Pear Shaped. Stella Newman
says Pete, who it’s fair to say, is neither the paranoid nor the romantic type.
‘It said “I had a wonderful time with you”.’
‘And?’
‘Something’s not right.’ Laura says he must be hiding something.
‘Women are so neurotic. He’s saying he had a great time, what more do you want?’
‘I want to know when I’m seeing him again. We’ve been seeing each other for nearly two months, this isn’t normal.’
‘Look, Soph, this guy is not Nick. Nick didn’t have a job.’
‘Nick’s a musician.’
‘Which is basically the same as being unemployed, so he had loads of time to sit around writing you faggy romantic emails. This guy runs a business, plus he’s older. He’s busy. I hate it when girls text me all the time.’
I’m not texting James ‘all the time’. At all, in fact. I am being very careful not to treat him like I treated Nick. I’d text Nick to tell him the filling of my sandwich because I was fundamentally bored in my old job, and because Nick was also bored pottering around our flat. Eventually we bored each other and then we split up.
I can be guarded and I can be cool and I can hold back, but at the same time today I saw a man on the bus with a moustache that was so long it curled round his ears and I would like to tell James about this moustache because it would make him laugh, and yet I feel I can’t. And that is why I’m not happy.
‘He’ll call. Now tell me about the bit with the glitter again.’
I wake early the next day, hung-over. Outside the sky is already bright and from my bedroom window I can just see a patch of daffodils pushing through, down by the banks of the canal. I consider going for a walk to clear my head – past the colourful boats and vast white stucco houses – then think better of it and climb back under my duvet to replay last night’s conversation.
According to Pete, there’s nothing untoward about James’s behaviour. My instinct tells me something is strange, but I can’t put my finger on it.
When James is with me, he’s highly attentive.
He notices everything. If I apply lip balm when he’s popped to the loo, he’ll notice as soon as he walks back in. Not gloss. Clear lip balm. Nick wouldn’t have noticed if I’d grown a Salvador Dali moustache and started speaking Aramaic, as long as I was still padding around the flat.
If I leave the room, James asks where I’m going.
When I’m cooking a meal, he’ll watch me, try to impress me, touch me.
When we’re in bed he is generous and energetic and passionate. He has the libido of a man half his age.
Afterwards we lie for hours having iPod shuffle conversations, flicking from time travel to Bernie Winters to why mosquitoes don’t get AIDS. We should be sleeping. Our combined age is seventy-eight, we both have work in the morning. It’s 3.47, 2.48, 4.15am. Neither of us ever wants to stop the conversation. Eventually we fall asleep, my hand curled around his fingers.
But when he’s not with me, I feel like ‘we’ don’t exist. The randomness of meeting someone in a bar, of having no mutual friends, of having entirely separate lives, is brought home. He could disappear and I would never cross paths with him again. Sometimes I wake up and wonder if he’s even real.
On days when we don’t speak, I feel laden down with the things I didn’t get to share with him. He won’t call for two, three days. Then, it’s like he has a CCTV on my psyche, and at the precise mid-point between when I’ve done a deal with the devil so that he’ll call, and the point at which I think fuck you, James Stephens, this is not acceptable, he’ll ring. My anxiety will be punctured, he’ll come round and we’ll carry on mid-conversation where we left off, and I’ll realise I am a paranoid, silly woman.
Come on, paranoid, silly woman – get out of bed. Go to work.
It’s four in the morning on Good Friday. James and I are at his house, lying in bed, facing each other. My head is resting on his arm. Everything feels so entirely natural and comfortable and right. I think we are falling in love. He looks at me intently. ‘What’s wrong with you, Sophie Klein? There must be something.’
‘Plenty.’
He shakes his head.
‘I’m impatient,’ I say. ‘I’m not very thoughtful. I never remember birthdays. I forget to send my godchildren cards at Christmas. I’m greedy. I’m sarcastic. Sometimes I get a bit depressed and can’t shrug it off.’
He shakes his head again. ‘No, you don’t. You’re generous. You’re a good woman.’ Why does that sound so church-y?
‘What’s wrong with you, James Stephens?’
He pauses and shrugs. He doesn’t answer. He will never show a weakness. He is a master at evading questions.
‘Say something.’ I mean say something nice. I feel like I’m trying to force a compliment out of him and I know this is bad but he’s looking at me like he adores me, but nothing is coming out of his mouth.
‘Who was the last person you went out with before me?’ I ask.
‘Svetlana.’
Beautiful Russians are two a penny in this city. James has a lot of pennies. I see these women slicing down Bond Street, hard bodies, steely eyes, spiky boots; russet-faced older men in bad jackets dragging behind in their wake.
‘How long did that last?’
‘Two years.’
‘Why did it end?’
‘It wasn’t going anywhere.’
‘Why not?’
‘I couldn’t talk to her the way I can talk to you.’
‘What did you do for two years?’
He raises his eyebrows and gives me a look that instantly makes me regret having asked the question. I turn to face the window and James’s arm wraps itself around my waist.
‘Sophie Klein. I haven’t felt this way about anyone in twenty years.’ I turn back to look at him. ‘I am truly myself with you.’
He is telling me the truth.
I love him, I love him, I love him.
I love the way he moves his fingers when he explains something. I love the way he loses his temper with an obnoxious waiter at exactly the same point that I would. I love the fact that I can flick a spoonful of spaghetti with meatballs at him and he doesn’t have a hissy fit that I’ve stained his shirt. I love talking to him and I love looking at him and I love thinking about him.
It is a rainy Saturday night in April and I’m teaching James the secret of a foolproof Yorkshire pudding, when my mother rings.
‘Have you spoken to your brother?’ she says.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘You’re not going to believe what that lunatic girlfriend of his is up to …’
‘Go on …’
‘She’s booked a Caesarean for the third week in August.’
‘Isn’t the baby due at the start of September?’ I say.
‘Exactly!’
‘So how does …’
‘She’s having it two weeks early so that it’s the same star sign as her!’ No amount of italics can convey the utter disdain in my mother’s voice.
‘Jesus, what is wrong with her?’ I say. ‘Is that even safe?’
‘Apparently. Sheer lunacy. And your bloody brother’s saying