Nell （Present）
NELL
PRESENT
I walk quickly to the restaurant where I’m meeting Alex, happy to be seeing him again. He’s usually punctual but tonight he arrives five minutes after me.
I stand up as he approaches the table, dressed in his work clothes, shirt, jacket, no tie, and as always when I see him, my stomach flips.
“Sorry I’m late,” he says. At over six feet tall, he towers over my small frame and the tension that has held my body taut since the morning seeps away. Whenever I’m with him, I have this feeling, this certitude, that nothing bad could ever happen.
“It’s fine,” I tell him. “I’ve only been here a few minutes.”
“You look beautiful.” He bends to kiss me. “How are you? Good day?”
“Not bad,” I say, the feel of his mouth on mine making me wish we were going straight home.
A waiter comes over and we order drinks.
While we wait for them to arrive, I ask him about his dinner last night.
But always attentive, he’s picked up on my “not bad” and wants to know why my day wasn’t great.
I’d like to tell him about the man on the bus but any discussion about someone possibly following me could lead to a conversation about my past. I deflect to the random bouquet of flowers that had turned up in the office.
“I had a delivery of yellow roses at work today.”
“Oh good, you got them.” Alex smiles at me across the table.
“You sent them?”
“Yes.”
“But why?” Alex meets my eye and I see his puzzlement. “I mean, thank you, they’re beautiful. I’m just wondering why you had them sent to my workplace rather than the house.”
“I suppose I thought you might need cheering up while I’m away,” he says lightly. “I know you’ll spend most of your time working. If I’d sent them to your house, you’d hardly see them.”
I nod, knowing he’s right but also realizing that I’m going to have to explain more fully the exact nature of the charity I work for, how the people who use the services we provide could take offense at such a blatant show of wealth.
“Thank you, it was lovely of you. It’s just that there wasn’t anything to tell me who they were from so I spent the whole day wondering.
” I pause. “Were you in the area then? They came from a local shop—did you go in and order them?”
“Yes, and I wrote a card. Maybe it fell out.”
“Probably,” I say, wondering what he was doing in Brixton.
He reaches for my hand across the table. “So, was it only trying to decide who your secret admirer was that spoiled your day?”
“Yes, only that. What about you, how was your day?”
He gives a smile. “Not bad.”
“So why wasn’t it great?”
“Because I got a call from my ex-wife about Stephane, our son. He was caught by the police with cannabis on him.” He grimaces. “A bit too much cannabis.”
“I’m sorry,” I say carefully, because Alex rarely mentions his son. “What will happen to him?”
He reaches for his whiskey and takes a sip. “Best-case scenario, he’ll be fined,” he says, replacing his glass on the table. “Worst case, he’ll be sent to prison.”
“It won’t come to that, surely, if it’s his first offense?”
“I hope not.”
“Where does he live?”
“In Paris, with my ex-wife.”
“I remember you saying that your mother lives in Paris. Do your son and your wife see her?”
“My son doesn’t but Delphine does. They always got on well.”
“Delphine.” It’s the first time I’ve heard his ex-wife’s name.
But then, we’ve never talked about her because most of the time I forget he’s been married and that he has a son.
When I think about it, which I do, a lot, this is only the fourth time Alex and I have seen each other.
The rest of the time, he’s been in the US.
It’s made the week we spend together each month extra intense, where we focus on each other to the exclusion of anyone else except, occasionally, Alex’s sister and her husband.
But all that is changing as Alex will now be dividing his time equally between the US and the UK, two weeks there, two weeks here.
A thrill of pleasure rushes through me at the thought of him being a more permanent fixture in my life, followed by the usual crushing guilt at feeling happy.
You’ve atoned enough, I tell myself fiercely.
For fourteen years, you’ve punished yourself, denied yourself.
Surely you deserve some happiness? “It’s a pretty name,” I say, returning to the subject of Alex’s ex-wife. “What’s she like?”
He picks up his glass and swirls the ice cubes around. “She’s very nice, reasonable and intelligent, except when it comes to Stephane. He’s her weak spot. In her eyes, he can do no wrong.”
“You said you don’t see him. Can I ask why?”
“It’s complicated. For a start, he blames me for the divorce.”
“Were you to blame? I mean, did you meet someone else?”
“No, it was nothing like that.” He places his glass back on the table without taking a drink, as if the mention of his son has spoiled his enjoyment of the evening.
“Simply put, Delphine and I couldn’t agree on parenting.
From the start, she spoiled and indulged Stephane and to counteract, I was stricter with him.
In his eyes, she became the good parent and I became the bad parent and boy, did he play us off against each other. ”
I give him a sympathetic smile. “That must have been tough. How old was he when you divorced?”
“Fourteen. Believe me, if I’d thought that staying together would be better for our son, I wouldn’t have left.
But the situation was untenable. There was never any backup from Delphine.
She just couldn’t say no to Stephane and he began pushing any boundary I set.
He had no respect for either me or his mother and the arguments were draining for all of us.
In the end, Delphine asked me to leave, saying that her life would be calmer without me in it and our son agreed.
” The pain in his voice is tangible. “I was working in the US most of the time anyway so I gave them the space they needed and stayed away, although I’m in regular contact with Delphine by phone and see her whenever I’m in Paris visiting my mother.
But Stephane has always refused any contact with me.
” He pauses a moment. “A couple of years ago, I tried to renew my relationship with him because I thought that at eighteen years old, he might have grown up a bit. But he didn’t want to see me.
In his eyes, I abandoned him by divorcing his mother even though it was Delphine who asked for the divorce.
She eventually met someone else and wanted to get married.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work out due, from what my mother told me, to Stephane, who wouldn’t accept Delphine’s new husband.
” He sighs. “He was an angry child, an angry teenager, and now he’s an angry young man.
My wife and I failed him horribly. We weren’t mature enough to have a child, I guess.
” He gives me a smile. “Let’s change the subject; I don’t want to think about my son tonight. He makes me feel a failure.”
“I’m glad you’ll only be away for two weeks this time,” I say.
He takes my hand, kisses it. “Even that’s too long. But for now, I can’t do otherwise.”
“I don’t expect you to. It’s already enough you’re cutting down the time you spend in the US. I know how hard you’ll have to work when you’re there to make up for it.”
“It’s worth it,” he says, looking deep into my eyes. “You’re worth it.”
My insides turn to liquid. “Do we have to have dinner?”
“Not if you don’t want to.”
“Do you want to?”
He pushes his chair back, his eyes still on mine. “Not anymore.”
He pays the bill while I get my coat.
“Shall we take a taxi?” he asks as we leave the restaurant. “It’ll be quicker.”
“No, let’s walk. Anticipation, and all that,” I tease.
He smiles. “I hope it’s never greater than the event.”
“No,” I say, taking his hand. “Never.”
The mews house where I live is situated at the far end of a little cul-de-sac in Paddington.
The street is so narrow that it’s impossible for a car to turn around, so delivery vans have to back down to deposit their load.
Alex knows how it came to be mine and he knows I was brought up in care.
But that’s all he knows about my past. When we arrive, we go straight to bed and only get up to make a hasty bowl of pasta, which we eat sitting at the island in the kitchen, our barstools turned toward each other, our legs wedged together, our free hands caressing each other, until we can’t bear it any longer and go back to bed.
I should sleep well, with Alex beside me.
But once he’s asleep, I find myself reaching for my laptop.
Alex doesn’t wake as I type a name into the search bar.
Even that small act sets my heart racing and I take a breath to brace myself, then press “enter.” Headline articles flash up on the screen and as I scroll down, other words kaleidoscope from the text—“stalker,” “obsession,” “murder attempt,” “court case.”
Feeling breathless, I slam my laptop shut.