12 December
Laurie
I feel like someone lined my Uggs with lead. It’s been full-on bedlam at work with back-to-back Christmas party bookings over the last few weeks and my feet ache as if I’ve run a marathon. I’m thoroughly bloody knackered. Dad’s recovery has been slower than the doctors hoped; it seems to have been one thing after another with his health ever since. He’s gone from being my robust, no-worries dad to looking frail and much too pale, and my mum seems to have followed suit because she’s worrying herself to death over him. They’ve always been quite the glamorous couple; Dad’s got ten years on Mum but it’s never really shown up till now. I can’t say the same of late. My father turned sixty last year but looks ten years older again; every time I see him I want to bundle him on to a plane to sunnier climes and feed him up. Not that my mum isn’t doing her best; their lives seem to be one long round of specialist appointments and dietary restrictions, and it’s taking its toll on them both. I go home as often as I can, but Mum is inevitably bearing the brunt of it.
Christmas insults my eyeballs everywhere I look; I’ve been shopping for the last few hours and I’m at that point where I want to bludgeon Rudolph, bump off Mariah Carey and strangle the next person who pushes me with the nearest string of tinsel. I’ve been waiting in this never-ending, barely moving queue in HMV for the last twenty minutes, clutching a box set I’m not even sure my brother will ever watch, and I could genuinely fall asleep on my feet. For a music store, you’d think they’d manage to come up with something more cutting-edge than Noddy Holder screaming ‘It’s Christmas!’ at the top of his lungs. What kind of name is Noddy, anyway? I find myself wondering if he was born with big ears and his mother was just too whacked out on gas and air to come up with anything else.
‘Laurie!’
I twist at the sound of someone calling my name and spot Jack waving his arm over the heads of the queue snaked around me. I smile, relieved by the sight of his familiar face, then roll my eyes to transmit how I feel about being stuck here. I look down at the box set and realize that my brother would prefer a bottle of Jack Daniels anyway, so I turn and push my way out of the queue, annoying pretty much everyone by going against the tide. Jack hangs around by the chart CDs while he waits for me, bundled inside his big winter coat and scarf, and I sigh because I’m caught by the memory of him at the bus stop. It’s been a couple of years now, and for the most part I don’t think about that day any more; my diligence in my mission to replace all of my errant thoughts about him with safer ones has paid off. They say that the human brain likes to follow repetitive patterns, and I’ve found that to be quite true. Jack now inhabits an appropriate place in my life as my friend, and as my best friend’s boyfriend, and in return I allow myself to enjoy his company and I like him. I really do like him so very much. He’s funny, and he’s incredibly caring towards Sarah. And he was a complete life-saver on my birthday, taking charge of the situation when I went to pieces there in the middle of Barnes Common. We were in the back of a taxi in the blink of an eye, my train tickets home booked before we even reached Delancey Street. Sometimes you just need someone to tell you what to do, and on that day Jack stepped up to the mark.
‘You look as impressed with this Christmas shopping malarky as I am,’ he says, sliding the CD he was idly looking at back on to the shelf and falling into step beside me as we leave the store. ‘Although you’ve clearly been more successful than I have.’ He eyes my bags. ‘Here, let me.’
I don’t argue when he takes the heavy carriers from me; the handles have bitten red welts into my palm and I flex my sore fingers with relief. There’s grey slush underfoot as we step out on to Oxford Street, remnants of the snowfall from a few days ago still hanging around because the arctic wind is blowing straight down from the north. Jack pulls a woolly hat from his pocket and jams it on his head, shivering for effect.
‘Have you got much to get?’ I ask.
He shrugs. ‘Sarah’s, mainly. Any bright ideas?’ He looks at me sideways as we walk, blending our pace with the bustling crowds. ‘Please say yes.’
I rack my brain. She isn’t hard to buy for, but her gift from Jack should be something particularly personal. ‘A bracelet maybe or a pendant?’
We pass a High Street jeweller and pause to look, but nothing in the window really shouts ‘Sarah’.
I wrinkle my nose and sigh as we shelter inside the doorway. ‘It’s all a bit too … I don’t know. Not individual enough.’
Jack nods, then narrows his eyes and looks at his watch. ‘Do you need to rush off?’
‘Not really,’ I say, not looking forward to the trudge home.
‘Good.’ He grins, threading his arm through mine. ‘Come with me, I know just where to go.’
Jack
Shopping is so much easier with Laurie than on my own. We’ve just hoofed it round the corner from Oxford Street to Chester’s antique emporium; a place I vaguely remember and hope is still there.
‘Wow,’ Laurie murmurs, her violet-blue eyes widening as we step inside the tall terracotta-brick building. I came here years ago as a kid to help my father find something special for my mum’s birthday. It’s a vivid memory; I think it might have been a special birthday, one to mark. We found her a slender silver bangle set with amber stones, and my dad had them engrave all of our names round the inside. She wore it sometimes when he was still alive, at Christmas and on special days. She wore it to his funeral too, and I don’t think I’ve seen her without it since.
I’m pleased to see the emporium hasn’t changed much in the intervening years, that it’s still the same Aladdin’s cave of vintage stalls.
‘This place is amazing! I never even knew it was here.’
‘Proper London.’ I shove my hat into my coat pocket, pushing my hand through my hair because it’s plastered against my head. ‘Where do you want to start?’
Her eyes glitter as she laughs, delighted as she takes it all in. ‘I have no idea. I want to see everything.’
‘Steady on. We’ll be here until Christmas.’
I follow her as she moves amongst the stalls, stroking her fingers over the head of a carved leopard, exclaiming over locked cabinets full of beautiful, top-grade diamonds, and then she’s just as excited by the paste and costume jewels at the next store along. She smiles, shy when the owner of a retro hat shop takes one look at her and pulls a heather Harris Tweed baker boy cap out for her to try; the old boy clearly knows his hats because she’s transformed into a sixties waif as soon as it’s placed on top of her wayward curls. Laurie’s hair is only ever sixty per cent tamed at best, and right now she looks like a street urchin from Oliver Twist. The lavender shades in the tweed bring out the colour of her eyes, but they also highlight the dark, bruised circles around them. She’s tired, I notice with a jolt, and it’s not ‘I just need an early night’ tired; it’s ‘I’ve had the shittiest few months of my life’ tired, the eyes of someone who’s worried and has been for a fair while. I realize I haven’t even asked her how she’s doing.
She takes the hat off after examining herself from each angle in the gilt hand mirror the shopkeeper obligingly holds up, turning the tiny label over to look at the price before she hands it back and wistfully shakes her head. It’s a shame. It was a good look on her.
‘How about in here?’ she asks a little while later. We’ve considered and discarded a little water-colour painting and earmarked a 1920s turquoise pendant as a definite maybe, but as soon as we step into the little perfume paraphernalia shop I know this is where we’re going to find the perfect thing. Laurie’s like a little girl let loose in a sweet shop, ooh-ing and ahh-ing over elaborate gilt bottles and exotic scents, and then she breaks into this sunshine-slash of a smile.
‘Jack, over here,’ she says, calling me to her side to look at something she’s just unearthed from the back of a shelf. I gaze over her shoulder to see what she’s holding, and I thank my lucky stars I haven’t bought the turquoise pendant already. The golden clamshell powder compact lying in Laurie’s hand is so very Sarah that it would be wrong for any other woman in the world to own it. Art deco, I’d say, from my extensive viewing of Antiques Roadshow, sizeable enough to comfortably fill Laurie’s palm, with an enamelled mermaid inlaid into the lid. There’s something of Sarah about the auburn waves cascading over her shoulder and the pronounced, coquette dip of her waist. Laurie hands it over to me with a sparkle-eyed grin.
‘Job done.’
I’m pleased by the weight of it. It’s Sarah-worthy, something that says I notice everything about you and you’re valuable to me.
‘Call off the search,’ I say, praying it’s not going to cost more than a small mortgage and breathing out with relief when I flip the tag. I can still afford beer after all. ‘Am I glad I bumped into you.’
We browse as the woman who owns the shop packages up the compact, taking her time to find a velvet pouch that fits and encasing the package in tissue and ribbons. I think she probably took one look at me and concluded that, left to my own devices, I’d wrap it in tinfoil or something. I wouldn’t, but she’s not that far off and I’m bloody glad I haven’t got to wrangle with the Sellotape myself.
It’s almost dark even though it’s barely four when Laurie and I make our way back out on to the street again.
‘Celebratory beer? I owe you one for helping me out,’ I say. She looks like she needs a good sit-down and a chat. ‘God knows what Sarah would have ended up with without you. Petrol station flowers and a dodgy pair of knickers from a sex shop. Or something.’ Laurie laughs, pulling her coat sleeve back to check the time as if she has places to be.
‘Okay,’ she says, surprising me. I was sure she was going to dash off.
‘Good girl. There’s a place I know just round the corner. A proper pub, not some trendy bar where you can never get a seat.’ I duck my head against the beginnings of snow on the bitter wind and spread my hand against her back to steer her down a small side street.
Laurie
As soon as we step inside the stained-glass doors of the pub I’m glad I didn’t say no to a drink. There’s the reassuring smell of a coal fire and beeswax polish, and the dark-green leather button-back booths are deep and comfortable, built for long, relaxed drinking sessions. An old man and his snoozing Jack Russell are the only other patrons. It’s one of those unpretentious, end-of-the-world pubs that you know hasn’t changed much in decades, ruddy quarry tiles and a brass surround running the length of the well-stocked bar.
‘Glass of red?’ Jack asks, and I nod, grateful as I take my shopping bags from him. ‘You go and find a seat by the fire, I’ll bring the drinks over.’
I bag the best booth in the house, closest to the warmth of the fire. I drop down and stow my bags under the table, shrugging out of my damp winter coat and hanging it on the newel post at the end of the booth to warm through for later. Warmed coats remind me of home; when we were kids my dad fitted an extra radiator behind the coat hooks so we’d always have a warm jacket on winter school mornings.
‘Wine for the lady,’ Jack jokes, appearing with a glass of deep-ruby wine and a pint. He follows my lead and hangs his coat on the other newel post, as if we’ve marked our territory, claimed this tiny lounge for two.
‘Best thing about winter,’ he says, rubbing his hands together briskly in front of the fire before he slides along the leather seat opposite me and pulls his pint towards him. ‘God, do I need this.’ He drinks deeply, smacking his lips appreciatively.
The wine is blood-warm in my mouth, pepper and rich blackcurrants.
‘Thanks for helping me today,’ he says. ‘I’d never have found anything so perfect without you.’
I smile, because I know how much Sarah is going to treasure the compact. ‘She’s going to be super-impressed with you.’
‘I’ll claim it’s all my own work, of course.’
‘Your secret’s safe with me.’ I drink a little more, feeling the alcohol begin to work its magic.
‘Not today.’ Jack shakes his head. ‘She called yesterday. Sounds like she’s having a ball, of course. I could hardly hear her.’
She called me from a bar yesterday too, probably straight after speaking to Jack by the sounds of it. She headed back to her parents’ a few days ago to celebrate her sister’s eighteenth birthday.
‘She put Allie on the phone, sounded drunk as a skunk.’ He laughs, halfway down his drink already. ‘Have you met her sister? They’re like two peas in a pod when they’re together. Double bloody trouble.’
I look towards the fire for a second and nod. ‘I know. Their mum and dad must have had their hands full over the years.’
Jack pauses, clearing his throat. ‘Sorry, Laurie. I didn’t mean to … well, you know.’ He doesn’t say Ginny’s name but I know that’s why he’s apologizing, and I wish for the hundredth time that I hadn’t told him. This is precisely why I don’t talk about her; people feel the need to offer sympathy or platitudes when there really isn’t anything helpful to say. It’s not a criticism. It’s just a shitty fact of life.
‘Are you heading back to see your mum for Christmas?’ I change the subject on to safer ground and he visibly relaxes.
‘Not until after my last shift on Christmas Eve.’ He shrugs. ‘Winding things up, winding things down. You know how it is.’
A couple more red wines later and I’m finally relaxing. I’d forgotten how nice it was to just sit and chat to Jack.
‘Will you stay in radio for ever, do you think?’
‘Absolutely. I love it.’ His eyes light with interest. ‘Plus no one cares if you’ve brushed your hair or still have yesterday’s T-shirt on.’
I laugh softly, because despite his attempts to sound laissez-faire, I know that Jack’s fiercely ambitious. Whenever he isn’t with Sarah he’s either at gigs or working, producing mostly, although he still occasionally gets to fill in for the regular late-night DJ, cutting his presenter teeth. I have no doubt that his voice will be on the airwaves somewhere as I eat my cornflakes or drift off to sleep over the years to come. I find the thought strangely comforting. I, on the other hand, have not got any further with my magazine job. The last few months, it hasn’t exactly been my top priority.
We get more drinks, and I can feel the heat in my cheeks from both the alcohol and the fire.
‘This is nice,’ I say, resting the weight of my chin in my hand as I look at him. ‘The fire, the wine. It’s what I needed. Thank you for bringing me.’
He nods. ‘How are you, Lu? Really, I mean. I know it hasn’t been easy on you these last few months.’
Please don’t be perceptive, you’ll unpick me. It doesn’t help that he called me Lu; only Sarah does that, and she doesn’t know it but the only other person in the world who ever shortened my name to Lu was Ginny. She couldn’t manage ‘Laurie’ when she was a baby; Lu was easier and it stuck. ‘I’m okay,’ I shrug, even though I’m anything but. ‘Most of the time. Some of the time.’ I gaze into the fire and try to keep the lump in my throat down. ‘It feels as if someone pulled the rug out from under my family’s feet, you know. My dad is our cornerstone, he always has been.’
‘Is he getting better?’
I press my lips into a tight line, because the truth is we’re not really sure. ‘A bit,’ I say. ‘He’s over the heart attack for the most part now, but looking back, that seems to have been just the beginning. He’s taking so many pills that he practically rattles, and my poor mum has had to take over everything, really. Therapy appointments, dieticians, consultants, not to mention getting a grip on all of the bills and household things. It just seems endless.’ I swallow a large slug of wine. You know how some events turn out to be the big stepping stones between one part of your life and the next? I don’t just mean the steps you intend to take, like leaving home or starting a new job or marrying the person you love on a summer’s afternoon. I mean the unexpected steps: the middle-of-the-night phone calls, the accidents, the risks that don’t pay off. My twenty-third birthday turned out to be one of my unexpected stepping stones; a step away from the solid foundations built by my indomitable parents towards quicksand where they are fragile and too human and need me as much as I need them. It’s knocked my world off-kilter; I’m sickly nervous every time the phone rings and there’s a permanent cesspool of fear sloshing around in the base of my stomach. If I had to sum it up in a sentence, I’d say I feel hunted. I’m caught in the crosshairs, waiting for the bullet that may or may not come, running, looking over my shoulder, braced for impact. I dream of my sister more nights than I don’t: Ginny cheering me on from my father’s shoulders at my primary school sports day, Ginny holding tight to his hand as they cross a busy road and leave me behind on the other side, Ginny sleeping on Dad’s shoulder in the pub garden we used to go to sometimes in the summer when we were kids, her blonde hair half covering her delicate face.
‘I just want my big strong dad back to normal, you know?’ I hate that I can hear the thickness of tears in my throat. And that Jack must be able to hear it too.
‘Oh, Laurie,’ he says, low and soothing, and then he slips round the booth and puts his arm round me. ‘Poor you, you look so knackered lately.’
I don’t even have the energy to act annoyed at that comment. I can’t deny it. I’m bone-tired. I don’t think I’ve even registered how low I’ve been because you have to keep on keeping on, don’t you? But right here, sitting in this pub feeling insulated from it all, it hits me like a shovel to the face. I’m so exhausted I feel like I’m disintegrating inside my clothes.
‘Life can be really shit sometimes,’ he says, his arm still warm and reassuring round my shoulders. ‘It’ll come good again. It always does.’
‘You think so? It sounds so stupid but I just feel like I’m failing at everything. Life here, no proper job. Perhaps I should just go back home. I should be with my parents, help my mum out.’
‘Don’t say that, Laurie. You’re down, but you’re not out. Your parents will be okay, and they’d want you to follow your dreams. You’ll get there, I know it.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Come on. Look at you. You’re clever and you’re funny; you won’t be stuck behind that hotel reception for ever. I’ve read some of your freelance stuff, remember? You’ll get your break soon, I’m sure of it.’
I appreciate the generosity of his praise, but I know that what he actually means is that he’s read the scant couple of articles I’ve had published because Sarah has pushed them under his nose. She’s worse than my mum whenever I place anything, which is barely ever.
Jack’s looking at me now, really studying me, as if what he’s about to say matters.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone in my life with as much … I don’t even know what it is that you have. Warmth, I guess, although that isn’t exactly it.’ He looks pissed off with himself for his inability to find the right words. ‘You just have a way about you, Laurie. Being around you makes people feel good.’
I’m surprised enough to stop feeling sorry for myself and look up. ‘Do you really mean that?’
‘Yes.’ His smile is slow, crooked. ‘Of course I do. Right from the first time we met.’
I catch my breath, trying to keep my thoughts inside my head, but they seep out, like water through my fingers. ‘The first time we met or the very first time?’
Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.
Jack
Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. She remembers.
‘You mean … at Christmas?’
We’re sitting closer than we were, almost thigh to thigh, and close up I can clearly see the toll recent months have had on her. Those dark circles, the high set of her shoulders as if she’s always got her teeth clenched. She looks in need of a hot bath, chicken soup and her bed for a week.
‘On the bus?’ she breathes. Her cheeks are pink from the wine, and her eyes more animated than they have been since the summer. ‘Do you remember?’
I frown and arrange my features into what I hope suggests puzzlement. If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that to acknowledge my memory of those few moments at the bus stop would be a monu-fucking-mental mistake. Our entire friendship is built on the dynamics of my position as her best friend’s boyfriend. I wait in silence and she withers in front of me. The jittery shimmer in her eyes dims and I know she wishes she could suck those words out of the air between us and back inside her body. If I could, I’d blow them back in there myself rather than have to hurt her with a lie.
‘At your party,’ I say gently.
‘No. Before then,’ she says, pressing me. ‘I think I saw you sitting at a bus shelter. Months before. A year before.’
Oh, Laurie, why is it never the coward’s way out for you? Trust me, it’s an easier path. Until you get called on it, that is. I feign complete ignorance, my best Hugh Grant nonplussed impression.
‘I think the wine’s gone to your head, Lu. We first met at your Christmas party.’
She holds my gaze, silent and unwavering, and right there in front of me I see her slowly reach her limit and raise the white flag of defeat. Ten seconds. Fifteen, maybe. It seems longer, and I feel like the world’s biggest cock. Shit, I think she’s trying not to cry. I’m a complete fucking bastard. Should I have said I remembered? Would it have been better? For Laurie in this exact moment, probably kinder, but for Laurie next week or next month or next year? I don’t think so.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, compounding my position as the big bad wolf. ‘Ignore me.’
‘I’d never do that.’ Three pints in and it seems that I’m struggling to maintain the lie too.
She blinks a few times and tears spike her lashes. ‘Maybe you should.’
I look at her, really look at her, and I don’t want to tell her any more lies today. She’s all kinds of vulnerable, and we’ve both had a drink.
‘Maybe I should,’ I acknowledge. ‘But I don’t want to. I like being with you too much.’ Christ. I know, okay? I shouldn’t have said that. It’s on the edges of inappropriate, and it’s selfish.
‘I like being with you too much too,’ she whispers, and a single, desolate tear slides down her cheek.
‘Don’t,’ I breathe, my voice rough even to my own ears. ‘Please don’t cry.’
Only a hard-faced bastard would let a girl cry like this without comforting her, and despite the fact that I’ve told her lies, I’m not a hard-faced bastard, so I brush her tears away with my fingertips, my other arm still round her shoulders.
‘It’s okay, honestly it is,’ I murmur against her temple. How can she smell of wild summer flowers even in winter? Her skin is delicate under my fingertips, and although every atom of my being knows I should drop my hand, I hold her face instead, following her jawline with my thumb. For a moment we stay like that, until she moves slightly to look up at me and her mouth is suddenly dangerously close to mine.
I don’t think she’s breathing. I don’t think I am either. Jesus, she has the most beautiful mouth this close up. Full and trembling. I can taste the wine on the warm heat of her breath. She moves forward, I think, and I swear there isn’t any air between our lips. I’m anguished. Torn.
‘I can’t kiss you, Laurie. I can’t.’
Laurie
I’ve drunk too much wine, and I’m the shabbiest person in the world, but I couldn’t move away from Jack now even if this pub was burning down. We’re caught in a tiny capsule of time, this unexpected booth at the end of the world, and there is just his generous mouth and his kind eyes and his warm, comforting hands. If this were a TV show I’d be shouting stop, because I’d know that however good they seem together, the shit would hit the fan further down the line. But this isn’t make believe, it’s real life, and in real life people make mistakes. I raise my head, and if he kisses me I won’t have the power to stop myself from kissing him back, because to me he looks exactly as he did that day at the bus stop, and for a second I’m that girl on the bus in 2008 again. My dad isn’t sick, and Jack isn’t Sarah’s boyfriend, and there’s tinsel in my hair. I can almost hear the whirl of time turning back, whooshing past my ears like the sound of an old-fashioned tape recorder being rewound or a vinyl record being played backwards. God, I don’t think I can stop this from happening.
‘I can’t kiss you, Laurie. I can’t.’
His words land on my heart like hailstones. Shit. What in God’s name am I doing? What kind of hideous lowlife am I? I need to get away from him.
‘Christ,’ I whisper, panicked, pressing my shaking fingers against my lips. I’m on my feet, scrabbling for my bags and half running out of the pub before I really know what I’m going to do, and it’s only when the bitter-cold air hits me that I realize I don’t have my coat and it’s snowing steadily.
‘Laurie! Laurie, wait up.’
He’s out of breath, my coat clutched in his hands as he catches hold of my sleeve. ‘Please, just stop a second, will you?’
I pull away, too hard, spilling the shopping from one of my bags over the quiet backstreet. He helps me to shove it back in and wraps my coat round my shivering shoulders, then he wraps his arms round my coat, holding me until the heat penetrates my clothes and my bones. It’s so very, very warm from the fire, and I close my eyes because I’m inexplicably in tears again. I’m not generally a crier, yet today my tear ducts seem to be bursting their banks.
‘Laurie,’ he whispers, raw, his eyes star-bright in the street lamps. ‘The last thing I ever want to do is hurt you.’
‘I’m such a fool,’ I whisper. ‘I don’t even know why I’m crying.’
Jack sighs, exasperated, kind. ‘Because you’re tired, and you’re worried, and you feel as if you’re always swimming against the tide.’
He rubs my back as he speaks low and steady against my ear, his body sheltering mine from the snow. My back is turned to the wall, and my fight is gone because he’s saying such incredibly comforting things and he’s holding me close. I’m so very tired of swimming. Most of the time I feel like the tide is going to pull me under, but here in Jack’s arms I feel as if he’s just reached over the side of a life raft and hauled me to safety. I realize, bleakly, that I don’t think there will ever be a time when I don’t have feelings for this man.
‘I wanted you to kiss me, Jack,’ I say, bereft. It’s not as if he isn’t aware what I wanted back there; to be coy would be pointless. ‘I don’t like myself for it.’
He strokes my hair, cups my chin, looks me in the eyes. ‘If I tell you something, do you promise to never tell another living soul, not even a goldfish?’
I swallow, eye to eye with him as I nod, and he takes my face between both of his hands. Whatever he’s about to say, I think it’s something I’m going to remember for ever.
‘I wanted to kiss you back there in the pub, Laurie, and I want to kiss you even more right now. You’re one of the loveliest people I’ve ever met in my whole life.’ He looks away, down the length of the deserted street and then back at me again. ‘You’re beautiful and kind, and you make me laugh, and when you look at me like that with your summer hedgerow eyes … only a fucking saint wouldn’t kiss you.’
Then he leans me against the wall with the weight of his body, and because he isn’t a fucking saint, he kisses me. Jack O’Mara dips his head and kisses me in the snow, his lips trembling and then hot and sure, and I’m crying and kissing him back, opening my mouth to let his tongue slide over mine as he makes this low, injured animal noise in his throat. I feel the relief of him in every follicle of my hair, and in every cell of my body, and in the blood in my veins. His breathing is as shallow as mine, and it’s so much more than I’ve ever imagined, and trust me, I used to let my imagination run riot where Jack O’Mara was concerned.
He holds my face as if I’m precious and then pushes his fingers into my hair, cupping my head in his hands when I tip it back.
This is the only time we will ever kiss each other. He knows it, I know it, and it’s so achingly melancholy-sexy that I feel tears threaten again.
I cling to the lapels of his winter coat, our kiss salty with my tears, and I open my eyes to look at him because I want to remember this kiss till the day I die. His eyes are closed, his snow-damp lashes a dark sweep on his cheek, all of his attention focused on our once-in-a-lifetime kiss.
We break off at last, the spell broken by the engine of a car crawling slowly past because of the inclement weather. Our breath almost crystallizes on the ice-cold air as it leaves our bodies in sharp, painful bursts.
‘Let’s be kind to each other about this,’ he tells me. I expect he wishes that his voice were more steady than it is. ‘We both know it shouldn’t have happened, but it doesn’t have to mean anything, and it doesn’t need to change anything.’
It’s such a searing understatement that I almost laugh; the sigh that leaves me as I look away from him is rent with longing and self-loathing, and quiet ‘no one will ever kiss me like that again’ distress.
‘Maybe if we’d met under different circumstances,’ I say, looking at him again after a while, and he nods.
‘In a heartbeat.’
On cue, a taxi trundles slowly along the side street towards us, and he raises his hand to flag it down. It’s a good decision.
‘Not a soul,’ he reminds me quietly as he opens the door and puts my bags inside.
‘Not even a goldfish,’ I whisper as I climb in. I don’t smile to make light of it, because it’s not even slightly funny.
He hands the driver a note. ‘Take her home safely,’ he says. His eyes hold mine for a few long seconds as he slams my door. I’m reminded of the last time I watched him disappear into the night. I didn’t know him then; I had no control. It isn’t like that tonight. I know who he is, and how he tastes, and for a split second I long to open the door of the cab, to stop history from repeating itself.
I don’t. Of course I don’t. Despite the fairy-tale snowstorm out there, this isn’t Narnia. This is London, real life, where hearts get kicked and bruised and broken, but somehow they still keep beating. I watch him recede as the taxi lurches cautiously away, and he watches me too, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, his shoulders bunched against the wind. I lay my head against the cold glass as we turn the corner, my heart and my conscience lead heavy in my chest.
I wish I’d never laid eyes on Jack O’Mara.