You Then, Me Now

by Nick Alexander

  Swallowing with difficulty, I spun on one foot and looked back.

  The blond man I’d seen before, who was apparently called Jens, was now facing me, while the man whose voice had rung out had his back to me and was slapping him on the arm as he spoke in a joyful, animated fashion. I went weak at the knees and had to step to the right so that I could steady myself by placing one hand on a column.

  Jens apparently saw this, because he started to frown. In response, the man he was talking to turned to look at whatever it was that Jens had noticed. And what he saw when he turned was me.

  He frowned at first, as if the image his retinas were feeding him didn’t compute, then he opened his mouth to speak, only to close it again without having said a word. Finally, without averting his gaze for a second, he tapped his friend on the arm distractedly and crossed the lobby to join me.

  ‘Is it you?’ he asked simply.

  But though I tried, I couldn’t reply. Instead, I clasped one hand to my trembling lips and started, yet again, to cry.

  He stepped even closer and, tentatively at first, he took me in his arms. ‘Laura,’ he said. ‘Oh, Laura.’

  His friend Jens and a blond woman came over to ask him something in Norwegian, presumably if everything was OK. Whatever Leif told them seemed to send them packing, smiling and apologising as they backed away.

  I cried in his arms for a minute or so, making the most, between gasps, of the sensation of being held, of that warm, musky smell I remembered from all those years before.

  I let him lead me to a love seat in the corner of the lobby, where we sat, side by side, but angled so we were half facing each other. When eventually I was able to speak, or at least croak, I asked, ‘How can you be here, Leif?’

  ‘Me?’ Leif asked. He shrugged. ‘We come quite a lot,’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘Maybe ten times since . . . you know . . . And you? How come you are here?’ He sounded businesslike, even a touch irritated. It wasn’t the reunion I had so often dreamed of.

  ‘I came for my fiftieth,’ I told him. ‘For old times’ sake, really.’

  Leif nodded. ‘For old times’ sake,’ he repeated, stroking my back in a distracted manner. It felt friendly, but not passionate. In fact, even friendly would be pushing it. Hesitantly friendly, let’s say.

  ‘You stay here?’ he asked. ‘In the Blue Balconies?’

  I shook my head. ‘I wanted to,’ I explained. ‘But I couldn’t find it when we were booking. They changed the name, so . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ Leif confirmed. ‘Yes, they changed the name.’

  It crossed my mind just how ridiculous it was to be discussing the name of the hotel. But everything else, everything I wanted to say, just seemed too complex, too vast somehow for words. And there didn’t seem to be any way by which to get from here to there.

  I suppose what I really wanted to know was whether Leif’s regular returns to Santorini had anything to do with me. But it felt absurd and egotistical to even suggest such a thing. And there was something in his deadpan delivery that was warning me off – something in his wording, his We come here quite a lot.

  We, I now thought. Who’s ‘we’?

  It had been twenty-four years, after all. How could I possibly imagine that lovely Leif had stayed single? How could I think that I was still the reason he was here after so many years? We’d spent a couple of days together followed by twenty-four years apart.

  ‘And you?’ Leif asked, as if he was tuning into my thoughts. ‘You are here alone?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, I’m with . . . someone.’ I’m here with your daughter, I thought. The words seemed simple enough, but like all the rest, they seemed insufficient for the task at hand.

  ‘With a man?’ Leif asked.

  ‘Oh, no!’ I said, glancing outside in an attempt at spotting Becky. But the place on the wall where she had been was now vacant. ‘No, I’m . . . I’m with a woman. A friend.’

  Leif nodded. ‘This is good,’ he said.

  ‘Good?’

  ‘It’s not nice to travel alone.’

  ‘No,’ I agreed. ‘No, it isn’t.’

  ‘So, I think I would be right if I wish you a happy birthday, yes?’ Leif asked.

  I nodded. I was fiddling with my fingernails, with a button on my top, basically doing anything to avoid looking Leif in the eye. Because I was terrified of what I might find there. Or perhaps it would be more honest to say that I was terrified of what I might find was missing. ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Fifty today. Fifty! When did that happen?’

  ‘It is hard to talk,’ Leif said after a moment’s silence. ‘It’s been so long.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Yes, you’re right. Do you want to just go and join your friends or something?’ It was madness to suggest it, really. I’d been praying for this moment pretty much constantly since I had last seen Leif, but now it was happening, I found I didn’t know how to do it. I seemed to lack the strength, or the intelligence, or the courage to handle it properly. And as I made my suggestion that we effectively end this conversation here, I was both terrified that Leif would agree with me and also hopeful that in doing so, he would end the excruciating tension of the moment. Because it really was unbearable. I could hardly breathe.

  In fact what happened was that Leif laughed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No I don’t want to go and join my friends. Do you want me to?’

  I shook my head gently and dared, because his laughter had made this possible, to look up at his face.

  He’d put on a little weight over the years, but he still had the same basic physiognomy. His face was rounder and he had smile lines around his eyes which hadn’t been there before. There was something icy about the blue of his eyes that was new, too, and I wondered if it was sadness or disappointment that had changed their hue. His nose was off-centre and I reached out to gently touch it.

  ‘Conor,’ Leif confirmed. ‘I had to have it broken and reset afterwards at the hospital. But it was never quite right. So I always think of you. Whenever I look in the mirror.’

  ‘I always think of you, too,’ I said. ‘I never stopped.’

  Leif’s eyes seemed to tint colder and I thought, Oh, gosh, it’s anger! It’s anger that’s made them this colour.

  ‘You didn’t write,’ he said, confirming my suspicions. ‘You never called. Not once.’

  Though in the early days I had often imagined Leif sitting by the phone, waiting for me to contact him, I’d forgotten over the years just how angry he might have felt, being more concerned with my own sorry lot – worrying more over my own loss and that of my daughter, who, because of fate, had grown up without a father. But of course, Leif had never known about the lost suitcase. Had he waited for my call? And if so, for how long? And how had that felt? How angry had that made him?

  He had turned away from me and was looking out to the street, so I reached out to gently touch his arm. ‘Leif,’ I said, gently. ‘It wasn’t my fault. I know . . . I understand how it must have been for you, but I couldn’t phone. I couldn’t write.’

  He sniffed and dried his eyes, which I only then saw were watery, on one sleeve. ‘Not here,’ he said, standing. ‘We need to explain, but not here.’ He stood, and I followed suit. ‘Come,’ he said, striding towards the sliding doors.

  Outside the hotel, I looked left and right for Becky but she was nowhere to be seen. I checked my pocket for my phone – I was hoping to call her or at least send a text – but I hadn’t brought it with me. And so, thinking that until I had spoken to Leif, I couldn’t introduce them anyway, I followed him down the Dreaded Steps.

  He stopped outside room 23, the same room he’d had all those years ago, and I thought he was going to comment on it; I thought he wanted to point it out to me. But instead he unlocked the door. He peered into the interior for a moment, then stepped back outside and gestured towards the deckchairs. ‘We are better here, I think,’ he said. I wondered if there were women’s clothes lying on the bed. I wondered if the elegant woman I had seen in re
ception was his girlfriend, or even his wife. I checked his hands for a wedding ring. He wasn’t wearing one.

  We moved the chairs closer together and sat. ‘You have the same room,’ I commented.

  ‘Yes,’ Leif said. ‘Always. I book very early and they save it for me.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘I mean, why do you want the same room?’

  ‘Because . . .’ Leif started. But then he paused and sighed deeply. ‘You know what?’ he said. ‘Let’s talk about you, maybe? Let’s talk about why you didn’t call me. Why you couldn’t call me?’

  I covered my eyes for a moment with one hand then slid it down my face. ‘I’m so sorry, Leif,’ I said.

  ‘Sorry,’ he repeated. ‘Yes. But why?’

  ‘They lost my case,’ I said with a shrug. ‘They lost it on the way home. With everything in it. And it had your piece of paper. The piece of paper with your address on it. And without that . . .’

  Leif screwed up his features strangely at this revelation and turned to look out to sea for a moment. When he finally turned back, his expression hadn’t changed at all. He looked as if the sun was too bright and was making him squint. ‘This is true?’ he asked.

  I nodded. ‘I . . . I don’t . . . Look . . .’ I stammered. ‘I don’t want you to think I didn’t try, that’s all. I tried really hard. I phoned the embassy and everything. They couldn’t help.’

  ‘For your suitcase?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, I hassled the airlines for that. For over a year. I wrote to Aegean and BA and Athens’ airport authority . . . And then I phoned the Norwegian Embassy. They couldn’t help me, either. Or wouldn’t. I wanted them to give me your name. I wrote to Bergen University, too. I even went there with . . . I went there. I tried so hard to find you, Leif. I dreamed about finding you. I still have dreams about finding, or losing, that damned piece of paper. I tried everything, really. But I just couldn’t think how.’

  Leif laughed sourly. ‘And the phone book?’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘The phone book. I’m in it. In Bergen.’

  ‘But I don’t know your name. I never knew your name.’

  Leif lowered his head to his hands and breathed deeply, noisily, for a moment. ‘Me neither,’ he said finally. ‘I never knew yours.’

  ‘It’s Ryan,’ I told him and he gasped. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course. I knew this, somewhere . . .’ He pointed to his head and made a circular motion. ‘I phoned the hotel, you know? I thought they might have it.’

  ‘Me too,’ I said. ‘But it had closed.’

  ‘Yes, but it reopened the next year. They found the old papers for me. And they told me your name was O’Leary.’

  ‘That’s Conor’s name.’

  ‘Yes,’ Leif said. ‘Yes, I know. The hotel had you down as Mrs O’Leary.’

  ‘You tried to find me too?’

  ‘Yes,’ Leif said. ‘I tried for years.’

  ‘And your name,’ I asked. ‘What is it? Your surname?’

  ‘Vilhjálmsson,’ Leif said.

  I asked him to spell it out. ‘I knew it was Vil-something,’ I said, once he’d done so. ‘I asked at the library. There used to be this system where you could ask them a question. Any question. So I asked them for Norwegian surnames beginning with V-I-L. And then I looked online when that became possible, in 2000 or 2001, I googled it. But I could never find your name.’

  ‘It’s Icelandic,’ Leif said. ‘Not Norwegian. My parents were Icelandic.’

  ‘God,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Why didn’t I know that?’

  ‘We didn’t talk of these things,’ Leif said. ‘We were quite busy. With Conor.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, we were.’

  ‘But you still thought about me?’ Leif asked, sounding surprised.

  ‘I never stopped,’ I told him. ‘Really, Leif. I never stopped. I’ve spent my entire life thinking about nothing else.’

  Leif buried his head in his hands again, and I rested one arm across his back as occasional tears slipped down my own cheeks. It’s too late, I was thinking. I don’t know what I was hoping for, but it’s definitely too late. I think only then, only once faced with the physical evidence provided by our transformed bodies, did I realise quite how many years had gone by. We’d had entirely different lives. We’d become entirely different people.

  After a minute or so, I went indoors to wash my face. I was expecting to have panda eyes but when I looked in the mirror, I remembered I hadn’t even put my make-up on that morning. It was probably just as well.

  I washed and dried my face and, glancing over my shoulder, I checked the bathroom cabinet. But there were only men’s things. And only a single toothbrush. This impression was confirmed as I walked back through the bedroom. Only one of the single beds had been slept in.

  When I stepped back out into the sunshine, Leif was standing looking out to sea. ‘Did you marry?’ I asked quickly, speaking before my courage deserted me.

  ‘Yes,’ Leif said. ‘And you?’

  I nodded. ‘It didn’t work out though. Well, it did for a while . . .’

  ‘Same here,’ Leif said. He still hadn’t turned to look at me. ‘Five years.’

  ‘Eight,’ I said. ‘I managed eight.’

  ‘So, you win,’ Leif said, and I wasn’t sure if he was trying to be light-hearted or snide.

  ‘Why did yours—?’ I started to ask. I stopped myself. I didn’t feel that I had the right to ask him that.

  ‘Why did it go wrong?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He turned to face me. His eyes were red around the edges. ‘I wanted children,’ he said. ‘Aslaug didn’t. It caused a lot of problems. And . . .’

  ‘And?’

  Leif shrugged. ‘That’s the main thing, really,’ he said. ‘And you?’

  ‘Me what?’ I was scared that he was asking if I’d had children. Because I still couldn’t work out how to tell him what I needed to say.

  ‘Your marriage? Why did it stop?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I don’t know really. Why do they ever?’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  I shrugged. ‘He was lovely. His name was Brian and he was friendly and funny and cute. So . . .’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I didn’t . . . love him properly, I suppose. I was always . . . I don’t know . . .’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Leif said. ‘You don’t have to. I was just curious.’

  ‘I was always comparing him with you. I suppose that’s it, if I’m being honest. There was always this bit of me that was thinking about you. It made things . . . difficult.’

  Leif smiled sadly. ‘I’m not so special, you know?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Well, me neither.’

  ‘But we . . .’ Leif said, gesturing between myself and him. ‘We were magic, weren’t we? Back then?’

  I nodded and chewed my bottom lip. I opened my mouth to speak, but found I couldn’t make a sound. Yes, I thought. We were magic.

  We returned to our chairs and Leif took my hands in his. ‘So, tell me, Laura,’ he said. ‘Tell me the truth. Are you seeing someone now?’

  I shook my head. ‘There was no one else. No one before Brian, and no one else since. Even Brian, really. It wasn’t . . . you know . . . And you?’

  Leif shook his head. ‘Not since Aslaug,’ he said. ‘I often think I should have stayed with her.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t have the children anyway. So it was kind of an argument about nothing.’

  ‘Yes, yes I see,’ I said. I tried again to formulate a sentence containing the name ‘Becky’, but once again couldn’t seem to find the right words.

  ‘I always hoped, you know,’ Leif said. ‘Every year that I come here. I’m thinking that this might happen. That I look around and I see you. Why didn’t you come back?’

  ‘I couldn’t afford it,’ I said. ‘And I was scared, too. At the beginning I was, anyway. And I had a ch— The only holiday I ever took was to Be
rgen. And later on, I was married, so . . . I was hardly going to bring Brian here.’

  ‘No,’ Leif said. ‘And now?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Why did you come here now?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know really,’ I said. ‘I inherited a bit of money. And I lost my job, so I have the time. Plus I split up with Brian, of course. Perhaps I wanted to remember who I was before I met him. Something like that, anyway.’

  ‘And you really came to Bergen. What year was that?’

  ‘Two thousand, maybe? Two thousand and one? It took me years to save up.’

  ‘Right,’ Leif said.

  ‘Were you there?’

  He shook his head. ‘I was working on the oil platforms. I was never anywhere, really. Always out at sea.’

  I sighed. The fact that he hadn’t been in Bergen provided a vague sense of comfort. Because I had always imagined that I had just missed him. I had often pictured us walking, just yards away, down parallel streets. I’d regularly had images of Becky and myself leaving a café only for Leif to take my still-warm seat just minutes later. But he hadn’t been there after all. And that seemed better.

  We sat like that for ten minutes, mostly staring into each other’s eyes in silence.

  Leif would occasionally exhale sharply and shake his head, as if the absurdity of it all was amusing. And I alternated between phases of tears and phases of not-tears. My mind had gone numb from the shock of it all, I think, and other than crying and not crying, there wasn’t much going on.

  The moment came upon me without me realising it. Suddenly it just happened. I broke free of Leif’s grasp and stood. ‘I need to check on someone,’ I said, intending to fetch Becky to meet her father. ‘Can you wait?’