Chapter 55
Trapezium
Out of the train window, Wilbur was walking to pick up the phone.
The Ghost saw his smile and realised it was Maggie on the line.
He remembered the scene. She was telling him that she had broken up with Edward the month before.
He’d mocked her when she’d visited his parents’ house and they had had a row.
And she realised that she had never loved him.
Wilbur plucked up the courage to ask her out on a date and she agreed. The Ghost, at his next stop, followed Wilbur as he headed to the Palace to pick Maggie up.
She’d got changed in the back of the cinema and was wearing a beret and a polo neck and a slightly awkward smile.
The date didn’t go the way he wanted it.
Maggie had a distance, that evening. A protective politeness that became clear over drinks at the Stone House pub, when she told him the news.
Two days after he had asked her out she’d had an incredible offer.
She was moving to London. She’d got a job that her tutor had told her to apply for with a design firm called Trapezium.
‘I can’t turn it down. They’re the best in the country … ’
So the date led nowhere. They were in limbo.
There was no kiss in the rain. He never invited her dancing at the Penny Farthing nightclub, as he’d planned.
It took Wilbur every single atom of strength he had not to tell her what he felt about her.
Not to tell her that he needed her in his life.
It was hard to fight for a relationship that didn’t yet exist.
The closest he came was during their goodbyes.
‘I’ll miss you.’
‘Aye. I’ll miss you too.’
And the hug lasted a little longer than formality expected. And then they looked at each other in silence for a few seconds, and they both watched as all the possibilities they could share evaporated into the night.