It takes genuine effort not to wilt in the face of this brief, intimate look at what they have. Instead, I try toappear the picture of serenity. I tell myself that were Alice and Ted in fact to break up, it would be no bad thing for either of them. They are not compatible, not fundamentally. I could handle whatever baggage he has in a way that she clearly can’t. Besides, she could find another brilliant, besotted guy in the morning. Look at her. It would take all of three minutes.
‘We met the other night, at that party thing,’ I tell Ted, my voice feeling strangled with the huge effort of trying to sound normal. Heat creeps down my neck.Don’t you remember me from that other time in London?I want to ask him.When our eyes met on the street?
‘Oh, right on. You were at that?’
‘Yes, I was there with Naomi.’ He doesn’t react. Yep, she must have stayed true to her word when she said she’d never mention me to Ted. The kinks around all of this can be ironed out later.
‘There were a lot of cool people there,’ I tell him.
Ted’s phone rings, and I want not only to bust the handset to smithereens but to travel into whatever fibre-optic cable was responsible for the connection, come face to face with the person making the phone call, and go at their skull with a knitting needle.
‘Scuse,’ Ted says, peering at the phone while I manage my calmest face.
A few minutes later, he shouts up the stairs.
‘Babe, I gotta go, it’s Jeremy,’ he calls.May Jeremy’s arse grow at the four corners and fester. Ted walks out of the door without saying goodbye or even looking in my direction. Maybe he’s playing it cool here, out of respect for Alice. I’m certain that if we were on more neutral ground, things might just be different.
She arrives down the stairs, frowning into her phone, clearly flummoxed.
‘Goddammit,’ she says to herself. She realizes that Ted has left, and I’m still here, and she doesn’t look all that pleased about it.
‘He said something about Jeremy needing him,’ I offer, trying to sound as though I belong neatly in the inside circle along with them.
Alice still exhales like a person nearing the end of her reason. ‘My dog-sitter is moving back to Brazil,’ she says, absorbing the news with no small amount of unease. ‘Goddammit!’
The opportunity nearly winds me on the spot.
‘Do you have a friend who could do it?’ I hear myself saying. ‘Or even a neighbour’s kid?’
Alice is deep in thought mode. I instruct myself to hold fire, to wait ten seconds before I say the next thing. I make it as far as three.
‘I mean, if you’re really stuck and can’t think of anyone, I suppose I could do it,’ I tell her. ‘He’s such a cutie: I’d be happy to.’
She eyeballs me uncertainly.
‘Look, this might sound crazy, I know. But my writer hours are pretty flexible, and I’d be happy to help if you can’t find a professional,’ I add. ‘If you’re stuck, like.’
It seems to take Alice almost four hours to reply. Four torturous, everlasting hours.
‘I mean, that would be really cool of you, Esther.’
I smile my most winning, trustworthy, dog-sittery smile.
‘Maybe… you wanna do a trial?’
‘Absolutely! Say when and where.’
Something seems to cloud over Alice’s face, but she bats whatever it is away instantly.
‘We won’t be around but if I gave you a key and some written instructions, could you let yourself in around eight a.m. on Monday and bring him to the park across the street? Just for a run around. Twenty minutes, tops.’
Jesus, I’d let myself in through the sewage pipes if you asked me to, I think to myself.
‘No worries. Consider it done. Oscar and I will have a lovely time together!’
29
On Monday morning, Oscar greets me at the front door with genuine hostility. It’s as if he senses what I’m trying to do here. ‘I have a key,’ I tell him, holding it up. He continues whining in protest as I get to work looking around in drawers and cupboards. He begins scratching the door in protest as I open Alice’s laptop. Incredibly, it falls open on her Hotmail, the sight of which makes me emit a long, kind of delighted groan. The Fates wouldn’t have made it this easy if I wasn’t meant to be doing it,surely.
