The Cupid Effect

  ‘What?’ Staring Man said.

  ‘You’ll have to come back later.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me in that tone of voice,’ he said. ‘I’m not the one in the wrong here. I asked for urgent repro and I’ve not got it. Would you like to accompany me to my lecture and explain to my students why I haven’t got the material ready?’

  Go Staring Man, go Staring Man.

  She said nothing. Maybe she’d shaken her head.

  ‘No, thought not. So don’t give me attitude, lady. Just so you know, I’m not paying full price for this job and I’m going to be reporting you to my head of department.’

  ‘While you’re at it why don’t you report me to God too?’

  My head shot up. Cheeky cow. Not only was she rude to me, she actually had the audacity to nick my sarky retorts. Deirdre Barlow Glasses had gone, disappeared into the depth of the repro world and Staring Man was glaring at me. Actually, he was glaring at the part of my face which currently housed a massive bruise. I thought we’d sorted out all that stuff between us the week before last, but no. I hadn’t got around to telling him that I wasn’t interested in Mel. And, as it turned out, ten days was a long time between Staring Man and me.

  ‘Er, look, I was, erm, hoping to run into you,’ Staring Man began, then winced, looked down and started blushing furiously. ‘I mean, I was hoping to see you.’

  ‘Oh,’ I replied. My heart was going ten to the dozen. Things had gone distinctly downhill between us since those halcyon days of the supermarket car park – because that person who’d been coming into the newsagent’s at high speed and who’d helped the door connect with my face had, in fact, been Staring Man.

  When I’d opened my eyes, dazed and confused as I was, I’d looked up and through the hail of greeting cards, there he was, doing what he did best, staring at me. Although, to be fair, shock and horror were carved into his features.

  I’d let him and a couple of other people help me up but I’d legged it before anyone could say anything, including ‘sorry’. Like I’d said to Craig, moments like that were my idea of hell. It’d been so busy in there, I couldn’t bear to stay. I’d just pushed my way through the crowd of voyeurs and walked away as quickly as possible, clutching my face. I’d had to lie down for most of the afternoon when I got home because I felt so dizzy and sick every time I moved.

  ‘I’m really sorry about, erm, your face,’ Staring Man said. ‘Is it painful?’

  I shook my head. ‘Not really. I mean, not any more.’

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ he repeated. ‘You left far too quickly on Saturday for me to apologise properly.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault, I wasn’t looking where I was going.’

  ‘Aww, you can’t be blaming the victim. I was worried that you might have had concussion or something. Is there anything I can do?’

  ‘Breathe?’ I said, then cringed. How the hell did that get out of my mouth? How did it get into my head in the first place? I can understand ‘battered to death with a teaspoon’, I can understand ‘carpet that doesn’t show up blood stains’, but, ‘breathe’?

  ‘Sorry?’ he asked.

  ‘Umm, you asked if there was anything you could do and, well, it’s obvious that you can breathe.’ So, just as obviously I had to say it.

  Surprisingly, SM laughed. He had a laugh that matched his voice. Rich, deep. More tingles of pleasure flickered through my body. ‘Another Lieutenant Barclay moment,’ he said as though he understood. ‘But, I must say, you’re right there, I can breathe. What I meant was is there anything I can do—’

  Deirdre Barlow Glasses chose that moment to reappear. ‘If you come back in half an hour, we’ll have your stuff for you,’ she told SM. It didn’t seem to bother her that she’d just interrupted our conversation.

  SM turned his glare on her. ‘I’d say thank you, but I’ve nowt to thank you for, have I?’ he said. ‘See you around,’ he said to me, then left. He’d obviously been put back into a bad mood by Deirdre Barlow Glasses. I watched the swing doors flump together behind him.

  ‘Hi,’ I said to the woman behind the counter. ‘Filled in the right forms this time.’

  Had she not:

  a) nicked my sarky retort

  b) interrupted my attempts to re-bond with SM

  c) been a miserable old whore

  I would have offered her a sympathetic smile – I knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of a Staring Man glare.

  ‘Forty-eight hours,’ she said. ‘And don’t forget your slip, you won’t be able to get your photocopying without it. We will charge your department, though.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I replied. ‘You have a nice day now.’ If you know how.

  ‘Ceri, hi,’ a voice called from down the corridor as I was heading towards my office later that afternoon.

  I stopped, looked around. I should have known by the squeak. Gwen. She came bounding towards me.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about the other day,’ she said.

  ‘Why? What did I do?’ I asked, trying not to act shifty. Deirdre Barlow Glasses had reported me. The cow. She was probably in church now, reporting me to God, too.

  ‘Nothing, nothing,’ Gwen squeaked.

  ‘So why do you want to talk to me?’ I asked, eyeing her suspiciously.

  ‘Maybe it’s best we have a word in private,’ Gwen said.

  The cow. The miserable old cow had reported me. I was so going to be chucking a lighted flame in there at some point. All that paper and chemicals would go up in an instant. ‘Are you sure I haven’t done something wrong?’

  Gwen rested a reassuring hand on my forearm. ‘Of course not.’

  Now she was plain scaring me.

  ‘How about we go to my office. I think it’s empty,’ I said to Gwen.

  ‘Perfect,’ Gwen replied.

  Gwen sat on the green tweed, armchair-type thing beside my office door, then patted the seat beside her. She’d piled her hair up into a bun today, she had on her usual flowery uniform, but her face was all maternal concern and sympathy again.

  Something bad has happened, I realised as I sank into the seat beside her. She hasn’t even got a cigarette out.

  ‘Ceri, I know I am your line manager but I think we’ve made a connection. We’ve become friends, haven’t we?’

  Have we? I thought. She wasn’t like my other boss who thought we were friends because she told me too much about herself. But we still weren’t friends. Not by a long stretch of the imagination. But, I nodded.

  ‘Good,’ she smiled, ‘I’m glad you feel we’re close. Which is why I wanted to talk to you about your face.’

  ‘My what?’ I said.

  ‘The bruise on your face.’

  I raised my hand to my cheek. It’d gone down quite a lot in the past three days, and it’d stopped hurting so I’d forgotten about it, I didn’t go in for looking in mirrors that much.

  ‘What about it?’

  Gwen looked down at her hands. ‘I know it’s very hard to admit what has really happened, especially to people you don’t know very well, but I want you to feel you can come and talk to me. About anything.’

  I don’t get you, I thought.

  ‘I mean, when one of my friends was being physically abused by her husband, it was virtually impossible for her to talk about. She had bruises all over and an excuse to match each one. I don’t want you to feel you have to suffer in silence like that. I understand. I mean, last year, I was attacked.’

  My eyes widened in horror.

  ‘In the street. It was hideous and very, very frightening. They only took my mobile phone, but I had bruises and scratch marks all over my face. I found it very, very difficult to talk about it. So, you see, I understand what you’re going through. You can talk to me. Any time.’

  ‘Gwen, thank you. But I really was smacked in the face by a door.’

  She bunched up her lips in an ‘are you sure?’ fashion. Jake was still on that kick as well (Ed would’ve been too had he not spent nin
ety-nine per cent of his time Missing In Action with Robyn). The only person who believed me was Jess, who knew I was prone to daydreaming and that accidents generally followed. My daydreaming was the reason why I’d never learnt to drive.

  ‘Thank you, though, for your concern. It’s good to know I can turn to you if I need to. But in this instance I don’t need to. I should’ve been paying attention to where I was going. But thank you. I’m touched you care.’

  Gwen left, having made me promise to talk to her if I needed to. I had considered for a fleeting moment telling her what was on my mind. It was a moment so fleeting it was gone before it entered my head. After she was gone, I moved to my side of the desk, collapsed onto it, rested my forehead on the cool work surface.

  God, this obsession with Angel had to stop. It’d gotten so bad I was actually seeing him everywhere. And I mean, everywhere. It was he who gave me the stupid bruise in the first place. Couldn’t very well tell Jake, Ed, Craig or Gwen that, could I?

  I’d thought I spotted him, David Boreanaz/Angel on the front of a magazine and double-took as I reached for the newsagent’s door. Next thing I knew there was a blinding pain in my face and I was groping for support as I went flying backwards. Then, I was lying on the floor and it was raining greetings cards.

  Just earlier, with Staring Man, I’d actually thought he looked like Angel. Except Staring Man had the most amazing eyes and I’d never seen David Boreanaz’s eyes in real life. SM’s eyes were a bronze colour. Shame he used them to glare at me. Shame, actually, he fancied Mel. But, at least now we’d made some sort of contact (pun not intended but very painfully true). And now he felt guilty about the door-face thing, it would hopefully be the end to those glares.

  If SM didn’t fancy Mel, though, he could have been my Angel replacement. The one I lusted after until Angel/David Boreanaz came up to me in the street, asked me for directions, looked deep into my dark eyes and realised there was no other woman on the earth for hi—

  Oh my God, I need therapy. I thumped my head on the table. I need to get a grip. And then keep that grip on reality. I was never going to have sex again if I carried on like this. And that would kill me.

  chapter twenty-five

  Confessions

  ‘I’m going to tell Kevin everything.’

  Claudine was stood in my shared office doorway and she said this like she was asking if I fancied sneaking into her office for a crafty joint. There was a hint of the naughty, but total casualness about it. My pen hovered over the marking of a below par essay while I looked at her.

  ‘I’m going to tell him about me and Mel. That I slept with him and that we’ve snogged twice since. But it’s all over.’

  Are you mad?! He’ll kill you, bury you and build a patio over the spot before the ‘we snogged twice’ bit is out of your mouth. ‘That’s, er . . .’ I hazarded, didn’t know what to say except ‘stupid’ so stopped.

  ‘Do you want to come in?’ I asked instead.

  Claudine stepped into my office, shutting the door behind her. She sat on one of the armchair-type things by the door, placed her bag and pile of papers on the armchair-type seat next to the ceiling-high bookshelves.

  ‘I’m definitely going to tell him,’ Claudine said, in a ‘don’t try to talk me out of it’ fashion. She clasped her hands in her lap, and leant forwards over her knees. I was surprised anew that Claudine didn’t smoke; she was the type of woman I always expected to smoke. I watched her from my position across the desk; her agitated manner made me want to smoke.

  ‘I decided last night,’ she paused, ‘and this morning, but that’s not important. The important thing is, I’m going to tell him.’

  Claudine’s tone had the conviction of someone who, if they talked long enough, would convince you they were doing the right thing. They knew they’d never convince themselves, so they didn’t even try.

  ‘I didn’t realise it was over between you and Kevin,’ I said neutrally.

  Her eyes doubled in size. ‘It’s not. Why would you say it was?’

  ‘Because you’re going to confess to him. I just assumed . . . I suppose I shouldn’t assume.’

  ‘Assume what?’ Claudine said quickly.

  ‘Well, if you’re willing to do something that’s going to end your relationship, I assumed you’d reached the end of the road.’

  Claudine gave me a wider-eyed demented look. ‘What I have reached is the end of my tether. I can’t deal with it any more. I can’t go home, look at Kevin, talk to Kevin, sleep beside Kevin . . . all the time, carrying this secret with me. It’s driving me insane. And every time we have sex, I’m so wary that I’ll say “Mel”, I can’t relax. It’s doing my head in. I can’t bear it any longer.’

  I nodded, as though in understanding but the last thing I was feeling was understanding. ‘What are you going to do when Kevin breaks down and starts sobbing his heart out?’ I asked.

  ‘He won’t cry,’ Claudine said, aghast.

  ‘What will he do?’

  Claudine shrugged. ‘I don’t know. He’ll get angry I suppose.’

  ‘You suppose? You mean, you’re going to cause him all that pain and you haven’t thought about how he’ll react?’ What, are you some kind of sadist?

  ‘He’ll be angry, of course, but when he calms down . . .’

  ‘Calms down? Claudine, he’s not going to calm down. He’ll probably not forgive you. Ever. EVER.

  ‘The calming down and talking things through are for films and story books; the anger and shouting and smashing things and never wanting to see you again, that’s reality. That’s what you’ve got to accept will probably happen if you confess all.’

  Claudine stared at me with her mouth and eyes agog. I’d never been stern with her before. I wasn’t being stern now. Not really. I just wasn’t condoning her decision, as she’d expected me to. Claudine’s eyes watered up.

  My tone had been a bit sharp, though. I shouldn’t have gone from nice Ceri to cross Ceri in one go. It was bound to jar her. However, she was talking nonsense. I sighed internally, looked down at my desktop to get myself calm and make my voice nicer, less harsh. ‘Claudine, tell Kevin if you want, but don’t forget he has a heart too. Don’t break his just to make yours lighter.’

  ‘But our relationship is based on a lie,’ she wailed. Next would come the wringing of the hands. Swiftly followed by gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes.

  ‘No it’s not,’ I reasoned. ‘Your relationship is based on all the things that brought you two together all those years ago. Your relationship is based on all the things you’ve done and worked towards together in the past however many years. Your relationship isn’t based on a drunken shag that happened six months ago. It may very well influence and affect your relationship, but it’s not the basis of it. If it were based on that shag . . . well, I don’t know.’

  ‘What about Mel?’

  Rat-a-tat-tat. The office door opened before I had a chance to say ‘come in’. Mel stuck his head around the door. ‘Hi Ceri, I w—’

  His face lit up and clouded over at once when he saw who was in the office with me. Claudine’s face did exactly the same thing.

  World War Three was about to kick off in my office.

  ‘I’ll come back later when you’re not so busy,’ Mel said, focused on Claudine.

  ‘Are you following me?’ Claudine snarled at my visitor. ‘On top of everything, are you following me too?’

  ‘You’re off your head, you,’ Mel said.

  ‘Look who’s talking,’ Claudine said.

  ‘What the hell is your problem?’

  ‘Everything to do with you.’

  The volume of their voices was rising. I got up, went to the door, to shut it.

  ‘Listen babe, it was you who stuck your tongue down my throat last time.’

  ‘Yeah, and it was you who stuck his dick in m—’

  Whoah! Not for sensitive ears. I shut the door on my way out. I paced the corridor for a while. Then I checked the cloc
k at the far end of the wide corridor. Eight o’clock. The canteen was shut. I had nowhere to go, except, possibly the bar. Much as I enjoyed the odd drink or eleven, I couldn’t face going in there alone; sitting alone. If it were a proper pub I wouldn’t feel so worried, I’d have something to read too, but in college, students would see me all alone – I’d be one step away from being the lecturer with a tweed jacket and pipe, emanating pathetic aloneness.

  I turned, started my slow walk back up the corridor. Maybe I should go to the bar. Get myself a pack of cigarettes. With Mel and Claudine, I was tempted to take up a life-threatening habit.

  In fact, between those two, what Craig and Jess said, Ed disappearing to be with Robyn, Gwen, Jake wearing the aura of a man wronged, and Staring Man, I was quite tempted to take up heroin. Have an out of body experience that would remove me from this world I’d moved in to. London was crazy, Leeds was certifiably insane.

  Time ticked on, I wore a groove into the corridor carpet, voices rose and fell from my office. But there were no smashing sounds or blood-curdling screams of anguish and death. I could-n’t even go home because my bag, coat, iBook and the essays I needed to finish marking tonight were still in my office.

  An hour later, I jumped back as the door was wrenched open and Claudine came stalking out, throwing: ‘If you fucking come near me again I’ll kill you,’ over her shoulder. She completely blanked me as she marched down the corridor, heading for the stairs to the next floor and her office.

  Mel’s head popped around the door. ‘SLUT!’ he screamed after her.

  Thankfully, no one else was around at that hour, so only I jumped at its suddenness and severity.

  Claudine did the smoothest 180-degree turn I’d ever seen, came stalking back up the hallway, growing about a foot with each step. By the time she reached us, she was twenty foot tall.

  Her face had narrowed into a knot of anger. So scary and hideous did she look at that moment that I leapt out of her path and flattened myself against the wall as she stormed past. I don’t know if Mel saw it coming, but I felt it, heard it, winced at it when her fist connected with his face.