After You

  She hesitated. “So happy. He nearly cried, actually. He said he’d missed me so much, and that it was awful being away from me and that I could come around whenever I wanted. But he had hooked up with someone else and they had a baby. And when you turn up at someone’s house and they have a baby and, like, a proper family of their own, you realize you’re not part of his family anymore. You’re a leftover.”

  “I’m sure nobody thought—”

  “Yes, well. Anyway, he’s really lovely and all but I’ve told him I can’t really see him. It’s too weird. And, you know, like I said to him, ‘I’m not your real daughter.’ He still calls me all the time though. Stupid really.” Lily shook her head furiously. We sat there for a while and then she looked up at the sky. “You know the thing that really bugs me?”

  I waited.

  “She changed my name when she got married. My own name, and nobody ever even bothered to ask me.”

  Her voice cracked a little. “I didn’t even want to be a Houghton-Miller.”

  “Oh, Lily.”

  She wiped briskly at her face with the palm of her hand, as if embarrassed to be seen crying. She inhaled her cigarette and then ground it out on the grass and sniffed noisily. “Mind you, these days Penisfeatures and Mum argue all the time. I wouldn’t be surprised if they split up too. If that happens no doubt we’ll all have to move again and change names and nobody will be able to say anything because of her pain and her need to move forward emotionally or whatever. And in two years’ time there will be some other Fuckface and my brothers will be Houghton-Miller-Branson or Ozymandias or Toodlepip or whatever.” She half laughed. “Luckily I’ll be long gone by then. Not that she’ll even notice.”

  “You really believes she thinks that little of you?”

  Lily’s head swiveled around, and the look she gave me was both too wise and utterly heartbreaking. “I think she loves me. But she loves herself more. Or how could she do what she does?”

  13

  Mr. Traynor’s baby was born the following day. My phone rang at six thirty in the morning and for a brief, awful moment I thought something terrible had happened. But it was Mr. Traynor, breathless and tearful, announcing, in the slightly disbelieving, exclamatory tones of all new fathers, “It’s a girl! Eight pounds one ounce! And she’s absolutely perfect!” He told me how beautiful she was, how like Will when he had been a baby, how I simply must come and see her, and then asked me to wake Lily, which I did, and watched her, sleepy and silent as he gave her the news that she had a . . . a . . . (they took a minute to work it out) an aunt!

  “Okay,” she said finally. And then, having listened for a while, “Yeah . . . sure.”

  She ended the call and handed the phone back to me. Her eyes met mine, then she turned in her crumpled T-shirt and went back to bed, closing the door firmly behind her.

  • • •

  The well-lubricated health plan salesmen were, I estimated, at ten forty-five, one round off being barred from their flight, and I was wondering whether to point this out when a familiar reflective jacket appeared at the bar.

  “No one in need of medical assistance here.” I walked over to him slowly. “Yet, anyway.”

  “I never get tired of that outfit. I have no idea why.”

  Sam climbed up on a stool and rested his elbows on the bar, nodding toward me. “The wig is . . . interesting.”

  I tugged at my Lurex skirt. “The creation of static electricity is my superpower. Would you like a coffee?”

  “Thanks. I can’t hang around, though.” He checked his radio and put it back in his jacket pocket.

  I made him an Americano, trying not to look as pleased as I felt to see him. “How did you know where I worked?”

  “We had a callout at gate fourteen. Suspected heart attack. Jake reminded me you worked at the airport and, you know, you weren’t exactly hard to track down . . .” He gazed around him. The businessmen were briefly muted. Sam was the kind of man, I had noticed, who made other men go a bit quiet. “Donna’s sneaking a look in duty free. Handbags.”

  “I’m guessing you’ve seen your patient?”

  He grinned. “No. I was going to ask for directions to gate fourteen after I’d sat down with a coffee.”

  “Funny. So did you save his life?”

  “I gave her some aspirin, and advised her that drinking four double espressos before ten a.m. was not the best idea. I’m flattered that you have such an exciting view of my working day.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. I handed him his coffee. He took a grateful swig.

  “So. I was wondering . . . You up for another nondate sometime soon?”

  “With or without an ambulance?”

  “Definitely without.”

  “Can we discuss problem teenagers?” I looked down and found I was twirling a curly lock of nylon-fiber hair with my fingers. For crying out loud. I was playing with my hair and it wasn’t even my actual hair. I dropped it.

  “We can discuss whatever you like.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  His pause was long enough to make me blush. “Dinner? At mine? Tonight? I promise if it rains I won’t make you sit in the dining room.”

  “You’re on.”

  “I’ll pick you up at seven thirty.”

  He was just gulping down the last of his coffee when Richard appeared. He looked at Sam, then at me. I was still leaning against the bar, a few inches from him.

  “Is there a problem?” Richard asked.

  “No problem whatsoever,” said Sam. When he stood up, I noticed, he was a whole head taller than Richard.

  A few fleeting thoughts flickered across Richard’s face, so transparent that I could see the progression of each one. Why is this paramedic here? Why is Louisa not doing something? I would like to tell Louisa off for not being obviously busy but this man is too big and there is a dynamic I do not entirely understand and I am a little bit wary of him. It almost made me laugh out loud.

  “So. Tonight.” Sam nodded at me. “Keep the wig on, yes? I like you flammable.”

  One of the businessmen, florid and pleased with himself, leaned back in his chair so that his stomach strained the seams of his shirt. “Are you going to give us the lecture about alcohol limits now?”

  The others laughed.

  “No, you go ahead, gentlemen,” Sam said, saluting them. “I’ll just see you in a year or two.”

  I watched him head off through Departures, joined by Donna outside the newsagent. When I turned back to the bar Richard was watching me.

  “I have to say, Louisa, I don’t approve of your conducting your social life in a work setting,” he said.

  “Fine. Next time I’ll tell him to ignore the heart attack at gate fourteen.”

  Richard’s jaw tightened. “And what he said just then. About your wearing your wig later on. That wig is the property of Shamrock and Clover Irish Themed Bars Inc. You are not allowed to wear it on your own time.”

  This time I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh. “Really?”

  Even he had the grace to flush a little. “It’s company policy. It’s classified as uniform.”

  “Damn,” I said. “I guess I’ll just have to buy my own Irish-dancing-girl wigs in future. Hey, Richard!” I called, as he walked back into the office, his back bristling. “For fairness, does that mean you can’t get jiggy with Mrs. Percival while wearing your polo shirt?”

  • • •

  I arrived home to find no sign of Lily, other than a cereal box that had been left out on the kitchen counter, and, inexplicably, a pile of dirt on the floor in the hallway. I tried her phone, got no response, and wondered how you were ever meant to find a balance between overanxious parent, normally concerned parent, and Tanya Houghton-Miller. And then I jumped into the shower and got ready for my date that absolutely, definitely wasn’t a date.

  • • •

  It rained, the heavens opening shortly after we arrived at Sam’s field, and we were both soaked e
ven running the short distance from his bike to the railway carriage. I stood dripping as he closed the door behind me, remembering how unpleasant the sensation of wet socks is.

  “Stay there,” he said, brushing the drops from his head with his hand. “You can’t sit around in those wet clothes.”

  “This is like the opening to a really bad porn movie,” I said. He stood very still and I realized I had actually said the words out loud. I gave him a smile that went a bit wonky.

  “Okay,” he said, raising his eyebrows.

  He disappeared into the back of the carriage and emerged a minute later with a jumper and what looked like some jogging bottoms.

  “Jake’s joggers. Freshly washed. Possibly not very porn movie though.” He handed them to me. “My room’s back there if you want to get changed, or the bathroom’s through that door if you’d prefer.”

  I walked into his bedroom and closed the door behind me. Above my head the rain beat noisily on the carriage roof and obscured the windows with a never-ending stream of water. I wondered about drawing the curtains and then realized there was nobody to see me, other than the hens, which were huddling out of the wet, grumpily shaking drops from their feathers. I pulled off my soaked top and jeans and dried myself with the towel he’d placed with the clothes, then flashed the hens for fun through the window, something, I observed afterward, Lily might do. They didn’t look impressed. I held the towel to my face and sniffed it guiltily, like someone inhaling a forbidden drug. It was freshly laundered but somehow still managed to smell irrevocably male. I hadn’t breathed in a scent like it since Will. It made me feel briefly unbalanced and I put it down and stepped away.

  The double bed filled most of the floor space. A narrow cupboard opposite acted as a wardrobe, and two pairs of work boots were neatly stacked in the corner. There was a book on the nightstand and beside it a photograph of Sam with a smiling woman whose blond hair was tied up in a messy knot. She had her arm around his shoulder and was grinning at the camera. She was not supermodel beautiful, but there was something compelling about her smile. She looked like the kind of woman who would have laughed a lot. She looked like a feminine version of Jake. I felt suddenly crushingly sad for him, and had to look away before I made myself sad too. Sometimes I felt as if we were all wading around in grief, reluctant to admit to others how far we were waving or drowning. I wondered fleetingly whether Sam’s reluctance to talk about his wife mirrored my reluctance to discuss Will; the kind of knowledge that the moment you opened the box, let out even a whisper of your sadness, it would mushroom into a cloud that overwhelmed all other conversation.

  I checked myself, took a breath. Just have a nice evening, I murmured, recalling the words of the Moving On Circle. Allow yourself moments of happiness.

  I wiped the mascara smudges from under my eyes, observing in a small mirror that little could be done for my hair. Then I pulled Sam’s oversized sweater over my head, trying to ignore the weird intimacy that came from wearing a man’s clothes, pulled on Jake’s joggers, and gazed at my reflection.

  What do you think, Will? Just a nice evening. It doesn’t have to mean anything, right?

  Sam grinned as I emerged and walked past him, carrying my wet clothes. “You look about twelve.”

  I went into the bathroom, wrung out my jeans, shirt, and socks in the sink, then hung them over the shower curtain.

  “What’s cooking?” I asked, peeking my head back into the kitchen.

  “Well, I was going to do a salad, but it’s not really salad weather anymore. So I’m improvising.”

  He had set a pot of water boiling on the stove, where it had fogged the windows. “You eat pasta, right?”

  “I eat anything.”

  “Excellent.”

  He opened a bottle of wine and poured me a glass, motioning me to the bench seat. In front of me the little table had been laid for two, and I felt a faint frisson at the sight. It was okay just to enjoy a moment, a small pleasure. I had been out dancing. I had flashed some hens. And now I was going to enjoy spending an evening with a man who wanted to cook me dinner. It was all progress, of sorts.

  Perhaps Sam detected something of this internal struggle because he waited until I took my first sip, then said, while stirring something on the hob: “Was that the boss you were talking about? That man today?”

  The wine was delicious. I took another sip. I hadn’t dared drink while Lily had been with me; I might have let my guard down. “Yup.”

  “I know the type. If it’s any consolation within five years he’ll either have a stomach ulcer or enough hypertension to cause erectile dysfunction.”

  I laughed. “Both those thoughts are oddly comforting.”

  Finally he sat down, presenting me with a steaming bowl of pasta. “Cheers,” he said, raising a glass of water. “And now tell me what’s going on with this long-lost girl of yours.”

  • • •

  Oh, but it was such a relief to have someone to talk to. I was so unused to people who actually listened—as opposed to those, at the bar, who only wanted to hear the sound of their own voices—that talking with Sam was a revelation. He didn’t interrupt, or tell me what he thought, or what I should do. He listened, and nodded, and topped up my wine and said, finally, when it was long dark outside, “It’s quite a responsibility you’ve taken on.” He reached over and refilled my glass.

  I leaned back on the bench and put my feet up. “I don’t feel like I have a choice. I keep asking myself what you said: what would Will want me to do?”

  I took another sip. “It’s harder than I’d imagined, though. I thought I’d just take her to meet her grandmother and grandfather and everyone would be delighted and it would all be a happy ending, you know, like those reunion programs on television.”

  He studied his hands. I studied him.

  “You think I’m mad getting involved.”

  “No, I don’t. Too many people follow their own happiness without a thought for the damage they leave in their wake. You wouldn’t believe the kids I pick up at the weekends, drunk, drugged, off their heads, whatever. The parents are wrapped up in their own stuff, or have disappeared completely, so they exist in a vacuum, and they make bad choices.”

  “Is it worse than it used to be?”

  “Who knows? I only know I see more messed-up kids. And that the hospital’s young person’s psych ward has a waiting list as long as your arm.” He smiled wryly. “Hold that soapbox. I need to go shut the birds up for the night.”

  I wanted to ask him then how someone so apparently wise could be so careless of his own son’s feelings. I wanted to ask if he understood how unhappy Jake was. But it seemed a bit too confrontational, given the way he was talking, and the fact that he had just cooked me a very nice supper. Then I was distracted by the sight of the hens popping one at a time into their coop and then he came back in, bringing with him the faint scents of outside, and the cooler air, and the moment passed.

  We poured more wine, and I drank it. I let myself take pleasure in the snugness of the little railway carriage, and the sensation of a properly full belly, and I listened to Sam talk. He told of nights holding the hands of elderly people who didn’t want to make a fuss, and of management targets that left them all demoralized and feeling as if they weren’t doing the job they’d been trained for. I listened, losing myself in a world far from my own, watching his hands draw animated circles in the air, his rueful smile when he felt he was taking himself too seriously. I watched his hands. I watched his hands.

  I colored slightly as I realized where my thoughts were headed, and took another swig of my wine to hide it. “Where’s Jake tonight?”

  “Barely seen him. At his girlfriend’s, I think.” He looked rueful. “She has this Waltons-style family, about a billion brothers and sisters and a mum who’s home all day. He likes hanging out there.” He took another sip of his water. “So where’s Lily?”

  “Don’t know. I texted her twice but she hasn’t bothered to reply.”<
br />
  Oh, but the sheer presence of him. It was like he was twice as large, twice as vivid as other men. My thoughts kept drifting, pulled toward his eyes, which narrowed slightly as he listened, as if he were trying to ensure he had understood me perfectly . . . the faint hint of stubble on his jaw, the shape of his shoulder under the soft wool of his jumper. My gaze kept sliding downward to his hands, resting on the table, fingers absently tapping on the surface. Such capable hands. I remembered the tenderness with which he had cradled my head, the way I had held on to him in the ambulance as if he were the only thing anchoring me. He looked at me and smiled, a gentle inquiry in it, and something in me turned molten. Would it be so bad, as long as my eyes were open?

  “You want a coffee, Louisa?”

  He had this way of looking at me. I shook my head.

  “Do you want—”

  Before I could think about it, I leaned across the little table, reached for the back of his head, and kissed him. He hesitated for just a moment then shifted forward, and kissed me back. At some point I think someone knocked over a wineglass but I couldn’t stop. I wanted to kiss him forever. I blocked out all thoughts about what this was, what it might mean, what further mess I might create for myself. C’mon, live, I told myself. And I kissed him until reason seeped out through my pores and I became a living pulse, conscious only of what I wanted to do to him.

  He pulled back first, slightly dazed. “Louisa—”

  A piece of cutlery clattered to the floor. I stood and he stood and pulled me to him. And suddenly we were crashing around the little railway carriage, all hands and lips and, oh, God, the scent and taste and feel of him. It was like tiny fireworks going off all over me, bits of me I’d thought dead reigniting into life. He picked me up and I wrapped myself around him, all bulk and strength and muscle. I kissed his face, his ear, my fingers in his soft dark hair. And then he stood me back down and we were inches apart, his eyes on me, his expression a silent question.

  I was breathing hard. “I haven’t taken my clothes off in front of anyone since . . . the accident,” I said.

  “It’s okay. I’m medically trained.”

  “I’m serious. I’m a bit of a mess.” I felt suddenly, oddly tearful.

  “You want me to make you feel better?”

  “That’s the cheesiest line I’ve—”

  He lifted his shirt, revealing a two-inch purple scar across his stomach. “There. Stabbed by an Australian with mental-health issues, four years ago. Here—” He turned to reveal a huge green and yellow bruise across his lower back. “Got a kicking from a drunk last Saturday. Woman.” He held out his hand. “Broken finger. Caught in a gurney while lifting an overweight patient. And, oh, yes, here—” He showed me his hip, along which ran a short, silvery, jagged line with the stitch marks just about visible. “Puncture wound, unknown provenance, nightclub fight in Hackney Road last June. The cops never worked out who did it.”

  I looked at the solidity of him, at the smattering of scars. “What’s that one?” I said, gently touching a smaller scar on the side of his stomach. His skin was hot under his shirt. “That? Oh. Appendix. I was nine.”

  I gazed at his torso, then his face. Then holding his gaze, I lifted the jumper slowly over my head. I shivered involuntarily, whether from the cooler air or nerves, I couldn’t tell. He moved closer, so close that he was inches from me, and ran his finger gently along the line of my hip. “I remember this. I remember I could feel the break here.” He ran it gently across my bare stomach, so that my muscles contracted. “And there. You had this bloom of purple on your skin. I was afraid it was organ damage.” He placed his palm against it. It was warm, and my breath caught.

  “I never thought the words organ damage could sound sexy before.”

  “Oh, I haven’t started yet.”

  He walked me slowly backward toward his bed. I sat down, my eyes still on his, and he knelt, running his hands down my legs. “And then there was that foot.” He picked up my right foot tenderly. You could still see the vivid red scar across the top. He traced the line of it with his thumb. “There. Broken. Soft tissue damage. That one would have hurt.”

  “You remember a lot.”

  “Most people I couldn’t recognize in the street a day later. But you, Louisa, well, you kind of stuck.” He dipped his head and kissed the top of my foot, then slowly ran his hands up my leg and placed his hands on either side of me, so that he was above me, supporting his own weight.“Nothing hurts now, right?”

  I shook my head, mute. I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care if he was a compulsive shagger, or playing games. I was so overwhelmed with wanting him I didn’t actually care if he broke my other hip.

  He moved across me, inch by inch, like a tide, and I lay back so that I was flat on the bed. With each movement my breath became shallower until it was all I could hear in the silence. He gazed down at me, then closed his eyes and kissed me, slowly and tenderly. He kissed me and let his weight fall onto me just far enough that I felt the delicious powerlessness of lust, the hardness of a body against mine. We kissed, his lips on my neck, his skin against my skin, until I was giddy with it, until I was arching involuntarily against him, my legs wrapped around him.

  “Oh, God,” I said breathlessly, when we came up for air. “I wish you weren’t so totally wrong for me.”