‘All right! Back to it!’ Michael suddenly interrupted, aiming his coffee cup into the bin and missing.
‘Well, that told me!’ Oscar laughed.
‘You’re a theatre boy now, Oz! You’ve got to learn our ways at some point and it’s probably best you know before we get into the theatre and you come face to face with a ghostie!’ Olive poked him in the ribs and sauntered off to take upher position in the scene they were rehearsing.
‘Oz…’ Oscar smiled, enjoying the nickname he’d never been given and enjoying even more that it’d been given to him by her.
‘I really don’t want to behere,’ Olive shouted to the bartender over the music, knowing full well that no one would be able to hear her and those close enough to potentially lip read were too drunk to care.
‘No one does,’ he groaned back and slid a rhubarb gin with elderflower tonic into her hand. ‘On the house, Olive. We never see you here any more.’
‘You remembered.’ She smiled, raising the glass to him.‘No, my days of hardcore partying are over, I think. I got too old, too fast!’ She laughed.
‘Well, it’s nice to have you here for a night at least.’ He reached over and squeezed her hand and Olive felt incredibly guilty for not remembering his name.
The entire cast seemed to have eluded her. Familiar faces swam through the crowd but were lost the moment she blinked. It was only thenthat she spotted the sweaty faces of Tamara and Jane up on a platform above the rest of the drunken crowd, a pole between them, their hair stuck to their faces and alcohol sloshing over the sides of their glasses. Olive couldn’t believe they’d had the outfits they were now wearing with them in their bags, and idly wondered if all women carried slinky dresses and high heels just in case the occasionto wear them suddenly arose, or if Tamara and Jane were anomalies. It didn’t matter to Olive either way. Even if she’d known about the night out prior to leaving her house that morning, she still would have chosen to wear the same clothes.
‘I really don’t want to be here either.’ Oscar’s lips brushed close to her ear and Olive was acutely aware of his hand on her hip. She could feel itswarmth through the thin fabric of her London-bus-red dress. Olive took a large swig of her drink and turned awkwardly in the crush at the bar to face him.
‘Do you… do you want to go somewhere else?’ She leant closer to him, but nowhere near as close as he had dared. Oscar blinked slowly, drained the last of his beer and let his hand find hers. He tugged on her fingers and led her as besthe could through the crowd. Olive had only had a sip of her drink, but she couldn’t seem to focus on anyone’s faces. Maybe it was the thumping bass of the music, the roar of everyone shouting over each other or maybe it was the fact that every cell in her body was now fixated on the feel of Oscar’s warm fingers wrapped around her palm. Everything else was simply secondary.
The cold airwas welcome against their sweaty bodies as they emerged onto the bustling street. They walked mainly in silence past the loud bars and clubs full of people enjoying a night out. Hundreds of words spilled out of the open doors and splashed at their feet. Their own conversation would have been lost amidst the noise, so they spoke only in nervous smiles and in the briefest of brushes with their hands.That said more than enough for both of them. They turned a corner and Oscar finally took Olive’s hand in his, clutching it to his warm chest. It was half past ten at night and he knew just the place to take her.
‘Home!’ He grandly gestured to a large square in front of them, lined with houses. In the centre was a small fenced and gated park, in which Olive could just make out brightly colouredchildren’s climbing frames through the gaps in the hedges. ‘Well, it used to be for a while, anyway.’
‘No way! I love it around here,’ Olive cried as she crossed the road with Oscar, his heartbeat thudding against the back of her palm.
‘See where the light is up there?’ He took her by the shoulders and pointed to a window on the third floor of one of the tall and narrow houses. ‘Thatwas my room.’
‘Your room?’ Olive queried, looking up at the cream-coloured walls.
‘Well, our room. It was Zadie’s flat.’
‘She doesn’t live there any more?’
‘No. We were going to move into a house together before we split up. She went ahead with the move without me. Still, the bad memories haven’t managed to fog up this place just yet. I miss living there, despite notreally missing who I was living with.’
‘She can’t have been that bad?’ Olive laughed.I bet she was, she thought.
‘She was,’ he said.Called it, she thought.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Olive, and she really did mean it, despite enjoying that he didn’t seem too attached to his ex even though they broke up only a few months prior. They were still facing the flat, Olive not wanting tolook at Oscar. She always felt more comfortable talking when no one was looking at her and so she afforded him the same courtesy.
‘No need to be. I hated the house she’s in now. It was the house she wanted for her, not the house she wanted for us.’ She felt him shrug. ‘I miss that flat, though. And it means I can’t get into this park any more.’ He turned to face the gated shrubs. ‘BUT,if you’re willing to climb the railings…’
‘You’ve been watching too many movies,’ she laughed, walking to the black railings and giving them a jiggle to test their strength.
‘Just one,’ he confessed.
‘Notting Hill?’
‘Bingo.’ He kicked a stone with his shoe that pinged against the gate.
‘Well, I’m not willing to climb these railings,’ Olive said, taking a stepbackwards.
‘Not even if I hoist you over the top?’ He interlinked his fingers and spread out his palms as a foothold.
‘Not even then,’ she said, taking another step away from him, her back hitting a green electrical box.
