Chapter 9

Andrew no longer had a teenage crush on Arabella Lindsey, and not just because he was now 20. But she was also the person who had flitted into and out of his life and left an indelible impression. He was only 15 when he first saw here, still not yet 16 when they finally talked, the lost nine months because her mother never passed on the messages, the list of complications, hurdles, the strength of his feelings at 17 and 18. And then the decision to walk away, his determination that there was no point in getting in too deep with her when there was no chance for it to go further. So 54 months after Andrew first talked to Ara he had to take her down off the pedestal and try not to act like they were getting engaged the following week. It was if he had to learn to date her. And that September night back in 1985 was the start. It was also easy to be truthful with her. She knew everything in his life up to Easter 1983, she knew about the money and the degree. So the night of chatting started from there.

“I know that you got your degree, you mentioned it in one of your letters. Do you still program? Have you set up another company since you sold the last one?”

“No I have done very little computing. I created one program for friends last summer but that has been the only thing in the last two years. I know that this will sound immodest but I did the degree while I was at school because I was bored. I went to the library at lunch and after school to do my homework and spent my evenings during the week working on my degree courses. Julian and I programmed on Saturdays but that right there just summed up four years of my life. What it did was isolate me. I was lucky with Leslie, Julian, Suzanne and Tony in that I had several good friends that provided balance but I was a schoolboy who deliberately cut himself off from others, at least during the week. I could not have been a normal schoolboy and done what I did. I sacrificed my teenage years for it. Now it was a conscious choice on my part but it was also not sustainable. The difference in intensity and breadth of assumed knowledge is staggering at Cambridge. What I had done was train myself to study all the time so that worked in my favour when I started there. But it is hard work, a ferocious intensity and the pace is even worse. So there is no time. And what little time there is I choose to spend having a social life, making some friends. The last break I let one of my friends borrow my computer because I was not going to be using it. And I could have done the same thing this break as well.”

“I am sitting here thinking that it did not seem like you sacrificed a lot but then remembered that I could only see you on Friday nights. I get the point you are making. So although Cambridge is really tough it is not as bad as going through secondary school and doing a degree at the same time?”

Ara was smiling mischievously.

“Exactly. I have a better balance there than I ever did at school.”

She wanted to interrogate him before they switched to her, so he sat and waited for the follow-ups. He had consciously not mentioned anything about the companies.

“Do you miss it?”

Andrew contemplated that.

“It is complicated. I miss the thrill of discovery, the ability to create something useful, although I got a little taste last summer. I miss the camaraderie of the time I spent coding with Julian. It was an important constant during my teenage years. But I have not done any serious computing, any serious coding in more than two years. Like I said the program I created was something for friends. I think about the strategy, what is the next thing that can be impacted by computers. Julian, now that he has finished his degree, has set up another computer company and is going to see what happens. But that part of my life seems to be past.”

Ara asked about his life at Cambridge and Andrew talked about Trinity, the course, Addenbrooke’s, the OTC, even the hockey team in first year. And he talked most of all about his friends. He left out anything to do with sex and didn’t mention the modelling but other than that he talked about life at Cambridge University.

“It is interesting, you seem to have gone out of your way to make good friends. It must help having rooms at the College.”

“Definitely, although they are all scattered around. The first year corridor was key. Did you miss that with your dad getting you the flat before you started?”

“Yes, although I think I would have found halls of residence tough. I was not yet 17 when I started and I think I would not have coped well with halls. But as I didn’t do it and I am now 21 it is tough to say. But Gwen and I were self-contained for that first year. Our third flatmate, Fiona, was terribly homesick and was never there, she went home almost every weekend. Penny, the bitch, was only there for the one term in 2^nd year and after that it was just the two of us. I came out of my shell as I got older but the damage was done. The groups were formed and although I was friendly with a lot of people I didn’t have a lot of friends. And despite the ease with which we chatted away, I am not very comfortable dealing with men. When you add in all the crap Mum was doing, particularly the first two years I was there.”

She shook her head in resignation.

“I was so proud to have skipped a year at school, but socially it made it difficult for me. Between being young for my year and shy around men, it meant I struggled with meeting new people, I always feel that I am the precocious overachiever, forever stuck being an ingénue. I needed to do a lot of growing up, I still do I suppose.”

Everyone had their demons.

“London has been better, there are five of us in the flat, a couple and three singles. I miss the quiet and space of my flat in Edinburgh but it has helped me so much more socially. The single guy is not even there half the time so it has not been too bad. I have re-upped for another year but I may try and get somewhere quieter for my final year.”

Andrew got Ara to talk about her dissertation. Nationalism, politics and religion in the anti-colonialism movement of the Middle East since 1918. It just tripped off the tongue. She acknowledged that it was too broad at present but she found the interplay and conflict between the three forces to be fascinating. She talked about just the 20^th century history of Iran and it was a convoluted tale of so many different forces, countries, ideologies, and that was just one country. Andrew came away with the impression that Ara studied just as hard as he did, but for her it was the endless reading of books, and now as a PhD student, source materials. But as he listened to her talk the boundless enthusiasm for the subject came through very clearly.

“I remember you spoke about being interested in the intersection of India, Russia and China. Did your focus change? And why?”

“Good memory. Nearly twenty years of status quo is probably the main reason I switched. The Russia China conflicts peaked in 1969 and the India China war was in 1962. There is just more recent change and upheaval in the Middle East, Iran in 1979 just one obvious example.”

Ara switched gears and Andrew was again faced with a dilemma.

“You have talked about being back in Edinburgh the last week of your break. Are you here next week?”

Such a simple question. He wasn’t going to be there but how to dance around where he was and what he was doing without lying. He sighed.

“No I am in Paris next week. I leave tomorrow evening.”

Ara noted the pause and the sigh and just looked at Andrew with a raised eyebrow. So another course of the meal was taken up with his modelling career. He tried to be vague as to exactly what was entailed, and Ara didn’t press for specifics. The concept of Andrew as a fashion model was difficult enough without him having to get into the racier aspects.

“Everyone who knows you must think they lead the dullest lives. I know that I do right now.”

Andrew’s protestations to the contrary fell on deaf ears. After finishing dinner they walked for a bit, not just letting the food settle but the conversation and revelations as well. It had been a cramming session, getting caught up on their lives all at once, and hopefully future nights out would be more relaxing. For the first time in more than two years he kissed Ara, just on the cheek, but they had survived, and had a pretty good idea of where they both were as people. The coming term would see whether the friendship could reconnect and deepen. But as he left her at the door of her flat it was clear to both of them that there was still a spark between them.

His swim the following morning was slow and contemplative. Neither of them had mentioned other partners during the last two years. Given his ever increasing sluttiness that was probably to his benefit but just as it loomed over Suzanne and him so too did the prospect of reconnecting physically with Ara.

The two of them were the people that Andrew struggled to understand the most. Not in the sense of them as individuals but more he struggled with them as part of ‘us’, whatever that meant. The last two years Andrew had changed, it was evident every day. He was most at home at Cambridge, more at home there than Edinburgh for sure. And the people who were becoming important to him were more and more his friends from university. Julian and Leslie, and Tony and Maggie, were anchors in his life but they had settled in Edinburgh, and the relationship going forward was going to be intermittent. Close and almost familial but not in each other’s lives every day.

Suzanne was the person Andrew was closest to. Sadly that tense probably had to change. She was the person he had been closest to. From 15 to 19 they had been constant companions, for years at school daily companions. What had started as friendship had evolved into something much more. Despite constant comments about there being something missing they had become much closer. By the end of last summer Andrew was no longer convinced that there was something missing between them. But then this last year had shattered that illusion. She was his best friend, his closest friend, or again she had been. Is that something that can survive neglect? They were trying to find out.

What did surprise Andrew was the realisation that some of his closest friends now were guys. Matt, Justin and Pedro were really good friends and although there were none of the gender dynamic conversations that he had with Helena, the last year had shown him the challenge of having friends that you had sex with. When things changed then the previous intimacy was lost. Helena and Andrew were like an accordion, forever waxing and waning. HIs guess was that they would be close but no further at the start of term and then when the latest beau was discarded, for whatever reason, she would be back at his door, and in his bed. Horribly conceited he knew but he had the evidence of the last year. His thoughts on Abi were all over the place. The best he could come up with was that he was the stabilisers on her bike and once she had learned to ride, pun intended, she discarded him and was off down the road exploring, without a backward glance. Not deliberately cruel but just insensitive and young. Abi was still beautiful, clever and came across as a nice person but it seemed like they were destined to be nothing more than friends, and maybe not even that if the distance between them continued to widen.

Having female confidantes was something that Andrew had been used to, going all the way back to Leslie in the grim winter of 1979. But Leslie had moved on and the three people that he had used as surrogates were no longer around. So his thoughts on Suzanne were all over the place. Their lives were different and the issues were large, and difficult to address.

And that was the easier of his two dilemmas! Ara made Andrew act like he was 12, like a love-struck fool. No, not act like that, but at least think like that. As with Suzanne they had to get past the gap in time and then nurture the spark between them. What had been interesting the previous night had been how similar she was to him, yet in an entirely different world. She was smart, well read, opinionated and passionate about her doctoral work. He didn’t think she realised that she had spent 10 minutes going on about a coup in Iran in the 1950s. Not that Andrew wasn’t interested but there was a fierce pride in her knowledge. As he swam back and forth he thought that they were not very different, not getting much in the way of parental approval. Ara was closer to Cambridge, easier to see, the opportunities for them to rebuild their relationship were there. What Andrew had to figure out was why he was reticent about leaping in whole-heartedly. Did the fact that she was away from the influence of her parents make everything more real, more realistic? That Sunday morning he had no answers and he would have no lack of things to think about that term every morning as he swam.

Monday morning saw Andrew walking over to Hermès’ head office from the hotel. The summer was drawing to a close, he had started his run before the sun had even risen, but the temperature was still fine. The four blocks from the hotel took only a few minutes. Manon came to the entrance within a minute of being called and soon they were sitting in her small office.

“I think it will be a busy week with long hours for all the shoots. Are you flying back Saturday?”

“Yes. The first flight to London in the morning.”

“Good, then Phillippe and I will make a reservation at the Monsart on Friday night and we can go for dinner when you are finished work, and we do not have to rush off to catch the last train.”

The small talk was over.

“Veronique came by and showed us the rough footage from Cyprus. It is good, very good and as I said on the phone there are at least three or four commercials from it. I am really glad you were free to work with us. You also worked really long days, longer than outlined in the contract. Are you okay with that?”

“I don’t think I could work like that all week but given that we had to get the sunrise and sunsets it was unavoidable. I am fine.”

“We have you scheduled for all week and again I need to check that is okay. These two days could count as part of your five days of shooting.”

“No, I understand. These were extra, I am still going to do five days of shoots this week.”

“Have you thought any more about getting an agent? We don’t want to be deciding these things at the last minute, or relying on your good nature, our personal connection.”

Andrew sat for a few minutes and told her about the pushy agency, he never did find out the name from Morag, the interest from AF-P and the short call he had with Marilyn Gauthier.

“You are going to meet her this week?”

“If she is available. I will call her at lunchtime and see if we can meet for dinner.”

“She is one of the best agents out there. If the two of you can reach an agreement I would recommend you use her. There is talk about putting an agency on this campaign. Veronique will be working for them not us directly. In future, it may not even be Veronique that you will be dealing with. I think it is important that you get an agent, if not her then someone else.”

Andrew nodded in agreement.

“Don’t look so worried. Beatrice really likes you. The whole wrapping a present, unwrapping a present idea, that is what you are going to be shooting all week. Every day after today you will be downstairs in the store, shooting there before the store opens, or after it closes. Now, can you come with me so that we can measure you? We want to make sure your clothes fit perfectly.”