The Pretence Read online

  “I know. I know I do,” I said. “It just isn’t easy.”

  “You’re a nice boy. You’ll find someone else.”

  It’s funny, a dozen people had told me various versions of those sentiments, and I’d instantly, and in some cases, contemptuously, dismissed them, but because it was her, I allowed it to stand unchallenged. In fact, something about the conversation, her motherly concern, was shaming me.

  “I just want to keep in touch, ” I said, lying to myself more than her.

  “But you can’t. You know that as well as I do. You have to let go. Move on.”

  “Can’t we stay friends?”

  “Maybe. One day. But not until you’re over it. Not until you stop sending these letters.”

  I paused for a moment, taking a deep breath. “It’s hard,” I told her.

  “I know, my love. I know.”

  Believe it or not, I almost lost it there. At those words and their obvious sympathy, I almost burst into tears. I waited for a moment, till I finally trusted myself to speak again. “Is she still in London?”

  “Simon, don’t ask me, because I’m not going to tell you.”

  “I just want to talk it over ... One last time.”

  “It’s too late! Can’t you see that? She’s got a new life now.”

  There was a long and uncomfortable pause. Perhaps it was the familiarity of the voice, but just for a moment I had this sense of communicating with the daughter through the mother.

  “Please!” I begged, not really sure what I was asking for.

  She didn’t reply for a long time. Not Dawn, nor Frances.

  “It’s just you, Simon. You know that, don’t you? It’s just you left al alone hurting.”

  I felt so wretched. As if this was my final humiliation, the point I’d been driving myself to for the last few months. So much so, that when our conversation drew to a close, I promised her I’d never try to contact Frances again. It was over. I’d eventually seen reason. I would write no more.

  And I meant it. I truly did. The only problem is, you can trust a swindler, a politician, a junkie and an alcoholic, a damn sight more than someone in love. I tried. I threw out everything that reminded me of her. All those photos I’d tortured myself with, the music we’d shared, presents she’d bought. I even took an old girlfriend out to dinner and to bed. Yet the very next evening - and perhaps it was no coincidence - I went out with Luca for a drink, and during the course of two bottles of Barolo, slowly but surely fell apart.

  I’ve known Luca, affectionately known as the ‘Mad Italian’ - which actually says more about the English’s attitude to foreigners than it does about his behaviour - for six years. We both work for a small-time agency that syndicates our respective columns to local rags: his about cooking, mine about motoring. And if you’re thinking I don’t seem to be the sort of person who’s interested in cars, you’re right. I was actually taken on under the broad umbrella of ‘the arts’. However, within the first month, the guy that did the car reviews ended up in hospital after writing off a new Volvo, and was found to be three times over the limit. And for reasons that, at the time seemed incomprehensible to me, I was immediately drafted in as his replacement. It was only later I learnt that Charlie Ambler, our boss, was involved in a long-standing extra marital affair, and access to an endless line of anonymous new cars was a great convenience to him.

  Most people, I guess, would’ve kicked up a fuss about that. And I did spend a couple of indignant evenings telling anyone who cared to listen that I was going to quit. But I never did. A certain lifetime lack of ambition, an inability to take seriously what others see as everything, has always meant me choosing the easy option. Which is why, when Charlie offered me an ‘appropriate level of compensation’, I breathed a sigh of relief that I didn’t have to maintain my outrage any longer, that I could just shrug and leave things as they were.

  It’s fairly enjoyable, though not overly challenging, work. I just read up what the big boys say in the national dailies, watch the motoring programmes on TV, listen to the reps and read the brochures, and then it pretty well writes itself. I still don’t have a clue what 24 valves are, or reactive suspension, or ABS braking, but, hey, who cares? Frankly, I think it’s an advantage. I don’t get bogged down with all that boring technical crap. Find a new slant, take a couple of playful paragraphs before establishing even the most tenuous of links with motoring, add a hint of something that might prove controversial to the petro-nerds, and that’s pretty well my work done for the week. Which is just as well, because, since Frances left me, even that’s been more than I’ve felt like doing.

  It’s funny, but amongst all my friends, even some I’ve known since childhood, Luca’s the only one who’s really stuck with me through this period. Maybe it’s his ‘Italian-ness’, a greater willingness to acknowledge emotions and their effects, that’s meant him being more understanding, less inclined to distance himself from, what others plainly see as, socially unacceptable behaviour. Or maybe it’s because he didn’t really know me that long before, and this metamorphosis from bloke to joke hasn’t come as such a surprise. Either way, I’m eternally grateful. He’s always there. For a quick chat in the office, a drink or a meal in the evening, or even, God shame me, the occasional phone call in the middle of the night.

  Of course, I realise I’m borrowing heavily on our friendship. And some nights, when I see the brave light of interest slowly dimming in his eyes, I do try to change the subject. But it’s a bit like a maze. No matter what direction I then set off in, ten minutes later I’m back where I started.

  This particular evening we were in a wine bar in Maida Vale, and whether there was something about my mood, or perhaps I’d struck him on the wrong night, Luca seemed a little less attentive than usual. Picking at the label on our wine bottle, taking the odd look round the bar, leaving the occasional gap to be filled by silence.

  “You need someone else,” he eventually said, though I could’ve sworn I hadn’t mentioned Frances in a while.

  “I don’t want anyone else,” I told him.

  “Look at that beautiful woman over there,” he said, indicating one of two sitting at the bar. “French by the look of it. God, I love French women. I love France.”

  I casually glanced over and gave a shrug, not even bothering to comment.

  “Sometimes you need an angel to exorcise a ghost,” he said.

  “She isn’t a ghost. She’s real.”

  “Only your pain is real. Which is why you want to hang onto it.”

  It was unusually harsh for him, and for a moment it threw me, as if deep down he felt the same as everyone else, but I still knew there was something in what he was saying. I hung onto my pain because it was the last thing I had. Once it was gone, I’d be left with nothing.

  “Would you like me to ask them to join us?” he suddenly volunteered, indicating the two women.

  Luca’s success with the opposite sex is almost stereotypically legendary. He’s in his mid-thirties, slim with almost snow white close-cropped hair and big brown Latin eyes, and possesses that kind of charm that, without fail, every woman I know sneers at until it’s turned upon her, and then promptly regresses to a foolish and flushed school girl. He’s obvious to the point of being crass, as politically incorrect as it’s legally possible to be, yet does it all with such inoffensive grace and generosity, you cannot help but like him. His favourite expression is: ‘Every woman is beautiful’. Which apparently means that every woman, no matter what her shortcomings, has something beautiful about her, it’s just a matter of finding it. And in which case, you wonder, why is he so rarely seen with anyone other than slim and beautiful young women of no more than twenty?

  “Not tonight,” I said, feeling a little guilty. “If you want to ... I mean, no problem. I can go.”

  Luca shrugged, and at that precise moment the two women got up to leave. “They made our minds up for us,” he said, with a gracious smile; first at them, and then at me.


  You don’t have to tell me. I know I’m being a leviathan pain in the ass. Poor Luca pays so heavily for his loyalty, and I do feel badly about it. Which is probably why, on the couple of occasions when he’s insisted that all I need is someone else, when his ‘Italian-ness’ refuses to understand why I’m so averse to such an obvious solution, I’ve gone along with him fixing me up with a couple of his friends.

  One of them I liked a lot. Clara, a language student from Modena, with short-cropped dark hair that accentuated her big blue eyes, a wide and honest nose, and lips that protruded so much they reminded me of a duck’s bill. We even ended up in bed together. But the fact that I did like her almost guaranteed it was going to be a failure. I wasn’t ready for anyone that simpatica, and committed the unforgivable cliché of pouring out the whole story of my relationship with Frances.

  She listened to everything - making the transition from lover to agony aunt seem so natural and easy - her arm about me, my head resting on her soft dark-nippled breasts. We spent the best part of the night lying there, talking it out till it almost seemed as if it didn’t matter, finally falling asleep in each other’s arms.

  In the morning she left me with a simple kiss on the cheek, telling me to give her a call if I ever was ready for anything else.

  However, most nights it’s just poor Luca. With me gratefully seizing another opportunity to draw off my pain, and him probably wondering how much more there could possibly be. Afterwards I almost always go home happier, leaving him with a smile on my face and promising the beginnings of a renaissance. But not tonight. I was losing it and we both knew it. I needed Frances. I needed that tenuous point of contact. And the irony was, I’d just had an idea that might make it possible.

  “Are you all right?” Luca asked.

  I turned to him, realising how lost I’d been in my thoughts.

  “Mm? ... Oh! Yes ... I think I might get an early night though.”

  He stared at me for a moment, as if he was about to say something, but then changed his mind. “Okay,” he said, turning and gesturing for the bill. “Maybe it would do us both good.”

  A few moments later we silently ventured out into the street, both of us aware that it was an abrupt end to the evening. I turned to him. “Sorry, Luca.”

  “Why?” he asked, smiling and patting me on the back, as if, as far as he was concerned, I would never have anything to apologise for.

  We shook hands and went our separate ways. I was so anxious to get away, to get back to my flat, but a little down the street I turned and almost ran after him. I wanted to thank him for being such a good friend, to tell him I wouldn’t always be this way, and that one day I’d make it up to him a hundred times over. But I saw a cab approaching, and dashed out into the street.

  I was a bit like an addict about to give into his fix: guilty, going through the motions of reprimanding myself, but so high on the thought, no way could I stop. Already I was starting to gather my thoughts, to form my sentences. Yet the best part was, I knew where I was going to send them. Luca had unknowingly started a train of thought in my head: ‘French girls ... France’ ... Paris! Frances had been full of Paris when she’d come back from her trip, even suggesting we moved there. The more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed.

  The only problem was, when I got home, I couldn’t find her friends’ address. I thought it was still in the kitchen table drawer, but after emptying it out, I started to wonder if maybe I’d thrown it away.

  I cursed to myself, so lost in the idea I couldn’t bear to give it up, pacing round the flat.

  If I really thought about it, I could almost remember. ‘27 rue Mercal’ ... What? Mercalade? Marcaladet? Shit, why didn’t I speak French like Frances? And what about the postcode? ‘75 ... 75 .. 1’? Oh, fuck it, I can’t remember!

  And I guess that’s where this story really begins. In that moment when I realised I was going to write the letter anyway, send it off with half an address, and remember the rest as best as I could.

  In my heart I knew I’d never see Frances again. Or not for a long time. Not until it didn’t matter. When we would bump into each other one day, standing there clumsily and guiltily, like children meeting old school friends they’d once been forbidden to play with. Making excuses, walking away, willing ourselves to remain untouched and untroubled.

  But I still needed the letters. As long as I had them, as long as I was writing, there was a chance, no matter how infinitesimally slight it might be. The way those down on their luck try to find that little bit of extra cash for a lottery ticket. Or maybe it was more complicated than that? Maybe it was a cathartic process? A way of laying off my pain? Taking little parcels of it and distributing it throughout the world.

  Whatever, I was determined to keep writing to her. What I didn’t know, was how much trouble it was going to get me into.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The balance of power in a relationship is one of those things you’d prefer to think doesn’t exist. And in the best of relationships it doesn’t. Or more accurately perhaps, it appears not to. Maybe it’s still there, it’s just that neither of you is aware of it because you’ve somehow instinctively latched onto your optimum levels. It’s only later, time down the line, if that balance begins to shift and you or your partner start taking the other for granted, or feelings are no longer what they were, that it begins to resurface. Now you have to renegotiate, arrive at new terms, redistribute old territory. And I wish you the very best of luck.

  That first night I met Frances, when I walked her home late from the party, across the common, and we drunkenly romped in a children’s playground - pushing each other on the swings, dipping our feet into the stars; trying to get the speed of the roundabout exactly the same as that of the rotation of the Earth so we’d unlock gravity and float up into the air - she told me everything I needed to know. Everything I should’ve listened to.

  “Beware. I’m dangerous,” she said, as we lay on our backs slowly rotating across the starry sky.

  “You look docile enough.”

  “Appearances can be deceptive.”

  I chuckled, wondering what game we were playing now, and she suddenly sat up and leapt from the roundabout. “I’m going to be sick!” she joked, making her way over to the see-saw.

  I followed her over, pulling down the elevated end, sitting on it and giving a kick so I lurched myself into the air, my greater weight soon bringing me back down.

  “Are you still going to be sick?” I asked, thrusting myself skywards once more.

  “No. But I’m still going to be dangerous.”

  “How?” I asked, now using the push of my legs to emphasise every point I made.

  “I change.”

  “Everyone changes.”

  Kick!

  “I change suddenly.”

  “Good. Keep it interesting.”

  Kick!

  “Simon, listen to me,” she said, suddenly sounding very earnest.

  The trouble was, I didn’t want to listen. I just wanted to be allowed to love her. Or maybe you’re thinking that, by saying what she said, she made me want to love her even more. But that’s not me. I told you before. I’m just an ordinary average everyday bloke, who’s much too fond of a peaceful life to want the greatest challenges of it to come from his own home.

  “I’ve left everyone I’ve ever been involved with,” she told me.

  “Maybe they didn’t deserve you?” I said, kicking so hard I almost lost my grip.

  “I wake up one day and that’s it. I have to go.”

  “What makes you think it’ll be the same with me?”

  Kick!

  “What makes you think it won’t?”

  Just for a moment I hesitated, my feet firmly on the ground, as if I knew I should be listening, that I should take heed of this. Then I kicked with all my might and Frances screamed as she plummeted back to earth and I rocketed into the sky.

  That was it, that was my warning, and it was as clear as it could
be. Listen to me, I have a flaw, I panic when it gets too cosy. I fight when others flee, and flee when others fight. But I was too busy noticing the way her hair fell across her face when the see-saw jolted at the top and bottom of its travel; the way her eyes sparkled out through her fringe like something precious kept behind bars.

  We should all write that down. On the first night when they do or say that thing you know that in six months, a year or whatever, will break you up. Write it down in big letters and pin it on the wall. Or maybe the bedroom ceiling? Then you can’t say it came as a surprise, that everything was perfect, that they weren’t being honest with you.

  And you won’t end up like me.

  Dear Frances,

  I saw you today. In Sainsbury’s

  choosing wine, in a shop in Camden looking at clothes,

  in a dozen different cars and with a dozen different

  men. Once I even chased after you. In St Johns

  Wood. I was driving along, glanced down this side-

  street, and saw you in the distance. I instantly cut across

  the cab inside me, leapt out, and just left this Renault I

  was testing where it was, with everyone shouting

  and blowing their horns.

  I don’t know how long it took me to realise it wasn’t you.

  I mean, I guess I always know really. I just have to

  check. Standing there, slumped against that garden

  wall, puffing and panting, with this attractive young

  woman gaping at me. Funny thing was, I still called her

  your name. I still asked her if she was you. As if my

  mind wanted to see you so badly, it could turn you into

  her for a few second. She never said a word. Just

  hurried on, her back all stiff and rigid, as if she was

  listening to see if I’d follow.

  When I got back to the car someone asked me if I was

  crazy. Well, am I? I don’t know. Every night when I

  lie in bed, I say that’s it. No more. But the next day

  it just starts all over again.