Then I Met You

by Dunn, Matt

  ‘So I see,’ said Simon, marvelling at a huge painting of a sunset on the adjacent wall. ‘You studied this, did you? At uni?’

  ‘Illustration. I wanted to do fine art, but wasn’t quite good enough.’

  ‘But you must be pretty good. Seeing as you do what you do for a living.’

  ‘I guess.’

  Simon nudged her. ‘Have you got any of your work you could show me?’

  ‘Not on me, no.’

  ‘What about on your phone. On your Instagram?’

  He voiced the name of the app like an old man might, which made Lisa smile. ‘I might have a couple, but . . .’

  ‘Let’s see!’

  ‘No!’

  Simon had folded his arms, and looked like he was refusing to move until he got his way, so Lisa sighed exaggeratedly and retrieved her phone.

  ‘Here,’ she said, flicking through her feed until she found some of her recent cover designs, then angling the screen so he could see them.

  ‘These are really good!’

  Lisa was surprised to find herself blushing. ‘You’re just saying that.’

  ‘What motivation would I have to . . .’ Simon hesitated. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound as harsh as it probably did.’

  ‘No, that’s okay. Serves me right. I was probably just fishing for compliments.’

  ‘Well, I’m giving you them!’ Simon peered around the gallery. ‘Maybe you’ll be in here one day.’

  ‘I’m in here now!’

  ‘I mean up there.’

  ‘I think being here as a visitor is the closest I’ll get.’

  ‘You never know.’

  ‘Oh, I think sometimes you do.’ She met his gaze for a moment, then smiled. ‘What about you?’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘Have you always been a . . .’ Lisa hesitated, wanting to pronounce it correctly. ‘. . . barista?’

  ‘What, like was I born one?’

  Lisa gave him a gentle shove. ‘No, silly! For your job.’

  ‘Nope,’ said Simon as he moved on to the next painting, a large canvas depicting Margate beach, though from a time before the donkey rides and deckchairs that dominated it nowadays. ‘I did a linguistics degree, then went travelling round Europe, where I just kind of fell into it, realised I loved coffee – or rather, everything to do with it – and . . .’

  ‘Aha.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The eighties Norwegian pop group. Are they here?’

  ‘No.’ She shoved him again, a little less gently this time. ‘Your coffee story. Fate – you see?’

  ‘What – my life’s calling is to make other people coffee?’

  ‘Why not? There’s worse things to do. And like you said, people like coffee.’

  ‘Other people, at least,’ said Simon, and Lisa grinned.

  ‘And where do you see it taking you?’

  Simon thought for a moment. ‘I’m not sure, really. I’ve always been more interested in the mechanics of it, rather than wanting to run my own café or anything like that. Plus coffee’s the second-most traded commodity in the world, behind petrol, with around four hundred billion cups being drunk every . . .’ Lisa’s eyes glazed over, and he stopped talking. ‘Anyway, so maybe I’d like my own roasters. Import beans from somewhere in South America, sell it here . . .’ He nudged her. ‘Hey – you could even design the packaging. I’d need a logo, and—’

  ‘Whoa!’ said Lisa. ‘Steady on. I don’t know a thing about coffee packaging.’

  ‘And did you know anything about book covers when you designed your first one?’

  ‘No. But I’d read a few books.’

  ‘Well, maybe you ought to start drinking coffee. Just in case.’

  Lisa nodded. Maybe she ought to. She glanced to her left and widened her eyes. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘They’re just starting a demonstration.’

  ‘Of?’

  ‘Well, it’s not going to be how to brew the perfect espresso,’ she said, grabbing Simon by the arm and pulling him through into the next space, where a dozen or so people were stood in front of one of the gallery’s staff. ‘They often do these here. It’s so people can connect with art.’

  Simon hesitated in the doorway. ‘It’s some sort of drawing workshop,’ he said.

  ‘So?’

  ‘I can’t draw.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘But—’

  Lisa shushed him, picked up a couple of clipboards and pencils, and hauled him to the back of the group.

  ‘Okay,’ said the man at the front. ‘In a moment, I want you to spend a minute just looking at the person next to you. Really study their face. Their features. Try to get a sense of them. Then I want you to put that down on paper.’ He looked around the group, then said, ‘Yes?’

  Lisa glanced to her right. Simon had his hand up.

  ‘What if you can’t draw?’ he said, and the man smiled.

  ‘Everyone can draw. Some better than others, obviously, but there’s no right or wrong here. It’s not a competition.’ He turned his attention back to the whole group. ‘Just try to capture the essence of the person. Maybe incorporate something you know about them, something they do, or did. No one’s going to be offended.’

  ‘Want to bet?’ whispered Simon, and Lisa smothered a laugh.

  ‘Okay,’ said the man. ‘Write the name of the person you’re drawing on the bottom of your sheet of paper and . . . everyone done that? Great. Your minute starts . . . now!’

  As Simon gulped audibly – an attempt at humour she appreciated – Lisa turned round to face him. It was the first time she’d really looked at his face, she realised, and she felt a bit mean after her ‘Tesco Value Loki’ description earlier. Yes, he had longish features, and his back-swept hair perhaps exaggerated them a little, but it suited him. Made him look somewhere between not trying too hard and not trying at all. The kind of man you wouldn’t compete for bathroom time with, or who wouldn’t be stealing your hair products. And his smile was . . . nervous? Like he wasn’t too sure of himself. Not at all cocky.

  As she studied him, trying her best to find his ‘essence’, she suddenly remembered he was doing the same to her, and for some reason Lisa found herself blushing. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had looked at her so intently, and she felt a strange, unfamiliar sensation bubbling up inside her. Then, suddenly, and to her immense relief, she realised the man at the front had called ‘Time!’, so she turned her attention to her clipboard.

  ‘You’re a pro. This isn’t fair,’ Simon whispered, so she put her finger to her lips.

  ‘Just get on with it,’ she whispered back. ‘Like he said, it isn’t a competition.’

  ‘Now remember,’ said the man, from the front. ‘Let your eye guide your hand.’

  Simon had crossed his eyes, and Lisa had to try hard not to snigger. Instead, she did her best to concentrate on the task at hand and tried to reproduce on paper what she saw in front of her. In truth, Simon was easy to draw. Regular – if slightly exaggerated – features. Large eyes. A wide mouth. Hair that invited a sweep of a pencil.

  This was what she loved. What she was good at. And what she could lose herself in. So much so that when the gallery worker eventually called time, she’d finished what had turned out to be a fairly detailed portrait.

  ‘Okay,’ said the man. ‘Time to pass them all to the front, and we’ll see what we have.’

  He collected all the sheets and began calling the names out. ‘Is there a Susan here?’ he said, holding up a portrait of a middle-aged woman, only identifiable by the multitude of black squiggles where her hair should be. Sure enough, a woman sporting a huge perm in the middle of the group put her hand up.

  ‘And what do we notice about the drawing?’

  The group looked nervously at each other, no one wanting to be the one to speak, until Simon put his hand up.

  ‘The, um, hair?’ he suggested.

  ‘That’s
right!’ As a ripple of nervous laughter went round the group, the man at the front held his hand up. ‘This is actually good,’ he said. ‘Because it captures something striking about Susan. A defining feature. The essence of her, as I said at the beginning. And that’s what art is all about. A representation of what the artist sees. How he or she interprets what’s in front of them. For example . . .’ He sorted through the drawings, then squinted around the group. ‘Where’s Lisa?’

  ‘Here,’ said Lisa, nervously.

  ‘Would you mind coming to the front?’

  She exchanged a look with Simon, ignored his ‘Teacher’s pet’ comment, then made her way through the group to stand next to the gallery worker.

  ‘Right,’ said the man. ‘I’m going to show you Lisa’s . . .’ He squinted at the drawing Simon had produced. ‘Portrait,’ he said, as if unhappy with his choice of the word. ‘And I want you to tell me what you see.’

  ‘She’s very . . . slim,’ suggested a woman at the front.

  ‘Very slim,’ agreed another.

  ‘And?’

  ‘She’s holding a megaphone,’ said the first woman.

  ‘Is she shouting?’ asked a young girl at the back.

  ‘It’s an ice cream,’ suggested a familiar voice. ‘And she’s dropping it.’

  Lisa took a step forward and peered at Simon’s drawing. ‘A stick figure?’ she said, trying to locate him in the group.

  ‘I told you I couldn’t draw.’

  The man at the front laughed. ‘Did you want to get your own back?’ he asked, handing her the pile of drawings, so she leafed through and found the one she’d done of Simon.

  ‘Now this is a little better,’ said the man, showing it to the group, and, when there was a chorus of impressed gasps, Lisa blushed a little.

  ‘That’s amazing!’ said an older woman at the back.

  ‘And what’s the first thing you notice about it?’ asked the gallery worker.

  ‘The eyes,’ said someone else.

  ‘What about them?’

  The group had gone silent, and Lisa felt something flip in her stomach. She’d suddenly realised what it was – just as the woman at the front had put her hand up.

  ‘Well, he’s smiling,’ she said. ‘But for some reason, he looks . . .’

  ‘Sad,’ suggested someone else.

  ‘Okay.’ The gallery worker handed Lisa her drawing, then picked another one from the pile – and as he started to discuss that one, she made her way back through the group and retook her place next to Simon.

  And though he was smiling, though perhaps not quite as broadly now, Lisa understood exactly what they meant.

  Chapter 19

  Simon sat on a bench and gazed out of the gallery window, his eyes drawn to the people milling about in the square outside. Mostly they were couples, off out for the afternoon – a visit to the gallery, followed by bit of shopping, perhaps, and maybe a coffee later. Much like he and Alice used to do at the weekends.

  For a moment earlier, he’d almost struggled to keep it together. He and Lisa had been – though it would have pained him to have admitted it – having fun in the drawing class, but when he’d realised that was what that long-forgotten feeling was, he’d been stuck by a pang of guilt so sudden, so painful, that he’d had to fight to keep the smile on his face.

  He hadn’t looked at a woman’s features so closely, so intensely, since the night Alice died, when he’d eventually plucked up the courage to go and see her body in the hospital, to say goodbye. Simon had been reluctant, worried about what he’d encounter, concerned that he didn’t want that to be the last memory he had of her, but instead she’d looked . . . peaceful. Calm. In complete contrast to what he’d been expecting, given the nature of the accident that had ended her life and taken her away from him forever.

  The accident. He hated the word. Calling it an ‘accident’ would suggest it was nobody’s fault, and that absolutely wasn’t the case. Lisa would probably disagree with that, of course. Tell him there was nothing he or anyone could have done to prevent it happening. That it was fate. But the only thing he knew for sure was that it had been fatal.

  Then again, maybe Lisa’s approach was the correct one. If there was nothing he could have done about it, then he shouldn’t feel guilty. It would certainly make it easier to move on, if it had just been a bump in the road, rather than the complete dead end Simon had been treating it as.

  He checked his watch. Lisa had been in the toilet for a while – perhaps not surprising, given the amount they’d had to drink earlier – so he’d taken the opportunity to collect his thoughts. Deep down, he knew that seeing this date through to the hopefully not-too bitter end was the right thing to do; not only because it was polite, or because Will needed them to – otherwise Jess would have nothing to write about (and it was surely better for Simon and Lisa to ‘make up’ the rest of the date themselves than to leave it to her imagination) – but also because the longer it went on, the more he had to admit that Will was right. He needed to ‘get back in the saddle’, as his best friend had so poetically described it – and far better to have a dry run with someone he had no prospect of ending up with, and to make any rusty or rookie mistakes on Lisa’s time rather than potentially mess something up that had, well, potential.

  The questionnaire had been tough too. He hadn’t admitted to Lisa why he’d answered how he had for the first question, and, while he felt a little guilty, he’d had his reasons. The night Alice had died, he’d been due to meet her for dinner, so he’d sat there in the restaurant and waited, and waited, ignoring the looks from the other diners, the slightly sneering questions from the waiters as to whether he was ready to order. Then Alice’s mother had called his mobile, sobbing, and though he’d found it hard to make out what she’d been saying, the word ‘hospital’ had sent him sprinting from the restaurant faster than he’d ever run in his life.

  When he’d got there, a place where he’d met her after work dozens of times, the building where (ironically) Alice had helped save countless lives, he’d found her distraught family waiting in the corridor, with Alice’s mother – normally a strong woman, and someone he’d always been a little scared of, if he was honest – a shadow of her former self, inconsolable, and her father pretty much the same. So he’d done his best to remain strong. Mainly because giving in to the alternative was something he might never have been able to recover from.

  He hadn’t even cried at the funeral. Still in shock – or, at least, that was what everyone assured him he must be. And while her family had been great – treating him like one of them, despite the fact that Alice and he had only been together for six months – he’d still felt like an outsider. An interloper. Gatecrashing their grief, like he didn’t belong anywhere near it. And even though he’d promised them he’d stay in touch, it had been easier not to. Less painful, certainly. So when he’d moved down to the coast, he hadn’t even given them his new address – something he still felt a little ashamed of, but not so ashamed that he wanted to do something about it.

  But it was hard, when you lost ‘the love of your life’ – another phrase people would trot out on occasion, which was meant in some strange way to comfort him but instead had the opposite effect – although after a while, he’d begun to doubt if that had even been the case. How could he have known whether Alice was the love of his life or not? That was only something you’d be able to tell retrospectively – on your own deathbed, surely – so perhaps he shouldn’t be putting her on such a high pedestal just yet? And, weirdly, that doubt had been the most comforting part.

  What was worse was, Alice hadn’t left a will. At twenty-nine, death hadn’t been something that she’d thought she had to worry about, let alone plan for. They didn’t live together, hadn’t even been together for each other’s birthdays, so Simon hadn’t had – and therefore didn’t have – anything of hers to remember her by, except for what he remembered about her.

  And that had been – still was – his bigge
st fear about dating someone else; that by seeing somebody new, he’d forget all about Alice. Because while that maybe wouldn’t be a bad thing, in another sense it would be the worst thing in the world. But, even so, there were times when that was exactly what he wanted to do, because the pain was so great, the confusion over how he was supposed to feel so bewildering.

  As time had passed, and he’d busied himself with his new life – his new job – there were occasions nowadays when it took him more than a moment to remember what Alice looked like. And that was the thing that made him the saddest of all.

  ‘So, what’s next?’

  Lisa’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts, and he leapt up from his seat like a schoolboy caught doing something he shouldn’t.

  ‘Next?’

  ‘Your choice, remember. So, where are we going?’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘Try to show a little enthusiasm, please!’

  ‘Sorry. It’s not that. I just . . . you’re the local, and I don’t really know . . .’

  ‘Okay.’ Lisa peered out through the gallery window and her face lit up. ‘How about Dreamland?’

  Simon frowned, wondering whether that was a euphemism, then he twigged. ‘The funfair?’

  ‘Why not? We’ve got to give the impression we’ve had the best date ever, done a ton of fun things, had some excitement!’ She widened her eyes to emphasise that last word. ‘And given that this is Margate, we don’t actually have a lot of other options.’

  ‘You wouldn’t prefer something a bit more’ – Simon performed the most exaggerated set of air quotes so far – ‘“romantic”?’

  Lisa looked at him for a second or two, then she mimed a yawn; so, obediently, Simon allowed himself to be escorted out of the gallery.

  ‘You’ve been before, I take it?’ he asked.

  ‘Once. When I was nine or ten. My mum and dad took me for my birthday.’

  ‘But you’ve not been back?’

  ‘Nope. Can’t remember why. They never took me again for some reason, then it closed down, and they only reopened it a couple of years ago.’