The First Time We Met: An utterly heart-warming and unforgettable love story

by Jo Lovett

  Sam adjusted the volume down on his phone. Jim Buck, his newest and biggest client, by fees and by ego, had been barking out suggestions and ridiculous demands for over an hour now. Sam had himself on mute and was working on his desktop at the same time, but it was hard to concentrate with all the shouting. How the hell was he going to put up with this man dominating his working life for the foreseeable future?

  Finally, yes, Jim had stopped talking. Probably had an eighties throwback dinner featuring a lot of champagne, fat cigars and exploited women to get to.

  ‘Not a problem,’ Sam told him. ‘I’ll have that with you by noon tomorrow.’ He didn’t even bother to attempt to inject warmth into his voice.

  He pressed the red circle on his phone and took a breath. Now he had an even more unenjoyable phone call to make, which he needed to do immediately. He swiped and pressed green.

  ‘Hi, Daddy. Are you phoning because you’re going to be late home?’ Liv didn’t sound annoyed or reproachful, just resigned. And very unsurprised. Perfectly pitched to make her father feel like crap.

  ‘Got it in one. I am so sorry.’ It was torture knowing that his kids were upset, and that it was his fault. ‘But listen. I have a couple things I need to do in person in the office but once I’ve done those I’m coming home to see you and I’ll finish my work once you’re in bed.’

  ‘Have you forgotten?’ Seriously, she’d make an excellent parent with her ability to convey quiet disappointment.

  ‘No?’ What had he forgotten? Not a physio appointment, please. He’d made every single one so far, but it was a constant worry that he was going to mess up and miss one. Surely the next one wasn’t until next week.

  ‘Our pizza and ice cream date? At Mariano’s?’

  ‘Wasn’t that Thursday?’

  ‘It is Thursday.’ Damn. Damn. He spent the whole time letting them down.

  ‘Liv, honey, listen. How about we do Mariano’s next week and this evening I order takeout when I’m on my way home and it’ll arrive just around the time I do?’

  ‘Do you think Mom would have forgotten?’ Liv had kept her tone so sweet, it took Sam a second to register the passive aggression in her words. He was still trying to form a reply when Barney spoke.

  ‘D-d-d-d-dad.’ Barney’s stutter was always more noticeable when he was upset. Liv must have had the phone on speaker. ‘You’re a liar.’ It took him a long time to get the word liar out. ‘You promised.’ Even longer to say promised. And then the phone went dead.

  Damn.

  Sam needed to stop letting his children down. He also needed to make some progress on finding the right speech pathologist or therapist for Barney. And he also needed to read through and comment on this contract because without his clients he probably wouldn’t be able to afford Liv’s extortionate health insurance, Barney’s extortionate therapist fees and all the other extortionate things in their lives.

  He had great kids, a great family, great friends, a great apartment, a great job. A lot of great things. He was very lucky. He just needed to find some extra hours in the day to take advantage of any of those great things other than the job.

  ‘That was fantastic pizza.’ Sam stood up to get the ice cream out of the freezer.

  ‘Almost as good as Mariano’s.’ It took Barney a lot of attempts to get his words out.

  ‘It’s okay. We’re going to Mariano’s next week instead. It’s nobody’s fault that we had to postpone again.’ Liv’s words and tone of voice were saccharine. But the barb in there was definitely intended. Clearly it was Sam’s fault. Did she blame him for everything? He was beginning to think that he didn’t have the emotional agility to deal with a complex teenage girl. Especially given how busy he was. It had taken extreme willpower to avoid looking at his watch during this meal. He just didn’t have the time for a leisurely mid-week dinner with the kids.

  ‘I’m so sorry about messing up this evening.’ He gave the twins an extra scoop each. If only you could buy teenagers’ happiness with ice cream like you could with toddlers. Barney scowled at him and Liv smiled at him suspiciously angelically. Neither felt good. Sam smiled back at them anyway.

  He glanced down. If he nudged his cuff against the edge of the table, maybe he could expose his watch face, unnoticed.

  He had so much to do tonight. A phenomenal amount of work, plus he owed return calls and messages to his mother, two of his sisters and his best friend Luke, not to mention the woman he was currently dating, Melissa. And he needed to get back onto doing something about Barney’s speech, underlined by Barney’s stuttering anger this evening. And he should probably be thinking about Liv, too, trying to break through the barriers she seemed to be erecting between them.

  ‘It’s 9 p.m., Daddy.’ Liv’s eyes had flickered to where he’d inched his cuff back. Her smile was bland and wide and didn’t reach her eyes. Yeah, he should definitely be thinking about how she was doing emotionally. Not right now, though.

  The kids in bed and hopefully sound asleep for the past three or four hours, none of the calls or messages he owed returned but the contract work finally finished, Sam checked the time on his office wall clock. Just shy of 2 a.m. He could go to sleep for four and a quarter hours or he could spend some time researching speech therapists and sleep for half an hour less. At least either way he’d be so tired that he wouldn’t dream. The nightmares were a killer. Last night, yet again, he’d woken at 4 a.m., bathed in sweat, his mind replaying images of the accident.

  He was so unbelievably exhausted. But Barney’s confidence was so unbelievably diminished because of his stutter. And getting worse. And in just over a year’s time he’d be entering high school. Things needed to improve by then or he’d have a very miserable few years socially.

  Sam was going to have to do the research.

  He was good at his job, a lot better than he seemed to be at parenting teens with issues. Maybe he should approach this as though it was a tricky business problem. To which he would no question find a solution.

  So. He needed to think outside the box.

  Everyone and everything they’d tried so far hadn’t worked. To date, they’d just done a very good job of proving that you couldn’t solve every problem by throwing enough money at it.

  He’d tried a lot of options, including therapists in far-flung states. Maybe he should go big on his outside-the-box thinking. Maybe he should look at speech therapy methods used in other English-speaking countries. Australia, South Africa, the UK.

  England. Speech therapy.

  Izzy. She’d been a speech therapist specialising in stutters.

  He hadn’t thought about her so much in recent years. She’d occupied his mind a lot when the kids were younger. How old must her child be now? Probably about seven. It had been a few months before he and the twins moved back to New York that they’d had coffee.

  Suddenly, the idea of speaking to Izzy again was very appealing. He’d spent, what, just two or three hours with her, several years ago, but those hours had felt precious. Comfortable. As though that was where he’d been meant to be. He’d had the same feeling that he’d had on the morning of his wedding day, that, another time, another place, and she could have been The One.

  Maybe he should contact her, ask for advice.

  No. This was middle-of-the-night loneliness talking. The wee hours were always the worst, when the rest of the world slept and you were up worrying, watching over your children, or working, all while nearly out of your mind with sleep deprivation.

  Although, maybe Izzy could help. What harm could it do to ask? Tonight he was out of any other concrete ideas.

  He didn’t even know her surname. And at work was she Izzy? Isobel? Isabella? He needed to drink another very strong espresso and get googling.

  Twenty minutes later he had alarmingly blurred vision but also Izzy’s work details and email address. And a genuine little heart flutter when he looked at the speech therapy website photo of her with lanyard around neck and that dimply smile, borderin
g on cheeky. The heart flutter would be the middle-of-the-night factor again.

  It really couldn’t hurt to email her. At worst, she wouldn’t reply, or she’d be unable to help. At best, she could help Barney. And perhaps she and Sam could chat again, and he could get a hold of that comfortable feeling again.

  Six

  Izzy

  ‘I need to wee now.’ The key was never going to fit in the lock. Izzy was going to burst. ‘My bladder isn’t what it was when I was younger. Childbirth ruins you.’

  ‘And also you’ve practically drunk your own bodyweight in margaritas and haven’t been to the loo all evening. Give me the key, you daft mare.’ Emma wrestled it from Izzy and got it into the door first time. First time.

  ‘You’re an actual key-using genius.’ Izzy kicked her shoes off, hooray, they’d been killing her toes, ran past Emma and Rohan, and went straight upstairs to the bathroom.

  The relief.

  When she got back downstairs, Emma and Rohan were in the kitchen, Emma plonked on the two-seater sofa next to the garden doors and Rohan at the sink filling three glasses with tap water.

  ‘Probably not going to make much of a difference to how you feel tomorrow, but worth a shot.’ Rohan handed their glasses to them.

  ‘Thank you, lovely Rohan.’ Izzy squished herself into the sofa next to Emma, only spilling a bit of her water as she sat down. ‘And thank you both for organising this evening. Two best best friends ever.’

  ‘Our pleasure. Happy birthday again.’ Emma clinked water glasses with her. Some slopped out onto Izzy’s knee.

  ‘I’ve had a really lovely day today.’ It had been one of those birthdays where pretty much everything had gone well. Izzy was mixing work-from-home and holiday all week, because it was half-term, and Emma was deputy head at a local comprehensive and on half-term too, and not working today or tomorrow. They’d done girls’ lunch and cinema on nearby Kensington High Street with Izzy’s seven-year-old daughter Ruby, before Ruby went to her best friend’s for a sleepover. Nearly everyone who should have remembered Izzy’s birthday had done so. She’d had some great presents. ‘Thank you again for your wonderful gifts. I’m really looking forward to them.’ And she’d had a couple of weird ones. ‘Just remembered that I forgot to tell you what my mother and Veronique bought me. Beyond strange.’

  ‘Straight to Oxfam?’ asked Rohan.

  ‘Yes, but no. In that, yes, I’m getting rid of it immediately, and no, there’s no way I’m taking it to Oxfam.’

  ‘Is that why you couldn’t tell me in front of Ruby?’ Emma was sitting up straight, looking delighted. ‘Was it something adult themed? Sexy underwear? Sex toys? Like your wedding present?’

  ‘Yes,’ Rohan scoffed. ‘From her mother and her wife. For her birthday. When she’s single.’

  ‘Emma’s basically right. I will never complain again when they forget my birthday. Which they have of course done every year since I was thirty. First present in literally six years and they bought me—’ Izzy paused for effect ‘—only the Kama bloody Sutra. And some other sex books. Basically a whole set of Female Sexual Empowerment genre books.’

  ‘Noooo,’ Emma screeched. ‘I was joking.’

  ‘What, really? Where are they?’ Rohan looked over at Izzy’s bookshelf, like she’d have stuck them on there between Mary Berry and Delia.

  ‘I hid them inside my biggest casserole dish.’

  ‘Would you classify the Kama Sutra as Female Sexual Empowerment? I’m not sure. We need to read them. Which cupboard?’ Emma was already trying to get herself off the sofa and onto her feet.

  ‘Eeew, no.’ Izzy shook her head so hard she saw stars for a couple of seconds. ‘I don’t want to read any of it, and definitely not with you two. I don’t think any of us need to know what the others have or have not done.’

  ‘You’re very, very right.’ Rohan was looking horrified.

  ‘Not tempted at all?’ Emma asked.

  ‘So very much not. My mother and stepmother bought them for me. Surely no-one should buy books like that for you other than your own partner? I mean, grim.’

  ‘Yeah, fair enough.’ Emma nodded. ‘Wow.’

  ‘Full marks to them for originality,’ Rohan said.

  ‘I think it’s a hint,’ Emma said. ‘They must think it’s time for you to move on.’

  Rohan gave Emma a massive nudge. ‘And that’s the drink talking. We really don’t need to do this this evening. Shut up, Emma.’

  ‘She’s probably right,’ Izzy said. Dominic had obviously moved on. He hadn’t sent her a card or even a message. Which was fine. Totally fine. Not at all hurtful. On his birthday she’d bought him a present from Ruby, a too-expensive-for-her-budget pair of Mulberry cufflinks, because he loved a double-cuffed shirt, and the latest Ian McEwan book, which he wouldn’t read, but would enjoy keeping in his sitting room, and got Ruby to make a card for him, but there was no reason he should do anything for her birthday. That was the whole point of being separated; you weren’t in a romantic relationship any more. Izzy should absolutely be moving on. Although she would not be reading Sexual Empowerment books, especially not ones purchased by her mother. ‘This evening was fab, wasn’t it? Good to know that we aren’t too old to do the macarena.’

  ‘Never too old.’ Emma nodded. ‘Can’t beat cartloads of cocktails and a group dance.’

  ‘Yep. A very good evening. A lot better than last year.’ Splitting up with Dominic two days before Izzy’s birthday the year before had not made for a festival atmosphere on the day. It had just been so sad. They’d grown apart and Izzy knew that it had felt inevitable once they’d decided, although she couldn’t even remember how they’d decided, other than that it had been precipitated by his secondment to Milan – maybe they’d never been fully joined and just hadn’t realised initially – but when you had several years of history and a daughter together and you didn’t actually dislike each other, it just felt unbearably tragic to finally acknowledge that you weren’t going to be together for life.

  Izzy had spent a couple of days after their decision full-on ugly crying and then a lot of time crying in an ‘I will be brave’, eyes always nearly brimming over, way.

  It hadn’t been attractive. Looking at herself in a mirror on the evening of her birthday last year, she’d seen that most of her face had looked remarkably pasty-white and puffy, while her cheeks and nose were very red.

  Oh, crap. Now she was feeling sniffly again.

  ‘Yes, that was a bad day.’ Emma glugged some water and then worked her arm round Izzy and gave her a big hug. ‘But it was the right thing, wasn’t it, and you’re in a much better position now.’

  ‘Ably assisted by the Kama Sutra,’ said Rohan. ‘Position? No, sorry.’ He shook his head. ‘It was funny when I thought it, but out loud it didn’t work.’

  ‘Time and a place for shit jokes, Rohan,’ Emma said.

  Izzy and Rohan had met on the back row of a history lecture at the beginning of their first term at university and had instantly clicked. There’d also been instant clickage between Emma and Rohan when Izzy introduced them, and they’d always got on well until they’d become flatmates for a few months a couple of years ago. Since then, there’d been a lot of bickering between them. The bickering was sometimes funny, sometimes not so much.

  ‘It was totally the right thing to say and I am in a good place, or position, now, and I love your jokes, Rohan. Most of them, anyway.’ Izzy downed quite a lot of water to hide her face in the glass while she waited for the hovering Dominic-related tears to settle down. Bugger, she’d drunk the water too fast. Now she felt sick. It had been the right thing to split up with Dominic, of course it had, except it did feel wrong that Ruby’s father lived in Milan, and occasionally she still missed him. Not in an ‘I want to have sex with you’ way, or an ‘I want to tell you that because it would make you laugh as much as it made me laugh’ way, because sex and laughter hadn’t featured highly in their marriage in the last year or two; but when you’d b
een together for so long, there were small things you talked about that you wouldn’t really mention to other people. Although to be fair, she had Emma and Rohan, and her other friends. She talked to them about mundane things all the time. She did not need Dominic for that. They could have a mundane conversation right now, without Dominic.

  ‘Not to change the subject but I need a new dishwasher,’ she told them. ‘Which I can’t really afford. But I hate mine. It doesn’t wash dishes. You have to wash them up yourself first. Always been like it.’

  ‘You wash your dishes up and then put them in the machine?’ asked Rohan. ‘Why would you do that? Why don’t you just not put them in if you’ve already washed them up?’

  ‘Because I like them to be perfectly clean.’ Dominic had liked them to be perfectly clean too.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Appliance issues are shit.’ Emma nodded. ‘My washing machine doesn’t spin properly. I need a plumber. Everything comes out sopping. Driving me bloody insane.’

  ‘Please tell me you don’t wash all your clothes twice,’ Rohan said.

  ‘No, I don’t. That would be weird.’

  Yeah, no, it wasn’t the same. Izzy was in many ways closer to Emma and Rohan than she’d probably ever been to Dominic, if she was honest, even on their honeymoon, but he’d agreed with her about the dishwasher. Things were a lot sparklier if they’d been through the machine. Obviously she was nearly always the one who put them through that machine, but that was a separate issue. Maybe if they’d worked harder on agreeing on other household matters, they’d still be together. That was what it was all about, wasn’t it, living together, being able to agree on small things. It wasn’t about sex and laughing, it was about the dishwasher and whether or not you’d have salmon or chicken that evening, and enjoying the same box sets.