by Alyson Rudd
‘But you mustn’t let it put you off, son,’ Grandpa continued. ‘Me and your grandmother had a wonderful fifty years together. A real team we were. You can’t get through life on your own. I’ve never had to sew a button, never washed a shirt, not even my filthiest underpants.’
Grace rolled her eyes.
‘Like magic, isn’t it?’ she said and Ryan laughed out loud, wondering how at eighty-five his grandfather could get away with saying anything.
The next day it rained and all three of them watched The Quiet Man, with, as Grace put it, ‘the most beautiful Maureen O’Hara in my favourite film of all time’.
Grandpa, rather than doze, as Ryan expected, was transfixed.
‘Have we seen this before?’ he asked.
‘Never,’ Grace said as she winked at her son.
They ate lemon sponge cake at three o clock and had roast beef at seven. Then it was time to haul Grandpa to bed. He always insisted he spend the night in his armchair but Grace was convinced that would be the beginning of the end for him and was strict about his routine. Afterwards, Ryan began wondering about his journey into work. It made sense for him to take the Jubilee line from Dollis Hill to Green Park and then change onto the Piccadilly line from there but that would ensure no sighting of Millie. He knew it was stupid to choose the long route via Rayners Lane but there was the tantalizing prospect that he might be on the train before her and would find out where she began her journey each morning. Such knowledge would surely compensate for the anti-climax on the Northern line. There was a problem though. He needed to calculate what time he should board his train. After much scribbling on a pad of paper, he decided he would vary the timings unless he got lucky and made a plan to arrive at Rayners Lane at 7.35 the first day and then three minutes later for each following day.
Grace called upstairs to ask if he wanted his bacon sandwich toasted or fluffy. She had always called untoasted bread fluffy and as he passed the photographs of Tom he thought, for the first time, that maybe it had something to do with his big brother.
‘You don’t usually leave the house this early, do you?’ his mother asked and he said it was a particularly busy week.
‘Shall I be washing the clothes on your floor?’ she said as if to do so would be as big a treat as being handed a bottle of expensive perfume wrapped in thick cream paper and tied with a velvet bow. It had been so hard not having any need to wash Tom’s clothes that she had sometimes in the distant past washed Ryan’s shorts twice in a day. Usually Ryan would refuse the offer, not wanting to be a burden, not understanding that it was something his mother needed, still, to do. He would have said no but he felt an urge to be freshly laundered so he kissed her cheek and said yes, if she wouldn’t mind, thank you.
‘It’s all magic anyway,’ she smiled.
‘Of course,’ he said and left the house. As he closed the door he heard his grandpa shout out as to why it was he could smell bacon on a Monday and had Grace forgotten to do the washing-up.
As Ryan reached the platform at Rayners Lane he scanned the crowd for almost red hair. There was some, but it belonged to men. He sat in the front carriage feeling proprietorial, expectant, nervous. He rubbed his nose and sat up straight as the train approached South Harrow. No sighting. Sudbury Hill. No sighting. Sudbury Town. No sighting. Alperton. No sighting. Park Royal. No sighting. At North Ealing he got off. ‘No one can doubt my commitment,’ he said to himself but the next train was not fruitful either so he stepped in and stood the rest of the way as an act of penance.
In the canteen, as he ate a sun-blushed tomato and mozzarella salad, Naomi sat opposite him.
‘I miss you,’ she said sarcastically.
‘Will you last the week?’ he said.
‘What’s with the rabbit food?’
‘Rabbits don’t eat mozzarella,’ he said. ‘My mother is fattening me up. I don’t see how I can eat anything else given I’ve already had a massive bacon sarnie today.’
‘I was thinking,’ Naomi said. ‘We could try to solve each other’s problem. It’s easier when it’s not your own heart or lust or sad loserdom or whatever.’
Ryan had no interest in psychoanalysing the morose giant that was Cappi. Actually, he thought, I have no desire to even stand next to a guy that tall. On the other hand, he liked the sound of Naomi offering help. Now he had confessed his obsession, there seemed little downside. It intrigued him that having bared his soul he felt no differently. He had not been shamed into giving up on the whole notion of ever speaking to Millie. If anything, saying the words out loud had added a sheen of reality to what was, in essence, an immature crush. It was now a real thing. Millie was a real person who might, one day, meet Naomi. Who might one day sit at this very table and lean over and stick her fork into a tiny ball of mozzarella, pop it into her mouth and then pretend to choke while wondering if she was eating a piece of plastic. ‘I hate cheese,’ Ellen had said, sprinkling Parmesan on top of her spaghetti bolognese.
The mozzarella date was, though, only a possibility if he continued to be proactive and bold. I can be bold, he thought.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Me first?’
‘Concurrently,’ she said sternly.
‘Deal,’ he said. ‘These tomatoes are shite.’
‘You should have asked me about them first,’ she said.
Two hours later, Ryan headed to the street, to stretch his legs, and saw Cappi sat on a bench in the foyer scrolling on his phone. Ryan paused. This was, he had to admit, excellent timing, and sat down he could cope with his own lack of height. Ryan plonked himself down too, cleared his throat and offered his hand.
‘Hi, I’m Ryan, the guy whose party you were invited to in Ealing.’
Cappi shook his hand but looked puzzled.
‘My friend Naomi, she’s my lodger; she told me she thought you were coming.’
‘I am sorry but I don’t know this.’
‘You are Cappi?’
‘Yes.’
‘Right. OK.’
Without registering it and in his eagerness to be helpful to Naomi, Ryan had shuffled so close to Cappi that he said these last words into the man’s nostrils. Ryan felt himself blushing and once he realized he was reddening he knew it might seem as if he was hitting on the Italian. He wanted to dash off but that might make it worse. He needed to backtrack, to explain, but instead Cappi slowly stood and walked away, muttering a ‘Ciao’ without looking back.
Ryan remained seated, numb with embarrassment. The numbness gave way to an inner groan at his stupidity. He had not even had a plan of action. He had ruined Naomi’s life with a guileless act of spontaneity. He was glad to be staying at his mother’s that evening.
He set off the next day after a fluffy bacon buttie three minutes later than the day before but the outcome was the same. Wednesday and Thursday were equally frustrating but on Friday she was sat, without a book, without a paper, just sat there, in the front carriage looking at her nails. There had been too big a gap in the service and there was nowhere for him to sit but he felt a smidgen of triumph that he now knew she lived beyond Rayners Lane – but as he looked at the map on the carriage wall that fact made little sense. If she needed to change at Leicester Square then it was much faster to take the Metropolitan line, which served all the same stations as those on the Piccadilly line before Rayners Lane.
Ryan frowned and stole a glance at her. She was reading now, the same East Lynne novel by the looks of it. He thought about his brief exchange with Cappi. It was a warning that to try to engage with Millie would be disastrous without planning. Still, he now had two topics of conversation. The novel and her route.
Grace and Ryan were playing Scrabble when Hana arrived home. Her cheeks were as sun-blushed as Ryan’s sun-dried tomatoes and her arms were a rosy pink and she seemed happy.
She looked at the board.
‘“Yowza” isn’t a word,’ she said.
‘Oh, but it is,’ Ryan said.
‘He’s got an app thing that che
cks,’ their mother said, as if she was playing a board game with a scientist from a different galaxy, ‘but we’ll stop now for tea.’
Grace had made a beautiful sponge cake filled with fresh whipped cream and English strawberries and there was a moment when all four of them were silent as they savoured its magnificence.
‘I’ll never leave home,’ Hana said as she took a second slice.
‘Not sure about the fruit,’ Grandpa said as Grace took his plate, and soon he was dozing as a solitary tear trickled slowly down his face.
‘So, Hana; food, weather, scenery. All acceptable?’ Ryan said.
She nodded.
‘I had a full cream tea every day but walked it off come rain or shine and there was plenty of both. We stuck to the coast most of the time and…’
Grace and Ryan blinked to fill the pause. Grace felt her heartbeat quicken.
‘And I met a guy who said he would phone me, which he already did when I was on the train.’
Hana had not been on a date since leaving the sloth. She had been timid, a home bird, uninterested in any man who glanced at her in a way suggestive of flirtation. Ryan could tell this was an important moment for his sister and he wanted to both encourage and discourage her. She did not deserve to be hurt again.
‘Is he living in Devon?’ Grace asked, having decided this was the most neutral, least interfering question she could pose.
‘East London. Could be better but he’s nice. I like him. He suggested afternoon tea in town next weekend. I think that’s a sign he’s nice.’
Grace exhaled and Ryan was struck by how much store Hana placed upon the man’s niceness; as if most men were callous and she had stumbled upon a rare example of empathy.
‘Oh, I think that sounds lovely,’ Grace said.
‘It certainly implies he knows a theme when he sees it,’ Ryan said. ‘We’ll bring Grandpa, he likes scones,’ he added and Hana tweaked his ear.
Chapter 5
‘I thought about welcome-home bunting but instead I’ve stocked the fridge with booze,’ Naomi said that evening.
‘Very thoughtful,’ Ryan said as he disparagingly surveyed the two bottles of rosé.
‘There’s beer too,’ she said. ‘At the back. Beth’s coming here at eight before we’re off out so there’s time to do some problem-solving.’
They sat at opposite ends of the sofa, drink in hand.
‘Any more info?’ she asked.
He filled her in and was pleased that Naomi agreed that Millie’s route was indeed a mystery.
‘Well, I’ve been giving it some thought. Don’t you have to take two weeks off at the end of July?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you be here in London?’
‘I haven’t booked anything yet.’
‘In that case, leave a day at least where you can just stand on the platform until you see her and then follow her so that you know where she works and then you can take it from there.’
‘From where exactly?’
‘Lots of places. Like seeing her at a coffee shop near her office and striking up a conversation that you think you see her most days on your commute. It depends on the office she works in. Maybe she works in a shop and you can buy something from her and ask if she has time for lunch or a walk or a drink. That has to be better than speaking to her on the train, which is a bit weird. No one does that. What do you reckon? Genius or what?’
‘It’s, well, it’s proactive I guess, and my word of the month is “proactive”. It’s also a bit creepy. She’ll think I’m a stalker. Actually, wouldn’t I technically be a stalker?’
‘It’s that or nothing, I reckon. We’re all stalkers if you think about it. Why do I play bridge? Because I’m a stalker. I know where he will be and so that is where I make sure I will be. We are living our lives accidentally on purpose in the hope we will summon some courage – and speaking of which, had any thoughts about my Italian job?’
‘Still thinking, still thinking,’ he said, looking at the floor.
Beth arrived wearing four-inch heels to try to compete with Naomi.
‘You should come with us,’ Beth said, smiling at Ryan with an enforced steadiness, lest she appear needy.
‘I’m meeting some mates,’ he said, even though he was doing no such thing, ‘but thank you, Beth, you are very inclusive. And tall today.’
‘I feel sort of insignificant when walking with Names. Everyone looks at her and it’s like being her poodle on a lead. But not really. Obviously. Because she’s not like that and she’d probably say she feels too much like a tourist attraction sometimes.’
‘She’s not that different, is she?’ Ryan said, although he had noticed the way people stared as if offended that Naomi walked with confidence rather than stooped shoulders.
Alone, because he had no plans at all, he mulled over Naomi’s scheme. He did not mind sitting quietly in his house but had found it simpler, many years ago, to swerve nights out by claiming prior engagements; not that many people had ever asked. Friends sometimes felt the need to drag him along, assuming he would be grateful and drunkenly embrace them, but the longer he drifted away from his time with Ellen the less he wanted to do fun things without her. He was not in more pain – he doubted he ever felt much real pain anyway – it was a matter of respect. He could do anything. Ellen could do nothing. It was not fair.
In any case he needed to sit and absorb Naomi’s plan. It had sounded fun, wacky, harmless when she had described it but he knew it was flawed. Normal people did not follow strangers. Men who wanted to stalk pretty women were weirdos. He was thankful for his flatmate’s help but it was no real help. He would not stoop to it, but the interesting part to him was that he wanted a plan at all – even if the likelihood of him ever properly meeting Millie stood at zero.
The next day, however, his boss asked him if he would attend a mid-morning meeting at the University of East London the following Monday. It meant he could have indulged in a lie-in, but he took the same train as usual and was rewarded by sharing a carriage with Millie. He glanced at the map above her head. There was no good reason for him to change at Leicester Square. Unless. Anyone might take a circuitous route if they were too early for a meeting. He breathed in deeply. He might well change to the Northern line, just to waste time.
The train whistled away from Piccadilly Circus and almost immediately slowed down again, so short was the gap between stations. Ryan straightened as he glanced at her. She did not move. He relaxed. He would change at Holborn as required. As he stood, so did Millie, and he wondered at the irony that she was behind him as they alighted. He paused before a wall map so she could pass by him. He needed the Central line. She was heading to the Central line. And so it came to pass they were both in the same carriage heading east. It had been several years since he had last been on the Central line and he was not used to its trains. He had assumed the first one was out of commission because the windows were seemingly blacked out but as it came to a stand-still he could see it was almost full. For some reason they had designed the trains on this line differently.
He stood at Stratford. She remained seated and he wondered what her job might be that she needed the Northern line one day and the far reaches of the Central on another. He wondered how it was that she had not smiled at him, not even quizzically. He wondered, briefly, if she was real. He wondered, for a while longer, why it was he sat back down. He had time to kill, he told himself. Never a good idea to be too early for a meeting.
They travelled together but not really together to Epping. He did not, now, have time to follow her out on to the street so he stared at his feet glumly. He had knowledge about her that amounted to knowing nothing at all. This might be the only time in her life she would ever visit Epping so it was of no help to him whatsoever. He needed her to have a place of work, just as he had a place of work, so he could find a frame of reference, a Caffè Nero, a flower stall, a park bench.
He sighed, then stepped out onto the platform to ch
eck how to return to Stratford. It was the end of the line and he had to cross the white grilled footbridge for the next departure or wait for seven minutes. As he turned to climb down the steps he heard the doors of the train open and he skipped so as not to miss it. As he placed his right foot into the carriage he turned his face towards the platform and its departure board and saw a flick of candyfloss hair entering a carriage four ahead of his. He shook his head. He was so wrapped up in Millie that he was becoming hyper-sensitive to possible sightings of her. At least this time he did not need to move carriages to be near her. She would be in an Epping office or at an Epping friend’s house. By the time he reached Stratford, he was running late and arrived breathless and apologetic with no time to consider if the reason for his tardiness was utterly ridiculous or, simply, a waste of time.
The lab closed completely in mid-July and Ryan’s tentative plans to holiday with Stu had evaporated thanks to Florence Nightingale, with whom Stu was becoming increasingly besotted.
‘She says you should come too,’ Stu said, ‘she says you have a fine nose,’ and Ryan sneered at what was becoming the refrain of his bachelorhood.
But there was always Paul. Thoughts of Paul always caused Ryan to sigh contentedly. They had met at university but while life had happened to Ryan, Paul had made life happen to him and he used his specialism in molecular genetics to travel the world, lecturing at colleges who usually begged for his expertise and offered translators when needed and accommodation too. Ryan had met up with him in London and Manchester over the past six years when he was briefly back in the UK, as well as Geneva, Turin and Toronto, a touch of glamour in his life made affordable by cheap tickets and Paul providing a bed. Not once had Paul said he was too busy with a girlfriend or included a girlfriend in their adventures. He was currently posted in Seville, probably preparing to explore Spain before the start of the new academic year. Ryan decided a week of Iberian backpacking would be good for him and he hoped good for Paul too. He could probably extend his break and spend longer with his oldest friend. He felt the warmth of a plan well made and fired off an email to him. By the end of the day they had agreed to meet in Barcelona and so pleased was Ryan that he could be heard humming as he ran another interminable stock check the following morning.
