Nathan Cardew moves in and out of me but my head is filled with Cam. He is real again, sleeping in a bed only a few miles away. In Penzance. Penzance, where we went out, where we bought sweets and cigarettes and cans of cheap cola, where we drank cider and pushed ten pence pieces into the arcade machines on the seafront. I can picture him there without even having to try.
I’ve lost count of the times I’ve wished I’d never met Cameron Stewart. But I can’t change the past, and as Nathan fucks me, I recall the night it hapened. Vicky and I were supposed to be going to a party on some farmland near Redruth. But she had period pains and wasn’t up to dropping pills and dancing until dawn in a churned-up field. So we decided to watch a film instead. We went to Blockbuster to choose a video, but then Vicky saw some friends walk past the window. She dragged me out to say hello. We got chatting. They were going to the cinema to watch The Crying Game. We’d heard of the film. Everybody said there was a mind-blowing twist so we tagged along, bought popcorn, and chose our seats. Vicky wanted to go at the back. I wanted to go at the front. We compromised and sat in the middle. As the lights went down, two men sat next to us. Vicky nudged me. Raised her eyebrows. I told her to shush but stole a look at the one beside me. He was gorgeous, breathtaking actually, with strong wrists and tanned skin, his hands weathered and rough and scarred. A fisherman, I guessed. I felt him looking at me and cast him a quick glance. He looked away. Vicky whispered something and we giggled like schoolgirls. I laid my hand on the armrest between me and him. When our fingers touched, a shot flashed up my arm as if he’d electrocuted me. I can’t remember the film. I can only remember our fingers grazing. At the end of the film, when the lights went up, my heart was beating fast and shallow like the wings of a hummingbird. The man’s friend, I later found out to be Geren, had short-cropped hair and a loud voice, and was making sure we all knew he hated the film because he wasn’t a ‘fucking nonce’.
‘I loved it,’ I said, as we followed them out.
The man with the electric fingers looked back over his shoulder and smiled. ‘Me too,’ he said. He had dark brown eyes, almost black, crinkled skin at the edges, shaggy dark hair which curled at the collar, and a wide mouth with clean, ever so slightly uneven teeth.
Vicky took my arm. Laughed. Pulled me through the people inching towards the exit and he was lost. In the foyer, she began marshalling us all to go on for a drink. As she talked I searched the crowd.
And there he was.
He was alone outside the cinema. Smoking. Leaning against a lamppost and watching the doors as the people spilled out. I left Vicky and her friends and walked out of the cinema and approached him. When he caught sight of me he beamed, wide, honest and open. We chatted about this and that, and it was as if we’d known each other for years. He was relaxed, confident but not cocky, funny and cool and, oh my god, sexy.
Vicky appeared at my shoulder. ‘Come on,’ she said, eyeing him with a smile. ‘I’ve got us a lift to the pub.’
‘Stay,’ he said to me.
I laughed as Vicky pulled me with her.
‘Where can I find you?’
‘The bakery in Newlyn!’
‘It’s fate! I fish out of Newlyn!’
‘Guess I’ll be seeing you then!’
And then Vicky and I tripped off, giggling, heads together, Vicky batting me with her hand and teasing me for being such a shameless flirt.
Nathan slumps on top of me. ‘I love you.’ He kisses my forehead.
An owl hoots some way off. I think of Cam now. How haunted he appears. How sallow and pale his aged skin is. How different we are now to those young people who met at the cinema. How altered. I know without doubt that I have to see him. Alex brought Cam back into my life. I can’t let him walk out of it without talking to him.
As Nathan snores softly, I lie there and stare at the ceiling. How much can one person stare at the ceiling? Sleep isn’t my friend. Most nights I don’t sleep at all, merely drift in and out of consciousness as my thoughts tumble, and the house creaks and rattles and groans. When we were newly married, I was terrified every night, convinced the noises of the cooling timbers were the sounds of Nathan’s father pacing blindly about. A cold sweat would creep over me and I’d watch the door, waiting for him to appear, and if it wasn’t Charles Cardew it was him, the other, with his glassy stare and blood-let pallor, his waterlogged body leaving ghostly pools of seawater. Some nights I still hear his footsteps, on the landing, on the stairs, in the attic above me. Tonight he paces the gravel path below the bedroom window. I hold my breath and strain my ears. Is it him? Yes. It’s him. I recall the stab of happiness when I heard those footsteps approaching from the shadows.
Cam? Is that you?
It wasn’t.
I’m looking for Cam. Have you seen him?
But he didn’t answer. He just kept walking.