The Love of Her Life

‘No, really,’ said Kate desperately, stupidly hoping that if she warded him off then what was about to happen might not happen.

Andrew stepped back. ‘Look,’ he said, crestfallen at her apparent horror. ‘I just wanted to ask you out when you get back. Maybe see if you wanted to go for a coffee, see a movie some time. But I guess – I guess that’s not such a great idea at the moment. With your dad, and all. I’m sorry.’

‘Ah,’ said Kate, feeling rotten that she was hiding behind her dad’s kidney transplant to get out of a date she didn’t want to go on. ‘You’re right. It’s – not a good time for me right now.’

God I sound American she thought. I really must go home.

‘Of course it’s not,’ Andrew nodded. ‘Hey. When you get back, if it is a good time – call me. OK?’

‘Sure,’ said Kate. ‘Sure.’

‘I promise not to talk about the novel,’ said Andrew. ‘Much.’

She looked at him, into his big brown eyes, as he smiled at her in the street, the lanterns from the bar next door swaying in the breeze behind him.

‘I just kind of like you, Kate,’ he said. ‘There’s – there’s something about you. You’re cool. I – I guess.’

He scuffed the pavement with his toe and she watched him, her heart pounding. It had been so long since someone had said anything like that to her and, to be honest, she had thought they never would again.

‘Oh,’ she said, and a lock of her dark blonde hair fell into her face. He looked at her, and pushed it off her cheek, his fingers stroking her skin. Kate met his gaze, shaking her head. Something was wrong.

‘Andrew,’ she said. ‘I –’

He bent his head and kissed her. His touch, his warm lips on hers, his hands on her ribs. Perhaps –

But she couldn’t. And the force of her response surprised her, for Kate pushed him away and said, breathlessly,

‘No. I’m sorry, no.’

She gave a huge, shuddering sigh.

Andrew stepped back, blinking uncertainly. He looked bewildered.

‘I’m – my god, I’m sorry.’

‘No,’ Kate said. She was almost backing away from him, she realized, trying to escape, like a cornered animal. ‘It’s not you. It’s me.’

He wiped his mouth with his hand, almost in disgust. She smiled. ‘No, really. I mean that. It’s the oldest cliché in the book – but in my case it’s totally true … it really is me.’

‘Right,’ said Andrew formally. He brushed something off his shirt. ‘I’m just – I’m sorry if I offended you. I thought –’

Kate held out both her hands, still keeping him at a distance. A couple walking down the sidewalk, who didn’t want to break their joint stride, bumped into her and she stumbled.

‘Look,’ she said, still breathing heavily, ‘I’m sorry, again. It really is me, Andrew, and I wish it wasn’t.’ She looked around, wildly, and he watched her.

‘Yeah,’ he said, after a while. ‘Betty said something.’

‘What?’ said Kate.

Andrew nodded, and looked at his feet. ‘Hey, it’s no big deal. She said some guy screwed you over. Something bad happened to you in London.’

She loved the way certain Americans always said the word ‘London’, investing it with a certain amount of reverence. ‘You could say that,’ she said. She winced, and looked up at him, not sure how he was taking all of this. ‘Hey –’ she began.

‘It’s no big deal,’ he said. ‘Really, it isn’t.’ He ran his hands through his hair. ‘You wanna cab?’

‘Sure,’ said Kate. ‘That’d be –’

Andrew whistled, and almost immediately, as if he were calling up the Batmobile, a cab zoomed around the corner. ‘So,’ he said. He held the door open. ‘See you around, I guess.’

‘Sure,’ said Kate. ‘Yeah. Upper West Side, Eightieth and Broadway. Thanks.’

The cab pulled off; through its greasy window she watched Andrew as he turned and walked off. Kate touched her fingers to her lips as the car sped through mid-town. She was shaking, and she didn’t know why.

The traffic was light, miraculously. Please go through Times Square, she willed the cab driver. Please, go on. Out of the window the lights of Broadway grew closer and they headed past Macy’s, and a sense of disgust came over her. Why had she let that happen with Andrew? Why couldn’t she just have kissed him and jumped into a cab? Maybe arranged to see him when she got back? Why did she have to behave like that? What was she going to say to him, to Betty?

I’m too good at running away, she said softly under her breath. She put her head against the glass, watching the reflection of her skin as the streets rushed by and they came to Times Square. Kate loved Times Square, much to Oscar and her mother’s horror. She couldn’t tell them why she loved it, quite, it never seemed to make sense. She loved the anonymity of it, the adrenaline that came with it. You could be wholly yourself, a unit of one, walking on its concrete, neon-lit stage. You could stand in the centre of the traffic all day and twirl around – and no one would look at you. She loved the contradiction of it – when she first came to see her mother, and went looking for Times Square, she had spent ages trying to find an actual square. She didn’t know now what she’d been picturing in her head: a stately square of London houses, with a garden in the centre, railings around the edge, perhaps? And when she’d realized this was it, this grey meeting of roads, stretched out over three or so blocks, she had laughed. It was unlike anything she’d ever seen before, it was utterly unlike London.

Twenty-four hours’ time, and she’d be on the plane. Twenty-four hours’ time, and her dad’s stay in hospital would nearly be over. Less than forty-eight hours till she saw him again. Till she was back there again … The lights of Manhattan flickered and flashed into Kate’s cab, the theatre signs, the road signs, the bars and restaurants and clubs, flickering on her face, keeping her alert, but then, suddenly, she was very tired.

CHAPTER THREE (#u1a88c0c4-05e2-5666-9ccb-685953012233)

There was a backlog at Heathrow, and Kate’s plane circled over London, coming in from the east, flying straight across the centre of the city. It was the perfect bird’s-eye view. Kate shifted in her window seat, her hands resting lightly on the stack of magazines she’d been reading, and stared down at the view, craning her neck in excitement. The huge jet followed the path of the Thames, its tiny black shadow flickering through the streets and places below. The river was bluer than she remembered. She’d forgotten how green it all was, how many open spaces there were. They flew over the Houses of Parliament, glowing gold in the early morning light, as the centre of the city stretched away in front of them. Kate twisted in her seat, following the path of Regent Street all the way up to Regent’s Park, the Telecom Tower, King’s Cross away to the side, as they headed west.

It looked like a toytown, Legoland, and she couldn’t reconcile it with what had gone on before. In those tiny streets below her, in that park there, in that tall building just beyond the river – yes, it was all still there.

The wheel on Kate’s trolley didn’t work. Of course it didn’t, they never did. It got stuck, and whirled around on its own, and consequently the trolley made a loud, juddering noise, like a goods train thundering through the night, which caused the other passengers and those waiting to greet them to look at Kate with a stare of disapproval, as if she personally was making the noise herself, had taken a large mallet to it and bashed it repeatedly, to cause maximum annoyance to others.

Kate never understood people who said airports were full of romance or love. Not only had no one ever met her at an airport (except her mother, and that hardly counted), she wouldn’t want them to meet her. Reunited with the love of your life under polystyrene ceiling tiles, strip lighting and grey upholstery? No thanks. She struggled with the trolley, flaring her elbows out to manoeuvre it around corners, trying not to let hopelessness and the strangeness of the situation overwhelm her. Taxi. She needed a taxi. A good old black London cab and she pushed on through to the arrivals hall, vaguely registering the expectant faces of people waiting as she went. Kate had learnt, now. She didn’t even bother to look around. She had long given up playing that game in her head.

It was a sunny day. Warm and fresh, with a cool little breeze whipping about. It smelled of spring, of something in the air, even there at the airport. Spring had come to London, and she felt it as she crossed the tarmac to the cab rank, as a man in a blue sou’wester waved her into a cab, and nodded politely as she said ‘thank you’. He helped her in with her bags, the cab driver tutted proprietorially over her and said, ‘Mind your head, love,’ as they both heaved the heavier of her suitcases into the back with her. She thought of JFK, of how fast it all was, how the director of the cab rank barked questions at you, of how fast the cab drivers went, manically swerving from lane to lane, talking wildly to their friends on an earpiece.

But although she kept expecting something dramatic to happen, for someone to leap at her and stop her, or yell at her, nothing did, and so the taxi moved off, gliding along smoothly. They reached the Heathrow roundabout, where the daffodils bobbed in the sunny breeze and the motorway opened up in front of her and they headed into London.

On a grey motorway, how prosaic, but there she was, and as the redbrick streets flew past she looked for the old familiar signs, like the old Lucozade sign, but that was gone; the blue and gold dome of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral, Fuller’s Brewery at the roundabout. She stopped trying to think and simply sat there, drinking it all in, wondering how she’d got there, and most of all, how her father was, and what would happen now.

And then suddenly they were there, turning off Maida Vale, into the long tree-lined boulevard, where the buds on the elms were just visible, and they were grinding to a halt outside the red-brick building, and the bin with the face painted onto the lid was still outside. Kate didn’t get out of the car. She looked around only as the cab driver pulled her bags out onto the pavement, puffing, and said,

‘Alright, love?’

He opened the door, regarding her curiously. She knew he was probably thinking, Uh-oh. Is she actually a bit … mad. Kate blinked at him, suddenly, as if he were speaking Martian.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Yes.’

‘Is this where you want?’

‘Yes,’ said Kate, stepping out onto the pavement, though actually what she really wanted to say was, I’ve changed my mind, can we go back to the airport? ‘Yes, it is.’

She gave him money and thanked him; he drove away, with a hand-wave out of the window. She felt like an alien, she couldn’t remember how to behave. She looked down at the paving slabs on the pavement. Rectangular, scratchy dark grey, slightly cracked. It was silly. She’d forgotten what they were like here.