(But later, just
as we're turning the corner into my road I'm beginning to panic about the
pain and difficulty of the impending conversation, I see a woman on her
own, Saturday-night-smart, off to meet somebody somewhere, friends, or
a lover. And when I was living with Laura, missed . . . what? Maybe I missed
somebody travelling on a bus or tube or cab, going out o f their way, to
meet me, maybe dressed up a little, maybe wearing more make-up than usual,
maybe even slightly nervous; when I was younger, the knowledge that I was
responsible for any of this, even the bus ride, made me feel pathetically
grateful. When you're with someone permanently, you don't get that: if
Laura wanted to see me, she only had to turn her head, or walk from the
bathroom to the bed room, and she never bothered to dress up for the trip.
And when she came home, she came home because she lived in my flat, not
because we were lovers, and when we went out, she sometimes dressed up
and sometimes didn't, depending on where we were going, but again, it was
nothing whatsoever to do with me. Anyway, all this is by way of saying
that the woman I saw out of the cab window inspired me and consoled me,
momentarily: maybe I am not too old to provoke a trip from one part of
London to another, and if I ever do have another date, and I arrange to
meet that date in, say, Islington, and she has to come all the way from
Stoke Newington, a journey of some three to four miles, I will thank her
from the bottom of my wretched thirty-five year-old heart)
an old
memory of initial connection:
the answer to everything
- all your questions answered:
what's next:
Silence. I don't know what
to say. There are loads of things I want to ask, but they are all
questions I don't really want answered: when did you start seeing Ian,
and was is because of the - you know - the ceiling-noise thing, and is
it better (What? she'd ask; Everything, I'd say), and is this really definitely
it, or just some sort of phase, and - this is how feeble I'm becoming -
have you missed me at all even one bit, do you love me, do you love him,
do you want to end up with him, do you want to have babies with him, and
is it better, is it better, IS IT BETTER?
