by Zoe May
However, I quickly realised that my daydream of helping the elderly, which did give me warm fuzzy feelings, was pretty far removed from the reality. It wasn’t all Come Dine With Me marathons, funny conversations and Jaffa Cake gorging, the reality was a pervy old man named Leonard who would slap my bum every time I brought him his tea and then blame it on his senility. And then there was Ethel. Just thinking of Ethel gives me the creeps. She used to rock back and forth in her room muttering about ‘the man in black in the corner who was coming for her’. The nurses tried moving her to other rooms or putting her in front of the TV but it was no use, the man in black was always in the corner, following her around the home.
Aside from dealing with bum slapping and psychotic delusions, there was a lot of bed-making, preparing cups of tea and helping people to the toilet and as much as I wanted to be a virtuous Florence Nightingale type, it wasn’t really me. A lot of the residents complained constantly – they were too cold, the TV wasn’t loud enough, their tea was too milky, or my arse wasn’t readily available enough for slapping. I wanted to help and I tried, but a lot of them were just grumpy because they were lonely and unhappy, and the perfect cup of tea or the most thunderous slap of my arse wasn’t going to take that miserable feeling away. My shifts started to drag me down and on a few occasions, I went home feeling so sad and wiped out that I’d go to sleep at 8pm after having a little cry. It quickly became clear that I wasn’t cut out for working in a care home but I still wanted to do something more meaningful than editing papers on catheters all day.
Despite getting the hump with my office job, I realised writing is all I’m really good at, so I decided to find a middle ground – something that helped the community but didn’t involve supervising toilet trips. I began looking into jobs in the charity sector and spotted a vacancy for a marketing assistant at a hospice. The job involved writing newsletters about the charity’s work, but the part that excited me the most was that I’d get to interview the staff and residents to write articles. It sounded both office-based and hands-on, but not too hands-on! I immediately drafted an application, feeling cautiously optimistic about my chances.
One of the people who interviewed me – Carla – was currently in the role but was leaving to work at a ski resort in the south of France with her husband. She was a hippyish woman dressed in a floaty smock who nodded empathetically when I told her how I wanted to do something more fulfilling and spoke about my relationship with Lyn and my voluntary work at the care home. When she commented towards the end of the interview that I reminded her of herself and she thought I’d fit in well with the team, I was pretty confident the job was mine. But that still didn’t stop me from letting out a yelp of joy when Carla phoned a few days later to tell me I’d got it.
Finally, I could hand in my notice at Shadwell Medical Research Centre! Finally, I wouldn’t have to pretend I wasn’t seeing the flirty looks and cheeky smiles being exchanged between Sandra and Ted all day! Yep, their relationship wasn’t just the regrettable fling I’d thought it might be; they’re still together and going strong and I hate to admit it, but they’re actually really good for each other. Ted now has someone to take to all the gimmicky things he likes to do in London and Sandra’s getting out more too. She’s gone from spending her weekends knitting at home with Betsy for company, to going to secret cinema showings or restaurants where you eat mysterious courses in pitch black darkness. They still work together and I would say I feel sorry for the guy who replaced me – a nerdy biomedicine graduate called Iain – but from what I’ve heard, he’s even more of a grammar Nazi than Ted and I don’t think Ted and Sandra’s romance even registers on his radar.
With his shared enthusiasm for punctuation manuals and genuine fascination with medical research, Iain’s clearly a better fit for the role than I was, which is fine, because my new job is so much better for me. Carla was right, I do fit in well with the team. Everyone is so nice, and I get to write about things that genuinely interest me – people and the community. I’m not going to lie, there are some days when my gaze wanders out of the window and I’d much rather be working on my novel, or simply lying in the sun, instead of writing about the hospice’s latest funding success story or its new specialist beds. But even so, it’s a great job and I don’t feel anywhere near as wiped out as I did when I was writing about catheters all day. I even have energy left over in the evenings to work on my novel, which is three quarters done now! A few evenings a week, I come to the café, where I’m sitting now, to simply drink tea and write. Instead of swiping on Tinder or going on terrible dates, I’ve been polishing off chapters; it’s amazing what you can get done when you quit the dating scene!
‘Closing up now, Soph,’ the barista, Sammy, tells me. I’ve been coming here so often that I’m even on first name terms with all the staff.
‘Okay, cool.’ I save my work and close my laptop as Sammy spritzes one of the nearby tables and wipes it down.
‘Good session?’ he asks. Like me, Sammy wants to be novelist. He’s working on a convoluted-sounding trilogy about elves.
‘Yeah, only a few chapters to go!’ I tell him as I slide my laptop into my backpack.
I say bye to Sammy and then head out onto the cool dark street. It’s grown windy since I’ve been inside and a strong gust blows my hair across my face and whips discarded newspapers off the outdoor tables. I pull my coat tight and I make my way towards the station. I look down the amber street, lit by hazy streetlamps, when something catches my eye in the distance. A scarf, in a purplish shade, blowing and rippling in the wind, snaking its way along the pavement, sweeping past office workers rushing to get home, when suddenly a tall blonde guy in a suit starts chasing after it, his bag slapping against his side, until he grasps it, holding it victoriously in his hand for a moment before looking around for who it might belong to. As he turns to look down the street, I realise who it is: Chris! From afar he just looked like a regular tall blonde guy, but now that he’s turned around, I see those familiar big blue eyes. I quickly look down, my heart skipping a beat. I keep my gaze fixed to the pavement, lowering my head, unsure whether I want him to spot me. After a moment, I shyly look back up to see an older woman hurrying towards him. She takes the scarf, her face full of gratitude. She wraps it around her neck and they talk for a moment, before she wanders off.
I watch, wondering what to do. Should I say hi? It’s been a year since I last saw him. I’ve thought about him a few times since then and there have been moments when I’ve wanted to reach out – but I’ve reminded myself of how happy and content he looked with Laura when I saw them in the pub that day and I’ve ended up deciding against it. But now here he is, right in front of me. Do I want to just let him go? Let him flutter out of my grasp like that scarf blowing down the street or should I seize the moment, grasping it?
‘Chris!’ I call, running after him.
He turns around, looking a little taken aback, until his eyes land upon me and his face breaks into a smile. That familiar, adorable, crinkly-eyed smile.
‘Sophia!’ he gasps as I approach. ‘Long time, no see,’ he says, pulling me into a hug.
I hug him back, feeling my heart lurch as I’m immediately taken back to the moment we shared at Lyn’s party, when he very nearly kissed me.
‘You look well,’ he says, surveying my face as we pull apart. I tuck a few windswept strands of hair behind my ear, feeling girlish and self-conscious. I’ve been so distracted recently by settling into my new flat, getting used to my new job and working on my novel, that I’ve hardly given a second thought to men. I haven’t been on a date for ages, apart from an after-work drink with a colleague a few months ago, which I’d thought was platonic but got a bit weird when he started telling me about his keen interest in polyamory. But other than that, there’s been nothing. My love life’s been non-existent, so non-existent that I’d almost forgotten what it feels like to get that spark, that twinge of lust, longing and nervous excitement you get when you lock eyes wit
h someone you’re really into. I’d have expected my attraction to Chris to have waned but standing here, looking into his lovely eyes, it’s stronger than ever.
‘Thanks, you look well too. What are you doing round here?’ I ask, surprised to have run into him near my new office, which is a few miles from Shadwell.
‘We’ve bought some new office space nearby. My team’s moving,’ Chris tells me.
‘This is where I work now. Are you sure you’re not just stalking me?’ I tease.
‘You got me!’
Chris starts asking about my new job when it begins to rain, large drops falling from heavy clouds gathering overhead.
‘Shall we get a drink?’ I ask, spotting a bar nearby.
‘Sure.’ Chris smiles and we hurry out of the rain into the warm cosy pub where we catch up. Chris tells me how he’s been promoted to Floor Manager and is now responsible for a team of 50 people. A team which is moving to their very own office just down the road. He mentions how he’s recently got back from a trip to Thailand for a friend’s wedding and regales me with stories about all the weird and wonderful things he and his friends ate there, dropping in the odd fact about Asian cuisine for good measure. As we sip our pints, I update him on my new job, the work I’ve been doing on my novel and my new flat.
‘I liked your old place,’ he says.
‘Really?’ I shoot him a sceptical look.
‘Yeah.’ He smiles, sipping his drink. ‘It was cute. Homely.’
‘Hmm,’ I murmur, thinking back to the teenagers who would always loiter about on the street, the kebabs littering the hallway, that nasty industrial carpet. ‘My new place is a lot nicer.’
‘But what about Lyn? Do you still see her?’ Chris asks, with a look of genuine concern.
‘Oh yeah, not as often as before but as much as I can.’
‘Good.’ He nods. ‘I could tell she meant a lot to you.’
‘She still does.’ I nudge him, filling him in on Lyn’s new life with Andrew and Tom. But while we’re talking, at the back of my mind, I can’t help wondering about Laura. Chris has told me all about his work promotions, his holiday, but what about her? Did he leave her out of the picture because he’s worried it might be awkward or have they broken up?
‘Lyn sounds like she’s doing well,’ Chris says. ‘She’s a sweetheart,’ he adds, with an affectionate smile.
‘She loved you.’
Chris looks surprised. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah! I mean, you baked her a cake and danced with all her mates. She thought you were great!’
‘That was quite some party!’ Chris remarks.
‘It was awesome.’ I wonder whether he even remembers the moment we shared on the dancefloor. He’s acting so casual, as if nothing happened at that party except a few dances with Maude.
‘You never sent me our selfies,’ Chris points out.
‘Oh! No, I didn’t.’ I scan his eyes for any sense of awkwardness, any recognition of the reason why I may have felt weird messaging him the photos, but he just looks blank. I get out my phone and open the gallery, scrolling way back through my pictures until I find them. I land on one, in which Chris is pulling a stupid face and I’m sticking my tongue out, and pass my phone to him.
He cracks up. ‘Brilliant. That wig! It suits you,’ he teases, flicking through the photos.
‘Not as much as the pink fedora on you.’
Chris laughs, taking one last look at the selfies before handing the phone back to me.
I place it on the table and take a sip of my drink.
‘You left pretty suddenly that night,’ I say slowly, placing my drink back down as I watch to see how he’ll react.
‘Sorry,’ he says, glancing down. ‘Your boyfriend showed up and it was getting late and I thought I’d better head off. Sorry I didn’t say goodbye.’
A faint blush spreads across his cheeks. He clears his throat and reaches for his drink.
‘He’s my ex-boyfriend now. We broke up that night,’ I tell him.
‘But you two were kissing,’ he reminds me, and suddenly it’s clear that the memory of the party hasn’t faded; he remembers it clearly.
‘We weren’t kissing. It was just a messy argument and he went and lunged at me!’
‘Lunged?’ Chris’ lips twitch.
‘Yeah, he lunged and then we broke up!’
‘Ha! Poor guy.’ Chris laughs.
‘Not so poor actually. More like a multi-millionaire.’ I roll my eyes.
‘Really?’ Chris balks.
‘Yeah, he was very wealthy. Stinking rich, actually. And for a while, I suppose I got a bit swept up in it all, sucked in by the glitz and glamour,’ I admit.
‘And then?’
‘And then I realised there’s more to relationships than going on fancy dates and prancing around London, shopping and showing off. That stuff gets boring surprisingly quickly.’ I pause, wondering whether I should say what I really want to say. ‘I realised…’ I hesitate. ‘I realised I’d been chasing the wrong guy.’
My heart thuds in my chest and I feel so nervous that I can’t even bring myself to look at him.
‘Sophia?’ Chris says, and I tear my eyes from my lap to meet his. ‘If that’s how you felt, why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I wanted to!’ I insist, meeting his gaze. ‘I went to the Red Lion after the party to talk to you but—’
Chris looks confused. ‘You came to the Red Lion?’
‘Yeah! You told me you had your battle games meeting there and I wanted to see you so I thought I’d just show up and speak to you in person, but then I saw you with Laura and you two looked so happy together that I just…’ I look away, recalling how sweet they’d looked that day. ‘I thought maybe the best thing to do would be to just leave you two to it and let you be happy with her.’
Chris sighs, shaking his head.
‘What’s wrong?’ I ask.
‘Laura and I broke up a few weeks after that and all this time, I’ve been leaving you to get on with Daniel, and you’ve been leaving me to get on with Laura, and—’
‘We’ve both been single!’ I finish his sentence.
‘Exactly!’ We both laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.
‘So, what happened with Laura?’ I can’t resist asking.
Chris takes a sip of his pint. ‘Well, do you remember how you told me to ask her questions on our date?’ he says.
I nod.
‘Well, I did that, but after a while, I kind of realised that’s that all it ever was. It was always me asking her questions. Me taking an interest in her life, but she wasn’t interested in me. After a while, I got the feeling that what she liked most about me was how much I liked her but she didn’t actually now me, or want to know me. She just wanted attention. She wanted a guy on her arm.’
‘That’s rough,’ I comment.
Chris shrugs. ‘It’s just one of those things. We were incompatible.’
He places his empty pint glass down on the table, next to my drink, which is nearly empty. I finish the last few sips.
‘Do you want another?’ Chris asks, but I’m aware that it’s getting late and as much as I want to spend more time with Chris, my new flat is a bit of a walk from the station and it can be slightly dodgy walking through the southeast London streets late at night.
‘I should probably head home,’ I tell him.
‘Yeah, me too. School night and all,’ Chris sighs and we get up and put on out coats, gathering our bags in a companionable silence, as if we’re both processing everything that’s been said.
We head out of the pub and step out onto the cool street. It’s stopped raining and the wind has calmed down, although the autumn leaves are still blustering about.
‘Looks like the weather’s settled. I thought we were going to have a storm,’ I ramble in typical awkward English fashion.
‘Mmm…’ Chris murmurs as we walk towards the station.
Instead of making inane comments about the weather,
I should find out what I really want to know.
‘Chris, do you remember that moment at Lyn’s party? When we were dancing and you were about to say something?’
Chris looks over.
‘I remember.’ He nods, holding my gaze for a moment. ‘Tom came up to us and said he thought we should get together,’ he recalls.
‘Yeah,’ I laugh. ‘He said we were a perfect match.’
Chris draws to a halt and turns to me, before reaching over to take my hand. Time slows as I look up at him, into his big blue eyes filled with penetrating intensity.
‘I probably shouldn’t have said anything, since I was with Laura back then, but I was going to ask if you thought he was right?’ he says.
I smile and slip my fingers through his, feeling the warmth of his palm against mine.
‘I do,’ I admit and finally, we kiss.
Epilogue