There is a second moment when we consider pretending that we haven’t seen each other, that it was nothing more than the curious meeting of two strangers’ eyes. But there is something that propels me toward her.
“Hello, Lola,” I say and as I speak I realize I am slurring my words.
“Oh, hey, Rob. Wow, what a surprise,” she says.
“How are you?” I say. “It’s been a while.”
“Yes, wow, it really has,” she says, flustered. “I was at some opening last night. Bit of a late one.”
She is exactly as I remember, the impression of creative chaos she so carefully nurtured, the tone and lilt of her voice, which always sounded like an air-kiss.
“And how are you, Rob?” she said, emphasizing the word you.
“Fine,” I say.
“What are you up to then?”
“Just getting a train.”
“No, silly-billy. I mean generally.”
“Oh, nothing much. I’m living down in Cornwall now.”
“Yes, Anna said.”
“So you’re still friends?”
“Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t we be?”
I know I am not making much sense and I suddenly feel very drunk, like a teenager coming home and having to pretend they are sober.
“We live close by now, in Gerrards Cross,” Lola says.
Gerrards Cross? I know it can only mean one thing: that Anna has remarried. I can imagine her living with an older man, divorced, teenage kids from a previous marriage.
“That’s nice,” I say, and I want to ask about Anna but I don’t know how.
“Are you okay, Rob?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” I say, speaking slowly and trying to enunciate each syllable.
“Have you been sick?”
“What?” I look down at my jacket, and there are little flecks of what looks like vomit. I try to think back and realize I can’t remember leaving Parliament Hill, or even how I got to Paddington.
Lola smiles at me, as if I am a rescue puppy she is rejecting. “Anna said you were struggling a little with the...”
She doesn’t finish her sentence, but she doesn’t have to. I know Anna will have told her everything, given her side: how I kidnapped Jack, put him at risk. How I’m a drunk. I’m sure she hasn’t told Lola about what happened in Prague, how she refused to allow our son the treatment that could have saved his life. How instead of giving him a chance, she did word searches and read crime novels.
I am just about to say something, to tell her to go and fuck herself, when I drop my wallet and loose change spills on to the ground. I bend down to try to pick it up, but I stumble and my knees buckle and then I am lying on my back, looking up at the station roof.
I can feel Lola next to me, her arms around my shoulders, trying to help me stand up, but I can’t see straight, can’t seem to coordinate my arms and legs. So I stop and sit for a while, my head bowed, until finally I manage to stagger up and weave my way across the platform to the train.
* * *
My jacket is wet, I think from where I have tried to clean off the vomit in the bathroom, and I am carrying a bottle of wine and a grocery bag full of beers. I find a seat and sit back and stretch out my legs, watching the blurry skyline rush by.
I have Googled Anna from time to time, but there has never been any indication that she has remarried. She had taken up marathon running. I couldn’t believe it at first. After our aborted game of squash, it was a standing joke between us that Anna had no interest in sports. But when I clicked on the link, it was Anna, all right. Anna in a running singlet pictured in a local Buckinghamshire newspaper, getting third place in a charity fun-run. I remember the headline: ‘Brave Mum Runs for Her Son.’”
Once, when I was drunk, I unsuccessfully tried to hack into her email and Facebook accounts, using every password combination I could imagine. I should have known better. Anna was always so careful about such things.
I wake. We are now a few miles past Exeter, following the path of the estuary, and I have spilled wine on the table and a couple near me have moved seats, glaring, tut-tutting as they go. The train emerges from a tunnel, and suddenly we lose sight of land and we are thrown out to sea, the train traveling so close to the shore it feels like we are tilting, then falling, into a giant pool of sea and sky.
I take out Jack’s camera from my bag and look through his photos. The brilliant white lighthouse on the walk to Durdle Door; a blurry shot of his favorite robin; his makeshift panorama from the terrace in Greece. Anna might have cleared out his room, taken his things to the dump, but she wasn’t having the camera. I made sure of that. I snuck it away from his bedside the day that he died, and I have never let it out of my sight.
I pass out, I think, with Jack’s camera in my hand. When I wake, I see that I have missed my station and there is a damp stain spreading across my crotch. The alcohol is making me horny, and I think about getting out at the next station and trying to get to Tintagel to find the girl from the pub, but it is too late now, so I search on Facebook for Lola, squinting so I can see straight, and I find a picture of her wearing a wrap on a beach, coral in her hair. I try to click through her photos, hoping to find a shot of her in a bikini or a slinky cocktail dress, something I will dwell on when I get home, but all her privacy settings are closed.
When I get back home, after a taxi ride from Penzance, I collapse on the sofa with a vodka and switch on the news.
