Green Smarties

A wee piece I wrote for the Sunday afternoon writers ...

*


Green Smarties


She prefers green Smarties, she’s afraid of cats and she’s in love with Colin Firth.
These, she thinks, are the essential facts.
She shifts her hips, trying to edge as far away from the lolling head of the snoring man beside her as the confined space of seat 32B will allow.
Yes, she decides – thanking her lucky stars that at least her short legs allow her some space to wriggle, even in steerage class – these are the only real truths she needs to hold onto.
Oh, there’s plenty of other stuff to know, in this fill-in-the-blank, stick-on-a-label world.
Name: Alison Jane Tennant
Age: 23
Sign: Virgo
She mistrusts such facts, their black-and-white smugness, their stubborn refusal to acknowledge that the world is a rainbow of shades of grey.
They tell you nothing anyway, these so-called facts.
They don’t tell you she hates the name Alison and much prefers to go by Jane.
They don’t tell you she scoffs at horoscopes and the idea of a destiny written in the stars (yes, she is shy, nitpicky and somewhat bossy, traits they tell her are written into her zodiac sign, but she chooses to blame her mother’s genes).
Facts say little about how she ended up here.
She can write the story so quickly in her mind when it’s just the facts.
Alison meets Neil. Alison says “I love you.” Neil says it back. Alison and Neil are happy together. Neil moves in to Alison’s apartment. Alison comes home early one day. Alison meets Rebecca. Rebecca is in Neil’s bed. Neil and Rebecca are naked.
Alison leaves.
Facts, Jane thinks, don’t tell the story at all.
Fact: She loved to look at him.
Facts don’t reveal the sense of awe that crept over her when she stared at him, her wonderment at the perfection of the blue eyes and the flashing smile that had turned so surprisingly her way. She’d often tease him he was almost as cute as Colin, but she knew there was no comparison. She wouldn’t have even noticed Colin if Neil was in the room.
Fact: She loved to hold him.
Facts don’t cover the way he filled her with that enveloping warmth, the glow that started deep down in her core and slowly expanded to fill every part of her, every inch of muscle and bone and skin.
Fact: She loved to surprise him.
Facts don’t do justice to the moment when she walked in the door, already smiling at the thought of the “ta-da” that she’d use to announce her early arrival home from work.
She heard the female giggle as she crossed the floor to the closed bedroom door, not even registering the noise until she turned the handle.
Then she watched it happen, feeling curiously detached, as though somehow her own presence wasn’t part of the scene unfolding in front of her.
The sudden swish of a mane of red-brown hair – hair, Alison noted, that was just the colour she’d always wanted her own sandy locks to be. The flash of a long sleek tanned leg as a slim brown pair of feet landed on the floor, their owner hastily wrapping herself in a robe – Alison’s robe, she noted with something approaching amusement; the green one Neil had given her for Christmas.
Neil. Sitting abruptly upright. Not even pulling the covers over him to hide his nakedness.
“Alison …” he began.
“Do us both a favour,” she heard herself say in an oddly cool voice. “Don’t even say it. There’s nothing to explain.”
She felt the corners of her lips turn up in a smile, the automatic response forming on her face as she turned to the intruder.
“I’m Alison,” she said in the same cool voice. “I used to live here.”
Those facts don’t reveal the hard knot that started in her chest at that moment, the cracking, splintering feeling that threatened to tear her in two and left her frangible, as though the faintest puff of a baby’s breath might shatter all that was left of what used to be Alison.
It was Jane who caught the flight to England.

*

He sorts his Smarties by colour, he’s allergic to cats and he’s always had a thing for American accents.
These, Nigel thinks as he stares at the bottom of his empty pint glass, are the kind of frivolous truths about himself he never shares with anybody.
No one wants to hear that sort of thing when they could be discussing the purchase of his new flat in Islington or the fate of Arsenal at the weekend or how he manages to balance his job in the City with his pub nights with the lads and his picture-perfect relationship with the woman Harry always calls “the wondrous Miranda.”
Miranda.
He could never help the smile that crept into his voice when he said the word, the tiny note of pride he tried hard to suppress whenever the approving nods and back-slaps came from the others. He remembers every moment of the night she’d walked into the pub.
It wasn’t just his attention she’d caught.
Dark hair in a mane down her back, swinging slightly as she walked. Tall. Slender. Dressed in a trim, tailored grey suit that even Nigel could tell hadn’t come off the rack at H&M. A suit sufficiently conservative as to find favour with the number-crunchers in the City but with the skirt skimming just snug enough over trim buttocks to suggest there was plenty waiting to be discovered underneath.
Model? Actress? No, television presenter, they decided as their heads all swivelled in unison to follow her progress across the smoky room – a Wimbledon audience with their focus on only one player.
They’d all watched her.
But it had fallen to Nigel to go speak to her when Harry – in his usual booming fashion – announced to the table at large that it was time for Nigel to get over his moping over Emma and move on to finer things.
“Don’t get much finer than that one, do they, mate?” the red-haired drinker said with a theatrical leer, nudging Nigel so hard his Caffrey’s sloshed over the edge of the pint glass.
Nigel stared over at the dark-haired, grey-suited embodiment of feminine perfection and raised an eyebrow at Harry.
“I’m not in her league, old chap.” Nigel mocked Harry’s public-school voice with his own best I could-have-gone-to-Eton-too-I-just-chose-not-to accent. “In fact, I venture to suggest that I am not even a spectator on the field at the match she’s playing in.”
Harry punched him, sloshing more dark beer onto the tabletop.
“As my dear departed grandmother was wont to say, piffle.” Harry gestured at Nigel, waving his hand up and down in front of him as a television presenter might in front of a game show prize. “You’re successful, you’re wearing a tie and you’re not entirely repulsive to those of the female persuasion. I say you’re going to introduce yourself to her, and if you don’t come back with her number I’ll buy you a pint.”
Whether the first two pints had given him an unusual streak of bravery or the prospect of seeing Harry part willingly with four pounds fifty of his own unearned fortune motivated his feet to move despite himself, Nigel couldn’t have said.
But he went.
And found himself on the receiving end of a slow, inviting smile topped by a laughing pair of brown eyes.
“I hoped it would be you who came over,” she said. “I’m Miranda. Can I get you a drink?”
It was all so easy after that.
Even Harry had to express admiration for the speed with which the two became an item so accepted that soon you couldn’t say one name without the other. Nigel-and-Miranda. Miranda-and-Nigel.
Even Harry had to appreciate the ease with which Miranda invited herself into all their lives, stopping by the pub on Thursdays just long enough to ask after Graham’s football exploits, challenge Steve to a round of darts and indulge in a witty echange of extravagant compliments with Harry before making her way home. She always kissed Nigel with just the right mix of teasing promise and public decorum, telling him to stay as late as he liked, she’d be waiting up.
He was never late.
And she was always waiting up, wearing “some old thing” she claimed to have dragged out of her bottom drawer, deliberately leaving the boxes from Agent Provocateur out in plain sight.
In fact, he contemplates as he stares at the still-empty bottom of his pint glass, he hadn’t seen so much black lace and satin in his entire twenty-eight years of life as he had in the eight months that followed his fateful walk across the pub to introduce himself to a vision in a tailored grey suit.
Harry wasn’t wrong, he thinks. Miranda is wondrous.
So how, he asks himself, almost aloud, has he ended up here?


*

Here. She’s been here two months. She’s crossed each twenty-four-hour chunk of time meticulously off on her calendar, recorded in her journal the mundanities of sixty-one days of existence on this still unfamiliar continent. Or, at least, the first twenty-one of them. After three weeks she realized there was little in her journal but a record of the same day repeated over and over again. Same weather (rain). Same food (beef-and-kindey pie, fish and chips, butter chicken from the Indian takeaway). Same commute to work (Northern Line tube to Leicester Square). Same day at the Irish Shop in Covent Garden (fold Aran sweaters, dust Belleek china, sell Waterford crystal to rich American tourists).
She still feels so new to this street, this grey unprepossessing place of crumbling brick houses and wrought-iron fences and cold damp basement flats, that she’s convinced the passersby can still smell the maple syrup that runs through her veins.
Her address still feels foreign to her when she writes it, slowly and neatly, on the back of the envelope she’s about to send off to Carmen.

66 St. Augustine’s Rd., Camden Town, London, U.K., NW1

She gets an odd satsifaction from seeing the words unfold across the page in blue, feeling that they ground her somehow, that they make her world real. The words should help to impress upon Carmen that she was serious about this move. That she wasn’t, as Carmen accused her, just running away from heartbreak over Neil.
“Neil who?” she’d said lightly the last time Carmen levied the accusation at her. “I just want to travel to the land of Colin Firth.”
Jane smiles as she licks the envelope, ignoring the pang she feels at the thought that this is Thursday. She and Carmen should be curling up on her squashy old futon this evening with a bottle of wine for their weekly intake of Pride and Prejudice.
They always alternate turns with the remote, taking turns to fast-forward through the dull parts (who cares about the foolish eldest Bennett sister and her foppish rich boyfriend anyway) and pause-and-rewind-and-play-and-pause-again on the good parts (Mr. Darcy leaping into a pond and emerging with clinging white shirt is always good for at least a half-dozen takes – more if a second bottle of wine is being consumed).
Jane feels a catch in her throat and a slight burning sensation in her eyes that she chooses to attribute to the dust in her flat. She smooths the flap of the envelope and stands up, pushing the hard wooden chair as far under the table as it will go so she can make space in the tiny galley kitchen for someone to walk through.
Not that anyone walks here but her.
She realizes, as she hurries down the street to the red mailbox – postbox, she corrects herself mentally – that there’s something depressing about that fact. That in two full months she has yet to meet a person she knows well enough to invite them over.
The obligatory post-work pints with her co-workers on Fridays always end early, when each of the women traipses off home to husband and children and the token man heads out to meet his partner for an evening at the opera or the theatre.
Then she just seeks shelter in her flat, curled up with butter chicken or fish and chips – depending which takeaway she’s stopped at on the way home from the tube station – and reading. Or writing enthusiastic letters to Carmen about how exciting London is. How vibrant. How busy. How full of culture and life and sights and experiences.
All of which is true, she consoles herself whenever a pang of guilt hits her for not being honest with her oldest, truest, closest friend. London is vibrant and busy and full of culture and life and sights and eperiences. Just because she hasn’t had any experiences yet doesn’t mean she can’t.
It’s that thought that makes her stop in the street as she starts to turn to head back to her flat.
Her eyes fall on the Lamb’s Head the end of the street. Two months here and she hasn’t even gone in for a pint. Carmen would be horrified.
The thought of describing for Carmen an evening in a real British pub is enough to drive Jane over the threshold and into its dark, smoky interior.
It’s not the most promising start to an exciting London social life, she thinks, her eyes taking in the ragtag assortment of drinkers at the various scuffed tables. Who should she approach first: the two pimply-faced boys who don’t look old enough to drink, the solitary man who’s hunched over a pint glass staring so intently at it that he looks almost asleep, or the table of pensioners complaining loudly about the weather and the fortunes of something called Arsenal, which she suspects is a soccer team – football, she adjusts quickly.
Jane straightens her shoulders and marches to the bar with what she hopes is the confident stride of someone who’s accustomed to such things.
“Whaddya fancy?”
The spike-haired, nose-ringed bartender turns a questioning gaze on Jane.
“Um …” Jane realizes her attempt to appear like an old hat at this ordering pints thing would be helped by having even the faintest clue about British beer.
She stares back at the bartender, feeling foolish.
The bartender winks and grins. “Been a hard day, has it? Pint of the best, then?”
Jane finds her voice.
“Depends what you call the best.” She attempts what she hopes is a grin but fears it may look more like a grimace. “I really can’t stand beer, actually.”
The bartender raises his eyebrows at Jane, but he doesn’t have a chance to speak before a new voice enters the conversation.
“Then you’re drinking the wrong beer.”
Jane turns at the sound of a warm baritone with a Colin Firth accent and is surprised to find the solitary, pint-glass-gazing man watching her from his perch at the end of the bar. With, she can’t help but note, a pair of what seems at this distance to be green eyes regarding her with something approaching amusement underneath a headful of dark, slightly rumpled curls.
“You Americans just don’t know beer.”
Jane wants to be offended at the error, but she’s too distracted by the undone top button of the white shirt pint-glass man is wearing under a dark suit. Not to mention the slight humorous quirk at the corner of his mouth.
She shakes herself mentally.
“Canadian, actually.” She grins, and this time it doesn’t feel forced.
He smacks his forehead playfully with the palm of one hand, and his mouth quirks again.
“Ah, from the colonies.”
She’d try to work up the energy to be offended, but the man has by now gotten off his stool and come over to sit beside her.
All Jane can do is keep grinning, afraid she looks foolish but not able to do anytthing about it.
“She’ll have a Caffery’s,” he tells the bartender. “On me.”
To Jane, he proffers a smile and an outstretched hand. (A large, strong-looking hand, despite the paleness of his skin, Jane notes. Not that she’s easily distracted.)
“Welcome, oh visitor from the colonies. I’m Nigel.”
Jane takes his hand, hoping her hand isn’t quivering as she shakes his.
“I’m Jane.”
Where’s Carmen when you need her, she wonders. She’s never been good at small talk, and it promises to only be worse when the person small-talking with her happens to look and sound distractingly like Colin Firth’s somewhat younger and quite possibly even hotter brother.
Perhaps it’s the Caffery’s, but talking with Nigel turns out to be no problem at all.
Before the first pint is finished, Jane has managed to tell him that she’s twenty-three, that she hates cats (“afraid of” always sounds so bad, and first impressions are important), that she’s renting a dingy basement flat up the street and that she’s working enough hours in the Irish Shop to pay her bills and save up to backpack around the British Isles.
In return, she acquires the information that he is an only child, that he’s so allergic to cats that he breaks out in hives if he pets one, that he hates football but follows it because everyone else does, that he’s been to New York City once and that he much prefers American – “Canadian,” he corrects himself with the mouth quirk that’s already starting to mesmerize Jane – junk food.
“Take crisps,” he says, gesturing at the line of small packets behind the bar. “What do we have? Monstrous concoctions like beef and mustard and roast chicken – which, I may add, taste absolutely nothing like those two quite delightful dishes. You have marvellous flavours like ketchup and salt-and-vinegar and barbecue.”
The way his mouth rolls around the word ‘barbecue’ makes Jane grin.
“You have better chocolate, though,” she says, patting his hand lightly in what she hopes is read as a playfully consoling gesture. “You know those Cadbury’s bars they sell in the machines in the tube stations for 30 pence? Do you know how many of those I’ve eaten in the past two months?”
Nigel puts a finger on his chin and nods in mock pensiveness.
“Ah, yes, Cadbury’s. But then, you have Smarties. The proper Smarties, I mean. Not ours, which don’t taste the same at all.”
He curls up his mouth and nose in an expression that makes Jane giggle, even while something goes quivery inside her.
“You like Smarties? Smarties are my all-time favourite candy.”
Nigel nods with such vigor that his curls bounce.
“Who couldn’t love a candy you can sort by colour?” He looks so childishly pleased with the thought that Jane giggles again. Then he lowers his voice to a confiding whisper and touches Jane lightly on the arm with one hand. “I always eat the green ones last, because they’re my favourites. But don’t tell anyone. I know it ought to be the red ones.”
Jane feels the warmth of his hand on her arm and realizes that he isn’t moving it away. He’s leaning in so close that she can see the grey flecks in his green eyes and make out the faintest streak of silver at the temples of his dark hair. She sees one curl flopping over his forehead and feels the temptation to reach out towards it and push it away from his face. Is his hair as soft as it looks, she wonders.
It’s fate, she thinks. It must be. What else brought her in here to talk to some guy who looks like Colin Firth, is horrifically allergic to all things feline and turns out to share her penchant for green Smarties? A guy who at this moment has his hand on her arm and is giving her a look that suggests he wouldn’t push her hand away if she did reach for that unruly curl.
She sits still, almost not daring to breathe as she searches her brain for a response that won’t use the words ‘fate’ or ‘destiny’ – she doesn’t know much about British men, but she’s reasonably certain they wouldn’t be any more comfortable than their Canadian counterparts with the use of such phrases before they’ve even asked you on a date.
A date. Just think, she could even end up with a date. She might have some genuine, honest-to-gooness British male encounter to write Carmen about. Maybe he’ll even come over to her flat. She could cook him something Canadian. What’s Canadian, she wonders. Maybe hamburgers? No, that’s silly, who’d cook hamburgers for a romantic evening. Carmen would have an idea. Maybe she should –
“Nigel!”
Jane’s musings are brought to an abrupt halt by a booming voice that makes every head in the pub turn. A red-haired man strides across the pub, claps a hand on Nigel’s shoulder.
“Here so early? Where’s the wondrous Miranda?”
Nigel’s glance flicks from Jane to the red-haired man and back to Jane again.
Jane stands abruptly.
“Don’t let me keep you,” she says, pleased to hear that her voice sounds casual and unconcerned. “Thanks for the pint.”
As she turns to leave, she sees Nigel lift his hand as though he is about to touch her.
She doesn’t pause, and Nigel doesn’t say anything else.
To be fair, Jane thinks as she leaves the pub, he didn’t have a chance to say much. The red-haired man had already launched into a stream of conversation – all to do, as far as Jane can tell, with “the wondrous Miranda.”
Not that Jane feels like being fair.
What the hell was he doing flirting with her if he’s involved with someone called the Wondrous Miranda? And what the hell was she doing even for a moment believing in fate?
At least, Jane thinks, it’s good to know that British guys are just as much jackasses as Canadian ones.
She finds the thought oddly cheering, and she quickens her pace to hurry back to the flat.



****

“Nigel, old chap, you are a prize idiot.”
He mutters it to himself out loud, feeling strangely cheered by defining the situation in such black-and-white terms. It’s not that he’s trying to figure out a way to piece his heart back together. It’s not that he’s fallen victim to unfortunate timing and the loud mouth of the world’s most tactless friend. And it’s not that he’s pinning his hopes on this mission to track down one American – Canadian, he mentally adjusts – shopgirl amidst the throngs of tourists in Covent Garden.
No, it’s merely that he’s a prize idiot.
That fact having been satisfactorily defined, Nigel stops to look in the window of yet another shop, where yet another attractive shopgirl is folding clothes and shelving them neatly. She glances up and smiles as she catches Nigel’s eye through the window, and Nigel smiles halfheartedly back. Tall, blonde, immpeccably dressed and flawlessly made up – not remotely like the girl he’s searching for, with her tousled sandy hair and shy smile and the jeans-and-white-shirt look he’s always found so appealing.
She’d made him laugh. At what, he isn’t entirely sure. He just knew that he felt better talking to her than he had in weeks. Which was what had driven him to Covent Garden on a foolish mission to find one shop girl in this maze of streets and stalls.
Nigel turns and trudges on, promising himself that he’ll only walk to end of this street. After that, he’ll head home.
Alone. To an empty flat.
Nigel pushes the thoughts away and pauses to look in the next window.
And stops in something approaching astonishment as he sees the small, sandy-haired figure neatly folding Aran sweaters and returning them to the shelf.
He squares his shoulders and pushes open the shop door.
She turns as the jingle of a bell announces his arrival, and Nigel can see she’s about to speak – probably, he figures, to politely tell him that it’s closing time and that he should move along.
Then her face changes, and Nigel watches a smile start to form before flickering off nearly as quickly as it began.
“Hullo,” he says. (Great opening line, Nigel, he berates himself. Way to really make an impression.)
“Hello,” she says back, her soft accented voice sounding unsure of the level of warmth with which she should infuse her greeting.
He wonders if he should pretend he just happened to wander in, buy a Waterford vase for his grandmother and engage her in small talk long enough to assure her that all things weren’t really what they appeared to be.
“I came looking for you,” is what he says instead. “I’m glad I tracked you down.”
“You found me,” she replies lightly, still not quite smiling and not taking any steps to move closer to him. But there’s enough warmth in her expression that Nigel feels encouraged to continue.
“In the pub the other night –“ he starts, then tries a new tack. “The thing is …”
He hears his voice trail off helplessly.
Good job, Nigel, way to impress her with your stellar conversational ability.
“Don’t worry about it.” She shrugs and waves a hand casually, as though batting away a small insect. “It was nice to meet you. And I appreciate you buying me the pint.”
She turns back to the sweaters, although as far as Nigel can see everything’s folded so neatly that there’s nothing left for her to do. Her small shoulders are stiff, and something about the tight posture of the thin back suggests she’s getting ready to ask him to leave.
“The thing is, I’m not with Miranda anymore.”
The words are out almost before Nigel can register that he’s even planned to say them. But he’s relieved to see her turn around and regard him warily.
She doesn’t say anything, and Nigel plunges on.
“Harry’s a great bloke, but he has a knack for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. That night I met you, I was going to explain to the lads about Miranda. That it was over.”
Nigel realizes with some surprise that this may, in fact, be the first time he’s defined that particular truth aloud.
“It’s been over for ages, actually. I could never tell them. They all loved Miranda. She was –“
“Wondrous,” Jane supplies drily, but with a hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth.
Nigel is surprised to find himself laughing.
“Indeed. Wondrous,” he said. “She was wondrous, and it was –“
He pulls himself up short.
“Well, it just was. But it’s not anymore, and I had a great time meeting you, and the thing is –“
Nigel digs into his pocket.
“I wanted to bring you these.”
He holds out the small box, and Jane laughs then.
“Smarties? You came all the way here to bring me Smarties?”
“They’re the false British kind, I’m afraid. But they’re the best we can do.”
He hears the ‘we’ and feels heat creeping across his face, cursing the pale English skin that allows him to still manage to blush like a teenage girl.
Jane grins and takes the proffered box.
“In that case, kind sir, I’ll take them. Shall we go somewhere to sort them and eat the green ones last?”
Sometimes, Nigel thinks, it really is that easy.


*

Sometimes, Jane thinks, it really is that idiotic.
That ridiciously, stupidly, senselessly idiotic.
She watches him walk out the door of the pub, unable to stop admiring the broad back and well-formed ass even while knowing full well that every step said back and ass made away from her was one step farther away from any hope that fate really was on her side.
Serves me right, she reprimands herself, for being so stupid as to write Carmen that long letter telling her all about it.

And it’s just so incredible, the scrawled words had gushed across the page.
Funny thing, at first I was just attracted to him because he was so, well, Colin-Firth-like. Now I don’t think he looks anything like Colin – although I do think they sound the same, even though Nigel insists his accent is very middle-class and not posh at all.
But the more time we spend together, the more I realize how funny and sweet he is, and what a genuinely nice guy he is.
Whenever we go out we end up talking for hours and hours. I think he knows more about me by now than anyone – except of course you! I even told him about Neil. I never thought I’d tell anyone about Neil.
It was easy to tell him. It kind of helped, I guess, that he’s been getting over someone too. Mind you, his wasn’t a drama. He say it was just waking up one morning and suddenly realizing that this perfect life he was building with this perfect person wasn’t what he wanted at all. That he saw a future with big job, big money, big house, two children and no real himself in it anywhere.
He was so dazzled by how perfect she was, he says, that he didn’t stop to think for months that he wasn’t happy. That he was always worried about what to wear, what to say, what to do, how to behave, and never thinking about whether he even wanted to be there.
She didn’t even cry when he told her it was over. Can you believe that? Think of all the tears I spilled over Neil.
And, if I’m honest, think of all the tears I’d spill if Nigel walked up to me even now and said it was over.


And she had to go and write that why, exactly? Jane sits at the scuffed table, realizing that the promised tears are indeed ready to spill into the half-drunk pint of Cafferty’s.
It was all so stupid, anyway. So foolish and stupid that she’d laugh if she wasn’t so ready to cry.
It was Elsbeth’s fault, really.
She and Elsbeth were closing up together, and Jane was watching for Nigel as she finished putting the sweaters away, keeping one eye on the street outside and one on making sure all the sizes got put back in the right place.
“Waiting for that fine new bit of yours, are you?” Elsbeth teased her. “Nice work on that front. Nothing like shagging a fanciable fellow like Nigel to pay back that Neil, right? And he works in the City. Wait until Neil hears you’ve got a rich and gorgeous bloke. He’ll be crawling back to you crying before you know it.”
I don’t want him to crawl back to me, Jane wanted to say.
But she didn’t. Because, of course, Nigel chose that precise moment to walk up.
So she made no reply at all, just shot a glare at Elsbeth and reached up to kiss Nigel.
Who offered her a polite peck and then drew back.
Nigel didn’t reach for her hand or slide his arm around her shoulders as they strolled towards the tube station. And he didn’t make any comment when she reached out to squeeze him around the waist. Or when she snuggled up to him in the crowded tube car and joked that for a change she would enjoy getting squashed up against the person next to her.
In fact, Nigel didn’t say anything at all the entire journey to Camden Town.
He didn’t utter so much as a syllable until they’d sat down at the corner table in the Lamb’s Head with their pints of Caffery’s.
Then, as Jane stared at him with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, he finally spoke.
“So that’s what I am, is it? Just some fanciable bloke with money you can shag to make Neil jealous?”
Jane was wordless, unsure whether to be angry or hurt or to laugh at the whole stupid situation.
“So that is it, then.” Nigel’s voice was quiet and calm, but with an edge Jane hadn’t heard in it before. “That’s all this has been to you. Just a chance to shag some British bloke so you can call up your friend and tell her all about it and she can help you make Neil jealous. I hope it’s worked well for you.”
“Nigel …” Even to Jane’s own ears, her voice sounded faint. “Nigel, that’s not – it’s not – you’re not … I mean …”
She couldn’t make words. Wasn’t entirely sure at that moment how to string syllables together into something that even remotely resembled a sentence.
“Don’t bother, Jane. I’m not always quick, but I’m not stupid either.”
Nigel took a ten-pound note from his wallet and dropped it on the table.
And Jane, still wordless, still frozen to her chair, incapable of either movement or speech, could do nothing but watch him walk away.





****


No.
She’s not sitting here watching this. She is not letting him walk away like that without even saying a word.
She shoves aside her chair. sets down the half-drunk pint so quickly that Caffery’s sloshes onto the table, and dashes out into the street.
It’s only been a few minutes, hasn’t it? He can’t have gotten far, can he?
She looks up and down the street but sees no sign of him. Wonders if she should start to run in the direction of the tube station, if she could catch him before he crossed the barriers and descended into the Northern Line again.
But he’s so much taller. And faster. Chances are she’ll miss him. If that’s even where he’s gone.
Go home, she tells herself. You can call him later and talk about it. It’ll be okay.
She isn’t convinced. But she has no better idea.
So she turns her feet in the direction of her flat and walks slowly off.
“Jane!”
Her heart leaps for a moment but falls when she realizes it’s not Nigel’s voice. It’s probably not even directed at her. Think how many Janes there must be in the world.
Then she jumps as a hand clasps her shoulder.
lt’s Harry, face nearly as red as his hair, apparently from the exertion of having actually hurried to catch up with her.
“Glad I caught you, Jane. Heading home so early?”
Jane nods mutely, not wanting to be drawn into conversation with the ebullient Harry at this of all moments.
“Nonsense. You’re coming in for a drink. Graham and Steve will be here before you know it, and Nigel’s here already, I take it?”
“No, he’s –“
Jane tries to protest, but Harry is tugging at her arm so violently that it almost hurts, and she’s afraid of trying to launch into an explanation in the street and ending up in tears.
So she follows, meekly enough, and keeps her head down as Harry nudges her into a seat at the corner table she’d just vacated and heads to the bar.
She stares down at the table, tracing patterns in the scuff marks with one listless finger, as she waits for the return of Harry and tries to come up with the words to form an explanation for Nigel’s absence.
Then something falls onto the table with a light plink. Something small and purple.
Followed by a few dozen more small colourful objects cascading across the table’s scuffed surface.
And a man’s hand, holding up one small green Smartie.
She looks up and meets a pair of grey-flecked green eyes.
“I’m an idiot.”
Nigel smiles, and she’s smiling back without conscious thought.
“I knew I was an idiot the moment I walked away, and I was just about to come back when I ran into Harry. He promised to keep you here long enough for me to run to the shop for these.”
He reaches his hand towards Jane’s face, and she opens her lips, capturing the Smartie on her tongue.
She savours it slowly, sucking off the sweet coating and feeling the chocolate melt away on her tongue.
Then she folds her arms across her chest and levels what she hopes is a stern gaze at Nigel.
“This doesn’t mean you’re forgiven.”
He hangs his head, putting on a penitent-schoolboy face that very nearly makes her laugh. But she sets her lips in a tight frown.
“Don’t you ever, ever, do that to me again. You know I’m so glad I met you and I care about you desperately and if you ever walk away from me like that I might just cry.”
Jane’s cheeks blaze, and she knows she’s blushing. But she feels something inside her leap when she sees an answering pink on his own cheeks.
“Might?” He says softly, reaching out a hand and stroking her cheek. “If you ever walked away from me like that, I know I’d cry.”
She meets his gaze and sees something in the grey-green eyes that starts a warm feeling in her, a glow that starts deep down in her core and slowly expands to fill every part of her, every inch of muscle and bone and skin.
She turns her face up to kiss him.
And finds herself staring instead at three pint glasses being plunked onto the table with force.
“So, my little ones, have we made up?”
Harry is watching them both. Laughing and shaking his head with an expression that says, I know I’m playing gooseberry right now, and I’m going to enjoy every minute of it.
He doesn’t wait for an answer. Just slides into the chair beside Jane and slings an arm carelessly around her shoulders.
“Well, my young colonial friend, tell me. Do you know any lovely Canadian girls who want to meet a handsome British fellow?”
Just wait till I write to Carmen, Jane thinks.