ALSO BY ARAMINTA HALL

Everything and Nothing

Dot

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Epub ISBN: 9781473552647

Version 1.0

Published by Century 2018

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Copyright © Araminta Hall 2018
Cover © Getty Images

Araminta Hall has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint a quote from The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch. Copyright © Iris Murdoch 1978. Reprinted by permission of Chatto & Windus

First published in the UK by Century in 2018

Century
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www.penguin.co.uk

Century is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781780898247

The rules of the Crave were simple. V and I went to a nightclub in a predetermined place a good way from where we lived. We travelled there together, but entered separately. We made our way to the bar and stood far enough apart for it to seem like we weren’t together, but close enough that I could always keep her in vision. Then we waited. It never took long, but why would it when V shone as brightly as she did? Some hapless man would approach and offer to buy her a drink or ask her to dance. She would begin a mild flirtation. And I would wait, my eyes never leaving her, my body ready to pounce at all times. We have a signal: as soon as she raises her hand and pulls on the silver eagle she always wears round her neck I must act. In those dark throbbing rooms I would push through the mass of people, pulling at the useless man drooling over her, and ask him what he thought he was doing talking to my girlfriend. And because I am useful-looking in that tall, broad way and because V likes me to lift weights and start all my days with a run, they would invariably back off with their hands in front of their faces, looking scared and timid. Sometimes we couldn’t wait to start kissing; sometimes we went to the loos and fucked in the stalls, V calling out so anyone could hear. Sometimes we made it home. Either way both our kisses tasted of Southern Comfort, V’s favourite drink.

It was V who named our game, on one of those dark, freezing nights where the rain looks like grease on your windows. V was wearing a black T-shirt which felt like velvet to touch. It skimmed over her round breasts and I knew she wasn’t wearing a bra. My body responded to her as it always did. She laughed as I stood up and put her hand against my hot chest. ‘That’s all any of us are ever doing, you know, Mikey. Everyone out there. All craving something.’

It is true to say that the Crave always belonged to V.

Part of me doesn’t want to write it all down but my lawyer says I must because he needs to get a clear handle on the situation. He says my story feels like something he can’t grab hold of. He also thinks it might do me good, so I better understand where we are. I think he’s an idiot. But I have nothing else to do all day as I sit in this godforsaken cell with only the company of Fat Terry, a man with a neck bigger than most people’s thighs, listening to him masturbating to pictures of celebrities I don’t recognise. ‘Cat still got your tongue? My banter not good enough for you?’ he says to me most mornings as I lie silently on my bunk, the words like unexploded bombs on his tongue. I don’t reply, but it never goes further than that because in here, when you’ve killed someone, you appear to get a grudging respect.

It is hard to believe that it isn’t even a year since I returned from America. It feels more like a lifetime, two lifetimes even. But the fact is I arrived home at the end of May and as I sit here now writing in this tiny, dark cell it is December. December can be warm and full of goodness, but this one is cold and flat, with days which never seem to brighten and a fog which never seems to lift. The papers talk of a smog blanketing London, returned from the dead as if a million Victorian souls were floating over the Thames. But really we all know it is a trillion tiny chemical particles polluting our air and our bodies, mutating and changing the very essence of who we are.

I think America might have been the beginning of the mess. V and I were never meant to be apart and yet we were seduced by the promise of money and speeding up time. I remember her encouraging me to go; how she said it would take me five years in London to earn what I could in two in New York. She was right of course, but I’m not sure now that the money was worth it. It feels like we lost something of ourselves in those years. Like we stretched ourselves so thin we stopped being real.

But our house is real and maybe that is the point? The equation could make me feel dizzy: two years in hell equals a four-bedroomed house in Clapham. It sounds like a joke when you put it like that. Sounds like nothing anyone sane would sell their soul for. But the fact remains that it exists. It will wait for us without judgement. It will remain.

I employed a house-hunter when I knew I was coming home, whom I always pictured stalking the streets of London with a gun in one hand and a few houses slung over her shoulder, blood dripping from their wounds. She sent me endless photos and details as I sat at my desk in New York which I would scroll through until the images blurred before my eyes. I found I didn’t much care what I bought, but I was very specific in my requests because I knew that was what V would want. I was careful with the location and also the orientation. I remembered that the garden had to be south-east-facing and I insisted on it being double-fronted because V always thought they were much friendlier-looking. There are rooms on either side of the hall, rooms which as a child I simply didn’t know existed, but which V taught me have peculiar names: a drawing room and library. Although I’ve yet to fill the bookcases and I have no plans to become an artist. The kitchen/diner, as estate agents love to refer to any large room containing cooking equipment, runs the entire back length of the house. The previous owners pushed the whole house out into the garden by five feet and encased it all in glass, with massive bifold doors which you can open and shut as easily as running your hand through water.

Underfloor-heated Yorkshire stone runs throughout this room and into the garden, so when the doors are open you can step from inside to out without a change in texture. ‘Bringing the outside in,’ Toby the estate agent said, making my hands itch with the desire to punch him. ‘And really, they’ve extended the floor space by the whole garden area,’ he said meaninglessly, pointing to the sunken fire pit and hot tub, the inbuilt barbeque, the tasteful water feature. He was lucky that I could already imagine V loving all those details, otherwise I would have turned and walked out of the house there and then.

And that would have been a shame, as upstairs is the part I like best. I’ve had all the back rooms knocked together and then re-partitioned so we have what Toby would no doubt call a master suite, but is actually a large bedroom, a walk-in wardrobe and a luxurious bathroom. I chose sumptuous materials for all the fittings: silks and velvets; marbles and flints, the most beggingly tactile of all the elements. I have heavy drapes at the windows and clever lighting, so it’s dark and sensuous and bright and light in all the right places. At the front of the house are two smaller bedrooms and in the roof is another bedroom and ensuite, leading to a roof terrace at the back. Fantastic for guests, as Toby said.

I’ve also taken great care over the furnishings. A tasteful mix of modern and antique, I think you’d say. Modern for all the useful things like the kitchen and bathroom and sound system and lighting and all that. Antique for all the totems. I have become a bit of an expert at trawling shops and sounding like I know what I’m talking about. And I found a field in Sussex which four or five times a year is transformed into a giant antiques market. People from Eastern Europe drive over huge lorries filled with pieces from their past and laugh at all of us prepared to part with hundreds of pounds for things which would be burnt in their country. You’re meant to bargain with them, but often I can’t be bothered, often I get swept away with it all. Because there is something amazing about running your hand along the back of a chair and finding grooves and ridges and realising that yours is only one of so many hands which must have done exactly this.

I bought a cupboard last time and when I got it home and opened it there were loads of telephone numbers written in pencil inside the door. ‘Marta 03201’, ‘Cossi 98231’, and so on and so on. It felt like a story without a beginning, middle or end. They struck me as possible workings of a private investigator, or even clues in a murder case. I had imagined having it stripped and painted a dark grey, but after I found the numbers I left it exactly as it was, with flaking green paint and an internal drawer which sticks whenever you try to open it. I’ve become attached to the rootlessness of the numbers. I like the thought that none of us will ever know what really happened to these women, or to the person who wrote down their numbers. But I’m not sure what V will think about the cupboard. Perhaps she will want to smooth the numbers away.

The colours on the walls all belong to V. Lots of navy blues and dark greys, even black in places, which the interior designer assured me wasn’t depressing any more. She encouraged me to have the outside of the cupboards in the walk-in wardrobe painted a shining black and the insides a deep scarlet. She told me it was opulent, but I’m not sure she was right because all I see when I walk into the room is leather and dried blood.

Almost the first piece of post I received after I moved in was an invitation to V’s wedding. It came in a cream envelope and felt heavy in my hand, my not yet familiar address calligraphed in a fine ink. The same flowery hand had emblazoned my name across the top of the card, which was thick and soft, the black lettering raised and tactile. I stared at my name for a long time, so long I could imagine the hand holding the pen, see the delicate strokes used. There was a slight smudge against the ‘i’, but apart from that it was perfect. I took the invitation into the drawing room and rested it on the mantelpiece, underneath the gilt mirror, behind the tall silver candlesticks. My hand, I noticed, was shaking slightly and I knew I was hotter than the day allowed. I kept my hand against the cool marble of the fire surround and concentrated on the intricate curls holding up the perfect flatness of the shelf. It reminded me that pure, flawless marble is one of the most desired materials known to man, but also one of the hardest to find. If it’s easy it’s probably not worth having, V said to me once, and that made me smile, standing in my drawing room with my hand against the marble.

I knew what she was doing; it was all fine.

I had emailed V from New York to let her know I was coming home. That was when she replied to say she was getting married. It was the first piece of correspondence we’d had since Christmas and it shook me very badly. I had only stopped trying to contact her in February and I emailed with my news at the end of April, which meant she’d only had a couple of months to meet someone and agree to marry him. I know you’ll be surprised … she wrote:

For a few days I felt simply numb, as if an explosion had gone off next to me and shattered my body. But I quickly realised how pedestrian this reaction was. Apart from all the love she clearly still had for me, V seemed to be under the impression that I had wanted the relationship to end. Her breezy tone was so far removed from the V I knew, I wondered for a moment if she had been kidnapped and someone else was writing her emails. The much more plausible explanations were that V was not herself, or she was using her tone to send me a covert message. There were two options at play: either she had lost her mind with the distress I had caused her at Christmas and jumped into the arms of the nearest fool, or she needed me to pay for what I’d done. The latter seemed by far the most likely; this was V after all and she would need me to witness my own remorse. It was as if the lines of her email dissolved and behind them were her true words. This was a game, our favourite game. It was obvious that we were beginning a new, more intricate Crave.

I left it a few days before replying to V’s email and then I chose my words carefully. I adopted her upbeat tone and told her I was very happy for her and of course we would still be friends. I also told her I would be in touch with my address when I got back to London, but after the invitation landed on my mat I knew I needn’t bother. It meant she had called Elaine and that in itself meant something. It also meant that she probably wasn’t as angry as she had been any more. I quickly came to see the invitation for what it was: the first hand in an elaborate apology, a dance only V and I could ever master. I even felt sorry for Angus Metcalf, as the ridiculous invitation revealed him to be.

I woke sometimes with the invitation lying next to me in bed, not that I ever remembered taking it up with me. Once, it was under my cheek and when I peeled it from me I felt the indentations it had left. In the mirror I could see the words, branded on to my skin.

I left it a few days and then sent a short note to V’s mother saying I would be delighted to attend. Not, I knew, that she would share my delight.

I have spent a lot of time with Colin and Suzi over the years and there was a time when I imagined them coming to see me as a sort of son. Sometimes at Christmas it was hard to shake the feeling that V and I were siblings sitting with our parents over a turkey carcass. ‘We make a funny pair,’ she said to me once, ‘you with no parents, me with no siblings. There’s so little of us to go around. We have to keep a tight hold of each other to stop the other from floating away.’ Which was fine by me. I loved nothing more than encircling V’s tiny waist and pulling her towards me in bed, feeling her buttocks slip like a jigsaw into my groin, as our legs mirrored each other in a perfect outline, her head resting neatly under my chin.

Sometimes I think I liked V best when she slept. When I felt her go heavy in my arms and her breath would thicken and slow. I would open my mouth so that my jaw was able to run along the top of her head and I could feel all the ridges and markings on her skull. It didn’t feel like it would be hard to go further than the bone, to delve into the pulpy mixture protecting the grey mass of twisted ropes which formed her brain. To feel the electric currents surging, which kept her alive and alert. Often I would feel jealous of those currents and all the information they held. I would want to wrap them around myself so she would only dream of me, so that I filled her as much as she filled me.

I wonder if V had to argue with her mother to invite me, or if Suzi thought it would serve me right to see her daughter happily married to someone else. I wonder if she planned to look at me during the ceremony and smile.

But in retrospect Suzi was always a stupid woman, always pretending she wanted to be different when really she wanted to be exactly like the people who had surrounded her all her life. I should have realised this sooner, as soon really as I heard her name.

‘I’m Susan,’ she said to me on our first meeting, ‘but call me Suzi,’ which wasn’t too bad until I discovered she spelt it with an ‘i’. A ‘y’ would have been too cosy for Suzi, too normal, too close to who she actually is. And you should never trust people who yearn to be something other than who they are.

It wasn’t even vaguely hard to get a job in the City when I arrived back in London. I had glowing references from the American bank and my performance there spoke for itself. My new salary was large and my bonus promised even more. I didn’t mind the journey to the office each day and I even liked the tall, glinting building I worked in, high in the clouds. I spent my days shouting about numbers and watching them ping and jump on the screens on my desk. It was so easy I couldn’t understand why everyone didn’t do it.

V had always said we should aim for retirement at forty-five and it was a target which looked easily within my grasp. I presumed she hadn’t completely changed her life since February and was still at the Calthorpe Centre, working in her sterile basement on her computer programmes which, she said, would render humans useless one day. She claimed not to know why she did it, why she persevered so steadily to make machines cleverer than we are, but I think she loved the idea of inventing something artificial that was better than the real thing. I think she loved the idea of seeing if she could outsmart human emotion.

It occurs to me now that if V hadn’t got her job we might have gone to America together. We might still be there. But I don’t like to think this way; it leads you down too many dangerous paths, into worlds of temptation which can never be yours. And I indulged too much in that sort of thinking as a child: that woman kissing her child in the park could be your mother, your key could let you into the house down the road with roses round the door, the smell of frying onions could be someone preparing your dinner.

And anyway, that is what happened. I got the job in America and she got the job in London. We were both riding the crest of a wave, me offered a salary so high I couldn’t take it seriously and V the youngest person ever to have been taken on as a director at the Calthorpe Centre, only six years out of university.

‘How clever of them to make it sound so innocent, like a medical foundation or something,’ she said after she took the call.

I wrapped her in my arms and whispered my congratulations. ‘But I’m going to New York in three months,’ I said.

She pulled away from me and her face tightened round her words. ‘I can’t turn this down, Mikey.’

Something rose through me which I thought might tip me off balance. ‘I won’t go then. I can get another job here.’

‘No. You’ve got to go. It’s an amazing opportunity for you. You can do a couple of years and earn lots of money and then we can start our proper life when you get back.’

‘You make it sound so easy.’

‘That’s because it is. We’ll talk every day and it’s not that far. We can fly over for weekends. It will be romantic.’ She laughed. ‘You’ll be even more like my eagle, flying across the Atlantic in your silver bullet.’

But that thought jolted me. I reached out and took her by the shoulders. ‘You have to promise that you won’t ever Crave without me, V.’

She shook herself free and rubbed where my hands had held her. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

Her tone cut at me and I turned away, trying to hide my hurt. But she followed me, twisting her body round mine. ‘Mike, I would never do that, you must know that.’

She stood on tiptoes so that her mouth was against my ear. ‘I love seeing how scared they are of you,’ she whispered. I held myself still, until she said, ‘Let’s Crave.’

I think we both knew it would be our last time. We went to a bar just off Leicester Square. We’d been there before, but not for at least six months. It was always filled with foreign students and tourists and gangs of boys up from the provinces. And the odd prostitute or escort. No one there looked as if they were having a good time and the music was a hard, steady thump which reverberated through your body and felt like you were giving yourself CPR. The lights strobed, making everyone’s skin take on a sickly, alien pallor. And something fluorescent in the air made the whites of everyone’s eyes glint and lint show up on everyone’s clothes.

V was wearing a grey silk dress which revealed the milky whiteness of her shoulders and her long, thin neck which curled into the base of her skull. She had piled her dark hair on top of her head, but tendrils had escaped to caress her neck, in a promise of what your lips could do. Black liner flicked over her eyes, stretching and elongating them, and she licked at her full lips which had never needed any lipstick. There was a blush high on her cheekbones, but I didn’t know if it was real or false. She smiled as the barman handed her a tall, brown drink and I saw her nails were painted black.

My own drink was too sweet and it coated my throat so it felt tight and sore. My head was filled with the knowledge of the time we were going to have to spend apart, which was causing an ache to build in my temples. A drunk man swayed into me, his girlfriend giggling on his arm. We were right next to the bar and it would have been very easy to take his head in my hands and bash it against the hard wood. The blood would have come quickly, his head contorted and broken, before anyone could have stopped me.

I looked back at V and she was still alone, still leaning against the bar, her drink making frequent trips to her mouth. It was possible she looked too perfect for this place and I thought about telling her we should leave. It was like putting an exotic butterfly in a roomful of flies, all buzzing round their own shit. I pushed myself off the bar to go to her, but as I did so a man approached her. He wasn’t much taller than she was; stocky, his large muscles bulging like Popeye’s from a pristine white T-shirt. His skin was swarthy and even from where I stood I could see it was covered in a film of sweat. A heavy silver chain with some sort of round coin encircled his neck and his black hair was slicked off his face. He wasn’t ugly, but something about him was grotesque, almost as though his features were too large for his face.

I stopped myself from moving, my eyes locked on to the encounter. I imagined, as I always did at this moment, what it was like to be that close to V, to feel the heat from her body and to imagine your hands at work there; to look at her lips as she spoke, to catch glimpses of her tongue as she laughed and wonder what that mouth was capable of. He leant forward as he spoke, craning close to her ear, his hand poised in the air just by her arm, as if summoning up the courage to touch her. She laughed. He dropped his hand to her hip, where it finally connected with her body through the silk. She was still leaning against the bar, but she tilted her hips forwards slightly so he could slide his hand behind her, against her buttocks. He closed the gap between them, extinguishing all the air, his groin pushing against her hips, no doubt already advertising whatever it was he had. I kept my eyes on V’s hands, but they stayed on her drink and the eagle hung uselessly round her neck.

My breathing had deepened and my body felt weak and useless. A mist was drawing down and I worried that soon I wouldn’t be able to see at all. Soon I would miss V’s sign and she would be swallowed by the night and the man. I turned my head and saw the neon exit sign above the door. I imagined walking towards it and into the open, returning alone to our flat, getting into bed and waiting for her to come home. I imagined letting go and not caring, the idea like tiny pins in my brain.

I looked back and even though the man’s face was against V’s neck, I could see her hand on the bird. The woman in front of me yelped as I pushed her out of the way. ‘Watch out,’ she called after me, pointlessly. Even in the moments it took for me to reach her, I saw V’s expression change. She wasn’t laughing any more and was pushing slightly against the man’s chest as he lowered his face towards hers. I took him by the shoulder, yanking him backwards so his drink made a stain down the front of his T-shirt.

‘What the fuck are you doing to my girlfriend?’ I asked, feeling the people around us melting into the background.

‘What the fuck?’ he said, straightening up. We stared at each other for a minute, but I had height and muscle on him and he had felt my strength when I pulled him back. He waved his hands in the air. ‘Nice fucking girlfriend,’ he said to me. Then he looked at V. ‘Cocktease,’ he said, turning away.

I felt V’s hand on my arm as it tensed and drew back, ready to lay waste to his stupid, oversized face. She turned me towards her and pulled me closer and I leant down and kissed her, putting my hands where his had been, laying back my claim. Her tongue was quick and fast and I wanted her so much I thought I would sweep the drinks off the bar and lay her in the spilt liquor. But she pulled me away, past the round tables and chairs, past the writhing bodies on the dance floor, past the booming speakers, past the merging couples, to a dark corner. She backed herself into it, pulling me towards her. She opened my flies and pulled me out, wrapping her legs around me. The silk of her dress slithered upwards too easily and she wasn’t wearing underwear, so I was inside her quickly and she was biting the side of my neck and moaning and it was like all the other people had gone and we were the only ones there, the only ones who mattered.

Afterwards, in the cold night air, with drunken people bustling along their sad, forlorn ways to terrible encounters, V said, ‘For a second I thought you’d abandoned me.’

I took her hand. ‘How can you say that?’

‘Because I touched the bird and it took you a while to come.’

I realised I must have spent longer looking at the exit sign than I’d meant to. ‘I’d never abandon you,’ I said.

‘Promise?’ she said and I looked over and saw she wasn’t giggling any more. She looked smaller, the black lines smudged now around her eyes.

I stopped, even though the streets were so full people immediately walked into us. I lifted the delicate silver bird which lived on the chain round her neck and she stepped towards me. ‘I’m your eagle,’ I said. ‘You know that.’

I didn’t give V the necklace. In fact, she told me she bought it for herself with her first ever pay packet from a waitressing job when she was sixteen. She told me she’d been walking past a shop and it had glinted at her from a window and she’d felt a deep desire to possess it. I had always presumed it to be a dainty bird, like a swift or even a clichéd lovebird, and I was surprised when she first told me it was an eagle. But when I looked properly I saw the length of the wings and the curved beak.

‘Eagles are magnificent,’ V had said. ‘They are the only birds which get excited by a storm, then they fly straight into it, so they can look down on all the chaos. But also,’ she said, putting her hands over mine, ‘they are very loyal. They mate for life.’

I’d leant down and kissed her mouth. ‘I’m your eagle,’ I’d said.

I thought it expedient to make friends in my new City job, even though the same plan hadn’t gone that well in New York. I would be fine if it was just V and me forever, but I’ve learnt that people find you strange if you’re happy like that. So, I’ve learnt their ways. I understand now that people do not always mean what they say. That they enjoy hours of meaningless chat in crowded bars without a reason like the Crave for being there. That they are happy to share their bodies with others and then act as if they barely know them.

If someone says something like, ‘I could fucking kill him,’ or, ‘I’m feeling so depressed,’ or, ‘My legs are literally about to drop off,’ they don’t actually mean any of those things. They don’t even mean anything close to those things. When a woman puts her hand on your leg she does not expect you to reciprocate. When a man calls you mate, it doesn’t mean he likes you. When someone says, ‘We must get together soon,’ you shouldn’t ask them when or text them the next day.

When I was in primary school I pushed another boy in my class, Billy Sheffield, and he fell and grazed his knee. My teacher, whose name I forget, told me I had to say sorry, but I refused because I wasn’t. He had called me some name, again I forget what but it would have been something along the lines of Two-Stripe or Fleabag, in reference to my market-stall trainers and unwashed clothes. Either way, I wasn’t sorry. So they took me to the little office where rumour had it they sent the crazy kids. A rosy-cheeked woman smiled at me and told me to sit in a comfy chair whilst she offered me sweets. It made me wonder if being crazy was all that bad after all.

‘Why aren’t you sorry?’ she finally asked me, after I’d stuffed myself with Smarties.

‘Because I’m not,’ I said.

‘But when you saw the blood on Billy’s knee, didn’t you feel bad that you’d done it?’ she said.

I thought back to the moment, standing over Billy and looking down at his raw knee, the skin scraped back and drops of blood popping on to the skin. I knew how it would sting and burn, how a bit of gravel might get trapped inside and how the nurse would right now probably be spreading foul-smelling iodine across the graze, wrapping it in a white bandage which he would wear like a medal of honour. ‘I thought he deserved it,’ I said.

‘No one ever deserves to be hurt,’ she said, still smiling.

‘He called me a bad name.’

‘Yes and that was very mean. He’ll be punished for that. But you still have to say sorry for hurting him.’ I must have looked blank, because she went on. ‘Sometimes, Michael, it’s worth saying sorry even if you don’t completely mean it. Just to keep the peace and make the other person feel better.’

I still sometimes wish I’d asked her if that applies to all emotion, or only contrition.

But I have learnt enough lessons over the years to better understand what is and is not expected in life. I knew, for example, that when George, who worked in the next office to mine, asked if I’d like to come out for a drink soon after I started in the City, I should arrange my face into a smile and say yes.

I had by then established a successful routine, and that made me feel confident about being able to adapt to a social situation. I rose every day at 5 a.m., ran for forty minutes along the same route, which was an acceptable 9K, came home, showered and dressed and left the house at 6.10 a.m., in order to be at my desk by 6.45 a.m. The office had its own gym, as all those offices do, and so I also worked out during my lunch hour on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I would have done it every day, but I knew there would soon be client lunches to attend and times when it was necessary to look as if I was so busy I was working through lunch. This set-up meant I had a bit of flexibility and could switch my days around if need be. I also bought a bench press and weights for home. For now they were in the bare library, but I knew V would never agree to this arrangement so I had already looked into the costs and feasibility of excavating the basement to make way for a gym. V always loved the heat, so I thought a sauna would work down there as well.

There were eleven of us out that evening, although only two are worth mentioning: George and Kaitlyn. George was loud and good-looking, but he drank too much and wasn’t very bright. His godfather ran the firm or something and his father was a lord, so he never had to worry about things like performance. You’d be amazed how many people there are like that in the City. How hard the rest of us have to work to carry them. And you could hate them, but what’s the point? The world, as I learnt at a young age, is hardly fair and there’s nothing anyone can do about that.

Kaitlyn worked in another office along my corridor, so we’d waved and said hello before. She was thin and tall and always dressed in some sort of dark-coloured suit, with amazingly high heels. I would watch her stride past my windows and wonder how on earth she didn’t trip and break her ankle. And yet she moved so effortlessly in them I concluded that she must have been wearing them for so long they had become an extension of her leg. Kaitlyn was very pale, with the lankest, blondest hair I’d ever seen. She was so blonde the shade extended to her eyelashes and eyebrows, which gave her an otherworldly quality. And her eyes were very blue, almost like looking at ice. I thought she’d be stern and severe, but in fact she was the exact opposite.

‘So, how are you finding us all?’ she asked when we found ourselves at the bar together, her accent a beautiful, soft Irish.

‘So far, so good.’

‘I hear you made a killing at Schwarz. I’d love to work there one day. My dream is to live in an apartment overlooking Central Park.’

‘My apartment overlooked Central Park.’ I glanced back at the rest of our table as I spoke, wondering when I could leave. We had been there for two hours and they were all already sweaty and red-faced, with a few of them making frequent trips to the toilets.

‘Oh wow,’ she said. ‘Why did you come back?’

‘I did my two years. London’s my home. The plan was never to go for more than two years.’

‘Yes, but New York. And Schwarz.’

Neither of us seemed to want to go back to our table, so I sipped at my drink at the bar. ‘My girlfriend has a job here she couldn’t leave.’

‘Oh, right. It must be impressive if it tops Schwarz.’

‘She’s not a banker. She works in Artificial Intelligence.’

Kaitlyn whistled through her teeth, an odd sound, not unlike one you’d use to call a dog. ‘Wow, what a power couple.’

‘Not really.’ I noticed that Kaitlyn wasn’t drinking her wine and the glass was tilting over the bar. ‘Careful, you might spill that.’

She looked down and laughed, taking a small sip. ‘So, where do you live now?’

‘Clapham.’

‘Oh, near me then. Are you by the common?’

I nodded. ‘Yes, Verity was very particular about being near the common. She’s a runner.’

‘I’m a walker,’ Kaitlyn said. ‘I’ve got a little dog and I walk him there every weekend. It’s the closest I get to home.’

‘Where’s home?’

‘A tiny village in the south of Ireland. You won’t have heard of it.’

‘Is your family still there?’

She nodded and I was struck suddenly by the thought of her flying across the sea to this harsh London life, away from the coast and the hills.

‘What brought you here?’

She shrugged. ‘Oh, you know, life. Ireland’s beautiful but it’s not the easiest place.’ For a terrible moment I thought she was going to cry, but she laughed instead. ‘I bet you have one of those gorgeous double-fronted houses on Windsor Terrace.’

‘How on earth did you know that?’ I asked too quickly, wondering if she’d been looking through my personnel file or something.

But she laughed again. ‘Because that road is just one long line of bankers, that’s why!’

I tried to picture some of my neighbours, but realised I couldn’t. I hoped she was exaggerating. Because if there is one thing V hates it’s unoriginality. And what could be more unoriginal than working in the City and living on a road of bankers? I could feel Kaitlyn looking at me but I refused to return her stare, feeling my cheeks colour under her scrutiny. I hated her at that moment, with a deep, horrible passion. Because how dare she come along and piss on my bonfire? My beautifully laid, perfectly proportioned bonfire.

It took me all the evening until my walk home from the Tube to realise that what Kaitlyn had said didn’t matter anyway. V wasn’t a banker, so she wouldn’t know if all her neighbours were bankers. I breathed more easily as I walked, but still I peered into all the windows without their curtains drawn. And it didn’t make me feel much better, because I saw a lot of similar rooms, not just to each other, but to my own. A lot of dark walls, industrial lighting, expensive modern art, sleek corner sofas, state-of-the-art media systems, stripped floors. I also saw a lot of bloated middle-aged men in half-discarded suits and thin blonde women in pale cashmere, holding glasses full of what would undoubtedly be the finest red wine.

I poured myself a glass of my own fine red when I got in, loosening my tie and throwing my jacket over a chair, kicking my shoes into the corner. I knew V would hate that, but she wasn’t there to see it and I also knew I would never behave like that once she moved in. I wandered into the drawing room and put Oasis on the media system. Oasis are V’s favourite band; mine too. Before I met her I only listened to bands like the Clash and Nirvana and Hole. I liked to lock myself away with music and let it thunder in my ears while I beat a frantic imaginary drum on my bed. V said I should listen more to the lyrics because that was where the beauty lay. She allowed Nirvana, but she couldn’t believe I didn’t own any Beatles or Bowie, any Lloyd Cole or Prince, any Joni Mitchell or the Carpenters. But mostly she couldn’t believe I didn’t own any Oasis. Noel Gallagher writes the best love songs in the world, she said, which made me feel jealous of him, that he could make her feel something I couldn’t.

V’s wedding invitation taunted me from the mantelpiece and I felt an overwhelming urge to break the rules and contact her. I got my laptop out of the cupboard and sat with it on the sofa. First I googled her name, but as usual nothing came up. Her Facebook profile was still deleted and she had never been on public social media sites like Twitter or LinkedIn. She had, of course, changed her phone number after the American incident and I didn’t even know her address. The only access I still had to her was by email. Between January and February I had emailed her every day, sometimes more than once a day, but she never replied, not until the one I’d sent about coming home. Which meant that my breaking off contact had been the right thing to do.

I realised as I sat there that I had partly stopped emailing her to make sure she didn’t delete that account as well. Because if she had done then I would have had very little link left to her and that thought was too terrifying to contemplate. Naturally I had also recognised that I needed to get myself together and set up back in London before I could present myself as a realistic proposition to her again. I glanced back up at the shiny white invitation and the rage I felt was so pure and intense I was surprised the paper didn’t combust. It had taken her only a couple of months to meet and agree to marry this man. It was possible she had fallen so in love she had been what they call ‘swept off her feet’.

I stood at this thought, knocking my laptop to the floor, and paced the length of my drawing room once, twice, three times. I had to stop then and bend double, placing my hands on my knees and retching. I stood and leant my head against the wall, knocking it slightly as I did, although that felt good, so I did it again, then again, the thump I was feeling reverberating pleasantly through my body. When I stood back I saw some blood on the newly painted walls, so I went into the kitchen to get a cloth. The half-finished bottle of red was on its side so I picked that up as well. But as I was crossing the hall back to the drawing room there was a ring on the doorbell. It was past midnight and V was the only person I could imagine calling at this time. She was practically the only person who knew where I lived.

I rushed to the door and threw it open, but it wasn’t V, just a small, slightly overweight woman, dressed in what looked like pyjamas.

She took a small step back as I opened the door.

‘Oh, sorry. Are you OK?’ she asked, gesturing to my forehead.

‘Yes, yes, it’s nothing,’ I said, realising as I spoke that I was still holding the bottle of wine and the cloth. ‘Walked into a door.’

‘Oh, OK. I live next door.’

‘Yes,’ I said, although I couldn’t remember ever having seen her before.

She held out her hand. ‘Lottie.’

I nodded. ‘Mike.’

She smiled awkwardly. ‘Yes, I know. We work together.’

‘Oh,’ I said, trying to arrange my face into a look of recognition, although really my brain was scrambling for who she might be. ‘Sorry, yes of course.’

She laughed. ‘I’m at the other end of the trading floor, so, well …’

‘No, no, I was just being stupid.’ Her features meant nothing to me.

‘Although I think I might be moving over to your team in the near future.’

I vaguely remembered an email I’d received in the week about a change in personnel. The idea of living next door to a colleague was terrible, but I smiled. ‘Oh, great.’

‘Anyway. I’m really sorry to ask. It’s just I’m doing a ten K tomorrow and have to be up really early and, well, the music, I just wondered …’

I turned as she spoke, aware suddenly of Liam Gallagher shouting behind me about champagne supernovas, the noise spilling out into the street. ‘Oh I’m so sorry. I didn’t think.’

‘No, no, it’s fine. Normally I wouldn’t be such a party pooper, but you know.’ Lottie was backing down the path as she spoke, her hand raised in a gesture of farewell.

‘I’ll turn it down right now,’ I called after her.

I shut the door and went into the drawing room where the noise hit me like a wall. I snapped off the stereo, the silence immediately pressing around me, my eardrums still beating.

I sat back on to the sofa and poured myself a final glass. In the silence it was much easier to think clearly. Of course V hadn’t fallen in love that quickly. Of course she hadn’t fallen in love at all. She was still in love with me and I knew that to be true for two reasons: firstly, V wasn’t the sort of person to be swept off her feet, and secondly she would never have been so angry about the American incident if she hadn’t loved me. I had to keep reminding myself what I had already worked out: this was all part of our game. This was our ultimate Crave and only I would understand that.

I picked my laptop off the floor and rested it on my knees. Perhaps it would be stranger to simply turn up at her wedding without contacting her first. The rules of any game dictate that a move by one player is followed by the move of another. She had made the first move; I must make the second.

I debated for a while about putting in the eagle bit, but V had often called me her eagle and I needed to start reminding her who we were. I wanted her to know that I got it, that I knew we’d started playing again.

I woke a few hours later with a pounding head and stiff limbs, the sun streaming through the window, revealing all the particles in the air before my face. I pushed myself up and saw another patch of blood where I had been lying. I reached my hand to my temple, but it was tender to touch, so I stood and looked in the mirror above the fireplace. I was shocked to see a mean, red lump protruding above my eyebrow. It looked like a tiny volcano on my face, rising to a dark peak, from which a thin trail of dried, almost black blood had run down one side.

I showered and brushed my teeth and drank a pint of water to rid my mouth of the taste of rotting meat, all of which removed the desire to die. But still all I felt capable of was putting on a tracksuit and dragging a blanket to the sofa. If V was here I knew she would make me some hot tea and feel my forehead; she would tuck in the covers and ruffle my hair. I checked my email, but my inbox was empty.

The day was very long. I ordered in food and watched the sort of television programmes that had punctuated my childhood, but which V had taught me to despise. Where once these types of shows had soothed me, sometimes even made me laugh, now I could only see them through her eyes, could only see fat, stupid people competing for non-existent prizes, as if humiliating yourself in public was the point.

I checked my email every ten or so minutes. At one point I unplugged and then reset my broadband. But I was worried this had done something to it, so I called my provider, who assured me there was nothing wrong with my connection. I asked Google how long undeliverable mail takes to be returned and was told the postmaster should inform you of a difficulty almost immediately, but confirmation could take up to three days.

The day drifted into the evening and the television got worse, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on books or music. I had my laptop open next to me, my inbox forever on the screen, my finger constantly refreshing the page.

I slept fitfully, on the sofa again, although this time I did have the foresight to close the curtains. I dreamt of V, trapped in an electronic world of her own creation, stuck behind a million passwords, which no human would ever be clever enough to decipher. She was being attacked by a massive eagle and screamed my name constantly. I woke with a start, my heart pinning me to the sofa like a butterfly in a box, my body covered in sweat and my mouth painfully dry. I lay very still and regulated my breathing, first into my toes, then up my legs, through my belly, my chest, neck and out of the top of my head. I felt better when I’d done that and I could see light creeping round the edges of the curtains, which gave me some hope. And I remembered all was not lost: Suzi and Colin were still at Steeple House, just as they always would be, and I knew that place as well as anywhere in the world.

I left it until 10 a.m. and then ten minutes more. By then I had run, showered and dressed, cleaned the house and opened the doors into the garden and made myself a pot of coffee. I would walk across the common in a bit and buy a paper, maybe even have lunch in a pub. Normal Sunday pursuits.

Steeple House’s number was still stored in my phone, although it wouldn’t have mattered if it had been lost. Suzi took a while to answer, but I knew better than to ring off, knew she would be in the garden on a fine summer morning with her daughter’s wedding looming and all the guests to impress.

‘Mike?’ she said, failing to hide her surprise behind her over-accentuated vowels.

‘How are you, Suzi?’ I asked, keeping my voice light.

‘Well. We’re fine, thank you,’ she replied, recovering herself. ‘Thank you for replying to the invitation so swiftly.’

I was worried when she said that. I thought I’d left an adequate time, but maybe I was wrong, maybe I looked too keen. ‘It will be lovely to see you and Colin.’

‘Yes. How long have you been back in England for?’

I could hear the radio spluttering on in the background and I knew it would be Radio 4, which was never turned off in Steeple House. V and I always listened to Radio 4 as well and I do miss it, but it’s one of the things I still find too painful. ‘A couple of months. I’ve bought a house in Clapham and got a job at another bank.’

‘Well, yes. Verity told me.’