The First Time We Met: An utterly heart-warming and unforgettable love story

by Jo Lovett

  Why hadn’t Dominic sent her a birthday message? Would it have been better if he had done? Was it better that he hadn’t?

  Her father hadn’t remembered her birthday either. Not surprising that a man with one fiancée, three ex-wives and seven children wasn’t too hot on family birthdays – not Izzy’s anyway – but still hurtful. He probably also didn’t like to be reminded that his oldest child was nine years older than his fiancée. But still hurtful.

  Okay. No. She wasn’t doing this. She was happy, she’d had a really lovely birthday, with her extremely lovely friends, she was in a very good place now, and she was not going back. She hauled herself off the sofa and walked over to the fridge. ‘Water isn’t doing it. We need a glass of rosé, some chocolate and Erin Brockovich.’

  ‘I’m going to love you and leave you.’ Rohan stood up. Emma was staying with Izzy for the night.

  ‘Do you really love me?’ Izzy asked, fluttering her eyelashes at him. Ow, she’d hurt her eye. Could you dislocate an eyelid? ‘Owwww.’

  ‘Will anything bad happen to me if I say yes?’ That was the legal-caveat-loving barrister in Rohan.

  ‘Will you take the Kama Sutra and the other books and get rid of them for me?’

  Izzy dragged herself out of bed and staggered into the bathroom.

  Last night had been worth it for the memories and the feel-good factor, because you couldn’t beat late-night drunken film watching with your best girlfriend, but this morning Izzy was actually going to die. It hadn’t been a glass of rosé; it had been a bottle. It was like someone had a vice all the way round the front of her head and was tightening, tightening, her mouth was so dry and tasted disgusting, and she had some serious tinnitus going on. On the upside, it was the Friday of half-term and she had the day booked working from home to catch up on paperwork.

  On the even greater upside, Ruby’s friend’s mother had just messaged to ask if Izzy would be happy for her to take Ruby with them trampolining this morning, followed by a pizza lunch. Happy? Izzy would be absolutely bloody ecstatic. Obviously she adored Ruby, but there was a time and a place for seven-year-old shrillness.

  There was no sign of Emma from Ruby’s bedroom. Izzy downed two paracetamol and a pint of water, crawled back into bed and turned the pillow over to find some lovely coolness. Another hour or two of sleep would help a lot.

  She turned the pillow over again. No. She couldn’t sleep. So annoying.

  Her phone pinged. Dominic.

  Happy Birthday for yesterday. Hope you had a great day.

  Well. That was normal. Totally normal. Drop your ex-wife, the mother of your child, who you weren’t even properly divorced from yet, a very casual birthday message, and no present, one day late.

  Anyway. Now Izzy had the answer to whether or not she’d have liked him to have messaged her yesterday. No, she would not. It did not feel good that he’d remembered; it felt shit all over again that they weren’t together any more. Even though she knew now that their relationship hadn’t been working. She shoved the phone under her pillow. Hopefully the two blue ticks accompanied by no reply from her would mean that next year he wouldn’t bother with the birthday wishes.

  Maybe she could get back to sleep.

  The doorbell rang, twice. Izzy got out of bed and looked between her curtains. It was the postman, holding a parcel.

  The sprint downstairs really hurt her head but at least she got to the door in time.

  The parcel was from Dominic. He’d sent her a birthday present after all. Izzy’s eyes pricked. She should probably go and open this in bed, in case Emma got up soon, so that she had time on her own to work out how she felt about it.

  He’d bought her a baking recipe book that she already had and a Hermès silk scarf that she’d never wear. Well, maybe she would, if she ever turned into a well-maintained, tweed-and-pearls kind of sixty-year-old. There was also a birthday card, with a mango on the front, very sweetly thoughtful of him, because he’d always thought she loved mango, and him buying her mango-related presents had been their thing. She actually hated mango. Sickly sweet with a horrible after-taste.

  Izzy sniffed hard. So many reasons to cry, because of one parcel. Dominic had got the book exactly right, because he knew her well, except he didn’t know that she’d already bought it for herself, because they didn’t live together any more. And he’d got the scarf exactly wrong, because he didn’t know her that well, despite eight years of marriage. And the mango card really summed the whole thing up.

  And now the tears were coming. No. She was not doing this today. Her head was already too sore. She’d do something else now to take her mind off things and send a thank you message this afternoon when she felt calm.

  She folded the paper and put it and the card and presents on top of her chest of drawers. She was going to do half an hour of work to take her mind off Dominic. Nice and slowly, sitting in bed with her laptop on her knees, with the lights off. Then she could maybe have a little rest later.

  She had lots of mundane work emails. And one from a sender whose name she didn’t recognise, with an intriguing first line: ‘Sam McCready: Speech therapy advice: Hey Izzy, You might remember me from when we had coffee…’.

  Izzy’s stomach lurched slightly. It couldn’t be Sam Sam. Though, what other Sams had she had coffee with? But… really?

  The email had just arrived. She clicked it open.

  From: Sam McCready

  To: Izzy Castle

  Subject: Speech therapy advice

  Dear Izzy,

  You might remember me from when we had coffee a few years ago. I gathered up your groceries and we went to a Georgian tea room with a lovely fire.

  I hope you’ll forgive my having hunted down your email address. I’d like to ask your advice on a speech therapy issue if I may.

  The reason that I’m writing is that I remember that you told me that you were a speech therapist specializing in stutters (or stammers as you probably call them), and I could really do with some help in that department right now.

  My thirteen-year-old twins were involved in an accident a few months ago. For background: my daughter was seriously injured but is now doing really well, with ongoing physiotherapy. My son, Barney, wasn’t physically injured but he was severely traumatized, we think both by the accident itself and by the aftermath with his sister, and he developed a stutter. The stutter is severe, getting worse, and fairly debilitating. We’ve seen a lot of speech pathologists and therapists and have made no progress.

  We live in New York now and we seem to have exhausted all options here.

  Do you know of any speech therapists specializing in stutters that you would recommend, or do you yourself undertake private work?

  Obviously if you’re no longer working in speech therapy or don’t feel able to help, please ignore this email. Otherwise, I look forward to hearing from you.

  Best

  Sam McCready

  Woah. Full-on stomach lurching now.

  Woah.

  Weird.

  Over the years, Sam had become one of those memories that seemed almost like a dream. A pretty amazing dream, granted, but a dream nonetheless. She hadn’t even known his surname. McCready. Sam McCready. It suited him. Like a New York private eye from a black-and-white movie.

  She didn’t actually want to think about Sam today. Today, she was aiming to focus on the fact that she was in a very good place in life, albeit hungover, with very good friends, and totally fine about everything, including Dominic. She did not want to think about Sam, because remembering that coffee had always made her feel uncomfortable, especially when, like today, she was thinking about what went wrong with Dominic.

  Looking back, their relationship had had tiny cracks in it almost from the day they met and, obviously, their split had had nothing whatsoever to do with Sam, who she barely knew. Except, it hadn’t helped that just before Ruby was born Izzy had spent an amazing two hours with a man who wasn’t her husband. She and Sam had talked for hours,
and they had made each other laugh. A lot. Dominic didn’t always get Izzy’s jokes, and he didn’t often make jokes of his own. Not ones that Izzy got anyway.

  And from the way Sam had spoken about his children then, it had been obvious that he was a fantastic, hands-on, caring father. Borne out by the email he’d just sent her at silly o’clock New York time. A lot of single fathers in well-paid jobs like law would have hired round-the-clock nannies. Dominic adored Ruby, but he’d always been more than happy to leave the majority of the childcare to Izzy.

  She still missed Dominic’s dishwasher empathy though, and the fact that she could bang on for hours to him about Ruby’s achievements and milestones.

  This was bad. Izzy did not need to go here again. She needed to close Sam’s email and ignore it and move on from all past negative thoughts. She could totally ignore it. From the way he’d worded it, he almost expected to be ignored. He was just a slightly desperate father reaching out to every person he could possibly think of who might be able to help. He’d probably written to dozens of different people.

  She pressed the cross on the top right of his email and clicked open a message containing a completed questionnaire from the mother of a little boy she’d seen last week with a severe word-blocking issue.

  ‘Mmm, that is so good.’ Izzy took a large mouthful of American-style pancakes with blueberry compote, maple syrup and crème fraiche. She was so lucky to have this café just round the corner. ‘I think I’m genuinely going to be feeling quite human after this.’

  ‘Yeah, you can’t beat a good carby brunch for a hangover.’ Emma pulled open her free-range pork and spiced apple sausage sandwich on seven-grain wholemeal bread, and dolloped in some home-made tomato ketchup. ‘Also, when it’s hangover food, you can eat millions of calories without putting on any weight.’

  ‘That is not true for normal human beings.’ Emma was tall and lean and ate like a horse without ever putting on any weight and could not empathise with mere mortals like Izzy. ‘But I really don’t care.’ Izzy took another to-die-for mouthful.

  ‘We need to decide on our city break. What about New York? I know it’s hot in August but maybe less touristy then? I googled. Lots going on that Ruby would like.’ Emma took a big bite of her sandwich and moaned loudly. ‘That is sooo good.’ The two smartly suited men at the nearest table both looked over and goggled, as they might if the very beautiful Emma were orgasming in public. Emma glared at them. ‘Just enjoying my sandwich.’ Izzy was pretty sure that at least one of them would ask for Emma’s number before they left.

  ‘New York’s actually a great idea.’ Izzy thought about Sam, now living there. Would it be weird if they bumped into each other? Obviously they wouldn’t. New York was a big city.

  Wonderful, now she was thinking about Sam again.

  ‘Speaking of New York… I had a weird email this morning.’ Why was she even mentioning it? It wasn’t a big deal. She just wanted to ignore it.

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘It was from Sam.’

  ‘Sam who?’

  ‘Sam Sam.’

  ‘Sam Sam?’ Emma did some suggestive eyebrow raising and eye swivelling while she swallowed a mouthful. More goggling from the suited men. ‘Sam Sam?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘I didn’t know you emailed each other. How did you get each other’s email addresses? When did you start emailing?’

  ‘We don’t. I mean, we don’t know each other. At all.’ Izzy realised that she hadn’t ever told a soul about those few hours she’d spent with Sam.

  She hadn’t told Dominic. That had felt awful, like having a secret; well, it had been having a secret, but it had felt too complicated to explain why her first, very brief, meeting with Sam had been so memorable, and why it had subsequently, six plus years down the line, seemed normal and fine to go for coffee together. It was just easier not to tell him.

  Strange that she’d never told Emma about it, though. In the nearly twenty-six years that they’d known each other, when Izzy had moved in with her grandmother and joined Emma’s school, she’d told Emma pretty much everything, barring the more intimate details of her sex life. She’d even told her about how infrequently she and Dominic had slept together in the last months of their marriage. And in the nearly eighteen years since she’d met Rohan, she’d told him most things too, but not this.

  ‘What do you mean? Why did he email you then?’ Emma asked.

  ‘Basically, he remembered that I was a speech therapist and his son has a really marked stammer; he’s tried a lot of therapy, none of it’s worked and he wanted to ask my advice. They live in New York now. He hunted me down on Google.’

  ‘He remembered from a short conversation with a stranger on his wedding day a very long time ago that you were then a trainee speech therapist and managed to find you on the internet?’

  ‘We bumped into each other once and had a quick coffee.’

  ‘What? When was that? I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. That’s huge.’

  ‘It was when I was on maternity leave and you were living in Munich. Just before Ruby was born.’ Hooray for the Munich excuse. ‘It was just a quick coffee. But I told him about my job then. He was a widower with twins. He mentioned that the twins are thirteen now.’ Izzy would have known without Sam telling her almost exactly how old his twins were given that she still remembered the dates of his wedding and their coffee, and how old the twins had been then.

  ‘Wow. And how was the coffee? Was he still gorgeous?’

  ‘Yes, still gorgeous, obviously, but I was a good eight and a half months pregnant and very grumpy and desperate for the loo the whole time. It wasn’t a long coffee.’ An Oscar-worthy piece of lying there, if she said so herself. It had been, frankly, the best coffee of her life, with the most attractive man she’d ever met, still memorable seven years down the line.

  Emma nodded. ‘Yes, you didn’t love late pregnancy, as I recall. Is he still gorgeous? Have you googled him?’

  ‘Nope. Didn’t occur to me. I’m incredibly restrained like that.’ Izzy rolled her eyes. ‘Of course I have.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I think the photo must be quite recent because he looks older. In a sexy George Clooney, grey-at-the-temples kind of way. He’s a partner in a New York law firm and he specialises in corporate law. There’s a paragraph describing what he does, which is a lot of words that you understand individually but which make no sense when strung together.’

  ‘Show me?’ Emma took Izzy’s phone, where, obviously, she still had the website up, and zoomed in on Sam’s photo. ‘Wow. Not surprised you fell for him on the spot. I mean, what first attracted you to the handsome, chisel-jawed, rich lawyer? Who, as well as all the client stuff, lectures a course at Harvard and does some pro bono work. I mean, God’s actual gift. I would.’ Yup. Izzy would have done too. In the past. Although what had actually made her fall for him had been his smile, a one-off sense of connection. And his voice.

  ‘He was even better in the flesh. Great sense of humour.’

  ‘Not surprised he was already taken when you met him. The good ones always are.’ Emma shook her head regretfully. Izzy was definitely not going to mention that he’d been single the second time they’d met. And that to her shame she’d wondered a lot during her maternity leave what might have happened between them if she hadn’t been married and about to give birth. ‘So what was weird about his email?’

  ‘The fact of it is weird. It’s a weird thing to send an email of that nature to someone you hardly know.’

  ‘Not that weird? If you’re a desperate parent?’

  ‘Hmm.’ Izzy did not want to speak to Sam and revisit how their second meeting had made her feel.

  ‘He must have put quite a lot of effort into finding your email address. Did he know your surname beforehand?’

  ‘Probably not. I didn’t know his.’

  ‘There you go. Effort. Could you take him on as a private client?’

  ‘Yeah. There’s a mutual r
ecognition agreement between the UK and the US for speech therapists. I got my US certificate when I did my six months in Seattle.’ Izzy and Dominic had been newly in love when they’d done their US stint. A long time ago.

  ‘There you go then. Another coffee?’ Emma smiled at the waitress.

  ‘Yes, fab.’ Bloody hell. Obviously, Emma was right. Izzy was going to have to reply to Sam. After all, what kind of person would she be if she ignored a desperate parent?

  Seven

  Sam

  Sam hit the Refresh button on his personal email account for at least the tenth time today. And no, still no message from Izzy. It was 6 p.m. in New York, so 11 p.m. in London, i.e. she almost certainly wasn’t going to reply this evening. Maybe she wasn’t going to come back to him at all.

  He’d hoped that he’d have a response waiting for him when he dragged himself out of bed at the crack of dawn this morning, and he’d carried on hoping all day.

  He didn’t know why he was so keen to hear from her. Because, really, was she going to be any better than any of the other therapists they’d tried? Well, perhaps. Perhaps it wasn’t so much about the methods. Perhaps they just needed to find someone that Barney would connect with. Hard to imagine Izzy not connecting with someone.

  However, if he was honest, maybe the reason that he wanted to hear from her so much, especially now that he’d seen the photo of her smiling face, was that he’d just like to talk to her again. Silly, really. She was essentially a stranger.

  Right, he was going to re-refresh one more time, leave the office, arrive home at a reasonable hour for once, spend a quality hour or two with the kids, and then meet Melissa for their date.

  ‘Daddy, I’ve been invited over to Chrissie’s apartment this evening for a pizza movie night. Can you pick me up at like ten?’ Liv had obviously been desperate for him to arrive home. Her face was sparkling. Friendships had been a little difficult for her since she’d missed so much school after the accident. ‘Her mom’s going to pick me up now if that’s okay?’