Page 11 of The Lucky Escape

My eyes adjusted, taking in the face of a stranger. How did he know my name? I had no idea who the crooked smile and Roman nose and twinkling eyes in front of me belonged to.

Oh, except: hold on. He was the man from earlier who’d been looking at me, the one I’d given daggers for daring to notice my presence. Had he been trying to get my attention because we knew each other? He was about my height – my generous tallness, despite everything else about me being overwhelmingly average, meant that our eyes were level – and he was smiling, wide and bright. He had shorts pulled over Lycra leggings and a grey marbled T-shirt that clung to his body to reveal not exactly a Brad Pitt physique, but definitely a healthy dad bod.

Alexander always made me feel a bit inferior because I didn’t have defined abs and a peachy bum. Although heck, it was nice to rub a hand over that stomach of his. When he walked around in his boxers sometimes I’d catch a glimpse of him and think,Holy hell, there’s my man.But then he’d eat a boiled egg for breakfast and I’d slurp at my cereal and I wondered if he ever looked at me and thought,Holy hell, there’s my woman.I mean, obviously he didn’t, otherwise he might have stayed.

The man in front of me was friendly-looking and approachable. An everyman. You might not turn back to look at him on the street, but you wouldn’t be mad if you got sat next to him at dinner. He wasn’t intimidating to look at, but he was cute. I didn’t mean to compare him to Alexander. God. Would I always compare every fella who crossed my path to him? Urgh. That made me so mad. For all I knew Alexander was in Timbuktu with a harem of attractive women who did CrossFit and took turns blowing him on the hour,every hour. ‘Annie Who?’ he probably said as yet another grape was delivered to his perfect mouth by a woman with an arse pert enough to park a bike in and tits that bounced like basketballs.

I refocused. The man in front of me, with his wavy dark blond hair and thoughtful eyes, was looking at me intently.

‘You’ve got no idea who I am, do you?’ He smirked. He had a levity to him, like he wasn’t laughing at me, but that we were in on a joke together. It made me want to catch up and be light, too.

But I wasn’t light. Instead, I was suddenly panicked. Maybe he was a friend of Alexander’s. Had he been in the church, at the wedding that never happened? I steeled myself for an outpouring of sympathy. This was exactly what I hadn’t wanted to happen, and exactly why I was loath to leave the house.

‘Drama camp. Summer of 2002 … Maybe 2003?’ He offered.

I shook my head, the penny dropping. ‘You went to Yak Yak Theatre Program?’ I said, slowly.

‘Yes, ma’am.’ He nodded. ‘I did set design forBugsy Malone, and I think you …’

Colour climbed up my neck and to my cheeks. If he was there forthat…

‘Oh my gosh! I was a showgirl! And the understudy for Tallulah. I got to do one show when that girl – oh crap, I can’t remember her name – she broke her leg on the very last day and I got to perform!’

‘Standing ovation, as I recall. The whole place went wild. I was there. It was electric. I mean, I was a teenager so that’s a loose definition of the word electric, but I remember it. I remember your face. You don’t look any different.’

I marvelled at the memory. Yak Yak was my favourite place in the world when I was just into my teens. Actually, when I was about Freddie’s age. For the whole of August, kids from all over the country got shipped off to the New Forest by their parents, living in a big holiday home, like American summer camp. We played silly games and did trust exercises and painted sets and ran lines and performed monologues. It was incredible. Totally incredible. And for some reason I just stopped going. The summer I was fifteen I didn’t want to go back, and so it turned out my last stint on stage was exactly the moment this guy whose name I didn’t know remembered.

‘Patrick,’ he said, as if he could hear my thoughts. ‘I’m Patrick Hummingbird. You might remember me as Paddy?’

As soon as he said it, it was like his face did one of those reverse ‘Evolution Of’ videos that they do on people.com of celebrities through the ages. They start with a photo of George Clooney when he was inER, and then it morphs into a photo of him in his first feature film, and then becomes a photo of him as Batman, and so on until it’s a photo of him walking into Prince Harry’s wedding with Amal on his arm. In my head I had to shrink the biceps in front of me and add in a bit more hair and un-straighten his teeth and make him shorter but then, suddenly, I could see him by a light rig working out where to put a spotlight and talking to a senior drama teacher and helping people memorize lines and laughing. That’s it. I remembered him as always laughing. He’d been the group clown, the boy always guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

‘Paddy Hummingbird! Yes! Shit! Out of all the bootcamps in all the world …’

‘I squat-lunged into this one,’ he supplied, getting myCasablancareference immediately. He added: ‘And it’s Patrick, now. I’m trying to do the grown-up thing.’

‘Patrick,’ I echoed.

‘Can I give you a hug?’ he questioned, taking a step towards me.

‘Oh, urm, yes, sure! I’m so sweaty but hi!’ I opened out my arms and tried to keep my armpits from having contact with his clothes. I could feel my own dampness even through my jumper –thatis how hard I’d worked out. I was still pouring sweat fifteen minutes after finishing. ‘It’s so nice to run into you!’

I got a whiff of him as we dipped in, and then pulled away. He didn’t smell old or fusty. He smelled manly. Potent. Paddy Hummingbird. What were the chances?

‘How have you been?’ he asked. ‘I thought I saw you here the other day. I’m so pleased it’s you! Are you new here?’ His face was indisputably kind. Some people just have those faces you want to tell everything to, and Paddy –Patrick– Hummingbird’s was one of them. ‘I mean, you look great, I have to say.’ He loosely gestured to my athleisure wear with his thick fingers, the veins on his forearms popping.

I shook my head. ‘Noooo,’ I said, self-consciously touching my face. I didn’t have a lick of make-up on and could feel the sweat on my brow had already turned to a salty crust. ‘I’m a mess. You don’t have to say that.’

‘I know I don’t,’ he countered. ‘But I am. Look at you …’ He trailed off, catching himself and changing tack. ‘Are you married? Kids? Getting a good rate on a self-investing pension plan?’

It was such an innocuous question. If you hadn’t seen somebody in almost twenty years that’s the question you’d ask, isn’t it? And I should have just smiled and waved a hand.I should have said something sweeping and general, and I started to, kind of. I started to say, ‘Oh pfffft. No news on my end!’ But I couldn’t even get the whole sentence out. Up until what had happened, I adored being asked about Alexander because I got to show off my ring and whip out a photo of us on holiday in Cornwall, demonstrating how much I had my life together, how loveable I was after all. But now, urgh. I was sobbing out my guts before I could stop myself. It was all very undignified.

‘Are you okay? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—’ Patrick was lunging at me in sympathy. He was a blur, though, because of the tears in my eyes. Jeez, that had escalated so quickly I’d not even noticed it was happening.

I waved my hands in front of my face. ‘This is mortifying,’ I insisted, batting at the air to cool my eyes and stop them leaking. ‘I’m so sorry.’

I suppose everyone else in my life knew what my situation was. Meeting this stranger – this old friend – was the first time I’d had to search for the words that now summarized my new relationship status. I’d not said it in years.It’s just me. I’m single.

I’m single. Isn’t that code for:I’m not good enough?

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