Chapter 34
It isn’t until a month later, when Lowe suggests meeting again: hey, fancy a x
Christmas is coming on this early afternoon. In town there’s an etherealness that only comes with the heaviness of December: the shops strung with lights and decorations; on street corners, candied nuts (that smell better than they taste) are scooped into paper bags that stain with oil immediately; happy people loaded with big square shopping bags and day-time prosecco. A shiny brass band play ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ under the chest of a silver angel, wire wings spread out towards the clouds, and it makes me giddy.
Does it have to be SO romantic? JEEEEZZZ.
My brain’s mumbling to itself: Hey Lowe, so I’ve been meaning to ask you … it probably sounds ridiculous now but just wondering, did you ever love me back then?
If you were to see me walking down the road at this moment you would see me physically shake the thought out of my head: Ella! Stop it! He is your FRIEND!
We arrange to meet in a strange little café in Soho. It looks more like a gift shop than a coffee shop: black and white sofas; marble tables covered in art books and fashion magazines; the coffee served in ridiculous deep shiny black cups with giant saucers. The owner is a rude woman my mum’s age.
The reason I suggested here is because the owner has ten dogs. They all hang around, posing and showing off in glamorous dog beds that look more expensive than my own with collars that would make you gasp if they came in your Christmas stocking. Dogs make a great ice-breaker. One of them is particularly adorable, a brown and white floppy King Charles Spaniel with one working eye and the other sewn shut, who sits by you, looking like she could read your fortune. PLEASE, READ MY FORTUNE, TELL ME WHAT TO DO, DOG!
I arrive first, carrying bags of my own Christmas shopping (to look busy and to make it clear Lowe wasn’t the only reason I faced the Underground). I take off my oversized, fuzzy, royal-blue hooded coat, order a coffee and wait, bags now by my feet. I obviously immediately regret the coffee; that’s not going to help with these jolts. I flick through a comic book that I found on the table to make myself look artistic, occupied. On the page, inside one of the little rectangles, a cartoon woman cries giant globular tears into a telephone. On the next she has a cape and is flying.
Annoyingly, the entrance to the café is a side street/alley, so I can’t prepare myself for his arrival. Still, I gaze anxiously out the window. Watch the people and daydream.
And the door swings open.
We turn our heads.
All ten dogs stare. And me.
Lowe looks knickerbocker glory delicious today. The structure of his face. His hands. He wears a pendant around his neck, something old but new for him, with stones – a ruby maybe? Turquoise? He wears a shirt, red-wine red. Black jeans and boots. He orders a coffee and I watch him give the best smile of his life to the woman who owns the coffee shop – she doesn’t deserve it – and I see even a woman of her impenetrable stature falter. I watch him pet the dogs, all sniffing his legs and licking his fingertips. I long to be their fur, their chins, their paws. Lucky bitches.
I cross my legs, lean my head on my elbow. I notice that Lowe mirrors my position. If I sit up straight, so does he. If I arch my back, so does he. If I cock my head to one side, he does too. If I sip my coffee, he sips his. I mean this is basic armchair psychology, isn’t it? If somebody is mirroring you it means they like you, right? Well, the guy is a bloody mime!
Smile versus smile. Eyes versus eyes. Hands versus hands.
‘So how’ve you been?’ he asks.
‘Good.’ Sound strong, Ella. ‘My book’s about to go out on submission.’ Realizing that’s probably just how most men in my industry talk about their work.
‘Wicked. Let me know how it goes.’
We still talk about our lives as ‘I’s’ and ‘me’s’ in total singular without ever mentioning partners.
‘What are your plans for Christmas?’ he asks. ‘You going away or … ?’
‘I’m just going to Mum’s. You?’
‘I’ll go to the coast with my dad.’
‘You still do that?’ Since Lowe’s mum died, Lowe and his dad created their own Christmas tradition of driving down to the coast to cold-water swim, and eat a picnic of sandwiches and coffee from a flask in the car. ‘Will you swim?’
‘Course we’ll swim!’
‘You’re crazy! I bet that’s an amazing feeling.’
‘I mean, it’s a cold feeling’ – he laughs – ‘but it’s addictive.’
‘What about New Year?’
‘There’s a few parties but I reckon I’ll just have a chilled one.’
We’re getting good at this.
‘I’ve had my fun anyway.’ He jokes like he’s old.
He doesn’t mention True Love. Only looks in my eyes and smiles and laughs at everything I say. How dare somebody so beautiful as you just tread the universe?
‘I’ve been writing actually.’ He looks shy to tell me this. ‘See, told you I’d get there!’ I like that he refers back to our last conversation. ‘I’ve just been playing around with some ideas, seeing what comes and—’
‘What?’
‘Sorry, it just feels weird and bit embarrassing talking to a proper writer about writing.’
‘Lowe! I’m not a proper anything!’
‘Yeah you are.’ The way he says this makes me think he isn’t talking about writing any more. The conversation is so close up and intense I forget to breathe.
I can’t take it. I’m going to burst; my feelings are breaking the seams of my clothes, tearing out like the incredible hulk – in velvet.
‘Ella, Ella … ’ Lowe points down and I clock the one-eyed fortune-telling spaniel pissing on my coat. OH, FOR FU—
The owner stalks over. If my dog pissed on a customer’s coat, trust me, I would not be stalking. ‘Oh, she does that – she’s old,’ she says, without apologizing. The fortune-telling dog looks at me like, how’s that for a prophecy, bitch?
I can tell Lowe’s annoyed on my behalf.
‘Here, let me give you some money towards dry-cleaning … ’ she half offers, not even really opening up her purse properly.
‘Give it to charity,’ I say.
And she scurries the money back and into her purse without even offering us a free cup of coffee.
Lowe says in his loudest voice, ‘Wasn’t that your most treasured irreplaceable coat that you inherited from your beloved deceased great-aunt, Ella?’
I catch on the joke and say, ‘Yes, it was.’ I sniffle like I’m crying. ‘It’s all I have left of her.’
And Lowe puts his arm around me, tutting and walks me out of the dog café.
‘It is a nice coat though, even with the dog piss.’
Once again we walk side by side. Side by side is good, remember? People take walks like this when they have difficult conversations, or they take long drives or sit by a fire so they don’t have to look each other in the eye. Did you ever feel the same about me? But side by side means I see the stares of passing people. ‘Oh my God is that … ?’ Somebody stops to ask for a photo. And again. And again. He’s so lovely to everyone. ‘Sorry.’ I can tell he wishes they’d leave us alone.
‘Don’t apologize,’ I say.
‘I’m going to put this on.’ He pulls out a cap clipped to the back of his jeans, just like the one he used to wear when we were younger and it just sends me back and twists me up. ‘Is that OK? I feel like it’s rude.’
‘No, it’s OK.’
We pass the Christmas displays in shop windows, squares of theatre, an electric toy train full of shambolic model-mice passengers wearing sunglasses and party hats, looping complicated tracks of consequence like that Mouse Trap game, tipping over glasses of wine, shooting through a turkey and splatting in trifle. Lowe and I crack up like we’re kids. Everything just makes us so happy. The last window is of a winter snow scene. Escape. Desolation. A magic effect of mist and mirror makes a forest of tiny plastic evergreen trees infinite. It’s like Raymond Briggs’s The Snowman. Lowe’s grin is huge, his hands behind his back, taking it all in.
‘It’s so amazing!’ I say. ‘How did they do that? It’s so clever.’
Lowe is quiet, enchanted.
And then, at the very end, the selling point: a jewellery display. The centrepiece an engagement ring.
I should be going home.
‘I’m walking this way if you want to?’ I say.
‘Sure.’ Lowe follows; like one of those people who has nowhere to really be, he slides along next to me, aimlessly. ‘I haven’t been around here for ages.’ He’s lost this time. He doesn’t seem to see the odd person who recognizes him, the way strangers nudge each other and whisper when he walks past. And if he does, he pretends not to or he’s used to it. We walk like we’re sharing a sleeve, laces tied together for a three-legged race, deliberately, clumsily.
At Seven Dials I ask, ‘What are your plans for the rest of the afternoon?’ Then kick myself because this is what I usually ask when I’ve had enough of someone’s company and I’m looking to wind things down, whereas I ask here because I genuinely care.
‘Well, we’re buying a house so—’
We’re.
I hear a gameshow buzzer siren go off with the word ‘we’. By the way his face falls, I know this means he isn’t single. This means he’s buying a house with someone else.
A bloody mansion, I bet.
I don’t know who we is.
I imagine Heather’s face in his wallet. I only met her that one time at the festival but did I mention she’s also the face of my nighttime sleep paralysis.
Aoife found her on LinkedIn once. She’s nothing like us. She’s a grown-up. A proper one. One of those organized women who wears suits with trainers to work and then changes into her smart clippy-cloppys when she arrives. Brings in her own salads with a separate bottle for dressing so it doesn’t go limp. It’s too easy to see her French-manicured nails wrapped around a Biro, filling in mortgage applications. Straightening out the paperwork how a newsreader does before they pretend to notice the camera. Get real – he doesn’t need a mortgage.
‘Oh, Lowe, I’m so happy for you,’ I say.
Because that’s how my parents raised me, to say kind things at times like this, to be happy for others’ happiness, even if it hurts. So I play easy-breezy, good old resilient Ella. Although this seems to sadden us both further.
It begins to feel cold and dark. Bleak.
This is no longer an indulgent fantasy but an ugly nightmare. He sticks his body close to mine; he’s trying to make it alright but that’s a fucking joke. Each step stings. Like warm hands on cold-water fish scales. I can physically feel the Christmas presents I’ve only just bought crunching in their bags, four crystal cut gin and tonic glasses I bought my mum, cracking to pieces.
We say goodbye under the dripping railway bridge.
‘We’ve got a Farewell Tour next year; you should come down to a show … I’d love for you to be there.’
‘Definitely,’ I say. ‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world.’
When I’m already thinking of all the ways I can be sure to absolutely miss it for the world.
‘OK … well … ’
He lingers; he doesn’t want this to be it. He knows something’s shifted. And we can’t win it back. We hug. Warm and tight. For ages. And I’m about to cry so I pull away first. His eyes are wet, but I think that’s the wind. Maybe if he was single, I’d definitely know it was time to jump ship, not to be with him but to spend time with him, freely. I’m not just going to sit there on Heather’s sofa now, am I, sobbing and eating Ben Jerry’s? I want to cry more for working my major life decisions around him. Then I want to cry even more because I have to be brave and there’s nobody to hold my hand.
‘Merry Christmas, Ella.’
‘Merry Christmas, Lowe.’
Crushing.
I hear the awkward ‘Excuse me?’ from some guy with eyes as big as gobstoppers – I can already guess what he’s about to say: ‘But you’re not … sorry … are you Lowe Archer … from True Love?’
I take this moment to get away, waving goodbye, Lowe calling out, ‘Ella, wait?’ and I pretend to find my train home with the cracked gin and tonic glasses and dog piss-stained coat and wasted day. We forgot to even talk about my solid streak of not drinking. When I’m out of sight I go back on myself. Jackson’s at the KTPLT Christmas lunch (freelancers not invited – no surprise there) and invited me to come down for a drink after. I hadn’t planned to; I don’t want to beg it – the last KTPLT party didn’t exactly end well – but I feel the need, now more than ever, to throw myself into my life with Jackson, to be sure one final time.
Lowe texts, just simply: x
I don’t reply.