Anna

Anna was from Germany and she wore very tight jeans. Anna lived in Finsbury Park and wouldn’t take his calls. Some nights we would fuck, lay in tangled sheets and he would tell me how much he hated Anna and I would tell him how much I hated you. We would smoke whilst we did this, and by the end of a packet of Marlboro Reds, we would be agreed that love was for mugs and that we had cheated the system with drugs and booze and a mutual understanding that sex was somehow better and worse when you didn’t know or like the person you were fucking.

Ben, pseudonym Ben, lived this mad life of immense privilege and nothing made him happy. Not the money, not the drugs, not the wine. Only Anna would have made him happy. I never really got to the bottom of who he was or how he came to be: we had just met one night and gone to bed together because we were both having nervous breakdowns and it seemed like a sensible idea to two drunks with personality fragmentation. He was quite bald about my not being his type and quite practical about our arrangement but somehow the sex was quite nice and it beat the months of stone cold loneliness that had gone before. He was no keener to hear about you than any man on the train would have been, but out of a sweet-mannered politeness he listened, called you an arse when it was appropriate to do so and lit me new fags if I was talking when I got to the end of one. In the same vein I wasn’t much fussed about hearing how Anna had broken his heart but out of politeness I listened and made the right noises.

I had gone to school with 17 different girls called Kayleigh and the sister of a footballer. He had gone to school with Prince William. This isn’t even hyperbole: he actually went to Eton in the same year as Prince William. He once saw Princess Diana win the mothers race. It was preposterous that I shared his cigarettes and slept in his bed, we were basically different species. One night, after Easter, I couldn’t sleep. It was 4.45am. Staring at one of the white walls in his old but very lovely house, I chained his fags and tried to remember what your voice sounded like. I couldn’t. In the middle of the wall was a picture of Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and I was staring at it intently when I made the decision to go. I pulled on my jeans, pushed my hat over my ears and wrapped my scarf around my face. I left his house for the last time, not sure if any of this had done what it was meant to, I certainly didn’t feel any better. But the first lay was laid and the first lips after yours had been kissed.

Later that day he texted me “will I ever see you again?” and I didn’t reply. For all I know Anna took him back. I hope she did, whatever he had done.