Chapter 32
THIRTY-TWO
‘Sun’s over the yardarm,’ Jamie said at three o’clock the following afternoon. ‘Jasper’s in Edinburgh. I’ve got no meetings. So what are we waiting for?’
‘What are you suggesting?’ I asked.
‘Skiving off to Birch Bar, obviously.’
‘We can’t do that.’
‘Why not? You worried we’ll get caught and given a detention?’
‘No, but…’
The truth was, I was tempted. Most of our clients were already on holiday.
The Turkish oligarch’s son and his soon-to-be fiancée weren’t arriving until next week, and anyway all the plans for their visit were in place.
Zahra’s uncle and his wife were in Riyadh.
No one was likely to contact me, and if they did, I’d have my phone on me.
I’d basically be working…
Besides, I was exhausted after a night of zero sleep sitting in a hard plastic chair in the hospital. I’d achieved very little that morning, even sitting dutifully at my desk. I looked longingly at the bright sunshine and blue sky outside the office window.
‘Go on then – let’s do it,’ I said.
‘I knew I could count on you.’ Before he’d even finished speaking, Jamie was on his feet, tucking his phone into his pocket.
Fifteen minutes later, we were at a table in the familiar surroundings of Birch Bar – not that I wanted to think too much about my previous visit there when we’d tried to trick Sam into thinking something was happening between me and Jamie.
I had a spicy mezcal margarita, and Jamie had a negroni, and I filled him in more on the events of the previous night.
‘So it looks like Arthur’s going to be okay,’ I told him.
‘When we got to the hospital, they’d just told Molly he was responding to the antibiotics and his temperature was dropping.
She was in absolute bits, poor thing. Ben too.
I stayed there with them until three in the morning, then they made me go home to get a bit of rest.’
Jamie looked down into his glass like it was a portal into an alternate universe. ‘Shit. Imagine being responsible for a kid. Imagine it dying on you. The whole rest of your life would be fucked.’
Which was pretty much the same thought I’d had the previous evening, although I wouldn’t have put it in those exact words.
‘No plans for fatherhood any time soon, then?’ I asked wryly.
‘Hell, no. What about you? Get another round in, then you can tell me.’
Obediently, I headed to the bar.
When I returned with our drinks, I said, ‘Actually, I would like to have kids. Or I thought I would anyway. With Sam, before things… I always thought he’d make a great dad.’
Saying Sam’s name made me feel hollowed out with sadness.
Although I’d texted him to tell him about Arthur, and he’d responded full of concern for the baby, sympathy for Molly and Ben, and later with relief that a corner seemed to have been turned, he’d said nothing about our conversation.
Nothing about Ava. Nothing about whether or not our relationship might be salvageable.
‘I note the past tense,’ Jamie said.
I nodded. ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen. He’s… he’s moved out. For now. I don’t know if he’ll come back, or what’ll happen if he doesn’t. With the flat and stuff, I mean. I haven’t thought that far ahead.’
‘So much for my cunning plan.’ Jamie swished the ice around in his drink. ‘I’m sorry, Georgia. I meant well. But I guess it just didn’t work.’
‘It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I guess I…’
I thought about what I’d learned about Jamie last week: his leaking of stories about Devereaux Partners’ clients to the Gossip Guru, his casual assumption that I wouldn’t betray him to Jasper. I wondered whether I should reassess whether he was really somebody I could trust or confide in.
But I hadn’t been able to talk to Molly. It would be a while before she was able to focus on anything other than her baby’s recovery and her own survival of the experience, which was totally understandable.
I thought fleetingly of Zahra, but she had problems of her own to deal with – problems I hoped I could help her solve, just as soon as I figured out a way to do that. Besides, she was a client first and foremost, and there was no way I could burden her with my personal issues.
And Sam, with whom I’d shared all my problems for the past four years, now was the problem. I had no one else.
‘You guess you what?’ Jamie asked.
‘I guess I don’t know how to make relationships work,’ I admitted.
‘My mum and dad – they hated each other. I never had that kind of example, growing up – you know, parents who loved each other. Advanced-level stuff like that. When I met Sam, I thought I had it all figured out. I thought I’d been able to skip the learning-how bit and get straight into the doing.
I thought I could just wing it, and if things went wrong, we’d just sort of get through it. ’
‘Then the shit hit the fan and you couldn’t find the off switch?’ Jamie said.
The second cocktail was going to my head, making me feel lightheaded and almost carefree. Although after yesterday, the most normal, pedestrian things felt weirdly joyous because Arthur wasn’t going to die.
I laughed. ‘That’s pretty much it.’
‘My parents packed me off to boarding school when I was ten.’ Jamie looked down into his glass again. ‘Dad was working in Kuala Lumpur and they wanted me to be educated in England, so off I went. No choice in the matter.’
‘Jesus.’
Again, I thought of Molly. Last night, when she’d finished crying, she’d said, I never want to let Artie go. I just want to hold him in my arms forever and ever. My parents hadn’t felt that way about me, and clearly Jamie’s hadn’t about him either.
‘Ten years old, though.’ I shook my head in bewilderment. ‘That’s tiny. It must’ve been awful.’
‘It wasn’t so bad. Mum and Dad weren’t all that anyway. I was kind of glad to get away from them. And I learned to play cricket and read Ancient Greek – all the useful life skills. Another drink?’
This is not a good idea, a voice somewhere in my head warned me. But what was the alternative? Going back home and sitting alone in the flat wondering where Sam was, what he was doing and whether he was missing me as much as I was missing him?
‘I will if you will,’ I said.
He grinned. ‘When do I ever not?’
When he returned from the bar with our drinks, we talked about ordinary, less personal things.
Arsenal’s chances in the Premiership in the upcoming season.
How much larger Jasper’s moustache could get before it needed its own postcode.
A new restaurant where it was currently impossible to get a table, no matter who you were.
‘You’ll have to start dating one of the reservations team,’ I joked, remembering how he’d secured Cormac Kennedy’s booking at Ash and Brine all those weeks ago, back when everything had felt normal and safe.
‘Not me,’ he said. ‘I’m done playing the field. I’m a reformed character. Next woman I go out with is going to be The One.’
‘But how will you know?’
‘God knows I’ve tried enough Not the Ones.’ He grimaced. ‘When the right person comes along, I reckon I’ll spot her a mile away. How about you?’
‘How about me what?’
‘If things are finished with you and Sam. You’ll be downloading the apps and putting yourself out there, right?’
The idea filled me with a deep weariness. Before Molly met Ben, she’d regaled me with horror stories about all the liars, creeps and secretly married men she’d matched with – not to mention the extensive collection of unwanted dick pics she’d amassed. You’ve got to kiss a few frogs, she’d said.
But I didn’t want to kiss any frogs because none of them would be Sam. The knowledge twisted at my already aching heart.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I won’t be in a hurry to start dating. I was okay with being single. I reckon I’ll go back to that for a while.’
Maybe do some work on yourself, said the voice in my head. Maybe figure out how to not make the same mistakes next time.
But that prospect felt impossibly daunting. Tiredness washed over me again, and I hid a huge yawn behind my hand.
‘Too much of my scintillating company?’ Jamie asked.
‘Too much booze,’ I said. ‘Not enough sleep last night. Sorry, I should probably get home and have an early night.’
Jamie looked disappointed, but he finished his drink and stood up. ‘Sure, I’ll walk with you to the Tube.’
I stood too, my head now swimming and the room tilting alarmingly.
‘Steady on.’ Jamie took my arm. ‘Jeez, you really are a cheap date, aren’t you?’
‘Not normally.’ I let him guide me out of the door, relieved he was there to stop me cannoning off tables and tripping over my own shadow. ‘Sorry, I’m a bit of a mess.’
‘Happens to the best of us,’ he reassured me.
Outside, the evening was hot. The sun glared off the pavement, and I wished I hadn’t left the flat without my sunglasses that morning. Crowds of commuters were already making their way home, clashing with the crowds who were just arriving for their Friday nights out.
‘Will you be okay on the Tube?’ Jamie asked. ‘Want me to come home with you?’
Again, I heard that warning voice in my head. Not a good idea, Georgia.
‘I’ll be fine,’ I told him. ‘Half woman, half pigeon, that’s me.’
‘That must be why you shit all over the floor in the office,’ he said.
We both laughed. We’d arrived at the station now, but Jamie didn’t let go of my arm. He steered me away from the entrance and the stream of human traffic and down a side street.
And then, suddenly, he was kissing me. I couldn’t have said afterwards how it happened – just one moment we were walking along together, and the next we were face to face, my back leaning against the hot plaster of the building behind me, his deep-blue eyes drawing closer and closer to mine until I couldn’t focus on them properly. Then his lips met mine.
The kiss didn’t start out gentle and tentative, but was immediately urgent and intense. His tongue was on my mouth and then inside it. One of his hands was on my waist and the other in my hair, stroking it back from my face and then tangling into it, tilting my face upwards to meet his.
I was too surprised to do anything about it for the first few seconds – although it felt like a lot longer than a few seconds. It felt like my reactions, dulled by booze, were struggling to catch up with what was happening.
Wait, what? He’s kissing me? Who is? Jamie! Jamie’s kissing me? Not Sam?
So the kiss went on until he decided to end it.
Then he looked down at me, smiling. ‘God, Georgia. I’ve wanted to do that for the longest time. Haven’t you?’
‘Jamie, I— No. No, I haven’t. I didn’t want you to do that. Not at all.’ I put my hand up and touched my lips, like I could somehow wipe the kiss away.
‘Well, now I have, did you enjoy it?’ He was still smiling, like it was inconceivable that I’d say anything that wasn’t Yes.
This time, my hands went to his shoulders, and I pushed him. He didn’t push back, but he looked surprised as I moved him away.
‘That’s not the point. This isn’t about enjoying. It’s – it’s not right, Jamie. It’s not okay. It’s not what I wanted.’
My knees felt almost liquid with shock. I had no idea how that had happened – whether I’d given some signal I wasn’t aware of that had communicated the massive, crystal-clear Yes he expected and assumed; whether I’d kissed him back and that had made it carry on for as long as it had; and, crucially, whether now that he knew I hadn’t wanted it, he was going to stop.
‘Guess I got that wrong, then.’ His grin was rueful. ‘Sorry, Georgia. God loves a trier.’
I shook my head, bewilderment mixing with relief. He didn’t seem to think this was any kind of big deal, so maybe that meant it wasn’t.
‘I need to go home.’ That was the one thing in this whole tangled mess that I was certain of.
‘Sure.’ He leaned over and kissed me again, on the cheek this time, the kind of kiss that would have felt entirely normal and safe five minutes before but now didn’t. ‘I’ll see you on Monday. Take care, babe.’
I didn’t say anything more. I turned and went back round the corner into the Tube station, my legs still feeling like they could barely hold me up.
I fought my way through the crowds to the ticket barrier, pulling my phone out of my bag to tap myself through.
As I reached the escalator, my legs seemed to recover their strength, and I hurried down to the platform.
Then I leaped onto the train just before the doors slammed shut behind me, my breath coming in gasps as if I’d just run up the moving staircase instead of down it.