The Cupid Effect

  Before, these experiences were periodic, the occasional sensation. Like getting into a lift and suddenly being overpowered by morning sickness. Someone in there was pregnant and there was no chance whatsoever it was me. This person was keeping it a secret because she didn’t know what to do yet, and how I knew it, I didn’t know. I simply felt it.

  Another time, I was sat on the tube, reading, when the page was splashed with a fat teardrop. I reached up, touched my cheek, I was crying. A flood of sadness followed. I hadn’t been sad two seconds earlier, the book wasn’t sad but I was overwhelmed by unhappiness. I wiped the tears before anyone saw, but the sadness and teariness only left me when the man next to me got up and left. Just like that, one minute my emotions were swimming in a sea of despair, the next, when the man next to me got off the tube train, I was fine.

  Yet another time, I’d been stood in a bank queue and I couldn’t stop myself laughing. Waves of joy kept coming and coming until I found myself covering my mouth to stop the giggles. Soon I was laughing so much I had to leave. Outside, I had no clue as to what had been so funny.

  But those things only happened when I was tired. When my mind was relaxed and weary and finding it difficult to keep a grip on reality. It was like a seventh sense. Not quite being psychic. Just having a super-enhanced perception. Extra Extra Sensory Perception for feelings, I guess.

  Except that was stupid, wasn’t it? What I felt was probably based on understanding people. And if there was one thing I had a lot of, it was understanding. Understanding how they got themselves into certain situations and how they felt about them afterwards. How people just kept going over and over, trying to sort things out but couldn’t because they couldn’t get any perspective on them.

  Like with Trudy. She was crying because she was scared and alone. And she had to do that test alone.

  She’s probably done it now, I reasoned. She’s done it now, got the result, decided what she’s going to do. And she’s done it without me holding her hand or sharing her pain. Just like a few million other people around the globe manage to do every second of the day.

  I sighed, sat back in the library chair, rubbed my eyes before I put on my glasses. I’d been in the library most of the day and my eyes were exhausted. The best cure: the blue-framed glasses I’d had a tantrum about being prescribed. (The woman in the opticians had stared at me in disbelief as I turned down every frame in the shop because, ‘I look like my dad in them’. I proceeded to try to talk her into finding that I didn’t need them after all. You know, couldn’t the diagnosis have been wrong? Anyone would’ve thought that I needed to have them welded to my face, not that I needed them to see things more than ten feet away. That was why we never mentioned them, not even if I was wearing them.)

  I closed my eyes. Trudy. Her face, her crying face, appeared behind my eyes. That was how my mind worked. I didn’t focus on her snarling, ‘Who the hell are you, PISS OFF’ face, the heartbreaking one plagued me.

  She bugged me, harassed me, upset me because I couldn’t, with a word or deed, make it all all right for her. If anything, I’d made things worse: Trudy wouldn’t have said all those things about herself if I hadn’t hugged her. Now she was walking around, knowing that someone else in the world knew how she felt about herself. Usually, too, saying things out loud made it all the more real, all the more horrific. I’d prompted her to go vocal with her traumas.

  A chill crawled across my skin, tingling my scalp, someone was watching me. My eyes flew open. Across the wide, light wood table on which were spread the spoils of my hours in the library, stood a lanky man. His close-cropped blond hair made his ears stick out, he wore baggy charcoal suit trousers, a white shirt with the top button open. He looked familiar. But then, most people looked familiar to me especially when there were so many faces in the college. This man, though, grinned at me as if he knew me, his green eyes excited as he yanked out a chair and deposited himself on it.

  ‘I’ve done it, Ceri,’ he said.

  I physically jumped out of my seat at his voice. ‘Jesus Christ, Ed! I didn’t recognise you.’ I still didn’t recognise him.

  ‘Huh?’ Ed replied.

  I waved vaguely at his head, the white shirt.

  ‘Oh,’ Ed ran a hand over his head, ‘that.’ He brushed off my shock with a blasé wave.

  ‘That?! Ed, you’re a different man. You’re a man.’

  ‘Shhhhh,’ a couple of people replied. This was a proper library, even though it was in a college. People actually came here to work and they expected silence with it. When I was a student, the library was an extension of the common room. Here, these merchants of no fun wanted to study.

  I leant forwards too. ‘Done what exactly?’ I whispered just as loudly.

  ‘I took your advice.’

  My blood froze, my bowels turned to water, my hands grabbed the table for support. Ed had just uttered four words I NEVER wanted to hear.

  I may dish out advice, I may think of myself as a cross between Oprah, a therapist, and Gynan from Star Trek: Next Generation but, Jeez, I never wanted anyone to take my advice. To listen to me, yes, but not to hear me so well they do what I say. For all the ‘faint heart’, ‘life half lived’, ‘life’s too long’ speeches I gave, I never wanted people to screw up their lives by following them. They’d only partly worked for me, and I believed them. I’d hashed together my theories and insights from a lifetime’s tellywatching and a couple of months of self-help book reading. How could anyone do what I said from just being told about it? By me, too. Who was I in the grand scheme of things?

  ‘Which advice was that then?’ I asked cautiously, knowing it wasn’t that he start ironing his clothes inside out to stop them getting a sheen to them.

  ‘Faint heart never won fair lady. I asked her out. I. Me. Ed. I. Asked. Robyn. Out. Me. I asked her out!’

  ‘You never!’

  ‘I did.’ ‘Shhhhh!’ From around the library.

  Moving like a woman possessed, I grabbed papers and pens, my glasses case, books that were mine, picked up my bag. ‘Come on.’

  We stood outside the library in the long, wide corridor with light wood parquet floors and beige walls. It was late afternoon, most students were either heading for late lectures, heading for home or were heading for the canteen. Everyone had somewhere to head to, except me and Ed. Ed, technically, shouldn’t be here anyway, what with his educational institute being way down in town.

  Not caring about the mess I made, I dropped the bundle in my arms and leant against the noticeboard outside the library. Ed leant facing me.

  ‘So . . . so,’ I prompted, with a frantic ‘come on’ gesture.

  ‘I went up to her when she was in the union. That’s our union, the union at The Met.’

  Yes Ed, I get the idea.

  ‘She was with all her mates. She’s so popular . . .’

  Usually I’d go sit on my own cos I don’t like going up to her when there’s loads of people but this time, I went over, asked if she wanted a drink, dead cool like. She was a bit taken aback. But she smiled at me with her beautiful lips, her eyes still looked surprised, like, but she said, ‘I’ll have a vodka and tonic.’ I mean, I’m never that forward, not in front of her mates. I always wait until we’re alone to talk to her. I’m just too shy and she’s just so beautiful.

  My palms were all sweaty and my heart was beating dead fast as I spoke to her, Ceri. You would’ve been so proud of me, I kept thinking, ‘A life lived in fear’. I bought the drink, took it back and then asked if I could have a quiet word with her.

  ‘Sure,’ she said. I think she was impressed with my change in image. She kept looking at me as though she was seeing me for the first time and she couldn’t stop herself smiling.

  We went to the other side of the bar and I looked her in the eye. Right in the eye. And I said: ‘I was wondering if I could take you out to dinner next week, Robyn.’

  Just like that. No stuttering, no ums, no ahhs. I just asked her.

  An
d she said: ‘Sure, why not. When?’

  I said: ‘Wednesday?’ Cos you know, Wednesday’s the night most people have free isn’t it? I wouldn’t presume she’d be free Friday or Saturday.

  And she said: ‘Give me a call over the weekend and I’ll come round to yours first. My flatmates will give us a hard time if we meet at my place.’ Then she asked the barman for a pen and look . . .

  Ed raised his hand. Across the back of his right hand, in curly-girly writing was a phone number.

  ‘Bloody. Hell.’ I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I was stunned he’d done it. Even more stunned that she’d said yes.

  ‘I know!’ Ed replied.

  I looked at him again: eyes sparkly, face flushed and excited.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ I repeated.

  ‘I KNOW!’ Ed grabbed me into a bear hug. ‘And it’s all thanks to you.’ He rocked me as he squeezed the life’s breath out of me. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’

  Ed’s happiness was infectious. The Mount Fuji of grins spread across my face as he smothered me with his joy.

  From the corner of my eye I spotted a cloud. A dark storm cloud on the horizon of happiness Ed and I were hugging on. I shifted slightly in Ed’s arms to face it head on.

  It was him. The man from the pub a few weeks ago; from the party the other week.

  Staring Man. Standing there – glaring at me.

  ‘Who’s he?’ I asked Mel.

  It was late in the day. I’d got into a routine of doing research during the day and prepping (oh yes, I was a proper lecturer now, I even used lecturer terms) in the early evenings. That way, students wouldn’t catch me in the library because they were either in lectures, the pub or their beds during the day; and they wouldn’t wantonly drop by my office in the evenings because they generally thought I was away home. I’d sent Ed off earlier with promises to listen to the entire retelling of the ‘I. Asked. Robyn. Out. Me. Ed’ tale again when I got home.

  I dropped by the Senior Common Room to have some time away from essays and my computer and found that I wasn’t alone in how I planned my working day: there were quite a few other lecturers in there too. About fifteen of us, dotted around the SCR, either eating dinner or prepping or marking, or doing what Mel and I were doing, sat side by side taking a break.

  When I asked my question of Mel, Staring Man had walked into the SCR. His body, which had looked like an artistic stroke on a page, moved very easily, elegantly almost, as he’d crossed the expanse. He went to make himself a cup of something in the kitchenette area.

  ‘That’s Bosley,’ Mel replied.

  ‘Bosley?’ I asked. ‘What kind of a name is Bosley?’

  ‘Bosley, as in Charlie’s Angels,’ Mel said, speaking slowly, as though I was thick for not immediately getting it.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Course . . . Why do you call him that?’

  ‘It’s not just me, everyone calls him that. The thing about Bosley is, he’s got an army of women friends and that’s all they are, friends. He’s always surrounded by good-looking women, whenever we bump into him he’s got some gorgeous woman at his side and nothing ever happens between them. You know, like Bosley in Charlie’s Angels, sexy women, no sex. And our Bosley is always rescuing these gorgeous women from some drama or another.’

  ‘Really?’ I asked, trying not to sound too interested.

  ‘Yep. A couple of weeks ago, me, Bosley, Craig, and another guy got together at my place to play cards. Bosley arrived last. He’d literally walked in and sat down when his mobile rang. One of his friends was stuck in Sheffield, she was pissed and had lost her coach ticket home. She was crying and saying she didn’t have enough cash to buy another one. So, Bosley gets up, goes and drives over to get her. He went all the way over to Sheffield and back, just cos she’s his friend.’

  ‘And he wasn’t trying to get into her knickers?’ I asked, as casually as possible.

  Mel leapt forwards in his seat, twisted to look at me. His eyes were alight with the suspicion of my question having a double meaning. It did, but not how Mel thought. I wanted to find out what sort of man he was. If he was driving miles out of true friendship or if he was doing it because he ultimately wanted to get a shag out of it. Either way you looked at it, it was a nice thing to do, but the motivation behind it would have a bearing on why he was glaring at me. Was he stalker material or just someone who had an unfortunate stare that I got in the way of ? Obviously, trying to get into her knickers was stalker potential; not trying to get into her knickers was unfortunate stare.

  Mel, who had no idea what went on in my head, thought I was asking because . . . it was obvious from the grin on his face what he thought.

  ‘No,’ Mel said, ‘he wasn’t trying to get into her knickers.’ His eyes twinkled even more. ‘Why? Are you interested?’

  ‘No,’ I said. Not in the way you mean.

  Mel’s grin spread, infecting more of his face. ‘You are! Ceri loves Bosley. Ceri loves Bosley!’ he started chanting under his breath.

  ‘Shhh,’ I whispered and pulled him back down beside me. ‘Stop it. I do not. I just spotted him at that party the other week and was wondering what he was doing here if he’s not a Met boy.’

  ‘He lectures in the Media department – that should interest you, seeing as you used to be a journalist. And he was at that party because he shares a place with a couple of Met people,’ Mel said, still grinning, ‘just like you. And, he’s from London, just like you. You two have got so much in common. You’re meant to be together.’

  ‘Don’t start, Mel,’ I said.

  ‘I could put a good word in for you if you like,’ Mel said, behind his grin.

  ‘Stop it. I’m not even remotely interested.’

  ‘Now, are you sure? He’s a mate. I’ll just mention you were asking about him. It’s no trouble.’

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ I hissed, then pinched Mel’s leg. He yelped, loudly. A few people in the room looked up at us. ‘You are such a big girl’s blouse,’ I whispered. ‘I didn’t even pinch you that hard and you’re practically screaming the place down.’ Staring Man, who was leaning against the kitchenette counter, was doing what he did best: staring. He glowered at us from over his coffee cup. I shifted uneasily in my seat and looked away.

  From the corner of my eye I spotted Mel waving at Staring Man. I looked up in time to catch SM’s reaction: he nodded a slight hello back, then looked away. Looked away in a manner that suggested he was studiously avoiding looking at us again.

  ‘I think Bosley fancies you,’ Mel whispered, leaning in close to my ear. ‘He looks well jealous. I’ve never seen him look that pissed off, ever.’

  ‘Yes, he does look jealous,’ I agreed. ‘And you’ve just told me that he’s always surrounded by gorgeous women but nothing goes on.’ I turned to look at Mel. ‘Ever thought that he might fancy you?’

  chapter nineteen

  Sex, please

  I sat on the edge of the bath, smoothing handfuls of conditioner into my hair.

  I loved conditioning my hair. Knowing that with every stroke I was making it shiny and soft. I got a real sense of joy from squidging it into my hair and running my fingers down from the roots to the tips, feeling my hair soften under hand.

  The simple things in life pleased me. I’d discovered this the longer I lived this life in Leeds. Seeing Jess once, maybe twice a week; and not so much as a sniff of male action. Well, not if you didn’t count Ed and Jake. Both of whom I didn’t count. Since that weekend back in London thing, the three of us had become very close. It was like having two more brothers, except now one of my brothers was white, with shorn blond hair, and hailed from Cornwall; and my other brother was white too, with rusty hair, an eyebrow piercing and a faint Scottish accent. Was it any wonder I found true happiness in conditioner? And Angel.

  I slowly pulled a comb through my hair, thinking about what had happened in my life since I’d touched down in Leeds. In ten weeks.

  Ed and his date, which was,
what – Sunday, Monday – in four days.

  Claudine and Mel. Mel and Claudine. She wanted to pretend nothing had happened between them. Mel kept saying he was in love with her, conveniently ignoring his wreck of a marriage. And between them nothing was being sorted.

  Gwen. I’d become her new best mate. The dinner invite hadn’t materialised, but she’d started sitting next me on days that weren’t Wednesdays – she even came to my shared office to find me and sat around until I made her coffee. Then I had to make conversation. She talked to me like we had anything in common. She was younger than Jess, but she was most definitely madder than Jess. Always it was with the demon year group. She could never forget them. Or ignore them. When I tried to change the subject, it worked for a few minutes. She was like a crying child you tried to distract with a toy – it’d work for a while, but their attention would come back to why they were crying in the first place. With Gwen it always came back to that first year group. I’d started to keep score of how often she mentioned them in a neutral conversation. Her personal best was twenty-five in one Wednesday.

  For my sanity and because I could see how much it bothered her, I went to the demon year group, as a group and in tutorials, and suggested they attempt mediation, to explain to her what was wrong. ‘Don’t just sit there and say, “I don’t gerrit”. Explain what your problems are in a practical way that she can sort out.’ My idea had fallen on deaf ears and consequently they fell on my ears via Gwen.