Preethi Nair - The Colour of Love

A short time later, my shopping basket was bulging with colourful vegetables. I had no idea what I was going to do with them but anything that had any colour went into the basket. Jean liked chicken so I decided to throw one in and figure out how to cook it later. I picked up a recipe book, some wine, flowers and candles and made my way to his apartment.

I smiled at the concierge as I entered the building, but instead of smiling back he glanced down at his feet.

‘Busy morning, John?’

‘Yes, miss,’ he replied, calling for the lift. I could sense that he wasn’t in the mood for chatting so I waited in silence for the lift to come down.

The tiles and mirrors reflected the huge ceilings of the apartment block and the lift was rickety and had an old-style caged door. I had always thought I’d get stuck in it. Before Jean Michel went away on his trip he had stopped the lift as we were halfway down. I had panicked. ‘I’ll take care of you, cherie,’ he said. ‘Always, you know I will. Nina, I want you to marry me.’

And although I was overwhelmed the first word that came out of my mouth wasn’t ‘Yes’ but ‘Dad'. All I could see was my dad’s face, so absolutely crushed.

Jean tried not to appear disappointed. I asked for time to think about it. He said he understood, but now my head was clear I would have a chance to make it up to him.

We had met two years earlier at a party. The moment he walked in half the women in the room turned to look: he was six foot two, with blue eyes, jet-black hair and a big smile. I watched his every move from the corner of my eye and my heart jumped with disbelief as he made his way towards me.

‘Are you OK?’ he said in a deep, confident voice, as if he had always known me.

I turned to check that it was me he was talking to and that I wasn’t mistaken: out of all the women in the room, he had chosen to speak to me.

We talked for hours and as I left he said he’d call. The days seemed interminable as I waited and my stomach did all sorts of things each time the phone rang. He called two days later, said he had wanted to phone straightaway to see if I got home safely but had held out as long as he could. There was something very solid about him: he was confident yet also excitingly passionate and spontaneous. There was no routine in our lives, no planning; things just happened.

He whisked me away from the world of the semi, Croydon and list systems, away from practicality and duty, and made me feel beautiful. He had all the qualities I lacked and when I was around him I never felt inadequate. Ki said he was what I needed; that he made me see things differently, beyond the values and concepts that had been drummed into me.

She, like Jean, was also a risk-taker, but ended up with someone who seemed safe, reliable and predictable … although he didn’t turn out to be in the end. Ki was laid out in her coffin in her red bridal sari. Her boyfriend, who was supposedly madly in love with her, hadn’t wanted to marry her, but her mother insisted that that was the way that she wanted to be dressed. Had she known towards the end that her boyfriend’s visits had become more and more infrequent? He didn’t even manage to make it to the funeral and three months later he was seeing someone else.

Jean Michel saw me through that period. Although my way of coping was just to get on with life and try not to think about things too deeply, I knew if I needed to talk he would listen. He always listened; he always tried to understand.

I turned the key to Jean’s flat and it wasn’t double locked.

‘Careless as usual,’ I thought. ‘Goes away for four days and forgets to double-lock the door.’

I carried the shopping into the kitchen and thought I heard a noise. Maybe the cleaner was in, although it wasn’t her usual day.

‘Hello,’ I shouted. Nobody responded so I began unpacking the shopping. The fridge had half a bottle of champagne in it along with some pâté. There was another noise.

‘Hello, is anyone in?’ I said, going towards Jean’s room.

Jean suddenly came out, making me jump.

‘Jean, I didn’t know you were home. When did you get in? Didn’t you hear me? I’ve got so much to tell you.’

He looked very pale.

‘Are you ill? What’s wrong?’

His bedroom door clicked closed.

‘What’s going on? Who’s in there? Who is it, Jean?’

‘No one, Nina,’ his voice sounded odd. ‘Don’t go in there.’

I went in and saw this woman emerging like some weasel out of a hole. She had a mass of red curls and was half-dressed.

All I could think about was the concierge, party to as many secrets as he was keys. He could have said something like, ‘Miss, don’t go up there, the gas men are seeing to a leak, come back in a few hours.’ I would have listened.

I stood there, completely frozen, trying to comprehend an obvious situation. There were no clichés like, ‘It’s not what you think’ or ‘She’s not important.’ In a way I wish there had been because in those moments of silence I understood that he could not possibly love me and that he loved himself much more. He expected me to say something, to do something, but I just stood there in silence, staring at him. And then I walked away.

I ran down the stairs and out of the building, cars beeping as I flew recklessly across the road, not caring if they knocked me down. I ran like I never wanted to stop but when my sides began to ache I couldn’t go on any more. Stumbling on a bench in Green Park, catching my breath, the tears began to trickle down my face.

The only other person apart from Ki who knew me inside out was Jean. I had showed him who I truly was and he had rejected me. Was I not good enough? Was that it? Was I fooling myself that he loved me? Did he mean it when he asked me to marry him? Did I make that up too? Was it because since Ki’s death I had been distant, or was it because I made him wait? He said that he would wait for as long as it took.

My arm and my chest, the ugly blotchy creases – he had pretended that they didn’t matter? Did she have ugly blotchy creases that he ran his fingers down while whispering that he loved her, every single part of her? Was that it? Was he touching her, saying that he was there for her, while the Guru was touching me? Did he pretend to love me because he pitied me?

Tears streamed down my face.

‘Help me, Ki, please, I need you. Show me a sign if you’re around. You said you would. Please. Are you seeing all this? Are you?’ Nothing came. ‘You lied to me. You said you would always be with me but how can you be? If you were with me you wouldn’t let any of this happen. None of this. But you’re dead and dead people can’t do anything, can they? I trusted you and you lied. I let you give up because you promised you would always be with me, but you deceived me just like everyone else.’

The rain began falling. I sat on the park bench thinking that there was really no such thing as fate: imagining providence having a hand was just a way of not feeling alone, a way of making sense of a pointless journey. ‘I’ll give you one last chance. Speak to me like you said you would. Go on, I’m listening now. Do you want me to beg? I’ll beg if you want.’

I crawled down onto my hands and knees. ‘See, I’m begging you. Please.’

Still nothing came.

Clutching at the blades of grass I fell forward on my knees onto a patch of muddy wet grass and began sobbing my heart out, oblivious to who was watching me. I looked up at the grey, miserable sky and the bursting rain clouds. ‘Fall harder, go on, is that the best you can manage? I don’t care what else you throw at me, send someone else to feel me up, go on, I don’t care any more. You’ve taken everything, everything. Do you hear me? You probably don’t even exist, do you? All made up, all of it, lies.’