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Alex

Wednesday

I spent all afternoon working on my online review of Tara Lies Awake. I submitted it to the site and printed it out, kissing the paper before sealing it in an envelope. I wrote my home number on the printout (haven’t been able to afford to get a new mobile since mine was nicked from my pocket the other week in the pub, and of course it wasn’t bloody insured) and wrapped the envelope with ribbon I’d found in Simon’s room. Nat’s always making cards and doing fancy stuff with parcels, so I expect the ribbon belonged to her. I was sure she wouldn’t mind me borrowing a bit.

On the way to class, I kept imagining how impressed Siobhan would be when she read my review. The more I thought about it the more excited I got. I found myself walking really fast, marching in time with my heartbeat.

I wasn’t sure exactly how to give my review to Siobhan. Ideally, I’d have liked her to stumble across it on the website, but I couldn’t be sure enough that she would see it – authors apparently always check their own Bookjungle rankings, but since the book had been out for so many years, I couldn’t be sure that she would still be checking it. I didn’t want to leave the printout on her desk in case someone else picked it up. And if I handed it to her in class the others might wonder if there was something going on between us. But it had nothing to do with any of them – this was a private matter between Siobhan and me.

Entering the college, I saw the receptionist and decided she was the best person to leave the envelope with, mainly because I couldn’t give a flying one what she thought of me.

‘Has Siobhan McGowan come in yet?’ I asked.

‘I don’t think so, love.’

‘Could you pass this to her when she does?’

She took it and set it aside.

‘You won’t forget, will you? It’s very important.’

She looked at me, then at the pink ribbon wrapped around the envelope and raised a well-plucked eyebrow. ‘No, love, I won’t forget.’

‘Thank you.’

After that, I needed the loo. I must have been in there longer than I thought because when I reached the classroom, everyone, including Siobhan, was already there.

I opened the door and saw Siobhan look me up and down. I swear she seemed impressed. And kind of hungry. Like I was a Mars Bar and she was Marianne Faithfull. She must have read my review already and – well, it looked like it had had the most positive effect I could have hoped for. Could it be that praise makes her horny? Makes her want the person praising her?

Is she that similar to me?

To my delight, I saw a hint of pink poking out of her bag – the envelope I put the card and review in. So the receptionist didn’t let me down. And when I saw what Siobhan wearing… wow! The boots, below what looked like they could be stockings on her long, sexy legs, and more make up than last time – though not too much, nothing tarty or cheap. She looked sensational.

She asked me to sit down, and I could feel her eyes on me as I walked to my chair. I had this rushing sensation in my stomach and chest, that feeling you get when something very exciting is about to happen. I was trying not to stare at Siobhan too hard, trying to be cool, trying to stay calm. And then she turned all the lights out.

It was a shock at first, suddenly being in pitch darkness with a group of near-strangers. But, very quickly, I became accustomed to it. I even forgot the others were there, and it felt like it was just me and Siobhan. Brian wasn’t scratching like a mangy hamster, Kathy wasn’t sending me hate rays for being a man, Barbara wasn’t snoring. It was just me and Siobhan, Siobhan and me, and it was so dark with the blackout blinds down that I couldn’t even see my own hands, and nobody else could see how aroused I was as I listened to Siobhan’s deliciously husky voice.

She asked us to think of a character, but the only character I could think of was her, and then there were two of us in the story in my head, her and me. I couldn’t manage the bit about standing in my childhood bedroom. All I could picture was my bedroom now, rucked-up sheets beneath two entwined bodies.

I felt like she was caressing me with her words, reaching across the room to me and stroking my hair, my face, touching my eyelids and running her hand down the back of my neck, then around to the front and – oh God – into my lap. I could smell her – her skin and perfume and hair – and when the lights came on I nearly fell out of my chair in my desperate attempt to cross my legs.

Have to admit, though, the mood was spoiled a bit by the sight of the drool on Grandma’s hairy chin. But when my eyes adjusted to the brightness I couldn’t stop myself gazing at Siobhan. She caught my eye then quickly looked away, shy, sweet, coquettish.

When I had to write down what I’d visualised, I had to make something up. I couldn’t be honest, could I? This journal is the only place where I can be fully honest.

The class ended and the others started to file out. Brian stuttered something to her as he passed and she smiled at him, sympathetically. I hung back, waiting for all the others to leave. I wanted to talk to Siobhan about her book and my review. I wanted to give her the chance to say how pleased she was. But bloody Kathy wasn’t leaving. She stayed in her seat, scribbling something, and Siobhan came over and started talking to her. It didn’t seem that Kathy would be leaving too quickly. Realising there was no way I could hang around without seeming like a weirdo, I slunk out.

But I wasn’t too worried because I knew Siobhan would love what I’d written – and I was confident that she’d want to call me to talk about it. She… shit, there’s the phone now.

It wasn’t her. Someone for Simon. Of course it wouldn’t be her. She’ll want to play it cool, won’t want to let me know how excited she was to read my words straight away. I expect she’ll call tomorrow, Thursday. I wish I still had my mobile – I’d forgotten what it’s like to have to literally wait by the phone.

I doubt I’ll be able to sleep tonight. Too excited.

Thursday

Had a terrible evening. Sat in the living room watching TV and waiting for the phone to ring. Nothing on except a programme about lions: all they seem to do is sleep and shag. Looked at the cover of Siobhan’s novel; the naked woman, Siobhan’s picture, the two merging into one. I stared at the phone. It stared back, mocking me. It rang at one point, making me leap off the sofa. It was Si, asking if I wanted to join him and Nat for a drink.

‘I can’t.’

He sighed. ‘You need to get out more, Alex. You couldn’t come out the other night because of your writing class. You can’t keep turning down our invitations. We’ll get offended.’ I could hear the clink of glasses in the background, Christina on the jukebox. I put the phone down, worried about blocking the line.

I smoked six cigarettes and rummaged through Si’s bedside cabinet, trying to find his dope stash. Just a few hard crumbs. I ate them. They didn’t do anything.

At ten, I checked the phone connection. At this point, I realised how sad I was being. Maybe I should unplug the phone, I thought. Then when she tried to ring she wouldn’t be able to get hold of me; it would just ring and ring, and she’d be there getting worried, wondering where I was. I knelt down to pull the cord out of the wall. But I couldn’t do it.

I wish I’d had the chance to talk to her after the class. Maybe I was too subtle, simply writing my phone number. Perhaps I should have made some ‘call me’ sign in class. But that would have made me look like a twat. And I’m sure Siobhan’s the kind of person who understands subtlety. Her novel is subtle. So why hasn’t she taken the hint and called? Does she think I’m just a loser who doesn’t even have a mobile phone?

Or maybe she’s just shyer than she seems.

Friday

Maybe she lost my number. That could be it. She might have lost the card I gave her somehow. She might even have lost her bag. Maybe she’s been searching her flat or house, getting frantic, wanting to call me, worrying that I’ll be upset. Of course, I’ll reassure her, I’ll tell her it’s fine, let’s go for a drink, a meal, and who knows what will follow.

Friday night, and I’m in my bedroom. It’s eleven thirty and, through the thin walls, Si and Nat are at it again, doing more for Anglo-French relations than Concorde, hypermarkets and Julian Barnes combined. I’ve put my headphones on, to drown it out, but when I close my eyes all I can see is flesh.

But it’s not just sex. It isn’t. No, no, I’m not being dirty. Not like when mum caught me in the bathroom, caught me with the magazine. And she made me scrub with the pumice stone: made me scrub my hands and… no, that’s the past. I don’t want to remember it.

Saturday

No call again. I went out for a walk, up towards the college. I wasn’t sure if Siobhan teaches there at the weekend; thought I might bump into her. I didn’t.

When I got home, I knocked on Simon’s door.

‘Enter at your own risk.’

I went in. The room stank of dope and sex. No sign of Natalie. Simon was on his iMac, looking at porn on the Web. The girl on the screen looked very young; I had to look away.

‘Did anyone call for me?’ I asked.

He reached for his cigarettes and lit up.

‘Yeah… actually, some chick did ring.’

‘What? When?’

‘Yesterday afternoon when you were at work.’

‘What did she say?’

He grinned. ‘She asked if I wanted to save money on my gas bill.’

‘You git.’

‘She was nice, actually. Maybe I could have fixed you up on a blind date.’ He laughed and coughed simultaneously.

In my mind, I grabbed hold of his stupid, grinning head and shoved it through the screen of his computer. In reality, I just muttered, ‘Arsehole,’ and left the room.

‘Don’t get eggy, Alex,’ he called after me. ‘It was only a joke.’

I came into my room and slammed the door. Then I turned on my own PC, staring at the flickering screen while it booted up, the hard disk grinding away. I could see my reflection in the monitor screen. My hair was all over the place and my eyes looked puffy. I needed a bath.

But if the phone rang while I was in there …

I logged onto Facebook and typed Siobhan’s name into the search bar. There were five Siobhan McGowan’s in the UK, plus some more in Ireland and a page full in the States. Two of them were listed as living in London on the search results. Of those two, one had a picture of a baby as their profile picture; the other had a picture of a cat.

Siobhan doesn’t have a baby – but I remembered her telling us she had a cat when she first introduced herself to the class. I clicked through. Because her privacy settings were preventing me from seeing her full profile, I was only able to see a small amount of information, including the fact that she had 82 friends. Twice as many as me. I scanned the list. None of the others from class were on there.

My mouse cursor hovered over the ‘Add as friend’ button. Should I do it? Why not. After all, we were friends, weren’t we? Certainly better friends than half of the people I have listed as friends, most of whom are colleagues or people I haven’t seen or wanted to see since I left school.

I clicked the button then had a tremulous little daydream about how long it would be before I saw the words ‘In a relationship with Alex Parkinson’ appear on her page.

Then I hovered over the ‘Poke’ button, but thought on reflection that was taking things a bit too far.

For the next two hours I refreshed the page repeatedly. I learned that one of my ‘friends’ was bored, that another had a cold, and that one of them had just finished watching the second series of Prison Break on box set. But Siobhan hadn’t yet confirmed me as a friend. I checked Twitter but all I found was an account in the name Siobhan MacGowan with a single tweet that had been made six months ago: ‘So this is Twitter, eh? Wonder what all the fuss is about. Am going to tweet every day.’ Couldn’t be her, unless she’d accidentally added an extra ‘a’ into her surname – unlikely, I’d say.

Monday

I decided this morning it was time to stop moping around. Stop being pathetic and passive. Do something, Alex. I went into work with a plan, albeit a dangerous one. I was going to commit one of the few sackable offences.

I sat down at my desk and put my headset on. My supervisor, Jackie, looked over at me, making sure I wasn’t wasting time before logging on. As we’re consistently being told, Bookjungle is the biggest online retailer in the world – not that you’d know it from our wages – and we have to keep our customers happy by letting them talk to us like we’re shit and not keeping them waiting when they want to tell us this.

I took a couple of calls from people moaning about delays in receiving their books, then did what I’m not supposed to do.

Checking that nobody was watching, I went into what we call the ‘back office’; the part of the computer system that the public can’t see. It’s the database where we keep all our customers’ details. We need to be able to access it in order to answer their queries: we can see their address and all the books and CDs they’ve ordered. But we’re only allowed to look up the details of customers we speak to, and only if we need the information to deal with their enquiry, to prevent you looking up the details of your friends and enemies. To deter us, the system generates random reports, which mean that you have to be able to show the supervisor that you spoke to the customer you were looking up. These reports only capture one in fifty of the customers we look up, but it’s not usually worth taking that chance.

Today, it was worth that chance.

I was quietly confident that Siobhan would be a customer of ours. After all, we are the biggest of our kind, and anyone who reads a lot, like Siobhan must, was more than likely to have ordered a book from us.

I typed her name.

There were 13 Siobhan McGowans on the database. Most were in Ireland, but three were in London, one more than on Facebook. Two of them had North London postcodes. I wasn’t sure which one it would be so I looked at them both. I felt jumpy and sweaty as I hurried to look up the details. The first Siobhan McGowan had bought a few CDs (Norah Jones, Gareth Gates – Jesus wept) and one Delia Smith cookbook. Surely that wasn’t my Siobhan? I’d be very disappointed if it was. I clicked on the second Siobhan and looked at her list of purchases. It was huge. I quickly scanned the list: Ryan Adams, The Cure, Belle and Sebastian, Sting… well, nobody’s perfect. And among the many books was one about teaching creative writing – and Tara Lies Awake by Siobhan McGowan! In fact, she’d ordered her own book several times. I clicked another icon and there were her personal details. Her home and mobile numbers and email address. I copied them, pasted them into an email, then sent it to myself at home, deleting the message from my sent items folder.

I couldn’t concentrate for the rest of the day.

All I could think was, I know where she lives.

Victoria Gardens was a pleasant little street: nice and quiet, curving off the main road, a small Victorian terrace, aptly enough. Close enough to Camden to be hip, and close enough to Hampstead to be respectable and safe. Siobhan lived at number 54. I walked down the odd-numbered side of the street, trying to act casual, trying not to look like I was reading the numbers on the doors. I was having a job in the dim light anyway, but luckily number 54 had a big brass sign on the front door. Siobhan’s house. Just a few feet away.

Close enough to sense her.

After this initial recce, I came home to check there were no phone messages. There weren’t. Then I went on to Google Maps and found the location of her house. It was only a thirty minute walk from my place, if I took the short cuts I carefully worked out.

I couldn’t phone her because she’d want to know where I’d got her number from. Oh, I was snooping on the computers at work, breaking the Data Protection Act, Siobhan. No. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t email her either, for the same reason. But I could walk by her house again, and maybe, just maybe, I’d get lucky. She’d come outside and look surprised and I’d say, ‘How strange, I’ve got a friend who lives down here. I’ve just been to see him. Yes, I’d love a cup of coffee. You lost the card with my number? No, don’t worry, I knew it would be something like that. And I do have a mobile, by the way, it’s just been nicked. Ha ha.’

I had a bath and downed a couple of glasses of Absolut. Not enough to get me pissed; just a bit of Dutch courage. Or Swedish courage, I should say.

It was nearly nine by the time I had enough Swedish courage to return to Siobhan’s house. It was dark, the sodium orange streetlights illuminating the alleys I cut through. There weren’t many people around: a few dog walkers, a bunch of teenage boys and girls hanging out by the Lock, buckling under the weight of their facial jewellery. I walked past them and on towards Hampstead.

When I got to number 54, I didn’t stop – just walked straight by, glancing to my right. The lights were off downstairs, but there was a light on in the first floor front room which I assumed was the bedroom: not a bright light, maybe a lamp, or candles. It was just before ten – too early for her to be in bed, surely?

I walked to the end of the road then back, again sticking to the odd-numbered side. I lit a cigarette. I wasn’t sure what to do. I couldn’t keep walking up and down, could I? I felt sick. Should I go and knock on the door? No, of course not. What excuse would I give? There were none.

I thought it would be okay to walk by one more time. I felt like there were hundreds of little butterflies going crazy inside me; a thousand newborn spiders wriggling in my stomach.

I was about five houses down from Siobhan’s when her downstairs light came on. Very quickly afterwards, the front door opened.

I ducked behind a car before anyone emerged. My breathing seemed so loud to me I was worried she might be able to hear it from across the road. But when I risked a glimpse around the car’s bonnet, I saw that the person who emerged wasn’t her. It was a bloke, a big, dark-haired rugger-bugger type. My heart sank.

Then I heard the door shut, and the next thing I knew footsteps were coming straight towards me.

I held my breath, wondering what the hell I should do. But then the footsteps ceased, and a car door opened and closed. The engine revved up and I peered through the window of the car I was crouching behind. I could see him in his car; a huge exhausted-looking man. He gripped the steering wheel and drove off.

I memorised his licence plate number.

And after all the lights had gone off in Siobhan’s house, I came home.