Even before I saw him, I knew where he’d be.
He was in the coffee bar, reading a copy of
The Times
, looking smart in an open-necked white shirt, freshly showered.
I hesitated, wondering whether it would be a good thing to stop and say hi, and at that moment he looked up from his newspaper. He didn’t smile for a second, just met my gaze, and I thought about what might lie behind it. It felt like the beginning; as though this was the turning point. I had had the chance to walk away, and I had stood my ground. Now came the reckoning.
When he smiled, I found myself crossing the foyer of the gym to where he sat. “Hello,” I said, thinking how lame it sounded. “I saw you in the pool.”
“I know,” he answered, “I saw you too.” He folded the newspaper and laid it carefully on the table next to his coffee. “What are you having?”
Walking away didn’t seem to be an option anymore. “Tea, please.”
I sat down as he stood, fitting into the seat opposite his, my heart pounding. However long I’d spent in the locker room after the shower getting ready, in case he was out here, it wasn’t enough.
A few minutes later he came back with a small tray with a teapot, cup and a jug of milk. “My name’s Lee,” he said, offering me his hand.
I looked up into a pair of very blue eyes. “Catherine,” I said. His hand was warm, his grip firm, and hours later when I lay in bed I could still smell the scent of him, faint, on the palm of my hand.
The fact that I couldn’t decide on anything to say almost made me laugh—normally it was difficult to shut me up. I wanted to ask if he’d enjoyed his swim, but that sounded inane; I wanted to ask if he was single, but that was too direct. I wanted to know if he’d been waiting for me. All of these questions, and, I realized, I already knew the answers. Yes, yes and yes.
“I’ve been wondering what your name was,” he said at last. “I tried to have a guess, but didn’t get anywhere near it.”
“So, if I don’t look like a Catherine, what do I look like?”
He hadn’t broken eye contact with me for a moment. “I can’t remember now. Now I know you’re Catherine, nothing else is good enough.”
His gaze was almost uncomfortable, and I felt myself blushing under the force of it, so I concentrated on pouring my tea and took my time stirring it, mixing a little milk, then a little more, until it was exactly the right shade.
“So,” he said, with a deep breath, “have you not been back to the River since I last saw you, or have I just been unlucky and missed you?”
“No, I haven’t been back. Just been busy doing other things.”
“I see. Family things?”
He was fishing to see if I was single. “Friend things. I don’t have any family. Both my parents died when I was at university, and I’m an only child.”
He nodded. “That’s tough. All my family live in Cornwall.”
“Is that where you’re from?”
“A village near Penzance. Moved away as soon as I could. Villages are grim places sometimes—everybody knows your business.”
There was another brief pause, until I broke it. “So, do you just work at the River?”
He grinned and downed the last of his coffee. “Yes, just at the River, three nights a week. Helping a friend out, mainly. Will you have dinner with me later?”
His question came out of the blue; the look in his eyes showed the hint of nerves that his voice hadn’t given away.
I smiled at him and drank my tea.
“Yes, that would be lovely.”
When I got up to leave, the card with his phone number in my jacket pocket, I felt his eyes follow me all the way to the door. When I turned to wave, he was still looking. But he did at least manage a smile.
My weekends are a curious mixture of relaxation and stress. Some weekends are good; others, not so. Certain dates are good. I can only go food shopping on even-numbered days. If the thirteenth falls on a weekend, I can’t do anything at all. On odd-numbered days, I can exercise, but only if it’s cloudy or raining, not if it’s sunny. On odd-numbered days, I can’t cook food, I can only eat cold things or heat stuff up.
All of this is to keep my brain placated. All of the time, day and night, my brain generates images of things that have happened to me and things that might happen. It’s like watching a horror movie over and over again, without ever becoming immune to the terror. If I can get things right, do things in the right order, check things properly, follow the correct rhythm, then the pictures go away for a while. If I can get out of the door and know for sure that everything is definitely secure in the flat, then I will get a few hours where the worst feeling I have is a vague discomfort, as though something’s amiss but I can’t put my finger on it. More often, though, I do the best I can with the checking and, assuming I make it out of the house at all, I then spend the rest of the day worrying about whether I did it right. Then the whole day will be filled with these images of what might be waiting for me when I get home. If I don’t choose a different route home every night, then someone will follow me. You get the picture. It’s not a pretty one.
Whatever this is, it snuck up on me and now it’s here to stay. Every once in a while I catch myself forming a new rule. Last week I found myself counting steps again, something I’ve not done for years. That’s certainly one I can do without. But I don’t seem to be able to control myself anymore. I’m getting worse, not better.
So, it was Saturday again, and an odd-numbered day, and I’d run out of bread and teabags. The teabag issue was a big one, because tea is another important rule, particularly at weekends. I know that if I don’t have cups of tea at eight, ten, four and eight o’clock I will grow increasingly anxious, both from the failure to get things right, and probably from the lack of caffeine. I looked in the garbage, where my 8 a.m. teabag, stupidly discarded before I saw that it was the last one, lay among potato peelings and last night’s spaghetti sauce, and for a brief moment I considered fishing it out to reuse. But that wouldn’t have worked either.
The mere fact that I had been stupid enough to run out of teabags was enough to cause a heightened state of anxiety; I’m very good at the self-blame thing. If I went out to buy teabags, I would not be able to check the house properly because it wasn’t an even-numbered day today. I might be able to get teabags and bring them back to the house, but in the meantime someone could have broken in, and would be waiting for me to return.
I spent more than an hour fretting over which was the worst of the two options—which rule was the more important? In order to try to get the images out of my head, I checked the flat several times, each time getting it slightly wrong. The more times I did it, the more tired I was getting. Sometimes I get stuck like this. Eventually I physically can’t check anymore.
And a small, small voice of reason at the back of my head, trying to be heard above the cacophony of self-reproach, was screaming
this is not normal.
By a quarter to ten, I was scrunched into a corner, a small tight knot on the verge of self-destruction, when I heard it—the sound of the front door being closed—properly—and footsteps on the stairs.
Before I had a chance to think, I saw a way of escape. If I couldn’t buy teabags, maybe I could borrow them . . .
The footsteps passed my door and continued upstairs to the top flat. I waited for a moment, rubbing my cheeks to get rid of the tears, dragging my fingers through my hair. There was no time to check the flat. The front door wasn’t unlocked; I’d heard him shut it, I’d definitely heard him shut it. I would have to just
go
.
Taking my door key, and locking the flat just once, checking it just once, I went up the stairs, pausing outside his front door. I’d never been up here before. There was a window on the landing, but no other light. I looked down the stairs. I could just about see my own door. I knocked, listening to the silence and then the footsteps on the other side.
When he opened the door, I jumped a little. Everything sounded so loud.
He had a nice smile. “Hi,” he said. “You okay?”
“Yes. I wondered if you have any teabags. That I could borrow. I mean, have. I’ve run out.”
He gave me a curious look. I was trying so hard to look normal but I must have been giving off desperation out of every pore.
“Sure,” he said. “Come on in.”
He held the door open and retreated into the flat, leaving me standing on the doorstep watching his back. In normal circumstances I would rather have died than follow a stranger into an enclosed space, but these weren’t normal circumstances, and if I was to get teabags by ten o’clock I would have to do it.
At the end of the long hallway was the kitchen, which I worked out was directly over my bedroom. No wonder those Chinese students had kept me awake with their party, I thought. Three shopping bags were on the kitchen table and he was rooting around in them.
“I just bought tea—ran out myself yesterday. I’m Stuart, by the way. Stuart Richardson. Just moved in.”
He offered me his hand, and I shook it, with the brightest smile I could conjure up. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Cathy Bailey. From downstairs.”
“Hello, Cathy,” he said. “I saw you on the day the agent showed me around.”
“Yes.”
Just give me the teabags,
I was thinking.
Please give me the fucking teabags. And stop looking at me like that.
“Look,” he said then, after a moment’s hesitation, “I could do with a brew. Why don’t you put the kettle on while I put this stuff away? Would you mind? Or are you busy?”
Put on the spot, I couldn’t very well admit that I had nothing better to do than worry about where my next teabag was coming from, and besides, my watch now showed three minutes until ten o’clock, which meant I wasn’t going to get the tea in time unless I made it now.
So I did it. I found mismatched mugs on the counter next to the sink, choosing two and rinsing them out under the tap. Milk was in the fridge. I put fresh water in the kettle and boiled it, and made the tea, stirring and adding milk drop by drop until it was exactly the right color, while Stuart put his shopping away and chatted away about the weather and how good it had been to find such a great flat just a few streets from the Northern Line.
I got to drink my first scalding sip of tea just as the second hand hit the twelve. I felt myself relax, the relief immediate, even though I was drinking it in a stranger’s flat, with a man I’d only just met, and I hadn’t even left my own flat secure.
I placed his mug on a coaster on the kitchen table, turning the handle exactly ninety degrees from the edge of the table, which wasn’t terribly easy because it was a round table. It took me a few attempts before it looked right. He looked at me and raised an eyebrow, and this time I managed a smile.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m just a bit—um. I don’t know. I needed a nice cup of tea, I guess.”
He shrugged and gave me a smile. “Don’t worry. It’s a treat to get someone else to make it.”
We sat at the kitchen table in a companionable silence for a moment, sipping tea. Then: “I knocked on your door the other evening. I think you must have been out.”
“Really?” I said. “What night was that?”
He considered. “Monday, I guess. Must have been seven-thirty, eightish.”
More like nine
, I thought. I tried to look vague. “I didn’t hear it. Maybe I was in the shower or something. I hope it wasn’t urgent.”
“Not really—just thought I should say hello and introduce myself. I wanted to apologize if I disturb you when I come in at night. I work late sometimes, never know when I’ll get back.”
“That must be tough,” I said.
He nodded. “You get used to it after a while. But I always think it must be really loud, those stairs.”
“No,” I lied, “once I’m asleep I don’t hear anything.”
He regarded me for a moment as though he knew full well this was completely untrue, but accepted it nonetheless. “If I ever do disturb you, I’m sorry anyway.”
I started to say something, and stopped myself.
“Go on,” he said.
“It’s the door,” I said.
“The door?”
“The front door. I worry about it being left unlocked. Sometimes people come and go, and leave the door open.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, “I always make sure I close it.”
“Especially at night,” I said, with emphasis.
“Yes, especially at night. I promise you I will make sure it’s locked every night.” It had the sound of a solemn vow, and he said it without a smile.
I felt myself—almost—starting to exhale. “Thank you,” I said. I’d finished my tea and stood up, aware again of my surroundings and keen to get back to the flat.
“Here,” Stuart said. He took a roll of small food bags from a drawer and used the bag as a glove to pull out a handful of teabags from the box, turning the bag inside out and twisting it at the top.
“Thank you,” I said again, taking the bag. “I’ll get some in tomorrow.” I paused for a moment, and then surprised myself by saying, “If you ever run out of anything . . . you know. Give me a knock.”
He grinned. “Will do.”
He let me walk several paces ahead of him to the door, not crowding me, and I let myself out of his flat. “See you soon,” he said, as I headed down the stairs.
I hope so
, said a small voice inside me.
And the most curious thing happened. I got back into my flat, sat down in front of the television and watched an hour and a half of a film before I realized I hadn’t even checked the flat.
That little oversight cost me the rest of the afternoon and several hours into the evening.
By eleven-thirty, I was in love. Well, maybe in lust. And maybe my perception was slightly clouded by ridiculously expensive red wine and a glass of brandy.
Lee had met me in the town center at eight, and when he arrived he looked even less like a doorman, despite the fact that he was wearing a suit again. This one was beautifully cut, the jacket straining just slightly across the biceps, a dark shirt underneath. His short blond hair was still slightly damp. He kissed my cheek and offered me his arm.
As we waited for our meal, he talked about fate. He took my hand and ran his thumb over the back of it, lightly, explaining how he nearly never got to meet me; how the weekend before Halloween was supposed to have been his last time working at the River; how he’d only agreed to work the extra shifts to help out the owner, who was a good friend.
“I might never have met you,” he said.
“Well, you did,” I said, “and here we are.” I raised my wine glass to him and sipped a toast to the future, to what lay ahead.
Much later, we left the restaurant and walked into the icy air. A brisk wind was blowing by the time we got to the taxi stand in Penny Street. Lee took off his suit jacket and slipped it over my shoulders. It smelled warm and faintly of him, that cologne he wore. I slotted my arms into the sleeves and felt the silk lining against my bare skin, the warmth of him, and how small and safe I felt inside the space of it. Despite it, my teeth chattered.
“Come here, you’re shivering,” he said, and pulled me to him, rubbing my back and arms gently. My head, heavy with wine and too many late nights, nestled into his shoulder. I could have stayed like that, leaning against him, forever.
“You feel nice.”
“That’s good,” he said. There was a pause, and then he added, “I’d like to point out that you look incredibly sexy wearing a little black dress and my jacket.”
I raised my head, and his kiss was subtle, like the rest of him; the merest brush of his lips across mine. His hand cupped my cheek, and held it, my hair between his fingers. I tried to read his expression but it was dark, his face in shadow.
Just then a taxi pulled up and he opened the door for me.
“Queen’s Road, please,” I said.
He shut the door behind me, and I wound down the window. “Aren’t you coming?”
He shook his head with a smile. “You need to get some sleep—work tomorrow. I’ll see you soon.”
Before I had a chance to reply, the taxi sped me away.
I didn’t know whether I was just completely in love with him, or ever so slightly disappointed. It was only when I got home that I realized I was still wearing his jacket.