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

by Jo Lovett

  ‘What, no chat at all?’ Emma reached for another slice of quiche. She had the appetite of a horse.

  ‘Not really.’ Izzy resisted the siren call of the quiche and took some more salad. She really wanted some of the lemon drizzle cake she’d brought but the scales hadn’t been kind to her this morning, possibly due to the crap breakfasts, mainly chocolate bars, she’d had all week. She really needed to start getting up early enough to eat proper food in the mornings.

  She didn’t want to talk about Sam, even to her two best friends. It felt like he was becoming another close friend, not just a client, except their friendship hung by a delicate thread.

  She loved their email exchanges. She knew almost more about Sam’s daily life than she did about Emma’s at the moment. And she looked forward to writing to him more than she probably should.

  But, even though it felt like a long time, probably because they’d been emailing back and forth pretty much every day, in reality it had been less than two months. Izzy didn’t want to make a thing of it, and she certainly didn’t want Emma to make a thing of it when probably she and Sam would stop talking when Barney no longer needed speech therapy. Which, as a caring professional, Izzy had to hope would happen soon.

  ‘I might get to meet Barney soon,’ Izzy said. She didn’t like being secretive. ‘Sam mentioned that he was coming over with the twins, and Barney would like to do a session in person, so if I’m around we’re going to meet.’

  ‘How do you feel about that?’ Emma was so excited that she was sitting even more bolt upright than before. She was also spraying balsamic onion and cheddar quiche crumbs all over her neatly folded legs, very un-Emma-like.

  ‘I think it would be a good thing. It’s a little bit weird doing long distance speech therapy. Although it seems to be working.’

  ‘I’m surprised he can understand your Devon burr over the phone,’ Rohan said.

  ‘Skype. And piss off, posh git.’ Izzy smiled at him.

  ‘Can we get back to the point?’ said Emma. ‘Are you looking forward to seeing Sam again?’

  Izzy shrugged. Properly shrugged. Total nonchalance. She was an amazing actress.

  ‘Yeah, I think it’ll be nice.’ Excellent answer. A lot more believable than pretending she wasn’t that fussed. ‘How was your date last night, Emma?’

  ‘Fine.’ Emma waved a celery stick dismissively. Izzy really wished she liked celery more than just the idea of losing more calories than she ate.

  ‘End up in bed with him?’ Rohan had an eyebrow raised.

  What? Unbelievable.

  ‘Sorry, what?’ Emma looked seriously unimpressed. Unsurprisingly.

  Rohan shrugged, both eyebrows up now. ‘You usually do.’

  ‘Right.’ Emma physically turned her back on Rohan and said, ‘So when are Sam and his kids coming? We need to shop for something for you to wear.’

  ‘You’re so persistent,’ Rohan said. ‘Maybe Izzy doesn’t want to tell you every single thing.’ What was wrong with Rohan today?

  ‘Thank you for looking out for me but I’m fine to talk about it, honestly,’ Izzy said, trying to defuse the tension. ‘They’re coming in three or four weeks’ time, but I don’t need anything new to wear for meeting them. It isn’t a big deal.’ Big lie.

  ‘Hey, look.’ She stood up and waved. Dominic was walking up the hill towards them with a giggling and waving Ruby on his shoulders. This was Izzy’s life, not a man who she barely knew who lived in New York. She should be focusing on Dominic and Ruby, not buying clothes to wear to meet Sam, for goodness’ sake.

  * * *

  ‘Hello, gorgeous daughter.’ Izzy swung Ruby off Dominic’s shoulders for a big hug and smiled at him over Ruby’s head. ‘What’ve you been doing?’

  Ruby had a lot to say about what she and Daddy had been doing. She was glowing. Spending time with Dominic was obviously good for her and Izzy should be happy that he was going to be a regular feature again in Ruby’s life from now on. And she really should consider spending a lot more time with him herself so that they could be a family again.

  After a lovely afternoon, Izzy couldn’t help sneaking a look at her emails on the way home on the Tube with Ruby. Another email from Sam, which made her smile.

  He’d tried one of her pasta recipes and by all accounts it had been a success. She replied while Ruby read out the name of every stop on the Piccadilly line from Cockfosters at the northern end to Heathrow at the western end.

  Hi,

  Impressed by the lemon zesting!

  Had picnic with Emma and Rohan. Nice picnic other than some bickering between E and R (!).

  But lovely weather and a nice day.

  I x

  As she and Ruby made their way out of the station, it occurred to Izzy that, in only a matter of weeks – or thirteen and a half years, of course – things had changed between her and Sam. She’d discussed Emma and Rohan, her two best friends, with him. Not in detail, but she’d done it. Her relationship with him had definitely moved firmly from professional into friendship territory. Although she hadn’t mentioned seeing Dominic to him.

  Izzy got into bed early that evening and, propped against her pillows, finished writing a report to a client on practising bump and smooth speech with her three-year-old, before checking her mother’s Instagram account (‘DoctorDebz: Wife, mother and grandmother. Cardiologist. Training for the North Devon marathon. Proud owner of two rescue donkeys. Baking with herbs and rose water.’).

  Busy donkey-owning and baking surgeons in training for marathons did not have time to talk to their daughter in person. Izzy had left at least four unanswered messages for her mother in the past fortnight. She should probably give up.

  There were several recent posts of her mother and Veronique with their two sons and their other granddaughter, Ella, so they weren’t too busy to speak to all their family.

  She should try to get over her obsession with her mother’s Instagram. Every single time she looked, she ended up with boiling blood. At this rate, she was going to be too wide awake from annoyance to be able to get to sleep, despite her tiredness. She should probably read for a while, to try to get her mind off it.

  And then an email from Sam arrived. Was it too soon to rant to him about her mother? Either way, her heart lifted, as it always did these days when her inbox pinged.

  Good job Emma didn’t know.

  Thirteen

  Sam

  Sam knew that Jim Buck would be able to see him checking his watch over the video conferencing, but he didn’t care. This meeting shouldn’t even have been in his diary, because he’d had several hours blocked out for the twins. The man was in full flow yet again. Sam was going to be very late at this rate. He needed just to go.

  ‘Sorry.’ Sam didn’t even wait for the end of Jim’s sentence to interrupt him. ‘I have an urgent appointment. Let’s pick this up later.’ He exited the call, grabbed his jacket and ran. If he wasn’t on time, Barney was likely to freeze on stage, and Liv was likely to freeze Sam out even further.

  He made it about seven or eight minutes late to the function room in the New York Historical Society where the kids’ vacation camp drama presentation was taking place, heart pounding and uncomfortably sweaty from his sprint from the office. Running through the park had definitely been the fastest way to get here, but it had not been comfortable in a suit and ninety-degree heat.

  Sam could see from the programme that there’d been a group intro, but other than that he hadn’t missed anything of note. He struggled to focus on any of the parts of the show that Liv and Barney weren’t in, because he could feel his phone vibrating with constant emails, and it was obvious that work was going to be hell later on, so he wasn’t completely aware of what was happening plot-wise.

  He did know that, when Liv came on, she was poised and very beautiful, moving around effortlessly on stage with no trace of a limp. He was transfixed. His amazing daughter.

  And then it was time for Barney to speak. Sam was on th
e brink of welling up before he’d even started. Barney’s face was so anxious and Sam was so desperate for things to go well. He smiled at him as hard as he could. Could you psychically transfer confidence? And memory of words? Sam knew them by rote from Barney practising so hard over the weekend.

  Barney stuttered on the first word. He attempted it a few times and then stopped and turned away from the audience. Please, no. He had to carry on. It was bad enough when he felt he had to abandon one-on-one conversations, but there had to be at least eighty people here. Giving up on this would be such a colossal setback. Sam sent him as many ‘You can do it’ vibes as he could. No. They weren’t working. Barney had almost entirely turned his back to the audience now. If a heart could physically break, Sam’s was doing it now.

  Barney started to walk towards the stage wings. And then Sam saw Liv dart out and say something to Barney. He stood still and she carried on gesturing at him.

  And then Barney turned back to face the audience, started speaking, very slowly, with the words of the first sentence rearranged, and carried on, his fluency increasing, looking just above Sam’s face the whole time. Fortunate that he wouldn’t be able to see that Sam’s eyes were moist. He stuttered badly in a few places and gave up on a few sentences and so it didn’t all make sense, but he carried on and he got to the end.

  Afterwards, Sam was pretty sure that he’d never clapped so hard in his life.

  He should email Izzy later. She’d be nearly as proud as he was.

  ‘That was amazing,’ he told the twins backstage, hugging them. Amazing was an extremely inadequate word.

  ‘I missed some of it out,’ Barney said.

  ‘Hey. We all do that. A word-for-word speech is a boring speech. You were fantastic,’ Sam told him. ‘I was so proud. And I could see you using some of your strategies.’

  ‘Yeah. I have to tell Izzy I changed the word order and took it slowly,’ Barney said. ‘And I did the “big fake smile in the restroom” thing beforehand and focused on your eyebrows.’

  ‘You were great. As were you, Liv. Both in your own part and in being there for Barney.’ As Sam reached to hug them both again, his phone buzzed and he removed his arm from Liv’s shoulders to take it out of his jacket pocket. Liv stepped backwards away from him.

  ‘We have to be there for each other because you aren’t,’ she said. Woah. Punch to the gut. Sam knew she was right, though he knew she’d said it to hurt him. And damn, it did hurt.

  Barney’s euphoric smile faded.

  ‘Y-y-y-ou were l-late. You m-m-issed us at the beginning.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. I did my best.’ Sam’s arms were suddenly empty of Barney, too.

  ‘Bye, Dad. You probably need to catch up on the work that you’ve missed. Guess we’ll be eating with Mrs H this evening?’ Liv’s smile and tone were so cold Sam almost shivered. Her evident hostility was almost more horrifying than Barney’s misery.

  ‘Actually, I’m taking you both out for dinner to celebrate how well this went.’ Sam put his phone back in his pocket without looking at it, which cost him a greater effort than it should have done. Neither Liv nor Barney looked as though they wanted him to take them out at this point, but tough. And he’d work through the night.

  Sam took another few sips of his espresso. He was in danger of yawning while Robert Wade, his firm’s senior partner, droned. In Sam’s defence, six forty-five was an unusually early start for a breakfast meeting.

  ‘So to summarise, Sam, the other managing partners and I are unanimous in thinking that you’re the natural choice to take over from Rutger on his retirement, but there have been questions about your commitment level.’ Ironic from a man who’d married four of his PAs, and was just about to move on to the fifth. Of course, Robert was fully committed to the firm, but he didn’t have a good home life to destroy. Reputedly none of his six children spoke to him unless they wanted money. Would this be what Sam’s life was like when he was Robert’s age? Minus the serial PA-marriage thing. ‘For example, today’s meeting was postponed from Monday afternoon after you left the office very abruptly and didn’t return.’

  Was he joking? To climb the greasy pole to partner, Sam had missed so much of his children’s lives, while his mother and sisters and Mrs H babysat in the evenings and on weekends. And now he was partner, apparently it wasn’t enough. They were considering him for the role of head of their Mergers and Acquisition group. Even more money and kudos, sure. But it meant even more commitment. Even less family time. Also even less time for his pro bono work and lecturing, both so important. And if he didn’t go for it, it might ruin his career and then they might not be able to afford their lifestyle. Sure, you didn’t need to be rich to be happy; after all, Sam’s childhood had been idyllic and his parents weren’t rich. But after the twins had lost their mother, he’d wanted to give them the best that money could buy. Education, lifestyle and the best healthcare insurance. They needed his time but they also needed stability and now wasn’t the time for a dramatic lifestyle change. Catch-22.

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘I’d be honoured to be considered and I’m fully committed to the firm. Monday afternoon was unavoidable but it won’t happen again.’ Nothing else he could say.

  The meeting finally at an end, Sam, still reeling, found that his work email inbox was filled, obviously, with a tsunami of annoying messages. He didn’t have time to check his personal inbox, but he did anyway. Izzy had emailed. However pissed at life he was, his mood always lifted at the sight of her name.

  It was Wednesday. Her work from home day. She was probably in her garden. He checked London on his weather app. Nope. Raining and not warm. Very different from the extreme heat in New York this week. She’d have to be inside today. She was suggesting moving Barney’s speech therapy sessions to once a week now that he was doing so well.

  He really hoped that, without Barney’s sessions, their emailing wouldn’t eventually fizzle out. He didn’t think it would, actually. They were real email buddies now. In fact, a couple of emails later, Izzy had achieved the near impossible: Sam was smiling.

  He didn’t smile much again for the rest of the day.

  Hey Izzy,

  Must be the middle of the night in London now. In fact, nearly morning. I’m up way too late (workload).

  Long day. Not a great one. Big and unpalatable meeting first thing. Then, during a working lunch, one of my clients actually made a waitress cry. Swung his arms to demonstrate an amazing golf shot, knocked over a tray of drinks she was carrying, yelled at her for standing too close to him. Client’s a big spender in that (very high end) restaurant so the girl nearly lost her job until a couple of us stepped in. Client then called me a pussy and I called him a dick. He told me I was lucky he needed me so wasn’t going to fire me. I nearly fired myself but then realized I need him too. Not a great realization.

  Liv super pissed at me this evening. I couldn’t work out why, but I did learn that she has an impressive line in swearing.

  Recipe looks good.

  How was painting?

  S

  That was a little indiscreet but it was Sam’s personal email, and he felt a lot better for having told Izzy. This was probably why people liked keeping a diary. It was very therapeutic writing your thoughts down. Except this was better than a diary would be. This was a diary that replied and always wrote exactly the right thing. He looked forward to receiving her emails and he was really looking forward to seeing her next month.

  He should go to sleep.

  * * *

  It always kicked the day off nicely having an email from Izzy waiting for him as soon as he took his phone off airplane mode.

  Morning.

  In mad rush (overslept) – just to say I hope today’s better!

  Pretty sure restaurant (and other) karma will hit the client eventually. Or maybe sooner rather than later. As you know (!) I used to work in a café. I’m not saying that anyone would do this on purpose (not much anyway) but if there’s a choice to be
made between whose plate the staff sneeze over I think we all know who’s getting the germs.

  Hope you’re having a better morning!!

  xx

  Mid-morning, Sam got an email from the hospital who’d been treating Liv for her injuries after the accident.

  They’d been waiting to get a date for what was expected to be a definitive scan. Sam could feel a stress headache starting as he read. So much crashing through his mind. Images of the accident, the immediate stress at the time, the short-term worry that Liv might require amputation, the nights in hospital sitting at her bedside bargaining with every god he’d ever heard of that he’d do anything if they’d let his daughter keep her leg and walk again, the longer-term worry and then hope, now the short-term question marks over whether she’d get back to sport at the level she was at before, whether she’d end up with early onset rheumatism. And of course the guilt, always the guilt.

  Deep breathing. He needed to practise some deep breathing right now.

  He needed to email Izzy. She always said the right thing. He had an urge to call her but she’d probably be busy with work and, besides, they only ever emailed. It was like it was their thing. Maybe chatting by phone would disrupt the balance of their friendship. And with Izzy he didn’t want to open the can of worms that was WhatsApp, with its panic-inducing blue ticks and endless emoji requirements.

  She replied within minutes.