Come Together Page 20

  ‘Oh.’ There’s no attempt on her behalf to hide her disappointment. ‘I didn’t know you’d already been.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ I say.

  And this is true: I have been there before. Just because I was six months old at the time and spent the whole time in a pram when Dad got a business freebie doesn’t make it any less relevant. When it comes to Hawaii, I can claim to have Book ’em, Danno’d with the best of them. To back this up, I make vague paddling actions and start humming the tune to Hawaii Five-O, hoping that my performance will distract Amy from her mission.

  It doesn’t. I’m hardly into my first ba-ba-ba-ba-baaa-baaa, when she cuts me short, asking, ‘And you don’t want to go back?’

  My arms fall limply to my sides. ‘Well,’ I continue to bluff, ‘it’s all sun, sand and surf and not much else, really.’

  ‘Sounds terrible.’ She slaps another brochure down on top of the first. I look at the cover: Rainforest Tours. ‘How about this, then? Done one rainforest, done them all?’

  A quick glance at the extensive library of brochures sticking out of her bag tells me that even Alan Whicker would have a tough job claiming he’d visited all these places. Time for some quick thinking, then, because there’s no way I’m getting out of this. I’ve already told her I’ll go on holiday with her and any retraction now will almost certainly be viewed as a signal that all is not well chez Rossiter and Crosbie. And I don’t want a relationship crisis discussion. Because there is no crisis. Apart from me lying to her about how much money I make from my painting. Apart from me continuing to lie to her about this when I’ve sworn to her that I’ll never lie to her again. Crisis? Ha! What crisis? These are details, mere smudges on life’s great plan – nothing to get freaked out about at all.

  I gently nudge the brochure to one side and say, ‘I was thinking of somewhere a bit closer.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We-ell …’ And then it hits me: ‘Because by the time we book it, we’ll only have a week before you start your new job.’

  But she’s not being fobbed off so easily. ‘That’s okay,’ she says, opening a Bahamas brochure. She runs her finger down a list of prices that look like national economy outputs, and points at the departure and arrival dates. ‘See – they do loads of one-week deals.’

  Deals. Ha! Try telling my bank manager that.

  ‘I know,’ I counter, ‘but think how long the flights are. Jet lag, and all that kind of stuff. By the time we get there and sort ourselves out, it’ll be time to come back again.’ I see her mouth open, preparing to contradict me, so I plough on. ‘Europe. What’s wrong with Europe? Europe is good at this time of year. Europe is – I don’t know – Europe is fun.’

  Her eyes narrow as she repeats the word. ‘Fun?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I enthuse. ‘Loads to do. Places to see …’ I nod my head in agreement with myself. ‘Fun.’

  She sits back in her chair. Her body is communicating with me. It’s saying, quite clearly, Europe is not fun. Europe is not fun, because I’ve been to Europe loads of times and I want to go to Hawaii. ‘Okay,’ she says aloud, ‘so which part of Theme Park Europe do you want to have fun in?’

  I think cheap flights, cheap accommodation, cheap food and cheap booze, and the word ‘Greece’ just slips out.

  ‘Greece?’ Her lips are so tightly pursed as she utters the word it’s a wonder it gets out at all.

  ‘Yeah, Greece. As in the birthplace of Western culture. As in the Parthenon and Homer and that groovy Greek stuff.’

  She considers this for a moment, looking from me to the brochures in her bag. I get the distinct feeling that if it came down to a them or me situation I’d come out a poor second. ‘Okay,’ she finally says. ‘Greece it is. Do you want to book it, or shall I?’

  ‘Leave it to me,’ I say, a heavenly vision of bargain bucket travel agents filling my mind.

  Thankfully, the conversation moves on. Thankful, though, isn’t a very appropriate word to describe my feelings towards what comes next. Anxious, yes. Paranoid, yes. But thankful, no. The words ‘frying pan’ and ‘fire’ spring to mind. Because what Amy starts talking about is what I narrowly avoided discussing with her in Chloe’s bathroom at the weekend: the past.

  Now, I’ve got a funny attitude towards the past. On the one hand, I’m easy with it. I’m where I am/who I am because of what’s happened to me – a sum of my experiences and all that. Like the first night I met Amy. We talked about the past then and that was just dandy. But it was the clean past, the censored past, the kind of past you could show to a kid without worrying about giving them nightmares. On the other hand, though, there’s some stuff I’ve done that’s probably best left where it is. Like sex. Like the other people I’ve had sex with over the past few years. Sex is a dangerous issue. When you tell someone about your sex life, they draw conclusions.

  Take Christine. Christine is a girl I had the major hots for at the beginning of last year. She was a mate, a real mate, in that we told each other everything, swapped love life stories like football cards. And this was great. This was open and this was honest. Problem was, when I finally got round to propositioning her, she wasn’t having any of it. Why? Not because she didn’t fancy me – she admitted that she did – but because she didn’t fancy becoming another sad statistic in the Jack Rossiter Hall of One-Night Stands.

  And this is my worry with Amy. Will she judge me? If I admit that I’ve spent the last God-knows-how-long perpetrating sexual hit and runs, will she take a leaf from my book and run a mile herself? It’s a risk, but it’s a risk I’m going to have to take. Because there are no more lies, right? If Amy’s going to accept me, then she’s got to accept me for what I am. It’s a love-me-or-leave-me kind of a thing.

  I just hope it’s the former.

  So, after a bit of humming and hahing, we sit here and get down to discussing our past relationships. Only I’m aware that we’re not really discussing our past relationships at all; we’re using them as models, as testing grounds for whether we’re compatible. In everything we ask one another there’s a pretended meaning and a real meaning. Amy, for example, asks me:

  Have you ever been unfaithful to someone while you’ve been in a long-term relationship? (Are you likely to be unfaithful to me?)

  When you’ve broken off relationships, have you just come out and told the other person it’s over, or have you engineered intolerable situations, so it’s looked like both parties have been to blame? (Are you a man or a mouse?)

  With any of these girls did you ever consider marriage, even as just a remote possibility? (Does the thought of commitment terrify you?)

  And I, in turn, ask Amy:

  If any of these guys had asked you to marry them, would you have accepted? (Would you marry me because you like the idea of marriage and it’s the right time in your life, rather than because you’re head over heels in love with me?)

  Have you ever committed an act of revenge on a former lover? (If things don’t work out between us and I dump you, are you likely to go all Fatal Attraction on me?)

  Have you ever had a lesbian experience? (Any chance of a three-some?)

  And, bit by bit, we sound each other out, both of us no doubt considering whether we like what we hear.

  Then things get more specific. It starts with the usual question: How many people have you slept with? I can’t vouch for Amy’s response to my answer (twenty-five-ish). But, as I watch her close her eyes and count her conquests off on her fingers, and announce, ‘Twelve,’ mine is definitely one of surprise. I immediately insert this information into the Promiscuity Equation that Matt and I invented in one of our more bored moments. It takes into account all the relevant factors necessary to calculate an accurate Promiscuity Rating () which is the average number of people you’ve slept with per year while single: Number of People Slept With (W); Current Age (X); Age at which Virginity was Lost (Y); and Number of Years Spent in Long-Term Relationships (Z). The equation reads:

  I apply this to Amy:
/>
  And to myself:

  And there it is: even though she’s slept with fewer people than me, our ratings aren’t actually that different. In her single, sexually active years, she’s got laid, on average, three times a year, compared to my 3.125.

  I’m not quite sure how to react to this. There is, of course, relief that we’re similarly experienced and that I’m no more of a tart than her and vice versa. I’m also, however, shocked. I regard myself as a bit of a loose guy, so does this make Amy a bit of a loose woman? And is this something I should worry about? I don’t trust myself too much when it comes to women, so should I trust her when it comes to men? Or am I just having a male ego crisis, stressing over the fact that she’s more than capable of having fun without me?

  Whatever, at the very least, I’m intrigued. I want to know more. And so I ask. And I get. Name by name. Lay by lay. From her first (Wayne Cartwright, behind the bike sheds, Elmesmere High), to her last (Martin Robbins, six months before she met me, at a wedding in Wales). From her youngest (again Wayne Cartwright, aged 17), to her oldest (Simon Chadwick, a forty-year-old musician). I hear about her worst (Alan Wood, a thirtysomething suit in the middle of a marriage break-up), and her best (Tommy Johnson, a West End set designer). She tells me more about her longest mistake (Andy, the City trader who she moved in with), and less about her shortest (‘Jimmy or Jonny Something. I was pissed and stoned. I don’t really remember much about him.’).

  And somewhere in the middle of all this, even though I’m matching her confession for confession, an unusual feeling grips me. It comes from nowhere, but once it’s here, it just won’t go away. As she continues to describe and I continue to listen, I start to feel nauseous. It’s the visualisation thing that’s getting to me. I can’t help picturing her with these other men, doing the stuff we do together, the stuff that makes her mine and me hers. It’s crazy, I understand, but it’s still painful. I haven’t had to deal with this kind of thing for a long time. I haven’t had to deal with it, because I haven’t given a shit. Most of the girls I’ve slept with have been one-night stands. I’ve known next to nothing about them. And those histories I have known about haven’t bothered me. Why should they have? It wasn’t like I was going to be hanging around and having to cope with them. We had no future together, so why waste time worrying about the past?

  But this is different. As in radically. I’ve been thinking about what Amy said to me in Chloe’s bathroom a lot these past few days. Those three little words. And I’ve been thinking that maybe I should’ve answered differently. Because I do care for her. A lot. And I think I am falling in love with her. And that’s why hearing this stuff hurts so much. I want her. I want all of her. And I know that means hearing the truth about her as well, because I’d rather know it than have it kept from me. But still, I don’t want to hear about her being unfaithful to other people. I don’t want to hear about her getting drunk and ending up in bed with someone, just because she’s too wasted to get in a cab and go home. I don’t want to hear about any of this stuff that I would have been more than happy to take advantage of when I’d been out on the prowl. And the reason I don’t want to hear about any of these things is because I don’t want them to happen to me.

  I bite it back down and tell myself to stop being such an arsehole. She must be feeling this, too, over the encounters I’ve told her. So don’t be pathetic. Don’t be insecure and don’t be jealous. Don’t be all the things you despise. Fight this bad feeling. Be glad you’ve had this conversation. It’s been unadulterated and it’s been honest and, above all, it’s been normal. Accept the fact that, short of marrying a virgin, this is something everyone the world over has to come to terms with at some point in their life.

  ‘But they’re all out of the way now?’ I ask, once I’ve dealt with number twenty-five and she’s done number twelve.

  She looks me dead-set in the eyes and says, ‘Yes.’

  ‘No hangers on? No unfinished business? No unclaimed baggage waiting to be picked up?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good,’ I say, trying to conceal the relief from my voice. ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘And you?’ she asks tentatively. ‘Anyone you haven’t told me about?’

  ‘There’s no one,’ I assure her. ‘Just you.’

  ‘No Zoe? No residual feelings there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No Sally?’

  ‘No.’

  She stares at the table. ‘Has she called you?’

  ‘No, I don’t think I’ll be hearing from her again. Kate says she’s up in Glasgow with Jons, trying to patch things up.’

  She nods her head, seemingly satisfied, then looks up and asks, ‘What about Chloe?’

  I doubt I’d look more shocked if she asked me to drop my trousers and piss in the middle of the street. I attempt to say ‘What?’, but what actually comes out is, ‘Wuh?’

  ‘She fancies you.’

  ‘Crap, she does. She’s one of my best friends.’

  ‘So? Friends have been known to sleep together, you know.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, coming on all defensive, no doubt sounding guilty as sin, ‘well we haven’t, all right?’

  ‘And you don’t want to? That’s the main thing. Not whether you have, but whether you will.’

  ‘I haven’t and I won’t.’

  She leans forward and kisses me. ‘Good,’ she says with a smile. ‘I’m sorry, but I had to ask.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? Because if you did feel anything for her, then I could never be friends with her. I wouldn’t want her within spitting distance of you. You do understand, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah. But it doesn’t matter now, does it?’

  ‘No.’ She lifts the bottle out of the ice bucket. It’s empty. Then she looks at her watch. ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘Max’s party. We don’t want to be late.’

  Party On

  Max’s party is a relief. A total laxative. A Maxative, no less. Max’s party should be bodily advertised on prime time TV as a miracle cure for anal guys like myself who are paranoid about meeting their girlfriend’s friends en masse.

  The moment Max opens the door to his flat, the knot of worries inside my stomach dissolves. He’s all smiles and, ‘Wow, so this is your new man,’ and he doesn’t give me the once over I was expecting, but just jams a chilled can of beer into my hand, hugs Amy, shakes my hand and waves us through.

  There are probably around sixty people already here. Ages vary: twenties and thirties. I check out the people in the room and feel pretty comfortable. Outwardly, there’s nothing to fear: no gathering of Satanists sacrificing goats in the corner; no writhing mass of rubber-clad bodies on the floor. Nothing, in other words, to make me suspect that Amy’s anyone other than the person she’s been with me.

  We stand just inside the door for a few minutes and Amy gives me a quick briefing on the assembled cronies. Then we get stuck in. It’s like the Amy & Jack World Tour, with stopovers at all the groups and cliques assembled, and I’m smiling and joking and racking up the names, and Amy’s whispering in my ear between groups, filling me in on the gossip. And it’s exhausting, I’ve got to admit. I find myself fighting this urge to grab her and get the hell out. Just for five minutes. Because I am on show here. She’s known some of these people since she was a kid. To them, I’m probably just another boyfriend, not a permanent fixture in Amy’s life, not like them.

  ‘So what do you think of them?’ she asks me, cornering me an hour or so later.

  ‘Most of them are great,’ I tell her, looking over her head at the surrounding people, thinking of a few notable exceptions, but generally meaning it.

  ‘Honestly?’

  I smile. ‘I wouldn’t say it otherwise.’ Obviously, this is a lie. If I thought they were the biggest group of weirdos outside of the Cuckoo’s Nest, I’d still tell her I liked them. Because she’s the important one here, not them. And it’s important to her that I like them.

  ‘Thank God for that.’
/>
  ‘Don’t sound so relieved.’

  ‘I am, though.’ She frowns. ‘Shame H isn’t here. I can’t believe you still haven’t met each other.’

  She gazes across the room and I catch her in profile for a moment. The same thought crosses my mind as when I spotted her about half an hour back when I was chatting to her college mate, Sue. Amy was laughing as she talked to some guy by the French windows, and I thought to myself: You’re a lucky man. Standing here now, it’s all I want to tell her. That she’s great. That I’m proud of her. That she’s made my life a place I really want to be, the kind of place I can envisage building a home in and sitting on the porch and watching the sun go down. I lean across and whisper, ‘Kiss me,’ in her ear.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ she squeals, pulling away from me and pushing me aside.

  My first reaction, as I turn and watch her weave through the crowd, is that there’s been some sort of malfunction in whatever connects my mind to my mouth and that instead of whispering, ‘Kiss me,’ I’ve actually bellowed, ‘Fire! Everybody get the fuck out!’ This concern, however, lasts just about as long as it takes me to suss that it isn’t the doorway that Amy’s making a beeline for, but the figure that’s just come through it.

  As I move a few paces closer to get a clearer view, I realise that ‘figure’ is a grossly inadequate word to describe what’s just appeared. This is no stick-drawing. More like Adonis. He’s about six foot three, athletic and tanned, with the sort of thick dark hair and flashbulb smile that belong bang centre in a Chippendales line-up. I glance around the room, but no, it’s not there. No flashing neon sign. Nothing at all, in fact, to warn the assembled guys that a Great White Shark has just entered the room and they should grab their womenfolk from the shallows and run for the hills. But maybe they don’t need to. Maybe he’s already spotted his victim.

  Or maybe she’s spotted him.