Читать книгу Execution Plan - Patrick Thompson - Страница 15

The next night she took me to Aberystwyth to see a film. I was expecting something French and gloomy, but she chose a noisy extravaganza with car chases and guns. She seemed to be watching me as much as the film. Perhaps it was because she was a psychology student, I thought. On the way back to Borth on the night bus, she edged closer to me across the seat.

‘Do you think people always have hidden depths?’ she asked. ‘Or is what you see what you get?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I think you’ve got depths,’ she said. She visibly came to a decision and kissed me, as though she’d been wondering whether to or not. I’d already reached the same decision and left her to it.

We had a brief affair, and ended up as friends. That’s as good as it gets, I think. Anything longer-term is based on a different emotion. It’s still called love, but it’s another flavour. Our little affair was all over in a month.

It was obvious early on that we wanted different things from the relationship. I wanted everything. I saw her and became happy.

She, on the other hand, saw some potential in me. She saw something under the surface. She could see a possible me, and it was him that she was after. He stayed hidden, however. She liked me, but not as much as she liked the version of me that I failed to become.

She began to cool. I attempted to woo her. It wasn’t something I had a talent for.

I tried to write poems for her, but they came out lifeless. I couldn’t get words to do anything good. We’d hold hands and walk the four-mile round trip to Borth and back. We slept together in my tiny student bed. I would find her crying from time to time. By the third week, that was all she was doing.

She told me she was sorry, she’d like to be friends.

We were friends. I didn’t have an easy time with that. But hope springs eternal, the vicious little bastard.