But now, he’s defrosted. It’s twelve years later and there is a tired-looking man drinking a coffee next to a pub window. He may well have had soya milk – he’s that kind, looks after himself even if he’s exhausted. The BMW in the car park might be his, but then perhaps it’s the Skoda with the Baby On Board badge in the back window.
He wanted children. I know that.
But with your first love you don’t know, you see, if he has a baby on board, because you do not know him, this man who took such a role in forming your whole life. Who is the reason you drink your coffee the way you do because you started drinking coffee when you were together. Who is the reason you get goose bumps from certain songs and cry at certain films.
You have thought of this moment, though, so many times, as you went to sleep, as you daydreamed on the bus, as you saw a date on the milk that made your stomach flip and realised it was his birthday. You have thought of telling him how well you’re doing, and looking good when you did it. You have thought how odd it is that you’re thinking all of this because why, when it’s so past and you don’t want him back.
You have thought Not now, when you have gone out with no make-up on and seen someone who looks like him from the back.
You have thought about not needing him any more, and how freeing that is.
And then you have wondered if that is real, if it would be, were you to see him again because what if first loves are like tornados; what if they obliterate everything in their path when they come along, even if on a calm day, when the sun shines, you can’t imagine their power? Perhaps you will always need him.
What am I doing?
You have thought of the romance of it all, of the depth of that immature love, and of all of that dancing. You have heard songs, and felt tears that contain seven different types of emotions.
You have thought of his skinny legs and his polo shirts and you have thought of his Midlands accent. He’s gone back home, Ollie, now he lives in Birmingham. To get some help with childcare for his children, perhaps? For extended family to be close to his own new one?
You have thought of that first love telling you that he wanted to be with you forever, and how that can have derailed. You have thought that well, it’s good that it did because look at you now with your real life, but also that it’s bad because look at you then, so in love and how can that not be sad, that it didn’t last.
You have thought how old the daughter you had together would be now, and now, and now, and now, and nothing has ever hurt like that does, every time.
You have thought everything, because twelve years is enough time to do that, and then suddenly there is no more thinking because he is there.
Before he spots you he is on his phone, because of course, what else.
We didn’t do that the last time I saw him. Phones were functional, still, for contact not time-wasting.
And so you stop for a second to try to make your heart stop racing and breathe so that your voice sounds normal, and so that you don’t seem rehearsed, like you haven’t played this out a hundred times, which of course you have because yes, twelve years. Twelve years of thoughts.
While you do that, you stare at him, at his head bowed, because he hasn’t yet realised you are there.
Could you have done that to me, I wonder? Are you capable? The man I know is not capable but look at him: his face has shifted. It’s not a leap to think his character may have shifted with it.
The anticlimax, though, when a moment that was so nostalgic, so loaded in all of those scenes you played out, is dominated by the mundane.
‘Hey,’ is the first word I say to this man, this man who adored me, my first baby’s father. ‘Do you want another coffee?’
He looks up and says nothing, but his face contracts.
‘I’m going to order one,’ I say eventually, swallowing hard.
I walk away but when I get to the bar I am shaking and so I order a glass of wine. Red, large.
It is very, very like having an affair, except that the sex part is out of the way and I regret it already. The one time, with Mitch I mean.
Then I sit back down next to him and we are silent, taking each other in and recalibrating. I want to fling my arms around him tightly and tell him how much it all meant, but it’s odd and not allowed and we’re grown-ups now and there are boundaries.
So we observe them. We talk about our journeys today, distances, parking. We move on to houses, locations, jobs.
‘You’re quite big news in the mum blogger world, I see.’ He smiles, almost proud and I think that’s okay. He can be proud – he helped to form me.
I laugh.
‘Apparently so,’ I say. ‘Who’d have seen that coming?’
I am gentler with you, I think. Soft.
I am enjoying his company like I always did and I have to remind myself to be suspicious of him, wary.
‘Just going to the loo,’ I say and when I’m there I check my lipstick and add a little concealer.
‘So you’re married?’ I say, back at the table, and Ollie nods.
‘Rose,’ he says. ‘We’ve got two girls, Holly and Jade.’
I am oddly unmoved. This new life of his feels unreal; something unmoored from me, floating around far away. I can’t
