The First Time I Saw You: the most heartwarming and emotional love story of the year

by Emma Cooper

  ‘We own the patent for this software.’

  She is unbelievable.

  My mouth is dry, and I take a sip of water as I watch her.

  ‘Ms Williams?’ I ask, my voice thick and stilted. I meet her eyes, which are hard and cold like amber. ‘Can I ask how long your programmer has been working on this software?’

  ‘I don’t see how that is relevant at this point.’ She looks at me as if she doesn’t know me at all. Maybe she has forgotten me? Perhaps I’m not the only one she has gleaned information from.

  I can’t bring myself to ask her any more questions for the rest of the meeting, so I watch her, this stranger. I try to forget how she laughed at my jokes, and instead think about the way she would avoid telling me about her past, about her family. I try to forget how I had felt when she had fallen asleep with a book in her hand and how I had taken it from her, closed it and kissed her on her cheek; the way she had smiled even though she was asleep. I wonder now if she really had been asleep or if that had been part of her plan, to look vulnerable . . . It can’t all have been a lie, can it? But I push this tiny bit of doubt aside.

  It’s late by the time I return home.

  The phone is ringing. I ignore it; it’s Mam. I love her to bits, but I can’t face hearing about Da’s bowel movements or about how my sister, Sarah, and brother-in-law have angels flying out of their arses. I grab a beer and a packet of crisps and turn on the rugby: Ireland v. Italy. I wince at a particularly hard tackle and roll the beer between my palms. I miss the feel of the game: the primal instinct that pushes you forward; the smell of grass and mud; the burning in your legs and the euphoria as you slam down the ball and score a try. My beer is finished before the scrum is reset for the fourth time, so I grab a refill from the kitchen.

  I’m trying to stay focused on the game, shouting at the referee for allowing so much extra time to the Italians, but my mind keeps wandering to her.

  Nobody knows much about our relationship, at least I don’t think they do, but the day I saw her name on the email, I had spoken to Bret about it. We’ve been mates for a while now; he joined the company not long after me. But I don’t think he would have said anything. I mean, it’s not like I did anything wrong. I told Sophie about an idea, that was all. Just an idea. I didn’t know she worked for Sandwell.

  Week Two

  Sophie

  I have been staying in this hotel for almost two weeks, not that I’m here very often. It seems that every waking minute of my day is spent hunched over a computer or talking into a phone. Samuel has not spoken to me, will not take my calls, has not seen me as I’ve locked myself away with only my colleagues – who have finally arrived to help me with the merger – and the legal team from Greenlight. His silence is gnawing away at me even as I submerge myself in my work, barely eating and drinking far too much coffee.

  I kick off my heels and slump on to the bed. I’m exhausted but pleased with the way the business side of things has gone. The board members, although they’re not going to ask me out for drinks anytime soon, can at least now see how the company will benefit; understanding that – although there may be some restructuring – the majority of the staff will remain. I flick on the TV, my room a festival of stages. I pick up the room service menu and order a chicken sandwich. My attention is pulled towards the ashen greys of a bygone era – my comfort food in television form. The credits are proclaimed across the screen in big billboard letters: ‘Paramount Pictures Presents’, swathed in Hollywood lights and accompanied by dramatic music that must have been recorded in a room full of musicians. I smile as the shot pans towards a man with his head bent, a trilby hat dipping in that casual yet strangely formal way. He speaks through the corner of his mouth, and the woman who replies pronounces the word ‘back’ like ‘beck’. She explains she needs to find a ‘forgotten man’. A forgotten man . . . is that what he is to me? Or is he a man who wants to forget?

  ‘You needn’t be fresh,’ she announces piously. I like that phrase and mimic it at my reflection.

  The stresses of the week are starting to slide away just as my phone vibrates. I turn the volume down and look at the phone screen. I don’t recognise the number.

  ‘Hello?’ I answer.

  ‘Pleased with yourself, are you? Pleased that all of your hard work has turned out well for you?’ His words are slurred.

  ‘Samuel, I—’

  ‘What? What can you possibly have to say to me that will make this right?’

  I consider telling him that he needn’t be fresh, but I don’t think it would strike the right tone. ‘I, look, I’d rather talk to you about this in person. I need to explain why I—’

  ‘Why you stole my idea and passed it off as your own? No thanks, I’m grand.’

  ‘That’s not what happened. If I could come and see you, I could explain?’

  He laughs loudly – an ugly, forced laugh – not the one that I remember; that laugh was so infectious that it made you smile every time you heard it, even when his jokes were terrible. ‘What, and be seen out with you? Consorting with the enemy? No thanks.’

  ‘Then why did you call?’ I ask, my voice quiet and unsure. I look at the screen and at the way the actress is looking down with a sultry smile at the man, and wish for a second that I had a cigarette holder and a glass of champagne too.

  ‘To thank you!’ I can hear the background noise of a bar, almost see him raising his pint glass theatrically. ‘To thank you for leaving like you did! You almost had me fooled, I almost . . . well, anyway, cheers! To the biggest bitch I’ve ever met!’ And with that he hangs up.

  The black phone screen reflects my stricken face. I pace around the room, grab the controller and watch the sloping smile of the hero downing the rest of his whiskey disappearing into darkness. I throw a cushion across the room before taking a few deep breaths, reaching for my laptop, and submerging myself in work.

  I am due to return home the day after tomorrow. The day after tomorrow everything will change; my life will not be the same, because I know that the promotion is mine. I knew that it would be; they have as much as said it. I will be partner.

  The last few people leave the office and cleaning staff begin to clear away the debris of the working day. Tentatively, a young girl reaches over and takes the coffee cup from my desk and smiles at me. I nod my thanks, stretch and then close down my laptop.

  The deal is done but I need to speak to him. I must make him understand why I had no other choice than to leave him.

  Later, as I lie in the bath, softly scented bubbles quivering and gossiping while I sip my cold glass of prosecco, I pick up Great Expectations again. I have been trying to read this book on and off for a year, and each time I do, I get distracted. When I was younger, Helen and I used to love reading. We used to spend our pocket money in bookshops, hiding beneath the covers with a torch: disappearing into someone else’s world. It would block out the sound of the fighting, of the slamming doors and the suffocating sobs from Mum as she locked the bathroom door.

  Even though I’m yet to find out who jilted Miss Havisham at the altar, I close the battered cover again. Sinking lower into the bath, I close my eyes and think of the way he spoke to me, the way he looked at me. He needs to know the truth.

  I watch as the lights of the city glide past the taxi window. Will he just slam the door in my face? I try to quell the feeling of nausea in my stomach – I shouldn’t have drunk so much prosecco.

  The taxi pulls up outside his modest gable-fronted house, which hunches behind a cluster of budding trees. His silver car is gleaming in the driveway in front of a double garage and the lights in the kitchen are glowing amber. The car door thuds behind me, my hand remaining on the handle until an impatient revving of the engine reminds me to let go.

  I knock on the door. Inside I can hear music, something upbeat, and I smile briefly as I remember what awful taste in music he has: dreadful eighties rock music along with a deeply rooted affection for show tunes.

  The
bottom of my heel twists into the gravel, and I step back to look up at the house. He’s definitely in there. I peer through the lounge window, trying to stop myself from laughing out loud as I watch him dancing, badly, with a ridiculous expression on his face – somewhere between having a bowel movement and sneezing. I take in his height; I’d forgotten how tall he is – six foot-twoish – and the way his dark hair flicks up on the right-hand side no matter how hard he tries to tame it. The song, which has him enraptured, is some sort of power ballad. Dramatically, he fills his lungs for the climax, exhaling it with a heartfelt screech; simultaneously playing a strangely shaped air-guitar and gyrating his hips. I crouch down and sneak back to the front door, giving it another sharp knock before the playlist continues.

  The door opens and in an instant, the man I fell in love with is gone, and in his place is a man with cold, calculating eyes and a tight line where his smile should be.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asks, his voice deep and serious; no hint of the high-pitched yelp I had first heard from him, as if his leg had been sliced by an axe, not kicked in the ankle by a Louboutin.

  ‘To explain,’ I reply. ‘May I come in? Unless you’re, um, busy?’ I smile.

  ‘I was just working out.’

  I try to keep the smile on my face. ‘In your jeans?’ I look down at his jeans where his bare feet poke out. I meet his eyes, and for a second, they soften: but only for a second. He pushes the door open and I follow him into the spacious hall, with hardwood floors and white walls, dotted with photos of his family and life back in Derry.

  I follow him into the kitchen where he opens the old-fashioned fifties-style fridge and pulls out a bottle of beer, twists off the lid and throws it into the bin. He turns to stare at me, and drinks deeply. I stare back, lean my back against the kitchen island and wait for him to finish.

  ‘So. Explain.’

  ‘I didn’t steal your idea. We already had the software concept when we were . . . together.’

  ‘Right. So, the reason you left the country in the middle of the night – the night, incidentally, that I told you about my idea that would change my career – and wouldn’t return any of my emails or calls was because . . .?’

  ‘I knew we were going to go after Greenlight.’

  ‘So, you knew that I would probably lose my job?’

  ‘Stop being so melodramatic. You’re not going to lose your job. Can I have a drink?’ He shrugs his shoulders like a sulky child. I walk past him, open the fridge and pull out a bottle of white wine, screw off the lid and swig from the bottle.

  ‘Jesus, Sophie,’ he says, sounding more Irish as he uses the word; he walks over to a cupboard and passes me a wine glass, which I fill to the top.

  ‘You’re not going to lose your job. It will just be . . . changed.’

  ‘What if I don’t want it to be changed?’

  ‘You sound like a toddler.’

  ‘I do not!’ he replies, sounding exactly like a toddler.

  ‘Your company was going down the pan – you know it and I know it. Our acquisition will save it.’

  ‘How can you stand there all high and mighty? You left, Soph, in the middle of the fecking night, no call, no explanation and the next thing I hear is . . .’ he air-quotes, ‘“Goodbye and all the best.”’ He opens the fridge and grabs another bottle of beer. ‘And then, then . . . I find out that you’re heading up the team analysing our data! And you turn up, looking like . . .’ he gestures up and down at me with his beer bottle, ‘that, and tell me that my idea, my big idea that was going to save our company, was actually used to buy it out!’

  ‘I told you, we already had the plans for the software. It wasn’t your big idea, we’d already pitched it.’

  ‘So why not just say that?’

  ‘Because I couldn’t!’ I shout at him. ‘Can we, God, can we sit down? I’m knackered, and my feet hurt.’ I take off my shoes and tread barefoot through the hall and into the lounge, the cool floorboards easing my soles. I sink into the pale-blue sofa and continue to drink my wine, waiting for him to follow me. Leaning my head back, I roll it to the left and right, trying to ease some of the tension.

  ‘Why did you leave, Soph?’ His voice is quiet, like he almost doesn’t want me to answer. I sigh.

  ‘I didn’t know you worked at Greenlight until then.’

  ‘You did! I told you about work, talked about it all the time. I—’

  ‘You talked about computers all the time and you never called it Greenlight.’

  ‘I did, I . . . shit. I always call it—’

  ‘Emerald City,’ we say in unison.

  ‘But you must have guessed, must have—’

  ‘Why? Because there is only one loan company in Washington?’ I laugh. ‘Believe me, I’ve replayed our conversations a million times, and you might find it hard to believe, but I simply never clicked. Besides, if you think about it, we didn’t really talk about work that much.’

  ‘You could have just told me.’

  ‘No, I couldn’t. I’d have had to come off the project.’ I smile at him. ‘Conflict of interest.’

  ‘But nobody knew we were together. It was just us.’

  ‘I couldn’t risk it.’ I shake my head, feeling the effects of the wine as I do. ‘And then if you came out with your “big idea” they would have thought that I’d told you. I’d have lost my job.’

  ‘So, the job meant more to you? More than what we had?’ I look away from the hurt look on his face, his eyebrows creased, and eyes softened. I drink the rest of my wine.

  ‘Yes.’ He looks as me disbelievingly. ‘Don’t look at me like that. I’ve worked hard to get where I am. You don’t know what it’s like to have nothing, Samuel. You have a huge family that loves you, you can walk into anywhere and light up the room with your smile and crap Irish jokes; I’m not like you. I need my job.’

  He leaves the room and returns with another beer and the bottle of wine, then fills up my glass and puts the bottle on the floor. ‘So that’s it? That’s why you left?’ He sits next to me and leans his elbow on the back of the sofa and his head on the heel of his hand. ‘Because of my crap Irish jokes?’

  I laugh and shake my head sadly. ‘If they knew that we were, you know, I’d never have been able to close this deal, and I’d never be able to make partner.’

  ‘And me? Did you care at all what I was going through? That I had no idea what I had done wrong?’

  ‘I never stopped thinking about it. So here we are . . . a sulky Irishman and – what was it? Ah yes, the biggest bitch you’ve ever met.’

  ‘Yeah, sorry about that. I’d had a few jars.’

  ‘It’s OK. I mean, not OK, but I understand why you would think that.’

  We sit quietly for a few minutes; my stomach is churning from drinking the wine so quickly. ‘Oh!’ I get up and smile at him. ‘I have something for you.’

  ‘P45?’

  ‘Funny. Wait there.’ I go back into the kitchen, grab my handbag and return to the lounge. It smells of him: the same fabric softener and remains of this morning’s aftershave. ‘Open your hand and close your eyes.’

  ‘I’m still pissed off at you. You know that, right?’

  ‘Fine, but just do it.’ He leans forward and puts his bottle on the floor, then closes his eyes. I resist the urge to kiss him and instead, put the box into his hand. ‘OK, open it.’

  ‘You’re not proposing, are you?’ He looks down at me and I realise that I’m kneeling on one knee.

  I roll my eyes and sit back on my haunches. ‘Just open it.’

  I watch his hands, the knuckles dotted with pale freckles that are so faint I can’t quite see them, but I know they’re there. I know that he has a small scar on the inside of his left palm from trying to slice an apple when he was making apple pie with his gran but that he tells everyone it happened in a bar fight. I know that he has a slight callous on the inside of his thumb because he scrapes his index fingernail against it when he’s thinking; I know how h
is hands feel when he holds the back of my neck.

  ‘I’d forgotten how you do that,’ he says, looking into my eyes.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Pull at your ear when you’re thinking.’

  ‘Do I?’ I smile at him, pleased that he doesn’t hate everything about me after all. My hair is caught in my hoop earring and I pull the tendrils free as he unwraps the red ribbon and opens the box. Carefully he pulls away the tissue paper and stares at its contents.

  ‘Is that the same one?’ I nod, feeling embarrassed and draining the remains of my glass of wine. Tentatively, he lifts the leaf up and stares at it.

  ‘I never stopped thinking about how I must have hurt you. I wanted you to know that.’

  Samuel replaces the leaf into its box and closes the lid. ‘Thank you.’ He leans forward and reaches for the side of my face, stroking it with his thumb. Everything inside me wants him. I rest my forehead against his.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

  ‘Thank you. I’m sorry for calling you a bitch.’

  And then I kiss him.

  Week Two

  Samuel

  For feck’s sake! For the fourth time this week, I have had to turn around and walk the other way in this building. I mean, would you look at me? I’m actually trying to camouflage myself behind a potted tree while she swings from side to side on one of the wheeled chairs, blond hair swishing neatly with her as she taps those manicured fingers on the desk.

  ‘Samuel?’ I flap the large green leaf out of my way, and pretend to look for something at the base of the plant.

  ‘Kat, hi, just looking for my, erm, my cufflink.’

  ‘You’re not wearing cufflinks, though.’

  ‘Well no, but, I lost one last week and I thought I might have lost it here.’

  ‘In the pot plant?’ she asks, smirking.

  ‘Stop busting my balls, OK?’

  ‘So, you and the Brit-bitch, eh?’ she asks as I step out of the foliage and rearrange my hair.

  ‘Brit-bitch?’