Moving On

Date

Date

SHE WROTE TO FRANCES, JUST FRANCES, AND TOLD her.

Remember the man who tried to catch the thief who stole my bag in Paris? Would you believe I met him on the Tube going home from work on my first day, and he asked me out to dinner – wish me luck!

She knew what her aunt would say if they were face to face. Be yourself , Frances would advise. Don’t try to be anything you’re not . All well and good, but what if herself wasn’t intelligent enough, or funny enough, or pretty enough?

He was older – she wondered how much older – and sophisticated enough to have a French mother. She was fairly sure he came from a wealthier background than she did; what would he see in plain old Ellen Sheehan, whose family was not in the least wealthy or sophisticated?

She wondered about his romantic history. He was sure to have plenty of it. In fact, she was surprised he hadn’t been snapped up already. Then again, maybe he had: maybe he’d been married and divorced, or maybe he still had a wife he wasn’t telling her about. Again, she found herself wishing for an instruction manual, one that would list five signs, say, that could identify a married man.

She welcomed the distraction of work, like she’d welcomed the busy times at the sandwich bar, when the pain of losing Ben was still sharp. Her first task with Lucinda was to create a full-page magazine ad to launch a new range of handcrafted fountain pens.

Make a point , Ellen’s headline proclaimed in beautiful copperplate script, above Lucinda’s close-up photograph of the working end of a pen, gold nib poised above a dot of ink on a sheet of textured ivory notepaper. The concept was approved by the client, along with Ellen’s suggestion of a limited offer of a box of beautiful notepaper with every fountain pen purchase.

‘Good start,’ Lucinda said. ‘I foresee great things for the team of us, Ellen.’

Taking the Tube home on Friday evening, she thought of the silk dress that was soft as a whisper on her skin, waiting on its hanger for tomorrow night, beneath the new red coat with cashmere in it. She’d spent her first month’s wages before earning them, and she didn’t care.

Saturday came, dry and crisp. She whiled away the day alone, Claire at work. She cleaned the flat and brought bedding to the launderette. She did a grocery shop and changed her library books, conscious of a persistent nagging anxiety.

Back at the flat she painted her nails and plucked her eyebrows and spread horrible-smelling depilatory cream over her legs and showered it off.

She heard the flat door opening as she was drying her hair. ‘Only me,’ Claire called, and water ran. A few minutes later she appeared at the door of Ellen’s room in a low-cut top and black leather pants. ‘That is one heck of a dress,’ she said. ‘Your banker will tear it off you.’

‘I suspect he’ll be too much of a gentleman.’

‘You’ll just have to knock that out of him. See you when I see you,’ she said, winding a scarf around her neck. ‘Good luck, have fun. You look great. Relax.’

Easier said than done. Ellen perched on the futon, afraid to move in case she creased her dress. Did silk crease? At two minutes after half seven, the front doorbell buzzed, causing her heart to give an answering leap. She pressed the buzzer and heard, three floors down, the front door opening and closing.

Calm down. Relax. She eased her feet into Claire’s black stilettos. She dabbed Chanel on her wrists and at her throat and behind her ears. She ran her tongue over her teeth and took a deep breath.

There was a tap on the door. Her heart jumped again at the sound of it.

‘Hi,’ he said, giving her the smile that in her already nervous state caused a fresh flock of butterflies to rise up and whirl inside her. ‘You look lovely.’

‘Thank you.’

He looked lovely too. The same dark heavy coat, dark trousers beneath, an olive green scarf around his neck. The tip of his nose was pink with cold.

She took up her bag – Claire’s bag – and lifted her new coat from the futon.

‘Here’ – he reached for it and held it while she put it on. She pulled the door closed behind her, and she felt his hand lightly on her back as they descended the stairs. She tried to walk as if she was used to stilettos. She could have done with more practice.

A taxi idled outside. He took her to a restaurant with widely spaced tables covered in white cloths, and no prices on the menu. They shared a starter of mixed nibbles – olives, nuts, paté, cooked meats, warm bread – and both followed with the poached salmon. The dishes were simple, perfectly flavoured and beautifully presented. Every so often their waiter appeared and discreetly topped up their glasses with ice-cold white wine.

They talked. He told her of his upbringing, divided between England and France, and his father’s death in a road accident when Leo was fifteen, and his mother’s passion for sailing, and his two half-brothers from her second marriage. He was thirty-four now, he told her, and didn’t enquire how old she was, and she didn’t tell him she was ten years younger.

He’d been to Eton. He meditated, off and on. He was ambidextrous. He’d been skiing since he was six. He liked reggae and jazz. He worked for the same bank he’d started with after college. He found the work soulless, but it paid well and he was good at it.

He’d never been married. No children. ‘My mother says I’m too particular,’ he told her, laughing.

He laughed often. He gestured a lot when he spoke. His table manners were impeccable. He listened when she told him of her job in the bookshop in Ireland, and her days in the sandwich bar, and her move to Marketing Solutions, and from there to Creative Ways.

She told him her parents were separated, and he didn’t probe. He didn’t ask if she’d been married, probably assuming that she was too young to have a failed marriage behind her. He enquired about siblings, and she spoke of Joan. ‘Thirteen months younger than me,’ she said. ‘We just missed being Irish twins.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Children born into the same family less than twelve months apart. Holy Catholic Ireland,’ she said, just to make him laugh, and it did.

She wondered what living arrangements he had. On the Tube he’d called Battersea his stomping ground, so he might live close enough to her workplace. She didn’t imagine he shared with anyone. There was a good chance he owned the place he lived in.

‘Dessert?’ he asked, and she shook her head, so he took her to a jazz club with red lamps on the little tables and wonderful music, where she sipped her first cherry brandy, and said no thanks to a second, afraid of stumbling in the stilettos.

He brought her back to the flat in another taxi and walked her to the front door. ‘I hope you had a good time,’ he said, linking his fingers in hers. His skin was cool. He smelt wonderful; she kept inhaling him.

‘I did, thank you.’

‘I did too. I’m glad you said yes. Would you like to do it again?’

Oh. ‘I would.’

‘What about next weekend, same day, same time?’

A whole week to wait. ‘Yes, fine. Great.’

He took a card from his wallet. ‘My number,’ he said, ‘just in case you need to reach me. Do you have one?’

‘Just at work – and I’m afraid I haven’t learnt it off yet.’ And unlike him, she didn’t have a business card.

‘Creative Ways, right?’

‘Yes.’ He listened. He remembered. What had he said on the Tube? An embarrassingly good memory.

He leant in and kissed her goodnight – a soft, gentlemanly kiss, more gentlemanly than it needed to be. He didn’t ask to come in, and she didn’t suggest it. What he’d seen of the flat must have looked terribly basic to him, and that was the most presentable part of it. She imagined his reaction to a mattress on the floor.

She entered the house in a kind of daze. Upstairs she cleaned her face and brushed her teeth. She took off her new clothes and hung them on the clothes rail that had come from the market. She fell asleep with the evening running on repeat in her head.

He’d enjoyed it. He wanted to do it again. She’d felt looked after by him, as she had in Paris. She felt chosen by him. She couldn’t imagine why, but it had happened.

On Tuesday morning a card arrived to her work.

Ellen,

Thank you for Saturday. It was wonderful. See you next week.

Leo x