Because She Loves Me

  I opened my eyes. I was shivering. I turned to embrace Charlie, seeking her warmth, and my heart skittered.

  She was awake, propped up on an elbow. She was staring at me.

  ‘I had a horrible dream . . .’ I began, thinking I must have disturbed her. But as I started to speak she rolled over and appeared to drop off immediately.

  My mind skipped about wildly: sex in the park with Charlie and how I’d been sure someone was watching us; Sasha’s problems with her married lover; memories of Karen and Harriet; niggling anxiety about money. And above all this din, hearing Charlie say that she loved me.

  It was a long time before I managed to get back to sleep.

  Nine

  Victor Codsall beckoned me into his office and shook my hand, gesturing for me to sit on one of the two sofas, flopping down on the other like he was unable to bend his knees. A stack of books, catalogues and magazines wobbled on the coffee table. Through the glass, I watched Victor’s staff at the design agency wander to and fro: bright, trendy young things who brought their bikes to work and wore T-shirts with ironic slogans. According to Victor, they were all sleeping with each other.

  ‘The whole fucking office is a festering Petri dish of disease,’ he once told me, gloomily. Victor said almost everything gloomily, hence his nickname: Eeyore. A sketch of the depressive donkey hung on the wall beside a framed, signed Tottenham Hotspur shirt.

  ‘How’s your . . . ?’ He pointed to his eye. Victor had found it hilarious that when I had my operation, the surgeon had drawn a black arrow above my eyebrow, indicating the eye to be operated on.

  ‘Much better. Actually, I’ve been discharged.’

  ‘Thank fuck for that,’ he said. ‘Not much call for blind designers round here. Although some of the shit this lot have been churning out recently, you’d think they’d all had detached fucking retinas.’

  I didn’t tell him that, actually, since waking up I’d been bothered by a floater in my left eye, a tiny circle that drifted across my vision whenever I blinked. I was trying not to worry about it. Mr Makkawi had told me floaters were normal, that I should only be concerned if I got a lot of them together.

  We made small talk for a few minutes before I said, ‘So I was wondering if you had any work for me? I’m available to work full time at the moment.’

  ‘As a matter of fact . . .’ He sighed, making it sound like he was about to tell me I had a terminal illness. ‘We got a new contract come in this morning from this e-commerce site. They’re planning some big new campaign – holidays, summer, beaches, young sexy people having fun and getting wasted . . . All that crap.’

  ‘Sounds great. What site is it?’

  ‘Wowcom. Big fashion site, based not far from here actually.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Don’t tell me – you ordered some fucking red trousers from them and they sent you pink.’

  ‘No. It’s just that I know someone who works there. My friend Sasha.’

  Not just that, but Wowcom was the company owned by Lance. It would be strange to work for Wowcom, given what I knew about the owner and Sasha.

  ‘That’s great. You’ve got an in.’

  We spent the next hour going over the details of the brief and Victor made a call to Wowcom to arrange a meeting later in the week.

  ‘Sweet,’ he groaned, at the end of the call. I wondered if, beneath the moaning, Victor was actually happy. He clearly adored his wife and children and was running a successful business. He was a self-made man. Rumour had it that he had grown up on one of the roughest estates in North London and that many of his friends were career criminals, drug dealers and gangsters with minders, huge houses and trophy wives.

  All through the meeting, the floater in my eye danced and bothered me. But it was a relief to have some work, especially as Victor thought the project would take at least a couple of months.

  I got up to leave.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I forgot to mention. I saw Karen last week. She came to a dinner party round mine. She asked after you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘She’s still single. Maybe she’s getting the taste for young meat again. I reckon she’d be up for it if you gave her a call. Hey, what are you grinning at?’

  ‘I’ve got a girlfriend now.’

  ‘Oh really? What’s she like? Obviously she’s not going to be as hot as my missus – but hotter than Karen?’

  I beamed. ‘Much.’

  ‘You’re kidding me. Got a photo?’

  I realised the only photo I had of Charlie on my phone was the topless selfie she’d sent me when I was out with Sasha, and I wasn’t going to show him that.

  ‘So I’ll tell Karen you lied about having a girlfriend because you don’t want to see her again?’

  ‘Very funny.’

  He saw me out. ‘Actually, Karen was saying she needs someone to design a website for her. Just a personal site, a blog or something. Not a big enough job for me but maybe you should get in touch, earn yourself an extra couple of quid. Or who knows, she might offer payment in kind.’

  ‘The only time you don’t sound miserable is when you’re teasing me,’ I said.

  He sighed. ‘That’s what I always say to my missus. Anyway, want me to ping her an email, ask her to get in touch?’

  I hesitated. It might be awkward, seeing her. But the money would definitely come in handy.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘That would be great.’

  ‘So how does it feel being back at work?’ I asked.

  Charlie rolled her eyes. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. I’d rather talk about something interesting. Like sex.’

  We were sitting in Starbucks near Old Street station, close to Victor’s office. Charlie had suggested meeting for lunch. She looked great in her work clothes, with her hair neat and her crisply ironed clothes.

  ‘I think the man behind you heard you,’ I whispered.

  She smiled naughtily. ‘I can’t help it. I want to drag you into an alleyway and have my wicked way with you.’ She popped a grape into her mouth and sucked it. ‘Why don’t we go into the toilet now?’

  Beneath the table she pressed her legs against mine and I felt my cock grow hard. It was frustrating, not being able to touch her flesh. At my flat, in those sex-drunk days between Christmas and her return to work, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other, and didn’t have to. But there was something deliciously tantalising about having to wait, knowing that when she finished work she would come round to mine and we could take our clothes off.

  A thought struck me. ‘How come we never go to your place?’

  She pulled a face, like the grape she was eating was sour. ‘It’s horrible, that’s why. There’s no privacy. There, you wouldn’t be able to push me over the kitchen worktop and enter me while we were cooking dinner . . .’

  ‘Charlie!’ I hissed, gesturing at the man behind her with my eyes as he looked round, shocked. She was so bad.

  She smiled and sipped her fruit juice. ‘I hate being Charlotte. I want to come home with you and be Charlie.’

  I needed to change the subject before the urge to take her into the Starbucks toilet became too much. So I told her about the meeting with Victor and how it connected with Sasha.

  She looked at her watch and grimaced. ‘I’ve only got five minutes.’

  ‘But you’ll come round later?’

  ‘Try and stop me. I’ll make dinner.’

  ‘You don’t have to. I’m happy with a takeaway. Or I could make dinner.’

  ‘Are you a good cook?’

  ‘No, I’m terrible. Sometimes I have nightmares in which I’m forced to be a contestant on Masterchef. The whole nation could witness my humiliation. I once managed to set a pan of spaghetti on fire. Even my boiled eggs come out wrong. I’m probably the worst cook in the world.’

  She
reached under the table and squeezed my thigh. ‘You can’t be good at everything. I’d much rather you were good at cunnilingus than cooking.’

  The man behind her almost fell off his chair.

  ‘It feels wrong, though,’ I said. ‘Having a woman come round and cook me dinner. I don’t want you to think I’m a typical sexist bloke.’

  She stroked my cheek. ‘I don’t. Enjoy it, Andrew. I like cooking, I’m good at it, you’re bad at it. Makes sense for me to do it, yes? You can learn one day and then you can cook for me.’

  We moved on to talking about Tilly. ‘How is she?’ Charlie asked. ‘Have you had any more clandestine cups of tea with her PA?’

  ‘No. Rachel texted me to say Tilly seems a bit happier and to thank us for taking her out. I meant to tell you. She says she’s keeping an eye on her.’

  I went quiet for a minute and she asked what I was thinking about. I normally hate that question, but with Charlie I never minded.

  ‘What about your family? Will I get to meet them?’

  She frowned. ‘That would be difficult. I don’t have any family.’

  Taken aback, I waited for her to continue.

  ‘I told you that both my parents died when I was a teenager.’

  I had no memory of her sharing this momentous fact. It certainly wasn’t the kind of thing I’d forget. ‘No you didn’t.’

  ‘I must have done. My mum died of cancer when I was fifteen and then my dad committed suicide a year later because he was so heartbroken and couldn’t get over it.’

  My insides had gone cold. ‘You definitely didn’t tell me any of that. Oh my God, Charlie. That’s awful.’

  She looked up at me through her lashes. ‘But it’s something we have in common, isn’t it? We’re both alone.’ She stared at the table top then back at me. ‘We were both alone.’

  I tried to think of something appropriate to say but before inspiration struck she said, ‘Right. I’ve got to get back to work. Back to being Charlotte again.’ She stood up, kissed me on the lips and told me she’d be round about seven.

  All the way back to the Tube, I racked my brain, searching for holes in my memory. Had she said anything about her parents? Had I asked? I couldn’t think of a single time the subject of her parents had come up. She barely talked about her past at all. I knew she was from Leeds, and she had told me a few anecdotes about her childhood and stories from when she was at uni, like the time she’d fainted at a Green Day concert, how she and her friends went to karaoke every weekend, the day she crashed her car and wrote it off. There was a map of her body in my head: I knew her taste, her smell, how every part of her felt beneath my fingers. I could hear her speech patterns in my head as I drifted off to sleep. I knew what music she was into, who her favourite painters were, which varieties of wine she preferred. I knew all of that, but her past was a mystery.

  I vowed to change that, to get her to tell me more about herself. After all, she knew most of my life story. I wanted to know everything about her. Because, and I knew this, felt this, even though I hadn’t told her yet: I was in love with her.

  When I got home I had a couple of emails waiting for me.

  The first was from Sasha, updating me on the situation with Lance.

  It’s horrific. They’ve shunted me off to a different department, so I don’t have to have any contact with him – which suits me! But it’s like everyone in the office knows. The other girls are treating me like I’ve got some hideous contagious disease and the guys keep looking at me like I’m a nympho who will shag anyone. This creepy bastard called Jake who works in IT asked me if I wanted to go out for lunch, like if he buys me beans on toast at the greasy spoon at lunchtime I’ll give him a BJ in the stationery cupboard in the afternoon.

  I need to see you!! Can we go out this weekend and get REALLY drunk?

  I replied saying yes, of course, let’s meet up Friday after work – even though that would mean an evening apart from Charlie – though I didn’t tell her about Victor and the contract with Wowcom. I wasn’t sure how she’d feel about it so would tell her when I saw her.

  The second email was from Karen.

  Hi Andrew,

  How are you? It’s been quite a while. Hope you’re well.

  Victor told me you might be able to work on a website design for me. It’s nothing special – I need a site to show potential clients, with a bio, a few articles, some testimonials, etc. Can you tell me how much you would charge and then maybe we could meet to discuss?

  Thanks,

  Karen

  She was an HR consultant, a person who went into businesses and told them how to manage their staff more effectively. That’s what she’d been doing when I met her at Victor’s office, though it turned out that she and Victor were old friends. I was glad the email was so businesslike and impersonal. I fired back a quick response, telling her my day rate and that I would guess such a job would take two or three days (really, it depended how fussy she was). Then I spent a couple of hours pulling together some preliminary ideas for the Wowcom job.

  Before I finished for the day, Karen replied to my email saying my day rate sounded fine and suggesting a couple of times for us to meet, both of which were later in the week. We agreed on Friday afternoon, so I could see her before going on to see Sasha.

  Waiting for Charlie to turn up, I opened a bottle of wine and had a sort through some of my photography books. The email conversation with Karen had reminded me of an exhibition she’d taken me to see on one of the rare occasions we’d been out together.

  She’d taken me to see some work by the photographer Rankin, who specialised in portraits of the rich and famous, along with more explicit pictures including nude shots of his model wife. Karen had bought me a Rankin book as a present and I wanted to look at it now – not to ogle the nudes but because there were some photos taken on beaches that I thought might provide useful inspiration for the Wowcom project.

  I couldn’t find the book. I searched the bookcase but it wasn’t there. It was a large hardback and it couldn’t have slipped behind the other books, and I was certain I hadn’t lent it to anyone or taken it anywhere.

  But before I could think about it any more, the doorbell rang, then rang again and kept on ringing, urgent, insistent. I went out into the stairwell and ran down the stairs as quickly as I could. Someone – Charlie, I assumed – was banging on the front door like she was desperate to get in.

  I heaved the door open and she tumbled inside, panting.

  She grabbed hold of me. She was cold but sweaty.

  ‘Someone’s following me,’ she said.

  Ten

  I peered out of the door at the lamplit street, my heart beating fast. I couldn’t see anyone.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked.

  She nodded mutely. She looked terrified.

  I stepped out onto the street, Charlie imploring me to be careful, and looked up and down the road. Apart from an elderly lady walking her dog, there was no one around. I went back inside and shut the door.

  ‘Come on, let’s get you upstairs,’ I said. ‘You’re shaking.’

  The first thing she said when we got into my flat was, ‘I need a drink.’

  She took a thirsty gulp of the wine I handed her and I steered her over to the sofa, sitting beside her, rubbing her cold arm.

  ‘What happened?’

  She hugged herself. Her face was very pale. ‘I took a shortcut through the park again. I know, I know – it’s a stupid thing to do. But I thought it would be fine.’

  I waited for her to continue.

  ‘I got about halfway through, just past the big house in the middle, and then realised there was someone behind me on the path. It was like they were hiding by the house and came out when they saw me. It was so dark I couldn’t see him properly.’

  I squeezed her hand.

  ‘He f
ollowed me down the path.’ The words gushed out. ‘I didn’t really want to look back but it was like he was gaining on me, going really fast, and all I could think of was that he was a rapist so I started running and he started running too and I just made it to the gap in the railings before him and I got through and he came through too and followed me down the street until I rang your doorbell . . .’

  ‘Charlie, sweetheart.’

  She was almost hyperventilating, and she clung to me on the sofa, shivering and crying silently. I held her like that until she calmed down, kissed the tear trails on her cheeks.

  ‘We should call the police.’

  ‘They’ll just say I shouldn’t walk through the park at night.’

  ‘Maybe, but it’s still worth it. What if he attacks someone else?’

  I walked across the room to get my phone.

  ‘Please, Andrew. I really don’t want to call them. They’ll tell me off for going into the park after dark.’

  I weighed the phone in my hand. She was right: it was clearly signposted that you shouldn’t enter the park at night. But I still thought it was worthwhile in case this man attacked someone else.

  ‘Plus he didn’t actually do anything, did he?’ she said.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’m going to phone them, say I saw someone go into the park, acting suspiciously. OK?’

  She nodded.

  While I waited for the police to answer I said, ‘I bet it was the same guy who I thought was watching us last night.’

  Charlie hugged her knees to her chest. ‘Don’t say that. I don’t like the thought . . . that someone saw us having sex.’

  I got through to the police and told them I’d seen a man in the park. They said they’d take a look but I could hardly see it being a priority.