Because She Loves Me Read online

  Groggily, I switched the lamp on and pulled the object out. It was a small parcel, fastened with a red ribbon which I pulled open.

  Inside was a little heart-shaped box, about four inches across and made of cardboard. I lifted the lid of the box and found a tiny photo.

  It was the photo Charlie had taken of me and her just before she’d left the previous afternoon. There we were, smiling at the camera, heads pressed together. Or was I confused? I squinted in the photo in the half-light. Yes, I’m sure it was that picture. We were wearing the clothes we’d had on in the afternoon. How had Charlie managed to print it and sneak it under the pillow? Too tired to think about it, I sank back into sleep.

  Seven

  I spent the next day catching up with life admin and looking forward to the night ahead. I hadn’t seen Charlie for twenty-four hours which, in my newly loved-up state, felt like an eternity. This was her last night before she had to return to work and she was also spending the day catching up with laundry and paperwork.

  I emailed Victor, my most regular employer, asking him if we could meet up this week, and he replied saying that I should come in the next day. I also, on a whim, emailed Harriet, wishing her a happy New Year and saying that I’d heard about her party. I didn’t overtly mention the Facebook unfriending. I wasn’t bothered about missing the party – it was in Buckinghamshire, where her parents lived, miles away.

  She replied almost immediately.

  Hey A!

  Yeah party was wicked. I was going to invite you but thought you’d have more exciting plans. How are you? Any big news? We must catch up.

  H xxx

  I couldn’t be bothered to reply, partly because I felt annoyed that she hadn’t invited me and could only come up with a lame excuse.

  My and Harriet’s relationship had been one of those partnerships that came stamped with an expiry date, an uncomplicated and fun couple of years – we definitely went beyond our best-before date – that provided us both with someone to hang out and have sex with but was far from the love affair of the century. I did like her a lot and loved spending time with her. She was pretty and interesting and had loads of friends who became my friends while we were together. We used to say that we loved each other but, looking back, I think we said it more because we felt we should. It was an emotionally vanilla relationship. The only times I ever saw her cry were when she saw animals dying on TV or when she dropped a bottle of wine on her toe.

  Now that she had unfriended me on Facebook, which I was a tiny bit offended by but not enough to make a fuss about it, I guessed this would be the very end of our relationship.

  It was six now and Charlie was due any minute. I went into the bathroom to clean my teeth. Opening the bathroom cabinet to get out a new tube of toothpaste I noticed something I hadn’t seen before: a bottle of Vidal Sassoon shampoo. Next to it, matching conditioner. Sliding the cabinet open further, I found a little roll-on antiperspirant, a small box of tampons and some Veet hair removal cream. There was a little brown jar containing some tablets too. The label told me they were codeine.

  None of these items were mine. Charlie must have put them there.

  I sat down on the closed toilet lid and thought about it. A friend of mine, Simeon, had once told me that his girlfriend, whom he was now married to, had moved into his flat by stealth: smuggling in her clothes, her toiletries, eventually so many of her possessions that there was no room in his wardrobe for his own clothes and they were living together. ‘It was when I found her vibrator in the drawer where I used to keep my underwear that I knew she’d properly moved in,’ he said.

  Was that what Charlie was doing?

  As crazy about her as I was, it had only been a week since we’d first slept together. A little soon to be shacking up, even if I was smitten with her. But part of me found it quite endearing and encouraging: she was expecting to be around here so much that she needed toiletries.

  I made a mental note to ask her when she’d invite me to stay at her place.

  I looked at my watch. She was late. Almost as soon as I thought this, she rang me.

  ‘Hiya,’ I said.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Her voice was thick with good humour. ‘I’m excellent. Why don’t you come down and see just how excellent?’

  I opened the front door of my flat and peered down the staircase. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m in the park, opposite your building. I’ll meet you by the lake.’

  She hung up.

  Eight

  To get to the park from my flat I had to walk through the new housing development on the other side of Tulse Hill. The gate was locked but there was a gap in the railings, partially concealed behind a shrub, which saved me having to climb over. I guessed Charlie had done something similar.

  It must have been no more than a few degrees above freezing in the night air. The moon was almost full and the sky was mostly clear, but as soon as I moved away from the lights of the housing estate it grew harder to see where I was going. Bare, gnarly trees scratched at the star-pricked sky, whispered to me of a thousand childhood fairy tales and adult horror movies. Harmless objects such as benches and waste bins loomed out at me from the darkness. Something darted into a bush as I passed, making my stomach flip over. When a stray cloud took its sweet time crossing the moon, I found myself in absolute darkness and I was forced to pause on the path, pulling out my phone so I could use its weak light to illuminate my way.

  She was waiting for me by the lake, actually a pond, towards the centre of the park. During the day, overfed ducks gazed disinterestedly at children chucking lumps of stale bread into the water while dogs sniffed at the railings and each other. A few years previously, on a bitter winter’s afternoon when the lake was frozen over, a child had drowned in this pond after climbing the railings to attempt to rescue his Jack Russell which had leapt the fence and skittered across the ice. The outcome was predictable: the ice cracked, the boy got trapped, the dog survived.

  At night, the lake was silent and motionless, the black water cold and uninviting. The ducks were elsewhere.

  ‘Charlie?’ I said, not sure why I was whispering.

  She was standing beyond the fence, next to the water. She appeared to be wearing a long black coat – but when I got closer I saw that it was more like a cloak, thin and rippling whenever the wind caught it. The breeze licked at it now, lifting it, revealing a bare glimpse of white leg.

  ‘Come over,’ she said. Her voice was low but clear.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked, climbing over the waist-high railing. I could see her clearly now. Only her face and hair were visible, the black cloak wrapped tightly around her.

  I stepped towards her and into her embrace. She smiled at me and kissed me softly. This was surreal but exciting.

  I tried to speak, to ask more questions, but she pressed her mouth against mine to hush me, and I understood that it was my role to stay quiet. She took my wrist and pulled my hand inside the robe, where it met naked flesh. I ran my palm over her ribcage, stroked her shoulder blade, then brought it back round to cup her breast, sliding my thumb over her erect nipple. I was aroused now, and I tried to press more firmly against her, but she stepped away.

  She let the robe slip from her shoulders and to the ground. She was naked and part of me wanted to grab the robe, wrap her up and keep her warm. But before I could do anything, she stepped into the water.

  ‘Charlie!’

  I couldn’t believe what she was doing. I watched, stunned, as she walked slowly into the lake until it covered her legs and then her hips. She turned to me and smiled. She looked like a water nymph, straight from that pre-Raphaelite painting. What was it? I looked it up later: Hylas and the Nymphs, John Waterhouse. A handsome youth, drawn to his presumed death by strange, beautiful women. Staring at Charlie now, pale and half-submerged, he
r skin catching the moonlight, I was torn between two urges: one, to get her out of there, out of the bitterly cold water, and take her home to the warmth of my flat; and two, to slip with her into the dangerous, icy depths, to abandon sense and, instead, embrace my senses.

  She beckoned me and I hurriedly undressed, leaving my clothes and glasses in a pile, until I stood naked and aroused before her. I hesitated – this really was insane – and then stepped into the water. It’s hard to describe quite how cold it was. And even harder to describe why I kept going rather than leaping out.

  It was Charlie. She magnetised me. But I also felt like she was daring me, testing me, that to stop would have made me less of a man. Plus I wanted her, was literally being led by my penis towards her. So I gritted my teeth and tried to ignore the burning cold as I stepped deeper into the water. The bed of the lake felt slippery against my soles and I feared what might be down there: broken bottles, old cans. For a second I had a flash of that boy who had drowned here, picturing his body lying beneath the water, small hands reaching out for me . . .

  I reached Charlie and she wrapped her arms around me, pressed her body against mine, kissing me deeply, her tongue in my mouth. She folded her hand around my cock and moaned. She was shivering; we were both shivering. She stood on tiptoe and positioned the tip of my penis against her.

  ‘Lift me,’ she said into my ear, and I did. She was lighter than I expected, and she wrapped her strong legs and arms around me and we both gasped as my cock pushed into her.

  I came within seconds. I don’t think I could have held her much longer than that. As I gently put her down, Charlie started giggling.

  ‘I’m cold,’ she said. ‘My teeth are actually chattering.’

  I started laughing too. What the hell were we doing? We splashed our way out of the water and I wrapped Charlie in the robe before hurriedly pulling my own clothes over my wet skin. I pulled Charlie against me and felt her trembling.

  ‘Let’s get—’ I began, then stopped.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  I stared into the trees that ringed the lake, peered into the shadowy spaces between them, and said, ‘Hello?’

  Charlie followed my gaze, her eyes wide.

  ‘Did you see something too?’ I asked. When she shook her head I said, ‘I’m sure there was someone there, watching us.’

  ‘Oh please, don’t.’

  Tentatively, I approached the trees. There was no one there.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ I said. My whole body felt like it had been encased in ice for a thousand years, like that Stone Age man they found in the Italian Alps. And right now, I needed to get back to the warmth and safety of my cave.

  I was still thawing out half an hour later as Charlie and I sat at opposite ends of my bath. A gentleman, I had taken the end with the taps and the plug. Soap bubbles covered Charlie up to her shoulders. She took a sip from her condensation-streaked wine glass.

  ‘I still can’t believe we did that,’ I said.

  She laughed. ‘Me neither. It was fun though.’

  I wasn’t sure if that was the right word. It was intense, unforgettable – but fun?

  ‘I wasn’t wearing a condom,’ I said.

  She scooped up a handful of bubbles and blew them at me. ‘You’re such a worrier. It’s OK. I’m on the pill. And I’m trusting that you’re not wildly promiscuous, so your chances of having a disease are low.’

  ‘I’m definitely not, nor have I ever been, wildly promiscuous,’ I said.

  She paused, took a sip of wine. ‘So, what’s your number?’ she asked.

  ‘You mean, how many women have I slept with?’

  She smiled. ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Seven,’ I said, after taking a few moments to count in my head. ‘Including you.’

  I had expected her to say something like ‘is that all?’ because, compared to most of my friends and from reading survey results in magazines, mine was a low number. But she said, ‘I know Harriet already, and me of course. Who were the other five?’

  I ran through the other girls.

  The first had been Laura, my girlfriend when I was in the sixth form at school. We were both virgins and after many heated petting sessions, finally went all the way while babysitting a neighbour’s toddler. We stayed together for another few months after that, splitting up when we both went to university.

  There were Junko and Helena, two one-night stands when I was a student.

  Then I went out with Sarah for two years, starting in our third year of uni, before she left me for a guy she met at the office where she worked.

  After a long period of involuntary chastity, I had a brief thing with a woman called Karen, ten years older than me, whom I had met through Victor. Karen and I both had meetings at Victor’s office at the same time and had got chatting while waiting in reception. Victor had found our tryst highly amusing and, until we split up, made constant jokes about being guest of honour at our wedding.

  Karen was by far the best in terms of passion and technique, until Charlie came along. Karen and I had been an unlikely match: she was experienced, worldly, at ease in her own skin, while I was gauche and awkward. I’m still not sure what she saw in me. Enthusiasm, perhaps. Energy. She had recently split from her long-term partner and, even when we were having sex, seemed sad. Beautiful and sad. One day she told me she thought we shouldn’t see each other any more, and that was it. I ended our relationship feeling like a student who’d just graduated from a fun and rewarding course.

  After that there was Harriet – who treated sex like a necessary bodily function – and then Charlie.

  ‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘My entire sexual history.’

  She had been quiet as I had recounted my list. ‘And who was best?’ she asked.

  ‘You, of course.’

  She didn’t smile. ‘No, I mean apart from me.’

  ‘Um . . .’ I told her it had been Karen.

  ‘The older woman. Are you still in touch with her?’

  ‘God, no. I haven’t seen her for years. It wasn’t that kind of relationship, where you stay friends afterwards.’

  She cocked her head to one side, studying me with those big eyes. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, it was just . . . We met, we had a sexual relationship, then we split up. That’s all that relationship was about.’

  ‘Just sex?’

  ‘Yes.’ I cleared my throat. ‘I feel quite uncomfortable talking about it, actually.’

  Charlie arched her eyebrows. ‘I find it interesting. I want to know everything about you. Don’t you feel like that about me?’ Beneath the water, she stroked my thigh, squeezed it.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t really want to know your number.’

  ‘Really? Why not?’

  The truth was, I didn’t want to know because I had this fear it would be too high. I knew that even if she’d had sex with one hundred men before me it shouldn’t matter. But I also knew that it would make a difference. That was just the way it was. I would rather not know. Then I wouldn’t have to care.

  ‘Because the past is the past,’ I said, resorting to cliché.

  The bath water was growing cold and the candles that lit the bathroom flickered in the draft that crept in through the window.

  Charlie was quiet for a minute or two, lost in thought. Eventually, she said, ‘OK. I understand. But I would like to hear more about your past. I love hearing you talk, Andrew. And I want you to tell me everything.’

  She wriggled forward, our legs pressed tighter together.

  ‘But not now,’ she said. ‘Shall we go to bed?’

  After we’d made love again, I remembered the things I had been meaning to ask her. Charlie had a way of sweeping the conversation along so that I’d forget everything I’d wanted to say. Like, she had never really told me about her b
ackground, her parents, where she went to school. Every day I resolved to get more information out of her – those were the parts of the past I was interested in – but some other topic always popped up.

  I picked up the heart-shaped box that she’d left beneath my pillow.

  ‘Do you like it?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s lovely. But how did you do it? With the photo?’

  She tapped her nose. ‘Ah.’

  ‘Come on, Charlie . . .’

  ‘OK. I’ve got a tiny portable printer. It’s in my bag now. I can plug my phone into it and print little photos. It’s really cool. I did it in the bathroom while you were waiting for me, then slipped the box under your pillow.’

  So that explained that.

  I wanted to mention the toiletries in the bathroom cabinet, but she yawned and said, ‘I really ought to sleep. I have to get up early for work.’ She groaned.

  ‘Do you dislike your job?’

  She lay facing the ceiling, her eyes shut, bare shoulders just visible.

  ‘I hate it,’ she said. ‘It’s boring and stressful. Every minute I spend there is a minute of my life wasted. All I want is to be able to concentrate on my art.’

  ‘One day.’ I kissed her.

  ‘You’re sweet.’ She opened an eye. ‘Sorry, guys hate being called sweet, don’t they? I meant to say you’re butch and manly.’

  ‘I don’t mind being sweet.’

  She closed the eye. ‘Then you’re even sweeter.’ She yawned again. ‘I really, really must sleep.’

  ‘OK.’

  She rolled away from me. ‘Goodnight, Andrew.’

  ‘Night.’

  ‘I love you.’

  I froze. Was I hearing things? We hadn’t mentioned love at all up to that point. We’d only been together just over a week.

  ‘Charlie?’ I said.

  But she was asleep.

  I awoke at some point in the night from a dream in which I’d been drowning, small hands dragging me beneath the surface of an ice-encrusted lake, the green, rotting face of a young boy leering at me, flesh hanging in flaps from a grinning skull, an eyeball popping loose and bobbing towards me in the dark water.