Stella Newman - Pear Shaped

We kiss on all the escalators up to the fifth floor. If I was behind us on the escalators I’d hate us, we are so goddamned happy.

Tucked away in one of the smaller galleries is the entrance to a tiny exhibit with a grumpy security guard standing outside. A placard on the wall reads, ‘The Beauty of the World, the Paragon of Animals.’

When the guard sees my dress he shakes his head. ‘Put the boots on. And don’t spend more than a couple of minutes in there, it’s bad for your lungs,’ he says ushering us through a door into a narrow corridor, lined with wellies. He closes the door behind us and we’re in darkness, stumbling and giggling as we feel our way along the walls in ill-fitting boots, taking a sharp left, then a right. And then all of a sudden the tunnel ends and our eyes automatically shut and then slowly open against the light, and we’re standing in a room full of sparkling silver glitter. Piles and piles of shimmering dots like a disco moonscape, dazzling and beautiful, shifting softly under our feet.

James dances me to the centre of the room and my dress does a perfect 50s prom twirl, and he laughs in delight. He grabs a handful of the dust and throws it up into the air, and it falls like rainbows of light down on us and suddenly he lifts me up and we kiss passionately and before I know it he has pulled my knickers to one side and he is inside me and I am thinking this hat is going to fall off and laughing and panicking and I don’t want him to stop but I’m scared the guard is going to come in and wondering if there is CCTV in this room and thinking well if this footage ends up on YouTube at least the hat will hide my face and wondering if anyone else has done this in here and then I don’t even care if the guard comes in and finally I am not thinking anything at all.

‘I can’t believe you shagged him in public just because he bought you a cake, you are such a cheap date,’ says Pete, placing a third double gin and tonic and a packet of Tyrell’s in front of me.

‘Trust me, that cake was not cheap,’ I say, ripping open the bag of crisps. I have told Pete about the incident in the gallery because I am very drunk.

The reason I am very drunk is because I feel insecure, because I have not spoken to James since Monday morning when he left my flat, and it is now Thursday night. So I have dragged Pete to my local, the Prince Alfred, and have banged my head twice in the last hour en route to the bar, on the low wooden partitions that carve up the pub into snug little areas.

I have not told Pete about how James and I spent all of Sunday walking in Regent’s Park, holding hands and talking about our shared family values, because he will find this nauseating, and like any right-thinking person he is only interested in hearing about the sex.

I have also not told Pete about the way James looks at me – like he’s amazed and surprised that he found me. He smiles all the time. Because I have no context for him, no mutual friends, I have no idea if this means he’s specifically happy to be with me, or is generally a very happy man. Either way, it is contagious, and I find myself smiling too. Except for now, when I am not smiling at all.

‘He sent me a text on Monday,’ I say.

‘So what’s your problem?’ says Pete, who it’s fair to say, is neither the paranoid nor the romantic type.

‘It said “I had a wonderful time with you”.’

‘And?’

‘Something’s not right.’ Laura says he must be hiding something.

‘Women are so neurotic. He’s saying he had a great time, what more do you want?’

‘I want to know when I’m seeing him again. We’ve been seeing each other for nearly two months, this isn’t normal.’

‘Look, Soph, this guy is not Nick. Nick didn’t have a job.’

‘Nick’s a musician.’

‘Which is basically the same as being unemployed, so he had loads of time to sit around writing you faggy romantic emails. This guy runs a business, plus he’s older. He’s busy. I hate it when girls text me all the time.’

I’m not texting James ‘all the time’. At all, in fact. I am being very careful not to treat him like I treated Nick. I’d text Nick to tell him the filling of my sandwich because I was fundamentally bored in my old job, and because Nick was also bored pottering around our flat. Eventually we bored each other and then we split up.

I can be guarded and I can be cool and I can hold back, but at the same time today I saw a man on the bus with a moustache that was so long it curled round his ears and I would like to tell James about this moustache because it would make him laugh, and yet I feel I can’t. And that is why I’m not happy.

‘He’ll call. Now tell me about the bit with the glitter again.’

I wake early the next day, hung-over. Outside the sky is already bright and from my bedroom window I can just see a patch of daffodils pushing through, down by the banks of the canal. I consider going for a walk to clear my head – past the colourful boats and vast white stucco houses – then think better of it and climb back under my duvet to replay last night’s conversation.

According to Pete, there’s nothing untoward about James’s behaviour. My instinct tells me something is strange, but I can’t put my finger on it.

When James is with me, he’s highly attentive.

He notices everything. If I apply lip balm when he’s popped to the loo, he’ll notice as soon as he walks back in. Not gloss. Clear lip balm. Nick wouldn’t have noticed if I’d grown a Salvador Dali moustache and started speaking Aramaic, as long as I was still padding around the flat.

If I leave the room, James asks where I’m going.

When I’m cooking a meal, he’ll watch me, try to impress me, touch me.

When we’re in bed he is generous and energetic and passionate. He has the libido of a man half his age.

Afterwards we lie for hours having iPod shuffle conversations, flicking from time travel to Bernie Winters to why mosquitoes don’t get AIDS. We should be sleeping. Our combined age is seventy-eight, we both have work in the morning. It’s 3.47, 2.48, 4.15am. Neither of us ever wants to stop the conversation. Eventually we fall asleep, my hand curled around his fingers.

But when he’s not with me, I feel like ‘we’ don’t exist. The randomness of meeting someone in a bar, of having no mutual friends, of having entirely separate lives, is brought home. He could disappear and I would never cross paths with him again. Sometimes I wake up and wonder if he’s even real.

On days when we don’t speak, I feel laden down with the things I didn’t get to share with him. He won’t call for two, three days. Then, it’s like he has a CCTV on my psyche, and at the precise mid-point between when I’ve done a deal with the devil so that he’ll call, and the point at which I think fuck you, James Stephens, this is not acceptable, he’ll ring. My anxiety will be punctured, he’ll come round and we’ll carry on mid-conversation where we left off, and I’ll realise I am a paranoid, silly woman.

Come on, paranoid, silly woman – get out of bed. Go to work.

It’s four in the morning on Good Friday. James and I are at his house, lying in bed, facing each other. My head is resting on his arm. Everything feels so entirely natural and comfortable and right. I think we are falling in love. He looks at me intently. ‘What’s wrong with you, Sophie Klein? There must be something.’

‘Plenty.’

He shakes his head.

‘I’m impatient,’ I say. ‘I’m not very thoughtful. I never remember birthdays. I forget to send my godchildren cards at Christmas. I’m greedy. I’m sarcastic. Sometimes I get a bit depressed and can’t shrug it off.’

He shakes his head again. ‘No, you don’t. You’re generous. You’re a good woman.’ Why does that sound so church-y?