Still Me Read online

  --

  The mood didn't recover. The bar was too noisy for me to talk to him, and I wasn't sure what I wanted to say. I sipped my cocktail and ran through a hundred looping arguments in my head. Sam swigged his drink and nodded and smiled at the guys' jokes, but I saw the tic in his jaw and knew his heart was no longer in it. At ten we peeled off and got a taxi toward home.

  I let him hail it.

  We went up in the service lift, as instructed, and listened before we crept into my room. Mr. Gopnik appeared to be in bed. Sam didn't speak. He went into the bathroom to change and closed the door behind him, his back rigid. I heard him brush his teeth and gargle as I crept into bed, feeling wrong-footed and angry at the same time. He seemed to be in there forever. Finally, he opened the door and stood there in his boxers. His scars still ran livid red across his stomach. "I'm being a dick."

  "Yes. Yes, you are."

  He let out a huge breath. He looked at my photograph of Will, nestled between the one of himself and the one of my sister with Thom, whose finger was up his nose. "Sorry. It just threw me. How much he looks like . . ."

  "I know. But you might as well say you spending time with my sister and her looking like me is weird."

  "Except she doesn't look like you." He raised his eyebrows. "What?"

  "I'm waiting for you to say I'm miles better-looking."

  "You are miles better-looking."

  I pushed the covers back to let him in and he climbed in beside me.

  "You're much better-looking than your sister. Heaps better. You're basically a supermodel." He placed a hand on my hip. It was warm and heavy. "But with shorter legs. How's that working for you?"

  I tried not to smile. "Better. But quite rude about my short legs."

  "They're beautiful legs. My favorite legs. Supermodel legs are just--boring." He moved across so that he was over me. Every time he did that it was like bits of me sparked into involuntary life and I had to work hard not to wriggle. He rested on his elbows, pinning me in place and looking down at my face, which I was trying to make stern even though my heart was thumping.

  "I think you may have frightened the life out of that poor man," I said. "You looked like you slightly wanted to hit him."

  "That's because I slightly did."

  "You are an idiot, Sam Fielding." I reached up and kissed him, and when he kissed me back he was smiling again. His chin was thick with stubble where he hadn't bothered to shave.

  This time he was tender. Partly because we now believed the walls were thin and he wasn't really meant to be there. But I think we were both careful of each other after the unexpected events of the evening. Every time he touched me it was with a kind of reverence. He told me he loved me, his voice low and soft, and he looked straight into my eyes when he said it. The words reverberated through me like little earthquakes.

  I love you.

  I love you.

  I love you too.

  --

  We had set the alarm for a quarter to five, and I woke cursing, dragged from sleep by the shrill sound. Beside me Sam groaned and pulled a pillow over his head. I had to push him awake.

  I propelled him, grumbling, into the bathroom, turned on the shower, and padded to the kitchen to make us both coffee. When I came back I heard the thunk of the water being turned off. I sat on the side of the bed, sipped my coffee and wondered whose smart idea it had been to drink strong cocktails on a Sunday evening. The bathroom door opened just as I flopped back down.

  "Can I blame you for the cocktails? I need someone to blame." My head was thumping. I raised and lowered it gently. "What even was in those things?" I placed my fingertips against my temples. "They must have been double measures. I don't normally feel this grim. Oh, man. We should have just gone to 30 Rock."

  He didn't say anything. I turned my head so that I could see him. He was standing in the doorway of the bathroom. "You want to talk to me about this?"

  "About what?" I pushed myself upright. He was wearing a towel around his waist and holding a small white rectangular box. For a brief moment I thought he was trying to give me jewelry, and I almost laughed. But when he held the box toward me he wasn't smiling.

  I took it from him. And stared, disbelieving, at a pregnancy test. The box was opened, and the white plastic wand was loose inside. I checked it, some distant part of me noting that there were no blue lines, then looked up at him, temporarily lost for words.

  He sat down heavily on the side of the bed. "We used a condom, right? The last time I was over. We used a condom."

  "Wha--? Where did you find that?"

  "In your bin. I just went to put my razor in there."

  "It's not mine, Sam."

  "You share this room with someone else?"

  "No."

  "Then how can you not know whose it is?"

  "I don't know! But--but it's not mine! I haven't had sex with anyone else!" I realized as I was protesting that the mere act of insisting you hadn't had sex with someone else made you sound like you were trying to hide the fact that you had had sex with someone else. "I know how it looks but I have no idea why that thing is in my bathroom!"

  "Is this why you're always on at me about Katie? Because you're actually feeling guilty about seeing someone else? What is it they call it? Transference? Is--is that why you were so . . . so different the other night?"

  The air disappeared from the room. I felt as if I'd been slapped. I stared at him. "You really think that? After everything we've been through?"

  He didn't say anything.

  "You--you really think I'd cheat on you?"

  He was pale, as shocked as I felt. "I just think if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, then, you know, it's usually a duck."

  "I am not a bloody duck . . . Sam. Sam."

  He turned his head reluctantly.

  "I wouldn't cheat on you. It's not mine. You have to believe me."

  His eyes scanned my face.

  "I don't know how many times I can say it. It's not mine."

  "We've been together such a short time. And so much of it has been spent apart. I don't . . ."

  "You don't what?"

  "It's one of those situations, you know? If you told your mates in the pub? They'd give you that look like--mate . . ."

  "Then don't talk to your bloody mates in the pub! Listen to me!"

  "I want to, Lou!"

  "Then what the hell is your problem?"

  "He looked just like Will Traynor!" It burst out of him like it had nowhere else to go. He sat down. He put his head in his hands. And then he said it again, quietly. "He looked just like Will Traynor."

  My eyes had filled with tears. I wiped them away with the heel of my hand, knowing that I had probably now smudged yesterday's mascara all over my cheeks but not really caring. When I spoke my voice was low and severe and didn't really sound like mine.

  "I'm going to say this one more time. I am not sleeping with anyone else. If you don't believe me I . . . Well, I don't know what you're doing here."

  He didn't reply but I felt as if his answer floated silently between us: Neither do I. He stood and walked over to his bag. He pulled some pants from inside and put them on, yanking them up with short, angry movements. "I have to go."

  I couldn't say anything else. I sat on the bed and watched him, feeling simultaneously bereft and furious. I said nothing while he dressed and threw the rest of his belongings into his bag. Then he slung it over his shoulder, walked to the door and turned.

  "Safe trip," I said. I couldn't smile.

  "I'll call you when I'm home."

  "Okay."

  He stooped and kissed my cheek. I didn't look up when he opened the door. He stood there a moment longer and then he left, closing it silently behind him.

  --

  Agnes came home at midday. Garry picked her up from the airport and she arrived back oddly subdued, as if she were reluctant to be there. She greeted me from behind sunglasses with a cursory hello, and retreated to her dressing
room, where she stayed with the door locked for the next four hours. At teatime she emerged, showered and dressed, and forced a smile when I entered her study bearing the completed mood boards. I talked her through the colors and fabrics, and she nodded distractedly, but I could tell she hadn't really registered what I had done. I let her drink her tea, then waited until I knew Ilaria had gone downstairs. I closed the study door so that she glanced up at me.

  "Agnes," I said quietly. "This is a slightly odd question, but did you put a pregnancy test in my bathroom?"

  She blinked at me over her teacup. And then she put her cup down on its saucer and pulled a face. "Oh. That. Yes, I was going to tell you."

  I felt anger rise up in me like bile. "You were going to tell me? You know my boyfriend found it?"

  "Your boyfriend came for the weekend? That's so nice! Did you have lovely time?"

  "Right up until he found a used pregnancy test in my bathroom."

  "But you tell him it's not yours, yes?"

  "I did, Agnes. But, funnily enough, men tend to get a little shirty when they find pregnancy tests in their girlfriends' bathrooms. Especially girlfriends who live three thousand miles away."

  She waved her hand, as if shooing my concerns away. "Oh, for goodness' sake. If he trusts you he will be fine. You are not cheating on him. He should not be so stupid."

  "But why? Why would you put a pregnancy test in my bathroom?"

  She stopped. She glanced around me, as if to check that the study door really was closed. And suddenly her expression grew serious. "Because if I had left it in my bathroom Ilaria would have found it," she said flatly. "And I cannot have Ilaria seeing this thing." She lifted her hands as if I were being spectacularly dim. "Leonard was very clear when we marry. No children. This was our deal."

  "Really? But that's not . . . What if you decide you want them?"

  She pursed her lips. "I won't."

  "But--but you're my age. How can you know for sure? I can't tell most days if I'm going to want to stick with the same brand of hair conditioner. Lots of people change their mind when--"

  "I am not having children with Leonard," she snapped. "Okay? Enough with the talk of children."

  I stood, a little reluctantly, and her head whipped around, her expression fierce. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry if I caused you trouble." She pushed at her brow with the heel of her palm. "Okay? I'm sorry. Now I am going for a run. On my own."

  --

  Ilaria was in the kitchen when I walked in a few moments later. She was pushing a huge lump of dough around a mixing bowl with fierce, even strokes and she didn't look up.

  "You think she is your friend."

  I stopped, my mug halfway to the coffee machine.

  She pushed the dough with particular force. "The puta would sell you down the river if it meant she saved herself."

  "Not helpful, Ilaria," I said. It was perhaps the first time I had ever answered her back. I filled my mug and walked to the door. "And, believe it or not, you don't know everything."

  I heard her snort from halfway down the hall.

  --

  I headed down to Ashok's desk to pick up Agnes's dry-cleaning, stopping to chat for a few moments to try to push aside my dark mood. Ashok was always even, always upbeat. Talking with him was like having a window on a lighter world. When I arrived back at the apartment there was a small, slightly wrinkled plastic bag propped up outside our front door. I stooped to pick it up and found, to my surprise, that it was addressed to me. Or at least to "Louisa I think her name is."

  I opened it in my room. Inside, wrapped in recycled tissue paper, was a vintage Biba scarf, decorated with a print of peacock feathers. I opened it out and draped it around my neck, admiring the subtle sheen of the fabric, the way it shimmered even in the dim light. It smelled of cloves and old perfume. Then I reached into the bag and pulled out a small card. The name at the top read, in looping dark blue print: Margot De Witt. Underneath, in a shaky scrawl, was written: Thank you for saving my dog.

  15

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Hi, Mum,

  Yes, Halloween is kind of a big deal here. I walked around the city and it was very sweet. There were lots of little ghosts and witches carrying baskets of sweets, with their parents following at a distance with torches. Some of them had even dressed up too. And people here seem to really get into it, not like our street where half the neighbors turn their lights out or hide in the back room to stop kids knocking. All the windows are full of plastic pumpkins or fake ghosts and everyone seems to love dressing up. Nobody even egged anyone else that I could see.

  But no trick-or-treaters in our building. We're not really in the kind of neighborhood where people knock on each other's doors. Maybe they'd call out to each other's drivers. Also they'd have to get past the night man and he can be kind of scary in himself.

  It's Thanksgiving next. They'd barely cleared away the ghost silhouettes before the adverts for turkey started. I'm not entirely sure even what Thanksgiving's about--mostly eating, I think. Most holidays here seem to be.

  I'm fine. I'm sorry I haven't called much. Give my love to Dad and Granddad.

  I miss you.

  Lou x

  Mr. Gopnik, newly sentimental about family gatherings in the way that recently divorced men often are, had decreed that he wanted a Thanksgiving dinner at the apartment with his closest family present, capitalizing on the fact that the former Mrs. Gopnik was headed to Vermont with her sister. The prospect of this happy event--along with the fact that he was still working eighteen-hour days--was enough to send Agnes into a persistent funk.

  Sam sent me a text message on his return--twenty-four hours after his return, actually--to say he was tired and this was harder than he'd thought. I answered with a simple yes because in truth I was tired too.

  I ran with Agnes and George early in the morning. When I didn't run I woke in the little room with the sounds of the city in my ears and a picture of Sam, standing in my bathroom doorway, in my head. I would lie there, shifting and turning, until I was tangled in the sheets, my mood blackened. The whole day would be tarnished before it had even started. When I had to get up and out in my running shoes, I woke up already on the move, forced to contemplate other people's lives, the pull in my thighs, the cold air in my chest, the sound of my breathing in my ears. I felt taut, strong, braced to bat away whatever crap the day was likely to greet me with.

  And that week there was significant crap. Garry's daughter dropped out of college, putting him in a foul mood, so that every time Agnes left the car he would rail about ungrateful children who didn't understand sacrifice or the value of a working man's dollar. Ilaria was reduced to constant mute fury by Agnes's more bizarre habits, such as ordering food she subsequently decided she didn't want to eat, or locking her dressing room when she wasn't in it, so that Ilaria couldn't put her clothes away. "She wants me to put her underwear in the hallway? She wants her sexytime outfits on full display to the grocery man? What is she hiding in there anyway?"

  Michael flitted through the apartment like a ghost, wearing the exhausted, harried expression of a man doing two jobs--and even Nathan lost some of his equanimity and snapped at the Japanese cat lady when she suggested that the unexpected deposit in Nathan's shoe was the result of his "bad energy." "I'll give her bad ruddy energy," he grumbled, as he dropped his running shoes into a bin. Mrs. De Witt knocked on our door twice in a week to complain about the piano, and in retaliation Agnes put on a recording of a piece called "The Devil's Staircase," and turned it up loud just before we went out. "Ligeti," she sniffed, checking her makeup in her compact as we headed down in the lift, the hammering, atonal notes climbing and receding above us. I quietly texted Ilaria in private and asked her to turn it off once we had gone.

  The temperature dropped, the sidewalks became even more congested, and the Christmas displays began to creep into the shopfronts, like a gaudy, glittering rash. I booked my flights hom
e with little anticipation, no longer knowing what kind of welcome I'd be returning to. I called my sister, hoping she wouldn't ask too many questions. I needn't have worried. She was as talkative as I had ever known her, chatting about Thom's school projects, his new friends from the estate, his football prowess. I asked her about her boyfriend and she grew uncharacteristically quiet.

  "Are you going to tell us anything about him? You know it's driving Mum nuts."

  "Are you still coming home at Christmas?"

  "Yup."

  "Then I might introduce you. If you can manage not to be a complete eejit for a couple of hours."

  "Has he met Thom?"

  "This weekend," she said, her voice suddenly a little less confident. "I've kept them separate till now. What if it doesn't work? I mean, Eddie loves kids but what if they don't--"

  "Eddie!"

  She sighed. "Yes. Eddie."

  "Eddie. Eddie and Treena. Eddie and Treena sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G."

  "You are such a child."

  It was the first time I had laughed all week. "They'll be fine," I said. "And once you've done that you can take him to meet Mum and Dad. Then you'll be the one she keeps asking about wedding bells and I can take a Maternal Guilt Trip Vacation."

  "It's 'holiday.' You're not American. And like that's ever going to happen. You know she's worried you'll be too grand to talk to them at Christmas? She thinks you won't want to get in Daddy's van from the airport because you've got used to riding in limousines."

  "It's true. I have."

  "Seriously, what's going on? You've said nothing about what's happening with you."

  "Loving New York," I said, smooth as a mantra. "Working hard."

  "Oh, crap. I've got to go. Thom's woken up."

  "Let me know how it goes."

  "I will. Unless it goes badly, in which case I'll be emigrating without saying a word to anyone ever for the rest of my life."

  "That's our family. Always a proportionate response."

  --

  Saturday served itself up cold with a side order of gales. I hadn't known quite how brutal the winds could be in New York. It was as if the tall buildings funneled any breeze, polishing it hard and fast into something icy and fierce and solid. I frequently felt as if I were walking in some kind of sadistic wind tunnel. I kept my head down, my body at an angle of 45 degrees and, occasionally reaching out to clutch at fire hydrants or lampposts, I caught the subway to the Vintage Clothes Emporium, stayed for a coffee to thaw out, and bought a zebra-print coat at the marked-down bargain price of twelve dollars. In truth, I lingered. I didn't want to go back to my silent little room, with Ilaria's news program burbling down the corridor, its ghostly echoes of Sam, and the temptation to check my e-mail every fifteen minutes. I got home when it was already dark and I was cold and weary enough not to be restless or submerged in that persistent New York feeling--that staying in meant I was missing out on something.