Page 42 of Wish You Were Here
‘I’m good. Great, actually! I just moved to London.’
‘Oh yeah, where have you been?’
‘Well, you know that after uni I went travelling. I trod the usual backpacker path through South East Asia, Australia, New Zealand and South America. After that I taught English in Japan for two years, then three years in New Zealand, where I almost got married but didn’t, a year in Canada, where I almost died but didn’t, and then I came back to the UK last year, lived at home with my folks in Cambridge, and now I’m here.’
‘Blimey! You’ve been about a bit.’
‘What about you?’
‘After uni, I moved to London to work in finance, got on a graduate scheme for an asset management company, and found a flat share in Clapham.’
‘And now?’
‘I work for the same asset management company and live in the same flat share in Clapham,’ I say, realising as I am saying the words out loud how monumentally dull I sound.
Jemma laughs. ‘Same old Ben.’
‘Yes, same old Ben.’
Jemma looks really good. I haven’t seen her in eight years, but she hasn’t changed much. She still has the same lovely chestnut hair, beautiful chocolatey brown eyes, and I think she might be a tad thinner, and she’s dressed in far more grown-up clothes than she used to be. At university she was a typical indie girl with her Adidas trainers and vintage second-hand t-shirts, but now she’s dressed like the perfect version of a twenty-nine year old woman I can imagine. She’s smart, trendy and gorgeous. Of all the women I have dated recently, ran nearby on parkruns, tried to chat-up or get to know at work, she is certainly the most attractive.
‘Look, I have to dash, but I’d love to meet up for a drink or something.’
‘Yes, definitely, that would be brill. Sorry, I don’t know why I said brill. I never say brill. I think I said it once in the 2000’s but that was it.’
‘Give me your phone,’ says Jemma with a delicious smile. I do as I am told, hand over my phone, and Jemma puts her number into my contacts before she hands it back to me. ‘Promise you’ll call me.’
‘I promise.’
‘Cross your heart? Hope to die?’
‘Stick a needle in my eye,’ I say, and we smile because that’s an old routine we used to do at university. Even speaking to her for a minute, and it is like all the years since we have seen each other just melt away. Sometimes in life, things fall into place and people come back into your life at the exact moment you need them – this feels like one of those times.
‘Can’t wait,’ says Jemma excitedly, before she leans in and plants a delicate kiss on my cheek. ‘See you, Benji.’
She is the only person to ever call me Benji.
‘Bye, Jem,’ I reply, using the shortened version of her name I used to call her. She gives me another ridiculously large smile, then she is gone, and I start walking towardsGail’s, a definite spring in my step. The statistical chances of finding love in London are slim, but the chances of bumping into Jemma in a city of almost nine million people is even slimmer. I’m not entirely sure what this statistic means, but surely it means something. When it comes to asset management we always go with the odds. If something seems too good to be true then itusually is, so we go with the odds because more often than not, you’ll end up on top.
18
Saskia
It’s morning and I wander into the kitchen to make myself some brekky, where I am met by the sight of Brian wearing a tight Japanese kimono and watering a bonsai tree.
‘G’day, love,’ says Brian, and I think of Ben. He’d be thrilled to hear Brian say ‘G’day’.
‘Morning, Brian,’ I say, walking across and getting myself a bowl from the cupboard, then a box of cereal and milk from the fridge. I make myself a bowl of cereal before I sit at the counter, where Brian has stopped watering his bonsai tree and is now carefully pruning it. ‘How’s the tree going?’
‘Maple’s bonza, love.’
‘Maple?’
‘Oh yeah, sorry, it’s her name. She’s a Japanese maple bonsai tree, and so I thought—’
‘You’d call her Maple?’
‘Exactly,’ says Brian without looking at me. ‘Your mum’s out shopping. Coles, I think. She said something about half-price sunscreen, and you know what she’s like with her sunscreen.’
