فصل 13

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Mr Traynor’s baby was born the following day. My phone rang at six thirty in the morning and, for a brief, awful moment, I thought something terrible had happened. But it was Mr Traynor, breathless and tearful, announcing, in slightly disbelieving, exclamatory tones, ‘It’s a girl! Eight pounds one ounce! And she’s absolutely perfect!’ He told me how beautiful she was, how like Will when he had been a baby, how I simply must come and see her, and then asked me to wake Lily, which I did, and watched her, sleepy and silent as he gave her the news that she had a … a … (they took a minute to work it out) an aunt!

‘Okay,’ she said finally. And then, having listened for a while: ‘Yeah … sure.’

She ended the call and handed the phone back to me. Her eyes met mine, then she turned in her crumpled T-shirt and went back to bed, closing the door firmly behind her.

The well-lubricated health-plan salesmen were, I estimated at ten forty-five, one round off being barred from their flight, and I was wondering whether to point this out when a familiar reflective jacket appeared at the bar.

‘No one in need of medical assistance here.’ I walked over to him slowly. ‘Yet, anyway.’

‘I never get tired of that outfit. I have no idea why.’

Sam climbed up on a stool and rested his elbows on the counter. ‘The wig is … interesting.’

I tugged at my Lurex skirt. ‘The creation of static electricity is my superpower. Would you like a coffee?’

‘Thanks. I can’t hang around, though.’ He checked his radio and put it back in his jacket pocket.

I made him an Americano, trying not to look as pleased as I felt to see him. ‘How did you know where I worked?’

‘We had a call-out at gate fourteen. Suspected heart attack. Jake reminded me you worked at the airport and, you know, you weren’t exactly hard to track down …’

The businessmen were briefly muted. Sam was the kind of man, I had noticed, who made other men go a bit quiet. ‘Donna’s sneaking a look in Duty Free. Handbags.’

‘I’m guessing you’ve seen your patient?’

He grinned. ‘No. I was going to ask for directions to gate fourteen after I’d sat down with a coffee.’

‘Funny. So did you save his life?’

‘I gave her some aspirin, and advised her that drinking four double espressos before ten a.m. was not the best idea. I’m flattered that you have such an exciting view of my working day.’

I couldn’t help but laugh. I handed him his coffee. He took a grateful swig. ‘So. I was wondering … You up for another non-date some time soon?’

‘With or without an ambulance?’

‘Definitely without.’

‘Can we discuss problem teenagers?’ I found I was twirling a curly lock of nylon-fibre hair with my fingers. For crying out loud. I was playing with my hair and it wasn’t even my actual hair. I dropped it.

‘We can discuss whatever you like.’

‘What did you have in mind?’

His pause was long enough to make me blush. ‘Dinner? At mine? Tonight? I promise if it rains I won’t make you sit in the dining room.’

‘You’re on.’

‘I’ll pick you up at seven thirty.’

He was just gulping down the last of his coffee when Richard appeared. He looked at Sam, then at me. I was still leaning against the bar, a few inches from him. ‘Is there a problem?’ he said.

‘No problem whatsoever,’ said Sam. When he stood up, he was a whole head taller than Richard.

A few fleeting thoughts flickered across Richard’s face, so transparent that I could see the progression of each one. Why is this paramedic here? Why is Louisa not doing something? I would like to tell Louisa off for not being obviously busy but this man is too big and there is a dynamic I do not entirely understand and I am a little bit wary of him. It almost made me laugh out loud.

‘So. Tonight.’ Sam nodded at me. ‘Keep the wig on, yes? I like you flammable.’

One of the businessmen, florid and pleased with himself, leaned back in his chair so that his stomach strained the seams of his shirt. ‘Are you going to give us the lecture about alcohol limits now?’

The others laughed.

‘No, you go ahead, gentlemen,’ Sam said, saluting them. ‘I’ll just see you in a year or two.’

I watched him head off to Departures, joined by Donna outside the newsagent. When I turned back to the bar Richard was watching me. ‘I have to say, Louisa, I don’t approve of your conducting your social life in a work setting,’ he said.

‘Fine. Next time I’ll tell him to ignore the heart attack at gate fourteen.’

Richard’s jaw tightened. ‘And what he said just then. About your wearing your wig later on. That wig is the property of Shamrock and Clover Irish Themed Bars Inc. You are not allowed to wear it in your own time.’

This time I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh. ‘Really?’

Even he had the grace to flush a little. ‘It’s company policy. It’s classified as uniform.’

‘Damn,’ I said. ‘I guess I’ll just have to buy my own Irish-dancing-girl wigs in future. Hey, Richard!’ I called, as he walked back into the office, bristling. ‘For fairness, does that mean you can’t get jiggy with Mrs Percival while wearing your polo-shirt?’

I arrived home to find no sign of Lily, other than a cereal packet on the kitchen counter and, inexplicably, a pile of dirt on the floor in the hallway. I tried her phone, got no response, and wondered how you were ever meant to find a balance between Over-anxious Parent, Normally Concerned Parent, and Tanya Houghton-Miller. And then I jumped into the shower and got ready for my date that absolutely, definitely, wasn’t a date.

It rained, the heavens opening shortly after we arrived at Sam’s field, and we were both soaked even running the short distance from his bike to the railway carriage. I stood dripping as he closed the door behind me, remembering how unpleasant the sensation of wet socks was.

‘Stay there,’ he said, brushing the drops from his head with a hand. ‘You can’t sit around in those wet clothes.’

‘This is like the opening to a really bad porn movie,’ I said. He stood very still and I realized I had actually said the words out loud. I gave him a smile that went a bit wonky.

‘Okay,’ he said, raising his eyebrows.

He disappeared into the back of the carriage and emerged a minute later with a jumper and what looked like some jogging bottoms.

‘Jake’s joggers. Freshly washed. Possibly not very porn star, though.’ He handed them to me. ‘My room’s back there if you want to get changed, or the bathroom’s through that door, if you’d prefer.’

I walked into his bedroom and closed the door behind me. Above my head the rain beat noisily on the carriage roof, obscuring the windows with a never-ending stream of water. I wondered about drawing the curtains, then remembered there was nobody to see me, other than the hens, which were huddling out of the wet, grumpily shaking drops from their feathers. I pulled off my soaked top and jeans and dried myself with the towel he’d placed with the clothes. For fun, I flashed the hens through the window, something, I observed afterwards, Lily might do. They didn’t look impressed. I held the towel to my face and sniffed it guiltily, like someone inhaling a forbidden drug. It was freshly laundered but somehow still managed to smell irrevocably male. I hadn’t breathed in a scent like it since Will. It made me feel briefly unbalanced and I put it down.

The double bed filled most of the floor space. A narrow cupboard opposite acted as a wardrobe, and two pairs of work boots were neatly stacked in the corner. There was a book on the nightstand and beside it a photograph of Sam with a smiling woman, whose blonde hair was tied up in a messy knot. She had her arm around his shoulders and was grinning at the camera. She was not supermodel beautiful, but there was something compelling about her smile. She looked like the kind of woman who would have laughed a lot. She looked like a feminine version of Jake. I felt suddenly crushingly sad for him, and had to look away before I made myself sad, too. Sometimes I felt as if we were all wading around in grief, reluctant to admit to others how far we were waving or drowning. I wondered fleetingly whether Sam’s reluctance to talk about his wife mirrored my own, the knowledge that the moment you opened the box, let out even a whisper of your sadness, it would mushroom into a cloud that overwhelmed all other conversation.

I checked myself, took a breath. ‘Just have a nice evening,’ I murmured, recalling the words of the Moving On Circle. Allow yourself moments of happiness.

I wiped the mascara smudges from under my eyes, observing in the small mirror that little could be done for my hair. Then I pulled Sam’s oversized sweater over my head, trying to ignore the weird intimacy that came from wearing a man’s clothes, pulled on Jake’s joggers and gazed at my reflection.

What do you think, Will? Just a nice evening. It doesn’t have to mean anything, right?

Sam grinned as I emerged, rolling up the sleeves of his jumper. ‘You look about twelve.’

I went into the bathroom, wrung out my jeans, shirt and socks in the sink, then hung them over the shower curtain.

‘What’s cooking?’

‘Well, I was going to do a salad, but it’s not really salad weather any more. So I’m improvising.’

He had set a pot of water boiling on the stove, where it had fogged the windows. ‘You eat pasta, right?’

‘I eat anything.’

‘Excellent.’

He opened a bottle of wine and poured me a glass, motioning me to the bench seat. In front of me the little table had been laid for two, and I felt a faint frisson at the sight. It was okay just to enjoy a moment, a small pleasure. I had been out dancing. I had flashed some hens. And now I was going to enjoy spending an evening with a man who wanted to cook me dinner. It was all progress, of sorts.

Perhaps Sam detected something of this internal struggle because he waited until I took my first sip, then said, while stirring something on the hob, ‘Was that the boss you were talking about? That man today?’

The wine was delicious. I took another sip. I hadn’t dared drink while Lily had been with me: I might have let my guard down. ‘Yup.’

‘I know the type. If it’s any consolation, within five years he’ll either have a stomach ulcer or enough hypertension to cause erectile dysfunction.’

I laughed. ‘Both those thoughts are oddly comforting.’

Finally he sat down, presenting me with a steaming bowl of pasta. ‘Cheers,’ he said, raising a glass of water. ‘And now tell me what’s going on with this long-lost girl of yours.’

Oh, but it was such a relief to have someone to talk to. I was so unused to people who actually listened – as opposed to those, at the bar, who only wanted to hear the sound of their own voices – that talking to Sam was a revelation. He didn’t interrupt, or tell me what he thought, or what I should do. He listened, and nodded, and topped up my wine and said, finally, when it was long dark outside, ‘It’s quite a responsibility you’ve taken on.’

I leaned back on the bench and put my feet up. ‘I don’t feel like I have a choice. I keep asking myself what you said: what would Will want me to do?’ I took another sip. ‘It’s harder than I’d imagined, though. I thought I’d just drop her in to meet her grandmother and grandfather and everyone would be delighted and it would be a happy ending, like those reunion programmes on television.’

He studied his hands. I studied him.

‘You think I’m mad getting involved.’

‘No. Too many people follow their own happiness without a thought for the damage they leave in their wake. You wouldn’t believe the kids I pick up at the weekends, drunk, drugged, off their heads, whatever. The parents are wrapped up in their own stuff, or have disappeared completely, so they exist in a vacuum, and they make bad choices.’

‘Is it worse than it used to be?’

‘Who knows? I only know I see all these messed up kids. And that the hospital’s young persons’ psych has a waiting list as long as your arm.’ He smiled wryly. ‘Hold that soapbox. I need to shut the birds up for the night.’

I wanted to ask him then how someone so apparently wise could be so careless of his own son’s feelings. I wanted to ask if he knew how unhappy Jake was. But it seemed a bit too confrontational, given the way he was talking, and the fact that he had just cooked me a very nice supper … I was distracted by the sight of the hens popping one at a time into their coop, and then he came back, bringing with him the faint scents of outside, and the cooler air, and the moment passed.

He poured more wine, and I drank it. I let myself take pleasure in the snugness of the little railway carriage, and the sensation of a properly full belly, and I listened to Sam talk. He told of nights holding the hands of elderly people who didn’t want to make a fuss, and of management targets that left them all demoralized, feeling they weren’t doing the job they’d been trained for. I listened, losing myself in a world far from my own, watching his hands draw animated circles in the air, his rueful smile when he felt he was taking himself too seriously. I watched his hands. I watched his hands.

I coloured slightly as I realized where my thoughts were headed, and took another swig of my wine to hide it. ‘Where’s Jake tonight?’

‘Barely seen him. At his girlfriend’s, I think.’ He looked rueful. ‘She has this Waltons-style family, about a billion brothers and sisters and a mum who’s home all day. He likes hanging out there.’ He took another sip of his water. ‘So where’s Lily?’

‘Don’t know. I texted her twice but she hasn’t bothered to reply.’

The sheer presence of him. It was like he was twice as large and twice as vivid as other men. My thoughts kept drifting, pulled on tides towards his eyes, which narrowed slightly as he listened, as if he were trying to ensure he had understood me perfectly … The faint hint of stubble on his jaw, the shape of his shoulder under the soft wool of his jumper. My gaze kept sliding downwards to his hands, resting on the table, fingers absently tapping on the surface. Such capable hands. I remembered the tenderness with which he had cradled my head, the way I had held on to him in the ambulance as if he were the only thing anchoring me. He looked at me and smiled, a gentle enquiry in it, and something in me turned molten. Would it be so bad, as long as my eyes were open?

‘You want a coffee, Louisa?’

He had this way of looking at me. I shook my head.

‘Do you want –’

Before I could think about it, I leaned across the little table, reached for the back of his head and kissed him. He hesitated for just a moment then shifted forward, and kissed me back. At some point I think someone knocked over a wineglass but I couldn’t stop. I wanted to kiss him for ever. I blocked out all thoughts about what this was, what it might mean, what further mess I might create for myself. C’mon, live, I told myself. And I kissed him until reason seeped out through my pores and I became a living pulse, alive only to what I wanted to do to him.

He pulled back first, slightly dazed. ‘Louisa –’

A piece of cutlery clattered to the floor. I stood and he stood, and pulled me to him. And suddenly we were crashing around the little railway carriage, all hands and lips and, oh God, the scent and taste and feel of him. It was like tiny fireworks going off all over me, bits of me I’d thought dead reigniting into life. He picked me up and I wrapped myself around him, all bulk and strength and muscle. I kissed his face, his ear, my fingers in his soft dark hair. And then he stood me back down and we were inches apart, his eyes on me, his expression a silent question.

I was breathing hard. ‘I haven’t taken my clothes off in front of anyone since … the accident,’ I said.

‘It’s okay. I’m medically trained.’

‘I’m serious. I’m a bit of a mess.’ I felt suddenly, oddly tearful.

‘You want me to make you feel better?’

‘That’s the cheesiest line I’ve –’

He lifted his shirt, revealing a two-inch purple scar across his stomach. ‘There. Stabbed by an Australian with mental-health issues four years ago. Here.’ He turned to reveal a huge green and yellow bruise across his lower back. ‘Got a kicking from a drunk last Saturday. Woman.’ He held out his hand. ‘Broken finger. Caught in a gurney while lifting an overweight patient. And, oh, yes – here.’ He showed me his hip, along which ran a short, silvery, jagged line with the stitch marks just about visible. ‘Puncture wound, unknown provenance, nightclub fight in Hackney Road last year. The cops never worked out who did it.’

I looked at the solidity of him, at the smattering of scars. ‘What’s that one?’ I said, gently touching a smaller scar on the side of his stomach. His skin was hot under his shirt.

‘That? Oh. Appendix. I was nine.’

I gazed at his torso, then his face. Then holding his gaze, I lifted the jumper slowly over my head. I shivered involuntarily, whether from the cooler air or nerves I couldn’t tell. He moved closer, so close that he was inches from me, and ran his finger gently along the line of my hip. ‘I remember this. I remember I could feel the break here.’ He ran it gently across my bare stomach, so that my muscles contracted. ‘And there. You had this bloom of purple on your skin. I was afraid it was organ damage.’ He placed his palm against it. It was warm, and my breath caught.

‘I never thought the words “organ damage” could sound sexy before.’

‘Oh, I haven’t started yet.’

He walked me slowly backwards towards his bed. I sat down, my eyes on his, and he knelt, running his hands down my legs. ‘And then there was that.’ He picked up my right foot, with the vivid red scar across the top. He traced the line of it tenderly with his thumb. ‘There. Broken. Soft tissue damage. That one would have hurt.’

‘You remember a lot.’

‘Most people I couldn’t recognize in the street a day later. But you, Louisa, well, you kind of stuck.’ He dipped his head and kissed the top of my foot, then slowly ran his hands up my leg and placed them either side of me, so that he was above me, supporting his own weight. ‘Nothing hurts now, right?’

I shook my head, mute. I didn’t care any more. I didn’t care if he was a compulsive shagger or playing games. I was so overwhelmed with wanting him I didn’t actually care if he broke my other hip.

He moved across me, inch by inch, like a tide, and I lay back so that I was flat on the bed. With each movement my breath became shallower until it was all I could hear in the silence. He gazed down at me, then closed his eyes and kissed me, slowly and tenderly. He kissed me and let his weight fall onto me just far enough that I felt the delicious powerlessness of lust, the hardness of a body against mine. We kissed, his lips on my neck, his skin against my skin, until I was giddy with it, until I was arching involuntarily against him, my legs wrapped around him.

‘Oh, God,’ I said, breathlessly, when we came up for air. ‘I wish you weren’t so totally wrong for me.’

His eyebrows shot up. ‘That’s – uh – seductive.’

‘You’re not going to cry afterwards, are you?’

He blinked. ‘Er … no.’

‘And just so you know, I’m not some weird obsessive. I’m not going to follow you around afterwards. Or ask Jake to tell me things about you while you’re in the shower.’

‘That’s … that’s good to know.’

And once we had established the ground rules, I flipped over so that I was on top of him and kissed him until I had forgotten everything we had just talked about.

An hour and a half later I was lying on my back and gazing dazedly up at the low ceiling. My skin buzzed, my bones hummed, I ached in places I hadn’t known could ache, yet I was possessed with an extraordinary sense of peace, as if the core of me had simply melted and settled into a new shape. I wasn’t sure I would ever get up again.

You never know what will happen when you fall from a great height.

That surely wasn’t me. I coloured as I thought back to even twenty minutes previously. Did I really – and did I … Memories chased themselves in hot circles. I had never had sex like that. Not in seven years with Patrick. It was like comparing a cheese sandwich with … what? The most incredible haute cuisine? An enormous steak? I giggled involuntarily and clamped a hand over my mouth. I felt utterly unlike myself.

Sam had dozed off beside me and I turned my head to look at him. Oh, my God, I thought, marvelling at the planes of his face, his lips – it was impossible to look at him and not want to touch him. I wondered whether I should move my face a little bit closer and my hand so that I could –

‘Hey,’ he said softly, his eyes slanted with sleep.

… and then it hit me.

Oh, God. I’ve become one of them.

We dressed in near silence. Sam offered to make me tea, but I said I should probably get back as I needed to check whether Lily was home. ‘Her family being on holiday and all.’ I tugged my fingers through my now-matted hair.

‘Sure. Oh. You want to go now?’

‘Yes … please.’

I fetched my clothes from the bathroom, feeling self-conscious and suddenly sober. I couldn’t let him see how unbalanced I was. Every bit of me was focused on trying to re-distance myself and it made me awkward. When I came out he was dressed and tidying up the last of the supper things. I tried not to look at him. It was easier that way.

‘Could I borrow these clothes to go home? Mine are still damp.’

‘Sure. Just … whatever.’ He rifled in a drawer and held out a plastic bag.

I took it and we stood there in the dark space. ‘It was a … nice evening.’

‘“Nice”.’ He looked at me as if he were trying to work something out. ‘Okay.’

As we rode through the damp night, I tried not to rest my cheek against his back. He insisted on lending me a leather jacket, although I had insisted I’d be fine. A few miles in, the air was cold and I was glad of it. We made it back to my flat by a quarter past eleven, although I had to check when I saw the clock. I felt like I’d lived several lifetimes since he’d picked me up.

I dismounted from the bike and started to take off his jacket. But he pushed down his kickstand with his heel. ‘It’s late. Let me at least see you upstairs.’

I hesitated. ‘Okay. If you wait I can give you back your clothes.’

I tried to sound insouciant. He gave a shrug and followed me to the door.

We emerged from the stairwell to the sound of music thumping down the hallway. I knew immediately where it was coming from. I limped briskly down the corridor, paused outside the flat and opened the door slowly. Lily stood in the middle of the hall, cigarette in one hand, a glass of wine in the other. She was wearing a yellow flowered dress I had bought from a vintage boutique, back in the days when I cared about what I wore. I stared – and it’s possible that when I registered what else she was wearing I stumbled: I felt Sam reach for my arm.

‘Nice leathers, Louisa!’

Lily pointed her toe. She was wearing my green glittery shoes. ‘Why don’t you wear these? You have all these crazy outfits yet you just wear, like, jeans and T-shirts and stuff every day. Sooo boring!’

She walked back into my room and emerged a minute later, holding up a gold seventies lamé jumpsuit I used to pair with brown boots. ‘I mean, look at this! I have total and utter jumpsuit envy right now.’

‘Get them off,’ I said, when I could speak.

‘What?’

‘Those tights. Get them off.’ My voice emerged strangled and unrecognizable.

Lily looked down at the black and yellow tights. ‘No, seriously though, you have some proper vintage gear in there. Biba, DVF. That purple Chanel type thing. Do you know what this stuff is worth?’

‘Get them off.’

Perhaps registering my sudden rigidity, Sam began to propel me forwards. ‘Look, why don’t we go through to the living room and –’

‘I’m not moving until she takes those tights off.’

Lily pulled a face.

‘Jesus. No need to have a baby about it.’

I watched, vibrating with anger, as Lily began to peel down my bumble-bee tights, kicking at them when they wouldn’t slide off her feet.

‘Don’t rip them!’

‘It’s just a pair of tights.’

‘They are not just a pair of tights. They were … a gift.’

‘Still a pair of tights,’ she muttered.

She finally got them off, leaving them in a black and yellow heap on the floor. In the other room I could hear the clatter of hangers as the rest of my clothes were presumably being hastily replaced.

A moment later, Lily appeared in the living room. In her bra and knickers. She waited until she could be sure she had our attention, then pulled a short dress slowly and ostentatiously over her head, wiggling as it went over her slim, pale hips. Then she smiled at me sweetly. ‘I’m going clubbing. Don’t wait up. Nice to see you again, Mr –’

‘Fielding,’ said Sam.

‘Mr Fielding.’ She smiled at me. A smile that wasn’t a smile at all. And with a slam of the door, she was gone.

I let out a shaky breath, then walked over and retrieved the tights. I sat down on the sofa and straightened them out, smoothing them until I could be sure there were no snags or cigarette burns.

Sam sat down beside me. ‘You okay?’ he said.

‘I’m know you must think I’m crazy,’ I said eventually, ‘but they were a –’

‘You don’t have to explain.’

‘I was a different person. They meant that – I was – he gave …’ My voice was choked.

We sat there in the silent flat. I knew I should say something but I was lost for words, and there was an enormous lump in my throat.

I took Sam’s jacket off, and held it out to him. ‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘You don’t have to stay.’

I felt his eyes on me but didn’t raise mine from the floor.

‘I’ll leave you to it then.’

And then, before I could say anything else, he was gone.