The One Plus One Page 4

  ‘And obviously we’re suspending you until we’ve got to the bottom of this.’

  Ed laughed at him. ‘Are you kidding me? You can’t suspend me. It’s my company.’ He threw the foam ball up in the air and caught it, turning away from them. Nobody moved. ‘I’m not going. This is our company. Tell them, Ronan.’

  He looked at Ronan, but Ronan turned away. Ed looked at Sidney, who simply shook his head. Then he looked up at the two uniformed men who had appeared behind him, at his secretary, whose hand was at her mouth, at the carpet path already opening up between him and the office door, and the foam ball dropped silently onto the floor between his feet.

  Deanna Lewis. Maybe not the prettiest girl, but definitely the one who scored highest on Ed and Ronan’s campus-wide Girls You’d Give One Without Having To Drink A Fourth Pint First points system. As if she’d look at either of them. He guessed that when she walked through the computer-science centre they had worn the same expressions as a basset hound watching a passing hamburger.

  He’d bet she’d never once registered him in the whole three years, apart from that time when it was raining heavily and she was at the station and asked him for a lift back to halls in his Mini. He had been so tongue-tied the whole time she was in the passenger seat he had said barely a word, except a vaguely strangled, ‘No worries,’ when he let her out at the other end. Those two words somehow managed to cover three octaves. She gave him a look that told him he was watching too many Australian soaps, then stooped to peel the empty crisps packet from the sole of her boot, dropping it delicately back into the footwell.

  If Ed had it bad, Ronan had it worse. His love weighed him down like a cartoon dumbbell, his hopes for it based on evidence less substantial than dust motes. He wrote her poetry, sent anonymous flowers on Valentine’s Day, smiled hopefully at her in the dinner queue and tried not to look crushed when she failed to notice. He grew philosophical in the end. It only took three years. Ed and he had both understood that someone so pretty, so far up the campus pecking order, wouldn’t make time for either of them. And after they had graduated, set up their company, and swapped thinking about women for thinking about software until software became the thing they actually preferred thinking about, Deanna Lewis fell into that weird pocket of reminiscence you bring out when you’ve had too much to drink and want to show your co-workers you had some kind of social life at university and didn’t spend the entire three years stuck behind a screen. ‘Oh … Deanna Lewis,’ they would say to each other, their eyes distant, like they could see her floating in slo-mo above the other drinkers’ heads. Or occasionally, of some other girl standing at the bar: ‘She’s nice. But she’s no Lewis.’

  And then, three months ago, some six months after Lara had left, taking with her the apartment in Rome, half the contents of his stock portfolio, and what remained of Ed’s appetite for relationships, Deanna Lewis had contacted him via Facebook. She had been based in New York for a couple of years, but was coming back and wanted to catch up with some of her old friends from uni. Did he remember Reena? And Sam? Was he around for a drink at all?

  Afterwards, he was ashamed that he hadn’t told Ronan. Ronan was busy with the new software upgrade, he told himself. It had taken him ages to get Deanna out of his system. He was in the early stages of dating that girl from the not-for-profit soup place. Why stir it all up again? The truth was, Ed was still stuck in his post-divorce slough. He hadn’t had a date in for ever. And a bit of him wanted Deanna Lewis to see what he had become since the company was sold a year previously.

  Because money, it turned out, bought you someone to sort out your clothes, skin and hair. It bought you a personal trainer. Ed Nicholls no longer looked like the tongue-tied geek in the Mini. He wore no obvious signs of wealth, but he knew that, at thirty-three, he carried it like an invisible scent around him.

  They met at a bar in Soho. She apologized: Reena – did he remember Reena? – had blown them out at the last minute. She had a baby. She lifted a faintly mocking eyebrow as she said this. Sam, he realized long afterwards, never showed. She never once asked about Ronan.

  He couldn’t stop staring at her. She looked just the same, but better. She had well-cut dark hair that bounced on her shoulders like a shampoo advert, and had lost the traces of puppy fat around her cheeks. She was nicer than he remembered, more human. Perhaps even golden girls were brought down to earth a little, once out of the confines of university. She laughed at all his jokes. Every now and then he glanced sideways to see her blinking at him and registered her brief flash of surprise that he was not the person she remembered. It made him feel good.

  They parted after a couple of hours, and a little piece of him was surprised when she called two days later to suggest they hook up again. This time they went to a club and he danced with her, and when she lifted her hands above her head, he had to focus really hard not to picture her pinned to a bed. She was just out of a relationship, she explained, over the third or fourth drink. The break-up had been awful. She was not sure she wanted to be involved in anything serious. He made all the right noises. He told her about Lara, his ex-wife, and how she had said her work was always going to be her first love, and that she had to leave him to save her sanity.

  ‘Bit melodramatic,’ Deanna said.

  ‘She’s Italian. And an actress. Everything with her is melodramatic.’

  ‘Was,’ she corrected him. She kept her eyes on his as she said it. She asked him about work – was blunt in her admiration of what he had done with the company. ‘I mean I’m a total tech klutz,’ she said. ‘But it sounds amazing.’ She had picked up the beginnings of an American accent. Her leg rested against his.

  He tried to explain it. She watched his mouth as he spoke, which was oddly distracting. He told her everything: the first trial versions he and Ronan had created in his bedroom, the software glitches, the meetings with a media tycoon who had flown them to Texas in his private jet and sworn at them when they refused his buyout offer.

  He told her of the day they’d gone public, when he had sat on the edge of his bath watching the share price go up and up on his phone, and begun to shake as he grasped quite how much his whole life was about to change.

  ‘You’re that wealthy?’

  ‘I do okay.’

  ‘Define okay.’

  He was aware that he was this close to sounding like a dick. ‘Well … I was doing better until I got divorced, obviously … I do okay. You know, I’m not really interested in the money.’ He shrugged. ‘I just like doing what I do. I like the company. I like having ideas and translating them into things that actually work for people.’

  ‘But you sold it?’

  ‘It was getting too big, and I was told that if we did, the guys in suits could handle all the financial stuff. I was never interested in that side of things. I just own a lot of shares.’ He stared at her. ‘You have really nice hair.’ He had no idea why on earth he said this.

  She’d kissed him in the taxi. Deanna Lewis had slowly turned his face to hers with a slim, perfectly manicured hand and kissed him. Even though it was more than twelve years since they were at university – twelve years in which Ed Nicholls had been briefly married to a model/actress/whatever – some little voice in his head kept saying: Deanna Lewis is kissing me. And she wasn’t just kissing him: she hitched up her skirt and slid a long, slim leg over him, apparently oblivious to the taxi driver, pressed into him, and kissed his face, his neck, and slid her hands up his shirt until he couldn’t speak or think, and when he came to pay outside his flat, his words came out thick and stupid, and he not only didn’t wait for the change but didn’t even check what was in the wad of notes he handed the driver.

  And the sex was great. Oh, God, it was good. She had porn moves, for Christ’s sake. With Lara, in the last months, sex had felt like she was granting him some kind of favour – dependent on some set of rules that only she seemed to understand: whether he had paid her enough attention, or spent enough time with her or taken
her out to dinner, or understood how he’d hurt her feelings. Sometimes she would turn silently away from him afterwards like he’d done something awful.

  When Deanna Lewis looked at him naked, her eyes seemed to light up from inside with a kind of hunger. Oh, God. Jesus Christ. Deanna Lewis.

  Afterwards, she had lain in bed, lit a cigarette, and said, ‘I hardly smoke any more, but after that …’ and chuckled throatily.

  ‘I might take it up myself.’

  And then, after she had finished her cigarette, she had given him head so good that he had suspected the downstairs neighbours would be lighting cigarettes too.

  She stayed with Ed the night after, and went home reluctantly. She was living with her brother in Fulham in the week, and at weekends in Bristol with her parents. That first week she emailed daily and rang him three times. He didn’t tell Ronan. He instant-messaged her from his bed, his laptop a glowing ocean in the middle of his vast duvet, and tried not to think about her. They were just mucking around, he told himself. It was nothing serious. It wasn’t as if Ronan was ever likely to bump into her.

  Besides, he and Deanna were both just out of bad break-ups. They had discussed how cynical they were about relationships, how it was good to find your feet alone. And then one night he’d had a few drinks. He’d been feeling a bit melancholy. He’d paused for about thirty seconds, then typed: ‘Come out with me this weekend.’

  ‘I can’t,’ came the reply.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Broke.’

  Ed thought of the way her long dark hair felt entwined in his fingers. He thought about how nice it had been just to have someone in his head who wasn’t Lara. And he wrote: ‘I’ll pay. Come.’

  She arrived on Friday night. They walked round the local bars, took a trip down the river, had a pub lunch. She linked her arm in his and he found himself staring at her fingers and exclaiming silently, Deanna Lewis! I’m sleeping with Deanna Lewis! She was funny and sparky. She had this way of smiling that made you smile right back. And it was just so good to have guilt-free sex with someone whom you weren’t afraid might steal your wallet while you were asleep.

  On Sunday night they had a good meal, drank a lot of champagne, and then headed back to his place, and she had worn these crazy black silk knickers with ribbons at the sides that you could just pull undone so that they slid slowly down her thighs like a ripple of water. She rolled a joint afterwards, and he didn’t normally smoke but he had felt his head spin pleasurably, had rested his fingers in her dark silky hair and felt like life was actually pretty good.

  And then she said, ‘I told my parents about us.’

  He was having trouble focusing. ‘Your parents?’

  ‘You don’t mind, do you? It’s just been so good … feeling like … I belong in something again, you know?’

  Ed found himself staring at a point on the ceiling. It’s okay, he told himself. Lots of people tell their parents stuff. Even after two weeks.

  ‘I’ve been so depressed. And now I just feel …’ she beamed at him ‘… happy. Like madly happy. Like I wake up and I’m thinking about you. Like everything’s going to be okay.’

  His mouth felt oddly dry. He wasn’t sure if it was the joint. ‘Depressed?’ he said.

  ‘I’m okay now. I mean, my folks were really good. After the last episode they took me to the doctor and got me pills. And they definitely helped. They do apparently lower your inhibitions, but I can’t say that anyone’s complained! HA-HA-HA-HA!’

  He handed her the joint.

  ‘I just feel things very intensely, you know? My psychiatrist says I’m exceptionally sensitive. Some people bounce through life. I’m not one of those people. Sometimes I can read about an animal dying or a child being murdered somewhere in another country, and I will literally cry all day. Literally. I was like it at college too. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘No.’

  She rested her hand on his cock. Suddenly Ed felt fairly certain it was not going to spring to life.

  She looked up at him. Her hair was half over her face and she blew at it. ‘It’s such a bummer losing your job and your home. You have no idea what it’s like to be really broke.’ She gazed at him as if weighing up how much to tell him. ‘I mean properly broke.’

  ‘What – what do you mean?’

  ‘Well … like I owe my ex a load of money but I’ve told him I can’t pay him. I have too much on my credit card right now. And he still keeps ringing me, going on and on about it. It’s very stressful. He doesn’t understand how stressed I get.’

  ‘How much are you talking about?’

  ‘Oh. A fair bit.’

  ‘How much?’ He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  She told him. As his jaw dropped, she said, ‘And don’t offer to lend it to me. I wouldn’t take money from my boyfriend. Makes things too complicated. But it’s a nightmare.’

  Ed tried not to think about the significance of her use of the word ‘boyfriend’.

  He glanced down at her and saw her lower lip tremble. He swallowed. ‘Um … are you okay?’

  Her smile was too swift, too wide. ‘I’m good! Thanks to you, I’m really fine now.’ She ran a finger along his chest. ‘Anyway. It’s been lovely not having to think about it. It’s been heaven going out for nice dinners without wondering how I can afford it.’ She kissed one of his nipples.

  That night she slept with one leg slung over him. Ed lay wide awake, wishing he could ring Ronan.

  She came back the following Friday, and the Friday after that. She didn’t pick up on his hints about things he had said he had to do at the weekend. Her father had given her the money for them to have a meal. ‘He says it’s such a relief to see me happy again.’

  He had a cold, he told her, as she came skipping across the road from the Tube station. Probably best not to kiss him.

  ‘I don’t mind. What’s yours is mine,’ she said, and attached herself to his face for a full thirty seconds.

  They ate at the local pizza place. He had started to feel a vague, reflexive panic at the sight of her. She had ‘feelings’ about things all the time. The sight of a red bus made her happy, the sight of a wilted pot plant in a café window made her vaguely weepy. She was too much of everything. She smiled at too many people. She was sometimes so busy talking that she forgot to eat with her mouth closed. At his apartment she peed with the bathroom door open. It sounded like a visiting horse was relieving itself.

  He wasn’t ready for this. She was just too needy. Too erratic. Too everything. Ed wanted to be on his own in the apartment. He wanted the silence, the order of his normal routine. He couldn’t believe he had ever been lonely.

  That night he had told her he didn’t want to have sex. ‘I’m really tired.’

  ‘I’m sure I could wake you up …’ She had begun to burrow her way down the duvet and he actually had to haul her upwards. There followed a tussle that might have been funny in other circumstances: her mouth poised to plug onto his genitals, him desperately hauling her up by the armpits.

  ‘Really. Deanna. Not … not now.’

  ‘We can snuggle then. Now I know you don’t just want me for my body!’ She pulled his arm around her and emitted a little whimper of pleasure, like a small animal.

  Ed Nicholls lay there, wide-eyed, in the dark. He had forgotten, in the four years that he had been dating and married Lara, how swiftly someone could pivot 180 degrees in your imagination from the most desirable person you had ever seen to someone you would gnaw your own limb off if it meant escaping. He took a breath.

  ‘So … Deanna … um … next weekend I have to go away for business.’

  ‘Anywhere nice?’ She ran her finger speculatively along his thigh.

  ‘Um … Geneva.’

  ‘Ooh, nice! Shall I stow away in your case?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I could be there waiting for you in your hotel room. When you come back from your meetings, I could soothe your troubled brow.’ She reached out a finger an
d stroked his forehead. It was all he could do not to flinch.

  ‘Really? That’s nice. But it’s not that kind of trip.’

  ‘You’re so lucky. I love travelling. If I wasn’t so broke I’d be back on a plane in an instant.’

  ‘You would?’

  ‘It’s my passion. I loved being a free spirit, going where the whim takes me.’ She leant over, extracted a cigarette from the packet on the bedside table and lit it.

  ‘So you’d like to travel again?’

  ‘I’d be off like a shot.’

  He had lain there for a bit, thinking. ‘Do you own any stocks and shares?’

  She rolled off him and lay back against her pillow. ‘A few. I think my grandma left them to me. A hundred shares in some building society and another two hundred in Woolworths. Hah.’ She half laughed. ‘And don’t suggest I bet on the stock market, Ed. I haven’t got enough left to gamble with.’

  It was out before he really knew what he was saying. ‘It’s not a gamble.’

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘We’ve got a thing coming out. In a couple of weeks. It’s going to be a game changer.’

  ‘A thing?’

  ‘I can’t really tell you too much. But we’ve been working on it for a while. It’s going to push our stock way up. Our business guys are all over it.’

  She was silent beside him.

  ‘I mean, I know we haven’t talked a lot about work but this is going to make a serious amount of money.’

  She didn’t sound convinced. ‘You’re asking me to bet my last few pounds on something I don’t even know the name of?’

  ‘You don’t need to know the name of it. You just need to buy some shares in my company.’ He shifted onto his side. ‘Look, you raise a few thousand pounds, and I guarantee you’ll have enough to pay off your ex-boyfriend within two weeks. And then you’ll be free! And you can do whatever you want! Go wherever you like!’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Is this how you make money, Ed Nicholls? You take women to bed and then get them to buy thousands of pounds’ worth of your shares?’