36
An hour or so later, there was a cautious knock.
‘Harriet,’ Cal called. ‘Are you OK?’ A long pause. ‘Please know I’m so, so sorry. That was a stupid way to broach something you must be in bits about. I’m totally and completely on your side and I should’ve been upfront.’
Even in the teeth of her anguish, she had to concede he was charming. Perhaps it was even … emotional intelligence?
‘Go away,’ she said, half-serious, like a sullen teen. She was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling, eyes swollen but dry now, all cried out again. She knew her behaviour was unbecoming, but somehow she had to go through it to get to the other side. If Cal was truly sorry, if he really liked her, he’d withstand it.
‘Please can I grovel my explanation and apologies face to face?’ Cal said.
‘No. Grovel them through the door.’
‘OK, I will. Hang on, I’ll sit down first.’
She heard the sound Cal’s t-shirt brushing against the wall.
‘There’s a German word, zugzwang, to describe a situation where any move a chess player makes, makes things worse for them. I feel that way right now, because my reasons for saying what I said aren’t what you think; I wasn’t doubting you. But they’re still quite shit.’
Harriet said nothing. She throbbed with the indignity of what he knew. Cal Clarke – irrepressible, haloed, priority boarding pass for life, Cal – had read about her begging for sex. She wanted to die. She rolled onto her side and blinked at the light coming under the door, then closed her eyes against her humiliation. She felt as if she’d been stripped in the town square, and Cal had turned out to see the Walk of Shame. It wasn’t possible to be calm and gracious when she was naked and he was not – even if it wasn’t his fault.
‘A colleague showed me the Facebook thing.’
‘How did she know you knew me?’
‘I’ve talked about you. Some of them met you at my birthday. She didn’t know your last name, but enough to make the connection.’
‘Why have you talked about me?’
Harriet knew she sounded peevish to the point of silly, but then again, what exactly was there to preserve, of anything, at this juncture.
‘As my friend. I think you initially came up as a wedding recommend.’
‘Hmmm.’
‘She was winding me up, saying perhaps I didn’t know the nature of the person renting a room in my house. I said of course I did. She said: Don’t you think it’s unlikely, how she turned up by coincidence when she’d photographed your wedding, and …’
She heard Cal hesitate.
‘… That you knew I must be single, and targeted me.’
Harriet flinched. She thought about Cal pondering this, scrolling back through memories of their interactions for clues of a seduction.
‘I said, don’t be daft. She’d remembered what I’d said about how you and I agreed this arrangement, sight-unseen. She said: Wasn’t she the first call you got – you said the room wasn’t even online? How did she know to call you before the room was online, if she didn’t know you? I didn’t have an answer for that. Obviously, I knew it wasn’t because you’d plotted anything. I wanted to have the answer ready for next time if she raised it, that was all. I should’ve told you why I was asking and not fished like a clumsy wanker. I didn’t want to mention Facebook before you did. Obviously, because you’re not an idiot and hadn’t drunk as much six per cent IPA, you made the connection immediately. And here we are.’
‘You weren’t gossiping: “Oh God yes, what IF my lodger’s unhinged?”’
‘No, of course I wasn’t!’ Cal said, with what sounded like real indignance. ‘For what it’s worth, even if I hadn’t known you, I’d have thought it read like absolute horseshit. There were about a dozen weird leaps of logic. Like, why was he snooping at your phone?’
Harriet twinged again at this outsider’s perspective that she had been traduced: she was simultaneously grateful, and freshly humiliated at his being informed.
‘Not that it would’ve mattered if it had been revealing,’ she forced herself to say, unable to let him think less of her in any way, ‘but Scott lost it at a photo of an ordinary dress in a Topshop changing room. It was only “provocative” to an Edwardian grandfather.’
‘I don’t doubt you. He’s one of those blokes who doesn’t even know when his entitlement’s showing. He kept giving himself away.’
Harriet was somewhat mollified at this. It matched up neatly with what Lorna had said. It gave Harriet hope that some had seen through him.
‘Great to know news of my great unveiling as a pissed-up bully has reached the newsroom of the Yorkshire Post.’ Then, quieter: ‘It’s so … embarrassing, Cal.’
‘Will it help if I embarrass myself?’
‘I don’t know. Try.’
‘I think partly why I blurted that question like an idiot was … when I read it, I felt protective of you, but also a bit … possessive, I guess?’
Harriet’s heart rate increased, and she sternly instructed herself not to be affected by it.
‘You’re my friend and there’s this ex saying bizarre, nasty things about you. I knew he was making it up. But he was describing a time in your life when I didn’t know you. It gave me a sort of disorientation, like … jealousy. Then my colleague starts accusing me of not knowing you, when I’m so sure I do. It got to me.’
Harriet swallowed, hard.
‘I know how self-absorbed and gruesomely inappropriate this sounds. Not least cos you’re thirty-four so of course you had a life before Travel Iron Jon, and moving in with me … and … Oh God, stop talking, Cal … Yeah, well, there it is. My feeling on reading it was: “who the fuck are you to her, and how dare you.” Nothing else. I’ve made myself look worlds worse, haven’t I?’
In actual fact, Cal had unwittingly struck a chord. Harriet remembered that she’d felt a stab of irrational possessiveness about the casual fling Cal had, thirteen years ago. Were they … both … falling …?! Surely not. No. Fact check: he was going on dates, that he wasn’t mentioning. Still, it was nice that he felt defensive. It was a teaspoon of sugar stirred into the very bitter, cold black coffee that was her life.
‘No. And I think you’ll agree: in Scott, I have now decisively won the awful exes competition. Close the phone lines, your vote won’t count,’ Harriet said, in a conciliatory tone.
‘Oh I don’t know about that …’
Harriet got up, pushed the hair out of her face, checked herself in the mirror (nothing to be done about those eyes), dug in a drawer to find a particular piece of paper. She opened the door to him. Cal was still sitting down, socked feet braced against the opposite wall. He looked up, apprehensive.
‘Long story short, you’re blaming this on a woman?’ Harriet said.
‘Zugzwang!’ Cal grinned.
‘You’re a massive zugzwang.’
Harriet handed Cal the florist’s card, as he stood up.
‘Remember when you thought I’d got flowers from a client? It was Scott. I ran into him and his fiancée at a wedding shortly before, and she looked as down-beaten as I once did. I wrote her a letter about what he’d done to me, saying “you’re not alone”. That bouquet was him promising he’d get me back for it. The Facebook post was the getting me back.’
Cal frowned at it. ‘This is really creepy, Harriet. You should’ve said at the time. We could’ve gone to the police, even.’
‘There wasn’t anything you, or they, could do, and I didn’t know what he’d do as retaliation. After Jon’s antics, I didn’t know how you’d take it. What a dream lodger I am.’
Cal gave it back. ‘I’d have installed machine-gun turrets.’
She flushed, unbidden.
‘Seriously, Harriet. I think this Scott is scum. I honestly, on Sam’s life, didn’t need you to tell me you’d not behaved like that. I was only looking for confirmation of a minor practicality, nothing more.’
Harriet thought on her rant about disrespecting things you didn’t fully understand. At least Cal asked.
‘Accepted and forgiven,’ Harriet said, shoulders slumping. Then: ‘Hey, I have a question. Why is there writing on the wall in there by someone saying they hate you?’
‘Uh?’
She showed Cal into the room and pointed to it.
‘Urrrgh, Naked Ned. Your predecessor. The guy who walked around nude and used toilets with doors open. He was Mr Chilled Hippy until I said to him I didn’t think it was working out, and could he perhaps go? He flipped at me. I found little notes shoved down the side of bookcases and folded up in the coffee pot afterwards, questioning my mother’s family background, shall we say. I feel lucky he didn’t beat me to death with his pimped didgeridoo while I slept. Not a euphemism.’
‘Hahaha. Yet you didn’t even want to meet me?’
‘I liked your voice,’ Cal said, shrugging, and smiling, and in some small way, helping to mend Harriet’s heart.