‘Goodnight Nick,’ she said. Then she climbed into the taxi and left.
I waited until the lights of the car had disappeared round the corner before I started walking. It had turned chilly this evening, and I stuffed my hands in my pockets and put my head down against the stiff breeze. It was still early, only just after nine o’clock and I felt bad that I’d dismissed Katy so quickly afterwe’d finished eating. Should I have offered to take her for a drink, or go for a walk?
But I needed to clear my head, and the half-hour walk home felt like a good time to do that.
The date had been nice, more so than I’d expected. Katy was lovely, and I could see why Andy had thought we might like each other. I’d even managed to avoid talking too much about Dawn.
But there was no spark, not helped by the fact that I’d spent most of the time thinking about Emma. What would it be like to go for dinner with her, to sit across from each other in a candlelit restaurant, holding hands across the table, gazing into each other’s eyes? To leave together, to share a kiss? To go to bed together?—
Stop it, Nick.
Poor Katy. She deserved someone who wasn’t hung up on a woman he could never have.
I shoved my hands deeper into my pockets. I was almost halfway home when I passed the entrance to the park. I slowed down, wondering whether to go inside. It was pitch black, but I could hear a noise, a rumble of voices, in the distance, and I stopped and listened for a moment. What was that?
I pushed the gate open, my steps quickening as I followed the path towards the sound. I barely glanced at the bandstand on my left, and soon I could see lights shining through the darkness too. I could make out crowds of people, and then a stage, lit up from above. I stopped.
This was the open-air theatre Emma had mentioned. I’d never been here before, at least not when something was playing. I moved closer, the makeshift stage slowly coming into focus.
A sign was propped up a few feet away and I headed towards it, peering down to make out the words.
I knew what it was going to say before I saw it, and my heart stopped beating when I realised its significance.
The Importance of Being Earnest, a play by Oscar Wilde
I played Cecily Cardew in The Importance of Being Ernest.
Emma’s words rang in my ears and I felt dizzy. Emma was here, right now, on that stage, just a few feet away from me.
She was right here.
My breath felt tight in my chest as I inched forward, closer and closer towards the back of the crowd, squinting through the darkness. My heart thumped wildly. I shouldn’t be doing this. Seeing Emma now, aged just seventeen, would only reinforce to me how wrong this whole thing was.
And yet I couldn’t leave either.
I hardly dared breathe as I stared at the stage, glancing nervously at the wings to see whether she was lurking in the shadows. And then, she appeared.
I knew I should leave, but I was rooted to the spot.
My chest felt tight, my pulse thumped wildly as I watched, her pale skin and flaming red hair so familiar to me. I had no idea how long I stood there in the cool night air, but as the play came to an end it took everything I had not to call out her name.
The stage emptied, and the crowd slowly began to leave. A wind had got up and I shivered as it cooled my skin, but still I didn’t move.
Emma was here and she was real.
‘Excuse me, sir, could you make your way towards the exit now please,’ a voice called and I turned with a start. What was I still doing here?
‘Sorry,’ I mumbled. And suddenly, as though a spell had been broken, I knew I needed to get out of there.
I turned and followed the last of the lingering audience into the darkness of the park. I pulled the collar of my jacket up and started walking – and then stopped dead. Because there was Emma, right in front of me. Standing between two people who were clearly her parents, her dad on one side, her mum on the other.
‘I’m so proud of you,’ I heard her dad say, and Emma’s face lit up. And then she looked at me and our eyes locked and I could barely breathe.
She looked away again, turned back to her dad and walked right past me, as though I wasn’t there.
And then she was gone.
I lay in bed for a long time that night, unable to shake the image of seventeen-year-old Emma from my mind.
