‘Her on–off boyfriend. She sometimes stays with him in Walthamstow.’
She’d told me when we first met that she lived in Walthamstow, near me. And that she had a group of housemates, one who kept stealing her food and whomshe had a crush on. Carl, or something like that. Not Jasper. ‘She doesn’t live in Walthamstow herself, then?’
‘No, she lives at home, with our parents in Muswell Hill. She’s saving up, she said. To buy her own flat.’
Another lie.
I agreed to go home with him. He told me his parents would be ‘chilled’ and I could sleep on the sofa. I didn’t usually go home with men I’d only just met. I’d never had a one-night stand. In fact, I’d only ever had one boyfriend, but I told myself Oliver wasn’t a stranger: I knew his sister. And his parents would be at home.
‘I love my sister and everything,’ he said, later that night as we sat chatting on the sofa in the dim light of his parents’ living room, ‘but she treats men like shit. Like Jasper. The poor guy is utterly loved up but she won’t commit to him. She’s nearly twenty-seven but likes to act like she’s seventeen! She only uses him when she wants to stay in Walthamstow because it’s closer to the hospital. She’s a bit fucked up, to tell you the truth. But then’ – he grinned at me in the half-light – ‘aren’t we all?’
Even then I jumped to defend her, telling him Simone had been good to me. ‘She’s kind, which not all my past supervisors have been.’
He tipped the remnants of the can of beer he’d been drinking into his mouth but didn’t agree.
‘She must be caring,’ I protested, irritated by his silence. ‘She works with babies.’
‘Oh, she fell into that.’ He pulled back the sleeve and showed me his wrist. ‘See that scar? She did that when I was four. She was ten and should have known better.’
‘So, you’re not close? I don’t have brothers or sisters. I don’t get this whole sibling thing.’
He put an arm around my shoulders and pulled me in closer, as though my words had endeared me to him. ‘We get on well now. But I wouldn’t cross her.’ He sounded flippant so I didn’t take him seriously, and we started talking about ourselves and our music tastes and our desires for the future, and the whole time he made me feel like I was the most interesting creature ever to cross his path. We talked until the sun came up, and Oliver made me a bacon sandwich and a strong cup of tea. As we sat at the kitchen table, our thighs touching, grinning stupidly at each other over our breakfast, I knew I wanted this time together never to end. We were inseparable for the rest of the weekend, and when he went back to university on the Monday, we promised we’d keep in touch.
On Tuesday, my next shift, I couldn’t help but watch Simone closely. She was kind and attentive to the expectant mothers, organized and efficient. Totally different, in fact, from the pill-popping, beer-swigging party girl I socialized with. I decided that Oliver was just being an annoying little brother, and that Dan had been drunk and, perhaps, jealous when he told me those things. Simone might party hard, but she worked hard too.
I didn’t have the chance to talk to Simone much during the day, but as I was changing out of my scrubs at the end of my shift I heard two colleagues come in. I’d worked with one of the girls, Becky someone or other: she’d qualified two years ahead of me. The other woman was older, a junior doctor. I realized they couldn’t see mebehind my locker door and they were already midway through a conversation.
‘She’s just another in a long line of women he’s shagged,’ Becky was saying. I could hear the rustle of coats and scarves being taken off. They must have been there for the night shift. ‘He’s got a wife and three little kids at home as well.’
‘Hugh Warrington is such a player,’ the junior doctor replied. She had a Scouse accent but I couldn’t remember her name and I’d only seen her from afar. ‘Doesn’t she know he’ll never leave his wife?’
‘Simone’s a smart cookie.’
I stiffened at Simone’s name.
‘They’re always together lately. Have you noticed? They’re not being discreet. I find him so arrogant. I don’t get what Simone sees in him.’
‘Heisa good doctor, but his morals are questionable. His wife has only recently had a baby …’
More rustling and the banging of locker doors. I didn’t know what to do, so I stayed quiet, hidden by my locker, and their voices faded as they left the room.
I hadn’t yet met a doctor called Hugh Warrington but I’d have put money on him being the well-dressed, older man I’d seen Simone with on Saturday night.
45
LENA
July 2024
The town is pretty with cobbled streets and colourful bunting fluttering between buildings. As I wander past the cathedral and bijou boutiques I imagine what it would be like to live here. Start afresh. Is that what Simone had thought too?
When I arrive Oliver is already seated at a table by the window. I can see him from where I hover on the street, his long fingers tapping against his cup. I hesitate, remembering the last time I saw him and the anger in his eyes. It was his idea to meet in Salisbury. It was roughly halfway, he said, between Bristol and Southampton, where he lived, but I wonder if it’s because this is where Simone worked. Was this her last known address?
It had been strange to hear Oliver on the phone yesterday. We had been inseparable after that first night together. Our relationship lasted only a few months but our love – or lust – had burned bright until it was extinguished by the truth about Simone. It had taken a long time to get overhim and, until I’d met Charlie, Oliver had been the love of my life.
He hadn’t revealed much on the phone and had seemed surprised that I was free to meet him at such short notice – I didn’t tell him this was my eighteenth wedding anniversary and that I’d forgotten to cancel the day off I’d booked before I split with my husband. I wonder what his own story is and why he, too, was free to meet on a Friday morning at the end of July. There are photos of him on Facebook: him, handsome and gym-toned, his wife petite and smiley and, for a wistful moment, I wondered what our life would have been like if we’d stayed together. I discounted it just as quickly. It might not have worked out with Charlie, but I’ll never regret meeting him or having Rufus.
Even at 10 a.m. my sleeveless white cotton dress is sticking to me. I’d carefully selected what to wear this morning and I know it’s because I want Oliver to think I haven’t let myself go. The café is fairly empty and I’m thankful for the fans set up in every corner of the room. Oliver glances up when I come in, goes back to his drink and does a comical double-take when he realizes it’s me. I rarely post photographs of myself on social media.
