S. Watson - Second Life

I shake my head and she orders a glass of Chablis, then tells me I ought to have the lobster. She’s always been a whirlwind, but tonight she seems almost in too much of a rush. I wonder if she’s trying to compensate for being late, or maybe she’s anxious about something.

‘Now,’ she says, once her drink has arrived. Her voice becomes relaxed and reassuring. ‘How are you?’ I shrug, but she holds up her hand. ‘And don’t give me any of that “I’m fine” crap. How are you really?’

‘I am fine. Honestly.’ She looks at me, an expression of exaggerated disappointment on her face. ‘Mostly,’ I add.

She pushes the bread that’s arrived towards me, but I ignore it. ‘How long has it been, now? It must be four months?’

For the first time I don’t know immediately, I have to work it out. I’ve stopped counting the days and weeks; perhaps it’s the first evidence of progress. I’m strangely pleased.

‘Almost five.’

She smiles sadly. I know she understands how I feel, more than most. A few years ago her stepfather died suddenly, a heart attack, while he was driving. They’d been close; the intensity of her grief had shocked her.

‘Are they any nearer to working out what happened?’ For a moment her expression seems to change; she looks almost hungry, unless I’m imagining it. I’ve seen it before, it’s the journalist in her; she can’t help herself. She wants the details.

‘You mean, who did it? Not yet. They’re not really telling us very much…’ I let the conversation evaporate. It feels like every week that goes by makes it less likely they’ll catch them, but I don’t want to put that into words.

‘How’s Hugh?’

‘He’s okay, you know?’ I think for a moment. I can be honest with her. ‘Actually, sometimes I think he’s almost glad.’

Do I? Or am I just saying that because sometimes I still worry that I am?

She tilts her head. ‘Glad?’

‘Oh, I don’t mean glad that she’s dead. It’s just… sometimes I think he just likes the fact that it makes things simpler, I guess. With Connor.’ I hesitate. ‘Maybe he’s right. They’ve certainly seemed much closer, recently.’

I look up at Adrienne. She knows that I’d been worried that if it ever went to the courts they’d uphold Connor’s right to choose.

‘I’ve known Hugh since for ever, Julia. He’s always liked things to be neat and tidy. But he’s not glad. Don’t be too hard on him.’

I feel empty, like I want to share everything with Adrienne, to offload it, to hand it over and find some peace.

‘He’s not even there most of the time.’

‘Darling, hasn’t he always been like that?’ She drinks some of her wine. A wave of desire hits me, the first for weeks. I tell myself to ride it out. She carries on speaking, but I have to struggle to concentrate. ‘They all are. We marry them because they’re successful, ambitious, whatever. Then that’s the very thing that takes them away from us. It was the same with Steve, and now it’s the same with Bob. I barely see him, he’s so busy…’

I centre myself. It’s different for her. She has a challenging career of her own. She can take herself away from her husband as easily as he takes himself away from her. But I don’t want to argue.

‘You’re seeing someone?’

I feel myself recoil. She knows, I think. About Lukas. Even though there’s nothing to know. We’re still chatting regularly, and though I try to tell myself there’s no reason to think so, I keep thinking he must’ve known Kate. I can’t work him out, and so I keep going back.

‘What—?’ I say to Adrienne now, but she interrupts.

‘A therapist, I mean?’

Of course. My panic recedes. ‘Oh, right. No, I’m not.’

There’s a moment of silence. She doesn’t take her eyes off me; she’s appraising me, trying to work out why I’d reacted as I had.

‘Julia? If you don’t want to talk about it…’

I do, though. I do want to talk about it, and she’s my oldest friend.

‘You remember I said I might go online? To get the list of people Kate was talking to?’

‘Yes. You said you’d changed your mind.’

I’m silent.

‘Julia?’

‘There was someone I wasn’t sure about.’

She puts down her glass and raises her eyebrows. ‘Go on…’

‘He visits Paris. He messaged me. I convinced myself he might be someone Kate was talking to. Someone the police don’t know about.’

‘So you gave his details to the authorities?’

Still I say nothing.

‘Julia…?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Why?’

‘I need to be sure… I’m just talking to him. I’m trying to find out what he knows.’

‘Darling, are you sure that’s a good idea?’

‘What’s the alternative? Give his name to the police—?’

‘Yes! That’s exactly what you should do!’

‘I don’t want to frighten him off and, besides, they’d probably just ignore it.’

‘Of course they wouldn’t ignore it! Why would they do that, Julia? They have a duty to investigate it. He lives in Paris, it should be easy enough.’

I don’t tell her he lives in Milan. ‘I know what I’m doing. We’ve only chatted once or twice.’

It’s a lie, an understatement. I’m trying to backtrack. Things have developed. He turns his video on now and has asked me to turn mine on, though I haven’t, yet. He tells me I’m beautiful. He tells me he wishes there could be a way I could be there with him, and even though I feel guilty for lying to him, I tell him I wish that, too. Our conversations end with him telling me he’s loved talking to me, that he can’t wait until we can chat again. He tells me to look after myself, to be careful. And because it would be impolite not to, because I just can’t figure him out, I say the same things to him.

It feels cruel, sometimes. I don’t mean it, and yet he clearly likes me, or likes the person he thinks I am.

‘He knows where you live?’

I shake my head. The other day I made a mistake and mentioned the tube. I’d had to confess that I was in London, not Paris, but he knows no more than that.

‘No, of course not.’

There’s a long pause. ‘So, what do you talk about?’

I don’t reply, which is an answer in itself.

‘You are very vulnerable right now, Julia. You’re sure you know what you’re doing?’

I nod. ‘Of course.’ But she doesn’t look convinced.

‘You like him.’

I shake my head again. ‘No. It’s not like that. It’s just… there seems to be a connection there. And I wonder whether that connection has anything to do with Kate.’

‘In what way?’

‘You know how close we used to be. It felt almost psychic. And, well—’

‘You think if you feel a connection with this man then it must be relevant?’

I don’t answer. It’s exactly what I think. She has no idea what a difference it makes, this feeling that I’m at least doing something useful, something that might lead Connor and me to resolution and a place of safety.

‘Julia.’ She looks stern. ‘You look like a teenager who’s got a massive crush on a boy in the next year up.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’ I mean it, but I don’t sound convincing, even to myself. Is it really how I feel? I can’t deny I’ve looked forward to Lukas’s messages.

Maybe it’s not about the investigation at all. Maybe it’s because now I know how Kate must have felt, chatting to those men; I can feel closer to her. I know her world.

‘You know,’ I say, ‘even if it is futile, a waste of time, so what? I’m just trying to do something to get over the death of my sister.’

‘So you told this guy about her?’

I say no, but I’m lying. The other day I’d had a bad morning after a sleepless night and I couldn’t stop thinking about Kate. He could tell something was wrong. He kept asking me if everything was all right, whether there was anything he could do. I couldn’t help myself. I told him.