by Caro Fraser
The implication of what he’d said sank in. Rachel stared at him. ‘You think I’m going to sleep with you? Today? Having just met you?’
It was Andrew’s turn to look surprised. ‘Sorry – am I missing something? What on earth do you think this is all about?’
‘It’s – it’s a date.’
‘A date? You sound like my daughter.’ He laughed, and then frowned. ‘We seem to have some crossed wires here. I thought you understood.’
‘I don’t think I do.’ She knew she sounded absurdly prim, but she couldn’t help it.
‘Right. Well, I apologise. I thought …’ He sat for a long moment, rubbing his chin – in bemusement, it seemed, rather than embarrassment. ‘Look, I need to go to the little boys’ room. Back in a tick. Then we’ll talk. Sort things out.’
She watched him head off in the direction of the gents, wondering whether she should just get up and leave. But how rude would that be? On the other hand, what he’d just said had been grossly insulting. Or had it? Maybe this was all online dating was about. Looking for sex partners. She felt foolish, naive. It was the way things were nowadays. Everybody rushed at everything. Even relationships. She should get over it. When he came back she would make it clear that what he’d said or assumed didn’t matter, but that she’d prefer to take things a bit more slowly. At that moment the waiter slipped the bill onto the table.
Simon was coming out of the gents when he saw the dark-haired girl’s companion leaving, slipping out the side door of the wine bar. Simon glanced across the room. She was still at the table. She seemed lost in thought, features in neutral. Simon went back to his friends, but his thoughts stayed with the girl, wondering what had happened, what had gone on between her and the man. He saw her turn and glance in the direction of the gents, and noticed the bill on the table. Then it dawned on Simon. She didn’t realise he’d walked out on her. Cheap bastard, dumping her with the price of a half-bottle of champagne and a plate of sandwiches.
Simon caught the attention of the waiter behind the bar. ‘The girl sitting over there by the pillar. I’d like to settle her bill.’
The waiter nodded. He rang up the tab, and Simon paid with his card. He watched as the waiter went to her table.
Rachel glanced up in surprise as the waiter picked up the bill. ‘Sorry – we haven’t paid yet.’
‘Gentleman over there paid.’ The waiter nodded in the direction of the bar. A tall, lanky man with light-brown hair, who had clearly been waiting for her to catch his eye, came over and sat down.
‘Your friend left, I’m afraid, sticking you with the bill. Not very gentlemanly.’
Rachel’s surprise was only momentary. Of course Andrew Garroway had left. Why wouldn’t he? Clearly for him online dating was just a way of finding lonely, compliant women to sleep with. Still, she felt an icy shock of humiliation.
‘I can pay my own bills, thanks.’ She fished in her bag for her wallet. ‘How much do I owe you?’
‘Nothing. I was happy to do it. Truly. I’m glad he left. It gives me a chance to get to know you. I’ve been wanting to do that ever since you walked in.’ Simon had astonished himself. He hadn’t intended to say what had been in his mind, but looking into her perfect face, her amazing eyes, it seemed easy and obvious.
‘Well, I’m afraid I don’t especially want to get to know you.’ Rachel put two twenties on the table, got up, slipped on her coat and left the wine bar. The chilly street air felt cleansing. She strode across Leadenhall Street in the direction of her office, her heart thudding with shame and anger. Did every man in London think she could be bought for the price of a sandwich and a glass of champagne? As soon as she got home tonight she would remove her profile from every single one of those ridiculous dating websites. She must have been mad to let Sophie talk her into it.
She reached her office building and swung open the glass door. Stepping into the vestibule, she headed for the lift and stabbed the button, exchanging a nod with the security guard on the desk.
‘Hold on,’ said a voice behind her. ‘Won’t you at least talk to me?’
She turned round. The tall young man from the wine bar was standing there, wearing a baffled, almost desperate expression.
‘Look,’ said Rachel, ‘I’ve had an encounter I’d rather forget about, and now I just want to get back to work. I suppose you thought you were doing me a favour, paying the bill, but I didn’t ask you to. OK?’ The lift arrived and she stepped into it. Simon put out a hand to stop the doors closing.
‘All I wanted to—’
The security guard came forward and interrupted him. ‘Excuse me, sir. I take it you have business in the building? If so, you’ll need to sign the visitors’ book and get a pass.’
Simon watched as the lift doors closed on the woman of his dreams. ‘No,’ he said to the doorman. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
The lift took Rachel to the fourth floor, where she went to her office and closed the door.
An hour later, Felicity was arriving at Vince’s mum’s council house in Deptford. Denise lived in a shabby, pebble-dashed box opposite a villainous-looking comprehensive school surrounded by a high wire fence. Most of the small front gardens of the houses in the street were overgrown, weedy repositories for discarded household items, but Vince’s mum’s front garden was tidy and well tended, with a low, plastic-linked chain fence. As she stood on the doorstep, Felicity wondered how many people were likely to turn up to a welcome-home party for an ex-con on a weekday. In Vince’s world, maybe more than a few.
Denise answered the doorbell dressed in a short lycra skirt, black tights, and a plum-coloured satin blouse. On her feet she wore fluffy house slippers. Her hair was dyed an extravagant orange-red, and her long, square-cut fingernails were intricately painted and studded with tiny jewels. She was still good-looking for a woman in her mid fifties, but the clothes were too young, and the make-up too much.
Denise gave a yelp of delight when she saw Felicity. ‘Fliss, babes!’ She hugged her and kissed her on either cheek. ‘Big day’s here at last! Come on through and meet the girls.’
Felicity took off her coat and followed Denise into the back room, where three women of Denise’s age, all decked out like ageing barmaids, were busy arranging plates of food on a gateleg table. Denise introduced Shelley, Rhona and Barbara, and they twinkled their fingers at Felicity in welcome. When Denise told them how Felicity had been waiting faithfully for four years for Vince, they all let out little murmurs of sympathy, and Shelley gave her a hug of solidarity.
Felicity glanced around. There was a ‘welcome home’ banner strung over the fireplace. She glanced round, but no balloons, which was small mercy. ‘Can I do something to help?’
Denise grasped Felicity’s hand. ‘Come and help me sort out drinks in the kitchen.’
A serious mountain of booze was crammed into the tiny kitchen. Bottles of vodka, whisky and wine covered the surface of the kitchen table, and four boxes of Stella lager were stacked behind the door.
‘The offie threw in a free box of wine and beer glasses, but I’m still worried there won’t be enough. We’ve got a ton of people coming over,’ said Denise. ‘Here, you get unpacking these, and I’ll sort out what I’ve got in my cupboards. He’ll be here around four.’
No need even to say his name, thought Felicity, as she began unpacking glasses from the box. How had Vince attained this heroic status? Simply by being absent, she supposed, like a Beirut hostage. Forget the real reason.
‘Ossie and Quills are picking him up at three, and they’re taking him for a beer first – you know, just to get him acclimatised, first day out and all that.’ Denise gazed speculatively at two baking trays of sausage rolls. ‘I reckon those should go in the oven at quarter to four. What d’you think?’
Felicity nodded. ‘Sounds about right.’
When she’d finished with the glasses, Felicity went through to the living room, where Denise and the others sat perched on the edges of two sofas, skirts riding up t
heir thighs, making inroads into a bottle of Chardonnay. Denise was holding forth on the iniquities of the British criminal justice system, how Vince should never have been sent down, how he’d only ever been defending himself in a fair fight.
Felicity had heard Denise spin this record countless times over the past few years, always the same old tune. Felicity had her own thoughts about it all. Sure, Vince had been unlucky. He had punched someone in a brief fight in Soho, and the man had died after hitting his head on the pavement. Vince had never meant that to happen. No question it could have turned out differently. But why, in the recounting of it, was it always Vince who was the unlucky one? How come Vince’s family and friends never mentioned the even unluckier bloke, the one who’d been on the receiving end of that vicious punch? It was like that time she’d ended up at the foot of a flight of stairs, losing the baby, thanks to Vince and his drunken temper. All that agonised contrition on his part. Unlucky old Vince. She hadn’t wanted that pregnancy in any event – so lucky her.
‘Come on, Fliss, have a glass!’ Denise wagged the bottle of Chardonnay.
‘I’m all right for now, thanks. I’ll have one when he gets here.’
The women nattered on. Denise opened another bottle, glasses were refilled, long-nailed fingers scrabbled in the bowls of peanuts and Bombay mix. After a while Denise glanced at her watch.
‘Omigod! Look at the time.’ She scuffed out of the room in her slippers, and returned moments later in shiny, plum-coloured platforms. The shoes dramatically altered her height and posture, thrusting her bust forward, balling the muscles on her spindly calves. The doorbell ding-donged and she hurried out to answer it. Seconds later came the sound of Denise’s squeals of welcome mingling with the voices of the new arrivals. Two middle-aged couples entered the living room, bringing with them the cold smell of outside, and two carrier bags full of cans of lager. Felicity didn’t know any of them.
Denise began introductions, but the doorbell rang again and she went to usher in more people, this time an entire family of three generations – gran, mum and dad, and brood of noisy youngsters.
The tiny living room was suddenly filled with shrill talk and laughter. Felicity made a discreet exit to the relative peace of the kitchen, and decided to station herself there and dispense drinks. She really didn’t want to mingle with these strangers.
She stayed there for the next hour as more and more people arrived, handing out cans of lager and Coke, mixing gin and tonics, cracking the caps of wine bottles and pouring drinks. Denise seemed to have forgotten about her, for which Felicity was grateful. She’d been worried Denise would drag her through to the living room to introduce her to everyone as the love of Vince’s life. Barbara, mildly pissed, came through and relieved the tedium by talking to her for twenty minutes about what a darling Vince had been as a teenager when he was at school with her Ryan, before splashing some Bacardi into her glass and wandering away.
There was still no sign of Vince, Ossie and Quills.
Felicity mixed herself a vodka and Coke and gazed through the window at the little huddle of smokers hunched against the drizzle by the rotary clothes line in Denise’s patch of back garden. Denise came through, her face tense and anxious.
‘I dunno what’s happened to them. What d’you think’s happened?’ She bit her lip, then picked up a half-empty vodka bottle and poured a couple of inches into her wine glass. She pulled her mobile from her skirt pocket and hit the redial button, listened, sighed, put the phone back in her pocket and swallowed the vodka in one. ‘Quills has got his phone switched off. I haven’t got Ossie’s number.’
‘Not to worry,’ said Felicity. ‘They’ll be here soon.’
‘Yeah?’ Denise’s eyes scanned Felicity’s for reassurance, and seemed to find some. ‘Yeah. He’s a good boy. He wouldn’t let his old mum down.’ She glanced out at the smokers. ‘Sometimes wish I’d never given up. I could do with one right now.’ She touched her lower lip with a manicured finger, her hand trembling slightly, eyes distant.
The increasing sense of remoteness which had been growing in Felicity all afternoon felt suddenly complete. She was nothing to do with this. She was a bystander at this grotesque circus, not even part of the audience swigging drink and wolfing sausage rolls in the living room. She wanted to leave, to get out before Vince got here. But she could not abandon Denise. To leave now would be to confirm Denise’s worst fears – that this was pointless, that Vince didn’t care about her or the party, that his priority on his first day of freedom was to go on the lash with his mates.
Suddenly there came the frantic ding-donging of the doorbell, and drunken laughter from outside the front door. Denise gave a screech and hurried down the hall to open it. There on the doorstep was Vince, so pissed he could hardly stand up, supported by his friends. Watching from the kitchen doorway, Felicity recognised Vince’s Turkish friend, Ossie. The other, a thickset man with ginger hair, had to be Quills.
‘Chrissake, bring him in!’ Denise grabbed Vince’s arm and the four of them made their way down the hall, giggling and swearing.
Felicity shrank back from the doorway. She leant against the fridge, and heard a roar go up from the living room. Then Denise shouting, ‘Get ’im on the sofa! Move, Darren!’ Laughter, then someone shouted, ‘Get that man a drink! He looks like he needs one!’ More laughter.
Denise tottered into the kitchen and grabbed a can of Stella from one of the open boxes. She was laughing, her eyes pink and manic. She grabbed Felicity’s elbow. ‘He’s here, babes! Come on!’
Felicity resisted. ‘I just need to go to the loo first. Freshen up.’
Denise put one taloned finger to the side of her nose and winked. ‘You go and make yourself gorgeous!’ She left with the can of Stella. Wife-beater, thought Felicity. That was what Vince and his friends always used to call that particular lager. The thought had come into her head from nowhere.
She stepped quietly into the hallway, hoping no one would see her through the half-open living room door. She found her coat buried beneath others on the banister, and for a panicky moment thought she’d left her handbag in the living room. Then she saw it beside the hall table. She picked it up and opened the front door, closing it behind her as quietly as she could, even though the sounds of the homecoming celebration were too loud for anyone to hear her leave.
At half past five Rachel left her office. As the lift descended she leant back and closed her eyes briefly. What a hellish day. A wasted morning when she’d been too nervous to do any serious work, leading up to a squalid lunchtime rendezvous that had left her feeling humiliated and stupid, followed by an afternoon of self-loathing. To top it all, she’d been chased by the client on the casino case, and had had to ring Anthony up and nag him, which she didn’t like doing, and which he hadn’t much cared for either. The work just wasn’t getting done on time. It wasn’t like Anthony. He was normally so conscientious, so on top of his game. Probably distracted by some new woman, thought Rachel gloomily, as the lift doors opened.
She stepped out onto the pavement into the swirl of evening commuters and found it was raining hard. She groped hopelessly in her bag for her umbrella, before realising she must have left it at home. Great. She was going to get soaked walking to the station, on top of everything else. Suddenly someone touched her arm. When she saw it was the young man from the wine bar, she sighed in annoyance.
‘Are you stalking me, or something?’
‘Sort of.’ He held his own umbrella over her. ‘Look, don’t get angry, and don’t get wet. I just want to talk to you.’
She stared at him. ‘Have you been waiting here all afternoon?’
‘Hardly. I only work across the road.’ Rachel liked the way he laughed when he said this. But she had had enough of men for one day. She turned away and started to walk in the direction of Bank station. He hurried along next to her, holding his umbrella gallantly over her head.
‘Come for a drink with me? Please?’ She kept walking. ‘Just one?’
She glanced at him, noticing that he had deep-set grey-green eyes, and was probably older than she had first thought. Early thirties, probably, though his slightly round face made him look younger. ‘You’re very persistent, aren’t you?’ she replied.
‘It’s my best quality. If you won’t come for a drink with me tonight, I’ll just have to wait outside your office again tomorrow night.’
‘Tomorrow’s Saturday.’
‘That’s true. OK, Monday night.’ He bumped into a fellow pedestrian and apologised, lost Rachel in the crowd, then caught up with her again. ‘So you might as well give in now.’
They had reached the junction of Gracechurch Street and Cornhill. Rachel stopped, and he did too. They stood together beneath his umbrella, the rain teeming down, people bustling past. He gazed hopefully at her, and she found herself thinking how random this was, unplanned, out of nowhere. The way things should be. She also found herself thinking that there was nothing to hurry home for – Oliver was having a sleepover with Josh.
‘It’s Friday. Everywhere’s packed.’ She realised she’d just said yes.
He realised it, too, and smiled. ‘I booked a booth at Abacus.’
‘Wasn’t that just a bit presumptuous?’
‘Do you have to talk to me like you’re constantly telling me off? I haven’t done anything particularly wrong, you know. I just saw you and liked you, and hoped we might get to know one another. Frankly, I thought booking Abacus showed a bit of foresight.’
Rachel smiled. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’
He put out his hand. ‘Simon Wren.’
Rachel shook it. ‘Rachel Davies.’
‘Come on, then, Rachel Davies. Before the lights change.’ He took her arm just above the elbow and hurried her across the road. Rachel found she didn’t mind the proprietorial gesture at all, nor the assumption that lay behind booking the cocktail bar. It was quite nice to be taken charge of. She would just go with it, and see where the evening took her. Maybe she would even have reason to be grateful to Andrew Garroway.