We had never had that much to do with each other, that was the thing, unless it was through Miranda.
‘She’s at home,’ he mouthed back to me. And then he mimed: he was coming to sit next to me. I was half pleased, half put out. Now I definitely wouldn’t be going home with anyone; by the time Julien and I had had our conversation and he’d headed off to Miranda I’d be too tired to start up anything with someone new.
He came to sit next to me. As he leaned down to pull the stool towards him I caught the scent of his aftershave, a gin-and-tonic freshness, and I remembered how twenty minutes ago, when I thought him a stranger, I’d had the sense that he was probably good-looking. And he was good-looking. I had known this – I’d realised it when he and Miranda first started dating, of course – but at some point I had stopped noticing. Now it was as if I was seeing him clearly again. It was an odd feeling.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.
‘I might ask the same of you,’ he said. Which, of course, was not an answer.
I told him about finishing the case. ‘So I suppose you could say I’m celebrating.’
‘Where are the others? Your colleagues? Are they here?’
I couldn’t exactly say, They’ve gone to another bar, I never socialise with them if I can help it. So I said, ‘Home – all too knackered to think about going out.’
‘So you decided to celebrate all on your own?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Isn’t that a bit lonely?’
There was a strange tension between us. I think it was the knowledge of having known each other for ten years and yet suddenly being aware that we did not know each other at all. We were really little more than friendly strangers. We needed Miranda there to make sense of the connection between us. Both of us were drinking quite fast, in an attempt to dissipate this awkwardness. I hadn’t even realised that I had finished my drink before he asked, ‘Have another?’
‘Oh, all right then.’ I was rather flattered. He was enjoying my company.
‘Where’s Miranda?’ I asked again.
‘You’ve already asked me that.’ The way he said it was a little teasing.
‘Yes, but then why are you here all on your lonesome?’ My reply was equally teasing. Oh my God, was I flirting with my best friend’s husband?
‘Just thought I’d have a quick one.’
The alcohol dared me to say it: ‘So we’re here, drinking – her best friend and her husband? We’re like kids playing truant or something.’ It was meant to be silly, off-the-cuff, but it had the inevitable effect of making what we were doing into a conspiracy from which Miranda was excluded. I drank a big slug of my wine.
‘If she knew, she’d definitely be jealous,’ he said. And then quickly, ‘I know that she misses you.’ He smiled, but there was something sad and tired about his eyes; they didn’t participate in the smile. ‘Look,’ he said, more seriously, ‘if I’m honest, I needed a bit of time to myself.’
‘What’s up?’ I asked. I was worried – but with the very tiniest tinge of amusement that we sometimes get, hearing of our friends’ problems. Everything about Miranda and Julien’s life seemed flawless, golden.
I said as much to him. ‘What could possibly be the problem? You guys are perfect.’
‘Oh yes,’ he said, with a smile that somehow went down at the corners rather than up. ‘Perfect. That’s exactly what we are. So bloody perfect.’
There was an awkward pause. I couldn’t think what to say. ‘You mean …’ I looked for a way to put it. ‘You mean – things aren’t great between you guys? Miranda hasn’t said anything.’
That was true enough. She hadn’t said anything to me. But then we hadn’t seen each other for quite a while. We’d chatted briefly a couple of times, but I am hopeless on the phone: something that always made my teenage years rather difficult. Besides, I hardly had any free time with work – and even if I did it was late at night, or early morning, times when I doubt Miranda would have relished a phone call. I felt a twist of guilt. She had asked me several times in the last month if I was free, and we had made a date, but I had to blow her off at the last minute because of a sudden crisis with the case.
‘It isn’t problems with us exactly,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit more complicated. I suppose it would be more accurate to say it’s a problem with me. Something like that. I have done something bad.’ He saw my raised eyebrows. ‘No … Not like that. I haven’t cheated. I got myself involved in something bad. And now I can’t get out of it.’
‘And Miranda doesn’t know?’
‘No … She does know. I had to tell her, because it involved both of us. She’s been’ – he frowned – ‘I suppose she’s been quite good about it. Understanding. All things considered. Except sometimes I catch her looking at me, and she seems so disappointed. Like this isn’t what she signed up for. It’s just a bit of a mess.’
He pronounced mess as ‘mesh’, and I wondered quite how much he had been drinking before we started chatting.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
He shook his head. ‘No. I mean – I’d like to, actually, but I can’t.’
‘Why not?’ I caught myself. ‘Sorry – I’ve had too much to drink. That was rude of me. Just tell me to shut up.’
‘Please don’t.’ He gave me that funny downward smile again, so different from the expansive, charming gleam of his usual expression. I preferred this one; it was more real. ‘I like talking to you,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it funny – we’ve known each other all these years. What is it, ten?’
‘Eleven,’ I said. June 2007. That was when I had run into him coming out of our bathroom.
‘And yet you and I have never really talked properly, have we?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Well, have another drink, and let’s talk. Properly.’
‘Well – I …’
‘Come on. Please. Otherwise I’m going to be here drinking on my own, and that’s perhaps the saddest thing ever.’ He caught himself, evidently remembering that was exactly what I had been doing. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean—’
‘It’s OK,’ I said. He was right. But drinking at home was worse. My empty flat, with the empty fridge, and the empty view: the sea of office blocks, the City – the place that ate all of my time, and meant that my life was empty, too.
The thought of going back there suddenly made my skin crawl. I’d prefer to have another drink with him, I thought. But there was something strange about it, being here in a bar with Miranda’s husband, when she didn’t know. And … strangely enjoyable, too, which was perhaps the worst thing about it.
‘All right,’ I said. What the hell.
‘Good.’ He grinned at me, and I felt something inside me somersault. ‘What will you have?’ And then, before I could answer: ‘I know – let’s have whisky. Do you like whisky?’ Without waiting for my answer, he turned to the barman. ‘We’ll get the Hibiki.’ He smiled. ‘You’ll like it. It’s Japanese – twenty-one years old.’
I never drink whisky. I hardly ever drink spirits, to be honest – I can sink a bottle of wine and hardly feel it, but spirits are another matter entirely.
The whisky went straight to my head. That is no excuse for what happened next.
Miranda was obviously a sore subject. So we ended up talking about everything else. I realised that Julien was a much better conversationalist than I had ever appreciated before. I had always thought of him as all charm, all surface, concealing some inner lack. We reminisced about Oxford, how easy life had been then, even though, back then, we thought we were working the hardest we would ever work in our lives.