Читать книгу Contacts - Mark Watson - Страница 11

Michaela Adler’s phone was in her handbag. The incoming text lit the whole interior of the bag for a second, like a torch in a tent, but she didn’t read it straight away. I need to turn off some of my notifications, she told herself, once again. All her chat threads, Facebook, the pushy running app which still piped up every couple of days – ‘let’s go run! The best time is right now!’ Phillip didn’t like it when she was glancing at it all the time. Even though it was very often gallery business. And even though, as she liked to point out, ‘People do tend to do things by text sometimes, because it’s not 1995.’

Phillip was only four years older than her, just like James had been, but he enjoyed his caricature as a grumpy old man; played up to it with a certain glee. He feigned ignorance of Justin Bieber’s life and work, however many times the name came up; he went to the local government office to register to vote, even though you could do it in five minutes on the internet. He visited Facebook no more than once a week, which in this day and age meant you might as well be living on a desert island.

In this place, they probably were the oldest people. Phillip with his thick-rimmed Tom Ford specs slightly misted over in the warmth of the club. Michaela in a dress she would describe as pretty revealing, but which by the standards of the 18-year-olds here might as well be a spacesuit.

The place had been a power plant before the Wall came down. The mezzanine was lit by bare bulbs that poked out on wires between the exposed girders of the ceiling. Michaela and Phillip often came here for late drinks. The throb of music from the floor below always made them grateful they didn’t have to dance, didn’t have to ‘go out’, try to meet someone. When they finally did go home they would joke about how they’d outlasted all the teenagers, who came out full of talk but by one in the morning were slumped in alleys outside, texting, sobbing, vomiting.

Maybe this would have to stop if Michaela got pregnant. When she got pregnant. But this was a good consolation prize for now. There was time. Occasionally she did get scared that there wasn’t as much time as there should be. People on the internet told horror stories about what happened if you left it past 35. If you had to have treatments. But, as Phillip said, ‘Everything is horror stories on the internet. Remember when you googled the pain in your side, it looked for half an hour like cancer, but it turns out you just had a pain in your side.’

She’d never met anyone whose opinion she deferred to so automatically, wanted to defer to. When they came out of a film she waited to hear what he thought, and tinkered with her own review automatically. If there was a weird noise in the night, she would nudge him awake just so he could say it was nothing, it was just the building. None of this was very feminist, probably, but in all her previous relationships – including with James – she’d always been the one to take the lead. It was tiring, being that person. It had been a fun couple of years on the other side of it. Couple of years and counting.

Of course, she hadn’t been able to articulate all this to James when she left him for Phillip. The conversation, the horrible bombshell dropped over a dinner: it had all been a mess. Her explanation had been a mess – it’s not that he’s better than you, I just need to see what’s out there, I can’t live not knowing. Her face had been a mess, too – mascara all over it like a kid’s crayon strokes. He hadn’t known how to react because she hardly knew what she was saying. Her reasons for running away to Phillip had only become clear months after the event. In fact, they were still becoming clear now. But if she had to describe what she loved about him in one sentence, it would be something to do with this – with the way they never ran out of stuff to talk about; they just saw five new conversational doors with every one they walked through. It was like a feast where, the more you ate, the more dishes reappeared. Mum used to tell her a Dominican folk tale which went something like that, though she couldn’t remember the moral.

Tonight, they had been talking about a friend with an online gambling problem so bad that there was talk of a plan to confront him for his own good. He’d just lost €2,000 in five seconds by betting online on a netball match which he wasn’t even watching. They’d also touched briefly on the Brexit debacle. Whether it would ever be sorted out or, as Phillip put it in his wiry voice, ‘the same people will be arguing the shit out of it until we all die from the temperature anyway’. In the last few minutes they’d been discussing a new exhibition at the gallery called ‘Denim World’, which featured nothing but a hundred pairs of jeans, worn by people in a hundred different countries. As with most work of this kind, Michaela wasn’t really sure whether it was interesting, or absolute horseshit, but as usual she’d written a press release which went big on the former.

It was twenty minutes after James sent the text that his former girlfriend glanced down to see the phone light up again in the bag, as it kept doing at intervals if you ignored a text – as if to say excuse me, I thought we were a team. She pulled the phone out, still only half-curious.

The sight of James’s number was a real surprise. Any interactions between them these days – minor queries about the upkeep of the flat – were conducted by email, and with no discussion of anything other than the matter in hand. She’d even officially deleted his number, because of a commitment to Phillip that this would be a fresh start for both of them. All the same, she naturally recognized those last three digits: 997. There was the satisfaction of having been thought of, and a little intrigue. Then she read the words and went cold.

‘I’ll just, I need to …’ she said, rising a little too quickly. Phillip nodded, taking a final contented sip of his beer. As she headed down the spiral staircase, he was inspecting the brickwork, etched here and there with the names of old lovers.

The toilet stalls were all taken and there was a queue, and a soundscape familiar to Michaela even though it wasn’t her language: high, urgent chatter, amped-up Friday-night emotion, over the shadow of the music from outside. She propped herself against a sink and read the message again.

I’ve decided to end my life. I’m fine. The understatement of it was so like him, in a way. But the actual sentiments couldn’t be right, couldn’t be real. He couldn’t have written this – she checked – almost half an hour ago, almost half a fucking hour. She pictured his round, earnest face, the curly fringe he was always toying with, to no real effect. She jabbed at the green icon to call his number.

The person she had called was not available. What did that mean? Where was ‘the person’, she asked herself, adrenalin hammering its way down her neural pathways. Was the phone at the bottom of a ravine with him? Was it wedged in his pocket in some hotel room as he hung from …?

No, this was stupid. Michaela was good in these situations; at least she thought she was. She might not be well organized, she might once have called the police to break her into her house when the keys were in her bra all along, but she believed in herself when real crises arrived. She was a go-to for panicky friends; she could do CPR and sometimes fantasized about becoming a hero by carrying it out, normally on the film star Tom Hanks. She’d even put ‘crisis management’ as a skill on her job application to the gallery. During the interview it had, sure enough, come up. They asked her what she’d do if fire damaged an exhibit the night before opening. ‘It’s a stupid question,’ Phillip had scoffed, ‘how often do they think that comes up? Why not ask what happens if a dinosaur gets in?’

Anyway, this was likely not a real crisis. He didn’t mean it. It was some sort of a stunt, or a drunken gesture.

Michaela’s stomach told her she didn’t believe herself. James never really got drunk, and it was hard to think of someone less likely to attempt a ‘stunt’. James was not a stuntman; he was a ponderer. He’d once caused a Monopoly game to be abandoned by deliberating so long over a hotel purchase that their guests went home.

‘Do you think we ruined Kath’s night?’ Michaela had asked as they washed up together afterwards.

‘She ruined her own night,’ said James, as they fought a tug-of-war over the tea towel. ‘How can she be married to someone who puts houses down without any sort of strategy?’

And two years later, when she marvelled over his shoulder at a spreadsheet showing that their new company had made a monthly profit for the first time, despite all her night terrors, he turned and grinned. ‘See? There’s no better way of choosing a partner than Monopoly skill. Never mind looks or being slim, or. You know. Having good one-liners at a party. No: Monopoly, clean driving licence. It’s all you need.’

It didn’t seem possible that the same person who’d spoken those words was the person making dire threats by text, threats to himself. She pressed green to call again. The recorded message repeated itself. She brought the phone down hard on the dirty-white edge of the sink. The petulance of it surprised her. It crossed Michaela’s mind that she was more pissed than she’d thought. She eyed herself uneasily in the mirror and moved aside to let a Goth girl wash her hands.

There was no point in panicking, she told herself again. Her legs felt leaden, as if the staircase was ten times as long as it had been on the way down. The reason it went to voicemail was that someone else was already talking him down. Yes. That was it; that made sense. Karl would be on it. Or Sally. Michaela gritted her teeth at the memory of the sister. Well. Someone. Someone would be dealing with this.

Phillip had ordered more beers and was already well into his. James would never have done that. He would have ordered the drinks, yes, but he would never start without someone else. He could be at a banquet in the last days of the Roman Empire and he still wouldn’t have touched so much as a dormouse until everyone was served. It was something she liked about him, one of the things she noticed first. An old-fashioned gentleman, her mum had said.

‘What’s up?’ asked Phillip.

‘Nothing.’

‘Clearly it’s not nothing.’

She hated it almost as much as she liked it, the ease with which Phillip could read her.

‘I just had … I had a weird message. From … James.’

Phillip raised his thick eyebrows. There was no reproach in the look – more a sort of quizzical amusement – and you would have to know Phillip as well as she did to realize that he was slightly hurt.

‘I thought that you didn’t …’

‘I don’t have his number. Any more. I can’t stop him having mine, can I? It wasn’t even to me. It was to … well, it looks like everyone.’

Her boyfriend’s eyes went rapidly over the text. It was easy to forget that English wasn’t his first language. She’d worked hard even to get to her passable level of German, and almost everyone at the gallery spoke English with a proficiency which made that effort seem pointless. They sprinkled English phrases into their conversation: online. Hanging out. Sometimes when Michaela was around, they spoke in English to each other, as if it was such a minor adjustment it wasn’t even worth mentioning. Last week her boss Anneka had used the English phrase cognitive dissonance in a meeting, and nobody flinched; Michaela had had to google it in the toilet later.

Phillip looked up from the phone with an expression whose rancour was a nasty surprise to her. It was such a handsome face, though, that even scowling suited him. He looked like a king disappointed with his dinner.

‘That is absolutely a dick thing to do,’ said Phillip. ‘That’s not fine.’

‘I know, but …’

‘He needs to grow up instead of sending something like this for attention.’

‘But I’m … that’s why I’m worried. I don’t think that’s the sort of thing he’d do, at all. I’m worried he might mean it.’

‘He doesn’t mean it,’ said Phillip, handing back the phone.

‘He might mean it. He isn’t the type to … he’s not melodramatic at all.’

Phillip blinked. Again, he didn’t have to say anything. Why are you defending your ex? his face asked. Most people in his position would ask the same, she supposed. Michaela was even wondering it herself, and perhaps that was what James would want. So maybe it was true; maybe it was manipulative of him to be doing this. She wondered fleetingly what James looked like these days; whether he had put all the weight back on by now.

‘Well, do you want to call him?’ asked Phillip.

Michaela moistened her lips with her tongue. Her throat felt dry. Below, there was a gap in the music; then a thudding beat came in, louder than anything before, and there were faint whoops from the dance floor. She could see James in the doorway for a second, as she had left him in the doorway of the old flat, shoulders drooping, and head held between his big hands. Her feeling of guilt and relief as she walked away.

‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘He’ll be fine, I’m sure.’