Daan has forgotten about the internal security cameras. Casting his mind back now he remembers at one residents’ committee meeting an argument between residents as to whether internal cameras were an important security measure or an invasion of privacy. There were enough residents with nefarious goings-on who didn’t want their every move monitored. They’d take the risk of dealing with burglars. Daan hadn’t got involved in the argument, he didn’t much care. He vaguely recalls that the compromise reached was that cameras were installed in the gym and pool but not in the corridors. The argument being something about health and safety in communal areas. He hadn’t understood the reasoning at the time, thought perhaps Alfonso was the only one to benefit because he could ogle the fitties as they exercised. Daan is glad now that there aren’t any cameras in the corridors.
“I didn’t stay long today. Got there and realized I just didn’t have the energy to work out. Just turned straight back around at the door.” Daan flashes Alfonso a big smile. Then he remembers that the best form of defense is attack and asks, “So why are you skulking around the back stairs, after hours, Alfonso? Anything I need to be concerned about?”
It was bolshie, rude, but it does the job. Alfonso looks defensive. “I’m not skulking, just checking about. Doing my job. Seeing everything is okay before I clock off for the weekend.” He is self-justifying, which makes a person appear shifty. “One of the residents said she’s heard things.”
“What sort of things?”
“Well, she wasn’t sure. Some shouting or crying, she said. It might have just been someone’s TV.”
Daan and Alfonso meet one another’s eyes and neither likes what they see. “What do you make of this pandemic business?” Daan asks.
“I don’t know what to make of it.”
“My guess is we will all be locked down next week.”
“You think?”
“Most likely. You’ll probably be better staying at home. I’ll send out an email to the residents, if you like, confirming that.”
“Well, we’ll see, shall we?” counters Alfonso. “No need to action anything yet. I’ll come in if I can.”
“Oh, I think it’s better to be safe than sorry.”
Alfonso nods, as Daan knew he would, and he turns away, heads back down the stairs. Daan waits until he hears his footsteps fade to nothing, the sound of the door opening back to reception, then carries on upward.
27
Kylie
Thursday 19th March
I need to keep communicating. I need to answer the questions asked and even those that haven’t been put to me yet. Carefully, I push on. “I realized that planning an enormous, expensive wedding was not only cruel but unsafe,” I admit. “Even though I was going under a different name, there was always the risk of being physically recognized. You both moved in different circles but the further I widened those circles, the greater the risk of being found out. I had to draw in. Make both lives smaller.”
Daan had lots of family, friends and people from work he wanted to invite; he assumed I would want the same. I immediately vetoed colleagues, that was the easiest win.
“I don’t want to get married in front of a room full of coworkers,” I’d argued.
“Why not?”
“It doesn’t feel intimate enough. Coworkers are transient, they are not friends.”
“Okay, if that’s how you feel.” He looked a little bit disappointed but wanted me to be happy. Brightening, he added, “I’m really looking forward to meeting your friends, though.” He never had and he must have thought that was odd. He was the sort of boyfriend women would generally want to show off.
“They are looking forward to meeting you too,” I lied. “It’s just my closest friends don’t live in London, and they all have young families so are pretty absorbed in their own lives.”
“Tell me about them again. So, there’s Ginny, who you met in college. She’s married with two kids, right? And Emma is a single mum. Tell me a little more about Alex—you hardly talk about her.”
I hardly talked about any of them. Despite his probing questions, I tried to keep them at a distance. These women he named are my actual uni friends, but they all know Mark well, and there was no way I could ask any of them to the wedding; they were all at my first one. Why did he have to be a concerned and interested sort of boyfriend? I remember kissing him to distract him. Leading him to the bedroom.
“I kept telling myself that there wasn’t going to be a wedding and yet I found myself arguing for one that would be possible, feasible.” I told him my preference was for an intimate gathering. I told him my mother was too sick to attend. I’d already said my father was dead. I said that I was an only child, never once mentioning my three half brothers.
I remember him asking, “Are there any aunts or uncles? Cousins?”
“No, none. Both my parents were only children too.”
“God, that’s awful, Kai.”
He wrapped his arms around me, his sense of protectiveness heightened because he thought I was all alone in the world. I pushed on. “Besides, it’s not about the big day, is it? It’s about us.”
Daan agreed to a small wedding in the end. He loved me, was wild about me back then, which is sometimes bigger than love, and he softened. I loved him deeply too. Love him.
I love them both. There’s another inconvenient truth.
Yes, even now. I don’t know which I should hate for locking me up, so I continue to love them both.
I have sometimes wondered, perhaps I should have insisted on a massive do, one that necessitated a two-year engagement to secure the perfect venue, to have a dress handmade in France and shipped to me. If I had done that there would have been an opportunity to walk away. Wouldn’t there? But I didn’t do that. I booked a private room for twenty at The Ivy, I bought a dress from Harvey Nics, sent out invitations. I made it happen.
I wanted to be his wife.
“I hired a bridesmaid. Who knew that such a service even exists? But it does. I found a discreet advert nestled in the back of a glossy wedding magazine,” I confess.
I called the mobile number. A polite young woman named Jess answered. “Who needs to hire bridesmaids?” I asked her. I had carefully worked out what I planned to say my reasons for calling were; I wanted to check that my lie was within the realms of possibility. Besides, I wondered what other shadowy reasons people had to justify hiring a woman to do the most intimate job a girlfriend could do. I couldn’t believe there were many women committing bigamy who needed to keep their wedding on the down and low.
“Women who want their actual friends to enjoy the wedding and not be burdened down with too many tasks,” Jess replied lightly and brightly. “Or maybe to even up the numbers, if you have, say, three close friends but want four bridesmaids to make the photos symmetrical. It is a flourishing business.” She had a sweet, singsong voice. I guessed she was probably born and bred somewhere like Surrey, she was most likely gifted a pony when she was five, her father loved her and her mother. Her reality was light years away from mine. Even the sanitized reasons for wanting to hire a bridesmaid seemed peculiar to me, but she appeared to accept them. Her trustfulness made it easier for me.