Dominic and I meet in Battersea Park, a location I’ve chosen because it’s fairly easily accessible by public transport but isn’t too close to home for either of us.
It’s one of those see-your-breath frosty days, with a piercing blue sky and yellow sun that make outside look a lot more appealing from the warmth of inside than it actually is when you get into the freeze-you-to-the-bone air. I’m fully wrapped up in a hat, scarf and gloves plus my thickest coat and woolly socks inside my boots, but am still far too cold to stand still.
We don’t hug or kiss each other hello, we just kind of do awkward waves.
Then I start walking, because my feet are fast becoming ice blocks, and Dominic follows.
‘How have you been this week?’ he asks.
I have decided that the best thing is to make a joke of The Night of the Shots, so I (very mildly humorously) say, ‘Hungover.’
‘Ha,’ Dominic says obligingly.
‘How haveyoubeen?’ I ask.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he tells me.
A tiny little shoot of something that I think might be hope springs up inside me, and I do my best to squash it. I don’t want to be hoping things about Dominic Rock. For all I know, he could just have been thinking about his laundry.
I say, ‘Oh,’ to encourage him to elaborate, because clearly I’m hoping he wasnothaving laundry thoughts.
‘I don’t really know how to phrase this,’ he says, immediately disappointing me, because if he wanted to say what I want him to want to say he’d know exactly how to phrase it. It’s three short words. He said them before, but they weren’t exactly unqualified. I want him to say them, mean them and act on them. Apparently, that is not going to happen now.
‘Oh,’ I repeat, despondently. I’ve just realised that the reason he wanted to meet is probably just to rehash our aeroplane conversation, in response to my stupid drunken outburst at the weekend. Maybe I should cut him off now, apologise and say he doesn’t owe me anything, and then we can go our separate ways.
‘So, basically, I’ve been an idiot,’ he says.
Not what I was expecting.
I nod, because it’s true.
‘You might have very different thoughts,’ he continues.
‘No, I agree,’ I say.
‘Agree?’
‘You are an idiot.’
‘Oh. Ha. Yes. Got it. Yep. That’s what you agreed with.’ He seems to be losing his mind.
‘And?’ I prompt. I’d like to end this torture quickly.
‘Yes, right. Yep, so I obviously am not assuming anything. But it’s just that, if you were…’ He stops talking and also stops walking, so I stop too and turn to face him.
‘Okay,’ he begins again. ‘I’m just going to say this. I apologise if it’s unwelcome.’ He fixes me with a very serious stare. I stare back.
We stand and mutually stare for a while and then I begin to stamp my feet a bit to warm them up (and possibly because I’m getting fed up with waiting).
And then, very suddenly, he blurts out, ‘I love you.’ Then he repeats, ‘I love you.’ Apparently on a roll now, he says again, ‘I love you.’
I want to be happy, but I don’t knowwhyhe’s said that. Is he trying to be kind after I embarrassed myself last weekend? Is he now going to tell me again that he can’t commit to me? It is not in fact kind to do another ‘I love youbut’.
‘I love you,’ he says yet again.
‘Just three short words,’ I observe.
Now it’s Dominic’s turn to reply, ‘Oh? Those three words beingI love you?’
