Finally, Luke’s in bed asleep and I sit in the kitchen and cry. I have failed him so badly. I kept all men away thinking it was the right thing to do, but now it feels like I was wrong.
I find a bottle of white wine in a cupboard and open it, not caring that it’s not the right temperature – the sort of thingJean-Luc used to worry about. I’ve been holding on to the pain from the past too much. It’s time to think about the future.
30
Sid
Friday evening and the January rain is coming down as if every cloud in the sky got an urgent memo to dump all supplies, now. I’m getting soaked as I run through the puddles, wondering why I’d got a bus rather than a taxi and was wearing a skirt and not my combat trousers.
Yet, I know why. Because I don’t want to talk to one of my nice taxi drivers who know me well and will wonder about my outfit – veryun-me – or why I’m quivering with weirdly excited nerves. I feel incredibly first datish, which is ludicrous because I genuinely can’t think of the last time I went on a first date.
Head down, I make it to the Stella and Finn is there, waiting for me with a big umbrella, and I hurry and stand under it because, naturally, I have not brought mine.
‘It wasn’t raining when I left,’ I say, and he smiles down at me. I’ve forgotten how tall he is, six something, Stefan’s height. I’m useless at height. Most short people are. For the first time since I’ve met him, Finn is not in casual, where’s-the-mountain clothes. He’s wearing dark trousers, a verynon-casual grey woollen jacket, white shirt and a fine grey sweater. He’s dressed up. For thisnon-date involving twojust-friends meeting to see a movie.
‘Should we go in?’ he says, his eyes never leaving my face and yet I feel he’s taken in the skirt of my dress, mysheeny-hosiery legs in the neat little pumps I break out for important meetings.
And against some of my better judgement I nod, and with one long arm he pushes the doors open and I brush past him into the heat.
I had gone online to look up the Stella. An old 1923 cinema, it’s been refurbished to look like it might have done in more glamorous 1920s style, complete with a ritzy cocktail bar. It’s an elegant cinema with lots of little table lamps and fabulous seating. He takes off my coat and gives it a little shake, because it’s now just a soggy mess, and reaches out to touch my shoulders to see if I’m dry. Normally, I don’t let people touch me, but this is OK, this is Finn checking whether I’m dry or not, the same way he needed to check if my rucksack was on correctly.
The cocktail bar is glorious with a chandelier and an air of utter excitement and glamour to it.
‘This is beautiful,’ I say.
‘Yes, isn’t it. The photos don’t do it justice,’ he says, looking around.
‘You mean you haven’t been here before?’
‘No,’ he says, ‘not the sort of place I normally go.’ He smiles at me, a smile that crinkles up his eyes and sucks all the oxygen from the room.
‘But, you know, on other dates,’ I ask, shocked to find that I’m actually angling for information about other women he might have taken out. Like Mags, or Ivanna the Terrible – was she tall and beautiful? I want to know. And what was sohigh-maintenance about her?
‘You’re the first person I thought of to bring here,’ he says, ‘because it’s different, special, like something out of another age. And that seemed to sum up you.’
I keep my head down until we find a banquette, not wanting him to see that I’m blushing. We sit down and a waitress comes by and definitely shoots Finn an admiring glance. Hey, sister, hands off, he’s mine, I want to say.
I recklessly order a Martini, while Finn sticks to sparkling water.
‘I brought the car,’ he says, ‘so I could drive you home.’
We sit there for a minute in silence while I look around and I shiver because my cardigan is damp. Despite the heating, I’m cold, but I’ll wait to take off my black cardigan when it’s dark and he can’t see.
‘Take my jacket,’ says Finn.
I look at him and his face is a little set, different to the way it normally is.
‘Please,’ he says, ‘take off your cardigan and I won’t look.’
I’m touched he’s picked up on my shyness. Underneath I’m wearing a sleeveless dress, which is probably not the right thing to wear in Ireland in icy, wet January, but it was the mostdate-like thing in my wardrobe. I put his jacket on over me. It’s huge and the soft silkiness of the lining is like a living thing draped around me, like his arms, and it feels wonderful. I fold it around me.
‘Thank you,’ I say.
‘No problem,’ he says.
‘Gentlemen used to always provide ladies with their jackets when they were cold, didn’t you ever see it in movies? And I used to wonder why the guys would sit there and not shiver?’
‘Because it was the correct thing to do and gentlemen in those movies were not allowed to shiver; it was written into the contract: no shivering. Ruins the effect,’ he quips, deadpan.
