Chapter 1 #2
‘No, it’s okay,’ I said. ‘I lost someone and needed a fresh start.’ It sounded so trite, so insignificant. And yet that one word, ‘someone’, contained everything.
‘I lost someone too.’
‘Oh?’ I turned to face him and he was still looking down at the ground, not at me. When he did finally turn his head, there was a pain in his eyes that I recognised. ‘My wife died. Two and a half years ago.’
I stared at him, at the dark glow of his eyes, the shadows on his cheeks in the fading light of the sun, and I saw him. Really saw him.
Sorry wasn’t what he needed to hear, I understood that from the endless times I’d heard it from well-meaning friends and acquaintances. All it did, for me at least, was make me feel more alone than ever.
‘It’s shit, isn’t it?’
His eyes widened and the corners of his mouth twitched upwards and I knew I’d said the right thing. He gave a nod and looked down at the paper bag of sweets on the bench between us, his long eyelashes creating spider-like shadows on his cheeks.
‘Really shit,’ he agreed.
I looked out into the garden, watching the roses bob in the gentle early evening breeze.
‘I don’t talk about it,’ I said, slowly. ‘My husband died and my best friend Rachel thinks I should talk about how I feel all the time, thinks it will help me come to terms with it. But I don’t know how I can, because when I do it just makes me feel sad and other people feel uncomfortable.’
I felt him shift beside me, angle his body in my direction. ‘Andy – that’s my twin brother – says the same. He thinks I should try to talk it through because it would help me to move on. But I honestly just don’t know how.’
‘Me neither. How can you put into words how much you miss someone? How it feels every single day as though you need to remind yourself to get up, get dressed, carry on while all the time it feels as though you’re being pressed down by a heavy weight?’
‘Or that some days all you want to do is sit and wallow in your memories of happier times, while other days you can’t let yourself think about them at all because it might break you completely?’
I looked at him. I felt breathless. My mum, Rachel, all my other friends, had tried and tried to get me to talk to them about my feelings, about how it would feel to move on and look for someone else, and I simply hadn’t been able to.
And yet now here I was, opening up to this man on a bench on a random March evening.
I didn’t know what it meant, but it felt good to have someone who seemed to understand exactly what I was going through.
Perhaps it meant nothing at all. And yet somehow, I felt sure it did.
‘It’s getting late.’
I looked out across the garden. Shadows had begun to fill in the gaps between the still-leafless trees. The sky was dark blue now, a band of buttery yellow outlining the horizon.
‘I should go home.’ I didn’t move. I didn’t want to, not yet, even though I knew I ought to.
‘I’ve enjoyed talking to you. Will you come again, and meet me here?’
‘What?’ I peered at him, his face in shadow.
‘I just thought… it would be nice to see you. You know, to chat, if you’re passing again. But no pressure—’
‘Yes!’ The word was out before I planned it. ‘I mean, sure. That would be nice.’
‘Great, great.’ He clasped his hands together, rubbing them like he was warming them in front of a fire. He stood, and I did the same. The gap between us remained, but it felt like there was something there, some invisible force pulling us together. I took a deliberate step back.
‘Well, it was lovely to meet you, Nick Flynn.’ His name felt strange on my tongue.
‘It was lovely to meet you too, Emma Vickers.’
We hovered a moment, stuck in time. Then he bent down, picked up his rucksack and his bag of sweets and flashed me a smile.
‘Same time Monday?’
‘Same time Monday,’ I confirmed.
Then he turned and stepped off the wooden platform, disappearing almost immediately into the shadows.
It wasn’t until I closed my front door behind me and kicked off my shoes that I realised I was still wearing Nick’s jumper.
I pulled it off and hung it on the hook next to my jacket so I’d remember to take it back.
My hand lingered on it for a moment, trying to remember the strange sensation I’d felt when my hand had touched Nick’s, but it wasn’t there.
I made my way into the kitchen and pulled a portion of chilli out of the freezer.
Greg had been a stickler for sitting down to a proper meal every evening.
After he died people brought me endless batches of home-cooked lasagnes, shepherd’s pies, curries and home-made soup until my freezer was so full I was in danger of being crushed beneath an avalanche of frozen food every time I opened the door.
But at the time, eating was the last thing I felt like doing, instead attempting to numb the pain of losing Greg by downing bottle after bottle of Pinot Grigio.
Eventually, Rachel and my mum had stepped in and told me I needed to pull myself together.
‘There’s no point killing yourself as well,’ Rachel said.
‘Imagine what Greg would say if he could see what you’re doing to yourself,’ Mum said, a double-pronged attack.
And it was that, their tough love, that made me realise I needed to look after myself. They were right, Greg would be furious if he could see me. Which was why I now spent my weekends batch cooking meals for the week ahead, and I was grateful for it every single evening when I got home from work.
As the chilli warmed and the rice cooked, I checked my messages. There was one from Rachel reminding me about a trip to the theatre on Sunday night to see our friend Angel in a show about feminism.
I tapped out a reply, telling her I was looking forward to it.
Would I tell her about my strange encounter in the park? We’d known each other since we were twelve years old and normally I told her everything. But there was something about what happened today that made me want to wrap it up and keep it to myself for a while longer.
Maybe it was just because I thought she’d leap on the merest hint of me being interested in someone. I mean, she loved Greg – everyone did – but as she always said, she loved me too, and she didn’t want to see me sad for the rest of my life.
‘You deserve someone to share your life with,’ she always told me.
And no matter how many times I told her I just wasn’t ready – and didn’t know whether I ever would be – she kept hoping.
So no, I didn’t think I would tell her about this just yet, however strange it felt to keep it from her. I’d see if anything came of it first.
I served up my dinner and took it through to the lounge. I might still try to eat a proper meal every night, but sitting at the table alone just felt too tragic, so I always ate in front of the TV – something Greg would definitely have disapproved of.
I pulled a tray from down the side of the sofa, sat down and switched on the TV.
I’d been watching a series on Netflix, but as I forked chilli into my mouth, I couldn’t concentrate on anything that was happening on the screen.
Instead, my mind drifted back to earlier this evening and, specifically, to Nick.
What exactly was it about our encounter that had lodged itself in my mind? What was the feeling I’d had when I was with him for that brief time? I closed my eyes and tried to remember it, but it was elusive, and eventually I stopped trying.
Today was only Thursday, and we weren’t meeting again until Monday.
He hadn’t shown any signs of wanting to give me his phone number or any other way of getting in touch with him, and I had no idea where he lived.
Which meant that the only way of being certain of seeing him again was to turn up at the bandstand after work on Monday and hope he hadn’t just been fobbing me off.
Something told me he wasn’t.
It wasn’t until later, as I was lying in bed and trying to get to sleep, that something else occurred to me. The thought that had snagged on my mind earlier, as I’d been sitting with Nick, finally revealed itself. And I wasn’t sure what to make of it.
The sweets Nick had offered me were in a familiar paper bag.
A paper bag of ‘Pic ’n’ Mix’.
Exactly like the ones I used to get from Woolworths.
A shop that had closed down more than a decade before.