But I was so fucking lonely over there. I begged V to let me come home all through the first year, but she kept on saying I was doing so well and making a future for us and how important that was to her and how much she loved me for the sacrifice I was making. We were both very busy at work and as the second year progressed we saw each other less and less, although we still Skyped and emailed and texted all the time. V would even sometimes sleep with the computer next to her all night so I could watch her through the day. I’d lock myself in the toilets at work and will myself down the wires and into the bed. Once or twice I even masturbated like that with the computer resting on the back of the toilet and my work colleagues taking a shit next to me.
Carly just caught me on a bad night. We’d gone out to celebrate a deal I’d landed, not that I wanted to go, but the boss made it clear it was what was expected. And everyone bought me drinks all night and before long the room was spinning and all the women there looked like V. I think I ended up crying because I remember a huddle of people around me and cold water being splashed on my face. I remember being lifted under the arms and the shock of the cold night air. I remember someone calling me honey and telling me it was going to be all right. I remember puking against a building and feeling like a monkey had stuck his arm down my throat.
Then we were in a strange flat and there was loud music and we were dancing with all the lights off and I realised it was just me and Carly. We were passing a joint between us and Carly was taking off her top and her breasts reminded me of V’s. All I wanted at that moment was to sink into a body, to stop the droning in my head and the aching, miserable loneliness eating its way through me. And ultimately, as V said, I am a weak person. I succumbed, and once I had I felt like a man who hasn’t eaten in days being given a steak. I couldn’t stop, even when Carly squeaked, even when she pushed at my hands, even when dawn started to crack open the sky. But I must have stopped because I woke the next day on the living-room rug, a blanket thrown over me.
I knew before I opened my eyes that the moment I did my head was going to split into lots of tiny pieces. The rug was sticky beneath me, its synthetic fibres making my body itch. My vision was blurred at first and the pain across my shoulders and shooting up my neck was like a knife scraping out my veins. And it was hard to believe that my throat wasn’t coated in poison as with every breath it felt like tiny pins were shooting through my sinuses.
I lay on my back, wondering how I was going to move again, taking in my surroundings. The room was small and dirty, the walls painted a depressing baby blue, with photographs stuck like a collage opposite the window. An Indian-looking throw with thousands of tiny mirrors covered a sofa that looked like it could have been pulled from a dump. The view from the window and the tight air told me I was in a damp basement, which was probably damaging the health of whomever lived there.
Although of course I knew who lived there, and the thought wrenched at me as if it was piercing my skin.
I sat up and the room lurched, my vision jagging at the edges. My stomach followed and I ran into the hall to find my way to the bathroom where I covered the toilet and the walls in a lurid pink vomit. I was shaking when I finished but I made myself stand so I could face myself in the mirror. My dick was purple and sore and we hadn’t used a condom. I was going home for Christmas in a week and I knew there were many sexually transmitted diseases which take months to show up.
I became aware of my smell: a musty, animal stench that rose from my groin and my armpits and made me gag again. I stepped under the shower, with its chipped blackened tiles, and stood with my face turned into the jets.
The water was hot but I was still shivering. There was something terrifying about this flat, so that it dragged over my skin like a bad dream. I looked out at the toilet with the cracked seat, containing the streaks of shit I had seen smeared against the side as I’d vomited. There was a blunt razor on the side of the sink still holding on to someone else’s hair. A spattering of black spores chased themselves up the windowless walls and the mirror ran with condensation.
I turned my face to the wall and leant my forehead against the cold tiles, but my brain boiled with a knowledge which ran through me like death – this disgusting, degrading, awful place felt like home. It reached out to me and wanted to take me in its shrivelled arms. This, I realised, was where I was meant to end up. Carly was the woman most suited to me and, like a dog, I had followed my nose home.
I was sick over my feet, into the base of the shower, the smell harsh and acrid. I chased it down the plughole with my feet, knowing it was going to block the drains. Surely I had worked too hard for this to be where I ended up.
When I came out of the bathroom Carly was in the lounge, wearing a tracksuit, her hair scraped into a ponytail and her face scrubbed clean of make-up. I went to fetch my clothes from the floor and she flinched as I passed. She watched me with her arms folded across her chest as I stepped into my crumpled suit, now soaked in the stench of the flat.
When I had finished dressing I forced myself to look at her and was at once so disgusted I thought about holding one of the couch pillows over her face and hiding her body in the wardrobe. I couldn’t imagine anyone missing her.
‘You should go,’ she said.
Her words surprised me but they were also a relief as I had imagined some dreadful scene in which she thought what we had done the night before meant something. A muscle twitched in the corner of her mouth and I felt the need to make things clear before I left.
‘Last night was a terrible mistake,’ I said. ‘I have a girlfriend in England whom I love very much.’
She snorted. ‘You’re telling me it was a mistake.’
It felt as if the terrible flat had swallowed all meaning. ‘I don’t want you to try and contact her or anything.’
‘For God’s sake. Don’t worry, your mystical girlfriend won’t be hearing from me.’ She motioned to the door. ‘Please, just go.’
I let myself out, hearing her rasp the lock into place behind me as I shut the door. When I reached the street I saw it had snowed overnight and I wasn’t wearing the right shoes, which seemed like an insurmountable problem. I started crying with my first step, the tears quickly becoming sobs, so that soon passersby were avoiding me as I lurched down the street.
In the days it took for the lump on my head to disappear I felt the need to prove myself at work, so found myself staying late. On Tuesday I didn’t leave until 10 p.m. The night was warm, and there were people all over the streets, spilling out of pubs and restaurants, their arms wrapped around each other. And all at once I missed V with a sharp, stabbing pain, as if someone had stuck a knife between my ribs. I wanted to go to her house and knock on the door and tell her I didn’t want to play any more. I wanted to cut to the end of the Crave, to the part where we’re together in bed and laughing at the rest of the world. I wanted to fall at her feet and tell her I understood, that I deserved my punishment, but it was enough now, I would never do anything remotely like that again, I would never even leave her side.
I found myself walking towards Kensington, a journey my iPhone told me was 4.8 miles and would take me eighty-nine minutes. It wasn’t a ludicrous distance. It was almost on the way home. I hummed through Oasis’s Definitely Maybe as I walked, filling my head with the noise. It only took me seventy-three minutes to get to Elizabeth Road, but I am a fast walker. Number 24 was about halfway down and as grand and imposing as I had feared, with newly refreshed paintwork and gleaming black and white tiles on the pathway and up the steps. A large black lantern hung in the porch, switched on and shining brightly out of the spotless glass.