Chapter 43
43
No one bothered to talk to Connor once the table formations dissolved, despite a few inquisitive glances, and he was fine with that. Being unknown came with freedoms, the luxury of lurking.
He liked to think he was a good people-watcher.
His friend Paige once said to him: ‘For a beautiful person you’re unusually good at making yourself invisible, and you know why?’
‘No, but I’m happy with the descriptor,’ Connor said. Paige was gay and often cheerfully told Connor her opinions about him, as non-stakeholder.
‘Because making yourself invisible is to do with lack of ego and curiosity, and not looks. It’s a state of mind.’
Across the room, Connor observed a man in his mid-forties or so, handsome in a ‘trendy geography teacher’ or ‘noir author’ way: black-rimmed glasses, neat features and auburn hair, with goatee beard. What Connor principally picked up on was that this person was staring intensely at Bel. At first Connor thought he might be imagining it, too sensitised to scrutiny because of his and Bel’s shadow life. They had been warned of a network of spies.
Bel was in animated conversation with a woman and two men, telling a story that required her to swing her Prosecco flute around and make emphatic facial expressions. They were beguiled, the Bel Macauley Effect in real time.
She’d done one of her sartorial caterpillar-to-butterfly transformations again. Connor had noticed men noticing her, and Bel not noticing at all. This was something different, however.
Every time Bel moved, this man’s line of sight moved with her. The heaviness of his gaze as he stared at her was like a dog in undergrowth tracking a squirrel.
Eventually the man saw his opportunity and approached her. Connor watched their exchanging opening words in rapt fascination. This man’s manner: smug, confidential, excited. Bel’s demeanour: like someone had thrown a drink in her face.
Her response to him decisively confirmed that Something Was Up. Connor had never seen her like this: her whole posture, completely altered. He was the sole audience for this little tableau, a particular vignette.
Wait! Was this the stalker? From York? The one she’d used as biography and obviously expected Connor to treat as a fiction, except he turned up at their office? Also, wasn’t he from her last paper, so it’d fit with him being at these awards? Oh … Connor was already intrigued and now it was like he’d leaned down and found the key jigsaw puzzle piece on the floor.
Bel looked so hunted in this interaction that it activated a protective instinct. The man put his hand on Bel’s upper arm and she flinched. Connor was baffled, too. Macauley was one of the most forthright people he’d ever met. She had no difficulty standing up for herself. Not in any abrasive way– but she wasn’t a wilting damsel needing rescue, a rare hothouse flower. If someone needed telling to go bum themselves into the middle of next week, she’d gaily do it.
Why did this individual look as if he intimidated her so much? What did he have on her? Had Bel done something so terrible this guy could hold her to ransom? Was the ransom … sexual? One thing Connor was certain of, there’d been some sort of personal entanglement.
He watched as a nervy-looking Bel said something to goatee guy with a bright, fake smile and walked away.
Connor saw Bel move onwards through the rabble decisively. Towards the far end … the exit? She was leaving? Oh, he didn’t like this at all. Not only was the party much less interesting without her, this man being able to chase her out felt all wrong.
It got worse: after glowering at her departure, the man swigged the rest of his drink, set it down and moved with purpose in the direction she’d gone.
He was following her? Was this an agreed pursuit, between two people playing games? You go first, I’ll wait a minute? He felt reasonably sure it wasn’t. On impulse, Connor wove his way through the crowds and followed both of them.
It took him a couple of minutes outside the Town Hall to spot them, a dozen paces away: the distance from the building was exactly as it would be if Bel was fleeing into the night, and goatee guy had intercepted her.
Connor could overhear what he was saying as he drew nearer. Bel’s arms were folded, her expression taut.
‘… Isabel, all I’m asking is you give me an hour of your time. I really don’t think that’s much to ask … Why are you so obstinate about this? What are you scared of?’
Connor took a deep breath. It was never wise to interfere when you didn’t know what you were interfering with, he thought, but here went nothing.
‘Excuse me?’ Connor said, interrupting, startling them both. ‘Sorry to cut in– Bel, there’s someone inside I’d like to introduce you to?’
‘We’re busy,’ the goatee man snapped.
‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ Connor said. He addressed Bel again: ‘All right if I borrow you?’
It was an Ask For Amy: if she wanted this other conversation, it was well within her capabilities to tactfully dismiss Connor.
‘Sure,’ she said, politely obedient, and Connor relaxed a few degrees that he might’ve judged this right.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ the man said, and Connor was surprised at talk this aggressive from someone who looked like he taught Year 7s about oxbow lakes.
‘Is this my replacement?’ the man continued to Bel, who with these words, looked as though she’d mentally teleported far from this place and left her body to deal with it.
‘We’re colleagues,’ Bel replied, voice flat.
‘Our conversation is more important than you, then,’ the man said to Connor. ‘Can you give us some privacy?’
Whoever this was, Connor suspected he’d done something bad enough to justify the smack in the mouth he fancied giving him.
‘I think Bel can decide that,’ Connor said.
‘Isabel,’ the man said, in a beseeching tone, gripping her upper arm.
Without knowing quite what gave him the right, Connor reached out and detached the man’s hand. He then stuck his hand out for Bel’s. She accepted it, stepping forward.
‘ Colleagues? ’ the man repeated, staring down at the hand holding. ‘You know who I am?’ he said to Connor.
‘Are you someone important in northern media?’ Connor said.
‘I’m the one who came before you,’ the man said.
What a weird, possessive remark, and why wasn’t Bel kneeing him in the ball bag for the emphasis on came?
‘Good for you,’ Connor said, eyes widening in a who cares you lunatic way. ‘Enjoy the rest of your evening.’
Connor led Bel through the door, feeling goatee man’s eyes boring on them like lasers throughout. Connor moved his hand to the small of her back and without discussion they went back up the steps and into the throng.
‘Who am I meeting?’ Bel said.
‘Oh, no one. Sorry, I thought you looked like you wanted assistance.’
Bel gave him a wonderstruck look. She slipped her hand back into Connor’s and squeezed, then let go.
‘Thank you for that. Seriously. Thank you, Connor.’
‘No problem,’ Connor said. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Sort of,’ Bel said, sounding as if she might cry.
‘Were you trying to leave?’
‘Mmm-hmm.’
‘But that prick stopped you?’
‘Yup.’
‘Want to leave now with me as escort, and I’ll punch him if he gets in the way?’
‘ Yes, ’ Bel exhaled, smiling. She still looked powerfully miserable, dependent on Connor’s direction: it was so unlike her, it was almost disorientating.
‘Follow me,’ Connor said, decisively. He was enjoying being heroic-protector, though he didn’t like to admit it. He felt like she might faint and if so, he would scoop her up and carry her out in his arms.
They did a small circuit of the room and then looped back to the exit, Connor cutting sharp left to avoid goatee guy if he was still hanging around outside, but he suspected that they’d shaken him off by him following them back in, and their walking in a circle.
In the muggy evening air, Connor said: ‘Taxi rank’s round here I think?’ and Bel nodded, still uncharacteristically meek.
Connor was going to hand her into the Hackney cab like some sort of Disney prince with a horse and carriage, and instead he found he couldn’t let her go, either.
‘Fancy a nightcap?’ he said, braced for her to make a ‘sorry, I’m tired’ excuse to be the fuck away from men in dinner suits angling for her attention.
‘That’d be great, actually,’ she said.
Connor felt a rush of joy that he told himself was the relief of being accepted when you feared you were being annoying.
‘Where to?’ the driver asked, as Connor slid the door shut.
‘The Edinburgh Castle pub?’ Bel said, to a nod from Connor.
As the taxi stop-start picked its way through busy streets, Bel said: ‘The Mayor asked to meet me, I don’t know if you saw. He loves my podcast.’
‘Really?’ Connor said. They both cast eyes at the driver, indicating to each other this exchange would stay anodyne.
‘Real fan of investigative journalism,’ Bel said. ‘Made me feel like I was the only person in the room. That’s some “rizz”. The funny thing was, he was telling me he was my fan and I felt I was recruited into being his fan.’
‘Huh. Good to know he likes investigative journalism,’ Connor said.
‘Right?’ Bel said. ‘He praised my likeability. Little does he know I’m going to get more likeable still.’
She held onto the grab handle as the taxi took a sharp corner and grinned.
There was the Bel he knew, so what on earth had happened just now?
Connor realised he was dying to find out who Goatee Shit was. He’d never really thought about Bel’s love life beyond that half-arsed digital stalking of her other ex, but he vaguely imagined a trail of broken hearts.
Bel was the kind of woman that men thought half of their music collection was about.