Cover

CHARLOTTE LEVIN

If I Can’t Have You

Dedication page

For Mum and Dad

The snow

Epigraph page

‘Unexpressed emotions will never die.

They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways’

SIGMUND FREUD

They all stared …

They all stared.

The group of girls cooing over the fruits of their Christmas shopping trip stopped and slapped each other’s arms. The Marrieds ceased to argue and held hands. The Reading Man lost his page.

I stood in the Tube carriage among them.

A young suity-booty City Prick and a Sloane Ranger with a leg-kicking infant on her lap parted ways to expose a seat for me. I don’t believe out of politeness. Most likely out of fear, confusion. The fact my light-headed sways made it probable I’d fall their way.

Regardless of the reason, I was grateful, and squeezed my white taffeta-engulfed body between them, while attempting to keep the material under control, which proved impossible as the voluminous skirt overlapped onto them both.

The child, who I could now see was a girl, stroked my dress with her saliva-ridden fingers.

‘Look at the princess, Mummy.’

The mother buried her spawn’s head into her blazer, clearly wishing to God she’d just got a black cab as usual. However, her utter Englishness forced her to smile at me. I returned a semi-version, but was conscious of my front tooth, hanging by a minute thread of gum. It hurt. I closed my mouth and looked down at the blood covering my chest. It was odd how it had taken more to the embroidery than the taffeta.

Raising my head, I could see in the window’s distorted reflection Sloaney and City Prick looking at each other behind me in wide-eyed horror. Though they appeared to be strangers, I’d bonded them. Beyond their ghostly images was the huge High Street Kensington sign. It was telling me goodbye. I remember thinking I’d write a book about it one day. The Fucked Girl on the Train.

As we pulled away from the station, eyes screwed and faces twisted with calculations as they tried to decipher what had happened. Was I the jilter or the jiltee? But as you know more than anyone, Dr Franco, people are rarely what they appear to be on the surface. The Marrieds may have in fact been illicit lovers, the shopping girls been out on the steal.

Sloaney pressed her Chanel silk scarf against her nose. It was my vomit-laced veil she could smell. I was tempted to turn and tell her everything. Ask for her help. But I couldn’t, because I didn’t know her. I didn’t know anyone anymore.

She wouldn’t have given a shit, anyway. Her only concern being I didn’t scare Mini Sloane. I smiled at the kid. It cried.