Fragile Minds Page 0,42
passion.
For a long time, I had imagined myself as a very deep wound, gradually growing shiny skin across the bloody mess beneath. I had begun to heal, slowly, infinitesimally. But there would always be a bloody mess beneath; that was the truth, for the rest of my life.
I took a deep breath and opened my eyes again. ‘Let’s go and get a drink then,’ I said slowly. Perhaps I should be braver. Perhaps I should try to tell him how I had really felt.
Together we went to a little Ethiopian restaurant round the corner on the high street. We didn’t hold hands, but our arms brushed as we walked, and I thought, this is what I will miss, the easy intimacy I’d found with this man.
We sat at a little formica table with one wilted freesia on it, and it was so steamy we both had to take our jackets off. A long-faced boy with a puny moustache and skin as dark as bitter chocolate brought us coffee so strong it made my heart kick.
‘I know it looks odd, Claudie,’ Rafe said. ‘But I want you to believe me.’
‘We’re grown-ups,’ I shrugged, tracing figures of eight in the sugar I’d spilt. ‘You’re free to do what you like.’
‘Claudie!’ he expostulated. ‘We both know that’s not true.’
I was surprised by the depth of his emotion.
‘It’s made me realise,’ he caught my hand now, and for a moment I actually thought tears might flood his brown eyes, ‘I don’t want to lose you.’
The tears were an illusion. I tried my best to concentrate; but a part of me felt so detached I could have been in the other room. He let go of my hand.
‘Frankly, Claudie, half the time I don’t think you give a toss about me anyway. And that’s the problem.’
‘That’s not true,’ I mumbled, but I was worried it was.
‘Oh come on,’ attack was the best form of defence, of course. ‘It’s like you’re bloody devoid of emotion, Claudia.’
‘Oh,’ I said. I rubbed my sore eyes with the heels of my hands. A lethargy had settled over me after I’d come out of hospital the last time. I had fought it hard this past year; I’d tried to come out of my shell, to stop protecting myself from any form of external life, but recently I’d felt so strange again. I shook my head, impatient with myself. ‘Yes OK. I can see that I might come across like that sometimes. And I do try not to, really.’
‘I mean, Christ knows, I understand you’ve had a horrible time.’
‘A horrible time?’ I repeated, almost puzzled.
‘The worst. Like I did when I was growing up. Losing my parents so suddenly. You know, I can help you. And you can’t define your life for all time because you lost Ned—’
I didn’t want to hear him say the name. I stood violently, my chair scraping loudly across the silence. The long-faced boy stared at us blankly and turned up the volume on the TV in the corner. A studio audience applauded wildly and incongruously in the empty room. And then a face I knew stared out at me; Sadie Malvern. ‘Missing girl’ the text read beneath it. I saw Rafe’s eyes flicker to the screen. He was a ‘sucker for a pretty face’ – his words, not mine.
I felt my stomach knot. Had she been caught in the explosion too? I looked back at the screen, but her image was gone.
‘I’m going to go now.’
‘Claudie.’ Rafe chucked money on the table and followed me out into the night. It was a relief to get out of the heat. ‘Sorry. That was shitty of me. I just mean – I can’t reach you sometimes.’
‘So you decided to fuck someone else?’ I was starting to feel anger now, which was some kind of release at least.
He looked like a small schoolboy now, bereft and guilty.
‘I wasn’t. I’m just – I’m not very good at commitment.’
‘It’s OK, Rafe.’ We were at my front door now. I walked away from him slowly, stepping over the broken eggs now smeared into the pavement, up the front stairs. ‘I don’t think I am either any more. Sorry if you’ve found me hard work. I probably am.’
‘Give me another chance, Claudie,’ he pleaded, but I knew that his heart wasn’t in it. We were both going through some sort of motion.
I gazed at him; at his hangdog look, at his lithe body and his immaculate designer clothes. He had provided comfort