‘Hi.’ Cold beads of sweat prick on my forehead.
‘Hi, Emma. Can I come in?’
I nod, determined not to fall to pieces outwardly, no matter what’s going on inside. ‘Of course.’ With a pounding heart, I invite him into the kitchen.
‘Coffee?’
‘I’d love one.’
Things are instantly weird between us. The tension in the air is acute. The difference from a week ago – when he’d rush in, throw his arms round me, and smother me with kisses
– is like a knife twisting in my stomach.
I set about making coffee, searching for a sentence, any sentence. But small talk escapes us both.
‘Emma.’
I turn to look at him, but briefly – before snatching away my eyes and taking out two cups.
‘Emma, we need to talk.’
The coffee is almost done and I have nothing to do except stare at the machine, my arms crossed. ‘You don’t need to explain. I understand.’
‘I don’t think you do. Emma – I was with Allison all last night. We were talking. Some things have changed.’
‘I understand, Matt. Honestly,’ I reply, hearing my voice wobble.
I pour coffee into a cup and hand it to him, refusing to look at his face. ‘It’s not as if you haven’t made things clear from the beginning. She’s the love of your
life.’
He pauses for a second. ‘I know what I said back then in the summer. It’s different now . . . but – what’s this got to do with anything?’
It strikes me that he looks on me – he’s always looked on me – in the same way that Cally looks on Giles. I’ve been a bit of fun. Light relief. Allison’s the woman
he can’t live without. The woman he’s loved for ever. The woman who can effectively click her fingers and he’ll drop what he and I have and—
‘She’s moving to France.’
I pause, taking in his words, my head swimming. ‘What?’
He looks at his hands. ‘I was at the house for hours yesterday, trying to persuade her not to go.’
‘But . . . why
is
she going?’
‘Things are serious between her and Guillaume. She’s decided she wants to make a go of it with him – to start a new life there.’
I abandon the coffee and walk to him, sitting on the chair next to his and holding his hands. They’re shaking, cold. My head is suddenly bursting with thoughts – but there’s
one that smashes the others into oblivion.
‘But what about the boys?’
It’s then that I see one of the worst sights of my life. Matt starts to cry. This big, strong, beautiful man, spilling out his heart, his life ripped in two. I wrap my arms round him,
pulling him towards me, hugging him, desperate to stop his pain. Eventually, he pulls back and wipes his eyes with the back of his hand, then he shakes his head and replies to my question.
‘They’re going with her.’
‘But they
can’t
.’
‘They can,’ he whispers. ‘They can.’
‘But how would that work? You’d hardly ever see them. Not unless . . .’
My words trail off as my mind burns with emotion and he looks up at me with red eyes.
He needs to say nothing. Nothing at all. And, although it’s me who says it, I also know that it’s his only option.
‘You’re going too.’
He swallows, then nods once, before leaning in and wrapping his arms round me, squeezing me tightly.
I feel like I’m never going to breathe again.
The loathsomeness of work was bearable when I had Matt as a distraction.
Now, all I can think of is him, a man I adore, moving to another country. Which is typical, isn’t it? I wait almost thirty years to experience this feeling, this overwhelming emotion
everyone goes on about. And as soon as I get a sniff of it – with my next-door neighbour – he has to move to the other side of the English Channel.
I am consumed with unhappiness throughout Monday, unable to think of anything except a future without Matt. That and dreaming up imaginary scenarios that could keep him here: everything from
Allison developing an allergy to baguettes to her being denied entry to France for a hitherto clandestine drugs trafficking conviction.
Even the fact that Lulu has finally given me something remotely interior designy to look at does nothing to cheer me up.
She’s asked me to source fabric for the curtains in a posh gastro pub in the Lake District, the sort of thing I’d once thought would be interesting. But, as I’ve quickly come
to discover, once you’ve seen one champagne-silk dupion you’ve seen them all.
‘Emma! We’re out of Duchy Originals,’ Lulu cries, popping her head round her office door.
I muster a smile. ‘I’ll get right on it.’
‘And I’d like you to pop back to the Quay today.’
‘Oh.’ My spirits lift. ‘Which part of the project will I be working on?’
She turns up her nose, momentarily bemused. ‘I left my umbrella there.’
When I arrive at the site, it’s quieter than last time; half the workers are on lunch. I tentatively open the door, like one of those teenagers in a dodgy eighties horror
film, and wonder where I’m going to start looking for Lulu’s sodding Marc Jacobs umbrella.
‘Hello!’ I call out, as footsteps approach.
Suddenly there he is, in front of me. Pete Hammond. Zachary’s father.
The resemblance isn’t overwhelming – not to the same extent as Zachary looks like Cally. But the more I look at him, the more I can see it. The blue eyes, the blond hair, the
slightly turned-up nose.
‘Hi, again. Can I help?’ he asks.
‘My boss left her umbrella here the other day.’
‘Oh. Any idea where?’
‘Upstairs, she thinks.’
‘I’ll have to come with you – it’s still a state up there.’
I follow Pete up the stairs with an acute sense that, just by uttering one sentence, I could change his life for ever. When we reach the top, his phone rings and he stops to answer it.
‘I’m with someone, sweetheart. Yep, I’ll get some on my way home. It’s the SMA White, isn’t it? Okay – got to go. Bye. Love you too.’
‘Sorry,’ he grins, ending the call. ‘That was my wife. I’m on the baby-milk run tonight.’
‘Oh,’ I smile.
‘There it is.’ He points to the umbrella on the other side of the room and marches towards it.
‘Thanks,’ I reply, and as he hands it to me I’m unable to take my eyes off his face.
‘Anything else I can help with?’
I hesitate, as he tucks his phone into his inside pocket again.
‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘That was all. Thanks.’
It’s a ten-minute walk to catch a tram back to the office and I reach a shelter just before the heavens open. I sit, as damp and cold as a used tea bag, watching the rain
fall in sheets, feeling empty inside.
The tram arrives and I’m about to step onto it when I realise I’ve forgotten to buy a ticket. ‘Shit,’ I mutter, scratching around in my purse and realising I’ve got
seventy-three pence to my name.
‘Oh God . . .’
I step back from the tram and watch as the doors close and it disappears. I gaze at my suede shoes. This morning they were a shade called Oyster. Now, they are more Regurgitated Kipper.
With my hair sodden, I put up the umbrella and begin traipsing in the direction of the office, a forty-minute walk away. It is the most miserable journey of my life, one that involves relentless
battles with traffic and slimy splashes from the gutter, and leaves my toes feeling as if they’ve been through a mincing machine.
When I arrive at the door of Loop and stand in the lift, a grey pool of water gathers under my shoes. I enter the office squelching like a toilet plunger. For the first time since I started work
here, every person in the office turns to look at me.
Lulu marches over furiously and snatches her umbrella. ‘Where have you been? I’ve got a meeting at three and have been standing here waiting.’
She strides off, shaking the umbrella and grabbing her coat. I trudge to my seat, wondering how I’m going to dry out without an industrial dehumidifier, and drop my bag on the desk.
‘Do you mind?’
I look up and Dee is pulling one of her septic faces. It appears that the strap from my bag has encroached on her desk – by an inch. I calmly remove it and smile sweetly, to conceal the
fact that I’d like to stab her with a sharp pencil until she screeches like a mutilated pterodactyl.
I glance at the clock. I have two hours and sixteen minutes of this working day left and the thought makes me want to cry. In fact, I think I’m going to. In fact . . .
It is as I sit with tears teetering on the rims of my eyes, that I hear my phone ringing. I hastily compose myself, sniffing back tears, rain and snot, before answering.
‘Hello?’
‘Emma, it’s Perry. Got time for a chat?’
When Matt and I make love that night it’s as if we’re in a bubble, one in which nobody can ruin things, where everything is so right that it’s impossible to
imagine anything else.
I am on top, our faces inches apart as my thighs squeeze his hips and I gaze into his eyes. He is beautiful to me, there’s no other way of saying it.
I sink my lips into his, tasting him, drinking him in. I kiss the sweet skin on his neck and I inch my hips upwards until I’m poised in that heavenly and unbearable position where
he’s almost, but not quite, inside me. His hands slide up my body as we become one and I groan with pleasure as his fingers run through my hair.
We make love into the night and it isn’t only lust that makes me want him so badly. I need to be with him, as close as it’s humanly possible to be. Because otherwise I’m
overcome with one terrible fact about Matt and me.
That this great thing we’ve got has suddenly become horribly finite.
It is three a.m. and even though I have to be at my desk in Manchester in six hours, I can’t bring myself to turn off the light.
‘You’re going to be exhausted at work,’ Matt tells me, brushing hair away from my face.
‘I’m beyond caring.’
He tuts. ‘I really feel for you having to work for people like that. If you’d gone to another interior-design company it could’ve been completely different.’
‘Maybe. The company certainly hasn’t helped. But, if I’m honest, it’s more straightforward than that. Interior design isn’t for me – not as a career. I love
making my home look lovely, but doing it as work – when I
get
to do it – removes all the fun. I took my old job for granted.’
‘We’ve all been guilty of that. It’s easy to get so used to something being there that it’s only when it’s gone you realise how much you wanted it.’
I swallow, momentarily silenced. ‘Has Allison set a date for when they’re leaving yet?’ I ask, leaning up on my elbow.
He hesitates before answering. ‘Yes, actually. She told me today. It’s the twenty-second of December.’
The contentment I’ve been experiencing all night disintegrates. I nod and clench my jaw. ‘My birthday.’
He lowers his eyes. Neither of us can bring ourselves to comment on that little gem. ‘I guess you’ll have to look for work out there soon?’
‘I started this afternoon. One of my old friends, Patrick, has contacts over there. He put me in touch with a magazine and they commissioned something for an edition in a few months.
I’ve started to do some social media work in French and sent my portfolio out.’
‘Good,’ I force myself to say, though it sounds as though someone’s stretched an elastic band round my tonsils. ‘What are you going to do about your flat?’
‘I’ll try renting it out first, though it’s inevitable that I’ll have to sell it. It pains me to think about putting it on the market when I haven’t owned it for
even six months yet.’
He kisses me softly on the lips. ‘Emma, I’m going to be here for your birthday. I was intending to go on the same day as Allison but, in the light of the date, I’ll postpone it
until the next morning. I’d stay even later but I can’t miss doing something with the kids over Christmas . . . even if it’s going to be very different from last year. The point
is, I’ll be there for your party. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’
I close my eyes tightly, trying to force back the tears, before opening them again and realising I can’t.
‘Matt.’ I squeeze his hand, unable to look at him. ‘I hope you understand why I’m saying this but I think it’d be better if you just went when you were intending
to.’
Saying goodbye to my twenties on the evening of 22 December is one thing; saying goodbye to the love of my life as well would be unbearable.
‘Is that how you’d prefer it?’
I nod. ‘It is.’
If I’d hoped, before I met Perry at a restaurant near work, that he’d become any less mad in the month since I saw him, I’d have been disappointed. His outfit
looks as though it was raided from the archives of the V&A and he’s gesticulating so wildly our fellow diners would be forgiven for thinking he’s attempting to start an aerobics
class.
‘The scripts,’ Perry says, wide-eyed, ‘they’re
almost
there. Almost. But they’re missing a sprinkle of magic. I’ve made a few suggestions but nobody
seems overly keen. And—’
‘
Perry
.’
Perry’s mouth slams shut and he looks at his father.
Being in the presence of Perry Ryder Snr is like sitting in front of the Godfather – except I suspect the most violent he’s ever got is threatening his son with instant removal of
his teddy bear collection.
He is almost totally bald, but for two or three straggly grey hairs clinging to the top of his head, and despite his age he remains a big, strong-looking man. His milky-blue eyes are compelling,
partly because I know that behind them is a mind that has enchanted millions of children with some of the most brilliant and original stories ever written.
I’m in the presence of a legend. A genius. A man whose work I watched when I was a little girl and who has inspired every single creative thing I have done since (this is in spite of the
fact that the last time we both worked for Little Blue Bus – before he retired and in the early years of my career – I was too in awe to ever speak directly to him).
‘Emma, I’ll get straight to the point,’ he says, putting down his knife and fork. ‘
Bingbah
has been incredibly successful but, as you know, every major
television channel is constantly reviewing things. And we are up for review. The fact that it’s been successful in the past isn’t enough.’