‘Sì,’ he says then, reaching for his wallet. ‘Voglio—’ He holds up one finger. ‘Uno.’ He looks defeated. ‘One, please.’
He gives his girlfriend the flower. She takes it, studies it, runs her finger over the length of the stem. She isn’t laughing any more. ‘No one has ever bought me a rose,’ she says.
Her boyfriend’s eyes travel over her. ‘I find that hard to believe.’
‘It’s true.’
‘Not even…?’ He takes a swig from the neck of his bottle. Raises his eyebrows.
The woman from seat 13C wonders who he means. His girlfriend seems to know exactly who.
She shakes her head. ‘Definitely not.’
The boyfriend looks almost pleased. ‘Prick.’
She chews her lip, turns her eyes downwards. ‘He was.’
The boyfriend looks serious. ‘He was?’
She sighs. ‘We made this short film together.’ She looks up at him. ‘Not the black-and-white one I told you I wanted to do. This was before.’ She shakes her head. ‘He said I was hard to work with. Hopelessly insecure.’ She grits her teeth. ‘Overbearing. Possessive. He used to go after other girls, but only so I’d try and catch him. So he could make me make a scene.’ She sniffs. ‘I know how that sounds. I spent so much of my life feeling irrational or immature.’ She closes her eyes. ‘I can’t tell you how many times he called me crazy. They all did. They all believed it.’ Her eyes open again. ‘Why wouldn’t they?’ she says. ‘I kept going back to him.’
‘Clara…’
He reaches across the table for her hand. She lets him take it. The woman watching them feels like she might cry.
‘Sorry,’ the girlfriend says. ‘Overshare.’ She smiles lightly. ‘When I look back on it, I think he was the jealous one. Or afraid. Of losing me. Of me realising I didn’t need him.’
‘You’re giving him too much credit.’
‘I know,’ she says. ‘He wasn’t a nice person.’ A pause. ‘It’s still hard, sometimes, to believe he was wrong. To believe that I can make anything worth something.’ Her voice falters. ‘To believe thatI’mworth something.’
The boyfriend is still leaning across, still staring at her. He squeezes her hand, his eyes dark and intense. ‘You’re everything,’ he says.
She laughs, waves the topic away. ‘Your turn.’
It’s a joke. But it also isn’t. She expects something from him, for him to bare some trauma of his own. The moment passes. The girlfriend looks down. And the woman who once sat in seat 13C is so caught up in the subtext of that look that she doesn’t see the man with the roses until he has arrived above her. Her breath catches, her hand rising to her chest. She comes back to herself, to her table and the vendor looming over it. If she were with her husband, he’d say that the roses are a rip-off. Two euros for one? And where are you going to put it? We leave tomorrow, and we’re not taking it with us.
But her husband isn’t here. She looks back to the couple, who are standing silently to leave, counting out the change for their bill.
She thinks about buying a rose for herself.
She doesn’t have to. The man who was at the table behind her, the man drinking alone in an open-necked shirt, is already paying for one, already handing it to her. Don’t I know youfrom somewhere? She searches the corners of her mind. Why would you recognise one face out of nine hundred and ninety-nine? The handsome bellhop looks different out of his uniform. He’s not looking through her, now. He’s looking at her, and she knows what that look means. She might blush, might avert her eyes, but she won’t protest when he asks if he can take the spare seat at her table.
The young couple walk off along the cobbles, her head nestled into his side, his arm threaded protectively around her waist. When they reach the river, they turn to one another, share a slow kiss. But the woman from seat 13C isn’t watching them any more.
a pianist
She begins slowly, with a ladder of gentle notes that ascend and then descend again, a Penrose staircase of chords that echo through the atrium.
She’s been playing the piano since she was a child, and though she now has no space for one at home, no time, she makes an effort to play these station pianos, when she can. To take a seat while waiting for a train and to fill a station with music, her fingers always stiff at first, everything soon loosening like a great knot. This music still fills her waking life. She spends her days as a surgeon, performing operations that are time-critical. She works to a carefully curated playlist of six pieces, one for each step. First song, remove the tumour. Fourth song, complete the outer stitching. So on. She never wants to hear Chopin’s Nocturne No. 19, because that would mean she’s about to run out of time.
Here in St Pancras Station, she has all the time in the world, so it is the Chopin she plays. She lets her bag fall from her shoulder, allows herself to lose herself. When she finally opens her eyes, she sees a heady mix of travellers. A woman in a denim skirt with white cowboy boots. Another in knee-lengthshorts, with not one but two lacrosse sticks. A man, tall and tattooed, with a dog, short and scruffy, riding the escalator up the concourse. When he reaches the top, he almost collides with the woman waiting for him, the one holding the bright and brilliant bouquet of flowers. The pianist’s heart swells with the music, and with the sight of it, a girlfriend handing her boyfriend flowers. A gesture of love suspended in amber, the gesture as the gesture is made. He laughs, and he kisses her. He takes the bouquet, takes her by the waist. He steers her towards their train.
his dad
He loves her, which is a good start. Enzo does not think that he has ever seen his son in love, except maybe with his teenage drum kit. They used to hate those drums, he and Helen. Now that the sound is gone, it’s amazing how cavernous a flat this small can feel. Today, things are full again. Today, every seat at their table is taken, which is exactly how Enzo likes it.
‘So,’ Helen says. ‘How did you two meet?’ She stops Seb before he can say anything. ‘I’ve heard your version. I’d like to hear Clara’s.’
