Imitation of a Life
Anna hauls her suitcase up the last flight of steps and opens the door of her attic apartment. She is relieved to see her cleaner has been in during her absence. The place is immaculate. She drops her keys on a side table, abandons her suitcase in the middle of the living room, and goes to put the kettle on. Tea is in order. Nothing else will overcome the wet grey weather.
When she has a cup of steaming goodness in her hands and a plate of only slightly stale cookies, she settles on the sofa to send the mandatory texts announcing her safe return. She is never sure whom these comfort more – the receivers, who await news of a loved one, or the senders, who are glad to have been missed. It’s a reassurance of your importance in the world. Someone, somewhere, cares about you.
She wants to send a message to Tolly, but that would be wrong. She is the one who severed the connection. By now, he must hate her. Or maybe that is too strong. They had a connection, but it was short-lived and stunted before it could flourish. Realistically, he has probably already forgotten her existence, much as she has done so many times with so many admirers after explaining her lack of reciprocation.
In the midst of thumbs-up and heart replies, one message comes in. You back yet? James.
She hesitates. He will want to talk about Bella, and she is not sure she wants to face that can of worms. Eventually, she sighs. What do they say about eating a frog? If you have to do it, better to do it sooner.
Just now , she types back.
Coffee? James gives a location halfway between their homes. She has enough time to open her suitcase and set off the first load of washing before she sets off to meet him. Despite the miserable weather, she elects to walk. She is feeling antsy, disconnected from her life for the first time ever, and exercise can only help. Perhaps she can walk off the effects of Tolly Hyde, like you walk off a hangover. But all that happens is she arrives at the coffee shop thoroughly soaked. She disrobes carefully, trying to keep from dripping on the chairs. James waits, his eyes sunken and his bottom lip chewed. His mop of red hair is more unruly than normal.
He continues to wait, eyes on Anna as she orders at the counter. She grabs a chocolate brownie. She has a feeling she may need extra bolstering. When she returns to his table, cappuccino in hand, he nods slightly. He cannot even raise a small smile.
Anna cuts right to the chase. “Have you heard from Bella?”
He nods again. “But I’m not sure what to believe.”
Anna avoids his eyes and looks down at her cup as she scrapes the edge of the foam around the rim. She raises the spoon to her lips and licks it clean while she unpacks his statement. A relationship is in a sorry state when those words are true. Especially when it is only a week old. She wonders if James already realises this.
“What do you want from me?” she asks.
“The truth.” His eyes search hers.
She considers. She has known Bella a long time. Far longer than she has known James, and while they haven’t been in constant contact, Anna is neglectful enough of friends not to hold them to high standards of contact herself. She is also loyal, although loyalty has its bounds. But she realises with a slight shock, if she had to ask either Bella or James for help, it would be James who would respond. She can guarantee it. She would trust James over and above everyone else in her life, apart from her family.
She nods. “Shoot.”
“Did you really ask her to come with you to a party?” James asks.
Anna sighs. “I did. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I did. I was nervous, I guess. I wasn’t sure why I’d been invited and I wanted a wingman.”
“And the pictures from the nightclub? Do they look worse than they were?”
Anna sips her coffee, then licks her lips. Here we go. James has asked for the truth. “I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t there. I left the party by myself. Bella had already gone. I didn’t see Bella again until Saturday, shortly before I left Los Angeles.”
“So she could be telling the truth,” James mutters. He so desperately wants to believe in a Bella who doesn’t exist. Anna can see how this may play out, how Bella gets her claws back into James, how his inevitable heartbreak is only going to get worse, the wounds getting deeper. But is it really her job to protect him? James is a grown-up, able to make his own judgements, even if they are incorrect.
She closes her eyes for a moment. Then she opens them and says, “I doubt it.”
His eyes bulge and his mouth drops open. Anna can see his thoughts cycle across his face as her words settle in. Disbelief, acceptance, sadness.
“Why did you say that?”
“Bella left the party with a scriptwriter who had already hit on me. That was after she offered me some of the ketamine she had got from somewhere.”
She lets James absorb her words. Damning words, but not fatal. Yet. James would not hold addiction against anyone. He would suffer faithfully by Bella’s side as he coaxed her towards treatment.
Anna takes a deep breath. She does not like what she is about to say, but James needs to hear it. He needs to walk away from Bella and find someone else, someone capable of loving her dorky, awesome friend the way he deserves. “That was after I’d seen her give some random guy a blow job.”
James reels back. He opens his mouth to breathe in and out. Little puffs of breath. His eyes close and Anna knows he is fighting not to cry. She extends her hand and wraps it around his on the table. “I’m sorry, but you need to know. Bella is Bella. I’m not sure fidelity is in her nature.”
The sounds of the café surround them as they sit together. The hiss of the frother, the clatter of cups, and the scrape of chairs provide a distraction for Anna against the pain she has inflicted. She knows she has broken James’s heart, that he had been smitten with the gorgeous, glamourous siren who whispered words he had longed to hear. The warmth of the room mingles with the damp brought in by the customers. It closes around their shoulders, holds them together. Anna’s words were delivered with the cool, clinical efficiency she has long practised. But she thinks for a minute how she would feel if she were told Tolly had received a blow job after she had left. And even though there had been no understanding between them, nothing to tie them together, she would be floored.
So she sits there with James, ignoring her urgent need for the toilet until he stirs. He stands, his face flushed red as if embarrassed. “Um. Thank you,” he says, but his eyes are unfocussed, and Anna is not sure what he is thanking her for. Meeting him? Telling the truth? Or destroying his hope?
Then he pulls on his coat and disappears out of the door, his shoulders hunched as much for his life as for the weather. Anna sits longer, pulling bits off her brownie and slowly eating them. She has no way of knowing whether she has done the right thing. But in life, as in the emergency room, sometimes you make the best call you can, and then you have to stand back and watch as it plays out. When she can no longer ignore her bladder, she goes in search of the restroom.
She is back home, a couple of filled rolls from the café and a bowl of tinned soup assembled for her dinner when her phone rings. It’s Bella. She considers ignoring it or switching her phone off, but maybe this is the final act for them all to move on. She answers.
“What have you done?” Bella shouts. Anna listens for any sound of anguish, of regret in Bella’s words, but she finds only anger. Bella could be shouting at Anna for ruining her favourite jeans.
Anna contemplates acting dumb but goes with, “I take it James has called.”
“What did you say to him?” Bella demands. “One moment I thought I’d got him back – John was a lot more helpful than you. Then he meets up with you and suddenly it’s all over.”
Anna chooses not to answer any of Bella’s questions. “Honestly, Bella? James is not the man for you. You know he’s not. And he’s not a toy.”
“This is the worst day of my life,” Bella declares, in full drama mode.
“The worst day of my life was the day I lost eight patients in a single shift!” Anna snaps.
But Bella ignores her. “You want him for yourself? Is that it? I told him that’s your plan!”
Anna laughs. She can’t help it. The thought of her trying to hook James when all she wants is to forget about love and lovers for the next few years is ludicrous. Then she sobers. What if James believes Bella’s claims? If their easy friendship disappears and her work life becomes awkward?
“Look, Bella,” she says. “I sincerely believe that there is someone better for you than James.” There are plenty of narcissists in medicine. Any of them would be an excellent match for her friend. “You are extremely beautiful. Find someone who cares more about that than the other stuff. James cares about the other stuff. He wants monogamy, a home, a wife, a mass of children.”
“A mass of children?”
“I think his family are Irish Catholics. He’s probably expecting six. Four, minimum.”
She hears Bella’s intake of breath, can almost feel the thoughts ticking. Bella is even less maternal than Anna. Anna at least thinks babies are sweet, even if not for her. Bella thinks they are horrendous puking and pooing machines.
“We never talked about kids,” she says.
Anna is not surprised. It’s not the subject you tend to bring up a week into a relationship unless your biological clock is running down and you are desperate.
“Why did you want him, anyway? He’s so not your type.”
“It’s alright for you. You’re in London. I’m stuck in that shitty city up North. James was my ticket out of there.” Frustration coats Bella’s words.
Anna is relieved. She hasn’t harmed Bella’s heart. “Maybe, try Australia?” she suggests. She can hear a male voice in the background, crying Bella’s name. It’s vaguely familiar, although it’s American. “Where are you?” she asks.
“LA,” Bella answers. Anna hears a muffled, “My friend Anna from Tolly’s party,” as if Bella is doing a bad job of covering the microphone. Then Bella’s voice returns clearly. “Randy is here. I think you know him. He says ‘hi’. Look, I’ve got to go.”
Bella disconnects the call and Anna sincerely hopes she never hears from Bella again.
Anna taps the phone against her palm, pondering what she can she do to refute Bella’s allegation to James. She plays the scene in her head. I just wanted to tell you, James, I don’t fancy you in the least . Oof. How to make things uncomfortable, with its overtones of “you’re just too unattractive for me”. This is one of the times, Anna thinks, to go full-on British. Stoic reserve is the way to go. Hopefully, neither of them will raise the subject.
She eats her dinner alone, checking the patient operating lists for the morning. There’s a routine ablation and a complex aneurysm on her list, so she does a deep dive to be prepared for all eventualities. She’s aiming for an early night; she is on shift in the morning and still has a sleep deficit to make up. But before she shuts down her laptop, she searches for Tolly’s name. She cleared all the alerts she had put up for him the day before, promising herself not to make a habit of it. She has to let him go and the fastest way to forget is to keep him out of sight. In the years after he dumped Eleanor, she managed to avoid Tolly Hyde quite well. She is confident of achieving that state of ignorance again.
But tonight, before she plunges back into her daily life, she wants to take a moment to bid him farewell. She rolls her eyes at herself. Such maudlin traits are atypical for her. Still, she looks at the latest entertainment news, searching for snaps of Tolly. There is nothing more recent than Saturday night’s party. The ones she has already seen of his arrival and a few selfies posted by other celebrities. Who needs the paparazzi when celebrities are so keen to pap themselves?
She closes her eyes for a moment. She pictures him as he was just before he kissed her – the sheen of the streetlight on his dark hair, the depth of the darkness of his eyes, the bristle framing his jaw. She breathes, once, twice, remembering. Then she opens her eyes, closes all her open windows, and drops the lid of her laptop.
She and Tolly are done. There is nothing to regret.