Simon Barnes - Miss Chance

‘Perhaps. Could you learn to mildly dislike me?’

‘Oh, but I already do.’

‘That’s all right then.’

‘You’re so pleasant, you see.’

‘Only nineteen hours before I kiss you again.’

‘I’m looking forward to that.’

Well, Mark thought, walking up the stairs to the flat. Now a little less than twelve hours before he kissed her once again.

He opened the door and called out Callum’s name, but there was no reply. Then he saw a note pinned to the table by a knife, a regular means of communication: I’m at Chris’s. Could you come round right away? Whatever the time of night? It’s not life and death, but it’s important. All right?

Horror. For a moment he wondered if he wasn’t going to faint. Christine. Or perhaps throw up. He had not been in the mood for reality. What had she done? What did she know? Not that there was anything to know. Or not really.

He sat down for a good while longer, being appalled. But after a while, even being appalled runs out of steam. There was nothing for it but to go and face it. The reproaches: though what had he done for which he should be reproached?

Ten minutes later, he was knocking at Chris’s door. Callum answered: ‘Oh, thank God.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘Go to the kitchen. I’ll tell her you’re here. She’s been listening out. Then I’ll explain.’

Callum’s face, his voice were neutral, carefully so. Mark went and stood about feebly in the kitchen. He wondered if there was beer in the fridge: she might have bought one for him. But it would not do, to look for it.

Callum came in. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. He sat down at the kitchen table. Mark sat also. ‘Thing is, she can’t speak. Physiological thing. I mean, it’s not her fault, she’s not putting it on. Had the doctor round. It’s some kind of locking-up. It’ll unlock in a day or so. Happens sometimes to people in shock.’

‘What’s happened, Cal?’ Mark’s own voice was not at its clearest.

‘She saw you going to the station.’

‘How?’ Perhaps that syllable was a complete giveaway, but if so, Callum gave no sign of understanding it. Anyway, giving what away?

‘We’ve been having quite a chat. She writes things down. New term resolution, remember? She was going to work every Saturday.’

‘Oh Christ, at the Cottle Reading Room.’ Which was near the railway station.

‘She was having a coffee break.’

‘Oh God, at the Voyagers.’ Which overlooked the station entrance.

‘And she saw you and –’

‘But look, Christ, what is she on about? All I did was catch a train, and anyway nothing happened –’

‘She saw you with a girl. And she knew at once that you were in love with her. By the way you were walking.’

‘Jesus, that’s ridiculous, I mean I was –’

‘Tell me about it sometime. But maybe you should see Chris now. And tell her what you want to tell her.’

‘Oh God.’

Mark went and knocked at her door. He then realised that waiting for a reply was foolish, so he called, ‘It’s me’ through the wood and then walked in. She lay on her mattress on the floor, a double mattress purchased primarily as an arena for gymnastics. Though that was not its function now. She lay under the covers, face on the pillow half-hidden by a straggle of fair hair. Body present, mind apparently absent, kidnapped by aliens. ‘Pretty child,’ his mother had said.

Chris sat up in bed, shifting the covers back. Not naked. Quite well wrapped up, in fact. Mark had been intending to embrace her, to kiss her face, but he did not do so, for reasons that eluded him. With odd, dormouse-like movements she rootled about for a notebook and pencil and wrote a word for him. Sorry.

‘Oh, look, Chris, Jesus, it’s me that’s sorry, all my fault, I didn’t mean to cause you any distress, it was hopeless of me, I’m such a bloody fool, but look, honestly, nothing happened, you’ve got it all wrong.’

I love you.

Oh God. ‘I’d never do anything to hurt you, it was stupid of me, inconsiderate, I just went to the seaside, you see –’

Are you sleeping with her yet?

‘Christ, no, not a thought of it, not an option, I mean we did spend the night there, but, you know, no hanky-panky. I mean nothing at all, no kissing and cuddling or anything. Just talking. I mean, she’s weird. I don’t even like her very much.’

You’re in love with her.

Mark explained at considerable length and with some warmth that this was not the case, and never could be. She wrote down one of his own favourite rejoinders, one he had used to tease her, laughing, a thousand times and more. She wrote, the lady doth protest too much. ‘Oh Christ, think what you like, Chris, but I know what I feel, and I know what happened, and I tell you, nothing’s changed so far as you and I are concerned. Not if that’s what you want.’ Mark had been ready to sweep her up into his arms at the conclusion of this avowal, but somehow it didn’t seem the moment. She was writing on her notebook once again. This time only very brief and rather brusque movements of the pencil. She then lay her head on the pillow to indicate that the interview was over. Mark rambled on disconnectedly for a while, but she did not respond. He tried laying his hand on her shoulder, even leant over to kiss her face, but she was hard, rigid, locked solid. So after a while of sitting in silence, in case she should wish to speak or at least to make some sign, he got up and left. He said as he went: ‘I’ll be back tomorrow. All right?’

In the notebook she had inserted, after the second word of the second line she had written for him, two further characters. LD.

‘You all right, Mark?’

Mark was standing in the kitchen with his hands clasped around the back of his neck. ‘Sure.’

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