Love You Madly

I make myself a cup of tea, wishing that Anna had woken me before she left. This isn’t the first time she has gone abroad on business, of course; she’s flown all over the world in the past few years. But this trip feels different. Her absence needles me. It may be due to the lack of fond goodbyes, but I cannot help wondering whether there is something wider than just a stretch of water between us now.

I walk back into the bedroom and open the wardrobe. Anna’s work suits are hung neatly in a row, a palette of demure pastels, muted greys and blacks, and one or two startling blasts of primary colour. I find yesterday’s choice, an elegant charcoal trouser suit, and pull it out. My fingers dip fleetingly into the suit, as nimble as a pickpocket’s. As I perform my search I hum tunelessly to myself, as if this were quite the most ordinary thing in the world. There is a book of matches in the left jacket pocket, glossily embossed with the name of a restaurant near the Barbican. I open the flap. Four matches have been pulled out from the right hand side. Four cigarettes after lunch? Perhaps more. Maybe less. I stare at the matches, willing them to reveal their meaning to me. What conclusions should I draw from this? What do four post-lunch fags actually mean? Shouldn’t Anna have mentioned that she went out for lunch yesterday? Who did she go with?

I hang the charcoal suit back in its place. This amateur detective work is ridiculously self-destructive. It just sends me into vertiginous tailspins of bewildered despair. But I am powerless to resist the call of those untended pockets; every day, the possibility of new information draws me back, like the cruellest addiction.

I wish Anna were here now. There is so much I want to talk to her about. We used to have endless, earnest conversations which stretched on long into the night, as we forgot the time and the rest of the world – everything except each other. But those talks are a thing of the past; all Anna wants to do now in the evenings is collapse on the sofa with a glass of wine and watch television until it’s time to go to sleep.

I open my saxophone case and begin to practise for this evening’s rehearsal, but I cannot muster any interest for the pretty patterns of notes that I am producing. The saxophone keys feel heavy beneath my fingers. I am relieved when the telephone interrupts me. It is Sean.

‘Hey, fella,’ he chirps.

‘Sean. How are you?’

‘I’m fine. But the six million dollar question is how are you?’

‘All right, I suppose. Anna’s gone to Paris for the rest of the week, and the world hasn’t exactly been set alight by the publication of Licked, but other than that I’m fine.’

‘Shouldn’t lose too much sleep about the book,’ says Sean carelessly. ‘These things take time. Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know. Has Anna gone to Paris on business?’

‘No, Sean, she’s gone with her fucking knitting circle,’ I snap. ‘Of course she’s gone on business.’

‘Anyway, listen,’ says Sean blithely. ‘I’ve got some news that’s going to make your day.’

‘OK,’ I say, seriously doubting this.

‘I’ve arranged a reading for you.’

I almost drop the phone. ‘That’s fantastic, Sean! Where?’

There is a pause. ‘In a bookshop.’

‘OK. Where’s the bookshop?’

‘Look,’ says Sean, ‘before we go any further, can we discuss dates?’

‘Sure. I’m available pretty much any time.’

‘Ah. Footloose and fancy free. Lucky old you.’

‘When is this all fixed for?’ I am delighted. One thing is for certain: Neville never would have dreamed of arranging anything as vulgarly populist as a reading. Good old Sean. For a moment, I find myself almost liking him. Thanks to him, I’m going to get to read my work to a real audience. Who, at the end, will clap.

‘Probably in about a week or so,’ answers Sean. ‘There or thereabouts.’

‘Great! Where’s this bookshop?’

‘And I think we can safely assume that you’ll be guaranteed a good reception. I’ve been talking to the manager of the shop, and he’s very keen on the book.’

‘God,’ I exclaim. ‘Someone’s actually read it. Miracles will never cease.’

‘Oh, he hasn’t actually read it,’ replies Sean, ‘but he loves the idea of it. The whole, you know, stamp thing.’ Sean is on thin ice here, since he hasn’t read it either.

‘Well,’ I say. ‘Stamp enthusiasts are OK. I’m not fussy. If my audience calls, then I must go. Where did you say the bookshop was again?’

‘And this, I would think, will be the tip of the iceberg. Once you get a few readings under your belt –’

‘Sean,’ I interrupt. ‘Where’s the fucking bookshop?’

There is a long pause before Sean finally says, ‘Preston.’

I take a deep breath. ‘Pardon?’

‘It’s in Preston. The bookshop.’

‘OK,’ I say evenly. ‘Why Preston, precisely?’

‘Well.’ I hear Sean weighing up his excuses. ‘Basically, they’re the only place so far that’s agreed to have you.’

Jesus. A fine time for him to start telling me the truth. ‘I was hoping for something a bit more, I don’t know, local. At least within the M25, say.’

‘All in good time. Everything comes to he who waits. But at the moment it’s Preston.’

‘Christ.’ I take a deep breath. ‘All right. I’ll do it.’

‘Oh good. Stuart will be pleased.’

‘Who’s Stuart?’

‘He’s the shop manager. My cousin, actually. He owes me a favour.’

‘Ah.’ So Sean is press-ganging one of his family into hosting my first reading. What am I saying? My only reading. In Preston. It wasn’t quite what I had in mind. ‘Thanks, Sean,’ I say, far too late for him to believe that I could possibly mean it.

‘Right, then,’ says Sean. ‘I’ll let you know as soon as I have a date.’ He rings off.

I put down the telephone and survey the flat. Now that Anna will be away for a few days, there seems little point in carrying out the usual battery of daily domestic tasks. I can live like a pig, and nobody will know. The prospect fills me with a hollow thrill. I wonder what Anna is doing right now.

Suddenly I remember that in all the excitement caused by the announcement of Anna’s trip to Paris last night, I never asked her about the cufflinks in her underwear drawer. I was so relieved when I realised that she wasn’t leaving me for ever that my brain must have subconsciously decided to shelve that issue for a more apposite occasion. I swear softly to myself. Now I will have to wait until next weekend. I walk into the bedroom for another look at the cufflinks. Anna’s underwear drawer is emptier than before; she has packed a lot for her trip, including, I notice, some of her more alluring items. I begin to riffle through what is left.

Minutes later I sit down on the bed, lost.

The Tiffany bag has gone.

Anna has gone to Paris with Andy, Graham and Richard, her colleagues, lovely chaps all. They are, she told me last night, all up for a laugh, that sort of thing.

My mind whirls.

What sort of thing?

I stare into space, my heart racing.

Anna has gone to Paris, and she has taken a pair of Tiffany cufflinks with her.

Each piece of the jigsaw slams into place with a resounding smash. The dreamy silences, all those late nights at the office – suddenly everything begins to make terrible sense.

Is one of her Paris-bound colleagues a gym enthusiast with a thing for Ravel?

It would explain why Anna was hiding the cufflinks in the first place, and it would explain why she didn’t wake me up this morning. She wanted to avoid the embarrassment of a flamboyantly uxorious goodbye if she is off to Paris to shag like a jack rabbit with somebody else.

I spend the rest of the day struggling to find alternative explanations for everything I’ve seen, everything I know. The more I wrestle with the facts, the more they obstinately shape themselves towards the unthinkable.

Is Anna having an affair?

I haven’t even got to the gut-busting punch line yet, the little detail that makes this all so especially sad:

We went to Paris on our honeymoon.

See? You couldn’t make it up.

Our jazz quartet rehearses every Tuesday evening at Gavin’s loft. At six o’clock I pack up my saxophone and catch the Tube to Old Street, numb from a dayful of worry.

Gavin is a graphic designer of some sort. He’s obviously good at it, because he’s loaded. He lives in a vast loft conversion on the fringes of Clerkenwell, all exposed brick, double-height ceilings, and stripped pine floors. There’s a baby grand piano in one corner. He even has a Raiders of the Lost Ark pinball machine. It feels more like a film set than a place where a real person should actually live. It’s every bachelor’s fantasy wankpad.

Gavin’s homogenised but expensive taste is derived in large part from the glossy magazines to which he is addicted. I have seen him rip open the latest edition of GQ, salivating as he gazes with barely suppressed ardour at the most recent techno-gizmo or the newest Paul Smith loafers. You can see his eyes glinting with deranged lust as he compulsively turns the pages. He just loves labels. He just loves stuff.

I press the doorbell, gazing anxiously in both directions as I wait to be buzzed inside. The entrance to Gavin’s building is shrouded in dark shadows which give me the creeps. Shifty characters with tattoos on their arms hang around on street corners, talking into mobile phones and staring menacingly at passers-by. I am waiting for the inevitable day when I am robbed and brutally murdered, all within pressing distance of Gavin’s doorbell. The atmosphere of palpable violence doesn’t seem to bother Gavin. Perhaps the attendant dangers of living here are immaterial, given the hipness of the milieu. Perhaps the attendant dangers of living here are the reason for the hipness of the milieu.

Gavin’s voice crackles out of the small metal box by the front door. ‘All right,’ he says cheerfully. He knows it’s me; I am being scrutinised by the unblinking eye of a small security camera above the intercom. I make sure the front door closes firmly behind me before climbing the stairs to Gavin’s loft.

He is standing by the door, waiting for me.

‘Hi Gav,’ I say.

‘Matt. How’s tricks?’

‘Tricks are dandy. My novel’s just been published, actually.’

‘Really,’ says Gavin.

‘It’s called Licked,’ I tell him.

‘Nice title.’

I perform a playful shuffle. ‘You could buy a copy if you liked,’ I say.

‘Yeah,’ agrees Gavin, laughing. ‘Course I could. Come on, the others are already here.’

I follow Gavin in. The twins, Ronnie and Abdullah, are setting up their instruments at the other end of the room, next to the piano. ‘All right Matt, you poncy fucker!’ shouts Ron Fries from behind his half-erected drum kit.

‘Do you want a beer?’ asks Gavin. ‘I’ve got this fantastic bottled stuff from Korea. It’s made by albino monks in this isolated monastery on top of a mountain. They trample the hops with their feet.’

‘Yeah, go on then,’ I reply doubtfully.

Gavin goes to his beautiful open-plan kitchen and opens an enormous Smeg fridge, which is taller than I am. Apart from about twenty bottles of beer, the fridge is empty. He takes out a bottle, prises the cap off, and hands it to me. I take a tentative sip. As I swallow, I start to believe the story about the monks trampling the hops. The beer has a distinct odour of smelly feet. I carry my saxophone towards the twins at the far end of the room.

As twins go, Ron and Abdullah Fries could not be less identical. Ron is a huge, stocky bear of a man; Abdullah is tall and thin. Abdullah’s wild shock of unruly red hair and mash of orange freckles make him look at least five years younger than his brother, but in fact he is the older of the two, by about forty-five minutes.

‘All right, Matt,’ says Abdullah as I approach. He raises his own bottle of Korean beer to me in friendly salute. I’m sure that Abdullah isn’t supposed to drink: he became a Buddhist years ago.

The Fries twins were born in East London in the middle of the Sixties. For newly-born twin brothers it was an unfortunate confluence of time and place, as there were only ever two names that they were going to be given. Ron was all right, but the subsequent proliferation of McDonalds restaurants, and Abdullah’s adoption of a Muslim name, has always led me to suspect that his conversion to Buddhism was due less to any spiritual conviction than a simple but heartfelt desire to change his name from Reg Fries.

Ron finishes setting up, and pulls out his drumsticks. He plays a few press rolls, and then puts on a pair of dark glasses. As soon as the shades go on, Ron is firmly installed in his own jazz dream world, where he is American, and black. While he acts out this peculiar fantasy, he insists on speaking some ghastly argot of his imagination, an excruciating cocktail of bastardised Harlem jive and flat estuary vowels.

‘You sorry-assed bitches ready to get down and play some shit?’ he drawls, sounding like Sammy Davis Jr marooned in Basildon. Gavin and I exchange glances.

‘Getting there,’ says Gavin, riffling through pages of sheet music by the piano.

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