Do you not think so?”
I turn around, gratefully accepting the opportunity to talk about something else, and look at the Polish waitress collecting some glasses from a table on the other side of the room. “She’s lovely,” I say.
“But they’re maybe a bit too big for me.”
“They can never be too big, pal. Never.” He says, shaking his head dismissively.
I am beginning to regret two things. First of all, I don’t feel comfortable and perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea meeting up with Ben tonight after all. Secondly, this is the first time we’ve really spent any time together, talking one-to-one, and from the things that are coming out of his mouth, I am beginning to wonder what sort of guy he really is and starting to regret ever having recommended to Gail that she should go out with him. It could be that I’ve told her to go out with a complete absolute bastard.
“So how are things going with Gail?” I ask in as cheerful a way as I can.
“Why do want to know?” he replies, an edge to his voice that I don’t like.
“Because I know she likes you, and she’s a nice girl. I was just wondering how it was going, okay? No reason.”
“Why? Because you fancy her?”
“Listen Ben, it was just a simple question. I was trying to be friendly, okay? You asked me out for a drink tonight, and I’m just trying to make friendly conversation. Let’s just not talk about Gail, or Dianne, or any other woman okay?” I reply, getting a little angry and wondering if I should just leave before whatever is obviously bugging Ben simmers over into something more.
“No problem,” he says, lifting both his hands off the table and showing me the palms of both his hands. “Didn’t mean to touch a live nerve there. Sorry pal…” He puts his hands back on the table and picks up his half empty glass of beer, waving it back and forward in front of himself. “But, it’s pretty obvious that she fucking fancies you.”
“Don’t talk rubbish, Ben. She’s mad about you. We’re just friends. There’s nothing going on between us, okay.”
“Good. Fine…At least we’ve sorted THAT one out then.”
“So,” I ask, wondering again if I should just leave now, but deciding to try one more time. “How’s work?”
“I don’t talk about work outside the office. It’s one of my rules, Andrew.” He emphasises, by waiving a drunken finger at me. “Anyway, whoever I am at work, is not who I am outside. I just do my job, earn the money, go home. You know?”
“Yes. Good idea. Anyway, I’ll be back in moment,” I say, standing up and deciding I need a break to diffuse the atmosphere and calm down. “I’m just going to the toilet.”
When I’m in the toilet, I turn my mobile on with my free hand and immediately get two messages. One from Slávka, the other from Gail.
Opening up the one from Slávka first, I smile at what she has to say, my confrontation with Ben momentarily forgotten.
“I miss my Scottish business man. Looking forward Saturday afternoon when I see you next. Only one week more before I see you again! Can I buy you dinner on Saturday night? If you want, then you come to my flat and we make love all night! Please?”
Deciding to reply later when I have more time to compose a good response, I open up the one from Gail next.
“Call me please. Are you with Ben tonight?”
Perhaps not the best thing to do now, considering.
I wash my hands, and return to the table. There are two fresh pints of beer on the table, as well as a small shot of whisky. Ben is looking really pensive.
“Got you the same again. And I got you a whisky-chaser. You need to catch up, pal.”
He picks up
his fresh pint and waits for me to match the salute.
“Cheers,” I say, picking up my pint and taking a large drink.
He puts his glass down, and stares at me, suddenly very serious. He is beginning to spook me out.
“What?” I ask.
“I’ve seen some things, Andrew,” he says, lowering his voice, and whispering almost conspiringly. “I’ve seen some things… in dark places.”
He’s lost me now.
“What are you talking about?” I ask him.
“I’ve done some things, Andrew…I’ve done some things… in dark places.”
A little shudder runs down my spine. What on earth is he talking about? Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s something I want to know anything about. One thing is for sure. Ben in real life is a lot stranger than he is at work.
“Things…” he says, again.
I feel compelled to ask ‘what things?’ but I fight with the question, trying to kill it before it emerges. I can tell Ben is waiting for me to ask.
“In dark. Places.” He repeats, emphasising the sinister quality of the world he has been delving into.
My phone rings. I answer it, grateful that I forgot to switch it off. It’s Gail. I hit the red button with my thumb, switching her over automatically to voicemail.
“Guy,” I say, into the phone. “What’s up?”
I am silent for a moment, pretending to listen to his reply, then with shock showing on my face, I carry on, “What? Oh no, that’s bad. So you want to me to come to the hospital now?” A pause, a moment of silence, I stand up from my chair, then, “Sure. No problem. I’ll come straight away.”
Ben is looking up at me, his dark places and dark things forgotten now. “What’s up?” he says, slurring the words.
“Sorry mate. I have to go. That was my flatmate calling from the hospital. Something’s happened and I have to go there right now.”
“No problem. Later then. Don’t worry,” he says, nodding at my glass of whisky. “I’ll finish your drinks for you…”
“I’ll see you in the office tomorrow, alright?”
“Yeah, but not if I see you first…” he says, laughing to himself.
The Sleeping Truth : A Romantic Thriller (Omnibus Edition containing both Book One and Book Two) Page 30
