‘So, what next? We appoint a solicitor? Get a survey?’ The words tumble from his mouth. ‘This is
amazing
news, Gemma. I feel as though the end is in sight. In four months’ time, we’ll be starting a new life in a new home, away from my mother.’
I nod and grin.
‘I can’t believe how excited I am,’ he babbles on. ‘I’m actually surprising myself!’ Then he stops and looks at me. ‘Are you not telling me something?’
‘Hmm?’
‘Come off it. There’s something else. You’re an open book, Gemma.’
I frown. ‘You said I was mysterious when you first met me.’
‘I was trying to pull you,’ he replies. ‘Come on. Spit it out.’
I think about going to buy him a drink first, but his eyes are now boring into mine. ‘It’s a small thing in the scheme of things,’ I start.
‘Okay.’
‘Totally worth it.’
‘Okay.’
‘And the fact is, they weren’t going to go for our original offer.’
He pauses. ‘Oh.
Kay
.’
I take a deep breath. ‘They asked for another £4k and I said yes.’
‘What?’ There is little evidence of joy in his voice.
‘When you’re dealing in these sorts of sums, £4k is nothing. Not really, is it?’
He looks obstinately unmoved by this assertion. ‘It is when you haven’t got it and have no prospect of getting it.’
‘We’ll get it.’ I feel actual, bona fide confidence in this, despite the slight deficiency in logic.
He picks up his drink and downs a mouthful silently. Then he looks in my eyes with the peculiar intensity he usually reserves for grand declarations: the first time he said he loved me, when he asked me to go on our first ever holiday together, or when he suggested I should move into his flat.
Somehow, I suspect he’s not about to suggest Paris now. ‘Gemma, where are we going to get that from?’ The quiet exasperation in his voice makes me clench my teeth. ‘We’ve already sold everything we own to get to the figure we offered them. Another four grand is just not possible.’
‘I don’t think we should be so defeatist,’ I say weakly.
‘You mean realistic.’
‘We’ve got four months to come up with the money, Dan. This is do-able,’ I say. ‘I’m absolutely convinced of it.’
Chapter 13
Gemma
I met Dan for the second time six full years after the night our paths first collided at that taxi rank in Liverpool. It was September 2010, on an achingly beautiful autumn day on the banks of Lake Windermere. We were in the throes of an Indian summer, with weekends filled with boozy barbecues, hazy days in the park, cycle rides through the city with the dying rays of the year’s sunshine on our shoulders.
I was in the Lake District because my friend Allie asked if I’d cheer her on in an open water swimming competition. I was happy to oblige as long as the most energetic thing I had to do was flip open my sun cream.
Allie and I had been friends after sharing a room in first year at university. I’d been a little annoyed about not having one to myself at first, but within days couldn’t have imagined things any other way.
Allie was a cautious, studious type, someone to whom I wouldn’t automatically have gravitated given that in those days my priority was finding a party and staying at it until I was only capable of crawling home. Yet from the moment we met, we clicked. We had nothing in common – partly because she’d grown up in Switzerland – but we had
such
a laugh. When I think about those days in our poky little room, with two beds, one sink and curtains that looked as though they must’ve been in the Domesday Book, that’s what I think of: the two of us with tears of laughter spilling down our cheeks.
The swim was the fourth she’d entered and the first I’d gone to watch, partly because I was mildly intrigued by what sort of lunatics were motivated to do such a thing.
I was on the edge of the lake, cheering her on as noisily as I could, when I noticed the winner emerging from the water. You couldn’t
not
notice him. He was improbably beautiful: all hard body, soft smile and general, Herculean gorgeousness.
It was an odd moment. It’d been years since I could recall fancying someone like that; so suddenly, so irrationally.
I was also thrown, I think, because in the years after Alex and I went our separate ways, I’d gravitated to scrawny blokes who smoked meaningfully and looked like they’d never seen daylight. Amateur psychologists might have made something of their passing resemblance to the object of my teenage affection – and his passing flirtation with Marlboros.
Yet here I was, at the edge of a lake, averting my eyes selfconsciously from a man who was the opposite of all that. Someone athletic and muscular, with a six-pack so defined it should by rights have its own passport.
Anyway.
That, I’d thought, was that. A cloudburst of attraction lingering briefly in the air, before floating away, forgotten.
After the race, Allie and I hit the Swan Inn, along with other competitors. I was at the bar, waiting to be served, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I span round, realised who it was and a pink glow bloomed on my neck.
‘You owe me twenty pounds,’ he said.
He might be a romantic these days and ask me to marry him (as a cynical joke, admittedly) twice a month, but the fact remains: they were Dan’s first, profound words to me.
You owe me twenty pounds
.
‘Sorry?’ I replied, which I admit wasn’t much of a comeback.
‘Twenty pounds. But don’t worry, I’d kind of written it off.’ His lips softened into a smile. My knees gave way slightly.
‘Sorry. You clearly don’t recognise me.’ It occurred to me when he said that, that he might be someone half-famous. Like an
X Factor
quarter-finalist from 2007, or a weather man who fills in at weekends on the local TV news.
‘Well, no,’ I confessed, feeling suddenly certain it was going to be the latter. He had the air of someone who knew his cumulonimbus from his cirrostratus, and I mean that only in a good way.
Ironically, I was the one whose appearance had changed most by then – my dreadlocks were long gone. He said later that he had only recognised me by the seashell tattoo on my shoulderblade, which he’d doodled on the edge of a contacts book he kept for years afterwards. That counts as possibly the only reason I’ve never regretted having that tattoo done.
We shook hands. It was the first time I felt his hand in mine and it was a window into his soul: warm, honest and strong. ‘I’m Dan. We met years ago. Five, maybe six . . . yes, it must’ve been six. You were in a bar in Liverpool and you were trying to get rid of your date. Then I bumped into you at the taxi rank.’
I looked at him blankly.
‘I obviously made an impression. Well, I gave you twenty pounds for the taxi. And you said you’d phone to arrange to give it back to me.’
I blushed fervidly. ‘Sorry, I just don’t remember this. And I’ve only got a tenner, which I was about to spend on these drinks.’
‘I don’t really want it back,’ he laughed. Then he paused, contemplating his next move. I wanted him to stay. Have a drink with me. Let me gaze into those eyes a moment or two longer.
‘Nice seeing you again,’ he said. And off he went, just like that, leaving my insides to collapse slightly at the sight of his back.
I’ve worked something out about myself over the years. When I decide I am interested in something, or someone, it starts out small, the grain of an idea, then it grows and grows until it’s so all-consuming I can barely entertain another thought in my head.
On the drive home, I couldn’t stop thinking about the guy at the lake. By the time I got back to my flat, he’d set up home in my head. The look of him. The smell of him. The everything of him.
I made dinner that evening replaying the award-winning script of what I should’ve said after he’d tapped me on the shoulder. Yet, it was only as I lay in bed the following morning, in the half-world between sleep and full consciousness, that I remembered what he was talking about.
I’d been seeing some horrible guy at the time – I couldn’t recall his name, but I do recall he took me to an equally horrible pub.
Details of the evening started to appear in my head, like little spotlights illuminating one by one. I remembered the taxi rank. I remembered talking to Dan. Yet why hadn’t I phoned him? I raced to my bedroom drawer and dug out my old diaries, then sat on the floor flicking through the pages.
Sunday, 14 January 2005 – 2.15 a.m.
Keg Dixon is yesterday’s news. And so are my dreadlocks.
Earlier suspicions about Keg being a low-level arsehole were entirely confirmed on our fourth (and last) date tonight. Not sure what was worse: the fact that he ‘forgot’ his cash card and tried to pay for a round with a money-off coupon for ALDI – or his repeated assertion that I had ‘blow-job lips,’ which I was supposed to consider a compliment.
Anyway. I have met a
gorgeous
bloke. If it wasn’t two in the morning and my brain was functioning slightly better, I’d use more impressive prose. But in the absence of any luciditiness (is that a word?) I will simply say this: He has GORGEOUS eyes. GORGEOUS hair. And has a GORGEOUS voice.
He’s big, with proper biceps, so technically not my type at all.
I also think he might like me, even though am certain I’m not
his
type.
Am taking the dreadlocks out tomorrow, have decided for definite. Timing is sheer co-incidence, clearly – am not abandoning my quirky, unconventional identity just to try and pull Gorgeous Guy. Though if it works and I do pull him, then brilliant!
Anyway. Have Gorgeous Guy’s number so will stick two fingers up to my copy of
The Rules
and phone him tomorrow p.m. Signing off now as v. tired and think I may have onset of hypothermia after standing in rain.
I turned the page onto the following morning.
Sunday, 14 January 2005 – 11.45 a.m.
Worst Cold Ever. My nose is the same colour as my hair
AND THIS IS THE LEAST OF MY WORRIES!
Gorgeous Guy’s number has rubbed off my hand, so cannot phone him.
Is probably for the best. Thought I fancied him last night but in cold light of day, use of lip-liner in a potential boyfriend might be an issue for me. Hmm. Quirky, unconventional phase apparently
is
drawing to a conclusion.
Still, lip-liner or not, he was lovely, am sure of it. Off now to weep a little. And blow nose a lot.
As the six-year-old words in my diary played on me the day after the swimming competition, I got a growing sense that – whatever the score was with the lip-liner – I’d let this guy slip through my fingers once. Now, fate had brought us together again.
It was time to make sure fate and I stayed friends.
Chapter 14
Dan
I wake forty minutes before I need to on an uninspiring Wednesday morning and lie watching rain snake down the windows as the soft skin of Gemma’s cheek rubs against the bristles on my neck.
‘I’m going to get us something nice for dinner tonight,’ she murmurs.
I cuddle her into me. ‘That’d be lovely.’
She looks up. ‘We’ve got some important stuff to do afterwards, like deciding on a solicitor to appoint.’
I shuffle down to turn my attention to her lips, when someone takes what sounds like a lump hammer to the door. ‘Don’t be late for work, will you?’ my mother shrieks.
‘How does she think I’ve managed to get out of bed on time
all by myself
for the past twelve years?’ I grouch.
Gemma remains diplomatically silent.
I’d known today was going to be challenging and it doesn’t disappoint. By mid-afternoon, I’ve had five discussions with three people from an energy company who’ve cut off the gas supply to one of the properties a client of mine is in.
There is so much paperwork piling up on my desk that I could host the world junior papier-mâché championships and never run out of supplies.
And I’ve just returned from a visit that began when I discovered another client half-naked and carrying a two-litre bottle of cider outside his flat because, he claimed, he’d lost his key and his trousers had been stolen. By a police officer.
I’m finally back at the Old School House, key and trousers recovered – predictably, not from a police officer – and all I want to do is start attacking my correspondence, with as little distraction as possible.
‘Big news on me and Jade,’ Pete announces.
‘Oh?’ I ask, unsurprised that the
Daily Mail
aren’t queuing up for an exclusive.
‘I decided I need to be bolder, so asked her to go for a coffee at lunchtime tomorrow. Or maybe a sandwich. I said I’d pay.’
‘Hey, Big Spender,’ I smile. A text arrives from Gemma, checking again that I’m not going to be late. I optimistically reply saying I should be on time.
‘I don’t want to look too keen,’ Pete continues. I decide not to tell him he couldn’t look keener if he’d bought the ring, booked the venue and had tickets for the honeymoon on the Isle d’Amour, a luxury resort for the terminally soppy.
Later that afternoon, I leave the office for one of my first meetings with a new client, Sheila. I came across her two days ago when she emerged, bleary-eyed, into the living room of another service user during one of my visits.
She’d been sofa-surfing for a while, though trying to pin down her last fixed abode was like attempting to discover the whereabouts of Atlantis with a Boy Scout’s compass. I discovered though, that she was forty-two, a sex worker, grandmother to a baby girl called Rose and that, despite a savage cough that rattled through her entire skeleton, she hadn’t seen a doctor in five years.
It struck me when we first met that Sheila might have been pretty once.
These days, her intensely blue eyes are all that remain of her old looks, despite clear efforts to maintain her appearance, with make-up and curled hair. Both were fighting a losing battle against years of substance abuse – crack, I’d guessed (correctly as it turned out). It had permeated every part of her, leaving her face gaunt, her skin grey and her lips parched.