‘Do you like art?’
She saw the optimism in his eyes and knew that she was going to disappoint. She was probably not the kind of girl he usually hung out with – if she had to guess, girls who travelled, visited art galleries, posh girls who grew up in houses where ice cubes were plentiful. ‘Not really. I don’t know much about it.’
A knocking could be heard above their heads. Her body stiffened involuntarily and she placed her hand on her throat.
‘Nothing to worry about, Anna. That’s just a signal to us that they’re nearly done.’
‘Okay.’ She believed him and it helped. She liked the way her name sounded on his lips.
‘So what took you to Fulham?’ He sat down next to her and, far from being awkward, it felt nice, natural, as if they were mates.
‘Well, what took me there was a job and what kept me there was a boy, for a while, but now what keeps me there is that I know the place and it’s affordable.’ She rolled her eyes and shoved the last of the sandwich into her mouth.
‘It didn’t work out with the boy?’
He was prying, but she didn’t mind. She had after all volunteered more information than she would have ordinarily, and she’d eaten half of his sandwich. There was something about being in this bubble...
‘It was never going to work out,’ she admitted with a note of sadness. ‘He was lovely, is lovely, just not for me. I wish him well, you know?’
He nodded.
‘Ned is beautiful-looking and sweet, but there just wasn’t that...’ She hesitated, searching for the right word.
‘Spark?’
‘Yeah, I guess so. No spark.’ She bit her lip. ‘I was going to say chemistry, but spark is good. His parents loved me and that made it harder to end it. They became part of the package and it kind of ropes you in, doesn’t it?’ She continued without waiting for an answer. ‘But we were mismatched in just about every way, really.’
‘Ah, he was probably a glass of champagne – exciting, glamorous – but you don’t want a glass of champagne.’
‘I don’t?’ She laughed. This is funny, because you are like a glass of champagne sipped on a veranda in the sunshine! You’re like James bloody Bond!
‘No. You want a man who is like a cup of tea.’
Anna stared at him. ‘Actually, sorry to disappoint you, but he wasn’t that glamorous and I think I might like to meet a glass of champagne!’
Theo shook his head. ‘No, you don’t. Champagne is for high days and holidays – people don’t always have a fancy for it. But a good cup of tea? There isn’t a day in the year when it isn’t the best thing to have first thing in the morning. A cup of tea warms your bones on a cold day and can bring you close together as you sit and chat. Trust me, you want to find a cup of tea.’
Anna pulled her head back on her shoulders and narrowed her eyes at him. ‘Hmmm...’ She twisted her lips in contemplation. ‘Couldn’t I have both?’
Theo laughed. ‘I’m not sure.’
She watched, curious, as he surreptitiously placed his fingers under the lapel of his suit jacket and ran his fingers over something bright that looked like it was attached to a little gold safety pin. ‘What’s that?’ she asked, nodding towards it.
‘Oh...’ He hesitated, then turned over his lapel to reveal a cluster of bright feathers and a shiny red glass bead, all, as she’d suspected, seated on a gold safety pin. She’d never seen anything like it. ‘It’s a fishing fly.’
‘Why have you got a fishing fly hidden on your jacket?’ she said in a low voice, figuring that if it was important enough for him to keep it out of sight, there might be a serious reason.
‘Well, long story short, someone I cared about, a kind of teacher actually, gave it to me when I was very young and it’s a symbol, I suppose, a reminder to look forward when things feel tricky. Something like that.’ He shrugged and laughed, clearly trying to mask his self-consciousness.
‘My mum did something similar for me,’ Anna said. ‘The alphabet game.’
‘The alphabet game?’
‘Yes. It’s too complicated to explain now, but I think you’re lucky to have had someone like that reminding you of what’s important.’
‘I was.’ He blinked. ‘Very lucky.’
There was a second when a needle of embarrassment lanced the promise of more revelations and she decided not to ask anything further. They were strangers, after all.
She scrunched the brown paper bag into a ball and handed it back to him, emboldened, flirtatious and almost forgetting their predicament. He took it and laughed. She wiped her hands on her skirt. This Theo fella was unlike other men she knew. He wasn’t the easy, coming-on-to-her type she met in the pub, men like Ned; and nor was he the slick, money-chasing, hardened workaholic type she made coffee for on the sixth floor. Anna realised that for the first time in as long as she could remember she was interested.
‘It’s strange, isn’t it, how someone can appear so out of your league and yet when you get them, live with them, they can lose their gloss a bit.’
‘Gosh, what a horrid prospect.’
‘I know.’ She held his gaze. ‘But that was kind of the truth. Once I lived with Ned, I didn’t want to end up with him. He was...’ She checked herself and smiled briefly, falsely, at Theo.
‘He was what?’
She tipped her head back and rested it on the wall, looking up at the ceiling. ‘He was not enough.’ She stared up at the reflection of the two of them, sitting side by side in the little box. It was a strange environment.
‘So if things didn’t work out with Super Ned, why didn’t you go back to your parents?’ he asked.
She noted the ‘Super Ned’, as if Theo felt he couldn’t possibly measure up to someone like that. ‘The answer to that question would take far longer than we have, I hope. That is if we ever get out!’ She exhaled sharply, nerves beginning to bite again.
‘We haven’t been here that long.’
‘It bloody feels like it.’
‘Well, charming!’
They both laughed.
Theo cleared his throat and she felt the weight of his nerves even before he spoke. ‘Before we do get out and scuttle off to our respective floors, I wanted to ask, how... how about we go out for a drink sometime?’ He concentrated on the balled paper bag in his palm.
‘A drink?’ She looked at him, excited and apprehensive at the prospect of going out with a posh bloke like Theo, a bloke quite unlike any other she knew.
And then a wave of guilt hit.
‘There’s something I need to confess and then you can decide whether you still want that drink.’
‘I’m listening,’ he almost whispered.
Anna patted her legs and gave a small nod. ‘I wasn’t trying to hold the lift. I was trying to make it go before you made it. I wanted to be in the lift on my own.’
‘That’s disgraceful behaviour!’ He laughed loudly. ‘Who would admit that?’ He laughed again.
‘I like to have everything out in the open,’ she explained.
‘Well, in that case I might as well tell you that I didn’t want you to accept half of my sandwich, never thought in a million years you would – I’m still bloody starving!’
It was Anna’s turn to laugh. ‘Oh God, I feel awful!’ She placed her hand over her mouth.
‘So you should.’ He smiled.
There was a moment, a second or two when they looked at each other and something occurred, a wordless exchange that gave meaning and weight to the beat of silence. Anna felt a jolt of anticipation.
Just as their eyes locked, the doors began to creak and light filtered into the lift. They were greeted by a smattering of applause. The lift was stuck halfway between two floors. They both jumped to their feet and stared at the ankles of their rescuers. The maintenance man dipped down and smiled, holding a jemmy bar. The girl from the lobby had her arms wrapped around a bucket – Anna wasn’t sure why.
‘Ah, Theo! Just your luck, eh?’ The maintena
nce man reached in with both hands and passed down a ladder.
Theo fed it into the space, propped it along the inside wall and stood back.
‘You climb up, Anna. I’ll hold the ladder. Bernie will help you at the top.’
‘Don’t—’
‘Don’t what? Forget about our drink? Don’t worry, I won’t.’
‘No! I was going to say, don’t look up my skirt.’ She smiled as she trod hesitantly onto the rickety rungs and was met by more claps from her colleagues and the several people who’d been waiting by the lift. She flushed.
‘Are you all right?’ Bernie asked.
‘Yes, I am, thank you. It could have been a lot worse.’
‘It could that.’ Bernie sighed. ‘An old lift like this one, you never know how it’s going to react. You might have been one tiny cog, one little pin away from plummeting to earth.’ He whistled, shaking his head and pointing downwards.
Anna’s gut churned at the prospect. ‘Actually, that can’t happen.’ She stood tall, smoothing creases from her top before fixing her hair. ‘These lifts are fitted with the latest devices that make it impossible to plummet.’
Bernie laughed out loud. ‘Who told you that?’
Anna looked at Theo, who seemed to have changed colour. ‘He did.’
‘I didn’t want you to panic,’ he said.
She stared at him. ‘So is there a sensor that alerts the lift man when someone is in trouble?’
Theo shook his head and wrinkled his nose. Busted.
‘The lift man?’ Bernie laughed again. ‘Best you can hope for is me with me jemmy and Nicola here with her bucket!’
‘What is the bucket for?’ Theo asked.
‘In case anyone was desperate for the loo,’ Nicola explained, stepping forward with her pail at arm’s length.
‘Sweet Lord above.’ Anna put her hands on her hips. ‘I’ve a good mind to contact the landlord and give him a piece of my mind!’
‘He is the landlord,’ said Bernie, pointing at Theo. ‘His dad owns Villiers House and it was his grandad’s before that.’
‘You have got to be kidding me!’ She turned to him, trying to recall exactly what derogatory remarks she had made about the owners of the building and feeling her face flush.
‘I can assure you we really do look after the building. It’s important.’
‘So tell me, do you have central heating and luxury carpets in your office?’
‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘Yes, we do.’
‘I knew it!’ She thumped his chest. ‘Was any of that for real? Or were you just trying to keep me calm? Do you still want to take me for a drink?’
Theo looked at her, an earnest expression on his face. ‘Yes. How about after work? I’ll meet you downstairs, say 6.30?’
‘Sure. I might be a little late as I’ll be taking the stairs.’ She smiled at him and made her way across the sixth-floor foyer.
* * *
It was now four weeks to the day that Anna and Theo had had their first date. Anna was sitting at the little table in the corner of the coffee shop, the one where they’d rendezvoused pretty much every evening for the last month. She tapped her watch, narrowed her eyes and made the most irritated face she could muster. ‘You’re late.’ It was difficult to pull off because her joy at seeing him walk towards her across the coffee shop split her face in two. Her smile was wide and instinctive. It still felt surreal that this handsome, suited man was there on her account. Me! He is here for me! Look at me now, Tracy Fitchett! The words jumped into her thoughts as her stomach flipped in joy.
‘Yes, that’s exactly what I need!’ Theo sighed and ran his hand over his one-day-old stubble. ‘You giving me grief over my timekeeping too.’ He pulled a face.
He had given her some idea of the irritations of working for his bully of a dad, but she had yet to admit to him that it didn’t sound all bad. After all, he had his own swanky office, guaranteed employment and, as he had once claimed, he was probably the only person who could get away with sliding down the banisters of Villiers House, should the fancy take him.
‘Tough day at the office?’ She inhaled the scent of him as he sat down opposite. This desire to ingest the smell of him was something new for her. His scent was strongest at his temples and whenever they kissed she gulped down lungfuls of it, finding it quite intoxicating.
‘You could say that. I’m afraid I might be bad company tonight.’
‘And this would be different from any other night how?’ she asked with one eyebrow raised.
I would rather be with you in silence than with the finest storyteller at the top of his game. I would happily watch you sleep. You are all I need, Theo. I want to be next to you, I want to touch you. That is enough.
This was how far they had advanced, able to jest and with no need to be on their best behaviour. The shot of happiness that fired through her veins at the sight of him was just as electrifying tonight as it had been every night since they’d met. She kept waiting to see if that feeling would lessen, checking in with herself after each meeting and at the end of every telephone call. But it hadn’t. If anything, the more she saw him, the more she liked him. This was the polar opposite of every other relationship she’d had, where her interest peaked early and was then swiftly followed by a short, awkward descent to goodbye. She remembered discussing as much with Melissa, back before she got together with Ned, explaining how her excitement at meeting someone new quickly turned into boredom and then fear at the prospect of a dull life ahead. This was different. For the first time ever she could clearly picture sitting with Theo night after night, knowing they would never run out of things to say and if they did then silence would do just fine.
Things felt easy. There was none of the game-playing or subterfuge that Lisa had informed her was vital in these early days. The two women had sat side by side on Anna’s bed with Kaylee napping between them and she had listened, giggling and aghast at her half-sister’s advice.
‘You have to be cool with him.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes! Really!’
Anna hid her face in her hands. ‘Then I’m scuppered. I have never been cool about anything, ever in my whole life. I am the exact opposite of cool!’
‘Well, figure it out! If this bloke Theodopadoodah is as posh as you say, he’ll be used to getting everything his own way and having birds falling at his feet, so you need to make yourself different. You can’t be like the others – he has to think you’re not interested and fight for you.’
Anna doubled over, laughing into her hand, stifling the sound so as not to disturb Kaylee. ‘Where do you get your information?’
‘You can laugh, but I know what I’m talking about.’ Lisa sipped her tea.
‘I’m laughing because there is so much that is hysterical about your statement that I don’t know where to start!’
Lisa gave a mock humph.
‘Firstly, Lis, the idea of him fighting for me makes him sound like my knight in shining armour and I don’t need a knight, I want a friend, a lover, someone I can trust. Secondly, he is posh, but he doesn’t seem like the kind of bloke who is used to getting everything his own way – he is lovely and kind of flawed, hesitant.’ She smiled at the image of him staring at the floor, more shy than cocky. ‘Plus I can almost guarantee that I am already very different from any bird he has ever been out with. He’s used to Sloaney types, girls with names like Felicity or Mirabelle. And finally, at the risk of bursting your bubble, I’m sorry to say that I think it all might be a bit late. We might only have been seeing each other for a few weeks, but I am as keen as mustard and he knows it.’
‘Well...’ Lisa drained her mug. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you and don’t make me remind you of this conversation when it all goes tits up. And don’t ever ask for my expert advice again.’ She wagged her finger for extra gravitas.
Anna smiled at her. ‘Remind me how things are going with Kaylee’s dad?’
Lisa made a ‘ttch’ noise with her t
ongue against her teeth. ‘Haven’t heard from him, but I hear he’s been seeing his ex, the bastard.’
‘Have you tried treating him mean, being cool, making him fight for you?’ she suggested.
‘Oh sod off, smart arse!’ Lisa sank down on the bed with her arms folded across her chest.
Anna scrunched up her eyes and smiled affectionately at the woman she had come to love.
Far from treating Theo mean to keep him keen, Anna revelled in the way the two of them had fallen for each other so quickly and so deeply. They did nothing to hide their mutual joy at being together and she knew that their happiness shone like an aura around them; everyone commented on it. Melissa had teased her, pointing out the colouring of her cheeks when she mentioned him, and Jordan had interrogated her over the phone.
‘So, the big question is, have you consummated your relationship yet?’
‘God, Jord, that is typical of you!’
‘Because it’s important! Let’s face it, at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter what they look like or how well they can wine and dine you, if when you get into the sack you are left feeling a bit bleurgh.’
Anna thought about their time together and blushed. The truth was, Jordan didn’t have to worry, she had not been left feeling a bit bleurgh. Quite the opposite: things felt different, felt... wonderful!
‘You know what? It is absolutely none of your business.’
‘Oh my God! That means you have! You absolute tart. I have never been prouder of you!’
She wasn’t about to tell Jordan this, but in solitary moments these days, Anna often found herself closing her eyes and trying to re-create the feeling of peace that engulfed her when she woke in Theo’s arms. Her mind had gone all fuzzy and distracted and everything else – food, sleep, friends – had been relegated.
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