Chapter 26
26
‘I thought you weren’t risking Sunday seshes with me?’ Shilpa said. They had seen off roast beef with horseradish cream and salted caramel choux buns in the Gothy Victorian splendour of The Edinburgh Castle pub’s first-floor restaurant. They were now nursing large red wines in its downstairs snug, the unseasonal ‘thick velvet curtains and pillar candles on saucers’ décor lighting them like a séance.
‘That was before I spent a Saturday night with Connor Adams,’ Bel replied, satisfied they couldn’t be overheard.
Today she was in a Bel outfit of billowy black linen strappy maxi sundress over striped T-shirt, and her Doc Martens sandals. She wished she’d been dressed as herself for their confrontation, not a dolly bird.
‘He might’ve felt like an idiot and externalised it!’ Shilpa said, having earlier heard of his wrongdoing and revealed herself as a Free Connor campaigner. (‘Your passion for justice for people with strong jawlines is truly inspiring,’ Bel said. ‘Shilpa Gupta QC.’ ‘I just hate to see wrongful convictions. Imagine him sent inside, banged up …’ Shilpa made a rabbit face. ‘STOP,’ Bel said.)
‘Whatever he felt, there was no excuse for turning on me like that. Plus, I know his getting dragged into it was my fault, but doing what he did was about the worst outcome for me possible.’
Which reminded Bel of the unhinged promises she’d gaily made to Amber about having her over for a couples’ dinner. Hopes that Amber might have forgotten in the party whirl were dashed by a Is that on, should Rick and I bring anything? message earlier today. To which Bel responded: just your beautiful selves and maybe a bottle of red at 7.00 p.m.!
In terms of following any plan, she was joyriding a Cessna plane in an electrical storm at night, playing Nine Inch Nails and swigging from a bottle of Wild Turkey.
She didn’t even have a ‘boyfriend’ to produce any more. She recalled the secret shivery joy of his embrace. Ugh. Who was that guy? To think she’d felt supported by Connor. She’d had more than enough of men pretending to be one thing and turning into another. Apart from anything else, it really attacked her belief she could read people.
‘Do you think Ant will try to come to your office again?’ Shilpa said, unknowingly picking up on her thoughts. ‘What is the “play games back” threat going to mean? Are you SURE you can’t tell York CID?’
‘I don’t think they’ll intervene on florid emails,’ Bel said. ‘And no. He won’t come back, he wouldn’t risk Aaron stopping him like that again. He’d think it was undignified, he’s always drowning in pride. I have no idea what he thinks he can do to me. Maybe it’s barring me from his office. I’ve got to hold my nerve, I guess. The whole point of him saying it is for him to live rent free in my mind.’
Shilpa made a face of revolted disbelief.
Bel again pondered the alternative: a message or a phone call where she explained to Anthony, in articulate terms, how much this upset her, and what a repugnant creep he was being. When she had tried this, it had bounced like rubber arrows off the ten-storey stone wall of Anthony’s towering self-image as a Nice Guy, and his unshakeable conviction she was in love with him. Telling him different was converted into reinforcing this delusion, so arguing with him was like feeding kibble to a kibble-powered gremlin.
‘You know what? I knew he was completely wrong for you from the start,’ Shilpa said. ‘ When you said– He can be quite quiet and serious, he is very sensitive and might take a joke the wrong way. You should be able to introduce your friends to your partner and know they’ll “get” them because you do. And vice versa. That’s part of how you know they’re the one– you can’t wait.’ Shilpa frowned, no doubt recalling Rufus. ‘ One of the ones.’
‘Oh God, did I say that?’ Bel said. She had mentally scrubbed the memory of the frenetic upswing phase where she believed she was going to live happily ever after as Mrs Anthony. What she in fact needed was psychotherapy, Kalms, a hot bath with a romance novel and an assertive conversation with Tim.
‘Yeah. It made me think that if you have to make lots of excuses for how they might behave, they’re definitely not the one.’
‘Amen to that, sister.’
‘Is he stopping you being on dating apps? He’s searching for you on them, isn’t he?’
Bel nodded: she was sure he was.
‘Dating apps are stopping me being on dating apps but yes, it’s a headache for the future because I am sure my seeing anyone else would set him off.’
‘How can he think he’s a good person and not a walking workplace misconduct with a stupid goatee?’
‘From my experience of life so far, I think everyone thinks they have reasons to do what they do. Bad people are always other people. Even serial killers think they’re misunderstood shock tactic campaigners.’
Bel walked back to her apartment arm in arm with Shilpa, making a mental note that if they were seen, she’d need to say they resolved Cancun.
They decided on large mugs of builder’s tea and a comfort watch of Clueless , taking up horizontal positions on the couches, legs hooked over arm rests.
‘Paul Rudd completely takes the curse off the whole “is her ex-stepbrother thing”, doesn’t he?’ Shilpa sighed. ‘I would totally inbreed with him.’
‘Perhaps I should’ve gone that route with Connor’s “sister” on his phone.’
‘Wait! You don’t think that was why he kicked off; he has a dead sister?!’ Shilpa said.
‘I very much hope not,’ Bel grimaced, ‘But even if he does, he could’ve said so?’
What made her fearful this was right, was that there was something about the heat of Connor’s reaction, his sense of injury, that she was missing. It could simply be protectiveness of his girlfriend?
During Cher’s date with Christian, the doorbell rang. They exchanged a worried look. No deliveries on a Sunday afternoon.
‘Oh, if that’s Anthony, I am going to DEAL,’ Shilpa said, sitting up like a meerkat.
‘He doesn’t have my address,’ Bel said in a hush, though as she said it, she wondered. She paused the film, stood up and patted Shilpa’s leg to indicate: ‘stay there’.
The sitting room area couldn’t be seen from the doorway, the kitchen island was in the way.
‘Lie low. Only intervene if it is Anthony and he maces me or something.’
She crossed the apartment and looked through the spyhole.
‘Oh, seriously. I don’t need any more of your crap,’ Bel said, after wrenching the door open to him, as much in tense embarrassment and edginess as aggression.