CHAPTER 3
3
R EBECCA AND I MET in the rather unromantic setting of a chain coffee shop in the heart of England where, due to the lack of available tables, we found ourselves seated across from each other. I couldn’t stop myself from glancing at her repeatedly, then looking away before she could notice me and object.
‘You keep staring,’ she said eventually, barely looking up from her laptop, and I recognized the slight tinge of an Irish accent in her voice.
‘Sorry,’ I replied, blushing a little. There was no other way to put it, so I decided to go with the truth. ‘It’s just … how shall I put this? You’re incredibly beautiful.’
Her eyes opened wide, perhaps in surprise that I would say something so unflinchingly intimate, and her hesitation gave me time to make my opening gambit.
‘If I can guess your name,’ I asked, ‘will you let me buy you a drink?’
She frowned now, cocking her head to one side as if to decide whether I was a normal person or potentially deranged.
‘We haven’t met before, have we?’ she asked, and I shook my head. ‘But you think you can guess my name.’
‘I’m absolutely certain of it.’
‘All right, then,’ she said, reaching across and offering her hand, which I shook. The skin of her palm was soft, but I could feel slight callouses on her fingertips. I was this close to asking her how long she’d been playing guitar but worried I might start to sound like a would-be Sherlock Holmes. ‘Deal. And if you get it wrong, what do I get?’
‘The question’s irrelevant,’ I told her. ‘Your name’s Rebecca.’
She sat back in her chair and stared at me, then looked down at the table, which held a notebook, a pen and her laptop, but nothing with her name written on it.
‘It is,’ she agreed.
‘So there’s a pub I like across the way,’ I told her, smiling. ‘A deal’s a deal, after all. You can’t renege.’
Ten minutes later we were seated in a quiet booth with drinks before us.
‘So are you some kind of magician?’ she asked. ‘Like Harry Potter?’
‘Harry wasn’t a magician,’ I said. ‘He was a wizard. Totally different career path.’
‘Then how—’
‘The Wi-Fi wasn’t working in the coffee shop,’ I explained. ‘So I connected to a hotspot on my phone. There were only three others available: Rebecca’s iPhone, Matt’s iPhone and Toby’s Android. And I was pretty sure you weren’t Matt or Toby.’
‘Clever,’ she said. ‘I suppose you’d better tell me your name, then.’
‘You don’t want to guess?’
‘You look like a Ryan.’
‘Is that a compliment?’
‘Ryan Reynolds. Ryan Gosling. Ryan Philippe. I mean, it’s hardly an insult. It’s not like I called you Donald.’
‘Aaron,’ I told her, shuddering slightly. ‘Aaron Umber.’
We flirted some more and, when the conversation grew more serious, she told me that she was from Dublin, although she hadn’t lived there in a few years, while I confessed that I’d never set foot outside my hometown, except for a brief trip to Edinburgh with my parents when I was twelve. She seemed surprised that I was attending medical school in the same city in which I’d grown up.
‘I feel safe here,’ I explained, a strange admission, considering it was only a few miles from where we were sitting that I’d experienced the trauma that had caused me so much damage. ‘And you? What brought you here?’
‘Love,’ she replied with a shrug. ‘I followed a boy. It didn’t work out. He’s backpacking somewhere around South America now, last I heard. He left, I stayed.’
‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘Don’t be. Turns out I feel safe here too.’
‘And that’s important to you?’
‘Oh, it’s the most important thing in the world.’
Somehow, within a few days, we were officially dating. The first girlfriend I had ever had. I fell in love quickly, partly because I felt genuinely happy in her company and partly because I was so sexually inexperienced that I didn’t know how to control my feelings. At the time, I was on rotation with Dr Freya Petrus in the burns unit of the local hospital, and the pressure of working under her, along with witnessing the trauma of patients who had suffered terrible life-changing injuries, was proving pretty stressful. Rebecca’s generally calm nature soothed me.
‘Are you a good swimmer?’ she asked one evening, a question that seemed curiously random to me.
‘I’m a terrible swimmer,’ I admitted. ‘In pools, I always stay in the shallow end. I need to feel the ground beneath my feet. I’ve never even been in the sea.’
‘I’m glad,’ she said.
‘Glad that I’ve never been in the sea?’
‘Glad that you’re not a swimmer.’
‘All right,’ I said, uncertain why that might be the case.
Which was when she told me about her father, Brendan. About the things he had done, not to her, but to her sister and to others. About the effect this had had on her life and the troubled relationship she bore with her mother ever since the facts of the case had been revealed.
In turn, I told her about Freya. About what took place when I was fourteen. Naturally, these were emotional conversations, but what we didn’t do, and what we should have done, was talk about how both these experiences had affected who we were as a couple, because, from the start, sex was a problem. In our first six months together, we only made love a few times, deferring to chaste hugs, and something – shyness, embarrassment, self-loathing – made us too nervous to discuss the foundations of such inhibition.
During our second year together, we moved to London, where Rebecca continued her training to become a pilot while I qualified as a child psychologist. Conferences and symposia were held regularly around the country, and it was at one of these, in Birmingham, that I found my commitment to her challenged for the first time.
I had gone to a bar with a fellow student, but he’d hooked up with another attendee, leaving me on my own. I had no desire to return to the hotel so remained there, drinking alone. A young woman approached and sat down opposite me, saying that she’d spent the last thirty minutes hoping my name was Justin.
‘Why’s that?’ I asked.
‘Because I’ve been stood up by a guy called Justin,’ she explained. ‘A Tinder date. So I’ve been sitting over there feeling sorry for myself and wishing you were him. Actually, you’re better-looking anyway.’
I didn’t quite know what to say. I wasn’t used to compliments.
‘Have you been stood up too?’ she asked.
‘Sort of. I was out with a friend, but he met a girl, so he ditched me.’
‘He just left you on your own?’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘Yes, you do. I’ve been watching you. You look lonely.’
‘Well, I’m a solitary person for the most part.’
‘Solitary people bring books with them when they go for a drink. You’re empty-handed.’
A waitress came over, and this seemed like the moment when we would either say goodbye or decide to have a drink together. She waited expectantly and, torn between reluctance and desire, I asked whether she would like to join me.
Over the next hour she told me stories of her life while asking very little about mine, and I couldn’t decide whether this was a relief or simply narcissistic on her part. Her name was Kylie, she said, named for the singer, her parents being obsessive fans who’d met at one of her concerts. She was twenty-four years old and worked as a receptionist at a talent agency that represented well-known actors, writers and musicians. When she told me the names of some of the people who crossed her path on a daily basis, she did so without any sense that she was name-dropping, speaking of them with neither affection nor contempt and sharing no gossipy stories. She didn’t want to stay there for ever, she added. She was saving to buy a mobile dog-grooming van in the hope that she would one day own an entire fleet.
‘I love dogs,’ she told me. ‘So much more than I love people.’
‘Most people do.’
‘I have a five-year plan and—’
A startled expression crossed her face, and she turned her head a little to the right, covering it with her hand.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
‘It’s him,’ she whispered. ‘It’s Justin.’
I glanced across the room and saw a young man standing there, looking around, clearly searching for someone. He appeared harried and sweaty, as if he’d been running. I didn’t have much sympathy for him. He was almost an hour late, after all.
‘If you want to go––’ I began, but she shook her head.
‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘He had his chance. And I’m here with you now.’
I smiled. Talking to a random girl in a pub excited me. Flirting. Seeing where things might go. The manner in which, once in a while, one of us would reach over to touch the other’s hand to emphasize a point we were making, leaving it there for a little longer than necessary, skin touching skin.
‘Tell me when he’s gone,’ she said, and I kept an eye on the hapless Justin while trying not to make my interest too obvious. He took his phone from his pocket and started tapping away.
‘Quick, put your phone on silent,’ I told her, and she did so just before it could ring. She ignored it and, throwing his arms in the air as if none of this was his fault, he gave up and left.
‘That’ll teach him,’ she said, watching as he departed. ‘You only get one chance with me.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind. Me, I’m never late for anything. If I’m not exactly where I’m supposed to be when I’m supposed to be there, then the chances are I’m dead.’
‘That’s cheerful,’ she said, lifting her glass and clinking it against mine.
We spent the next hour chatting about the usual things – books we’d read, movies we’d watched, places we’d like to visit – and then:
‘So you probably have a girlfriend, right?’ she asked, and I was uncertain how to respond. Yes, I had a girlfriend. A girlfriend of two years. But a girlfriend who never touched me and who I was afraid to touch. I considered saying that my relationship status was complicated but couldn’t bear the sound of the cliché.
‘There is someone,’ I admitted cautiously. ‘But I’m not entirely sure what we are to each other.’
‘Do you love her?’
No point in lying.
‘I do,’ I said. Because I did.
Beneath the table, her leg stretched out, and when her right foot – bare, removed from her high heel – brushed against my calf, I knew that I was powerless. I wanted sex. Not just for the act itself but because I wanted to behave as other men my age behaved. I wanted to feel normal.
We drank some more, then went to another bar. Then to a club, where we danced. I think I surprised her by being quite good at it.
‘Not just a pretty face,’ I told her when she commented on this, enjoying this different version of Aaron that I was creating for her benefit. A confident Aaron. A desirable Aaron. A sexy Aaron.
We kissed, and during that kiss, the song changed, ‘ Can’t Get You Out of My Head ’ pounding insistently through the speakers, everyone on the dance floor bursting into a spontaneous ‘ La La La, La-La-La-La-La’ . Kylie pulled away, looking at me in amusement, and asked whether I’d asked the DJ to play it. I insisted that I hadn’t, pointing out that I hadn’t left her side since we’d arrived. But I had, of course. I’d gone to the bathroom. And I’d requested it on the way back.
We danced some more, kissed some more, and then, at last, I glanced at my watch. Almost 3 a.m. The club would be closing soon.
‘It’s late,’ I said.
‘Time for bed.’
I nodded, looking around, uncertain what to do. Having missed out on all the rites of passage that train people how to behave in such moments, I felt absurdly anxious. In life, I was seen as a successful, confident young man. But emotionally, I was still a stunted fourteen-year-old boy.
‘You can come home with me if you want,’ she said.
An image of Rebecca came into my mind. My feelings for her were deep and true. I loved her, I wanted her, I longed for her. But without sex, what were we to each other, really? And so I gave in. We hailed a taxi. In the back seat, we kissed some more. I was conscious of the driver, who was tactfully ignoring us, probably accustomed to such late-night shenanigans, but didn’t like the idea of being observed in such an intimate moment, so I pulled back, preferring to look into her eyes and talk quietly, stroking her cheek with my thumb.
When we reached her flat, my excitement was equalled only by my apprehension. I wrapped my arms around her, enjoying the curve of her back beneath my hands. I grew excited by the deep sigh that escaped her lips when I placed my fingers beneath her blouse to stroke her skin. It occurred to me that I had never given Rebecca an orgasm and that for so long all of my own had been self-induced. Another thing we had never spoken of. I was so stirred by Kylie’s arousal that I needed to pull back for a moment.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘Fine,’ I said. I’m normal , I told myself. I’m normal.
‘You look like a fifteen-year-old who’s about to lose his virginity.’
Normal. Normal. Normal.
‘Slow down,’ she said when I reached for her again. ‘Shall we have a drink first? A nightcap?’
‘Sure,’ I said, a little relieved as she made her way towards the kitchen.
‘What would you like? I have wine, beer. I might have some whisky somewhere if—’
‘Maybe just a soft drink? I’ve probably had enough alcohol for one night.’
When she came back, she turned off the main light so only a table lamp illuminated the room with its soft glow. ‘Is a Coke OK?’
I nodded and she handed the ice-cold can to me. An image of Rebecca ran through my mind, as did the certainty that if I went through with this, I would surely repeat this behaviour time and again in the future. I would become a man that I didn’t want to be. A liar. A cheat. A serial betrayer. But I felt such strong desire that I was lost.
And then I opened the can.
It must have been shaken somewhere along the way because it immediately exploded, Coke drenching my top.
‘Oh shit!’ she said. ‘Sorry!’ I put the can down and looked at my shirt, now stained and sticky, pulling it away from my skin.
‘I can help you with that,’ she whispered, reaching forward to undo the buttons and, in that moment, I was taken back nine years, to Freya’s apartment, a wide-eyed schoolboy uncertain what to do as she told me that I couldn’t possibly go home with my uniform in such a state. That I should take it off and she’d run it through the washer-dryer for me.
Won’t take more than an hour, Aaron. In the meantime, you can jump in the shower.
When her fingers touched me, I reared back, stumbling over the side of an armchair.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked, surprised by my behaviour.
‘I’m fine,’ I said, looking around, trying to find the light switch. It was too dark in there. I was frightened. I couldn’t breathe. The flat was too small. I needed to get out.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked as I grabbed my jacket and lurched towards the door. I fumbled with the lock, and she opened it for me, before stepping back in fear. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Did I do something to upset you?’
I shook my head, unable to answer, and ran down the staircase, only glancing back to see her face, bewildered and alarmed.
Not normal.
Broken.
Completely broken.
The following year, on a weekend break to Barcelona, Rebecca and I sat outside a bar off the Ramblas and I asked her to marry me. I expected her to say no. In retrospect, I think I wanted to provoke her into breaking up with me, for her to recognize that the three years we’d spent together, those wasted, sexless years, had been a mistake but one that could be set right if we separated now. After all, we were both still young enough to start over. To my surprise, however, she agreed without hesitation, and that was it, we were engaged.
We celebrated for the rest of the weekend. With alcohol. With good food. With walks and sightseeing and selfies. But physically, with nothing more than the occasional chaste kiss.
I had gone to Spain with the deliberate intention of proposing, convincing myself that things would improve after we made this commitment. Perhaps I wanted to lock her down, so she wouldn’t leave me and I wouldn’t be alone. A half-life was all I merited, I told myself. I didn’t deserve what came so easily to other men. Who, after all, would want to touch someone as soiled as me?
It would be quite a few years later before the possibility of something more would present itself and I would become overwhelmed by real desire.
Rebecca and I might have met in the most boring place possible, but when I first laid eyes on Furia Flyte, it was in a much more exotic setting.