I’ve waited for this moment for so long that I thought it would feel much weirder than it does. It actually seems completely natural. I don’t even feel particularly nervous. In fact, I’m almost giddy with happiness, so much that I almost want to laugh out loud. How many times have I walked up to this park to look for him? How many times have I talked about this to my friends? It’s become a running joke now. They won’t believe I’ve really seen him.
I stand up straight. Actually, they really won’t believe it. They’ll think I’ve completely lost the plot. Even more than they did when I told them about him in the first place. I sneak my phone out of my pocket and scroll to the camera. I’m not close enough to get a good photo, I know, but anything’s better than nothing. I zoom in slightly – too much and it will be blurry, the camera on this phone isn’t great. Just as I tap the screen to take the photo, he looks up. He looks up and over at me. I hear myself gasp and before I even think about it I’m out of the park and walking up towards the shops. I put my phone back in my pocket with shaking hands. He wasn’t supposed to look at me. He wasn’t supposed to see me. That wasn’t meant to happen. Shit.
But then I realise I need to go back. I need to talk to him. I’ve waited so long and there he is, I can’t just run away, can I? What if I never see him again? I think about what Freya said this morning about walking over and mounting him. Of course I’m not going to do that, but maybe I could go over and just talk to him. Yes. That’s what I should do. Oh god.
I turn back towards the park, muttering ‘Please still be there… please still be there…’ under my breath as I walk. He is still there, I can see him as soon as I get to the corner. I should plan what I’m going to say, but I can’t think – all my brain power seems to be concentrated on getting me into the park and across to his bench. And then I’m there. He’s sitting in the centre of the bench, so I drop down next to him and stare straight ahead.
‘Hi,’ I say, eventually.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see him turn his head very slightly towards me and I hold my breath as if that’s going to make me invisible. I dig my fingers into the bench under my thighs to keep myself rooted and stop my hands from shaking.
‘Hey,’ he says. His voice is deep. I knew it would be.
‘I know this is weird,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry.’
He laughs. He’s got a nice laugh. ‘No, it’s OK. But I’m just gonna tell you right now that I’m not interested in learning about The Lord.’
He’s got a bit of an accent, but I can’t quite place it. Midlands, maybe. It throws me (and I was already fairly well thrown). I turn to look at him. He’s really handsome. Like stupidly handsome. There is no way I would have been brave enough to speak to him under normal circumstances.
I smile. ‘No, sorry. I don’t want to. I’m not one of those… I’m not religious. At all. I just… I saw you and… I had to come and talk to you. That makes me sound mad, I know, but I’m not. Honest.’
‘It’s OK,’ he says again. ‘I like a girl with balls.’
I laugh.
He grins. ‘I don’t mean with actual real balls.’
‘No, I wouldn’t have thought so.’ Are we having a conversation? I think we’re having a conversation.
‘I mean, I like that you came over to talk to me.’
‘I’m glad,’ I say. ‘I know it’s a bit of a weird thing to do.’
‘Nah,’ he says, tipping his face up to the sun again. ‘I was just wishing I had someone to share this with. You have perfect timing.’
‘Share what?’ I ask.
‘The word of The Lord.’
I almost groan out loud, but then I notice that he’s grinning.
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Couldn’t resist.’
We sit in silence for a minute or two. I’m desperately trying to think of something to say that doesn’t make me sound completely demented, but I’m struggling. Eventually I say, ‘So do you come…’ I realise almost too late that I’m about to ask him if he comes here often. No. ‘… to this park a lot? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.’
He pulls a face that makes his mouth turn down at the corners. It’s adorable. ‘Not a lot, no. And I don’t think I’ve seen you before either. I would’ve noticed.’
I stretch my legs out in front of me and look at my ankle boots. My purple tights.
‘Do you work near here?’
He shakes his head. ‘I’ve got an interview. Just over there.’ He gestures towards the far side of the park. ‘Just trying to, you know, sort my head out.’
‘Oh right,’ I say. ‘Sorry to disturb you then. I’ll let you…’
‘Nah, it’s OK,’ he says. ‘If my head’s not sorted now, it’s probably too late, to be honest. Do you work nearby?’
I nod. ‘Just round the corner. In the discount book shop.’
‘Cool.’
‘Yeah. It is. Sort of.’
He’s smiling at me and I can’t think of anything to say. I need to think of something good. Something intriguing or alluring. Something that’ll make him ask me out.
‘I’ve just come out for milk,’ I say instead. For fuck’s sake.
He shuffles on the bench as if he’s making a move to get up and I can’t let that happen. I just can’t.
I take a deep breath. ‘Do you want to – maybe – get a coffee some time?’
He grins at me. His teeth are so straight. And white. ‘Sounds good. When’s good for you?’
‘Tomorrow?’ I say. Even though I want to say today. Even though I want to forget about work and for him to forget about the interview and for us to go right now.
He takes his phone out of his pocket and I tell him my number. He keeps looking at me and I finally realise why.
‘Oh! Bea! I’m Bea. Bee, ee, ay.’
‘Nice to meet you, Bea,’ he says, holding out his hand. ‘I’m Dan.’
Chapter Five
‘You’re not going to believe what happened to me today,’ I say, as I walk into Freya’s room after work.
‘Someone wanking in the pregnancy section again?’ she says from her chair in the corner.
‘Oh my god. No. Something good.’
‘Cool, just a sec,’ she says, holding up one finger. She’s got her legs curled up underneath herself and an exercise book on her knee, pen in hand. There’s a huge pile of similar books on the small round table next to her. I still can’t believe how much work she has to bring home with her, but she tries to get it done as soon as she can, so the rest of the evening’s her own.
I sit on the end of her bed and look around her room.
Freya’s room is like something from an interiors magazine and it always surprises me. My room still basically looks like a student room. Or my bedroom at home. Home home. But Freya has pictures and mirrors and a beautiful multicoloured blown-glass chandelier.
‘Is that new?’ I say without thinking, spotting a red glass vase on the window ledge. The light’s shining through it and reflecting on the black and white rug.
‘Shush,’ she says, without looking up.
I shuffle off the bed and walk over to look at her photos. One full wall is covered in them, all individually displayed in frames Freya picks up in charity shops and jumble sales and only very occasionally IKEA. I look at the photo of her mum in the seventies, wearing a pair of short shorts and perched on the back of a moped; Freya’s brother as a baby wrapped in a blanket but with a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses perched on his head; the dog she had as a kid, lying across her bare feet.
Before I reach the photos of me and Henry, Celine and Adam, Freya says, ‘Done. This one managed to confuse Elizabeth I and Elizabeth II which is quite impressive. “The Virgin Queen is mother to four children…” Work needed on history and sex ed.’
I flop back on the bed again. Her mattress is so much softer than mine.
‘I found him,’ I say.
‘Who him?’ She uncurls her legs, sticking them out straight in front and circling her ankles. ‘N
ot him him?’
I swing myself up to sitting and nod. ‘In the park. I went to get milk this morning and stopped for a look and he was there. He looked exactly the same.’ I hold my phone out to show her the photo, but it’s not great. My hands were shaking too much to get a clear shot.
‘Wow.’ She looks at it and then at me.
‘I asked him out. And he took my number. We’re going for coffee tomorrow.’
‘Wow,’ she says again. She doesn’t look impressed.
‘What?’
‘I just…’ She twists her mouth to one side and I’ve known her long enough to know what that means. ‘You don’t really think it’s him, right?’
‘Of course it’s him.’ It is. It must be.
She reaches for her drink on the table behind the exercise books, gulps some and puts it back. ‘I get that you think it’s him. Because you’ve wanted this for so long. But I don’t want you going out with some random bloke you picked up in a park because you think you’ve been dreaming about him, you know?’
I shake my head. ‘I know. But… it really is him. Everything was the same. Even his name. I knew his name was Dan—’
‘You didn’t know his fucking name was Dan. You’ve literally never mentioned that before.’ She’s looking at me like I’ve lost my mind.
‘No. I didn’t know before. But as soon as he said it I knew.’
‘Can you hear yourself? You sound insane.’
‘I know that,’ I tell her. ‘I’m not stupid. And I know you don’t understand. But I know the dream and I know it was him.’
She closes her eyes and rolls her head from side to side. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, opening her eyes and staring straight at me. ‘I know it means a lot to you. And maybe it really was him, what the fuck would I know?’
‘It was him,’ I say. ‘I know it was.’
‘I just want you to be careful,’ she says.
‘I know,’ I tell her. ‘We’re only going for a coffee. I won’t go anywhere with him. And I’ll ring you after.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ Freya says. ‘OK.’ She pulls her legs up under her again. ‘My first work placement, I met a woman. She was older than me, she’d been working there about three years, I think. She had a daughter. She brought her in one day, she was gorgeous. One Friday night after work a bunch of us went to the pub for a quick drink and it turned into a late one. I was sitting next to her and we were talking and she told me her marriage was over. That her husband wasn’t interested in her any more. That they were only staying together because of the baby. Her knee was pressing against mine under the table and I couldn’t think straight because I just desperately wanted to kiss her.’
She tips her head back again, staring up at the ceiling.
‘I didn’t kiss her. And she didn’t kiss me. We both went home and on Monday we went back to work and we never talked about it again. But I kind of got obsessed with her. I used to watch her all the time at work. We were on staggered lunches and I made sure I had the same break as her ’cos I thought when she and her husband did actually split, I’d be there. I’d be the one she’d come to, you know? I stalked her on Facebook. I looked up her address at work and went and sat in her local pub just in case she popped in. I thought she was The One, you know? And I don’t even believe in The One. And then one day – this had been going on for months, like… six months? – and then one day her husband came to pick her up from work. And he kissed her and I stood and watched them, like the creepy stalker I was. He had his hand on the back of her neck and it killed me, it was so casually intimate. And I went home and got absolutely hammered.’
‘God,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry.’
She shakes her head. ‘The thing is, I realised – eventually, not immediately – that it wasn’t about her at all. I was lonely. And insecure. And I felt out of my depth at work. And I just took all these emotions and feelings and pasted them onto her. I wanted her to save me. I’m not sure she even knew my name.’
It’s only then that I realise the point of her story.
‘You think this is about Anthony?’
She nods.
‘It’s not,’ I say, standing up. ‘It’s nothing to do with him.’
‘Don’t go,’ she says. ‘I don’t want to upset you.’
‘I’m not upset,’ I lie. ‘You’ve got loads of work to do. And I’ve got some stuff to do for my stepdad.’
I’m out of her room before she can say anything else. She doesn’t come after me.
* * *
I lie face down on my own bed. When I got back to the shop this morning, a new delivery had come in and I volunteered to sort it, mainly so I could spend the day on my own, thinking and dreaming about Dan. It was too fresh, too perfect, I didn’t want to talk about it and have someone burst the bubble. Maybe I shouldn’t have told Freya. But I had to tell someone. I can’t believe she thinks this is about Anthony.
I met him when I first moved to London. I went into a newsagent’s on Shaftesbury Avenue and he was in there, buying a magazine. He smiled at me. His eyes were really bright blue, the type that look a bit otherworldly. I blushed. We both left the shop at the same time but in different directions. I looked back over my shoulder to take one last look at him and he was looking back at me. It was thrilling. Like something from a film. I kept walking, but he came after me. Tapped me on the shoulder, said, ‘Excuse me’ and asked for my number. By the time I got off the Tube, he’d already texted asking me out for a drink. We went out for three months and I was happy. I hadn’t had a boyfriend before. I was new in London, living in this amazing house with wonderful people and I thought I might be falling in love.
And then he suddenly stopped answering his mobile. At all – not just to me – I got other people to try. And then, after a couple of weeks, I went round to his flat and he’d moved out. I never heard anything from him again. As if he’d just disappeared. As if he was dead.
It was horrible. But it’s got nothing to do with the dream. And nothing to do with Dan.
Chapter Six
After dinner, I open the laptop to work on the bookkeeping I do for my stepdad, Tom, but after a few minutes, I close the program and Google ‘dreams actually coming true’ instead. I find lots of stuff about premonitions – apparently many people believe this is possible – but most of the sites seem a bit woo-woo and I only read a bit from each before I move on.
I have Googled this before. I think the first time was after I had the Dan Dream – I mean, the park dream – for the second (or maybe third) time, but my focus was more on recurring dreams than actual… clairvoyance. Because that’s not a thing. Is it? The internet suggests it is.
But then a few pages in, I find a psychology site that actually seems legit and an article which states that dreams don’t come true, they’re true in the first place; that dreams just tell you what you really know – or feel – about something, but haven’t consciously recognised. Which must be bollocks because how could I have known Dan when I was fifteen?
For a while after I first had the dream about Dan – it wasn’t about Dan then, I remind myself, I used to just think of him as Him – I kept a dream diary. But I have a lot of dreams and the more I wrote them down, the more would come back to me. Before long I was spending at least half an hour each morning transcribing them and I just couldn’t spare the time. And most of them were gibberish anyway. There were a couple that I felt were a bit insightful, but at the same time blindingly obvious. I had an interview for a job I really wanted but didn’t get and that night I dreamt I was standing on a train platform. Just as I went to get on, the doors closed, but then the train pulled forward slightly and the next door opened. Duh.
I always thought dreams were really just your brain trying to make sense of your day. Like tidying everything up and working out how to file it away. That’s why the explanation for how your life flashes before your eyes before you die makes so much sense to me. If your brain is a sort of super complex hard drive then dreams
are like defragging, maybe?
I’m half reading ‘Twenty Creepy Stories of Prophetic Dreams That Came True’ on my phone and half watching Notting Hill on my laptop when my door opens and Henry bursts in, his face pink and his hair on end. He’s wearing tracksuit bottoms and a hoodie, his home uniform.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I just walked in on a naked woman in the bathroom,’ he says, his voice cracking. He shuts the door behind him, as if he’s afraid she’s going to follow him into my room.
I push the laptop off my lap. ‘No way. Who?’
‘I don’t know!’ He sits at the foot of my bed and runs both hands back through his hair.
‘What does she look like?’
‘Small? Very thin. Short dark hair? I didn’t get a good look, to be honest. I legged it.’
I grin at him. ‘So Freya’s been on Tinder again.’
‘God,’ Henry says, staring up at my ceiling. ‘I’m going to have to talk to her. It was bad enough when she was the one walking round in her pants, but now it’s total strangers? Naked total strangers?!’
‘You know she won’t care,’ I tell him.
‘I know. She says I’m repressed.’
‘Maybe that’s the answer.’ I shuffle up the bed. ‘Maybe you start walking around with no pants, see how she likes it.’ My face goes hot and I think Henry goes even pinker, but then he laughs.
‘God. Can you imagine?’
‘We could make it a nudist house.’
I’m not certain, but I think his eyes flicker down to my chest and it’s only then that I realise I’m wearing a thin white T-shirt and no bra.
‘What are you watching?’ he says.
I have to take a second ’cos I feel like my breath is caught just behind my breastbone, but once I can breathe, I tell him.
It Had To Be You: An absolutely laugh-out-loud romance novel Page 3