said Vic.
I got off and slid as far away from him as possible.
The taxi slowed with the traffic on Chalk Farm Road. A woman wearing a white wifebeater and a pair of acid-washed jeans despite the harrowing cold was crawling on all fours outside the kebab shop, picking up the remains of her fries and cheese and cramming them into her mouth. We drove on, slowly. A gang of girls were swaying together in a long, linked-arm line over the lock, singing some mournful song: “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.”
I wound down the window and leaned my head out. “That was my parents’ song!” I shouted. I turned to Vic: “That can’t be a coincidence?!”
One of the girls broke away from the chain and sprinted in six-inch, neon-green heels toward the dark window of a leather shop. She lowered her head like a bull, laughing all the way. Her friends grabbed her arms just before her head smashed into the glass. She fell back into them, laughing harder.
“Close the window!” shouted the driver.
I did.
London is a depressing place to look for things.
The doors on the first floor of Vic’s house were all white and all shut. I’d stripped off my clothes downstairs and now I was throwing my naked body against each door in turn. They stayed shut—locked? Vic was mumbling about not waking the operators. He was picking up my clothes.
“Fuck me,” I was saying. “Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.”
Finally he produced a key from his pocket and opened a door on the left. “We like our privacy,” he explained. “Security is always an issue. Even among friends.”
He followed me into the dark room. I hit my shin on the bed. Vic turned on the light. It was a futon. A NATO aerial-bombardment map was pinned above the mirror. There was a poster of the film Taxi Driver. The room was monkish, the perfect place to ask for forgiveness.
Vic was surprised when I rolled away from his hairy body and produced a packet of Performa condoms from my handbag. I snapped one on his penis efficiently.
It immediately began to die.
“Would you rather we didn’t use them?” I said.
“Yeah. Thanks. It’s just that I don’t like the sensation of condoms.”
“Well, I don’t really like the sensation of abortions.” I sat up. “I don’t really feel like having a fetus ripped out of my womb, thank you very much.”
There was silence.
I felt for it, but now it was dead.
He got out of bed and stood over me. “Why do you humiliate me?”
I waited.
“Hit me, then,” I said.
He exhaled, agonized. He lay down again.
Soon he was snoring.
I moved into the crook of his arm. I felt so happy then.
The dawn entered the room. I rolled over and lit a cigarette. I tried to hold on to Vic, but he was pushing me off in his sleep. His head injury had scabbed. Experimentally, I ground the cigarette into his chest.
He woke up, screaming. “What the fuck are you doing?”
I rubbed the cigarette out between my fingers.
Now the room was ablaze with morning.
“Do you love me?” I said. “Now that we’ve had sex?”
He pretended to sleep again.
Finally he mumbled: “We didn’t have sex.”
“But do you love me anyway though? Because we might have sex in the future?”
He sat up. “What about the pussies from the refuge?” His face looked dire in the light. “What about the red silk kimono? Who are you?”
“Yeah, I’m not in the habit of going out in nightwear. I do own one though. Freddie’s always trying to borrow it.”
“You know it’s really off-putting for a girl to keep on going on about her ex-boyfriend on a first date.”
“Freddie’s not my ex-boyfriend, I told you. And this isn’t our first date, Vic. We met in a past life. I was your faithful concubine. But now I’m an empowered woman.” I corrected myself: “I’m a woman in the process of becoming empowered.” I laughed. “If you’ll only let me.”
Vic lay down again.
I rolled another cigarette.
“No,” he said, and tossed it somewhere. “You’re desperate.”
I laughed. “No, Vic. That’s the trouble. I think I’m desperate, I even want to be desperate, but I’m not. The sad truth is that I’m not. Maybe if I was, then you’d love me.” I stood up, exhilarated. “But I’m not.”
I got dressed quickly.
“You’re all the same,” he mumbled, face down in the pillow.
The front hall was adorned with black-and-white photographs of Big Ben, captured from a range of surreal angles. This was a terraced house. I could hear operators talking in the kitchen. I went in.
There was a breakfast bar. Operators—two men and a woman—were sitting around it on matching stools. There was a laptop. On the screen, there was a picture of marmalade on toast. A real piece of half-eaten toast was spotlighted on the counter.
“Yeah,” the woman was saying. She had brown hair and no distinguishing features whatsoever. “And put the date and time. And say what it is.”
“What is it?” said the man, fingers poised over the keyboard.
“Toast,” said the woman.
“Hi!” I said. “I’m Ann-Marie! Vic’s new friend.”
They stared at me.
There was an empty stool—Vic’s? I perched on it, taking a bite out of the toast, nodding with approval. I could see that the marmalade on the screen was a more brilliant shade of amber. It had been photoshopped.
“I’ll probably be hanging round here a whole lot more from now on,” I said.
They continued to stare.
The woman plunged a French press. They didn’t offer me any coffee.
“Vic told me what happened in the army,” I lied. “It’s terrible. I’m really hungover. We got totally trashed. I don’t usually get this trashed anymore, not since I went on this mad detox diet for the six months leading up to my finals.” I nodded. “I just graduated. I got double-starred first actually, from Cambridge.”
They didn’t
