Platform Seven Read online

  ‘Are you still using the same number as your PIN?’ he asked. He meant my cashpoint PIN.

  ‘Yeah, I know …’ I said. He’d told me off about that before, and about the fact that I used the same password for everything, but my memory was so poor, I could never rely on retaining lots of different passwords and numbers.

  ‘You are just asking for your identity to be stolen,’ he said, as I handed him my phone.

  13

  There are people who need excitement more than they need anything else, more than love or money or sex – and nothing is more thrilling than the early days of a relationship. That’s why some people go from one lover to the next, recreating that early buzz. If you stay with someone when that has faded, how do you replace it? With the drama of jealousy, perhaps – or with jealousy’s Siamese twin, infidelity? Or with rows, with arguments – they make you feel alive just as the early obsession with someone can make you feel alive. Sticking a pin into the end of your thumb makes you feel alive, after all.

  As far as relationships are concerned we are all doomed to achieve, in due course, the pain of clarity. There is so much that seems obvious in retrospect, but when it comes to love, the clues are always ambiguous.

  *

  One night, I said to Matty, quite casually, not meaning anything, ‘We should go out a bit more, we should make the effort. We don’t want to get too stuck in the mud.’

  We were in the bedroom. He was already in bed, on his laptop; I was undressing. He looked up. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he said.

  I didn’t even look round. I was examining my toes. ‘I just mean we don’t want to get into too much of a routine like …’

  ‘Like what?’

  I hesitated. I had been about to say, ‘like an old married couple,’ but it would have come out wrong. I wanted to be a couple with Matthew, either married or otherwise, I just didn’t want to be old. In truth, it had surprised me, a little, how much he wanted to stay at home once he had moved into my place. He had explained that his job was so stressful he preferred it when it was just the two of us at home and that made perfect sense but my job was stressful too and I still liked going out when we could. He didn’t like spending money, either, it turned out. Why pay to see a film and have someone rustling a massive tub of popcorn next to you when you could see loads of films for free on your own television and save the bother? Why eat out when he was a good cook – this was true – and he could do it much better at home? He hadn’t mentioned any of this before we cohabited.

  ‘Go on, like what?’ he insisted. His tone of voice warned me this was about to turn into an argument. It was bedtime and we both had work the next day. I didn’t rise to it, but he continued. ‘What you’re saying is, you’re bored, you’re finding me a bit boring.’

  I turned to him then, with a smile. ‘Don’t be silly. Of course you’re not boring, you’re anything but.’

  He looked down at his laptop again. ‘Sounds like what you’re saying.’

  ‘Well I’m not.’

  I rose from the bed, picked up the clothes I had just taken off and went to drop them in the laundry bin next to the chest of drawers.

  He continued with his email and spoke while he typed. ‘You said it was great to be out with Neesha. You said it was a nice change from being stuck at home watching TV with me.’

  Neesha was an old friend from the first school I taught in, St Peter’s out at Gunthorpe. We had done our probationary year together. There was a group from that school, Neesha, Karen, Michael, Samira, we all got together once or twice a year but last week it had been just Neesha and me. It was one of those friendships that might not have stood meeting every week but worked very well at the few-times-a-year level. It had been great to be out with her, it was true – it was the first time I had gone for a drink with a friend after work in a while.

  ‘I didn’t say that. That wouldn’t be a nice thing to say.’

  ‘Yes you did. You don’t remember because you were pissed.’

  I hadn’t come home pissed. I’d had a couple of glasses of wine, might have been a bit tipsy, but Neesha wasn’t a big drinker any more than I was. We’d done a lot more talking than drinking.

  ‘Matty, I’m sure I never said that.’

  He stopped typing and looked at me. ‘You’ve always said how bad your memory is, so how do you know?’

  Getting into an argument about what I had said when I couldn’t remember saying anything of the sort seemed pretty stupid. I sighed.

  ‘Nicer than being with me, is what you meant. I suppose it is a bit boring, isn’t it, boring for you, when we snuggle up on the sofa together and watch a film. Funny, Helen complained we never snuggled up on the sofa but it would seem you don’t like it all that much.’

  I thought the mention of Helen was uncalled for, but I let it pass.

  ‘Don’t be silly. I love snuggling up on the sofa, of course I do, everyone does, it’s just …’

  ‘It’s just you’d rather be out with a friend.’

  I went over to him then, pushed his laptop off his lap, gently, kissed him hard on his unresponsive lips and said firmly, ‘Don’t be silly. And now it’s time to go to sleep.’

  In bed, with the lights off, our backs to each other, I lay awake for a while, feeling I couldn’t relax until I heard his breathing deepen, and thought, I never said being out with Neesha was a nice change from being stuck at home with him, I’m sure of it. I wouldn’t have been that tactless even if it was true.

  *

  The next day, I checked my phone as I walked to work. I scrolled up until I found my text thread with Neesha. On the way home from our night out together, I had texted her, That was so fun thnks! Nice change from being home watching telly must do it more often!!! Xxx

  My phone was almost always in my pocket, not because I had anything to hide but just because. The only time my phone wasn’t on me was when I was asleep or when it was plugged in recharging, but then it was locked.

  So, Matty checked my phone. I could change the passcode – but then, what if he asked me, why have you changed your passcode? Wouldn’t it imply I had something to hide? And the truth was, I didn’t have anything to hide, so if he really needed to check my texts, then wasn’t it best just to let him? Wasn’t that the best way to reassure him, rather than act as though I were guilty of something when I wasn’t?

  I couldn’t help smiling to myself, as I slipped my phone back into my coat pocket and strode to work – it was cold and windy that day and the breeze slapped my hair across my face every few minutes. I should have worn a hat. Matty: who would have thought a man so outwardly confident and charming could be so insecure in secret? I thought of how keen he had been to meet my parents, meet my friends – how he always wanted to know when I would be back and how I would get home whenever I went anywhere without him, even in daylight. We’d talked about his past girlfriends a bit – in his twenties there had been one called Lorna who he’d been really in love with, apparently, who had left him for his best friend or something. All that confidence: all that need. He never told me he loved me and we had both studiously avoided the subject of marriage or children, it was far too early for all that – and yet, he wanted to know everything about me. He was keener on me than he would ever admit to himself, I concluded. It was really quite cute, wasn’t it? There was no point in raising it with him – but maybe I’d be a bit more careful about what I texted to people in the future.

  *

  That weekend, on the Saturday morning, I woke before him. We usually had sex on Saturdays, followed by breakfast together, like most couples I suppose. I lay still for a while, waiting for him to stir, but the quality of his breathing told me he was sound asleep. It had been hot overnight and I felt sticky, my hair needed washing, so I slipped from the bed and went to the bathroom.

  The shower was just a fitting over the bath with a thick, translucent curtain decorated with goldfish. The other thing I longed for, apart from built-in wardrobes, was a proper
shower cubicle, or a wet room, even though I wasn’t all that sure what a wet room was.

  I closed the bathroom door behind me gently and turned the water on to run hot while I peed. I got into the shower and stood letting the water run over my head. As I rinsed the shampoo out I thought, the extractor fan has probably woken Matty up. I stepped carefully out of the bath but pulled the plastic curtain back into position so that the water still thundered against it. I turned the handle on the door and opened it a crack, so that I could see into the bedroom. The curtains were still closed but in the dim light I could see that Matty was up and sitting on my side of the bed, turned away from my direction and slightly hunched.

  My phone was still plugged in – I could see where the charging cable led down from the bedside table and into the plug socket on the wall – but from the way Matty was bent and the position of the lead, I could guess that my phone was in his hand.

  I pulled back from the door and returned to the shower. I did not want him to catch me catching him.

  I took my time finishing my shower. I brushed my teeth very thoroughly and then plucked my eyebrows. When I stepped out and opened the door to the bedroom, the curtains were open and it was full of daylight, the duvet in a mountainous heap in the middle of the bed. Matty wasn’t there. My phone was back on the bedside table, at the exact angle where I had left it. I stood looking at it as I scrubbed at my scalp with a small towel. I knew what Rosaria would say – that it wasn’t on, him looking, that it was behaviour I should challenge. I imagined myself saying, in a cheery tone, ‘What were you doing with my phone?’ and tried to imagine his response. I was admiring your screen saver? I wanted to feel how much it weighed? I knew that he would answer with a question of his own. ‘You were spying on me?’ Or, perhaps, ‘So I was looking at your phone. You have a problem with that?’

  I carried on scrubbing hard at my scalp with my towel, much harder than I needed to. It would tangle my hair. I would have to tug hard with the wide-tooth comb later, to detangle it. Whatever response Matthew gave to my question would be an offended one. It would mean an argument. Did I want that when, actually, it didn’t really matter whether he looked at my phone or not?

  There are some events that form a curve in the road but one so gentle it is only later that you think, yes, how could I not have realised it was at that point that the road started to arc, that I was at the beginning of a long slow bend that would take me in a completely different direction?

  I stepped around the bedroom gingerly as I gathered my clothes for that day, as if someone had broken a glass in there and I was not quite sure the carpet had been hoovered properly. Matty was in the kitchen, I could hear him. The radio was on. He was humming along to it, tunelessly and absently, in the way he did, as if his mind was elsewhere and he was only half following the melody. Suddenly he called out.

  ‘Lisa!’

  ‘Ye-es …’ I called back, pulling my towel a little tighter around me.

  ‘Lisa …’ He was still calling my name as he stepped into the bedroom. ‘Oh good, you’re done.’ He was naked but for an apron, a very old navy blue one I had been given for Christmas by my parents years ago. It would have been crumpled and stuck at the back of a drawer – I’d forgotten I even had it. It was a sight so surprising that I broke into a smile.

  ‘What?’ he said, grinning back at me. ‘What?’

  I gestured towards the apron.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, looking down at himself, as if it surprised him too. ‘That was what I was coming to ask you!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How many eggs do you want?’

  ‘You’re making me breakfast?’ I could not help the edge of incredulity in my voice, although he’d made me breakfast often enough before. It was that I had just been thinking of him one way and here he was, countering my thoughts, as if he could tell.

  He crossed the bedroom towards me and kissed my damp nose. ‘Yes, I’m making you breakfast, silly. Mmm, you smell nice. Put your kimono on cos I’m frying the eggs now and everything else is ready. One or two?’

  ‘Two, please.’

  He went to the bathroom, peed, returned to the kitchen. I made the bed and dried myself, piled my damp hair on top of my head in a clip. When I had tied my kimono, I picked up my phone and looked at it – opened it with my passcode and flicked through it. Everything was as I had left it; nothing was amiss, and there were no texts or Whatsapp conversations that he could possibly object to so really, what was the problem if he looked at it from time to time? I slipped it into my kimono pocket. The kimono was made of fine white cotton that I knew to be slightly see-through – it had been chosen from M & S the week before Matthew moved in for precisely that quality. My grey fleece dressing gown with the hood had been chopped up for dusters.

  I went into the kitchen just as Matthew was sliding the fried eggs onto toasted sourdough. Neat slices of avocado in a fan shape were to one side of the plate and as I sat, he leaned over and placed two slices of crisped prosciutto crossways on top of the eggs, then did the same on his. I had never had a boyfriend who thought that it mattered how the food looked on the plate.

  He turned and replaced the pan on the hob, to cool down, then turned back and grabbed the hair on the back of my head, tipping my face up to meet his. He kissed me hard. Then he sat and said, ‘Eat up, it will get cold. This is breakfast as foreplay, by the way.’

  I brought a knife down on a crispy piece of prosciutto and it crackled as it snapped and sank into the soft yolk of the egg. I cut into a piece of bread and lifted the whole forkful to my mouth while Matty watched me. I looked at him as I pushed the fork into my mouth and made an appreciative noise. The belt on my new white kimono was loose. I knew exactly what I was doing.

  He reached out a hand to pull at the end of the belt on the kimono and I tapped the back of his knuckles sharply with the flat of my knife – too late, the kimono fell open.

  ‘Ow!’ he said, shaking the hand. ‘That’s domestic violence!’

  ‘What about eat up before it gets cold?’

  ‘Fuck …’ he muttered, but picked up his fork.

  We ate in silence, looking at each other the whole while, and I thought about how, once our breakfast was done, I was going to rise from the chair, go over to him, lift the apron and straddle him and how he knew that was what I was going to do, and knew that I was enjoying making him wait.

  He finished eating and picked up his phone, which was lying by his plate. I felt a rush of disappointment. Really? He punched a few buttons. I looked down at my plate.

  As he put his phone back on the table, my phone, in my kimono pocket, vibrated. I extracted it and looked. It was a text from Matty. Your chair or mine? Xxx

  I texted back. Yours xxx He pushed his plate to one side and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, ostentatiously, then turned his chair to accommodate me.

  *

  One day, a few days later, I was reading, on the sofa. He was sitting opposite me on the armchair with his feet on the coffee table. He had been drinking a bottle of beer and doing some work emails on his laptop, tapping away from time to time while it was open on his lap, when I looked up and saw he was staring at me. I began a smile but never concluded it because I realised, as the instinctive movement of my mouth began, that he was not going to return it.

  ‘Pallor, algor, rigor, livor.’

  ‘What?’ I asked. I was still waiting for him to smile.

  He took a swig from his beer bottle, lifting it high but still watching me, tipping the contents down his throat in large gulps that made his Adam’s apple move up and down although the rest of him stayed entirely still. He lowered the bottle and put it down, closed the lid of his laptop. ‘The stages of death, what happens to the body I mean, not that it means anything to you.’ During the final phrase of this remark, his tone was openly contemptuous.

  I wondered if he was drunk. Either way, I no longer wanted to sit beneath his gaze. I wasn’t in the mood. I rose and put my book dow
n. As I walked past him, on my way to the bathroom, he reached out a hand and took hold of my wrist, arresting me. He held it firmly. I wanted to ask him, ‘Are you drunk?’ but didn’t dare.

  ‘Ever wondered,’ he said, swinging my wrist lightly from side to side, ‘what it’d be like to fuck a corpse?’

  I pulled my arm out of his grasp and said, ‘No, and I think people who do are right sickos.’ He let me go.

  *

  That night, in bed, he said, ‘Lie still. Go on. Close your eyes. Don’t do anything. Pretend you’re dead.’

  ‘Matthew …’ I protested.

  ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘you’re mine, remember, do as you’re told.’ He pushed me gently onto my back and began to place my limbs, straightening my legs and tucking my arms in to either side of my torso. No sooner had he arranged me than a convulsion of laughter welled up in me and I snorted and suddenly he was laughing too, and I creased out of the position he had placed me in so carefully and rolled on my side and he shoved at me and said, ‘Fuck’s sake, Cupcake, you make a useless corpse! So much for doing as you’re told!’

  ‘Oi!’ I said, and rolled on top of him.

  And we had sex, normally then, just a man and a woman in their thirties making love, taking it in turns to come, holding each other afterwards, and as we held each other I thought, thank God. And then I thought, I mustn’t get paranoid just because of the phone stuff and the checking up on me. Isn’t it quite sweet, really, that he cares? I mustn’t get paranoid about everything.

  14

  It was a Sunday, roast lunch at my parents’ house – on my own; Matty was doing an A & E shift at the hospital and had left the flat before dawn. My parents and I had spent most of the meal discussing his new role in the Fracture Clinic and what was the next step for him, whether he might continue in orthopaedics or move over to anaesthesia. My parents loved Matty’s job, of course, and I had wondered, more than once, if there was an element of them feeling that having a doctor for a son-in-law would come in handy as they aged. Matty was the hard-working, middle-class boy they had always dreamed of for me. His father was also a doctor. His mother threw pots and was a part-time magistrate. There was a sister at the BBC. He had even grown up in Surrey. What more could they have wanted?