In Case You Missed It

by Lindsey Kelk

  ‘Three days,’ he said, squinting at the maths. He knocked the cocktail shaker against the bar to loosen the pint glass he had wedged in the top and poured the frothy pink liquid into four waiting glasses.

  ‘It’s fine, it’s whatever,’ I said hurriedly. ‘He’s probably not going to reply.’

  ‘Oh, he is,’ John replied. ‘He’ll text you tonight, ask what you’re doing later.’

  ‘And how do you know that?’ I asked, suddenly panicking that he was about to pull off some incredible mask and reveal that ah-ha, he, John the mild-mannered bartender, had been Patrick all along.

  ‘If he messaged you in the week, he would have had to make real plans with you.’ He topped off the cocktails with prosecco and added them to a silver tray already laden with drinks. ‘This way, it’s a far more casual, no-obligations situation. A no-pressure hang-out. Classic arsehole behaviour.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  His absolute certainty, the complete and utter self-assuredness of his answer, rubbed me up entirely the wrong way. I did not like John the bartender.

  He nodded. ‘In the words of a certain singing teapot beloved by young and old, it’s a tale as old as time.’ He wiped his hands on the white bar towel that hung over his shoulder. ‘I’ve seen it a thousand times, Rose.’

  ‘It’s Ros,’ I corrected.

  He tossed the towel down on the bar as a passing waiter scooped up the tray of drinks and melted away into the crowd. He pushed his wavy, black hair away from his face and I strongly considered suggesting to Adrian’s mum that he really ought to be wearing a hairnet.

  ‘He’ll text and you’ll reply and we’ll be having this conversation all over again next week. Unfortunately it’s very predictable, Ros.’

  ‘I’m predictable, am I?’ I asked, the fingers of my left hand curling into my palm, fingernails stabbing at my flesh. What a cock.

  ‘The situation is predictable,’ he corrected. ‘When you work in a bar, you get used to hearing these stories. No need to take it so personally.’

  ‘Well, you’re wrong about one thing,’ I informed him as I placed my unfinished drink back on the bar.

  ‘Yeah? What’s that?’

  ‘We won’t be having this conversation again,’ I declared. ‘Or any conversation if I can help it.’

  I turned and walked away before he could reply, marching across the garden. Who did he think he was? And what on Earth did Sumi and the others see in him? I searched for a friendly face that might bring down my blood pressure.

  ‘Rosalind, there you are.’

  Instead, I found my parents.

  ‘I’m so glad we found you,’ Mum said, her cheeks pink and eyes bright. ‘We’ve something to tell you. Do you want to do it, Alan, or shall I?’

  ‘You tell her,’ Dad replied, kissing the back of her hand all the way up her arm like an about-to-be-fired 1980s waiter.

  ‘No, you do it,’ she insisted, all giddy. ‘It was your idea.’

  It was still so strange to see my parents engaged in any kind of physical display of affection. I knew other people’s parents got touchy-feely on occasion but mine just didn’t, especially not my dad and especially not in public. But here he was, M&S sweater draped over his shoulders, socks pulled halfway up his calves and a spring in his step I’d never seen before. And, if I was being brutally honest, My Horny Dad didn’t feel like something that had been missing from my life.

  ‘Well, one of you needs to tell me,’ I cut in, fighting back the hordes of theories popping up in my mind. They’d started a swingers’ club. They were taking up naked tennis. They were starting a naked tennis swingers’ club. ‘Out with it?’

  ‘It was all this romance,’ Dad said, gazing around the Andersons’ back garden, seemingly seeing a very different party to the one I was attending. ‘It got me thinking. We’ve got our ruby wedding anniversary coming up in a few weeks and I thought, rather than celebrate the past, why not celebrate today? Why not do it again?’

  ‘Do what again?’ I asked, eyeing John over Dad’s shoulder. He was happily chatting to Mrs Danvers from down the street, my epic putdown clearly not weighing on him in the slightest.

  ‘Your dad asked me to marry him!’ Mum said, clinging to her husband like a loved-up limpet.

  ‘But you’re already married.’ I blinked at them, confused. ‘Wait, you are, aren’t you? You didn’t get secretly divorced or anything?’

  ‘It’ll be a second wedding, a vow renewal,’ Dad clarified. ‘Our first one was so long ago, this time we want to celebrate with everyone who makes our lives so special.’

  ‘And the first one wasn’t necessarily everything it could have been,’ Mum added, Dad nodding along in solemn agreement. ‘I want this time to be perfect.’

  It had never really occurred to me before but I didn’t know much about my parents’ wedding. They didn’t have a single photo up anywhere and they never talked about it the way my married friends did.

  ‘And I know you’re going to say no but I would very much like you and your sister to be my bridesmaids. It would mean a lot to me if you would at least consider it.’

  ‘While you’re living with us, rent free,’ Dad added, clearing his throat with a subtle cough.

  I smiled and wrapped them both up in a giant Reynolds sandwich, throwing as much enthusiasm as I could muster into the mix.

  ‘This all sounds lovely,’ I told them, a giant smile pasted on my face. Who wouldn’t want to be a single thirty-two-year-old bridesmaid for her own parents? What a dream come true. ‘Anything I can do to help, just say the word. While I’m living with you, rent free.’

  ‘There is quite a lot to plan,’ Mum agreed, her fingers woven tightly through my dad’s. ‘But I think we’ll make short work of it all together.’

  ‘Anything you plan will be perfect, Gwen,’ Dad replied, shoulders straight, tall and proud. If they hadn’t been my parents, it would have been adorable to see the two of them nuzzling, so very much in love.

  But they were, so it wasn’t.

  I turned away, pretending to be checking something in my handbag as they snuggled into each other, mutterings of love turning into noisy public kisses.

  There it was. My phone lit up, quietly announcing one new text message from Patrick Parker.

  I stopped for a moment, paralysed.

  Until I opened the message, it could say anything. It could be an apology or a declaration of love. It could say ‘I’m good thanks’ and nothing else ever again. It could be a wedding photo, a christening announcement, that GIF of the husky that looked like it was telling you a terrible joke. I could delete it now and never know. Or I could open it and live with the consequences.

  Shuffling away from my parents, I opened the message.

  Doing anything tonight?

  I looked back the bar where John was happily chatting away with Adrian’s mum and silently cursed him and his precognitive powers.

  Not really, I replied quickly. Fancy a drink?

  CHAPTER NINE

  It took me exactly four minutes to make my excuses, get out of the party and into an Uber.

  For three years, I had dreamed of what would happen if I ever saw Patrick again and there were a thousand variations on the theme. I imagined walking past him on some romantic street, usually Paris (because it was my fantasy and why the hell not?) and I would always be bundled up in a fabulous coat, walking by the river at night, trees filled with twinkling fairy lights. We would spot each other at the exact same moment, stunned that fate had delivered us back into each other’s lives, and time would stand still, right up until we fell on each other, lips on lips, body to body, heart to heart.

  On other occasions, I imagined myself opening the post, only to find a long handwritten letter from him, an epic essay in his beautiful handwriting, telling me how much he missed me, how he still loved me, how he couldn’t go on another day without me, and then, as a perfect single tear fell down my face and dropped onto the letter, there would be a knock at
the front door and Patrick would be waiting, with red-rimmed, pleading eyes. ‘Did you get my note?’ he’d ask and then we’d collapse into each other’s arms, never to be parted again.

  And then there were the nights I lay awake, staring at my ceiling and dreaming of tearing his testicles from his body and gouging his eyes out with a rusty spoon.

  My feelings were complex.

  Memories, possibilities and worst-case scenarios all raced around in my head as the Uber I’d splurged on rolled to a stop. It was like Christmas morning, my birthday and the first day of the school holidays all mixed together with exam results day and that one horrifying time I had to take a pregnancy test after sleeping with someone I met on holiday in Ayia Napa. The best of times and the very, very worst of times. I wondered if Charles Dickens had ever been on an 18-30s holiday of his own. If he hadn’t, he ought to be made to revisit that statement.

  ‘Lucy, I’m about to do something really stupid,’ I said into my phone as I climbed out of the car and paced a hole in the pavement, two doors down from the pub.

  ‘Then don’t do it,’ she said through a yawn.

  ‘I’m on my way to meet Patrick.’

  ‘OK.’

  I stood back to let a group of friends armed with bags of chips and unrestrained laughter jostle past. Mmm, chips.

  ‘You’re not going to tell me not to go?’ I asked.

  I heard her take a deep breath in as she considered her response.

  ‘Ros, we all knew you were going to see him as soon as he messaged you,’ she said as kindly as she could. ‘And we both know you would have called Sumi if you wanted someone to tell you not to go.’

  These were both excellent points.

  ‘Now tell me, do you look fabulous?’

  I fanned myself with the skirt of my dress and checked myself out in the car window. ‘I look fine.’

  ‘Which is Ros for “I look drop-dead gorgeous”,’ Lucy replied. ‘So, get in there, show him what he missed out on then leave with your knickers on and your dignity intact. I’m deadly serious, go and meet him but if you even think about dropping trou, I will feel ripples in the force and send Sumi out after you. If he’s even considering trying to win you back, he has to earn you.’

  ‘It’s just a friendly drink,’ I said, wondering whether or not that was true. ‘I swear that by the time I go to sleep, it will be in my own bed and these knickers will not have left my person.’

  She made a doubtful sound down the line.

  ‘Are they nice knickers?’

  ‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘You go out, you put on a nice dress, you wear nice knickers. It’s just what you do. I wasn’t planning on anyone seeing them.’

  Although it never hurt to be prepared, hadn’t they taught us that in Brownies? I wasn’t sure this was the situation Brown Owl had in mind when she told us that but, we were where we were.

  ‘Fine, fine, fine,’ she said with another yawn. ‘I’m going in for a scan first thing Monday morning, shall we get dinner Monday night? You can tell me all about Patrick and I’ll bore you with all the hideous baby details. Dave’s away all next week and I wouldn’t mind the company.’

  ‘I could come to the scan with you if you like,’ I offered, starting down the street towards the pub. I could do this. I was doing this. ‘I don’t have to be in the office until ten.’

  ‘Ooh, if you don’t mind?’ Lucy brightened quickly. ‘Sumi came to the first one but she’s so busy I hate to ask. Adrian came last time but they asked me not to bring him again, he was dicking around with a speculum and broke it.’

  ‘Dave didn’t go with you?’ I asked, although I wasn’t nearly as surprised as I should have been. That man did not deserve her.

  ‘He was ill when I had the first one and away working for the second one,’ she explained. ‘And you know how much he hates hospitals. It’s honestly easier to do it without him.’

  Because scheduling work trips around your wife’s hospital appointments for your first child was entirely unreasonable. I deeply disliked Creepy Dave.

  ‘I’d love to be there, text me the details,’ I told her, standing outside the pub and peering through the dirty windows. ‘Right, I’m going in.’

  ‘Call me if you need me, I mean it,’ she said, blowing kisses down the line. ‘I’ll be asleep in half an hour but I have to get up for a wee seven times in the night so I’ll probably be able to reply before you do anything stupid.’

  ‘Thanks, Luce, love you,’ I said as I ended the call and checked Patrick’s last message one more time.

  The Fox and Crown, seven thirty, can’t wait

  I was outside the Fox and Crown, it was seven thirty-four and I didn’t have to wait another second.

  The day had been hot and humid and Patrick’s pub of choice was all the more disgusting for it. Close and dark was the best description, but at least it was a proper pub, unlike Good Luck Bar. This was the kind of pub where we’d made all our mistakes growing up: dark wood, red velvet and a squishy carpet underfoot, perpetually sodden with a century of spilled pints and not-so-empty threats. Classic London boozer.

  I couldn’t see him when I walked in but my heart stuttered with every step, knowing any second now, he’d be there in the flesh. Suddenly my hair felt wrong, why had I taken it down when it was so sticky out? I pulled it up into a ponytail and then immediately let it back down again. Patrick loved my hair up. I was trying too hard. My midi dress was another mistake, the synthetic fabric was soaked through at my lower back. What was sexier than an incredibly sweaty woman with too much hair on the verge of an anxiety attack? I fished around in my bag for a Polo to give my brain and my body something to do. You could always rely on a Polo.

  A man stepped onto a small stage at the back of the room and tapped a microphone, causing a squeal of feedback that made everyone jump.

  ‘Right you are, we’ve got a turn on tonight,’ he muttered, beckoning a slight woman holding a guitar onto the stage. ‘This is our Karen, she’s going to sing us some songs. Keep quiet for fifteen minutes and don’t be arseholes about it, clap will you?’

  Scattered applause danced around the room as the girl positioned herself on a high stool and turned her brilliant smile on the room.

  She could be in an advert for toothpaste, I thought, running my tongue over my own teeth. And conditioner. And makeup. And oh, shit, is she wearing my dress? I looked down at my floral frock and grimaced. Fucking Zara.

  It was a sign and I knew it. Patrick was late, there was a musically blessed supermodel in the same room wearing the same dress as me and it didn’t matter what I did with my hair, it would never be right. The universe did not want me to meet Patrick, the universe wanted me to throw my phone under a bus, go home and leave this sweaty rag of a dress out for the foxes.

  Mind made up and heart in tatters, I turned on my heel to march out the door and back into my senses.

  And there he was.

  Our eyes met and the light of recognition brightened his face. In the dim gloominess of the pub, he was all I could see. Blond hair, blue eyes, easy smile, exactly how I remembered.

  ‘Hi,’ he said as Karen strummed her first chord.

  I opened my mouth to reply but nothing came out. I smiled and tried again, managing a strangled squeak.

  ‘Ros?’ Patrick asked, placing a warm hand on my shoulder. ‘Are you OK?’

  I gave him a thumbs up as I doubled over, spluttering, the ground rushing up towards me altogether too fast. My eyes were watering, my face was burning, I couldn’t breathe. Oh my god, I was choking on a Polo. This was perfect, I thought as I dropped to my knees and people around us began to mutter. I’d waited three years for this moment and I was going to choke to death on a Polo. At least I was wearing nice underwear.

  ‘Ros? Ros!’

  As the room began to close in on me, I felt two hard thumps in the middle of my back, a shard of white flew out of my mouth and I drew in a long, loud, sharp breath.

  Combing my hair out of my face,
I looked up to see Patrick, just inches away from me, holding me in his arms.

  ‘Saved your life,’ he said softly.

  ‘Thank you,’ I replied, my voice barely above a whisper.

  A squeal of feedback reeled out from the stage.

  ‘Is she OK?’ asked Karen with the guitar.

  ‘She’s OK,’ I confirmed, still doubled over, staring at the remains of the Polo and wondering if perhaps death by mint wasn’t the worst way to go.

  Slowly, I stood up, tossed my hair over my shoulder and wiped at my wet eyes, two smudges of mascara on my fingers. Patrick looked like Patrick, calm, confident and slightly bemused, still holding me up, one hand on my arm, one on my waist. I looked like a pound-shop Kardashian.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Reynolds.’

  ‘It’s good to see you, Parker.’

  And just like that, three long years melted into nothing.

  It was still light outside, still not even nearly dark, but the edge had been smoothed off the sun, leaving the streets sticky in the almost-dusk. Patrick leaned against the wall of the pub while I stood, uncomfortably straight, half hiding underneath a tree heavy with tiny pink flowers.

  ‘So,’ I started, swirling the glass of wine he’d bought me. ‘Long time no see.’

  Patrick smiled but said nothing.

  ‘How’ve you been keeping? Been anywhere nice over the summer?’ I asked, filling the silence with a steady stream of hot bullshit. ‘Warm, isn’t it? Can’t believe the weather, it’s so close, that’s the problem, so humid. I’ve barely slept a whole night since I’ve been back and—’

  ‘I love your hair that length,’ he said, interrupting my ramble with exactly what I wanted to hear. ‘It suits you long.’

  Was it longer than the last time I’d seen him? I didn’t think so. Bigger, almost definitely. The humidity was real. I looked at the people around us, either busy with their own conversations, staring at their phones as they smoked or sat or sipped their drinks. I wanted to shake them, explain what a momentous occasion this was and have them acknowledge it. Just an average Saturday night to them, a second chance with my soulmate for me.