This is a Love Story (9 page)

not be able to answer.

‘Well, I’ll see you in the morning then, Si. Not long now!’

‘No, not long at all. See you later.’

The line went dead.

All of a sudden I was filled with hope again, so I dashed upstairs to pack. My packing plan was a little more elaborate than the

one I’d adopted for Ibiza. Fewer shorts, sun cream and novelty hats; more suits, gadgets and hair gel.

I loved events like this. I had never covered the gaming fair in America before, but I had done lots of similar trips and it meant

spending a few hours taking pictures, then enjoying slap-up meals and nights out on the company credit card.

Sienna

The sun was rising slowly over the city of London and Nick and I were watching it through a tiny window to my left. Rich

whirls of colour were bathing the fields around the runway in a warm glow. My thoughts were a mix of overwhelming excitement

and serious worry. I hoped things at home would be OK.

When I took the job I knew I might have to go away for work every now and then, so Elouise kindly agreed to pop round and

keep an eye on things when I did. This was really short notice, though. I definitely owed her a few babysitting sessions, even if I had

a habit of teaching Luke naughty words by accident.

Last summer I was looking after him and we were playing in the garden. I managed to tread on a wasp, which stung me between

my toes, forcing me to utter a tirade of words that turned the air blue. He stood and looked at me with his feet pointing inwards and a

look of fear clouding his big green eyes. It wasn’t until a couple of weeks later that Elouise mentioned he was saying the words

‘holy’ and ‘shit’ in close succession at church playgroup and couldn’t work out where he had picked them up from. I went red.

As the aircraft moved around the runway before zooming into the sky, we both sat quietly, waiting for take-off.

I was becoming quite scared, if I was being honest. Air travel was something I had never really got my head around. Obviously

there were scientific reasons why this stupidly heavy lump of metal bashed together by human beings could stay in the sky. Bashed

together by human beings. Thousands of feet in the air, suspended above vast expanses of deep murky water and sharp-edged

mountain ranges. People. Mortals, capable of making mistakes. People always make mistakes. Day in, day out. We are experts in the

art of the accident.

My stomach flipped as I heard the engines whirr loudly beneath us. Sections of the wings started to move, ready for the flight and

our ascent into the unknown. Fear spread all over my body, washing down my legs like alcohol. I kept swallowing hard, again and

again.

We’d had such an early start that neither of us had really woken up. A dozy breakfast and a couple of overpriced coffees in the

departure lounge had done little to bring us into a state of consciousness. But this was working a treat.

Like a meerkat tanked up on Red Bull, I was well and truly alert now. I was still blushing at the thought of my display of

clumsiness earlier that morning.

Nick had swung into the driveway of our block of flats and called my phone just as he’d promised. I’d tried to be calm and cool

but managed to trip over my luggage in my near comatose state of sleepiness, falling to the hard, wet ground in front of him.

I used to take ballet classes. I used to be graceful. This morning I resembled a giraffe with its legs tied together as my foot got

caught in the handle of my bag, sending me soaring into the air. My heart jumped in my chest and the force of my humiliation hit me

before I hit the concrete. I’m not sure which was more painful. Why did this have to happen now? Why?

These had not been a good few days for me, what with the Pete incident, which I had just about squirmed my way out of. Ten

pounds. That was my punishment for the copying incident. They said it reflected the cost of the ink and paper. The window was

covered by insurance. I think I got off pretty lightly.

Anthony is an angry man and an unreasonable one at times, but he seemed to understand that it was a genuine accident and not

much more was said after that. I was still embarrassed, though, and my fall didn’t help. I felt like a first-class idiot.

Nick instantly jumped out of the car, reached down and picked me up as his headlights momentarily put my shame on a stage. His

strength was no surprise with his build. He picked me up with ease, as though I was a rag doll. I was really humiliated and I felt

angry with myself for a few moments, before I realised I was taking myself too seriously.

We sat in his car quietly for a minute. Nick was the first to crack. I was unsure about whether I should laugh or bawl my eyes out,

so I did neither and sat in silence, looking down at my bleeding palms. This would not help my mission to impress him. I looked and

felt like an eight-year-old.

Then he started to laugh, and I’m so glad he did. It started off as a quiet snigger, which burst from between his lips, sudden and

sharp. He was trying so hard to hold it in but it eventually developed into a full-on belly chuckle. He turned towards me, wiping his

eyes with one hand, an apologetic smile on his face. Then I went, and we were both laughing so much we couldn’t speak.

‘Let me see those,’ he said eventually, gently pulling my hands towards his chest. He softly turned my palms over and made a

hissing sound when he saw the gentle drops of blood rising to the surface of my skin. I wasn’t looking at my bleeding hands. I was

looking at him, holding my hands. It struck me for a moment that this immature man might actually be able to take control of a

situation, might help me.

‘I know what to do!’ he said, reaching into the glove box for a tissue. He quietly worked away, dabbing the blood from my palms

and pressing new tissue onto them to make the bleeding stop. He wrinkled his eyebrows in concentration. I felt like my heart had

slowed right down. Something in the depths of my soul shifted and moved. I didn’t know if it was the aftermath of embarrassment or

the eye-wateringly early hour that had left me feeling a little emotional. But with each sweep of that tissue, it felt as though he was

touching my heart.

I had felt the rush from a boy before. That twinge of teenage horniness you feel when you kiss some stranger in the darkest corner

of the nightclub, or the lift you get when a good-looking man buys you a drink at a bar. This was different. I felt like he was

creeping into my heart and there was nothing I could do to stop him. I had only met him a few weeks ago, I thought he was childish

and bruised, but still these feelings persisted.

I was trying not to let it happen, I really was. Everything about the situation was inappropriate and difficult. I worked with him.

He was older than me. It was an embarrassing crush I could never really admit to. There were so many reasons, other people, that

were stopping me from being with him. And why would he even give me a second glance, anyway? I suspected with a face like his

that he was a ladies’ man, that he must have women scrambling around to be a part of his life. I wondered if he knew what he was

doing to me. I don’t think he did.

As the plane started to lurch forward, I dug my nails into my palms and flinched when I felt the sharp pain of my cuts.

‘You OK, Si?’ asked Nick, turning his face towards mine, a lovely expression of concern dancing across his features.

‘Yeah, of course. Why – are you scared?’ I jeered, poking him in the arm to deflect attention from my own crumbling state of

mind.

‘No, no, of course not! Just checking you weren’t going to freak out or anything,’ he added, with a frantic hand gesture that made

an air hostess giggle as she walked past. He was so animated, his face capable of such incredible expressions. I wouldn’t even know

how to find the words to describe some of them, but I knew what they meant when I saw them.

The familiar smell of foil-sealed food filled the space around us as the aircraft built up speed. My stomach jumped as it started to

lift, bouncing along the runway slightly as it launched itself into the air.

Please don’t let go, I thought to myself, making a little order to the plane as it gripped onto the sky, wondering how my home life

would be affected by my absence, and how my permanent absence would be a disaster. I bit my lip hard, and flexed my fingers. My

head was full of images of the pilot swigging neat whisky behind the instrument panel, and the co-pilot smoking crack. Tears were

beginning to form in my eyes. For God’s sake, it wasn’t even 8 a.m. and I had nearly cried twice. I was a wreck.

‘You’re scared, aren’t you?’ Nick turned towards me, his eyes wide. He looked a little concerned and reached out an index finger

to my face, swiping a single tear away with expert precision and balancing his thumb on my right cheek so he didn’t poke me in the

eye. My breath caught in my throat. He looked a little surprised at what he’d done.

‘Gosh, Si, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t . . .’ he said, as my tear slid off his finger and onto his lap. ‘I think it’s the claustrophobic spaces

thing. It makes me go a bit funny,’ he went on, looking down at his feet.

‘No, no, no. I’m definitely fline. I mean, fine.’ I looked at him with my fake ‘everything’s OK’ expression, my cheeks turning red

again.

He glanced at me suspiciously before turning his eyes towards the window again. The plane lurched from side to side as it

positioned itself in its charge for America. It swung down sharply, giving Nick and me a view of patchwork fields, so far away now

they looked like my grandmother had knitted them. It was stunning.

Something in our relationship shifted during our trip to America. As soon as we touched down on the runway, work took over

and Nick morphed into a different man. It was a fascinating transition to watch, but I felt like a distant party looking in from the

outside. He seemed like a totally different person away from the hysteria of the office and his broken relationship, and again I was

reminded how far I was from really knowing him. I felt light years away from that stolen moment we had shared – a single tear

wiped from my face just a few hundred feet from the ground when I felt like we were already lost in the clouds.

He took hundreds of photographs, then tucked himself away in remote corners to upload them to the work server back home. He

was a true professional. Passionate and confident. He wasn’t just the office prankster he made himself out to be. I had been worried

that he would throw me in a dumpster or something, or that one of his jokes gone wrong would land us both behind bars. But he

was far from being that boy here. He was a man. And seeing this side of him made him even more attractive.

The gaming convention was everything I’d hoped it would be and more. I threw myself into interviewing and met everyone from

the archetypal geek to the closet gamer. Businessmen with wives, busy schedules and incredibly fast thumbs from secret console

sessions in the twilight hours, mingled with out-and-out joystick freaks. America was as brash, outrageous and eccentric as I’d

always imagined it would be. And I saw enough nutcases in fancy dress to last me a lifetime. I grew particularly fond of a young

man called Buck, whose job it was to wander around dressed as Sonic the Hedgehog, giving out Twinkies to passers-by. He asked

for my number. I asked to see his face. He refused. I found this odd, so I avoided him after that.

On our first night I made a couple of calls home, checking everything was OK, then Nick and I had dinner at an uptown sushi

bar.

‘Can I ask you something? And if it’s none of my business then just tell me to sod off, but is there something going on back

home? You seem troubled,’ he said out of the blue, massacring a sushi roll with his chopsticks. ‘I get the impression there’s some

kind of problem – or is your dad just overprotective?’ he went on, giving up and stabbing the fish roll through the middle before

sending it to the depths of his stomach.

I had a split second to respond to this question and I did a very bad thing. I lied. I was worried he would be freaked out. It was

better not to tell him.

‘Oh, it’s nothing. Just got a couple of things on my mind at home.’ My blood ran cold as I realised I had been dishonest.

Something in his eyes told me he didn’t believe a word. But something stopped me telling the truth.

‘So, anyway, tell me about your family . . .’ I threw in a quick subject change, taking a gentle swig of my vodka and lemonade.

He was wearing a crisp white shirt with thin red stripes, matched with a pair of dark jeans and a brown belt. He looked so good it

hurt.

‘Well . . . Where do I start? I have two parents who are, remarkably, still together, despite what seems like a loud and theatrical

bust-up every day for the past twenty years. I have a sister who mocks everything about my existence, and a dog called Mildred who

just sits and looks at me adoringly. I’m closest to the dog by far – she makes the most sense. How about you?’

I love dogs. I love that he loves dogs. Maybe one day we can have a house in the country full of dogs. Oh dear, it had swung

round to me again. Shit.

‘Er, well. I’m an only child. I was always envious of people with brothers and sisters but I guessed I missed out on the rivalry and

arguments, which is no bad thing,’ I finished, smoothing my French Connection skirt down with my hands. I still felt like a scumbag

for lying.