When we arrived at the terminal, I let everyone out of the bus before me. I was overwhelmingly tired and, as I stepped into the jostling crowds, felt as though I was under water. Everything was happening to someone else, someone who wasn’t me, who hadn’t done the things I had just done.
I waited for a couple of minutes, then went to join the queue for taxis. There weren’t many people in it yet—night flights were only just now arriving—and Sonia was the third in line. I went and stood beside her and she gave me a brief nod.
‘The centre of London,’ I said to the driver, when we climbed into the cab. I gave him Sonia’s address.
‘We can drop you off and then go to mine.’ I leaned forward and said, through the partition: ‘Is it all right if, when we get to my flat, you wait for me while I run and get my card, and then we go together while I get money out?’
He gave a shrug. ‘As long as I get the money,’ he replied.
‘I know,’ I said. I was looking at the meter that clicked forward every few seconds. I already owed him £5.60 and we hadn’t left the airport.
‘How come you’ve gone on holiday without your card?’
‘We weren’t on holiday,’ I said. ‘We were meeting someone.’
I wanted to be as vague as possible. And uninteresting. I didn’t want him to remember us. I sat back in my seat. Sonia had her hands clasped in her lap and her eyes were closed, but I could tell she wasn’t asleep. I opened my mouth to say something to her, but closed it again. After all, what was there to say? The night was behind us now. I closed my eyes too, and let the journey jolt through me. When I opened them again, we were turning into Sonia’s road.
Forty-five minutes later, I had paid the driver a hundred pounds and was in my nasty little flat, gritty with tiredness, buzzing with anxiety.
Before
We clinked glasses. Neal’s arm was almost touching mine on the table, and I could feel his warmth beside me. If I put my hand behind his head, fingers tangling in his dark curls, pulled him towards me and kissed him, I knew he would kiss me back. He would look at me with his crinkle-eyed smile, say my name as if he was learning it. Maybe we would go into the bedroom and he would unzip my very short green dress (three pounds from the local Oxfam shop) and lift it over my head, and we would be late for the rehearsal and everybody would guess, and Neal would be embarrassed but he would be happy, very happy. I knew that. A little shiver of apprehension went through me.
‘Cheers,’ I said.
‘Cheers.’ He didn’t smile but shifted imperceptibly in his seat so that our arms touched. For a second everything hung in the balance, but then my mobile rang and it was Sally, sounding busy and excited and also rather bossy, asking me to buy some lemonade on the way over because she had decided to make us some Pimm’s, just weak ones. It was such a lovely summer evening and Lola was at her mother’s for once so she needed to celebrate.
‘We should go,’ I said to Neal, and held out my hand to pull him to his feet. We stood for a moment, hand in hand, smiling at each other. Then he lifted my hand to his lips and kissed the back, and when he let it go I touched his face very gently with the tips of my fingers. We could wait. I had all summer before me.
Walking towards Sally’s house, he said: ‘For a long while there was someone else.’
‘Yes?’
‘We lived together for almost three years.’ He wasn’t looking at me but straight ahead.
‘In your house?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought it looked as if a woman had lived there.’
‘She was good at things like that.’
‘So what happened?’ I knew that this was a form of confession, something he needed to tell me before we went any further. I felt a twinge of apprehension at his solemnity. ‘Why did it end?’
‘She died.’
‘Oh!’ This was so utterly unexpected—not a story of another messy break-up but something altogether more heartbreaking—that for a moment I was quite lost for words. ‘God, Neal,’ I managed. ‘I’m incredibly sorry. How? Had she been ill?’
‘A head-on collision.’
‘That’s—that’s awful. When did it happen?’
‘Two years ago. More. It was in February, icy roads. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.’
‘What a sad thing,’ I said. I didn’t know what words to use. I wondered if I should stop and hug him or something, but he kept on walking, eyes ahead.
‘It’s all right now,’ he said, adding: ‘There hasn’t been anyone since.’ He gave an odd laugh. ‘I didn’t know how.’
‘I see.’ And I did see. It was as if I was stepping into the shoes of a dead woman. This wasn’t going to be just a carefree summer affair with Neal but an undertaking. As we walked, I felt a heaviness settle on me, like a warning.
Perhaps the Pimm’s hadn’t been such a good idea after all. It certainly wasn’t weak. Hayden drank a large amount, which seemed to have no effect on him, but he also kept topping up Joakim’s glass, which Joakim gulped eagerly while Guy glared at him. Richard came home from work to find six strangers (and me) making a horrible noise in the living room, which, although quite big, was certainly not large enough
