‘Now? Literally on my first morning in your flat?’
Esme nodded. She had a playful look about her. ‘Tea bags are
in the cupboard next to the boiler. Milk in the fridge. Use the posh
mugs on the tree, though not the one that says Darling Daughter.
Laura will probably go and borrow that cricket bat if you do. Oh,
and put some clothes on,’ she said as Tom climbed out of her bed,
feeling the chill of the draughty flat.
Tom picked his jeans up off the rug and found his shirt under
a chair piled with clothes and books. He put them on and looked
back at Esme, who was now sitting up in the bed. The antique brass
alarm clock on her bedside table showed 7.45.
‘Very sexy,’ she said, while he looked in the mirror and pushed
his messy brown hair around until it looked vaguely presentable.
‘Though I’m not sure who you’re hoping to meet between here and
the kitchen.’
‘It gets all tangled,’ he said, defending his vanity. ‘Also, I never
got to tell you my rules.’
‘Do you have any?’
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‘Not as such,’ he said, about to open the bedroom door. ‘But I do have a question.’
‘As long as it’s not about the relationship thing. I know it’s fast.
But I just—’
‘No. It’s not about that. I’m happy with the . . . relationship thing,’
he said.
‘Good. Then I grant you your question, Tom Murray.’
‘Okay. So we met on Friday.’
‘Yes.’
‘Or Saturday morning, really.’
‘I suppose.’
‘And we hung out yesterday. Then . . . well . . . you know.’
‘I do.’
‘So. Is this our first date, or our second?’
‘Good question. What do you think?’
‘No,’ Tom said. ‘I’m asking you.’
‘Fine. Well I’d like to say second. Because, you know . . . First
date and all that,’ she said, motioning to the bed around her. ‘But
I don’t know. We can decide when you’re back with my cup of tea.’
Alone in her kitchen, Tom allowed himself to drift back over the
past day-and-a-half again: from the moment he approached Esme
at Ali’s party, to now, and everything in between. The unlikely, the
surprising, the wonderful. He reminded himself to text Annabel
later to explain in no uncertain terms just how wrong she was. She’d
disapprove, of course. But then she didn’t know what it was like.
The boiled kettle clicked as the front door slammed shut. Foot-
steps creaked down the corridor, and quite soon he was no longer
alone in the kitchen.
‘Oh. You again.’
It was the blonde girl he had met in the early hours of the morn-
ing. This time she was wearing running leggings and a vest, carrying
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a copy of The Sunday Telegraph under her arm. Laura. Esme had told him about her yesterday. She was a junior political reporter who,
according to her, was a ‘complete and utter Tory’ and based her
style on Samantha Cameron. Despite all that, Esme assured him,
she was lovely.
‘Morning,’ Tom said brightly, lifting tea bags from the mugs and
holding them in a spoon.
‘Bin’s in the cupboard under the sink.’
‘Ah. Thanks.’
‘I see she’s got you making tea already.’
Tom smiled and said, ‘Laura isn’t it?’
‘It is.’
‘Tom.’
‘Nice to meet you again, Tom. And sorry about all that last night.’
‘It’s fine.’
‘We don’t have many gentleman callers, you see,’ she said, appar-
ently trying to break the tension with deliberate over-formality.
‘Honestly, it’s fine,’ Tom said, thinking back to the last time
someone had stayed at his. January, after a gig date at the Hope
and Anchor in Islington, during Tom’s ill-conceived three months
on Guardian Soulmates. The next morning was, at the very best, awkward and quiet.
‘Can I make you anything?’ he asked, shaking Julie (or was it
Julia?) out of his head.
‘No. I’ll sort myself out.’
She took a tin of expensive-looking coffee with ‘LAURA ONLY’
written in marker pen across the front and cleaned out the filter of
an espresso machine.
‘You’re the fancy-dress party guy then?’ she asked. ‘She texted
me about you.’
‘I suppose.’
‘And is this the second date or first? Or shouldn’t I ask?’
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‘Actually we were just discussing that. Undecided so far.’
‘Well, either way it must have gone well,’ she said, tamping down
her coffee. ‘If I know Esme, anyway.’
‘I guess so,’ Tom said, picking up the two mugs of tea, hoping
that he’d made hers right. He was about to go back to Esme when
Laura said his name.
‘Yes?’
‘Listen, I’ve never done this before and I’m not the sort of person
to . . . well . . . go around telling people what to do,’ she said, completely dishonestly if her reputation as a journalist was anything
to go by. ‘But I just wanted to tell you to be nice to her. Esme is
kind and giving and clever. And if you’re good to her, she’ll be the
best friend you ever make,’ Laura said, glaring now. ‘Trust one who
knows. Okay?’
Tom nodded.
‘Good,’ Laura said abruptly, taking her breakfast to the flimsy
dining table set up at the end of their small, all-white galley kitchen.
‘I suppose I’ll see you around.’
Back in the bedroom, Esme had opened the curtains, throw-
ing light onto the Lichtenstein print behind her bed, the grey and
slightly stained rental-flat carpet, and her pine chest of drawers, piled with a laptop, more books and an overly loaded jewellery tree. In the
corner of the long, narrow room was his guitar, leant precariously
against a wardrobe to which only one door was fully attached. Her
full-length mirror was obscured by the green floral dress she wore
yesterday, hung up before they went to sleep.
The window was open slightly. Tom could hear the muffled coos
of London pigeons which sporadically settled on Esme’s windowsill,
and the nearby hum of traffic from the Vauxhall Bridge Road. The
sun was shining, its rays beaming across the rooftops of the white
stucco and yellow brick townhouses of Pimlico. The tops of the trees
outside swayed gently in the breeze. It was a perfect day.
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Esme was sitting up in bed now, grinning. Tom sat down next to her and passed her a mug. She pulled his face near with both hands
and kissed his lips.
‘Happy?’ she asked.
‘Happy,’ he said, sitting against the bedhead and taking a sip of
the slightly too hot tea.
‘That took a while.’
‘I met Laura again.’
‘Oh God. She didn’t say anything, did she?’
‘No,’ Tom l
ied. ‘Nothing. We were just chatting.’
‘No one chats with Laura. They get told things and occasionally, if she’s in the mood, they get to tell her something. But that’s pretty rare.’
‘It was fine. Honest.’
‘And did you decide?’
‘Oh. The date thing. First, I think. Really to call it a second
there’d have to be a day or so in between.’
‘So those eleven hours were, like, an interval?’
‘Exactly.’
‘In a thirty-six-hour first date.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, that’s fine with me.’
‘Good,’ Tom said. He passed Esme her tea and looked into her
eyes. He had never really believed that it was possible for his life to change so quickly. But then he had never expected to meet Esme
Simon at half past two in the morning, at a party in Stockwell that
was winding down around them. He’d never expected to walk her
home through South London and across the Thames. He’d never
imagined that she would want to meet him again later that day.
Of all the things he hadn’t expected, at the very top of the list was
waking up in Esme’s bed on a bright day in late June, knowing so
clearly and so absolutely that he was in love with her.
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‘But I do have one question,’ Esme said.
‘Go for it.’
‘What will that mean for anniversaries? Do they stretch across a
day, or two days, or—’
‘Let’s worry about that next year, shall we?’
‘Okay,’ Esme said, and shuffled closer to Tom. ‘We’ve got plenty
of time, haven’t we?’
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CHAPTER THREE
9 – 10 pm
THE BEST VERSION OF MYSELF
October 2007 – Hampstead, London
‘Right. Nine o’clock exactly,’ Neil said, looking at his digital watch.
‘Where is she?’
‘She’ll be here.’
‘Well, it’s been half an hour. We’re beginning to wonder if this
brilliant girlfriend of yours actually exists.’
‘Fuck off, Neil,’ Tom said.
‘Annie, you’ve met her, right?’
‘Yeah. Couple of times.’
‘A couple?’
‘Before she was with Tom,’ Annabel said, taking a sip of her
Guinness and black.
‘Hmm,’ Neil said, theatrically stroking his chin. ‘So it’s entirely
possible that Tom saw this girl at a party, fancied her, and decided
to lie about her being his new bit.’
‘Bit?’ Padraig – or Pod, as they called him – said.
‘Slang term, isn’t it? For girlfriend.’
‘No. Or at least not to my knowledge. How long have you been
saying it?’
‘Dunno.’
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‘You mean all this time you’ve been calling various partners of friends and colleagues “bits” while everyone looks at you like you’ve
gone mad.’
‘Maybe I am mad?’ Neil said, picking a flower out of the jar in
the middle of the table and positioning it in his hair.
‘You’re a dickhead. Not quite the same as being mad,’ Annabel
said, silencing Neil for all of two seconds before he started up again, like a spoilt child after more attention.
‘Anyway. You do have to admit that my theory has some weight to
it. Murray here meets the girl of his dreams, concocts a relationship
and invites us all to meet her at some posh Hampstead boozer, never
thinking that we’ll say yes. And in about ten minutes he’s going to
pretend he’s had a text saying she can’t come. Stuck at work. The lab
has exploded or something.’
‘She doesn’t work in a lab, Neil. She works at a hospital and
at a school,’ Tom said wearily, thinking back to his school days
and Neil’s remorseless winding up, hazing and piss-taking; the
time spent in a headlock with his knuckles rubbing his skull as
he forced Tom to admit to ridiculous things like how he fancied
the headmaster, had no balls or was gay – the last of which stop-
ping only when, at fourteen, Annabel confided in the two of them
that she was ‘bisexual, at the very least’ and Neil became the only
British schoolboy in the mid-nineties to take a fierce stand against
homophobic put-downs.
‘Same difference.’
‘What?’ Tom scoffed.
‘Lab. Hospital. Same difference. Science. White coats.’
‘And the school?’ Pod said.
‘Don’t be pedantic.’
‘You know,’ Tom said. ‘Sometimes I wonder if the only reason
we’re still friends is that we’re the only people from our school year to have moved to London.’
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‘You could hang out with Ben Merriweather if you’re looking for other Lowie Londoners,’ Neil said, reprising the term he had daubed
them with years ago when they variously moved from Lowestoft to
the capital. Neil was the first to arrive in the city, to take a job on a graduate scheme for a bank. Followed shortly by Annabel, who had
fallen out with her parents. Then, finally, a couple of years later, and for very different reasons from the other two, Tom himself.
He thought about saying something back but decided against it.
Neil was one of those people there was no point arguing with. He
was always right and when he wasn’t would make up facts to amend
the truth in his favour.
‘My point is that you drag us all here—’
‘You live five minutes away, Neil.’
‘I’d say Golders Green is more like ten minutes on the Tube.
Fifteen on the bus. Anyway, Pod here has come all the way from
Lowestoft. Just to meet this girl!’
‘I was in London anyway,’ Pod said, with a mix of innocence
and bemusement. ‘With work. I thought that’s why we’d decided to
meet this evening?’
‘Just ignore him,’ Annabel said.
‘It’s alright for you. You’ve already met her.’
‘Whatever. Anyway. If Tom here had followed my advice, we’d not
even be here. You could still be at home in Golders Green playing
your stupid Xbox.’
‘PS3, thank you very much.’
‘Whatever, gamer geek. I’m going out for a fag. Drives me fucking
mad that you can’t smoke in pubs anymore. Now all you can smell
is the stale piss from the toilets,’ she said, getting up from the table, as Tom looked at his phone again, wondering where Esme had got
to, or if he had missed a text to say she couldn’t make it.
But there were no more messages, just:
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Tom: How about the Rosslyn Arms? xx
Esme: Perfect. See you after Spanish xx
Tom thought about another message. But he’d already sent too
many:
Are you okay? Xx
Anything up? Xx
And a sort of casual yet desperate:
Let me know if you can still make it xx
What else was there to sa
y?
Was Esme having second thoughts? They were just over three
months in – perhaps the cooling-off period had begun? Tom had
been here before; he knew the signs. Last week she’d cancelled a
trip to the cinema at the last minute. In return he had told her he
couldn’t stay over on the weekend after a gig. Now this.
‘What did she mean by that?’ Neil asked, when Annabel had
gone. ‘About her advice.’
‘Oh,’ Tom said. He didn’t want to tell them, but knew that if
he didn’t, Annabel would. ‘She sort of told me not to get involved.
With Esme, I mean. Because of what happened.’
‘Why? Is Esme—’
‘No. It’s nothing to do with her. More to do with me. Annabel
thought it might be too soon.’
‘But you’re alright? With her, I mean. Esme,’ Neil said. Tom
had known him for so long that he could see the change in his
demeanour, hear it even. Gone was the ribbing and joking. In its
place an incongruous seriousness. This was how things went now.
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‘Fine, mate,’ Tom said. ‘Annabel was . . . just worried. You know?
I don’t know. Maybe she had a point.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean maybe she was right. It was too soon and all that. I don’t
know. I’ve just been thinking.’
‘Tom. Come on, mate. From everything you’ve said—’
‘From everything I’ve said you lot think she’s the bloody girl of
my dreams.’
‘And what’s wrong with that?’
Tom thought for a second. There was absolutely nothing wrong
with that. This new thing with Esme was incredible. From the first
time they met there was an undeniable and unstoppable attraction
that seemed to pull them together. Ever since then things had been
pretty well perfect.
So where had all these doubts suddenly crept in from? Why had
he made an excuse not to see her? Tom had done this before –
chipped away at the foundation stones of a friendship or relationship
enough for it to crumble. He didn’t have to do anything big and
dramatic to ruin things. He didn’t want to believe that he was doing
it with Esme now, too.
‘Nothing, I suppose,’ Tom said finally. Neil went to speak again,
but Tom interrupted him. ‘It’s just that a few months ago I was
thinking of leaving London altogether. Starting fresh somewhere
else.’
Jamie Fewery Page 4