Chapter 46
46
Connor realised that going through a tough time wasn’t the issue, it was letting it change you permanently. He’d lost sight of how ‘Enduring Hardships Connor’ was a sharper edged, less tolerant character. That Connor went in expecting the worst of everyone, wearing it as his armour.
His job had been a bloody battle, and he and Jen had been locked in a gladiatorial state of mutual enmity. A doom spiral, where whatever lever you pulled, you were going down into the sea. He’d forgotten he was someone else before.
‘Thanks!’ he said, as Bel placed a fresh Chianti in front of him and a dirty Martini in a coupe in front of her place, as she swung herself back onto a stool.
Connor raised his glass in thanks. ‘Martini at this hour, you’re not here to play.’
‘Hell no.’
‘Grotesque epilogue. Go.’
‘OK … Ant, as said, dodges the leaving his wife part, says their son needs him at home for another however many years, and so on. I split with Tim, I apply for other jobs, avoid Anthony like the plague at the office, leave his messages on Read. Anthony turns this “coming to my senses” into a narrative where I ghosted him. I’d toyed with him on the explicit understanding we’d not be together-together straight away and then changed my tune in impatience. I’m the heartless bitch who led him on. Go figure.’
Connor made a face. ‘He sounds somewhat unwell.’
Bel fished the green olive out of her drink and ate it, daintily spitting the stone into a napkin and folding it away. Connor tried not to think about her lovely mouth doing something quite different, and with him, his hands wound in her hair. It gave him a little spasm of want so intense he’d have to park it for examination later. He pictured her with Anthony and felt a spasm of something else, something painful. Jealousy …? No, it must be revulsion, the man didn’t deserve her.
‘I thought Ant was winding me up at first, it was such extreme projection,’ Bel said. ‘It was like arguing with a pigeon. He says that I exploited his compassion, hahaha. That the hotel room was intended for talking only, I mean! Yet I seized his dick. It goes from that bewildering bullshit to really quite obsessive, rambling messages about the grandness of our passion. You give up pushing back on someone that deranged.’
‘Did he really think a woman ten years younger than him, with options, was going to agree to be an Other Woman for however long it took to get his shit together?’
‘I think he’s an obsessive manipulator. First he manipulates me into being my confidante, then agreeing that we’re in love, and ultimately into doing what I did. He was puppeting the sad girl from work so effortlessly. After that, I’m supposed to be manipulated into being his bit on the side. When his manipulation of me fails he gets angry, but he can’t admit that’s why he’s angry. Instead he turns it into: “I don’t like how this makes me feel, and if I don’t like how I’m feeling it must be your fault and your intention.” He’s recast me as this brutal femme fatale. It’s like he’s living inside a story because “Bel realised I wouldn’t leave my wife so she wouldn’t consent to full sex on a semi-regular basis” is too ignominious and, you know, on him.’
‘Didn’t you tell his wife? If you’re single and he isn’t?’
‘No. I thought about it, of course, but what am I going to say? I’ve had a thing with your husband and now he’s hassling me, can you do something about it?’
‘Yikes, yeah.’
‘I’m not ruling it out, though. I’m not ruling out having to report him for harassment. I’ve had dozens of emails from him in the last eight months and I’ve never replied to one.’
‘It was him at the office the other day, wasn’t it?’ Connor said, and Bel nodded.
‘He’s been trying to get my mobile number out of Tim, posing as an old friend from work. I know it sounds daft, given we’ve split up, but honestly, Connor, if he tells Tim I will be in pieces. Tim would be absolutely enraged and broken and it would set off a bomb between our families– his family would move to a full war footing with me and I’m going to Tim’s sister’s wedding soon.’
‘I get it,’ Connor nodded.
‘Then Ant turns up at Deansgate, as you say. I’m worried about the pattern of escalation. Speaking of which, the email about you is here,’ Bel said, checking her phone, and Connor’s jaw dropped.
‘Emailing now?!’ Connor pulled back his sleeve on a Patek Phillippe vintage watch, a gift from Shaun. ‘It’s almost midnight?’
‘Yep,’ Bel scrolled her handset. ‘Do you want an excerpt? They’re all in this mad, melodramatic tone. Shilpa calls them his Batman-villain monologues.’
‘Go on,’ Connor said, eyes wide. ‘This sounds like a bid for a sectioning, to be honest.’
‘ Dear Isabel ,’ Bel read aloud, ‘ It has been devastating to me, since we parted, to discover how vicious you can be and yet I am not too proud to admit that this evening has emotionally demolished me. I assume you and that AI generated matinee idol are involved with each other, despite the claim you are merely “colleagues” as we once were. Do you know how the thought of you with someone else affects me? Do you care in the slightest that I’m lying here, tortured by visions of the two of you together? I wonder often if you know what you do to me. If I visited your apartment now, would he be there? Unlike me, does he get to undress you, to know what it’s like to …’
Bel stopped reading with a sudden gulp mid-sentence, looking up at Connor with evident embarrassment.
‘God, sorry! I had no idea that was going to take a swerve into softcore. Fucking hell. What is wrong with him?’
Connor looked appalled and Bel misread why: ‘You don’t deserve to be dragged into this sordid mess of my making and I shouldn’t have shared that—’
‘I’m glad you told me because I want to help. I know I’m trying to plot the coordinates of a fever dream, but calling you “vicious”– why would you tell Anthony if you were seeing someone?’
‘Right?! Because we’re in love, you see? But I’m so fearful of the size and power of that once-in-a-lifetime love, I’m running scared of it. Moving to Manchester, my private life, my aversion to having anything more to do with Ant– it’s all one giant displacement activity. He’s trying to make me face up to it or else I will ruin both our lives with my denial.’
‘Bel, I don’t want to upset you but this is really worrying,’ Connor said. ‘He’s got to be staying over in the city with these awards, hasn’t he? He says “apartment” there– does he have your address?’
‘God, no! I can’t see how he would?’
‘That sounds like a threat to me and a hint that he does have it.’
‘Oh,’ Bel said.
‘Can I read the rest of the email?’
‘Erm. If you want to.’
Bel surrendered her phone, wincing. Connor scanned Anthony’s furious fantasies about Connor’s access to Bel, with a stomach-turning twist that Anthony was sure Bel was thinking of him at crucial junctures. Connor hated Anthony anyway but if he was going to claim Bel’s mind was straying during the sex they weren’t having, it was personal. I can promise you, in this entirely theoretical coupling, I would command her full attention.
It was followed by entreaties to meet Ant to ‘lay all our cards on the table’.
He handed her iPhone back.
‘At the risk of making your evening go from bad to very bad to even worse, how would you feel about me kipping in your spare room tonight?’ Connor said.
‘I wouldn’t mind at all, but why?’
‘He’s got a whole night here tonight and he hoped to spend it with you. He’s a stranger to boundaries and dignity. This guy is going to come round.’