Page 14 of The First Time I Saw You
I’m wary of my answer. Kat is well known for orchestrating discord in the office. ‘I don’t know much about her really.’ I look away from the way her fingers are punching the numbers and ignore the nagging feeling inside that pushes a vague memory of Kat at the bar the other night to the forefront. I turn my attention back to Sophie and wonder if she is working out if I am a viable asset or – if the rumours are true – I’m surplus to requirements. I pull out my phone to check for messages and then turn to walk away.
‘I’ll let you know if I see it,’ Kat adds.
‘Eh?’
‘The cufflink?’
‘Oh right, thanks.’
This is ridiculous. I re-read the last paragraph of the self-help book which Sarah left last time she was here.
‘I am a handsome, successful man, I do not need anyone to make me feel worthy. I am master of my own destiny . . . and I sound like a twat.’
It’s not self-help that I need. I need Jon. Jon was my first love: is my first love. I don’t know when our love affair began – maybe it was when I first saw his hair, or the way his leather trousers fitted in a way I could never get mine to, but I knew it was love.
My hands are almost shaking with anticipation as I reach for the dial; I have no control of my body as the beat begins. I stand, legs slightly apart, bent at the knees and head bowed in reverence as I begin to live on a prayer. I use the gravelly part of my voice that empowers the struggle of Tommy’s life as he worked on the docks; I lean forward and sing into my bottle of beer, ‘wahoooing’ all the way there, my mood lifting considerably.
There is a knock on the door, so I pause the playlist. It’s unusual for anybody to visit me at this time in the evening. My stomach growls and I hope that it might be girl scouts selling cookies; instead, it is her: the Britch.
I can feel the comfort and security that Jon has given me ebb away as I look at her. I have always been overwhelmed by her beauty. That’s the wrong word to use. My da always said I was a ‘namby-pamby’. I once showed him a piece of poetry that I’d written at school. My English teacher, Miss Clarke, had almost cried when she’d read it. She’d said that if there were more boys in the world like me then there would be less fighting. When I told Da this – after he had finally stopped laughing – he clipped me round the ear and told me to man up. As I look at the flush in her cheeks and the way she looks up at me, I can hear Da’s voice: ‘Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen.’
‘What do you want?’ I ask.
She wants to explain, she says, and then she does this thing: she bites her lip, no, not bites, she sort of pulls her bottom lip with her teeth, and I know she’s nervous. I feel myself wanting to hold her but then I think about Da and the poetry and Jon . . . Jon wouldn’t take this shit. I let her in and she follows me into the kitchen.
When I was a kid, I used to watch this American sit-com and every episode, I was jealous of the kids in it because they always had bottles of Coke in this big old fridge. We only ever had two-litre plastic bottles of supermarket-brand coke, which Da used to swig from. When I moved in here, this fridge was the first thing I bought, that and six bottles of Coke that needed a bottle opener to open . . . I even got them customised: ‘Share a bottle with Samuel’. I reach in and grab a bottle of beer, ignoring the bottle of wine that I should be offering to her. It’s a small victory and I hide my smile as my hand passes it; her favourite bottle of white is hiding next to the milk and she isn’t going to have a drop. I rearrange my face and turn to her.
‘So, explain.’
I listen as she tells me that she already had the software pitch outlined before I told her about my idea, but I’m fighting the memory of that night. The strawberry stains on her fingers as they sliced the fruit into bowls – neat, precise quarters: whole hearts dissected. I remember I could still taste them later as we kissed and the way I could still smell them on the sheets after she’d left.
How does she do it? I sigh as Sophie passes me, taking the wine and my small victory with her, dismissing my complaints and making the whole mess sound like an argument about leaving a damp towel on the floor rather than stealing my ideas and leaving me, quite literally, in the dark . . . Now she’s going on about my job just changing. I don’t want it to change. It’s not fair.
‘What if I don’t want it to be changed?’
‘You sound like a toddler.’
‘I do not!’ She raises her eyebrow at me.
‘Can we, God, can we sit down? I’m knackered, and my feet hurt.’ She drains her glass and refills it before turning on her heels and heading for the lounge.
She plays with her ear as she sinks into the sofa and it kills me: that tell that lets me know she’s concentrating on what she is going to say.
I glance at her glass of wine; her slim fingers edged with rose-pink nails grip on to the stem: she’s drinking too much too quickly. I notice the edges of her words have softened, their clipped consonants filed down, the spaces in her sentences becoming shorter and her gestures more animated. She kneels in front of me, asking me to close my eyes. Her hair has caught in the small silver hoop earrings. I’m still angry, I tell her, but the need I feel to unhook her hair and hold her is contradicting my words.
I open the small box and inside is proof: proof that I was right to feel about her the way that I did. I can feel my heart pulsing, my blood quickening, bringing fire and warmth to my body when I didn’t realise it had been cold. She must see the way I’m looking at her and I worry that the intensity of my feelings is scaring her. Her smile is fading, and she looks pale. I lean forward to reassure her that there is nothing to be scared of and then she kisses me . . . and I feel like I’ve come home.
There is a girl lying in my bed. A girl who has a small chicken pox scar on her left eyebrow, a girl who in the short time I have known her has made me feel hatred and love, betrayal and loyalty, fear and security. I know she can’t see the way that I’m stroking her hair, the way I’m watching her snoring gently, and the way that I’m smiling: slightly sadly, because I know that she is not entirely mine. I pull my arm from under her and kiss her on the forehead, step into my shorts and go about the business of cleaning up last night’s mess.
The washing machine whirs into action, as I try to light the gas on the cooker and place the kettle on top. The big American fridge hums next to the old dinosaur of a gas stove. There are times when I have almost gone for the convenience of an electric cooker, an electric kettle, but there is just something about the routine of manually lighting the gas, the whoosh as it ignites, the whistle of the kettle on the hob, that makes this place, so far from home, feel like home. While the kettle heats up, I stare out of the kitchen window as the sun starts to rise, turning the kitchen walls the colour of those bubble-gum-pink lollies that I used to eat as a child. I spoon coffee into two mugs and smile as I replay the events of the night before: her embarrassment and the way she had started hiccupping; how her hand had flown to her mouth to try and hold in their sound and the way she had started giggling when they wouldn’t stop. The hard-nosed businesswoman laughing and snorting like a little girl. How she had fallen asleep on the sofa and the feel of her as I carried her up to the spare room. The way she had snuck into my room while I slept, smelling of soap and toothpaste; the way her skin felt beneath me and the things she said.
I close myself in the downstairs study and reach for the phone. I have no choice. I have to do it.
Week Three
Sophie
The smell of coffee wakes me up. I stretch with contentment, allowing myself a few minutes of luxury as I replay last night. The lilt of his accent from downstairs fills the room as I glance at the clock. I should be going into the office to double-check everything is in order, but I can’t seem to find enough urgency to get out of this bed. I roll over on to my stomach and bury my head in the pillow, breathing in his smell, and I know that this is right. I was right to come over last night and I was right to, well, I was right to knock on his door.
