by Anna Bell
‘You neither?’ he says, still grinning.
That smile. I didn’t realise how much I’d missed seeing it.
‘Actually, I’ve got a friend who lives in Barcelona. He’s having a New Year’s Eve party and I thought I’d tack on a few days here before I went to see him.’ He rubs his stomach where I hit him with the mousse. ‘That bloody hurt, you know.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, wincing. ‘I thought you were a burglar or something. Let me see.’ I shuffle up to him, careful to keep the crochet blanket secure.
He pulls up his jumper and I try not to gawp too much at his taut stomach and instead focus on the red patch. I rub my hand over it and he flinches in pain.
‘Good job you had all those layers on. Who knew that a can of mousse could be so lethal? Perhaps there’s some ice in the freezer.’
‘I’m sure I’ll be fine.’
‘Well, at least let me put some arnica cream on it,’ I say, as I head into the bathroom and root around in my giant toiletry bag.
‘Arnica cream? Who brings arnica cream with them on holiday?’ he says, as I reappear.
‘Someone who worries that they’re going to injure people,’ I say, as I squeeze the cold gel onto my finger before massaging it onto his stomach.
‘Thanks,’ he says, looking me in the eye.
My belly does an involuntary flip. All these years I’ve tried to tell myself that it was a silly little teenage crush, and that the kiss was the result of too much Pimm’s, but the electricity between us is unmistakeable.
‘You’re here alone, then?’ I ask.
I don’t want to highlight his single status too obviously.
‘Uh-huh, and you are too?’
I nod, biting my lip nervously.
We keep looking at each other for what seems like an age, and I wonder if he’s going to make a move on me. I want him to. I want to forget about the time I went to visit him and what I overhead him telling his friend Gaz and, instead, I want to pick up where we left off all those years ago. But he doesn’t. He turns and looks around the room, which now that I look at it, is a bit of a mess. It was such a rush to get ready to go out on my not-a-real-date and I’ve got half of my case emptied on the floor.
‘I hadn’t really expected guests,’ I say, as I walk around to my suitcase and hastily shove stuff back inside.
Danny picks up the black lacy number that I was wearing earlier from where I’d thrown it off into the middle of the floor.
‘Just here on your own,’ he says, again, with the same smirk he used to have on his face when he was a teenage boy.
‘Yes,’ I say, snatching it away and gathering up the rest of my stuff quickly. ‘My friend Lucy helped me pack for any eventuality.’
‘I think I like your friend Lucy.’
I shake my head at him and hurry about, putting the rest of the things in the case.
‘So,’ he says. ‘I feel really bad that I’m gatecrashing your holiday. I could head into town and book a hotel, or I could crash on the sofa for tonight, if you don’t mind?’
‘You can’t go into town, you’ve only just got here. Of course you can have the sofa,’ I say, wondering if I should offer him the bedroom as this is his family home. I look at the sofa, which doesn’t look big enough for me to fit on, let alone Danny.
‘Great. So have you eaten, or . . .?’
‘Yes, I had some tapas.’
‘Down at Los Toros?’
‘Uh-huh,’ I say, hanging my head in shame.
‘Isn’t Steve great, and Liza. Such a wonderful couple.’
‘Hmm, yes, they’re just great. Do you need to eat?’ I ask, praying that he doesn’t want me to go back there with him.
‘No, I grabbed something at the airport. I was just planning on chilling out when I got here.’
We’re still staring at each other.
‘How about a cup of tea?’ I ask, taking the totally British approach.
‘Why not? I’ll go and put the kettle on.’
He goes out of the room and I breathe deeply.
My head is spinning. For so long I haven’t let myself see Danny alone and now here he is, in a tiny one-bedroom apartment where I’m half dressed. I pick up my fleecy pyjama bottoms and slip them on. Along with a hoodie to cover up my braless pyjama top.
I can hear him banging around and I hastily rearrange my hair in the mirror and manage to tame it into a messy top knot.
I walk out into the kitchen and take a deep breath as I watch the steam coming out of the kettle. I can do this. I can totally do this. I’m a fully grown woman. Just because I want to shove him up against the breakfast bar and kiss his face off does not mean to say I have to act on it. I’m blaming the sangria and Lucy putting dirty thoughts into my mind. I’m sure I can be here with a man who’s a platonic friend without letting my imagination run away with itself.
‘You know, I could murder a beer,’ I say, as the kettle whistles loudly on the hob. I get the impression that tea isn’t going to cut it. ‘Shame I haven’t been to the supermarket yet.’
‘Didn’t my mum leave you any? Usually she gets the cleaner to leave a six pack of beer and some milk.’
He pulls open the fridge and there are both. I feel like such an idiot, I’d never even thought to look and I hadn’t really enjoyed my black tea earlier. He takes two bottles out and opens them with the bottle-opener magnet stuck on the fridge. I can’t help glistening with a slight pride that it’s one of the tacky ones I’d bought him from the Munich beer festival. I’d got a bit carried away and bought him a selection, each more tacky than the last.
‘See, I keep them,’ he says, as he notices me watching him. ‘But there’re only so many bottle opener fridge magnets I need at home. He hands me over a beer and I try not to react to the spark as our hands accidentally brush each other.
‘Thanks,’ I say, taking the longest sip.
‘Do you want to drink them up on the roof? It’s a bit chilly out, but there should be some rugs,’ he says, ducking into the lounge and returning with his coat on.
‘The roof?’
‘Have you not been up there yet?’
I shake my head. ‘I only arrived this afternoon.’
‘Ah, well, obviously the view’s better during the day, but there’s enough of a moon for it to look good tonight.’
He opens a drawer and pulls out a box of matches, before he closes the kitchen door, which reveals another door behind it that’s bolted shut. He unlocks it and it swings open.
‘I would never have known this was here.’
‘I take it you haven’t read the welcome pack yet,’ he says.
‘Not yet, I got here and went for a little sleep before grabbing some food.’
‘Not like you.’ He has a small smile on his face. ‘You’re usually so conscientious.’
‘Very funny,’ I say, pulling a face.
When we were kids he was the one who would dive into a new board game, cracking open the pieces and setting them all up in the way he thought they’d go, and impatiently rolling the dice. Whereas I’d be the one carefully studying the instructions and all the rules and objectives of the game.
‘You can shut the door, keep the heat in,’ says Danny as he marches through and climbs the stairs. ‘It doesn’t lock from the outside.’
‘Good to know,’ I say, nodding to myself before I do as instructed.
I follow Danny up the steep outdoor staircase and we soon find ourselves on a terrace on top of the house. There’s enough ambient light from the street lights below for us to see what we’re doing.
I gasp as I take it all in. The roof terrace is positively huge – at least in comparison to the rooms downstairs. It must have the same footprint as the whole apartment but, without the dividing walls, it feels enormous. There’s a large dining table at one end with eight chairs round it, a BBQ and what looks like a Tiki bar. Then at the other end, nearer to us, there’s a set of two black rattan sofas facing each other.
Danny pulls cushions out of a box and starts passing them to me to put on the sofas. When we’re done, I sit down and snuggle under a blanket he passes me before he lights the candles on the little glass-topped table.
‘I can’t believe I didn’t find this place before; it’s amazing.’
‘I know, it makes the whole apartment. Downstairs is nice and all, but we usually all live up here when we’re over.’
‘Where do you all fit?’
He laughs.
‘Sometimes I sleep up here in the summer on a camp bed. But Stuart’s also got a little duplex in the same complex, so if we all come out as a family, then I’ll often stay in one of his spare rooms. We still all hang out up here though.’
‘Shame it’s so dark.’
‘You can still see the sea, though. Look,’ he says, pointing.
I half stand up to look over the side of the wall and gasp again.
It’s quite far away, but you can see where the buildings stop and the dappled moonlight is reflecting off the water.
‘That’s incredible,’ I say, walking back over and sitting down.
‘Yeah, I love it here. It’s the kind of place I’d love to have a bolt hole, but seeing as most of the time I try and come when Mum and Dad or Stuart and his family aren’t here, I just use this place.’
It feels so strange sitting here on a sofa opposite Danny, but normal at the same time. Like I haven’t sat down with him for a beer for a couple of months, rather than years.
‘I can’t believe you’re here,’ I say. ‘It’s so weird to see you.’
‘I know. It’s like I know everything’s that gone on with you with the letters and through Mum, but still I can’t believe that I haven’t had a chance to catch up with you properly since I moved back to England. Where’s the time gone?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say, shaking my head pretending it was a mystery. When I’d seen him a couple of years ago we said we’d meet up properly, but it didn’t feel right seeing him alone when I was with Ross and so I never pushed it. When we broke up, I thought Danny was with Diana and I didn’t fancy playing gooseberry.
‘So, how’s the events business? Have you had anything go wrong recently?’ he says wincing. ‘Sorry, but you make it sound so funny in your letters. That whole Dumb and Dumber thing with those people getting their tongues stuck on the ice.’
‘Yeah,’ I say smiling, ‘that was an amusing one. The Willy Wonka-themed parties have been less dramatic. Although we did have to fire our original Willy Wonka as he kept touching up the Oompa-Loompas.’
‘I always worried about that in the film,’ says Danny smirking. ‘Does it ever get exhausting just being at parties all the time?’
‘It’s not all the time. There’s a lot of paper pushing involved too – event plans, risk assessments.’
For once I’m telling the truth as I’m responsible for the paperwork, rather than for the events themselves.
‘The serious stuff,’ says Danny, and I nod, pretending that my job is far more important than it actually is.
‘But didn’t you say you wanted less drama when you moved from your job in London?’
I close my eyes; I hate thinking about that job. One of the main reasons I’d gone for the job in the first place was so that I could be near Danny, only he’d gone to Tokyo before I’d even started it.
‘It’s certainly a lot calmer than that. It’s just as busy, but a whole lot less stressful. My boss at Eventualities was something else.’ I shudder at the thought.
‘I always think it was a shame that you moved to London just as I left,’ he says as if I moved there by coincidence.
Danny had arrived back from travelling and started his job in London just as I’d been offered a job at the company I’d been temping for in Newcastle, but a few months into it my dream job was advertised in London and I took it as a sign that I should be with Danny. I applied for it on a whim, got an interview and found out that I’d got the job just as I arrived at Danny’s flat. I told him my good news only for him to tell me we were both celebrating as his company was sending him to Tokyo to complete his graduate programme. I was gutted, but not as gutted as I was when I nipped into the bathroom to get changed for our night out and I heard him telling his flatmate Gaz that our kiss was a mistake and that we’d only ever be friends.
If things had worked out for me in London then I could probably have looked back and laughed it all off, but it was the worst year of my life. The pay was terrible and all I could afford to rent was a shitty bedsit in Balham with non-existent heating, mouldy walls and a two-ring hob, so I lived off tinned spaghetti. Not even the job made up for it. My boss was a sadistic witch who shouted at me at every given opportunity and I ended up leaving London further into my overdraft than when I’d arrived.
‘London’s loss, but Tokyo’s gain, huh?’ I say trying not to sound too bitter. ‘I was constantly jealous of you on your travels. Do you miss it? All those swanky cities you lived in.’
‘Not really. It was exciting at first but, to be honest, I never really got a chance to enjoy it. Work was so intense and it was all consuming. We worked hard, played hard, but it was exhausting, and if I wasn’t working or boozing I was sleeping. I could have been in any city – the people were always the same. Same type of bars. Same flats.’
‘And there was me thinking you were living the high life.’
‘I probably was to many. I mean, we used to go out some nights and we’d spend over a grand buying champagne and shots. I could buy anything I wanted when I wanted, but I wasn’t happy. It was all too much pressure.’
‘That’s why you quit?’
He nods.
‘It wasn’t really that I had a burning desire to launch the video company, it’s more that I was getting burnt out. Gaz had quit his job a few months before and wanted to set up the company and I decided to go in with him.’
Ten years we’ve been writing to each other and this is the first time we’ve talked properly about our lives. All those years I was jealous of his time in NYC and Tokyo and all the time he was hating it.
‘It’s great that your business is doing so well.’
‘Yeah, it is. We mainly do corporate stuff, but we’ve just started to offer courses in video production for individuals wanting to start up YouTube channels. Teaching them the basics about equipment, lighting, editing and uploading, and how to embed it on their websites, how to think about content production.’
Even in the candlelight I can see his whole face lighting up, he’s truly happy in what he does. It’s funny as, when I first heard he was quitting his banking job and moving up north to set up a video production company with his mate, I thought he’d lost the plot. But he’s got the sparkle that I’m so desperately craving.
‘I think your mum loves having you close to her. I think she nearly had kittens when you said you wanted to work at hers.’
‘Ha, yeah. Using their barn saves us a fortune in rent and she keeps us well stocked in tea and homemade shortbread. Not that we use it much anymore. We tend to film in client spaces and edit in our houses.’
‘Oh, God, that shortbread. Mum still brings me home a tin whenever she goes up to visit Hazel.’
‘She used to send some out to me monthly when I was working abroad.’
‘I could just eat one, or ten of them, right now.’
Despite already having eaten my body weight in tapas, I could do with something sweet. I’d wanted to get out of the restaurant as quickly as possible and hadn’t dared order dessert.
‘Hold that thought,’ Danny says.
When he’s gone, I realise that my cheeks are aching from smiling, but I can’t stop, even when he’s not here.
He returns a few minutes later with a margarine tub.
‘Please tell me that’s not what I think it is.’
He nods and opens the lid and my stomach gurgles in anticipation.
‘Mum gave me a big box over Christmas.’
I dive in an
d take out two biscuits before he even puts them down on the table.
He laughs. ‘So where were we?’
‘We were talking about you being incredibly brave quitting your well-paid job and moving miles away to work in your mum’s barn with a mate.’
I bite into the shortbread as I wonder how it is that everyone else manages to create the life they want to live.
‘I guess so – brave or stupid. We hadn’t really planned to settle in the Lakes, but Gaz ended up meeting a woman a few months after moving up there and they moved in together pretty quickly. Now they’re married with a baby on the way. Looking back we started the business with only an idea – we hadn’t really researched whether we’d be able to build a client base and we didn’t really have a clear idea whether we had a business model.’
‘But you made it work,’ I mumble between mouthfuls, trying to catch the crumbs with my hand.
‘Yeah. We were lucky in a few ways. I’d had a good bonus from the bank so we could use that as start-up capital. Mum letting us use the barn for free was great, as pretty much all our meetings take place on our clients’ premises. Then, we were there for the boom of the YouTube stars. Now, everyone wants to be the next Zoella.’
‘I find it so weird that people hang out in their bedrooms and talk rubbish about their days to the Internet, but people find it so compelling.’
I’m totally pretending that I’m not addicted to Instagram Stories.
‘I know, it’s so weird. We had someone the other day as a guest speaker on a course and she literally uploads videos of herself painting her nails. She does a different style every day and she has over a million followers.’
‘Wow. That’s um . . .’
‘I know, isn’t it?’ he says, shaking his head in disbelief.
‘And that’s her job?’
‘Yeah, she earns all the money from the advertising on YouTube and brands pay her to create posts on Instagram, and she’s got a talent manager and a book deal.’
‘Blimey. Perhaps I’m in the wrong industry.’ I look down at my nails; no one’s going to want to see them. ‘Although, to be honest, I can’t imagine my life would be that exciting.’
‘But that’s the point. It’s the fascination with an ordinary yet somehow extraordinary life.’