Would Like to Meet

by Polly James

  I take deep breaths and wait for him to finish, so we can get back to what we were doing, but it’s not to be. When Jude eventually hangs up the phone, he raises both hands in an appropriately French-style shrug of resignation, and then he says, “I’m really sorry, but I’ve got to go back to the party. Sean’s got into some sort of ruckus at the disco, and the staff want me to come and deal with him.”

  He stands up, then extends a hand to pull me to my feet, while I wonder whether there can be two Seans staying at the Manoir des Beaux Arts. If not, is Eva still with him, and is she all right? You don’t leave your friends when they’re drunk, not if you’re any sort of proper friend, which I am obviously not.

  “Wait for me,” shouts Jude, as I turn and start running flat-out along the path, away from the sand and the hypnotising sea.

  * * *

  Sean’s sitting on the floor next to an upturned table, amidst a pile of broken glass, when Jude and I arrive at the marquee. It’s almost empty now, apart from some staff and a small cluster of rubbernecking guests.

  “Mate,” says Jude, crouching down next to Sean. “What’s up?”

  Sean’s so drunk that most of what he says is incomprehensible, other than “frigid bitch”.

  He can’t be talking about Eva, which is a relief, but I still can’t see her anywhere. More worryingly, this is definitely the Sean she was with earlier, and yesterday evening, too.

  “Where’s my friend Eva?” I yell at Jude. “The one he was with last night, as well? A tall blonde – a very attractive one.”

  “Thasser,” says Sean, fighting off Jude who’s trying to lift him to his feet. “Thass the bitch.”

  After that comment, Jude can leave Sean on the bloody floor as far as I’m concerned, but now he’s making excuses on Sean’s behalf, about how difficult it is when your long-term partner leaves you without warning.

  I don’t say anything in reply. I just aim a kick at Sean’s leg, then run to the barman and demand to know where Eva is. It takes a while to get an answer, even though his English is far better than my French, but eventually I discover that Mademoiselle Fraser “est dans sa chambre”.

  “Merci,” I say, several times, and then I head for the exit.

  When I get there, I look back, and when I do, Jude is also looking at me. He mouths, “Sorry” again, but I turn away and start running again, to find Eva.

  * * *

  Eva is in tears when I reach our room, as well as full of self-reproach.

  “I never get so drunk I make bad decisions,” she says, “and then I go and do it on your birthday, of all the days to choose. I’m sorry, Han. That’s what happens when I talk about subjects that depress me, like infertility.”

  I give her a big hug which she seems to appreciate, and then I reassure her that I had a lovely time, anyway, but without going into any detail. I’m more interested in hearing about what happened with Sean.

  Apparently, he got even drunker than Eva did, and ended up shoving his hand down her bra while they were on the dance floor, while yelling, “Come on love, you look up for anything.”

  When Eva told him to fuck off, he lost his temper and said she didn’t seem “half so frigid” the night before.

  “I’d only bloody snogged him that first night, anyway,” said Eva, “and he was a perfect gent when I said it was time to leave. Tonight was a totally different story.”

  After the “frigid” allegation, Sean then told everyone at the party that all women were bitches who didn’t know a good thing when they saw it, and then he went to slap Eva across the face when she told him to calm down and stop making an idiot of himself. She stepped out of range, and he crashed into a table piled with drinks.

  “That’s why I don’t usually date men my own age,” Eva continues, once she’s finished crying and I’ve pointed out that we should really get some sleep. “Even when they’re not drink-fuelled madmen like bloody Sean, they have way too much emotional baggage. Young ones haven’t accumulated any yet.”

  On that note, she crashes out while I lie awake for ages, wondering whether Jude is likely to be baggage-free before I eventually manage to doze off. I don’t come up with an answer to the Jude question, but I do work out that Eva snores when drunk.

  Chapter 41

  When Eva wakes this morning, she says she feels too fragile to make it to the screen-printing class we’re both supposed to be attending, so I set off on my own. I’m secretly hoping that Jude will be there, but there’s no sign of him. I take a very roundabout route back to our room afterwards, but I still haven’t encountered him anywhere by the time that Eva and I carry our bags to her car, ready for the journey home.

  “You never told me what you got up to last night,” she says, as she struggles to re-set the satnav, largely due to the dark glasses that she’s wearing. “But you look pretty pleased with yourself about it, so come on, Hannah, spill the beans!”

  I do. I figure if Eva knows what a great time I ended up having without her, then maybe she’ll stop beating herself up about leaving me alone last night, so I opt for maximum spillage with nothing held back.

  Eva can’t believe her ears, especially when she discovers I didn’t get Jude’s number in all the chaos. She can’t believe her eyes, either, when he appears on the top step of the manoir, just as we are driving towards it. He spots me through the car window and gestures at us to stop, but there are other cars behind us, so we can’t. The French aren’t slow to beep their horns.

  As we continue driving past, Jude runs down the stairs towards us, still waving his arms and mouthing something incomprehensible. As he does so, Eva glances over at him and says, “My God. I didn’t know he was here.”

  Oh, shit. This is going to be another Stefan moment, isn’t it? I knew last night was far too good to be true.

  “You know him?” I say, in an outraged voice.

  We’ve reached the end of the driveway by now, so Eva doesn’t answer me. She’s too busy negotiating the tricky junction with the main road, the one with a convex mirror on the far side that you’re supposed to use to check if the road is clear before you pull across. I reach over and take off Eva’s stupid glasses as she prepares to turn, then – once we’ve made it across the junction – I hand them back and repeat the question, and finally she answers me, though I’m none the wiser when she does.

  “No, I don’t know him,” she says, as she straightens the wheel and accelerates. “But I know who he is. Don’t you?”

  “Well, obviously, I know who he is,” I say. “He’s Jude, like I told you earlier. So what?”

  Eva throws both hands up in the air, which is a very bad idea when driving, and then she says, “So what? I’ll tell you what: you forgot to mention your Jude was Jude Morley, better known as Morley.”

  My expression must be blank, so then she adds, “Morley the photographer, you ignoramus! The one known to everyone who works in the creative industries, apart from those who design thumbs-up icons for a living, apparently.”

  I don’t reply, mainly because there’s no denying that’s my job.

  * * *

  Eva keeps huffing about my “general cluelessness” all the way back to England, at which point I finally admit I’m an idiot in exchange for her giving me back my phone. I immediately check it for messages from Joel, but there aren’t any, so then I spend the next part of the journey trying to get hold of him – increasingly frantically – but all my calls and texts go unanswered.

  I even log on to his Facebook page, but apart from more photos of unidentified brunettes in various nightclubs and bars, there are no clues as to what he’s been up to for the last three days.

  “He’ll be fine,” says Eva. “Young guys never update their Facebook statuses or reply to texts on time.”

  She’s probably right, so I calm down and take a look at the rest of my timeline, which mainly comprises Esther’s status updates. I don’t think she’s been having half as relaxing a time as me, poor girl.

  “This yea
r is about my career,” she said on Friday night but by Saturday, she’d decided it was about her health, instead. This morning, she’d apparently given up on both.

  “I am not worthy of my dreams,” she announced, but by this afternoon she was fighting back: “I’m telling my doubts to sit in the corner and be quiet.”

  “Gordon Bennett,” says Eva, as I read the series of statuses aloud. “Bit melodramatic, our Esther, isn’t she?”

  I don’t respond, mainly because my own doubts about what Joel’s been up to are getting stronger and stronger the closer that we get to home. By the time Eva drops me off at my house, I’m relieved to see that it’s still standing, though I still feel a sense of trepidation as I open the front door and step inside. The hallway looks remarkably tidy, and so does the living room, when I glimpse it through the part-open door.

  “That you, Mum?” shouts Joel, sticking his head out into the hallway from the kitchen.

  I drop my bags and rush towards him and he scoops me up in a big hug.

  “Happy belated birthday,” he says, as I kiss him on the cheek and then step back to begin my inspection.

  No obvious signs of any accidents, no bloodshot red eyes, and all the dirty dishes I didn’t have time to do before Eva and I left for France have now been washed and put away.

  “Have you been staying somewhere else this last few days?” I ask, as Joel gestures for me to sit down at the table.

  “No,” he says, looking a bit puzzled, and then he asks if I’m hungry, because dinner’s nearly ready.

  “Pasta,” he says, which sounds familiar, but in a positive way for once. I had a great time in France, but it’s lovely to be home.

  It’s even lovelier when Joel’s pasta dish turns out not to be the one that we’ve been eating every night since Dan left home.

  “Asparagus and crispy bacon in a rosemary cream sauce,” he says, when I ask him what it is. “A Gordon Ramsay recipe.”

  I ask for seconds as my phone beeps with a message from an unknown number.

  Sorry I missed you this morning. It’s taken me until now to get home and recharge my phone – after I finally managed to persuade those jobsworths at le manoir to give me your number. Fancy meeting up again?

  The sign-off simply says, “Jude”, so while I’m on a roll of mega-good fortune, I text him back a yes.

  * * *

  After Joel and I have finished eating dinner, I check my emails to find that Danny sent Pammy a virtual birthday card while she was away. Pearl sent me one, too, promising a “proper card and present to follow when Albert and I get back from Beijing”.

  I put off replying to either of them tonight, as now I’m feeling pretty tired, but I do open my real-life cards and gifts.

  Dan hasn’t sent me any kind of card, whether proper or not, but Joel has. He’s also bought me a present, and some flowers, too. I’m delighted with the gift – a voucher for the store from which Eva and I bought most of my new clothes – but I’m unnerved by the flowers, though I try my best not to show it. They’re freesias and roses, both in white, my favourite kind. That’s why they’re the flowers I chose for my wedding bouquet.

  I’d think Joel was up to his reconcile-your-parents trick again, if I wasn’t so sure that he can’t possibly know that I’ve met someone new.

  I have, haven’t I? I’ve actually met someone new …

  Chapter 42

  I haven’t heard any more from Jude all week, not since he sent me the text about meeting up again, but I’ve been too busy to fret about it much. I’ve been spending most evenings with Esther, partly to make up for her having missed out on the arts weekend, and partly to persuade her to give internet dating another try.

  “I suppose that’s the only option left for me, isn’t it?” she says, when we’re having yet another quick drink after work tonight. “Seeing as not all of us can go to France and pick up a younger man, and you’ll be too busy to spend time with me now you have.”

  I reassure her that I’ve got no intention of abandoning my friends and ending up as a Billy-No-Mates again, and then I apologise and say that I really should go, but I’ll phone her tomorrow to check if she’s finished her dating profile. I’m determined to keep tonight’s drink as quick as it’s supposed to be, because Joel’s getting annoyed with me for being late home for dinner every night, since he turned into a hipster-bearded Gordon Ramsay.

  “Don’t write me off as coupled-up yet, Essie,” I say, downing my gin in one overlarge gulp, and spilling half of it down my front. “I doubt I’ll hear from Jude again.”

  Esther doesn’t even have time to respond before my phone starts to ring, and it’s the man himself.

  “Sorry,” he says, by way of introduction. “Been shooting in Italy all week and this is the first chance I’ve had to call.”

  “Oh, hi, Jude,” I say, apparently much to Esther’s disgust.

  When I stand up and go to kiss her goodbye, she moves her cheek out of the way.

  Jude’s talking again now, though, so I just grimace an apology at Esther and then walk out of the bar. It’s too noisy to hear properly in there, given that I thought that Jude just said he wants us to meet up tomorrow night.

  “You don’t live far outside London, do you?” he adds. “Though I can come to you if that’s easier.”

  Joel would kill me if he thought I was seeing someone other than Dan, so I think I’ll go to him instead. Jude, I mean. A forty-mile trip from Bracknell into London’s a small price to pay to keep your son happily in the dark.

  * * *

  Remember that fantasy date I had when Dan first left, the one with Mr Suave? Well, that’s almost exactly what my first date with Jude is like, minus the pretentious wooden chopping boards. And Jude looks even better in a candlelit restaurant than he does in an art class, or on a beach at sunset.

  He meets me off the train at Victoria station and then we walk the short distance to a small, family-run Italian restaurant in the heart of the City of London. The maître d’ doesn’t make much fuss of me, as per the Mr Suave scenario, but he’s very effusive in his greeting to Jude, kissing him several times on both cheeks. Then he shows us to a table in the window where we spend the next four hours staring into each other’s eyes and talking about ourselves. It’s wonderful, apart from the bit about Jude’s age. He’s only thirty-five, for goodness’ sake, which is even younger than I thought he was, and which may account for why I get hiccups as soon as I find out.

  Once I’ve finally got rid of those by drinking a glass of water upside down, I change the subject before Jude can ask how old I am. Later on, it becomes apparent that I don’t need to worry half as much about the age difference as I have been doing.

  We’re the only ones left in the restaurant by now, but the waiting staff don’t seem to mind. They’re buzzing about unobtrusively in the background, while the music’s still playing and our second candle is still burning. Then the chef/patron comes out and joins us at our table.

  “Amico mio,” he says to Jude, slapping him on the back. “When I ’ear you are in tonight, I finish early so I come sit with you.”

  “Hannah,” says Jude, “meet my old friend, Salvo. The best chef in London, by a mile.”

  “Pfft!” Salvo waves away the compliment, then adds, “Ciao, Bella” as he begins the cheek-kissing ritual with me. Once that’s been completed, he orders Sambucas all round and he and Jude chat for a bit, mainly about Jude’s trip to Rome earlier this week.

  I watch as the flame flickers from the coffee bean in my glass and then burns itself out. It reminds me of the sunset Jude and I watched together when we first met.

  I’m about to say so, when Salvo asks Jude, “So, you take una foto of Hannah today?”

  Jude looks over at me and says, “No, though I may take pictures of her one day, if she’ll let me. Hannah is my date tonight.”

  He smiles as he says it, but Salvo seems overcome by embarrassment for some unknown reason. He slaps himself on the forehead, then stands u
p while apologising profusely for interrupting.

  “Sono un idiota,” he adds, then, “I go back to kitchen now, give you po’ di privacy.”

  “What was that about?” I say, glancing at my watch.

  Shit, I need to leave now if I’m to catch my train, so Jude says he’ll explain what Salvo was talking about in a second, once he’s got the bill.

  That proves a bit more difficult than it sounds, as apparently, Jude isn’t allowed to pay the bill and nor am I, though I offer to, repeatedly. Salvo comes back out from the kitchen to tell us that he won’t allow it.

  I ask Jude why, after Salvo’s finished another kissing ritual, and we’re finally walking towards the door.

  “It’s complicated,” he says, “but basically, I used to pay him in photos when I was an art student and had no money. Now he says their value’s gone up so much, I overpaid.”

  He glances towards a photograph on the wall and I follow the direction of his eyes. I’ve been so busy looking at him that I haven’t taken a blind bit of notice of my surroundings, until now. All the walls at Salvatore’s are covered in photographs, and they’re all of beautiful women. Not just young women, as you might expect, but women in their forties, fifties and sixties – and some even older than that. All their faces show laughter lines, and past sadness too.

  I raise my eyebrows, and Jude says, “I see beauty in women of all ages. Always have. My mother and grandmother taught me that, though I sometimes have trouble seeing it in my annoying sister. Now shall we walk? I thought you wanted to catch your train.”

  I get less and less sure of that as we stroll arm in arm, towards the station, stopping to kiss every few minutes under the stars. It’s easy to forget how beautiful London can be if you normally see it from the Tube.

  Chapter 43

  It’s horrible, dating someone in secret. There’s no one I can talk to about my date with Jude, apart from Eva, and she’s abroad for the next few weeks and only contactable in the middle of the night. I can’t tell Joel, Pearl’s still in Beijing falling in love with Chinese children, and Esther’s internet dating isn’t going well. Pammy can’t even tell Danny about Jude, even though they’re now “just friends”. She’d feel uncomfortable doing that in case he then told her that he was dating someone, too. Mind you, Esther’s first internet date sounds as if it was even worse than that horrendous prospect would be.