Chapter Thirteen #3
“No!” I say at once, but my cheeks are turning crimson, and Jack is looking at me with such a comical expression, I want to hug him.
“Oh, Emma. I’m sorry.” He shakes his head. “I wanted to get to know you, too. And I wanted to have fun, too. It sounds like we both wanted the same things. And it’s my fault we didn’t get them.”
“It’s not your fault—” I mumble.
“This is not the way I planned for things to go.” He looks at me seriously. “Will you give me another chance? Tomorrow night?”
A big red double-decker bus rumbles up to the bus stop, and we both look up.
“I’ve got to go,” I say, standing up. “This is my bus.”
“Emma, don’t be silly. Come in the car.”
I feel a flicker of temptation. The car will be all warm and cozy and comfortable.
But something deeper inside me resists it. I want to show Jack that I was serious. That I didn’t come running out here expecting him to follow me.
“I’m going on the bus.”
The automatic doors open, and I step onto the bus. I show my travel card to the driver and he nods.
“You’re seriously considering riding on this thing?” says Jack, stepping on behind me. He peers dubiously at the usual motley collection of night bus riders. A man with bulbous eyes looks up at us and hunches his plastic hood over his head. “Is this safe?”
“You sound like my grandpa! Of course it’s safe. It goes to the end of my road.”
“Hurry up!” says the driver impatiently to Jack. “If you haven’t got the money, get off.”
“I have American Express…” says Jack, feeling in his pocket.
“You can’t pay a bus fare with American Express!” I say. “Don’t you know anything? And anyway”—I stare at my travel card for a few seconds—“I think maybe we should call it an evening. I’m pretty tired.”
I’m not really tired. But somehow I want to be alone. I want to clear my head and start again.
“I see,” says Jack in a more serious voice. “I guess I’d better get off,” he says to the driver. Then he looks at me. “You haven’t answered me. Can we try again? Tomorrow night. And this time we’ll do whatever you want. You call the shots.”
“OK.” I try to sound noncommittal, but as I meet his eye, I find myself smiling, too. “Tomorrow.”
“Eight o’clock again?”
“Eight o’clock. And leave the car behind,” I add firmly. “We’ll do things my way.”
“Great! I look forward to it. Good night, Emma.”
“Good night.”
—
As he turns to get off, I climb the stairs to the top deck of the bus. I head for the front seat, the place I always used to sit when I was a child, and look out at the dark, rainy London night. If I gaze for long enough, the streetlights become blurred like a kaleidoscope. Like a fairyland.
That date was nothing like I expected it to be.
Not that I knew what to expect. But I did have the odd imaginary scenario in my head, ranging from dreadful (he doesn’t turn up; it turns out he’s a Nazi) to fantastic (we end up making love on a speedboat on the Thames and he asks me to marry him.
Actually I think that one might have been a dream).
The real thing was somehow better and worse, all at once. I wasn’t expecting to storm out. I wasn’t expecting to cry. I wasn’t expecting Jack to have made such an effort.
Swooshing around my mind are images of the woman in gold, the pink cocktail, Jack’s expression as I said I was leaving, the waiter bringing me my coat, Jack’s car arriving at the bus stop.
Everything’s jumbled up. I can’t quite straighten my thoughts.
All I can do is sit there, aware of familiar, comforting sounds around me.
The old-fashioned grind and roar of the bus engine.
The noise of the doors swishing open and shut.
The sharp ring of the request bell. People thumping up the stairs and thumping back down again.
I can feel the bus swaying as we turn corners, but I’m barely even aware of where we’re going. Until after a while, I start to take in familiar sights outside, and I realize we’re nearly at my street. I gather myself, reach for my bag, and totter along to the top of the stairs.
Suddenly the bus makes a sharp swing left, and I grab for a seat handle, trying to steady myself. Why are we turning left? I look out of the window, thinking I’ll be really pissed off if I end up having to walk, and blink in astonishment.
We’re in my tiny little road.
And now we’ve stopped outside my house.
I hurry down the stairs, nearly breaking my ankle.
“Forty-one Elmwood Road,” the driver says with a flourish.
No. This can’t be happening.
I look around the bus in bewilderment, and a couple of drunk teenagers leer at me.
“What’s going on?” I look at the driver. “Did he pay you?”
“Five hundred quid,” says the driver, and winks at me. “Whoever he is, love, I’d hold on to him.”
Five hundred quid? “Thanks,” I manage. “I mean…thanks for the ride.”
Feeling as though I’m in a dream, I get off the bus and head for the front door. But Lissy has already got there and is opening it. She looks totally mystified.
“What on earth’s a bus doing here?”
“It’s my bus,” I say. “It took me home.”
I wave to the driver, who waves back, and the bus rumbles off into the night.