Chapter 22
22
EMMA
On Saturday, when I arrive at the café near Alexandra Palace where I’m meeting Callum, the first thing I do is look at my watch. I’m fifteen minutes early.
I have no idea what length of journey he’ll have to get here because I have no idea where he lives, which is utterly ridiculous given that we were literally joined at the hip for a good week only three months ago.
I turn to walk back out and maybe wander round some shops for the next twenty minutes and then I remember that I’m an adult and that if I were meeting a girlfriend now I’d just sit down and read or do something on my phone. I’m not a love-sick, trying-to-play-hard-to-get teenager. Well, I’m kind of love-sick. But the rest of it: no. I’m going to behave like the adult I supposedly am.
I go in and find a table in the corner of the room and sit down. And this is good. Very good. Fine.
On Sunday I was tempted to ask Callum if he was free to meet on Monday. In fact, I’d have happily met him at in the middle of the night then and there. But also, I wouldn’t have done; having been bitten before I do feel cautious. If there’s any possibility of us rekindling something it needs to happen slowly and it needs to happen right.
I decided that it would be better to wait a week, just in case seeing me in person last weekend swayed him but, on reflection, he decided he regretted suggesting a date. Because if there’s one thing about Callum telling me he loves me and then walking away, it’s that it’s a shit experience that I do not want to repeat any more.
That’s why I told him that I’d got back with Dev; I was panicking and I wanted to say something that would mean he wouldn’t ask me ever again.
I did consider Dev’s suggestion for a long moment in the museum, but then I thought about how very much I loved Callum and just knew that I couldn’t do it to Dev; it would be unfair not being able to offer him my whole heart.
I order a latte and a glass of tap water and then I get my Kindle out.
I sit and read (I say read, I stare at the screen and do not take any of the words in) and look at the door at the same time.
When Callum arrives, I see him immediately.
Again, I have the instincts of a teenage idiot: I’m very tempted to pretend to be incredibly engrossed in my Kindle.
I am, however, as I have already reminded myself a few times this afternoon, an adult, and I do not want to behave like an idiot.
So I put my Kindle back in my bag and smile at him as he crosses the room towards me.
My heart’s beating at a hundred miles an hour. Callum’s wearing worn-in jeans and a navy quarter-zip jumper under a jacket and I can’t imagine anyone ever looking better in any clothes ever. I noticed last week that he hasn’t bothered recently with the super-tidy haircut that he had in the summer; his lovely thick hair’s curling over his collar and it very much suits him. His eyes are fixed on me and his smile seems personally targeted, as though I’m the only person in the vicinity, even though he actually has to step over a couple of toddlers and dodge round several other people to reach me.
I stay seated when he gets to the table, really because I don’t know how to physically greet him. If I don’t hug him, maybe that would be odd. But if I do, maybe that would be odd too. Basically, I’m not sure where we’re at hug-wise.
He hovers for a second and then pulls the chair opposite me out. He sits down and leans his arms on the table.
‘Hi,’ he says, as my stupid mind fixates on the obvious latent strength in his forearms and how much I like his hands.
‘Hi.’
‘Thank you for agreeing to meet.’ He sounds very formal.
‘It’s nice to see you.’ I’m just as polite.
‘Would you like to order something?’ the woman who served me asks him.
‘An espresso would be great, thank you.’
The woman simpers a little under the force of Callum’s smile (to be fair it’s truly lovely) and then leaves us to it.
We sit there in silence for a long moment and I begin to wonder whether there was actually any point in us meeting today. We’re good at small talk, but I think we have to do more than that now. I have nothing beyond inanities to offer, and to my disappointment Callum doesn’t seem to be rushing into explaining himself. Perhaps we’ll have a half hour of careful chat and then just go our separate ways.
I’m beginning to feel very disappointed – I couldn’t help hoping that he might say something big – but then, just as I’m about to comment on the unusually wide range of cakes available here, Callum suddenly says, all in a rush, ‘The reason I asked you to meet is that I wanted to apologise for my incredible stupidity and tell you that I love you and I’ve never stopped loving you, and I wanted to ask you again if you’d be happy to go on a date with me.’
‘Um.’ I’m frowning, trying to interpret what he just said.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, after a while.
I nod, for no good reason. My brain’s still struggling to process his words.
‘Could you explain?’ I ask eventually.
‘Of course. I mean, I can try.’
I wait.
‘Basically.’ He stops and while I’m waiting for him to carry on I watch his face. I love the shape of his jaw. ‘I have always loved you. The day we met, the moment you resigned from the café and then immediately gave me this huge, gleeful smile, I was just hit with this incredible certainty that you were the girl I needed to marry one day. Like, I just wanted to be with you and make you happy forever. Obviously, I didn’t actually know you at all at that point, but as we got to know each other I just loved you more and more. It was as though on that first day an artist had painted on a canvas an outline of love, and as I got to know you the middle of the love shape got filled in.’
I sniff and wipe under my eyes. Callum’s rarely poetic like this, and it’s gorgeous. Also, now he says it, that’s exactly how it happened for me too. The filling-in-details thing.
‘Obviously, though,’ he continues, ‘I was – as we both know – wild. When I proposed and you told me that I needed to sort myself out, you were right. And as I told you before, I intended to get my life back on track and then go back to you, but in the end I didn’t. And then fast-forward to when we met again in Italy, and clearly, from my side, the love had never gone, and I stupidly, while thinking I knew that we shouldn’t be together, allowed myself to fall into that week-long romance with you. And then I told you that I didn’t think we could ever be together because I thought I’d hurt you again.’
‘Yes?’ I encourage, because finally we’re getting to now , and he’s bloody stopped talking.
‘Last weekend at the party, I don’t know,’ he says, finally getting going again, ‘I just felt – and I could be wrong; I could be the most arrogant idiot in the world and please tell me if that’s the case – that you looked as though the sight of me made you hurt and I just suddenly thought that if us not being together hurt you what was the point in me saying let’s not be together in order not to hurt you? If that makes sense.’
‘You’re an idiot,’ I state.
Callum nods.
I look into his eyes and see fear there.
I want to tell him that I love him but right now I can’t do that.
‘So, were we to go on a date,’ I say, ‘how would you like to see things progress from here?’
‘I would like… I’d like us to be together. Properly. I love you.’
‘I see.’
I want to allow myself to be happy but given everything that’s happened between us in the past I’m nervous.
‘In the summer, it was all very surface-level,’ I tell him. ‘I realised after you left Paris that there were signs, which, if I hadn’t been actively trying to avoid seeing them, I would have realised were practically slapping me in the face.’
Callum nods again, slowly.
‘For example,’ I say, ‘all our conversations. They were very superficial. All small talk, banter. No details. Neither of us knows where the other one lives. I don’t think you even know what job I do unless you’ve googled me. I definitely didn’t tell you, because we didn’t go there. And that’s so superficial. And we didn’t even get that far.’
‘That’s true,’ Callum agrees. ‘And it was my fault, wasn’t it? You tried to move the conversation there a couple of times and I blocked you.’
‘Yep.’
We sit in silence for a few moments, and then Callum says, ‘Could I ask a question? Obviously please do feel very free to not answer.’
‘Okay.’
‘What job do you do?’
I look hard at him, into his lovely, still-fearful eyes, and then down at his hands, which he’s fisted so hard that his knuckles are showing white.
It’s the eyes and the knuckles that do it.
‘I’m a special needs teacher,’ I say.
‘Do you… work locally?’ he asks tentatively.
‘The school’s in Muswell Hill. It’s a primary school.’ I decide to tell him more, to see if he reciprocates. I don’t feel good about the fact that I feel as though I’m testing him, but also, I kind of need to. ‘I live near Bowes Park in a flat.’
‘Do you enjoy it?’ He’s still sounding very cautious, as though he’s dealing with an unpredictable wild animal or something.
‘Yep. It’s obviously challenging but it’s very rewarding.’
‘How did you manage to get the time for your trip?’ He’s still speaking slowly, as though he’s very keen to ask the questions and hear the answers, but nervous about how I might react. Fair enough, because while I did want to talk about this stuff with him before, I’m not so sure now. Especially given that I still know nothing about his current life other than the broad fact that he’s a lawyer.
‘I took a term’s unpaid sabbatical and ran it into my summer holiday.’ I don’t want to talk about myself any more if he isn’t going to talk to me about himself, so I ask, ‘What about you?’
He flexes his hands a little. ‘I work for a large law firm in the City. I do actually quite enjoy it. I live in a flat in Fulham but I’m in the process of buying a house so there’s more space for Thea when she’s with me. I have her on alternate weekends. I’m on perfectly amicable terms with her mum. When she isn’t staying with me, I see her one day on the weekend and once a week on a weeknight, usually Wednesdays.’
He pauses, and then says, ‘I’ve been very keen to be as hands-on and involved as possible so that I’m a completely different kind of parent from mine. Obviously, Thea wasn’t planned but from the moment Leona, her mum, told me about her I just wanted to be the best dad I possibly could. My parents were shit. They didn’t turn up for school concerts or sports days. They only cared when I succeeded at something, and then really only – from where I was standing – to boast about it to their friends and colleagues. If I was upset about something, they never knew, so I have no idea whether they would have attempted to help or not, but I suspect not. I don’t want to be that kind of father. I feel like I have no role model, but I’m doing my best, and so far so good.
‘On Wednesday I had one of the proudest moments of my life. Thea told me all about a bully in her class who’s been victimising one of Thea’s friends, and then told me that I’m the best dad in the world because she can tell me anything and I always listen. I don’t think there’s any higher compliment than that.’
‘That’s so gorgeous,’ I say. ‘I’m so pleased for you.’
‘Thank you. I worried for quite a long time that at some point I’d turn into an uncaring parent but then I suddenly realised one day – Thea’s fifth birthday in fact – that it would already have happened, and I relaxed. And obviously I’m sure I make my mistakes but I’m pretty sure she knows I love her. And that’s huge.’
‘That is huge. You sound like an amazing dad.’
‘Thank you,’ he says again. He opens his mouth and then closes it.
‘What?’ I say. And then: ‘No, you don’t need to tell me. Sorry.’
‘No, no, it’s just I was going to say something and then I thought better of it in case it sounded very manipulative. I mean it was true, what I was going to say, but maybe it would sound as though I was saying it on purpose.’
Callum is never this uncertain. It’s weird. Also cute.
‘Just say it,’ I say. ‘If you want to? And I will bear in mind that you are not being manipulative?’
‘I mean, basically I was just going to say that I never talk about this stuff. With anyone. But I wanted to tell you.’
He’s right; it could have sounded manipulative. But it doesn’t. And I feel that I’ve just received something very precious. Even when we were together when we were young he didn’t talk about his parents much.
‘Thank you,’ I say for the umpteenth time.
‘No, thank you .’
We sit there for a long time, just kind of looking at each other, and then the café owner places Callum’s coffee in front of him and says, ‘So sorry it took so long.’
‘Not at all, thank you.’ He glances at the woman for a second and flashes her a smile and then switches his gaze back to me, as though he can’t bear to look away for too long.
We resume the mutual gazing. I don’t know what to say now and maybe Callum feels the same way.
‘Cake?’ I say eventually.
‘Sorry?’
‘I wondered if you thought it would be nice to get some cake.’
‘Oh, yes. Absolutely. Cake would be great.’
‘Good. What kind?’
‘Whatever you like? Unless we aren’t sharing?’
‘I’m easy either way.’
‘Me too.’
‘What’s your favourite cake?’ I ask.
‘Not a big cake eater.’
‘You could get a different snack? Or nothing? We could have no cake?’
‘Honestly, whatever you prefer.’
I begin to snigger. ‘This is a ridiculous conversation.’
‘Yeah, too polite,’ Callum agrees.
‘Yes.’
‘And a little awkward too.’
‘Yes.’
‘So.’ He suddenly looks very serious. ‘To get it back out there: no obligation at all, obviously, but I wondered if you would like to go for a date.’
His knuckles are white again.
This time it’s an easy decision.
‘One date would be very nice.’ I reach out and touch his hand briefly and he catches my fingers and I get the most enormous thrill, right up my arm and through my whole body. ‘Just one date for now. A real first date. And then just see what happens. If anything.’
I cannot risk too much heartbreak with Callum again. I can’t leap straight into happily-ever-after fantasies this time. My heart can’t take any more bruising.
‘That sounds perfect,’ Callum says.
‘So basically we’re going to take things very, very slowly and talk more openly and only… do stuff if we feel some level of commitment.’
‘Perfect.’ He pauses and then says, ‘I mean, if we’re going to wait to do stuff until we’ve talked, I can give you my entire life history right now?’
‘Callum!’ I glare at him.
‘Sorry, joke, joke, joke.’
‘A very bad one.’
‘Yeah, sorry.’ He grins at me and I smile back. ‘Soooo… When… would you like to have that date?’
I’m suddenly feeling very decisive.
‘We’re both here now? We could have that cake—’ I feel like if Callum is going to date me properly he’s going to need to know all about my love of lemon drizzle ‘—and then go for a walk? I have a couple of hours free now and then I have a Zumba class and then I’m going out with girlfriends from work.’
It feels perfect that I have other plans later on. Yes, obviously I know how amazing our nights were when we were on the trip, but I really, really don’t want to take things insanely fast, because if there’s any hope of us going long term I think we have to take things slowly now, and it’s ideal if there’s something stopping me from giving in to any temptation.
‘Great,’ he says.
And then we sit and smile at each other. Callum nudges my ankle with his under the table and, honestly, I feel as though my heart’s going to lift right out of my body.