Chapter 10
NICK
Why on earth had I suggested Emma and I date other people? I had no interest in seeing anyone else, and I didn’t think she had either. It had felt like the right thing to say at the time but now, just the thought of her with another man was killing me.
Andy had set me up with one of his colleagues, Katy. She sounded lovely.
But she wasn’t Emma.
I picked the phone up and dialled Andy’s number.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ I said, the moment he answered the phone.
‘Nope. Nah-ah. Absolutely not.’
‘I can’t go,’ I said.
‘You’re not pulling out now. I’ve bigged you up so much Katy’s really looking forward to it.’
‘But I really don’t want to go on a date.’
‘Nicholas,’ he said.
‘Oh no, this is serious.’
‘You bet it is.’ A beat. ‘You need to try and move on, right?’
‘Not necessarily. I was perfectly happy wallowing in my own misery before all this started.’
‘Maybe so. But this has started, which means that as well as getting over Dawn, you need to move on from Emma, or whatever this idea is of Emma. Agreed?’
‘Well, unless…’
‘Nope! Stop it! You know it’s no good.’
I sighed and slumped into the nearest chair, defeated. ‘I know. I’m just not sure if I’m ready for this. I’ve never even been on a proper date before.’
‘Nicky, you need to relax a bit. This is just dinner with a woman, no pressure. Just talk to her, eat some food and drink some beer. That’s it.’
‘But she knows about me, right?’
‘About Dawn? Sure. But it doesn’t mean you need to talk about it all night. Ask her about herself, what she likes, her job, whatever. But just try to enjoy yourself, okay?’
‘Okay.’
He hung up before I had a chance to say anything else.
I glanced at the clock. I had a couple of hours before I needed to be in town.
I grabbed my jacket and paused at the front door and placed my palm flat against it.
I’d taken to stopping every time I left the house, or whenever I lay in bed at night or stood in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil, and trying to feel Emma in the fabric of the house.
It hadn’t worked before, even when we’d tried really hard to connect, so I knew it was unlikely to ever happen. But it didn’t stop me from hoping.
I opened the door and walked briskly to the park.
As usual the bandstand was empty, forlorn and long forgotten.
I wondered what made someone decide to spend money on it and bring it back to its former glory in a few years’ time.
I wished I could see it the way Emma did, surrounded by a beautiful rose garden.
I stepped inside. Even though I hadn’t expected Emma to be there it still felt like a blow when I saw the bench was empty.
I sat down and stared out into the park, watching the blossom drop slowly from the tree and settle at the base.
A woman walked past with her dog. She threw a stick and I watched the dog race away across the grass and return it, tail wagging.
Where was the playground Emma had mentioned, and when had it been built?
What was life really like in 2019? It was only twenty years away, but it felt like a lifetime.
A gap that felt impossible to close.
I closed my eyes and pictured the first time I came here and saw Dawn.
We’d been so young but that had only been fifteen years ago.
So much had happened in that time – we’d fallen in love, got married, tried for a baby, and then she’d died.
In between all that, we’d had so many happy times – days at the coast where Dawn indulged my love of searching for fossils, Dawn coming to watch me play my violin and me watching her singing in front of crowds of people.
So many small things that had disappeared into the stretch and bend of time and were forgotten, but that made up a happy life together.
And then I thought about Emma, and the first time we’d spoken. Had we known even that day that there was a special connection between us? That something in the fabric of time had brought us together?
I’d thought a lot about why we’d met and decided it must be because of our shared grief.
Her for Greg, me for Dawn. They say grief is one of the most powerful emotions, and maybe that was the reason this had happened.
Perhaps we were never meant to be together forever, but simply for this short period of time, to help each other. To deal with our grief and move on.
I should tell her when I saw her next week that we needed to stop this. That we’d come to the end. Because it wasn’t good for either of us to yearn for something that we knew we could never have.
I stood, suddenly aware of the time. I’d promised Andy I wouldn’t let Katy down, so I owed it to her to at least be on time for our date. I took one last look at the bench, then stepped back onto the grass.
‘I had such a lovely time,’ Katy said.
‘Me too.’
Katy and I stood facing each other in front of the restaurant.
I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and back again.
She looked down at her shoes. We’d had an unexpectedly fun evening and despite my reservations the conversation had flowed well.
Now, outside saying our goodbyes, things had turned awkward.
I suspected Katy was hoping for a kiss, but I didn’t want to lead her on.
She took a step towards me and I held my breath. If I stepped back I’d look rude and I didn’t want to upset her. And then, over her shoulder, I spotted a car pull up to the kerb, and relief flooded through me.
‘Oh, here’s your taxi,’ I said.
I saw the disappointment in her eyes as she glanced at it. She hitched her bag onto her shoulder, then stepped forward and planted a kiss on my cheek.
‘Goodnight Nick,’ she said. Then she climbed into the taxi and left.
I waited until the lights of the car had disappeared round the corner before I started walking.
It had turned chilly this evening, and I stuffed my hands in my pockets and put my head down against the stiff breeze.
It was still early, only just after nine o’clock and I felt bad that I’d dismissed Katy so quickly after we’d finished eating.
Should I have offered to take her for a drink, or go for a walk?
But I needed to clear my head, and the half-hour walk home felt like a good time to do that.
The date had been nice, more so than I’d expected. Katy was lovely, and I could see why Andy had thought we might like each other. I’d even managed to avoid talking too much about Dawn.
But there was no spark, not helped by the fact that I’d spent most of the time thinking about Emma.
What would it be like to go for dinner with her, to sit across from each other in a candlelit restaurant, holding hands across the table, gazing into each other’s eyes?
To leave together, to share a kiss? To go to bed together—
Stop it, Nick.
Poor Katy. She deserved someone who wasn’t hung up on a woman he could never have.
I shoved my hands deeper into my pockets. I was almost halfway home when I passed the entrance to the park. I slowed down, wondering whether to go inside. It was pitch black, but I could hear a noise, a rumble of voices, in the distance, and I stopped and listened for a moment. What was that?
I pushed the gate open, my steps quickening as I followed the path towards the sound. I barely glanced at the bandstand on my left, and soon I could see lights shining through the darkness too. I could make out crowds of people, and then a stage, lit up from above. I stopped.
This was the open-air theatre Emma had mentioned. I’d never been here before, at least not when something was playing. I moved closer, the makeshift stage slowly coming into focus.
A sign was propped up a few feet away and I headed towards it, peering down to make out the words.
I knew what it was going to say before I saw it, and my heart stopped beating when I realised its significance.
The Importance of Being Earnest, a play by Oscar Wilde
I played Cecily Cardew in The Importance of Being Ernest.
Emma’s words rang in my ears and I felt dizzy. Emma was here, right now, on that stage, just a few feet away from me.
She was right here.
My breath felt tight in my chest as I inched forward, closer and closer towards the back of the crowd, squinting through the darkness. My heart thumped wildly. I shouldn’t be doing this. Seeing Emma now, aged just seventeen, would only reinforce to me how wrong this whole thing was.
And yet I couldn’t leave either.
I hardly dared breathe as I stared at the stage, glancing nervously at the wings to see whether she was lurking in the shadows. And then, she appeared.
I knew I should leave, but I was rooted to the spot.
My chest felt tight, my pulse thumped wildly as I watched, her pale skin and flaming red hair so familiar to me. I had no idea how long I stood there in the cool night air, but as the play came to an end it took everything I had not to call out her name.
The stage emptied, and the crowd slowly began to leave. A wind had got up and I shivered as it cooled my skin, but still I didn’t move.
Emma was here and she was real.
‘Excuse me, sir, could you make your way towards the exit now please,’ a voice called and I turned with a start. What was I still doing here?
‘Sorry,’ I mumbled. And suddenly, as though a spell had been broken, I knew I needed to get out of there.
I turned and followed the last of the lingering audience into the darkness of the park.
I pulled the collar of my jacket up and started walking – and then stopped dead.
Because there was Emma, right in front of me.
Standing between two people who were clearly her parents, her dad on one side, her mum on the other.
‘I’m so proud of you,’ I heard her dad say, and Emma’s face lit up. And then she looked at me and our eyes locked and I could barely breathe.
She looked away again, turned back to her dad and walked right past me, as though I wasn’t there.
And then she was gone.
I lay in bed for a long time that night, unable to shake the image of seventeen-year-old Emma from my mind.
As amazing as it had been to see her, it had also brought home to me how wrong this whole thing was. I might not want to date anyone else yet, but I had to end this thing – whatever this thing was – with Emma. I was thirty-one and she was seventeen. Just a girl.
I would tell her when I saw her in a couple of days’ time.
It was the only thing I could do.