I didn’t want to go. I told Kerry that my job (as a nurse) was time consuming and the last thing I needed was a boyfriend. All my previous relationships had ended because of my strange hours and almost constant exhaustion. We nurses knew the only way it could work was to marry a doctor, because they are the only other people who understand the stress. So I had sworn off men until a suitable doctor appeared – and so far, one hadn’t.
Mike was not a doctor. Mike was an engineer. I had dated an engineering student a few years before. I did not want to meet Mike.
But Kerry told me she would look a fool if I didn’t turn up, so in the end I said yes. Kerry had always been a good friend to me, and she really wanted it to work with James. Also, I presumed the men would pay, and I was always hungry in those days.
Mike told me later that he’d begged James to let him off. He’d come out of a relationship with his high school girlfriend, who’d chosen to stay in London. And he wanted to be single for a while and play the field. James eventually convinced him that meeting me was playing the field.
But then, half an hour before the date, Kerry and James broke up. And this was the eighties – you couldn’t get hold of people on the spur of the moment. So Mike and I rocked up at the restaurant, and found the table booked for four under Kerry’s name, and introduced ourselves. At first, we joked about whether Kerry and James were actually late, or slyly giving us a few minutes alone. But after an hour – during which we drank a bottle of wine between us and told the waiter about fifteen times we were ‘just waiting for our friends’ – we got worried. I used the restaurant’s phone to call Kerry, who sobbed something about a blonde and a sports car and a receipt that shouldn’t have existed.
‘All men are rubbish, Helen – you should stay away from them,’ she informed me before hanging up.
I walked slowly back to the table and told Mike what had happened, in so far as I understood it, and then politely said that I quite understood if he wanted to call it a night, although by then I already knew he was the funniest, nicest man I had ever met and I wanted the night to last forever.
Mike shrugged and said, ‘Well, we’re here now, aren’t we? Seems a pity to leave.’
So we ordered some food and carried on talking, and before we knew it, the restaurant was empty and the chairs were all upside-down on the tables and staff were mopping the floor, and still we didn’t want to go.
Finally, after the last waiter told us we had to leave or we’d be locked in, we stood up.
‘I don’t want tonight to end,’ I said, and then cringed because maybe Mike didn’t feel that way at all. I could not believe I’d said something so stupid.
‘Tonight is never going to end,’ said Mike, reaching for my hand and pulling me towards him. ‘Tonight is forever.’
Well, I wasn’t sure if he was just trying to get me into bed, but I didn’t care. I knew I would take every minute I could get with this man, because as far as I was concerned, he was the best one.
We had the words ‘Tonight is forever’ engraved on our wedding rings the following year. But nobody could have foreseen what our ‘forever’ would mean. Nobody could have known how unhappy I would be.
Julia
Late morning, Daniel phones and asks me to fetch Mackenzie from school at one. I can’t say no because that’d be another point against me.
‘Where do I go?’ I ask.
‘To the school,’ he says, like I’m stupid.
‘Yes, but where in the school?’
‘To her class, obviously.’
‘Daniel, I’ve never picked her up before. Where’s the classroom? What do I say to the teacher? Do I have to sign her out? Where must I take her afterwards? Will she have bags?’ I can feel my voice rising so I pause and let my voice adjust. ‘I just need some details, love,’ I say in what I secretly think of as my best Claire voice.
‘You must take her back to the house. You’ll figure out the rest. I don’t have time now.’ He hangs up.
I look at my phone like I’m dreaming, and consider sending him a message just saying ‘no’. But it’s quite a big deal to trust me to pick up his child. So I do what I did when I first met Claire – I ask myself what she would do.
My first hurdle is explaining to my boss that I might be late back from lunch.
‘I’m not saying I will be, just that I might be,’ I say. I don’t know why I’m even telling him – he probably wouldn’t have noticed. I realise that Claire would’ve just gone and done what she needed to do. But I’m Julia, and I know about people not being available, and I don’t just disappear from work in the middle of the day.
‘What about the Madison deadline?’ says my boss, looking hurt and confused, like I’ve just resigned.
‘I sent it to you this morning,’ I say.
‘Where?’ He looks
