Steve Mosby - The Third Person

‘I love you,’ I told her, kissing the side of her neck.

She didn’t say anything, but she moved slightly and took hold of my hand where it rested on her stomach and she gave it a squeeze. And she pressed back against me, giving a noise that might have been contentment.

Why hadn’t I seen her again?

I looked at the old man.

‘Because I love my girlfriend,’ I said. ‘That’s why.’

I saw her through the window of the train: an odd moment, but fitting in a way – that my first real-life glimpse of her should be occluded slightly by the sunlight on a streaky window. I recognised her face from the picture she’d sent, and would have known it was her even without the white dress. The way she was standing. It’s like everyone else in the station was forty per cent less real than she was. Crowds, sponsored by Stand-In.

She didn’t know me to look at, but I caught her eye before I’d reached her, smiled, and she smiled back and knew it was me. Amazingly, she didn’t look disappointed. I walked over to her feeling nervous, not knowing how to greet her or what to say. In the end, it was easy. We said hi to each other softly, and she kissed me on the cheek, her body like air in front of me. Would you like to get a coffee ? And I said yeah, please – this is really weird, isn’t it? Isn’t this really weird ?

Claire looked beautiful, and I was tongue-tied for a few minutes, but then I loosened up. I already knew her, after all: her e-mails and chat-voice had given accurate readings of her personality, and before too long we were talking easily and freely. She bought me an espresso. Knock it back , she said. Like a shot of spirits . When she did that with her own, I saw her throat and felt my stomach lurch. There was something half-wild about her – about the way she laughed so unselfconsciously, the way she touched me gently on the shoulder, the way this whole encounter seemed so easy for her. It seemed mad that we were in a train station, talking. Flirting, even – because that was what we were there to do, after all. That was what we both wanted. Ever since I’d booked the ticket (and I’d had to book it, just to be sure) I’d been anticipating it. The night before, we’d cybered for what would prove to be the last time. She’d described taking me into the toilets at the station and fucking me in one of the cubicles, wrapped around me and desperate. That was why we were here. But:

‘I don’t think I can do this,’ I told her.

‘Do what?’

‘You know. This . I don’t think I can do it.’

More than that, I could barely even look at her. The table was so very interesting. She frowned slightly, her chin resting on her hand, her elbow resting on the table, so perhaps my look got to her face in a roundabout way.

‘Have sex with me?’ she asked. ‘Is that what you mean?’

I shrugged, feeling awkward.

‘Yeah. I guess that’s what I mean.’

She shrugged herself.

‘Well, we don’t have to do that. Don’t worry about it.’

‘But that’s why we’re here. We’ve both been on the train for over an hour.’

‘Sure,’ she told me, standing up. ‘But we’ll have a coffee instead. Another one, anyway. Same again?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I don’t think I’d ever felt so pathetic in my life, but at the heart of me there was this strange kernel of light, and I think it came from knowing that I’d made the right call. Suddenly, all the excitement I’d been feeling over the past couple of months felt like tension, and what I was experiencing now felt more and more like relief.

‘Don’t be sorry,’ she said, and then looked at me with that expression – the one that said she liked me but was slightly disappointed at the same time. She touched my shoulder gently, and then gave it a squeeze. ‘You’re a nice guy, Jason. And I’m not into ruining lives.’

‘Maybe I should go,’ I said.

She shook her head.

‘Why? Come on – let’s have another coffee. We can talk.’ She gave me a nice smile. ‘You can tell me about your girlfriend. Okay?’

I thought about it. As weird an idea as it should have seemed, suddenly it didn’t. In fact, I realised that I really did want to talk to Claire about Amy – that it seemed right. The feeling of relief was getting stronger and brighter. I figured that I had a lot I needed to say.

‘Okay,’ I told her, nodding. I even managed a smile. ‘That’d be really nice.’

‘We talked for a couple of hours,’ I told the old man in my flat. ‘And that’s all we did. She bought me another coffee; I bought her one later on. We wandered out into the city square for a little while. Weird, I guess.’ I laughed. ‘It was a nice day. And then we went our separate ways. And that’s it.’

And that was it, too – stripped down to minimal detail, anyway. But it had been an important afternoon for me: I’d told her about Amy, and the distance that was growing between us. I’d said that it felt like a light that was going out, and she’d listened and been sympathetic. Like a best friend – or the closest thing to it, with Graham seconded. As my train pulled away from the station that afternoon, I watched her from the window – standing there in much the same way as she’d been standing when I arrived. The whole afternoon felt like a beautiful holiday, or a dream, and it made me feel sad to see her move backwards away from me, reduced to a tiny white blur, and then swung out of sight by the corner of the track. I was never going to e-mail her again or chat to her. It wouldn’t have worked. It was just one perfect day. The End.

‘You never saw her again?’ the man asked.

‘No.’

‘Never spoke to her?’

‘No.’ I looked at him steadily. ‘Never saw her again, online or off. Never exchanged a word with her. That was it.’

He kept looking at me, almost as if he could smell the lie but couldn’t tell which direction it was coming from. So, I furnished the lie with a few final truths.

‘I loved my girlfriend,’ I told him. ‘I still love her. My relationship with Claire, as much as it even was a relationship, was a mistake. We both knew it. We both left it at that.’

I didn’t feel like saying anything else, so we just sat and stared at each other for a second. The old man seemed about to say something, but then we both heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Two guys walked into the room. They were both dressed the same as the bouncer with the gun, but they didn’t look half as mean. One had glasses, foppish brown hair and seemed to be about eighteen; the other was all pasty-faced and mid-thirties. They looked like nothing so much as a couple of half-harried computer geeks, and they seemed nervous about whatever it was that they’d found:

‘Nothing.’

‘You checked everywhere?’

The younger guy nodded, pressing his glasses back up his nose.

‘His hard drive’s clean. And there’s nothing in the deleted data that could be recovered. If there was, we’d have found a trace at least. No sign of it on his disks either. I think he’s clean.’

The old man stared through him, looking disappointed and suddenly distant. Then, he nodded to himself, and started to ease his old body out of the chair.

‘Never mind.’

As the bouncer moved over to help him, the old man turned to face me.

‘Don’t get up, Mr Klein. We’ll see ourselves out.’ He seemed suddenly contrite. ‘I’m sorry for any… inconvenience.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ I said, wondering how many pieces my computer was currently resting in. ‘Any time.’

As if as an afterthought, he reached inside his suit and retrieved his wallet; from that, he produced a business card and passed it to me. I took it, and turned it over.