He wanted it to be like my studio in Paris. He went to a lot of trouble, quietly. But I have never appreciated him. I wash my hands and go downstairs, cross the silent, empty space and enter the bedroom. The bed is unmade. I go to Julie’s side and smell the pillow. There’s her scent. Is it mango or coconut shampoo that she uses? I lay my head on the pillow.

My eyes fall on the lap dancer’s pole. As if the scales have fallen off my eyes, I understand now that the previous tenant didn’t decide to leave, he was told to leave, or rather given an inducement to leave. In his hurry to accept, he left the pole behind.

She was practicing her dance for me. I will never see it now. I stand and, like a man in a daze, go to it. At the level of her crotch I sniff it, but it smells of metal and lemon polish. I let myself lie on the floor and stare at the ceiling. For a while there is the sensation that I am the last man on earth.

That I am totally alone.

Thirty

Julie Sugar

I walk to the Tube station numb with shock. It had all gone so disastrously wrong. In the train I stand with all the other passengers. A man in a pin-striped suit stands up to offer his seat to a pregnant lady. I watch the exchange blankly. She sits and meets my eyes. Smiles. I smile back automatically. At my stop I scramble off. I stand on the platform for a moment before heading towards the exit. I put my ticket through the barrier gates and come out into the silver light of the evening. There is dog poo in my path and I manage not to step into it. I open my door and my mother calls out, ‘Is that you, Julie?’

‘Yeah, it’s me,’ I reply and I am surprised by how normal my voice sounds. I go up the stairs and enter my room. I sit on my bed and look at the wall of photos. I see Jack smiling up at me, squinting, looking moodily, laughing, expressionless, a cigarette dangling from his lips, sitting in front of a beer, and the photo I never liked, but kept anyway—a girl on his lap and two kissing him on either cheek.

Strange.

How very strange.

Is it possible that even this morning I had kissed Jack’s photo and been convinced that I was in love? I had built a fairy tale in my mind and I was so strong-minded that I refused to give it up, no matter what. Now I know I must have been mad to think that I was in love with Jack. What a fool I’ve been? I feel the bitterness of my own stupidity. I sit with my hand pressed to my midriff. Could I trust what I feel now? And yet the feeling is worlds apart.

I loved Jack in my head, I loved him because he had the blue eyes, because he was so handsome and so dead cool and because all the girls were crazy about him, and what a trophy it would have been to have him, love him, because he was a doctor and in the end he was an imaginary figment of my imagination.

I love Vann with my entire body and my heart. I love talking to him, I love being in his presence, I love kissing him and being kissed by him, I love making love to him, I love the way he makes me wet simply by looking at me, I love eating with him, I love listening to music with him, I love having a laugh with him, I love that he doesn’t give a shit about money and celebrities.

I love that he doesn’t strive for what all of us spend day and night trying to acquire—oodles of money. He simply walked away from it all without a backward glance. What most human beings would sell their souls for. What I felt for Jack is a tiny thing compared to what I feel for Vann. My entire body feels it. I realize, too, the feelings I had nurtured for Jack were all wrapped up in jealousy about Lana and wanting everything she had. I feel light-headed and suddenly cold. It is like being in a dream. I thought it was passion and lust but it is love. Things that shouldn’t make sense do.

I’m in love with him.

I am head over heels in love with him.

How long have I been in love with him? I cannot say. It does not matter anymore. Only that I love him. The depth of this new yearning is so intense, the ache so great that the girlhood crush that I nurtured and stubbornly kept alive for years has paled into nothing. He is the first person to make me ‘feel’. He makes me feel replenished. My fears have flown. I no longer need to gorge simply to hang my head down the toilet. I took him for granted. Never appreciated the splendor of the man.

Surely he must have felt something for me too. I think of him, winking at me, building me up in that dim drawing room, accepting me into his flat that first night even though he had heard me refer to him so scathingly as a servant, asking me to pretend he was Jack, crouching beside me on the toilet floor and wiping my damp face as I stank of vomit, offering to take me to the hospital to see Jack. Why, no man would do that if he did not love a woman to distraction! I’ve hurt him terribly.

How crazy life is. There I was thinking he is ashamed he is poor and it turns out he is ashamed that he is immeasurably rich.

I walk over to the wall and begin to take down the photos. One by one, the memories of where I had acquired them, when I put them up. God! How very silly I have been. I stand on a chair and pull down the highest one. I pick them up and put them on a pile on the bed. The wall is stained with Blu-Tack marks. I want to tear all the photographs into tiny little pieces and forget I was ever so mad and foolish, but I cant. I’ve had them for so long they are a part of me. They tell their own story. The story of how I allowed a crush to become an obsession.

I sit on my bed and realize that I must tell Vann everything. Everything. I can win him back. I won’t give up. I will go with him to Paris or Provence or wherever the light is best. He will paint and I will go to the open-air market for vegetables and fish and meat. We will have a wooden table where I will prepare everything. The windows will not be slash. They will open out; perhaps they will have shutters. I will cook and we will eat together and make love, and we will be happy. In winter we will light a big fire and watch the snow falling, making everything vanish in white.

My phone rings. It is Lana.

‘Hi.’

‘Yeah.’

‘What’s the matter, Jules?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You sound a bit down.’

A sob rises in my throat. I swallow it down. It remains a lump in my throat. ‘I’m all right, really.’ My voice sounds funny.

‘Look, Blake won’t be back for another two hours. Why don’t you come over? Do you want me to send Tom or would you rather take a taxi, my shout if you do?’

Now the tears are running down my face. ‘I’ll take a taxi, but you don’t have to pay for it,’ I blubber.

‘Oh, Julie. Would you rather I came to you?’

‘No,’ I sniff. ‘I’ll come over.’

I go to the mirror and watch myself cry. I am one ugly fucker when I cry. The phone rings again and Lana says, ‘Don’t take a cab. Tom’s very close to Kilburn and he is already on his way to you. He’ll call you as soon as he gets to your block and you can go down to him, OK?’ Her voice is very kind and it makes me want to bawl.

‘All right,’ I sniff.

I don’t cry in the car. I simply sit staring out of the window. How strange that the one friend I seem to have in the world is the person I thought I hated. I arrive at the wide, tree-lined street, manned on either end by armed diplomatic Protection Group officers. Set back on the eastern side is Kensington Palace. Here, too, is where the Russian Embassy is located and where the steel magnate, Laxhmi Mittal, lives. This is London’s billionaire’s row, Lana’s new residence. Each mansion is white stone and surrounded by spacious gardens, but I don’t see anything. Tom drives us into the gated magnificent mansion that is Lana’s new home.