Granta 122: Betrayal (Granta: The Magazine of New Writing) by

Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781905881666
Publisher: Granta Publications Ltd
Published: 2013-01-17T05:00:00+00:00

We had met three times already and never once spoken or enquired about the other’s life. We had exchanged cellphone numbers, but we never called. Telephones were off-limits it seemed, and contact, other than through email, taboo. That we didn’t even mention this and preferred to glide over it in silence gave our meetings a guarded, tacit, over-the-transom but under-the-radar air. Her name never figured on my calendar, and mine, I sensed, never entered hers – though most likely for different reasons.

Ours were the cobbled lanes; major arteries we steered clear of. On Abingdon Square the snow kept piling up and made me wish we could spend endless hours together in our coffee shop, do nothing but sit there and hope that neither made the slightest effort to lift the spell. Provided we stayed put, and provided it snowed, we could manage to meet like this next week, and the week after, and the week after that as well – she and I together at this same corner table by the window, with our coats bunched up on a third chair, knowing how lucky I was to be there, because I had never before had the chance to sit face to face with one of the most beautiful and most intelligent women I’d met in my life. And now it was given to me, and if neither had yet mentioned the drinks we said we’d have instead of coffee, and if neither brought up others in our lives, it was because we didn’t wish to alter anything or abandon this tiny, safe islet we’d found for ourselves. For me, it was the rarest thing on earth. For her? I couldn’t begin to know. One day I’d have to ask. And that day might be the last.

Tread softly. Do nothing. Spoil nothing.

Two days later my resolution gave out. Did she want to have drinks?

My dearest, I’d love to. Let me get a couple of things out of the way. I’ll let you know.

Early the next morning – what a good sign this was: I’m free tonight.

Yes, but tonight isn’t entirely mine, I emailed back. I can do drinks but then I have a dinner to go to. How about six?

Let’s make it five thirty.

Fine, I wrote back, there’s a bar off Abingdon, not far from our cafe.

So it’s ours now?

On Bethune. All right? I ducked her humour but hoped that my abrupt reply told her that her meaning had pleased me and wasn’t lost on me.

On Bethune it is, my dear.

Seldom in my life had anyone been so wilful and acquiescent at one and the same time. Was this a sign? Or was she just the accommodating sort?

When we met yet again a week later we ordered two Hendrick’s gins. ‘The rest of this week is not going to be good for me,’ she said. ‘Actually it’s going to be pretty awful.’

Well, I thought, finally something’s coming out.

The week wasn’t so hot for me either. I alleged dinners and cocktail parties that were excruciatingly boring, give or take a few people.

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