But I should be focusing on Claire at the moment, not Anna. With a sigh, I turn the pages to my entry for 3 June 1995:
Claire Bushey yielded yesterday evening, after I plied her with caviar and Champagne (so my master strategy worked). I did drink a fair amount of that bottle of Ruinart rosé myself—about three-quarters of it. It’s a wonder I managed to get it up in the first place.
I even had a surprise along the way. A simpering virgin, as it turned out. But I should have suspected. That rosy, childlike innocence must come from somewhere.
I’m now convinced that nothing could be more satisfactory than the act of “deflowering an unsullied maiden” (saw that little phrase in the Textbook of Medieval Duo Literature yesterday), especially one as charming and well endowed as Claire is (perhaps that’s why I got it up in the end). I now understand why certain martyrs are promised ninety-nine virgins in heaven—or is it seventy-two? Woke up this morning to discover that she’d crept out during the night, sometime after I fell into a postorgasmic stupor. I hope she didn’t meet the head porter along the way.
I wince at the entry’s lackadaisical tone. While I suppose a hot-blooded male of twenty-five is entitled to be boastful about a worthy conquest or two, young Mark Henry Evans was officially an idiot.
Fact: My subsequent encounter with Claire wasn’t as pleasant. I should read my account of what happened, as it might help me understand her current preoccupation with the past. I flip a couple of pages to the entry for 12 June 1995, swallowing hard:
Waited outside for forty minutes; a girl came out to tell me that Anna had made a trip to her parents’ home in Coton to pick up some jewelry and was running late. Anna eventually emerged in a magnificent peach dress and a pair of gravity-defying stilettos (there weren’t any jewels around her neck; either she or the girl must have been fibbing). Her face was an agitated shade of red. She did not apologize for keeping me waiting; she merely grabbed my hand and remained silent for the first fifteen minutes of our walk to Trinity. Then she blurted out, to my surprise:
—I need to get away for a few days.
—I don’t see why not.
—You said you would love to take me to Cornwall for a weekend. You’d hire a boat so that we could spend a balmy afternoon on the water, making ripples behind us.
—I don’t have any such facts in my diary.
—But you said all that. I wrote these facts down. Shall we go to Cornwall on Friday?
—I can’t do a whole weekend there. Not on such short notice.
—Let’s spend a night in Norfolk, then. You did say you would love to take me for a picnic on the dunes someday. We’ll open a bottle of Champagne and watch the sun setting over the marshes.
—Er…right. I don’t have those facts, either.
—You are fucking selective in the facts you choose to learn, Mark.
I shrugged before replying:
—I can’t be writing down everything I say.
—I need time away to figure out what to do about Stepmum. She’s driving me nuts with her threats.
—Sorry, Anna. But you can’t expect me to drop everything and head off. It’s May Week in Cambridge, after all. There’s loads going on here this weekend.
—But you said you’d do anything for me. Even the smallest thing. Especially if I need your help.
—Did I really say so?
She came to an abrupt halt and glared at me, placing her hands on her hips.
—You didn’t mean any of that, did you? You were just lying to me.
—Stop being so emotional.
—How dare you call me emotional? How dare you?
—Calm down, Anna.
—Fuck you, Mark.
And so we went from holding hands to fighting in a matter of minutes. I didn’t realize that Anna had such an explosive temperament until she raised her hand to slap me. I don’t know why she got so upset with me in the first place, but I suppose what I said was unpalatable to her ears. I had to defend myself from her determined assault, because the last thing I wanted was to arrive at the ball with a black eye to match my tail suit. Anna lost her balance at one unfortunate point, toppling sideways over her stilettos and hitting a nearby lamppost with a sickening thwack. I gasped in alarm, only to hear her shout moments later:
—Oh, my God. What the hell?
I bent down to help her up, but she refused to take my hand and even tried to hit me again. Thankfully, I managed to shake her frenzied palms off. I eventually left her crouching on her knees next to that lamppost, clutching her head and still shrieking away.
I strode down Portugal Place and along Magdalene Street only to receive another shock. Claire Bushey had planted herself in front of me with folded arms and fiery eyes.
—I saw you earlier, Mark. Holding her hand. And I saw everything on Jesus Green. Everything. You’re sleeping with her, aren’t you? I don’t ever want to see you again.
I was tempted to retort that a fling’s a fling and that Claire and I were never a proper item in the first place. However, she stalked away before I could open my mouth, sparing me from having to reply. Cursing the foibles of the women in this town (they’re all crazy in their own little ways, it seems), I headed down Trinity Street and groaned at the snaking queue of ballgoers outside the college. I saw Eleanor Rothschild waiting in line, looking stunning in her yellow dress, and decided to join her.…
Yes, that was the evening when all my problems with the two women began. Sighing, I flip a few pages to the entry for 15 June 1995:
I read in the Times this afternoon that Anna failed to show up to the Trinity ball on Monday. She was last seen in her room, dressing up for the ball.
My jaw dropped. A cold chill ran down my back. What the hell happened to her after I left her in hysterics on Jesus Green?
I was tempted to ring the police, to blurt out that I’d escorted Anna partway to the ball. But something held me back. It would be awful if everyone knew that the two of us had fought before she vanished. To make matters worse, we had also quarreled the night before her disappearance (as my diary entry for 11 June states, although it also says that we enjoyed some fabulous make-up sex afterwards). If I’m held responsible for Anna’s disappearance, this would be a disaster. If someone had, say…harmed her soon after I left her on Jesus Green, I would surely be castigated for abandoning her—in a distraught condition on her knees—on our way to the ball. And if she had done something rash in her catatonic state (like throw herself into the river), I might similarly be blamed.
My conviction that I should remain quiet about our affair was reinforced when the phone rang an hour later. A female voice introduced herself as Laura Patterson, Anna’s classmate.