by Rebecca Done
Eventually she succeeded. ‘I can’t believe it. How are you?’ She knew it was a question so vast that he wouldn’t have a hope of answering it, but she thought it might at least buy her some time to try and remember how to behave normally.
He laughed softly, and scratched the back of his neck. ‘Er, a bit head-fucked.’ His voice, unbelievably, sounded just the same. ‘But very relieved to see you’re still in one piece.’
Smiling nervously at one another, they could have been teenagers on a first date. Smudge, who had positioned himself at a neat equidistance between them, kept looking from Jess to Matthew and back to Jess again, as if to say, Hello? What the hell is going on here? Can someone fill me in? Guys? Guys?
‘This is great,’ Matthew said then, his gaze conducting a tour of her living room, of all the things Zak had been flinging around and swearing about only hours earlier. ‘It really suits you.’
‘I collect trinkets,’ she said apologetically. ‘I’m not very of-the-moment.’
He shook his head to disagree. ‘My house has hand sanitizer where all the ornaments should be. Trust me, this is much better.’
She smiled. And then, because she couldn’t quite believe he was standing in front of her and she’d been waiting to say it for seventeen years, she said quickly, ‘I’m sorry, Matthew.’
This seemed to catch him off guard, and for a couple of moments he remained motionless, just looking at her. Eventually he spoke, his words tumbling out on a tightly coiled snatch of breath. ‘Jess … don’t be crazy. You’re not the one who should apologize.’
Absurdly, she disagreed by nodding fiercely. ‘I am. I am. I’m so sorry for what happened to you.’
He stepped forward then and grabbed her hand, fingertips grazing the scar that crossed her palm. His grip dwarfed hers as it always had, the warm clasp of it enough to send her heartbeat into full pelt.
‘It’s me who should apologize. I’ve been trying to find you so I could say it. I’m so sorry – for everything. I know I was the one in the wrong. I know that, Jess.’ He was squeezing her hand on every second word.
‘No,’ she managed, working her fingers against his in return, aware somehow that this might be her only chance to rediscover him. ‘You weren’t.’
‘You don’t have to say that.’
‘I know I don’t. But I never blamed you. Never.’
Matthew seemed surprised enough by this to gently relinquish her grasp. ‘Fuck,’ he said, rubbing a hand across his face in apparent confusion. ‘None of this is making sense in my head.’
‘Did you come here expecting me to hate you?’
‘Yes,’ he said simply, and then became quite still. They were both now staring helplessly into the eyes of their past, unable to change a thing.
‘I don’t hate you,’ she said. It was only a half-sentence, and she wanted to finish it, but she swallowed back the words just in time.
Matthew moved forward then and pulled her into an unexpected hug. She slipped her arms round his waist in return, burying her head against his shoulder with the same quiet ease as she used to. His body felt almost exactly the same as it had all those years ago – more muscular, perhaps, but otherwise just the same.
‘Sorry,’ he mumbled into her hair. ‘Just tell me to get off.’
She shook her head against his chest and they stayed like that for maybe thirty seconds, breathing in sync, before he finally pulled away.
He took her hand and they sat down next to each other on the sofa, knees almost but not quite touching. Smudge trotted over from his usual spot next to the hearth and positioned himself with satisfaction on top of Matthew’s feet, claiming him for the duration of his visit, however long that should happen to be.
‘Yesterday, Jess,’ Matthew said, ‘when I saw it was you …’ He ran a hand backwards over his head, a gesture of lingering disbelief. ‘I’m so sorry I let them cart you off like that. I have never wanted anyone to be carted off less in my entire life.’
She waited, sensing there was more to come.
‘But Natalie … my girlfriend … she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know about my past. And neither does my daughter, obviously.’ He winced, like it pained him to admit it. ‘I was planning on being at the food fair alone yesterday because I wanted to see you. But then at the last minute Natalie said she’d join me.’ He shot her a half-smile of resignation. ‘She normally hates things like that.’
‘How can she not know about us?’ Jess whispered, like she was afraid Natalie might somehow be able to hear them.
‘She was out of the country at the time it all happened, working in New York. She completely missed the whole thing. And I just … never got round to telling her. So now I inhabit this weird little world where I’m half normal person, half paranoid wreck. I regret not telling her, obviously, but now it’s too late. If she found out … well, I’d never see my daughter again, for one.’
‘You really can’t … ?’
‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘I’ve come close to telling her, sometimes. But that kind of thing … it’s not Natalie’s bag, if you know what I mean.’
Not Natalie’s bag. Like they were discussing gangsta rap or anti-establishment rallies.
‘You don’t have to explain anything to me,’ she said.
‘Well, I think an explanation’s the least you deserve, Jess. Not that I’m doing a particularly great job at it.’
She wanted to take his hand again, to reassure him if that was even possible, but as she looked down she noticed that he was wearing a bracelet, woven in black leather and fitting snugly round his tanned wrist.
The sight of it coursed through her chest like electricity.
Attempting and failing to swallow, she began to produce words at a previously unvisited pitch. ‘Do you wear that all the time,’ she asked him, nodding down towards his wrist, ‘or is today a special occasion?’
Following her gaze, he paused for a couple of seconds, like he was trying to work out what to say. ‘Both,’ he replied eventually. ‘I’ve worn it every day for the last seventeen years. But, yes – today feels …’ He paused. ‘Slightly extraordinary.’
‘I can’t believe it’s lasted all this time.’
He cleared his throat before lowering his voice in confession. ‘Between you and me … I have been known to wax it.’
She broke into a smile. ‘That’s very diligent of you.’
‘Well, you know. It’s the only one I’ve got.’
Their eyes met with a mutual memory. She wanted to lean in and hug him again but resisted as a fleeting image of Natalie crossed her conscience.
‘So … does Natalie know you’re here?’
He nodded. ‘Actually, she asked me to come.’
Jess felt her heart sink a little.
‘She thought I should probably check you weren’t briefing your legal team or something. And,’ he added, shifting slightly and digging into the pocket of his jeans, ‘she wanted me to give you this.’ He extracted his wallet and, from it, a wad of notes that he passed to her. Jess swallowed as their fingers brushed. ‘Just … think of it as compensation,’ he said, though she knew he could sense her doubt. ‘For you missing your slot yesterday, and everything.’
‘How did you know I had a slot?’
‘I picked up a flyer in the deli on Friday. And I just thought … maybe it would be a good chance to speak to you. With the aid of some crowd cover, obviously, in case it went horribly wrong.’
She watched him for a moment while she took this all in. ‘Honestly, you don’t need to do that,’ she said eventually, holding out the money.
‘Please keep it,’ he said with a shake of the head. ‘I’ll only have to launder it if you don’t.’
She relented with a smile; but as she set the notes aside, a thought occurred to her. ‘You’re not being charged with anything, are you?’ she asked him, suddenly fearful. ‘I told them it was my fault.’
‘I know. I called in at the police station yesterday. And no �
� they’re not charging me. Thanks mainly to you, obviously, for so evidently having never read the Highway Code.’ He released a breath. ‘Ah. It’s been an interesting twenty-four hours.’
By his side, Jess experienced her own small hiatus of quiet relief.
‘But look, never mind me.’ He turned to her. ‘What about you – are you okay? What happened at the hospital?’
Involuntarily, she shifted, her thigh muscle twinging painfully in protest. ‘I’m fine,’ she reassured him. ‘Soft tissue bruising and swelling. No lasting damage.’
Visibly relaxing, he nodded slowly. ‘Thank fuck for that.’
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
His expression became thoughtful. ‘No, I mean, listen – at the end of the day, I think we should all just be grateful that you never decided to become a lollipop lady.’ He shot her a smile and ran a hand over his jaw. ‘Imagine the carnage.’
Jess covered her mouth with renewed mortification. ‘I’m so sorry. You must think I’m insane.’
He shrugged lightly, but his eyes were twinkling. ‘Just assumed you were bored, or something.’
She attempted to explain. ‘I’d been seeing you everywhere. Or I thought I had. In the end I managed to convince myself that I was imagining you. Until yesterday, obviously, and then …’
He laughed. ‘Oh, you definitely get points for the most creative way to ID someone.’
She laughed back. ‘Thanks. I think.’ A pause. ‘So I was right? It has been you these last few weeks? I wasn’t imagining it?’
He hesitated, meeting her eye with a smile. ‘You might have to bear with me on this. It involves an amount of stalking I’m not quite comfortable with.’
She smiled back, pretending to mull it over. ‘I’ll try.’
‘Okay, well …’ He rubbed his chin. ‘We got here a few weeks ago, and I’d been sort of working up the nerve to contact you. I wanted to say sorry, for everything that happened between us, but the moment never quite seemed right. Either I was with Natalie or you were with … someone else or you were out when I knocked. I thought about putting a note through your door, but I didn’t know your situation. And I really wanted to see you face-to-face, anyway.’
Her mind was racing, attempting to process all the facts. ‘So, you actually live here now – in Norfolk?’
‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I mean, temporarily. Natalie’s always had this … fantasy of a second home by the sea. We came up here for a long weekend last summer, and she ended up having an unexpected love affair with the place. Anyway, after we got back she started looking for houses, found one she liked and put in an offer – all without telling me.’ He shook his head. ‘And she’s spent the past year trying to convince me it would be a fantastic idea to move here for a few months while we do it up, so … here we are. She’s taken some time off work to project-manage.’
Jess struggled to imagine a job so high-powered that sabbaticals for property development were factored into the remuneration package. ‘What does she do?’
‘Management consultant,’ he said in a way that made Jess think he’d been forced to listen to one too many anecdotes about efficiency bottlenecks and profit margins. ‘So … anyway. That’s why I’m here. I thought maybe enough time had passed for me to be able to risk coming back to Norfolk for a few months, what with my false name and everything.’ He met her eye, then looked down.
She swallowed. ‘So … Natalie doesn’t know your real name?’
‘No,’ he said, speaking carefully as if he appreciated it might sound odd. ‘She knows me as Will. Will Greene.’
Jess nodded. ‘You changed it officially?’
He nodded back. ‘Before I met her. I needed to start again.’
‘I know the feeling.’ And she did – she knew it better than anyone. There had been many times over the past seventeen years when she’d been tempted to wipe clean her own identity and start afresh. ‘So would you rather I called you Will?’ She didn’t want to, of course: the man sitting next to her was Matthew Landley, and she couldn’t really imagine thinking of him as anyone else.
‘Well, why don’t you try it?’ His eyes were fixed on hers.
Jess hesitated for just a moment. ‘Hi, Will. Pleased to meet you.’
‘There you go,’ he said softly. ‘How does it feel?’
‘A bit strange. I liked Matthew.’
‘Yeah, me too,’ he said. His eyes had crinkled up at the corners but his smile was one of deep sadness.
‘Well, I’ll give it a go,’ she said.
‘I appreciate it.’
‘And you shaved your head,’ she said, motioning to where his hair had once been.
He touched it like he’d forgotten. ‘Oh, yeah. What do you think?’
‘I mean, you look different. But it really suits you.’ She smiled. ‘Though isn’t it normally the other way around? You grow a beard …’
‘Yeah, but that’s so obvious, isn’t it? Like wearing a false nose.’
‘Or sunglasses,’ she said, nodding at the pair he’d set down on her coffee table.
He laughed. ‘Never without them.’
‘Well, they’re nice ones. Clearly you didn’t find them in the false nose shop.’
‘No, although I do spend a lot of time in false nose shops. I’ve found them to offer an unrivalled browsing experience.’
By now their knees were touching, but neither of them made a move to draw away.
‘So, anyway – how have you been?’ he asked her. ‘Before yesterday, I mean.’
She exhaled. Where should she start? ‘Well, I run my own catering business.’ She caught his eye. ‘No restaurant yet, but …’
His eyes glistened with apparent admiration. ‘Wow. I’m so pleased for you, Jess.’
To anyone else, her career choice might have sounded pedestrian, but she knew that to Matthew – Will – it meant everything.
‘Is it going well?’
Jess nodded, trying not to think about the raft of bills that had landed on her doorstep only this morning. She’d been wondering more and more recently if self-employment was invariably the road to financial ruin – but, as yet, her love of the work had managed to make up for all the worry. ‘I mean, there’s a lot of competition, and I have overheads, but … yes. I really enjoy it.’
‘And …’ He cleared his throat. ‘Are you seeing anyone?’
There was the lightest of pauses, and she realized that he had probably seen her with Zak at some point. ‘Yes,’ she said, but then hesitated.
She tried to read his expression as he waited patiently for her to elaborate. Could she detect a shred of disappointment in his face?
Why could she think of nothing else to say?
‘What does he do?’ Will prompted her.
‘Oh, he’s a bit different to me. Actually, he’s very different to me. He’s an A & E doctor in London.’
‘Long commute.’
‘Oh, we don’t live together. I mean …’ She paused. ‘You know. He has a place in London. I’m here.’
‘No kids?’
She exhaled through her nose with what she realized too late might have sounded like derision. ‘No.’
He was waiting again, perhaps expecting more detail, but having none she felt able to offer him, instead she said, ‘So what do you do now?’ She paused cautiously. ‘For a living, I mean.’
The question hung uncomfortably in the air as it left her mouth.
‘I homeschool Charlotte,’ he said, meeting her eye. ‘Not a huge fan of the British education system myself.’
Jess had expected, of course, that he would no longer be a school teacher, but somehow to hear it still felt unjust – shocking, even. ‘You were … such a good teacher.’
‘Well. I was good at the maths.’
She shook her head. ‘I’m really sorry.’
‘Thank you.’ After a beat, he appeared to swallow the thought away. ‘Okay – can I say something completely naff and crap?’
She nu
dged him with her knee. ‘Always.’
He laughed. ‘What?’
‘No! I don’t mean … you’re always naff and crap.’ She smiled. ‘I just meant, you can say anything you like. Of course.’
He looked down at his hands. ‘You’re exactly how I imagined you to be, all these years later.’ He winced. ‘There you go.’
‘That’s not crap,’ she reassured him.
He made a face. ‘Naff?’
She smiled. ‘That depends. How did you imagine me to be?’
‘Oh, it gets naffer. We should stop there.’ He shook his head and looked across at her then as if she fascinated him, the same way he used to all those years ago. ‘This is crazy. I thought I was going to come round here and quite possibly make everything ten times worse, and then I see you and it’s …’ He paused. ‘Just how it always was.’
She smiled. ‘Well, that’s a good thing.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ he mumbled.
A short silence fell between them, like something decompressing.
‘Jess,’ he said then, his voice low. ‘I wanted to say as well … I heard about your mum. I’m really sorry.’
She shook her head. ‘Don’t be. I mean, it feels like a long time ago now.’
A couple of moments passed. ‘Really? I bet it doesn’t.’
Glancing down into her lap, she said nothing. He was right, of course. It was just a line she trotted out, little more than a pleasantry, like discussing a milestone birthday or the worsening dementia of a distant relative.
Matthew shook his head, as if he was trying to dislodge any ancient memories that may have been lurking there. ‘Sorry. Change of subject?’
Jess nodded quickly and, with some effort, got to her feet. ‘So now that you’re here …’
‘… like you’ve been expecting me.’
She crossed the room. ‘Well, you know.’ She leaned over and flicked the wheel on her iPod, parked in its dock above the inglenook. ‘You’ll never guess what’s on my playlist.’
‘Hang on. Let me think. Enya? Kenny Rogers? Richard Marx?’
She caught his eye and smiled. ‘Yep, all of those – but also this. Trust me, you’ll like it.’ She pressed ‘play’. The sound of Morrissey filled the room.
