On Friday I emailed Julie to let her know about my strange phone conversation with Alison. Of course the email was far too blunt a tool for us to discuss it properly (particularly with me needing to catch up with work as well). I was unable to answer all the questions she asked (although, really, like I have the answers to all the questions she asked). As such we went out for a coffee yesterday afternoon to talk about it properly, but when we met we decided to make it drinks instead and managed to keep it going most of the evening.
In detail I told her what happened. She asked me all the questions which have been bubbling around my brain: What? Why? How come?
I was unable to answer any of them.
After about two drinks we started to talk about Alison herself.
“She was always someone who had secrets,” Julie told me. “Did you notice that?”
Julie is short and thin, with an angular but pretty face and librarian glasses. When she holds a problem up to the light, it’s as if she’s really examining it, giving it all her mind’s attention.
“I didn’t know her as long as you did,” I told her.
“No, you didn’t,” she stared at me thoughtfully. “And that’s an odd thing too, as the last boyfriend she introduced to me – well, they seemed almost at the point of getting engaged. She’d got that far into the relationship before she bothered to introduce him to her friends. And yet you, well, she introduced you almost at the start. I thought she must really, really like you.”
“What happened to that boyfriend?”
She shrugged. “They broke up not long after. Maybe he just wasn’t ready for an engagement.”
Another couple of drinks:
“I thought she was such a good mate,” Julie was tipsier now. “I really thought Alison was someone I could rely on, that I could really trust. And now this. I feel so cut off, so let down. I just don’t understand it.”
She stared at me and then reached across the table to clutch my hand.
“You must be gutted?” her voice was rich with emotion.
“I’ve felt better,” I told her, holding her fingers tight. “I just wish we could have talked about whatever was going on. I wished she’d confided in me, so I knew where I fucking stood.”
“Yeah you don’t want to ask that Katie bitch,” she let go of my hand to pick up her glass. “She thinks that just because she shagged that rock star that she’s all that!”
Another couple and we were both quite pissed:
“You’re a nice guy,” she said, “you seem reliable.”
“Thank you. You’re nice too.”
I’m not sure if she even heard me. “I never go out with nice guys. I never go out with reliable guys. I only go out with total dicks. It’s my friends I rely on to be reliable, and now they don’t seem reliable either.”
For a moment I thought she was going to burst into tears, but instead she just picked up her pint and knocked back half a glass and smiled at me.
We kissed at the end of the night. I waited for her outside the pub as she’d gone to the loo and when she emerged we kind of fell into each other’s arms. I don’t know if it was really a sexual thing, or we just needed to share some intimacy. But it felt good standing there on the South Bank holding her tight and feeling her lips on mine.
At the end she told me to call her.
I think I will.
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