Page 28 of Days You Were Mine

‘Not yet. But soon. Things will become much simpler once Christina knows who Alice really is.’

Such prescient words. If only I’d listened.

Then

Alice

Jake shows me a different way to live. He cares about nothing and wants to try everything; to say that he has opened my eyes sexually in the space of a few short days is a dramatic understatement. But it’s more than that. His whole life is dedicated to small acts of pleasure, from the ritualistic Italian cappuccino to a night spent watching shooting stars in Hyde Park (we broke in by climbing over the locked gates, and spent hours on a bench wrapped up in blankets, and I think it might be the most romantic thing I will ever do).

It’s his idea to spend a whole weekend in bed, forty-eight hours of decadent living during which we get dressed only once, to visit the little shop across the road for provisions.

Amir, the owner, laughs when he sees what we have lined up on the counter.

A bottle of cava, another of white wine, milk, a jar of Nescafé’s Blend 37, a loaf of Mother’s Pride, a packet of ginger nuts.

‘All the essentials, yeah?’ he says.

‘Think we’ve got it covered,’ Jake says, wrapping an arm around my shoulders.

In the kitchen, we unpack the shopping together like any married couple: milk in the fridge, tea and biscuits in the cupboard, champagne into the fridge. I am boiling the kettle fortea, my back turned to Jake, when he surprises me with his hands inside my shirt, the sharp cold of two ice cubes against my nipples.

I cry out, but then I feel the warmth of his mouth against my neck and it turns into a gasp of pleasure instead.

I try to turn around to kiss him, but he whispers, ‘No,’ and I am used to this game of taking turns. I love it. I live for it.

‘We’re going to need a lot of time, a lot of weekends,’ he says afterwards, as we lie on the brown sofa, and our future of committed eroticism stretches out in front of us, a whole infinity of lovemaking.

Jake carries the television into his bedroom and we watch one show after another:Doctor Who,The Goodies,Parkinson. There’s anOmnibuson Andy Warhol, and the two of us watch entranced. Like everyone else, we’re fascinated with Warhol. So much has been written about him, but it’s rare to see him on TV, the man famed for his fiercely guarded privacy.

‘Rick is going to be as big as Warhol, if not bigger,’ I tell Jake. ‘I overheard Gordon saying so the other day.’

Jake picks up my hand and kisses it without taking his eyes away from the screen.

‘I live in hope that one day, Alice Garland, you might actually believe in yourself. You’re just as talented as him.’

We drink the champagne at two o’clock in the morning out of cheap tumblers bought with Green Shield stamps; I recognise them because we have the same ones at home. My father often makes my mother a gin and tonic in one of these glasses, his own evening whisky in fine crystal inherited from his parents; small, everyday acts of pettiness intended to grind her down.

‘Why do you put up with him?’

‘Because we’re frightened of him. His temper. The rages thatcan blow up from nowhere. He’s tolerable most of the time, but when he drinks, it’s a nightmare.’

‘Alcoholic?’

‘I don’t really know. It doesn’t seem to take much to make him turn. Three glasses of wine and he’ll fly off the handle. It’s like he’s just waiting for me or my mother to say the wrong thing so he can start yelling at us. You get inured to it after a while. My mother just drifts off into her dreamworld and I suppose I closed down a bit more each time. I felt like I was marking out the time until I could leave.’

‘Poor baby,’ Jake says, kissing me. ‘I hope he never hurt you. Physically, I mean.’

‘No. Sometimes I thought he might. But he always pulled himself back at the last minute.’

Jake is quiet for a moment.

‘My grandfather was violent. All the time. But I never let him break me.’

‘You really hate him, don’t you?’

He shrugs. ‘He’s dead, so … I guess I just need to let it all go.’

In the morning, we are in the bathroom together, Jake shaving in front of the mirror, me about to have a shower, when I open up the cabinet to look for soap. And there inside are two boxes of medication I am instantly drawn to. I take them out and look at their names. Phenelzine and Largactil. They look nothing like the antibiotics I was prescribed throughout most of my childhood for recurring tonsillitis.

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