by Alyson Rudd
His whole body felt energized and he smiled at how easily pleased he was – memories of Grace telling neighbours that he was such a sunny child came flooding back. His brain felt massaged and optimistic and as he reached for the Sudoku at lunch he paused. He had had a brainwave. He had solved Naomi’s problem.
Chapter 6
Hana had been taken to afternoon tea at The Ritz. This, as far as Grace was concerned, meant there would soon be an engagement. She phoned Ryan, desperate to share the news. Fortunately, Ryan was still in an overly benign mood and was patient with his mother.
‘It sounds great but, Mam, don’t mention weddings, she’s still, understandably, cautious and she should be cautious. She married that idiot too soon and look how that worked out.’
Grace sniffed that she knew perfectly well her daughter needed to be careful but that she had a feeling.
‘I’ve never seen her so happy, Ryan,’ she said.
‘Oh, Mam, you’ve not even met him yet,’ Ryan said, trying very hard not to sound impatient.
‘I’ve told Hana he’s very welcome to join us for a Sunday lunch and she’s going to ask him.’ There was a note of triumph in his mother’s voice. ‘And when he does, you have to be there too of course.’
‘Of course,’ Ryan said, making a mental note to take Millie to his mother’s only after he had been seeing her for at least three years.
It was a thought that punctured his buoyant mood and reminded him that he was a deluded obsessive who had seriously considered stalking a woman who might be in a very happy long-term relationship with a handsome lawyer or surgeon. A tall lawyer. A well-built and athletic surgeon who owned a cleverly designed glasshouse that overlooked the sea from its position in front of a giant rock where there were hidden music chimes and ledges for picnics for Millie to share with her lace-clad friends.
Grace filled the pause.
‘And so that leaves my lovely Ryan,’ she said. ‘Anything romantic in the air?’
‘You’ll be the first to know, Mam,’ he lied.
Naomi was late home that evening. Ryan heard her trying to be quiet in the way all people who have had one drink too many try to be quiet. There were a few stifled hiccups and then the piercing clink of a dropped tumbler. He decided not to leave his room. He did not want to find himself offering to sweep up the shards of glass but mostly he wanted to deliver his smart route to Cappi while she was fully attentive and therefore fully appreciative.
He booked his flight to Barcelona at his desk, having travelled in earlier that morning without a sighting of Millie. His boss had given him a strange look when he had asked to extend his two weeks.
‘Amazed you didn’t ask sooner,’ he said. ‘I’m off for a month but as long as Abi can cover, we’re OK.’
His life was back on track. The optimism returned and it was as if Millie, her hair clipped back but strands falling over her cheeks, had turned to smile at him. He could picture her face clearly and although he had seen her smile properly just the once, when helping the panicked student, he felt as if he had known her smile for years.
Ellen had a beautiful smile too. They had met in the student bar, played cards together, gone for long walks, had sex in the sea off Santorini, wandered around art galleries hand in hand, speculated on what they would call the puppy they would own when they had a home of their own, had been inseparable for the next fourteen months until her mother killed her.
Ryan bit his lip. Ellen always returned when he was at his happiest. She had liked Paul and he had liked her so the three of them often sat up late with a cheap bottle of wine or some cider and discussed the things that students thought mattered. He could feel the warmth of her smile whenever he thought about Paul. It made sense. No one else he knew now had ever known her. Grace had met her but only for an afternoon, and Hana too, but only for an hour or so.
He drummed his fingers on the desk. It might look like guilt but it was not guilt. There had never been any guilt. He knew what guilt was, he had seen his mother very definitively guilt-ridden for years, and nor was it pain. It was not even grief. He was too young to grieve properly. Ellen’s death bore no meaning. Young, healthy people did not die. One second she was there and the next she was not and it felt like a break-up. He had seen break-ups, counselled friends through break-ups. One second there were couples, there was Dom and Lois, Callum and Suzanna, and then the boys were single again. He still went drinking with Dom and Callum but, once it was over, he never spoke to Lois or Suzanna. Perhaps he never even set eyes on them again. It was like that with Ellen. He saw her the night before it happened but had not seen her, not properly, since. He might have cried, he was pretty sure he had cried, but more in disbelief than sorrow. He was just another student with a gone girl.
He scowled at the fridge as if his agitation would be enough to summon something edible.
‘The cupboard is bare, Ryan,’ Naomi said, ‘but all is not lost. I really want to sit at an outside table at that new café with the papers and pretend I am in Paris. I’d rather go with you than alone. So?’
He smiled. This was the perfect way to unveil his grand plan. They hovered close to a couple who had drunk their lattes and paid their bill but were still deep in conversation. There were only five outside tables and all of them were taken.
A waitress came up to them and asked if they were there for drinks or having brunch.
‘We’d like to eat,’ Naomi said loudly and the engrossed couple’s body language indicated they knew they should leave.
‘I’m sure a table will be free soon,’ the waitress said, not quite as loudly but loud enough.
Finally, they were sat in front of plates of eggs Benedict and Ryan waited.
‘So, where are we with our plans?’ she said, adopting an air of joviality. Ryan was not fooled.
‘I think you’re sorted,’ he said.
‘Oh, am I now?’
‘Cappi thinks I am gay and that I have tried to, you know, flirt with him. And he seemed pretty pissed off about it. This gives you the exceptionally good reason to apologize for my behaviour, tell him I was trying to do you a favour because, in fact, the person trying to flirt with him is you. Lovely, that is. Could be a scene from a Richard Curtis film. In fact, it ought to be. And it’s also genius because if he shrugs then at least you know he isn’t interested and you can abort the mission.’
‘Clever, I’ll help you with the screenplay. But why does he think you’re gay in the first place?’
‘It just sort of went a bit awry after I shook his hand,’ Ryan said.
Naomi nodded, picturing the slightly too friendly, slightly too sensitive, arguably attractive Ryan touching Cappi’s hand instead of grasping it, then grinned.
‘I’ll do it,’ she said. ‘Now, over to you.’
‘Sort of in progress but definitely proactive, which is clearly my word of the summer. I have three weeks off, not two, and the third of them will be, well, it will have something to do with Millie. Look, I can’t follow her but I promise to smile at her, speak to her. Something. I promise.’ He did not tell her that he had accidentally on purpose followed her a second time.
Naomi pouted.
‘I’ve been thinking it through, though,’ she said. ‘I decided you should wear a baseball cap or something, just in case she half recognizes you. You shouldn’t be Commuter Ryan, you should be Sherlock Ryan.’
Ryan shook his head while trying to calculate how he could be a detective without being a stalker. Would wearing a deerstalker hat take the edge off how sinister it all felt? The thought of it made him smile at least. You could argue, he thought, that I have already done quite enough following as it is.
The rest of the brunch was spent in a jovial climate. All things were possible, after all. They could be geniuses. Just as people put off folding the laundry or filling in a tax return, they can also put off the more pleasant chores because they suspect the anticipation might be as good as it gets. Ryan and Naomi were on the same adventure trail bu
t had reached a fork in the road which meant they had to find their prize on their own from now on. This moment was the best, when they could be self-deprecating but optimistic, each prodding the other to have faith. They were each creating a bubble for the other, one in which they could be daring, close to heroic, prepared to give fate a shove in the back, and because both of them were – right now – dreamers, their chatter lacked cynicism. Naomi believed if Ryan could pull it off then so could she. Ryan believed if he could guide Naomi into the arms of the shy and surly Cappi then surely he could one day share eggs Benedict with his Piccadilly girl.
There was one more formal bridge class before the summer break. Numbers had steadily dwindled since the end of May and there were just four of them and eight packs of cards. Naomi disliked the game but liked how when sat opposite Cappi he was forced to look at her and she would try to inject some sexual tension into a bid of ‘three clubs’. It never worked. Ryan’s plan was a good one but she felt it was high risk and tried to make herself believe that if he did indeed shrug off her declaration of attraction she would be half grateful that she could dump the bridge club.
Gordon, the avuncular professor who ran the club, had brought along some prosecco to mark the end of the semester. He did not ask if anyone wanted a glass, he just poured and firmly handed all four of them plastic picnic flutes that were an odd shade of cloudy orange. If unbreakable glassware could go stale then this is what it would look like, thought Naomi. On the other hand, Gordon could not have performed better had I bribed him, she decided.
They all made small talk, about their summer plans, their courses, their papers, the weather. It was too intimate a gathering to pull Cappi to one side. She walked over to the window to break up the quartet and, a few moments later, there was a tender tap to her elbow. She half turned, she half smelled an Italian aftershave, but there stood Gordon.
‘I wonder if I might interest you in accompanying me to the National Portrait Gallery next week,’ he said and she realized, almost immediately, that he had been summoning the courage to speak to her alone for a long time and that the prosecco was not to toast the wonders of bridge but for her. Be kind, she thought to herself. Don’t flinch.
‘That’s a nice thought,’ she said. ‘I’m always thinking I don’t do art or museums enough.’
She held his arm and leaned in. ‘I’m being presumptuous but, just in case you are asking in the going-on-a-date sense of asking, I’m already dating.’
Gordon gulped, smelling more now like a man who was wearing too much English deodorant. ‘Of course, of course,’ he said. ‘Nice prosecco, isn’t it?’ And he moved back to the table.
Naomi remained rooted by the window as she heard Gordon tell the group: ‘It’s tough being single actually these days. I expect you’re both in relationships, I know Naomi is.’
Bemused by the bitterly personal detour in the small talk, Cappi and the sweet undergraduate called Sami, stood to leave. Love, actually, thought Naomi, is a nightmare.
Chapter 7
He sat on one of the smooth grey Gatwick departure-lounge chairs. Boarding information was a full forty minutes away. He looked around at his fellow passengers and could almost hear Ellen’s voice. ‘They are on honeymoon,’ she would have said. ‘That pair, they have just met.’ She would be warming up, flexing her powers of observation. ‘And those two, by the vending machine, they broke up last week but neither wanted to be the one to give up on the holiday.’ Ryan looked closely at the vending-machine couple. Maybe Ellen was right. There was a stiff politeness to their demeanour, laced with intimacy. ‘Let’s pretend we are brother and sister,’ she once said, hoping to induce a few gasps of horror when they kissed. ‘Hey sis,’ he spluttered, ‘Hey bro,’ she said, straight-faced. ‘What shall we buy Mum for her birthday?’
Ellen had been the energetic one, she had pulled him into bed and then out of bed in order to explore, to be alive. She could have written a book on how to have fun on the cheap. She saw beauty in almost everything, prodded him to acknowledge it and then whisked him off in the opposite direction. Someone had said, afterwards, that she had lived life to the full, as if that made her loss easier. But it made it worse. All that vibrancy and optimism gone to waste, and without her he had slowed right down again, reduced to daydreams about a woman with nearly red hair who was so still, so serene and so not like Ellen.
‘Cheers. Great to see you, buddy,’ Paul said.
They were sat in a square full of bars. There was a flautist nearby and an atmosphere of indulgence. They were but two minutes’ walk from the apartment Paul had rented. They were the same age, but Ryan felt younger, less experienced. Mostly, though, he felt completely at ease. He would never say it out loud but he loved this man like a brother and he wondered, fleetingly, if Tom were here, would he love him as much as this?
‘Trouble is,’ Paul said, ‘you can’t give the city just one night. I reckon we should stay three days before heading…’ He shrugged. ‘We have an end point, which is Seville, but we can get there however you fancy.’
‘Or maybe we’ll just stay put,’ Ryan said as he sipped at his Estrella.
Four beers later they reluctantly stood up.
‘This might be the worst bar we visit, we need to explore, man,’ Paul said and so they glided through the city heading towards the beach, slowly becoming as drunk as every other English tourist in Barcelona that day. They bought some bottles of water and sat on the sand in silence, comfortable in each other’s company and with enough shared memories to bridge the fact they rarely met up these days. In front of them a group of students, all of them attractive, played volleyball. They both hoped to be asked to join in. They both slowly realized they were too old to be noticed.
‘Odd to say this now, in front of so many young women frolicking in the sun, but I need to get a job in England soon,’ Paul said. ‘I don’t know why, really, but I think it’s because I was dating this girl,’ – he waved his hand dismissively – ‘in Italy, in Turin, and she was something. Everything? But nothing because… Because she didn’t get it.’
‘Get what?’
‘The joke. There’s this humour thing, this humour gap I’ve found. You can’t have a proper laugh unless it’s with someone from home.’
‘So you broke it off because she didn’t laugh at Mr Bean?’
‘Exactly and oppositely. She did like Mr Bean. It was impossible.’
They both chuckled and Ryan realized his heart was thumping at the prospect of his best mate working in London, maybe at the same university.
‘Yeah, well, do what you have to do but don’t move to Glasgow or Aberystwyth. I want a pal based someplace I’d like to visit.’
‘I was thinking London,’ Paul said. ‘Your turn to be the host, mate.’
‘You can join me in my latest hobby.’
‘Yeah? You a free runner now, flying up the side of Tower Bridge?’
‘Sometimes, but mostly I follow women on the Tube.’
There was a silence. Paul did not want to be flippant. He knew his friend would expand.
Ryan sighed.
‘I’m telling you to cure myself before it gets too weird and hard core. Basically, I see this girl on the way into work and she’s got to me, so I stayed on the Tube longer than I needed to and when she got off I got off too. She went towards the Northern line and I had to get back to work, so I did, but… you know, pathetic stuff.’
‘OK,’ Paul said patiently, keeping his voice neutral.
‘I just thought, and Naomi thinks it too, if I knew where she works, I could try to buy her a coffee more easily…’ he trailed off. If there had a been a plan, it now escaped him. ‘Anyway, I had to go to Stratford and so I was half thinking of following her on the Northern line first for a bit, but she went to Stratford too and I was early so I stayed on until the end of the line because that’s what she did.’
Paul snorted.
‘And?’
‘I had to go back again immediately. I had bec
ome the guy who’s late because he was too early.’
‘Shame,’ Paul said. ‘Maybe she’s a double-glazing saleswoman.’
‘No she isn’t.’
‘She’s a Jehovah’s Witness.’
‘No. She isn’t.’
‘Then find out.’
‘Naomi thinks I should spend a day stalking her but I’m not stalking someone.’
‘Again.’
‘Whatever. I didn’t feel great about it.’
There was a silence between them as summer sounds buzzed and sand, kicked up by the volleyball players, flitted past their outstretched toes.
At last Paul spoke.
‘It’s not technically stalking any more. You’d be solving a mystery. You could call it research.’
‘Research for what?’
‘Your soul, my curiosity. Hell, what have you got to lose? You can’t keep spotting her on the train and mooching about it. Have fun with it. I would. If you can’t say hi to her on the train then you have to find a way to speak to her in the street. Simple, really.’
Ryan wondered why he did not own a baseball cap and then remembered that whenever he had worn one his curly hair had sprung from the sides, making him look like a clown or a five-year-old. Any other form of hat would be inappropriate given it was July. He would have to risk recognition. He was taking another risk too. She might easily be on holiday herself.
He arrived at the station fifteen minutes earlier than usual, ready for a long haul or a very brief interlude. He had made himself porridge for breakfast, a rare event, which was why he had nothing but raspberry jam to add to it, but he did not want to become sidetracked by hunger. He let thirty trains come and go and then walked back to Cotton Lane and watched the entire first two series of Scrubs, his favourite-ever sitcom. He set off twenty-five minutes earlier the next day and was just as unsuccessful. She’s in California, he thought, or Mallorca or Tenerife or she has simply decamped to her lover’s palace on the seafront.
