17
At Cal’s suggestion, they carried their bottle of white to the picnic table in the garden. The steamy atmosphere on a late summer evening was unexpectedly potent and her senses were heightened by the last half hour’s ordeal.
Cal was dressed like Tom Hiddleston in The Night Manager (she’d overheard this ridicule from Sam – ‘I’d not let you manage my night’ – and liked it): pale-blue linen shirt with rolled-up sleeves and now, sunglasses. The effect was only enhanced by the way he looked like he’d been roughed up by spy drama heavies.
As Harriet sat down, she took it all in: bees buzzing groggily in the flowers as the light faded, the scent of honeysuckle, the damp, muggy air, fairy lights glowing amber like fireflies as the solar power kicked in. She was enjoying her fridge-cold glass of Chenin Blanc more than any wine she could remember. Cal had upended a bag of crisps into a bowl, and Harriet was struck by the endearing idea he had unselfconsciously copied a parental habit.
‘After I’ve been beaten up, I always like to reflect with wine and Waitrose nibbles,’ Cal said, as he moved the bowl towards her. ‘A thrashing, and a finger savoury. A perfect Sunday.’
Harriet smiled into her wine. He talked like someone who read and wrote a lot.
‘Is this the right flavour pairing?’ Harriet said. ‘I’m a wine-crisp sommelier. Like, a hearty beef crisp goes with a robust red.’
‘Ready salted and …’ he consulted the bottle’s label, ‘floral aromas, assertive apple and pear.’
‘Ideal.’
‘You seem to have taken it in your stride,’ she said, gesturing to his face while taking a crisp.
‘I haven’t been hit like that since one time at school, and it turns out my survival mechanism is the same: hope they don’t do it again.’
Cal had a very sophisticated form of confidence, Harriet thought, the kind where it can play dress-up as qualities such as self-deprecation, and vulnerability. You needed to be pretty sure of yourself to have sailed through the last half hour with no apparent fear, combativeness, embarrassment or bravado.
‘Do you mind me giving you some unasked-for advice?’ Cal said after a pause.
‘I can’t really say no, while gazing upon your ruined face,’ Harriet said, taking another crisp. Mmm, crisps.
‘There’s no chance of you and Jon getting back together, right?’ Cal said.
Harriet crunched, and shuddered. ‘Uh, no. There wasn’t before tonight.’ She conjured up a Lorna-ism. ‘I would rather eat aquarium gravel.’
Cal laughed, then wiped at his face, serious again. ‘Tell him that, once and for all. Maybe not the gravel part. It’s nice, you caring about whether he has his phone on him to get home. But trust me, someone in that state is clinging to anything as hope that there’s still a way. Cut him off. Don’t even politely entertain any further bullshit.’
Harriet frowned. ‘But I’ve moved out? He surely knew that we were over.’
‘He’s ranting on about fighting for you, so no, I don’t think he does.’
‘I feel like such a shit for hurting him so much, is the problem.’
‘Yes, and I’m afraid he knows that. That’s the weakness he’ll exploit, your guilt. But you asserting yourself doesn’t make you cruel.’
Harriet nodded, writhing slightly. It was hard to imagine a less-appropriate relationship advice coach. (And surely this was the moment he should tell her to leave – he hadn’t wanted her here since Sam’s reveal and now she’d given him a solid reason for booting her out? She wondered if he felt too guilty, now he’d got a look at who she’d left.)
Nevertheless, cold Cal seemed to be hitting nails on heads and she couldn’t help but appreciate a different perspective. He had faced Jon down, but neither did he stoop to his level or gratify him with any display of anger in return. Perhaps she could do with borrowing some of that strategy, and attitude.
‘I’m so baffled by this. Ever since I finished it, this whole side to him has emerged that I never knew was there. I feel quite freaked out and very stupid for not being aware of it.’
Harriet remembered what Lorna said about Jon being a bad person to break up with. The more she thought about it, the more she was slightly frightened by the extent of Lorna’s prescience. In her many years of knowing her, Lorna’s instincts had never been wrong. Another person’s attitude that Harriet should borrow.
Cal grimaced. ‘Some people don’t let you leave well, I’m afraid. They don’t do easy endings.’
Harriet nodded. They exchanged a look of understanding that they’d not be discussing his aborted nuptials. In this moment, Harriet couldn’t fit that episode together with what she’d seen of Cal so far tonight, whatsoever. Unconfrontational, able to wisecrack under pressure, and annoyingly … pleasant. But then, how did she expect a bride-jilter to behave? Given her track record for understanding male behaviour, and the fact it was none of her business, she decided not to try.
‘Is there another lad this was meant for?’ Cal said, pulling his shades down to squint while pointing at his damaged forehead.
Harriet cringed. ‘Oh, God – no! It’s as if Jon wants there to be someone else, so I can be the scarlet woman, and he can duel.’
Harriet knew that this jealousy hadn’t come entirely from nowhere. She’d simply not needed to notice it, before. For example, a running joke, if she was going out without him, was Jon asking, ‘cui bono?’ – who benefits – at the sight of her outfit, Harriet always replying: ‘No, Zara,’ or similar. The idea there had to be a male admirer for any effort she made was, on review, overwrought. She’d chalked up too much to an ex-all-boys’ school, creaky outmodedness. It wasn’t school, it was Jon.
‘Then are you sure Jon’s not seeing someone, and this is all displacement?’ Cal said, looking studiously into his glass.
‘I seriously doubt it. Our split was very recent and Jon’s not the womanising type.’
‘Hmmm. Counter-intuitively, I’ve found being excessively paranoid and a cheater tends to go together. They’re judging you by their own standards.’
This felt true; in fact, Harriet knew it to be true in her own past: the flex of accusing someone of your own bad behaviour. Still, she failed to imagine Jon doing such a thing, even if he’d not been so in love with her. He was a moral person who had a very developed sense of what was ‘not on’. On a practical level, he was barely on social media, never seemed to cling to his phone, so unless he was having it off with someone at work over the range cooker in the kitchen, chances to meet other women were scarce.
‘I think it’s more that he didn’t see this coming, didn’t really understand me in the first place.’ Harriet let out a sad sigh, thinking this was as much her fault for not really trying to be understood. ‘Instead of figuring it out by spending some time in his own head, he’s spun off into some movie idea of how he thinks a heartbroken ex would behave. He thinks I’m going to realise he must really love me, to go this far. I feel so bad for him, but …’
Harriet paused; this was pretty insensitive when Cal had been hit by him. Worse was the way Cal was looking at her, as a sort of pitiable curiosity.
‘Also,’ she said, in ‘reasserting herself’ tone, ‘Next week I’ll start looking for somewhere else to live. First the wedding coincidence, now this. I don’t think we were meant to house share,’ Harriet said.
Cal’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Er …’ He hesitated in that precise way people do when offered something they definitely want, but seizing upon it is unseemly. ‘If you’re sure?’
That was all the hint Harriet required.
‘Yes, absolutely,’ she said, firmly. ‘No hard feelings. We weren’t to know Leeds was this small, hah.’
‘No rush,’ Cal said. ‘I won’t advertise the room until you’re set to go.’
‘Thanks.’
Harriet sensed him casting about for something to soften the fact she’d said, ‘I’ll leave’ and Cal had said, ‘ooh yes please’.
‘Hmmm … so far in my landlording career, I’ve encountered nudity and violence. What’s left on the eighteen-rating criteria?’ he said, after a pause.
‘Injury detail,’ Harriet said, pointing at Cal’s face.
He winced. ‘Scenes of a sexual nature from the next one? Oh God.’
They smiled, an easing between them.
Her promising to go had lifted the curse of awkwardness, although in the following seconds she remembered Kristina’s scream, and hardened again. It would’ve been so much better for both of them if she’d never known about that. Never mind.
A bat flitted past in the blue-dusk.
‘What is Cal short for, by the way? Callum? I realise I don’t know,’ Harriet said, as they walked back into the house.
‘Calvin,’ he said, taking his shades off, rolling those intense pale green eyes. ‘Want to know why? It’s fucking shameful.’
‘Go on …?’
‘My mum loves Back To The Future, especially the bit where Marty gets called Calvin because he’s in Calvin Klein pants.’
She broke into a wide grin. ‘That’s great.’
‘Is it though?’ Cal said. ‘It’s also a film where the mum crushes on her son. Cool.’
‘Calvin. I like it.’
‘Forgive me if I don’t trust your taste,’ Cal said, with a smile, and she felt a little chill in his palpable disdain at her grubby life.
Duvet drawn up to her chin in bed, Harriet scrolled down to the FLEASLAGS group on her WhatsApp and typed.
Jon turned up at my house uninvited, claiming I was hiding my location from him, and PUNCHED the house mate / landlord, Cal, accusing us of having an affair. A SUNDAY MOOD.
Lorna
YOU WHAT
Roxy
???!!! Are you joking??
Harriet
Sadly not. Luckily Cal isn’t pressing charges. Jon was absolutely off his head, ranting about us shagging, had clearly been drinking.
Lorna
Woah
Roxy
OMFG
Harriet
What I don’t understand is, how did Jon find out where I lived?
Roxy
Uhm … sorry that was me. After the film. He made it seem like it wasn’t a thing
Harriet
How did he explain away that he was asking you, not me??
Roxy
You know Jon, it was all fiddlesticks and whoops butterfingers and Harriet said she’d give me it and keeps forgetting, would you mind ever so? I didn’t think he’d punch anyone! I didn’t even think you’d mind him having it or I’d not have given it him
Harriet
You weren’t to know. I really hope he’s so ashamed tomorrow he comes to his senses
Lorna
Imagine if you actually HAD left him for someone else. Presume Jon would be being fingerprinted under arrest for murder right now
Harriet
What’s got into him?! Two years together and no sign of this stuff in his nature, whatsoever?
Lorna
You say that but he did have a thing about Second World War films. He once told me every man of his generation feels guilt at never having faced a Nazi
Roxy
He must be so madly in love with you he’s lost his mind.
Lorna
Don’t make this some male passion ‘nice guy snapped’ shit, Rox. If this was a woman we’d have no problem saying she was a vindictive scary banshee
Roxy
I wasn’t!
Lorna
I admit I’m struggling to picture Mark Corrigan from Peep Show turning into The Punisher, can you act it out when you see us next, H?
Harriet
NOT LOL