Before I Met You

by Lisa Jewell

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he doesn’t. We’re just friends.’

  Dom raised an eyebrow at her. ‘You never seen When Harry Met Sally?’

  ‘Of course I have.’

  ‘Well, then, there you go. No such thing as “just friends”. Particularly not when the female friend looks like you.’ He skewered her, then, with a long and deep-rooted look across the table.

  Betty flushed and stared into her lap. ‘No,’ she said, ‘he definitely doesn’t have the hots for me. I know he doesn’t.’

  Dom raised his eyebrow higher. ‘Hmm,’ he said.

  ‘Really!’

  ‘Maybe he just really really likes you then,’ he said facetiously.

  ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘he does.’

  Dom leaned back into his chair, folded his arms across his chest and smiled. ‘And reading between the lines I would suggest that it might be mutual.’

  Betty laughed. ‘Of course it is!’ she said. ‘I really like him. He’s a really nice guy.’

  Dom just stared at her with a smug smile on his face.

  ‘What!’

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ he said, pulling himself straight and unfolding his arms. ‘Just trying to work out if I’ve got competition.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ said Betty. ‘What are you talking about!’

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ he said, ‘nothing.’

  She narrowed her eyes at him and he laughed.

  ‘Nothing!’ he said again. ‘I just, well, God, you must know, Betty?’

  ‘What!’

  ‘You must know that I’ve got a massive crush on you?’ He blinked, just once.

  Betty blinked back.

  ‘The first time I saw you I thought, you know: cute blond. But then that morning in the café. You looked like shit. That gross hat. Your make-up everywhere. You had a hole in your dress. And green hair. And I just thought: that is the best-looking girl I have ever seen in my life. Seriously.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Oh.’

  Betty had no idea if she was supposed to respond to this declaration. The silence that had fallen since he’d made it felt strangely comforting, as though it was protecting her from something. She smiled nervously, and then, like the onset of an uncontrollable sneeze, she felt a wave of laughter building up inside her. She held it down for as long as she could, until it physically started to hurt, and then she let it rush to the surface and explode across the table.

  Dom looked at her, half injured, half amused. He looked as though he was about to question her laughter, but then he too caught the joke and started to laugh.

  Betty put her hands up to her face and made a show of trying to control her laughter, but still it rolled out of her, unstoppable, like the ocean. She brought her head down onto the table top, then up again to look at Dom and then they both started up again.

  The laughter peeled on for the next five minutes and by the time it finally came to a still, gentle close her head was spinning and it was as if they’d been drinking, as if they were a bit tipsy, a touch stoned.

  ‘Not sure where the fuck we go from there,’ giggled Dom, drawing his hands down his face and sighing.

  Betty smiled. ‘Pretend it never happened?’

  He glanced at her. ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, isn’t that what you’d like to do?’

  He stared at her for a moment, as if he were trying to work out a really complicated puzzle. ‘No,’ he said, his voice serious again. ‘No. Not at all.’

  Betty held his gaze and stopped breathing. ‘Then ...?’

  ‘Well, then ...’ He looked for a moment as if he were about to kiss her, but at the last second his demeanour changed and he said, ‘Fancy a spliff?’

  She looked at the oversized clock on the kitchen wall. It was nearly eleven o’clock. She should head back, head for bed, get the early night she’d failed to get the night before. But she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep now, not with a stomach full of roast chicken and a head full of Dom saying he had a crush on her, and a drag or two on a spliff would definitely help her to sleep.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘why not?’

  He brought a little box through to the kitchen and made one quickly and deftly, and then she followed him up the stairs to the window on the landing and she tried not to muse too much on the fact that his bedroom was just there, the door ajar, his bedding visible from where they sat. She tried not to think too much about the fact that they were sitting, knee to knee, facing each other at a negligible distance, their fingers brushing as they passed the spliff back and forth, the warm summer air vibrant against their skin, their lips taking it in turns to touch the same damp spot on the end of the spliff. She tried just to concentrate on the precise wording of her imminent announcement of her intention to leave, to go home, to her bed. She thought about Amy’s words, she thought about John’s warnings, she reminded herself that she had never looked at a picture of Dom Jones in a newspaper and thought that she might want to sleep with him. She thought about anything and everything apart from the sense of overwhelming desire building within her, the sense that the air between them was being sucked away in rhythm with the spliff, that every time their fingers touched it was bringing her closer and closer to some kind of ludicrous inevitability.

  ‘I wish I’d met you first,’ said Dom, staring at her thoughtfully.

  ‘What do you mean?’ She passed him back the last nub of spliff.

  ‘I mean, before Cheryl. Before Amy. I wish I was sitting here with you ten years ago, a clean slate. I wish ...’ He turned and stared through the window, drew the last inhalation from the spliff, then hurled it, thoughtlessly, into the spiralling darkness below. And then, suddenly, almost stealthily, he was on his feet and tipping Betty’s head upwards towards his, and then he was kissing her, as though she were overripe fruit and he was hungry.

  Betty stopped thinking entirely.

  John Brightly stared at Betty curiously as she dashed past his stall and towards her front door at seven o’clock the following morning.

  ‘Morning,’ she trilled, feeling his gaze taking in every tiny detail of her appearance: the faded make-up, bed-hair, possibly even the bulge of her balled-up knickers in her shoulder bag.

  He nodded but didn’t reply, just carried on staring at her inscrutably.

  ‘Just ...’ She stood before him, waiting nonsensically for a miraculous rush of words to pour from her mouth that might offer a more savoury explanation for her appearance and her demeanour. But of course none came, so she pulled her keys from her handbag, smiled awkwardly and a touch psychotically at him and disappeared inside her flat, slamming the door hard behind her in her wake.

  And then, her back pressed up against the door, she took a moment just to breathe, to contemplate the implications of what had just happened.

  She stood like that for thirty seconds, let the embarrassment wash through her like a foul-tasting tonic, and then quickly and mindlessly, she got ready for work.

  42

  1920

  LIKE THE OTHER half of a Swiss weather clock couple, as Godfrey mounted a train headed for Manchester on a misty September morning and disappeared from Arlette’s life, so Gideon reappeared, new and shiny, full of charm and romantic intentions.

  He was on the pavement, outside Liberty’s staff entrance on Tuesday evening, holding a bunch of roses the colour of flushed skin.

  He removed his hat with his free hand when he saw her emerge, and smiled shyly.

  ‘Good afternoon, Arlette,’ he said, holding her hand in his and kissing the back of it with dry lips. ‘I feel I have barely seen you. You look utterly radiant.’

  Arlette looked at him quizzically, because she knew that she looked anything but. ‘I have not slept in three nights, so doubt it very much. But thank you, anyhow. All compliments are welcome.’

  He stared at her dreamily for a moment before gathering his senses and saying, ‘Oh, yes, flowers. For you.’

  He handed them to her with a
flourish and she smiled and said, ‘Thank you.’ She did not want to ask what the flowers were intended to suggest, because she did not wish to know the answer.

  There was a moment of awkwardness then. It was incumbent upon Gideon, Arlette felt, to make his intentions clear, but he seemed reluctant to do so.

  ‘So,’ he said, eventually, ‘where are you headed to now?’

  ‘I’m going home, Gideon,’ she replied patiently.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes. Of course you are. Maybe I could walk you home?’

  She smiled. ‘That would be very nice. Thank you.’

  He looked at her then with a mixture of awe and joy. ‘Wonderful!’ he said. ‘Super.’

  It was obvious to anyone with half a brain that Gideon was in love with Arlette. And Arlette had substantially more than half a brain. She had kept him at arm’s length these past few weeks, ever since the night at the Cygnet when she had first taken Godfrey back to her lodgings and into her bed. Thereafter she had no longer automatically taken the seat next to him in clubs and bars and had taken instead to waving at him politely across rooms.

  ‘Poor Gideon,’ Godfrey would say, with feeling, ‘I have never before seen a man look so lost. His heart has been pulverised.’

  To avoid any further pulverisation of his vital organs, Arlette had severed all but the most basic ties with him, yet now she was allowing him to walk her home and accepting his gift of flowers. In answer to the unasked question ‘Why?’, she would have to reply that she had not a single clue. It was possible that she was lonely. It was also possible that she had missed him. After all, their friendship had been a close and intimate one, forged over hours spent in his studio alone together, his eyes engaged with every detail of her.

  As they strode through the darkening streets of London that evening, the pavements glowing gold beneath their feet, funnels of crisp russet leaves twirling and dancing in their wake, she started remembering the way it had felt to have Gideon at her side, his height and his humour, his air of always being on the verge of doing something peculiar and wonderful. She remembered the first time she’d seen him, singing carols on Regent Street last Christmas, the wild look in his eye. He’d later told her it was absinthe. His one and only meeting with the green fairy. He’d been violently sick the next day and never touched the stuff again. But seeing him like that the first time had left him forever in Arlette’s imagination as someone flighty and strange, someone almost magical.

  ‘It has been a long time, hasn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘I wanted to see you before,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t like to intrude. You’ve seemed very much involved these past few weeks.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘I feel I have been on a different planet. A completely different world.’

  He looked at her curiously. ‘Has it been a nice world?’ he enquired.

  She looked at him then with shining eyes. ‘Oh, Gideon, it really has been the most unexpected and beautiful world. I ...’ She tried to say more but her words got caught up with her tears.

  Gideon stopped and stood before her. They were outside the London Palladium on Argyll Street where a small queue was forming for a variety show. Arlette allowed Gideon to draw her head into his shoulder, not wanting strangers to witness her tears.

  ‘Oh, sweet Arlette,’ he soothed. ‘He has your heart. Doesn’t he?’

  She nodded into the rough fabric of his overcoat.

  He turned himself back towards the direction of their journey and kept her held close to him as he steered them east, towards Bloomsbury.

  ‘When does he return?’ he asked.

  ‘Four weeks.’

  ‘Oh, four weeks. That will speed by in a blur, my dear.’

  She sniffed and shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It absolutely won’t. I can assure you of that.’

  ‘Listen to me,’ he said, mock-sternly. ‘I am your friend and I will make sure that the next four weeks pass by in a blur. If you’ll allow me, Miss De La Mare, I will keep your mind occupied and your heart warm. If you’ll allow me I will do everything I possibly can to make sure there are no more tears.’

  She smiled at him. ‘And how do you propose to do that, Gideon?’

  ‘Just say you’ll allow me.’ He squeezed her tight against him.

  She considered the offer. She had intended to spend the next four weeks sobbing and fretting and becoming worryingly thin. She had intended to spend it sitting by the front door waiting for the postman to come. But now she had been offered an alternative, and she had to say she found it rather appealing.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I will allow you to attempt to distract me. But I reserve the right to be utterly miserable if I so desire.’

  ‘But of course,’ he smiled. ‘That is your prerogative.’

  ‘Good,’ she said.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘So, shall we begin?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes, why not?’

  ‘Well, I had intended to write some letters tonight.’

  ‘Letters to whom?’ he demanded, aghast.

  ‘My mother.’

  He considered this for a moment with one fingertip against his bearded chin. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Well, it is for you to decide, but I intend to head from here to a poetry salon in Russell Square where they have promised home-made ginger snaps and fine sherry. And possibly an appearance from Mr Siegfried Sassoon.’

  Arlette raised her eyebrows and Gideon cleared his throat and continued, ‘From there I am due to meet my eldest sister, Rebecca, for drinks at her apartment in Knightsbridge. She has just returned from a trip to Hollywood.’ He paused and let his words sink in. ‘Where she dined with Lionel Barrymore. Amongst others.’

  Arlette’s breath caught. She thought of her mother, alone in the big house on the cliff, waiting for a letter of a decent size. And then she thought of herself again, as a girl, staring out to sea, wondering what might become of her. She had arrived, somehow, dead centre of another social tornado. She could not turn her back on it.

  ‘Fine,’ she said, ‘yes. I’ll come with you. But I shall need to be home before midnight.’

  Gideon beamed at her. ‘Of course!’ he said. ‘Of course. I will guarantee it!’

  ‘Well, then, we must hurry,’ she said, taking his hand in hers, ‘I must change into new clothes and do something with these flowers.’

  Gideon smiled widely and mischievously at her, and together they ran, breathlessly and exuberantly, hand-in-hand, through the streets of London towards her Bloomsbury apartment.

  Arlette’s landlady popped her head out of her sitting-room when she heard them thundering up the stairs together a few minutes later. Miss Chettling was a single woman of around fifty with a cloud of white curls and a twinkle in her eye. She loved having the two young women in her attic, always keen to talk to them about their lives and their adventures, always admiring their clothes, their hairstyles, borrowing the latest style magazines from them and sighing with delight when she handed them back. She was also mainly deaf, which was most beneficial in regard to spiriting boyfriends in and out of their rooms at ungodly hours.

  She smiled at Gideon and said, ‘Good evening, young man. Good evening, Miss De La Mare.’

  ‘Good evening, Miss Chettling. May I introduce my friend, Mr Gideon Worsley.’

  ‘A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr Horsley.’

  Gideon tipped his hat and then removed it. ‘Likewise, Miss Chettling.’

  ‘I’ve heard you,’ she hissed conspiratorially at him, still smiling brightly.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Miss Chettling?’ Gideon smiled down at her questioningly.

  ‘Up and down the stairs. All times of the day and night. I hear you come and go. I know you think you’re being very quiet, but you’re not.’ She let out a small peel of laughter then and covered her mouth with her fingertips, girlishly.

  Gideon smiled at her uncertainly.

  Arlette cleared her throat. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘we’d better be on our
way. We’ve got dozens of parties to go to and we mustn’t be late.’

  ‘No!’ agreed Miss Chettling overbrightly. ‘No, you must not be late. Off you go.’ She patted Gideon’s arm and, using the low conspiratorial voice again she said, ‘I don’t mind, you know. They’re modern young women, you know. They pay their rent on time. I like my house to be busy.’

  Gideon looked at her fondly and said, ‘Yes, indeed. Indeed, indeed.’ Arlette pulled him firmly by the arm, up towards her room. ‘Must go. Lovely to meet you,’ he called out to the landlady, before they both ran helter-skelter up the stairs, laughing so hard it hurt.

  ‘She thinks I’m Godfrey,’ Gideon said, once they were safely behind Arlette’s door.

  ‘It does appear that she does, yes.’

  ‘So, clearly, she has not been introduced to Godfrey?’

  Arlette smiled wryly. ‘No, indeed not.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Gideon, sinking into the settee.

  Arlette looked at him crossly. ‘And what is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘“Hmm”? What do you mean by “hmm”?’

  ‘I mean nothing by “hmm” ...’ he countered.

  ‘Well, I think you’re lying. I think you do mean something by it.’

  Gideon narrowed his eyes. ‘I find it strange,’ he started, carefully, ‘that Godfrey has been visiting you in your rooms for ten weeks and not encountered your charming landlady, yet I have met her on my first visit.’

  Arlette bridled gently. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it has always been at a much later hour. I have not wished to disturb her.’

  He looked at her sceptically.

  ‘Are you suggesting, Gideon, that I have not introduced my beau to my landlady because I am in some way ashamed of him?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’ He looked appalled at the suggestion. ‘No. No, no, no. I just merely wondered, I suppose, how it has been taken beyond the narrow confines of our perfect little world. Your ... affiliation with a gentleman of a different hue.’

  Arlette drew her shoulders up and glared at him. ‘What nonsense,’ she cried. ‘Godfrey is not a gentleman of a different hue! Godfrey is a world-famous musician, the best clarinettist of his generation. He is educated and well read, he is far far cleverer than me.’