‘You mean without Simon?’
She nods.
‘Oh.’ Now I’m really flummoxed. Rose hasn’t even mentioned Simon since the night before Dee Dee died when she joked sadly about being on the ‘misery diet’ since their break-up. And then I remember that Simon is a work colleague of Mart’s and that this is Martin’s birthday dinner. ‘Oh my God, is Simon here?’ I hiss.
‘No.’ Rose makes a face. ‘Martin asked how I felt about inviting him and I said I’d rather not have him here so he isn’t. It’s just hard being here alone.’
She looks away, tears clearly pricking at her eyes. I rush over and give her a hug. It feels awkward. I’m not used to Rose opening up. She’s always been very discreet about her relationships, at least around me. It’s one of the many ways in which she’s much more like a mother to me than a normal sister. Rose stiffens as I hug her and draws quickly away, wiping her eyes. She turns to check her make-up in the mirror.
‘Sorry for being so emotional,’ she mutters. ‘I’m fine, really.’
A moment later we head back into the party. There are about twenty or thirty people here and I can see most of them doing a double-take as they catch sight of Rose. Several of Martin’s friends comment on how good she looks but when I mention the fact to Jed he just nods, distracted. He’s staring at the glass bar visible below us in the main part of the restaurant.
‘You know what that takes me back to?’ he murmurs.
I gaze at the bar and all the handsome people milling around it. ‘What?’
‘The night we met.’ Jed draws closer.
I sigh. It’s not really a memory I’m proud of, though Jed loves to remind me about it. I was on a spa weekend at a fancy hotel with a couple of girlfriends, Jed at a conference in the same place. He chatted me up in the bar. I was initially interested – charmed not just by his good looks but also his easy manner and fierce intelligence – but pulled back dramatically as soon as he mentioned he was married, about half an hour into our conversation.
‘I’m telling you because I don’t want it to be a secret,’ he said, his eyes at once sorrowful and twinkling with devilment. ‘I don’t want to play games, so here it is: I’m unhappy in my marriage. Deeply unhappy and just hanging in there for the kids.’
I confessed I felt uncomfortable and Jed apologized.
‘I would be lying if I said I didn’t find you incredibly attractive,’ he said, his hand a light pressure on my arm. ‘But the last thing I want is to make you feel uncomfortable. Let’s just finish our drinks, I’m enjoying your company so much.’
So we finished our drinks, then ordered two more . . . the last two, I insisted. Jed nodded and asked me about my job. He listened attentively to everything I said. I told him about my work, how I loved the kids but was looking for more responsibility and hated the constant changes to the curriculum according to the whims of political fashion. More drinks appeared as if by magic while Jed hung on every word I uttered, before gradually steering the conversation onto my personal life. He expressed astonishment that I had no boyfriend and impressed me with his evident devotion to his children. Before I knew it, it was past midnight and we had been talking for almost three hours. I said I had to go to bed and he offered to escort me to my room, promising not to come inside.
At my door he asked, hesitantly, if he could see me again. I said no and he looked so upset that when he leaned forward to kiss me goodbye I let him find my lips rather than my cheek. Suddenly the kiss was properly passionate and Jed pressed me against the wall with a groan. I could feel him, hard, against me.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ he breathed in my ear. ‘You are such a fucking turn-on.’
I only just managed not to sleep with him and spent the whole of the next morning in the hotel wondering if he would reappear. He didn’t and I left the hotel unable to stop thinking about him. I knew that if he contacted me again I would surrender entirely but assumed that he wouldn’t, that he was understandably a bit embarrassed he had come on to me so strongly and was now eager to get home to his family. Anyway, we had swapped neither email addresses nor phone numbers and though I had told him that I lived in south London and taught at a primary school near Oval, he didn’t know any of the details.
Back at school, life seemed flat and dull, the men around me entirely lacking in charisma. I found my thoughts drifting to Jed over and over again, especially to our kiss. It had been months since I’d been on any kind of date and far longer than that since anyone had truly sparked my interest. I told Rose, of course, who made a face and told me I’d done the right thing in walking away.
I knew this was true, of course, but still I thought about him. And then, five days later, Jed sent flowers to me at school – a huge bunch of white roses. He included his phone number at the end of his note:
Thank you for an enchanting evening.
I phoned up, fully intending just to say thank you for the flowers. But Jed was so delighted to speak to me that I stayed on the call. Jed made it very easy, confessing with just the right balance of embarrassment and passion that he had been trying to track me down ever since he got back from his conference and that he couldn’t stop thinking about me. He said (again) that his marriage was a sham and I said I would go for dinner with him. Later, we talked and talked over French langoustines and rack of lamb then he saw me all the way home, even though it was miles in the wrong direction and I had already told him my sister would be home and I wasn’t going to invite him in. He kissed me at my door and left, having secured another date. This time we went for dinner in a Malaysian restaurant near Jed’s offices in the City. Jed told me that he felt terrible about putting me in this position, but that he had fallen in love with me, that I was the one he had been waiting for all his life. Overwhelmed and totally in thrall, I gave myself up to him that night.
Jed pulls me closer now, his arm tight around my waist. He gazes across the room, at all of Martin and Cameron’s good-looking friends.
‘Do you realize how much every single man in this room envies me right now?’ he whispers.
I snort, rolling my eyes. ‘Please, most of the men here are gay.’
Jed laughs and I smile with pleasure. It’s been a long time since I heard him laugh. Then I look over and catch Rose staring miserably into her wine glass. I feel instantly guilty. Despite losing Dee Dee, I am so lucky to have found Jed, so lucky to be happily in love. All my petty insecurities over Zoe and concerns that Jed has withdrawn into a narrow focus on his case against Benecke Tricorp seem to melt away. Jed squeezes my hand.
‘I spoke to my solicitor earlier,’ he says. ‘The decree nisi will be through any day and once it’s issued I think we should start making definite wedding plans.’
I gaze at him. We haven’t talked much about getting married since Dee Dee died. Somehow any kind of celebration has felt inappropriate.
‘Are you sure you’re ready to start thinking about that?’ I ask.
Jed nods. ‘If Dee Dee were here she’d be nagging me about it.’
I fall silent, remembering the conversation the three of us had just after the engagement party where Mart and Cameron gave Dee Dee and me our bracelets. Dee Dee had been keen to be a bridesmaid, though decidedly against any kind of frothy pink frock.
‘I’d like to keep it small,’ I say. ‘It just seems wrong to do anything bigger without Dee Dee being here.’
‘Whatever you want.’ Jed smiles sadly.
‘I love you,’ I whisper.
Jed leans in, his breath hot on my ear. ‘Good,’ he says. ‘Because I’m not letting you go. Ever.’
June 2014
SO I worked out how everyone has seen the photo Sam Edwards took of me. Basically he showed his friends and one of them is going out with Georgia Dutton in my class and she has made sure EVERYONE has seen. I don’t know what is worst, that Sam broke his promise not to show anyone so he can’t really like me even a little bit OR that EVERYONE at school has now seen and thinks I’m a slut AND ugly, including Ava and Poppy who have
n’t really spoken to me all week except to say things like ‘I don’t mean anything by it, but you were showing off for a boy.’ Which I WASN’T. It’s not just the photo either. Sam has told people I let him touch me and that I was all hairy and now the boys in my class are calling me ‘hairy Dee’ then laughing like they’ve made the funniest joke in the world. I have been thinking that if I got all the hairs waxed off then maybe that would stop. I could casually just tell Ava or whoever that I’d done it, and then gradually everyone would find out and they’d think more of me. I don’t know, I am so worried I just don’t know but it has got to be worth a try.
I can hear Mum downstairs, she’s had a few glasses of wine now so I’m going to go and ask her if I can go to her beauty place this weekend. I’m going to say I want to have my eyebrows plucked and my legs waxed. I’m NOT going to say about the other bit, I’m not stupid and I know Mum wouldn’t go for that OBVIOUSLY but once I’m in there I bet I could get the girl to do it.
And then maybe Ava and the others would be my friends again.
December 2014
It’s the first Friday in December. Jed is off at a conference on counterfeit medicines and won’t be home until late. I’d been hoping that now the court case is properly lodged in the system, Jed’s focus on Benecke Tricorp might ease up. But instead he has become interested in the many terrible stories his research into fake drugs has unearthed, from the diethylene glycol used as a substitute for glycerine in children’s cough syrup to the leukaemia clinic in which patients were given false oncology drugs.
‘There’ll be sessions on lots of useful things including a seminar on international law,’ he explains eagerly. ‘There’s even going to be a practical demo from the lab guys at the Campaign against Counterfeit and Substandard Pharmaceuticals; they’re going to show how to use a spectrometer to analyse exactly what ingredients are inside fake drugs.’ He pauses, his eyes glittering. ‘Maybe it doesn’t make sense to you, but I need to know that the law can and will change, that companies and dealers can and will be held to account.’
I nod. I understand better than Jed thinks that without things changing in the future, it’s as if the pain of the past has no point, no meaning. Unfortunately, I also understand that past pain often has no point and no meaning. My parents’ death taught me that many years ago. You can rationalize and focus your ambitions all you like but, in the end, the dead stay dead and the agony of their loss must be absorbed, only transmuted in its own time, from within, and not through signing up to good causes or forming action plans to change the world.
My day at school is long and tiring. I hurry out to the school car park just before 5 p.m., two heavy bags in each hand. I’m planning to have a soak in the bath then head into town to meet Laura for a drink. I don’t see her very often these days, not since the week after Dee Dee died. In fact, since I moved in with Jed I’ve hardly seen any of my old friends. It’s not just that I’m preoccupied with my home life: my oldest friend, Moira, who I shared a flat with for several years, emigrated to New Zealand at the start of the year and most of my other friends – including Laura herself – have small children, which makes it far harder than it used to be to arrange to meet. On top of that, my new role as head of Key Stage One means I’m bogged down with admin and, like a total glutton for punishment, I have also taken on responsibility for the end of term production – coming up in just a few weeks now – which involves rehearsing the kids every other lunch hour.
As I reach my car and fumble in my bag for the key, my name echoes across the school car park. I look up. A man in a long, dark overcoat is walking towards me. The last time a stranger approached me in this car park it was Zoe, shrieking obscenities. I look more closely as the man draws nearer. This is not a stranger. It’s my old boyfriend, Dan, who Laura herself mentioned the last time we met. I can’t believe it and stare, stupidly, as he approaches. Dan has filled out a little since I last saw him and there are fine lines around his eyes, but otherwise it’s the same face, the same disarming smile.
‘Em?’ he says again. Then he stops and stares at me.
I stare back, feeling my entire body flushing under his scrutiny. Seeing him is an electric shock to my system. My heart starts racing. My mouth falls open. I even forget that I have no make-up on and that there’s a huge paint stain on my jacket.
‘Dan?’
‘Hello.’ He grins. It’s the same sexy smile that used to floor me ten years ago. My stomach cartwheels. I clutch at the car. What is going on? What is my ex-boyfriend doing here? Why is my body reacting like this? I haven’t thought about him since that conversation three months ago and, before then, he hadn’t crossed my mind in years. I realize my mouth is open and close it. I swallow, my throat too dry to speak.
‘It’s good to see you.’ Dan moves closer, his hand resting on the bonnet of my car. I can see now that his coat and his haircut are both smart and expensive, that he has really grown into his looks: broad shoulders, full lips, a long, straight nose, cool, grey eyes and dark, wavy hair. My legs feel trembly and I have to lean against the car. I have no idea why my body is responding like this, but it’s making me angry.
‘How are you?’ Dan asks.
‘Fine.’ The word sounds harsh as I say it, more harsh that I mean it to, but if Dan is fazed by this he doesn’t show it.
‘I came to find you,’ he said. ‘There’s something I need to tell you.’
What the hell can he be talking about? It’s eight years since he announced he was taking a job in New York and that it wasn’t practical to think our twenty-month-long relationship would survive it. I was heartbroken for a long time. Dan, on the other hand, plunged into his new life with gusto, making little effort to stay in touch and stopping altogether within a matter of months.
What on earth could warrant this sudden reappearance out of the blue? Is he getting married? Becoming a father? No, surely neither of those things would bring him here, like this. Could he be dying? Or have some terrible disease which has lain dormant for ten years, which I might have caught from him?
I slam the car door shut. ‘So why are you here? What do you want?’
Now Dan does look surprised. He raises his eyebrows, a smile curling around his lips.
‘Not so pleased to see me, Emily Sarah?’ he asks. Sarah was my mother’s name as well as my middle name; and as only my parents ever used the two names together it’s disconcerting to hear them coming out of Dan’s mouth.
Disconcerting, yet not unpleasant.
‘No, I am, it’s fine.’ I’m still flustered but my body has, at least, calmed down. I don’t know what that initial reaction was about, just shock I guess. ‘How did you find me?’
‘It wasn’t that hard,’ Dan says. ‘I asked around. It’s cool you’ve made it as a teacher.’
‘Thanks.’ How surreal is this? A group of other teachers cross the car park. They look over and wave. I can see them checking Dan out, wondering who he is. I say nothing, just wave back.
Dan clears his throat. ‘Look, Em, I’m really sorry just to show up out of the blue.’ He frowns, his forehead wrinkling, and I’m struck again by how he looks the same and yet different. The eight years that have passed have been good to him. I suddenly wonder how I look in his eyes. I stop leaning against the car roof, straighten my jacket and shake back my hair. Dan watches, still smiling. I have the uncanny sense that he can see exactly what I’m thinking.
‘What is it?’ I ask. ‘What did you want to tell me?’
Dan’s eyes flicker to my left hand. ‘Nice ring,’ he says. ‘Er, congratulations.’
‘You heard about that too?’
‘About Jed?’ He says the name as if it’s italicized. ‘I already knew. That’s . . . look, can we go somewhere? Get a coffee? There’s a café over the road. I was waiting there earlier.’
I hesitate. Truth is, I’m equal parts intrigued and annoyed with him. Which is, I reflect, how it always used to be with Dan. I give myself a mental kick. Dan is old news,
no longer part of my life. Still, Jed won’t be back from his conference for hours and I have no plans. Plus, it will be interesting to catch up, to find out what he wants to tell me so badly that he’s sought me out after eight years of silence.
‘Fine.’ I lock my car and we walk side by side to the café. Dan takes off his coat. He’s wearing a navy suit, expensively cut. He shrugs off the jacket as we sit down. His pale blue shirt brings out the hint of blue in his grey eyes. I can see now that his new physique – that filled-out body – is partly muscle. I can just make out the cut of his biceps under the fine cotton of his shirt, though his height stops him from looking bulky or overdeveloped. Everything about him seems so much more manly than I remember. There is a faint rash of stubble on his chin which I’m certain he never had when he was younger. I check his hands. No rings, no jewellery of any kind. I wonder if he still has the swallow tattoo on his upper right arm. We were supposed to get them together, but I chickened out at the last moment.
I remove my jacket as the waitress comes over. We order coffees then I sit back. I gaze out of the window. I can almost see my car from here just beyond the edge of the school fence.
I can feel Dan’s gaze lingering on my face.
‘It’s really good to see you, Em,’ he says. ‘It’s been, what, eight years?’
‘That’s right.’ I meet his eyes.
‘Okay, I’ll get to the point. Firstly, I’m still a journalist. After my job in the States I did a short stint in South Africa, then back to the States for the past six years. Now I’ve moved home and I’m freelancing. There’s a story I started following a couple of weeks ago when I saw your . . . when I saw about your stepdaughter, about what happened in Corsica.’
‘You read about that?’
Dan nods. ‘I’m so sorry, it must have been awful. You were there, weren’t you?’
‘Yes, but I don’t understand, what’s that—?’
‘I noticed the article because Jed Kennedy was named in it.’ He pauses. ‘As you know, he was in the news back in the summer because he’d just got that minister off. I noticed him because of his connection to you.’