The Night We Met

by Zoë Folbigg

  A month later, but a different time of day, the street was bustling. People spilled out onto the pavement, waiting for tables at the restaurants, hot and bothered customers covertly stepping out from their sunbeds with an air of guilt, excitement and melatonin, the gay and the groomed exiting the salon with freshly waxed backs, sacs and cracks.

  Rat-a-tat-tat.

  There was no answer.

  There had been no answer to Daniel’s email he sent, the day after he left Olivia sleeping. No answer to the subsequent emails he sent in the four weeks after, until one bounced back with Failure Notice written in the subject line and a message that said: Sorry, we were unable to deliver your message to the following address.

  Daniel had wanted to cry at his desk at the Elmworth Echo when that one came back, and wondered what the hell had happened. He had memorised that Central Saint Martins email and had checked and double-checked. None of the other messages had bounced back until then. What had he done differently?

  Rat-a-tat-tat.

  A little more confidently this time.

  Tomorrow would be Olivia’s twenty-third birthday and Daniel thought it fitting to go and see her today. The 28th of July. A date that would give him the confidence and a reason, given they met this night, two years ago. This would be poetic and maybe – just maybe – he wouldn’t let her go a third time. A seventh time.

  His heart raced. France had won their World Cup. The school holidays had started, which meant kids ruined his peaceful lunchtimes by the river and his mum was home from work. Plus it was even sillier season in local news. This Tuesday evening was close and muggy.

  Rat-a-tat-tat.

  Louder this time. He had spent £17 on a travelcard. He wasn’t going to let it go to waste.

  Shit. She’s out.

  Daniel was about to turn around and slink off back to King’s Cross, or to see if he could meet up with Jim and return later, when he heard footsteps padding down the stairs he remembered carrying Olivia up.

  She’s coming!

  Daniel panicked and realised he was woefully unprepared for something he had spent a month building up to. He didn’t have any flowers, he didn’t even have a card or birthday present. He was just so focused on getting the courage to go and knock on her door.

  Shit, I should have bought a birthday present…

  He wouldn’t have known what to get the girl who could afford to live in a flat in Soho. And it was all so last-minute anyway. He had only decided, this lunchtime by the river, that today would be the day. He couldn’t pass up this date.

  The door was about to open when Olivia must have realised she put the latch on it, and the fumble of a key chain went on for a bit longer than Daniel expected.

  ‘Oh, hang on!’ said a male voice on the other side. A chain rattled. A heart tightened. And a puzzled-looking man in his fifties wearing only a maroon dressing gown opened the door cautiously.

  ‘Yes?’ he asked, pushing his glasses up his nose and tightening his fluffy belt to preserve his modesty.

  ‘Oh.’

  Daniel was confused.

  He couldn’t be her dad.

  Surely he couldn’t be her lover.

  ‘Is Olivia in?’

  ‘Olivia?’

  The man narrowed his eyes and scratched his head, before looking down to check nothing was on show.

  Daniel felt his face go hot. A rage rise in his throat.

  I never should have left her. I should have come sooner.

  ‘Ahhh,’ said the man. The penny dropping. ‘Olivia Menzies?’

  ‘Olivia Messina.’

  ‘Oh yes, Messina. She moved out.’

  ‘She moved out?’

  ‘A few weeks ago now. I’m the new tenant.’ The man gave a sympathetic shrug and, despite his kind demeanour, Daniel felt a frustration that made him want to kick the door open.

  FUCK.

  ‘I didn’t actually meet her, but if you know a forwarding address…’ The man stopped himself, realising that if the former tenant’s gentleman caller hadn’t even known she had moved out, he was unlikely to have a forwarding address for the mail he was getting.

  Calm. Down.

  The man gave Daniel an apologetic smile.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll catch up with her another time.’

  ‘Sorry old chap,’ the man said, before looking down to check his old chap again and closing the door to get back to his bath or his friend or whatever it was he was doing in Olivia’s flat. Daniel looked back up at the lofty and symmetrical windows and pictured Olivia in there. Her low futon. The turquoise tiled bathroom.

  Did she remove the bottles?

  He imagined what the apartment might look like without Olivia there. Without her mannequins and makeup and empty bottles secreted and strewn all over the place.

  Where’s she gone?

  Daniel walked up towards Broadwick Street and left onto Carnaby.

  He’s lying. She was in there.

  But he knew she wasn’t.

  Did she make that email bounce back?

  Why was Olivia Messina so fucking elusive?

  And he realised. Because people came to her. She didn’t have to make an effort.

  Except he had seen her at that fashion party. He had seen her get the sack. He had seen her dirty secret hiding behind the bath. He knew she was as vulnerable as everyone else, and he so wanted to see her, to see if she were OK.

  If she wanted to contact me, she could have found a way.

  He felt at a total loss.

  Daniel pulled his new mobile phone out of his pocket and dialled the only number he knew. Jim Beck. He had made a good case to Viv for letting him get a mobile phone for work, being a journalist and all – Jim told him all the journalists in London had one, no, needed one. But despite having one herself, she had said no. That employees tended to play games on them rather than use them for work; that they’d never take off.

  ‘Nothing is more powerful than face-to-face Daniel, you have to get out there on the doorsteps…’ she said, before suggesting he might want to go on a course if he wasn’t feeling confident enough doing interviews.

  That lunchtime, after sitting by the river and contemplating his options, Daniel went to the new Orange shop that had opened on the high street and got himself a little Nokia that didn’t look anything like the bricks the Americans wielded in the movies. He charged it up at work and he did play Snake on it, but only on the train going into London that evening. He punched Jim’s number from a piece of paper into his phone contacts list of one.

  ‘Hey, it’s Daniel,’ he said as he walked up Carnaby Street, unaccustomed to the act of talking into a mobile, face still hot from the panic of Olivia having moved out. From the email bouncing back. From the sight of her broken and bony as she slept in the recovery position.

  ‘You got one!’

  ‘Yeah. Weird.’

  ‘That stingy cow gave in, did she?’

  ‘No, I had to get it myself.’

  ‘Fucking bitch.’

  Daniel didn’t laugh as usual.

  ‘Hey, where are you?’

  ‘Soho.’

  ‘Oh, me too!’

  *

  It wasn’t all that unlikely. If Jim wasn’t at his desk in Wapping he was scouring Soho for a celebrity story, and within ten minutes they had met up in The Sun & 13 Cantons for a pint. Except Jim was doing something called the Carol Vorderman 28 Day Detox, so his pint was of lime and soda.

  ‘Can you get us into Brixton Academy tonight?’ Daniel asked. He’d seen in NME, The Horizontals were back from their trip to Japan and had been given a slot for an up-and-coming bands night. ‘Olivia might be there.’

  Jim looked at his watch. It was already 8 p.m., he would be hard pushed to get hold of The Horizontals’ PR.

  ‘Are you sure this is a good idea? Surely if she’d have wanted to—’

  Jim looked at Daniel’s sad, khaki-green eyes, his kindly smile and handsome face, and couldn’t bring himself to say it.r />
  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  He pulled out the aerial on his fancy flippy Motorola and stepped outside the pub so he could hear.

  *

  On the side balcony at Brixton Academy Daniel and Jim watched The Horizontals rock out. Turned out Jim was doing the PR a favour by getting some press attention for them, as the gig was only half sold. The Horizontals could sell out stadiums in Japan but were still niche on the UK circuit.

  Daniel sipped warm beer from a plastic pint glass and looked around. There was no flame-haired girl cheerleading her mismatched best friend. No shining light in a cream slip dress.

  After the gig, while the band’s manager – a fat man with a square head – was pressing Jim to write a story on the gig, Daniel took his chance.

  ‘Hey, Mimi!’

  ‘Oh, hi!’ she said with a quizzical half smile. Relief and champagne made her bright eyes sparkle.

  She obviously couldn’t remember his name, so he helped her out.

  ‘Daniel – I saw you at the 100 Club, last month.’

  ‘Yeah I remember. Hi…’ Mimi said, looking up at him and wondering how he got into the VIP bar.

  ‘You were… erm… awesome tonight.’

  ‘Oh thanks. Shame it’s not a great crowd. Think they wanted the Lighthouse Family but got the wrong day.’ Mimi laughed at her joke. Her slightly upturned nose shook delicately as she did. On stage she had looked like a porcelain doll wielding an enormous bass.

  ‘Well, I thought you were amazing.’

  Mimi blushed. ‘How come you’re here?’

  ‘Oh, my mate Jim works at The Sun. Showbiz section. Caught fifteen minutes of you at the 100 Club and wanted to see more.’

  Mimi’s eyes widened excitedly.

  ‘Oh, really?’ She looked over to her manager chatting to him. ‘He’d better give us a good review.’

  Daniel winced internally at his half lie. He didn’t think The Horizontals would be sitting alongside Geri and Robbie in the paper tomorrow. But he only had one thing on his mind.

  ‘I was hoping to catch up with Olivia to be honest.’

  Mimi smiled hesitantly as her eyebrows knitted together. She did remember now. He was the guy at the 100 Club who Olivia had met in New Zealand. Or Australia. Or wherever. He seemed cute. But Olivia met a lot of cute guys. And Mimi was often having to fend them off for her. She didn’t quite know how to play this one. Olivia hadn’t really talked about him.

  ‘Oh sorry… Daniel, was it?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Olivia’s not here.’

  ‘Yeah, cause I went to her flat…’

  Mimi looked surprised that Daniel knew where she lived.

  ‘Her flat?’

  ‘She wasn’t there.’

  ‘Yeah she wouldn’t be. Livvi’s gone back to Milan. She’s not in a good way.’

  ‘Not in a good way?’

  ‘No, I think everything caught up with her.’

  Daniel shook his head as he took in the news; the concerned look on Mimi’s sweet face made him measure his own.

  ‘Has she gone home for the summer?’ he asked hopefully, suspecting what was coming.

  ‘No. She’s gone home for good. I’m sorry Daniel,’ Mimi winced. ‘Livvi dropped out. She’s gone back to her mums. You know, to get herself sorted.’

  Twenty-Four

  October 2017

  Cambridgeshire, England

  ‘Will you come inside with me, Mummy? I can show you my clay model.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Olivia from under her hot bobble hat.

  ‘The head was a bit wobbly, so you have to be careful picking it up, but Miss Cave said it would dry out over the weekend, so it should be fine.’

  Sofia talked at a hundred miles an hour as she led her mother by the hand up the path towards her Year 3 classroom, almost breaking into a skip she was so excited. It was a different response to Flora, who clearly hadn’t wanted Olivia and her embarrassing bulbous bobble hat anywhere near her school.

  Olivia had wanted to walk both of her daughters on the two-kilometre trip from one school to the other. The sunny autumn morning, with its crispness, conkers, and last of the apple fallers on the pavements, was the first of this school year that she had been able to do it. That she didn’t have an appointment, an operation or recovery to stop her. The Mammas had gone back to Italy and Daniel was back at work, at a big online strategy meeting in Salford.

  I can do this, Olivia reminded herself, as she pulled on her coat and looked in the hallway mirror. Simple tasks she had thought nothing of before her fall at the airport.

  ‘I’ll go from here,’ Flora had said as they came through the park and onto the road her school was on. ‘You’ll make Sofia late.’

  Sofia was jumping onto a pile of red and brown leaves with abandon, clearly not worried about being late. But Olivia knew it was that Flora didn’t want her friends to see her with her mum. That it had been embarrassing enough to have a mum with brain cancer, let alone have people looking at her, checking out her bald shaved patch under her stupid bobble hat.

  ‘OK,’ nodded Olivia acceptingly.

  ‘And I’ll walk myself home,’ Flora said flatly. ‘You’ll have loads to do anyway.’

  Olivia craned her neck and looked up the road at the secondary school behind the hedges. Her daughter’s new life in Year 9, a step up that she knew nothing about since being plunged into her cancer vortex.

  ‘All right, love you. You’ve got your key, yes?’

  ‘Yep,’ Flora said with a low wave, already halfway down the road.

  *

  As Sofia skipped down some steps and through a gate to the classroom, Olivia struggled to keep up. She was still tired and could feel the synthetic fibres of the hat rubbing against her head and her healing wound.

  What if it’s hot in the classroom?

  What if I have to take off my hat?

  I really don’t want to talk to any—

  ‘Olivia hiiiiiiiii,’ said Charlie’s mum, Caroline, her frame even taller, her limbs more willowy than Olivia’s, her face close and her head cocked to one side. ‘How are you getting on? Sofia told Charlie you’d been poorly.’

  Poorly?

  It wasn’t actually Charlie who’d told his mum that Olivia was poorly. Isabella’s mum Genevieve had overheard Daniel telling Miss Cave on the first morning back, that Sofia had had a tough summer and his wife was awaiting brain surgery. Genevieve had told Caroline, and asked Harry’s mum, Julie, if she knew anything about it, because Julie lived near the Bleekers’ Huf Haus and might have seen some of the comings and goings if ambulances were involved.

  As word got out, Phoenix’s mum Nikki started a WhatsApp group, just so people would know that she knew the most about it, under the guise of starting a collection so they could buy Olivia some flowers. By Harvest Festival, it had got around the entire playground.

  ‘Oh, I’m good thanks,’ Olivia said, stepping back gently. ‘Recovering well.’

  ‘Gosh, you look well. We thought it was a lot worse,’ Caroline said almost gleefully. Olivia couldn’t really think of many things that could be worse than brain surgery, dying aside, but she smiled and gestured towards the open classroom door, so she could follow Sofia in.

  As she did, out stepped Laura, a parent governor, and therefore a self-professed authority on the matter (‘She had a stroke – but apparently her face isn’t wonky’).

  ‘Olivia, hiiiiiiiii!’ said Laura, her high blonde pony swishing behind her. ‘How are you?’ She cocked her head to one side and made a sympathetic face as she squeezed Olivia’s arm.

  ‘Yeah, feeling great,’ Olivia smiled, as she scratched the bobble hat. It was a hot mess under there.

  ‘That’s super!’

  Laura scrutinised Olivia’s face, waiting for her to give her more. ‘Yah, Pete said he saw Daniel in Waitrose and that you were doing amazingly…’

  She awaited further detail with bated breath.

  ‘Ah, so you alread
y knew.’

  Laura looked a bit flummoxed and Olivia felt bad.

  She’s just being kind.

  ‘If there’s anything I can do…’ Laura had an eager face. She was the parent governor who was also the class rep and the head of the PTA. She was earnest, if pushy, but all Olivia wanted Laura to do was to move aside and let her into the classroom, so she could see Sofia’s clay model.

  ‘Mamma!’ Sofia called, shouting from inside.

  ‘Oh, I’ll let you get on,’ said Laura, with another squeeze of the arm. ‘So jolly to see you back, and you look a-maze-ing.’

  Olivia nodded wearily and stepped inside the classroom.

  ‘Olivia hiiiiiiiii!’ said Evelyn’s mum Rachel, who was head-to-toe in Lilybod leisurewear. ‘Welcome back! You look fab! Gotta run, but we must catch up. Coffee soon?’ she said as she headed out of the door.

  Sofia came running over, with her model in one hand.

  ‘Look Mamma!’ she said proudly, as the big cat’s head wobbled off and fell onto the floor.

  ‘NOOOOOOOO!’ Sofia shouted. Miss Cave stepped forward and gave Olivia a knowing smile that said welcome back to the mad house.

  ‘It’s BROKENNNNNN!’ Sofia slumped into her mother’s waist.

  Miss Cave picked up the decapitated tiger’s head and put it on her desk.

  ‘Don’t worry Sofia, I have just the thing for it, and if it doesn’t work, you can make another one in Golden Time. You were so good at it!’ Sofia’s tears abated and Olivia smiled gratefully – as grateful to Miss Cave for not going on about her bloody brain as she was for placating Sofia.

  Olivia wrapped her arms around her daughter.

  ‘Bye-bye cara mia. Shine brightly today.’

  Olivia kissed Sofia’s nose and Sofia threw her arms around her mother’s neck, almost pulling her down.

  ‘Whoa, easy!’

  ‘I don’t want you to go!’