Page 51 of Still Me
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On Friday afternoon, when Agnes began her piano lesson, I retreated to my room and called England. As I dialed Sam’s number, I felt the familiar flutter of excitement just at the prospect of hearing his voice. Some days I missed him so much I carried it round like an ache. I sat and waited as it rang.
And a woman answered.
“Hello?” she said. She was well-spoken, her voice slightly raspy at the edges, as if she had smoked too many cigarettes.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I must have dialed the wrong number.” I briefly pulled the phone from my ear and stared at the screen.
“Who are you after?”
“Sam? Sam Fielding?”
“He’s in the shower. Hold on, I’ll get him.” Her hand went over the receiver and she yelled his name, her voice briefly muffled. I went very still. There were no young women in Sam’s family. “He’s just coming,” she said, after a moment. “Who shall I say is calling?”
“Louisa.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Long-distance phone calls make you oddly attuned to slight variations in tone and emphasis and there was something in that “Oh” that made me uneasy. I was about to ask whom I was talking to when Sam picked up.
“Hey!”
“Hey!” It came out strangely broken, as my mouth had dried unexpectedly, and I had to say it twice.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing! I mean nothing urgent. I—I just, you know, wanted to hear your voice.”
“Hold on. I’ll close this door.” I could picture him in the little railway carriage, pulling the bedroom door to. When he came back on he sounded cheery, quite unlike the last time we had spoken. “So what’s going on? Everything okay with you? What’s the time there?”
“Just after two. Um, who was that?”
“Oh. That’s Katie.”
“Katie.”
“Katie Ingram. My new partner?”
“Katie! Okay! So... uh... what’s she doing in your house?”
“Oh, she’s just giving me a lift to Donna’s leaving do. Bike’s gone into the garage. Problem with the exhaust.”
“She really is looking after you, then!” I wondered, absently, if he was wearing a towel.
“Yeah. She only lives down the road so it made sense.” He said it with the casual neutrality of someone aware he was being listened to by two women.
“So where are you all off to?”
“That tapas place in Hackney? The one that used to be a church? I’m not sure we ever went there.”
“A church! Ha-ha-ha! So you’ll all have to be on your best behavior!” I laughed, too loudly.
“Bunch of paramedics on a night out? I doubt it.”
There was a short silence. I tried to ignore the knot in my stomach. Sam’s voice softened. “You sure you’re okay? You sound a little—”
“I’m fine! Totally! Like I said. I just wanted to hear your voice.”
