I was suddenly tired, and hungry, and asked Patrick to tell me about what he had been up to for the last four years and said I would be listening even though my eyes were going to be shut. He told me he was training for his specialism, that he’d planned to do obstetrics but had changed to intensive care at the last minute, and was applying for an overseas placement, somewhere in Africa, because you got extra points or something.
Without opening my eyes I said, ‘Are you still with Jessamine?’ knowing he wasn’t. Ingrid had called to tell me they had broken up, weeks after she’d called to tell me they were together.
He said, ‘What? No. That was short-lived. And regrettable. Nothing to do with Jessamine. Just, we’re quite different people.’
‘What happened?’ I opened my eyes.
‘It was when I started to think about the Africa thing and when I told her about it, she said that although she adored me, the whole Médecins Sans Frontières vibe didn’t really work for her. She said I should be a dermatologist.’
‘A famous one?’
‘Ideally. I believe she’s only dated men in finance since then.’
I said, ‘In three out of five cases they are called Rory.’
‘So you already knew we –’
‘It was four years ago, Patrick, of course I did.’
15
IN A MOVIE, if someone who is happy coughs, the next time you see them they will be dying of cancer.
In real life, if someone realises when the car stops in front of her house that she is disinclined to get out and knows it isn’t just the idea of going inside and passing her parents’ closed door on the way to her room that is keeping her from undoing her seatbelt; if she knows it is because she does not want to say goodbye to the person who has driven her home and would rather sit and keep listening to him talk even though what he has been talking about is mostly quite boring, to do with his work; if it seems like he does not want her to get out either from the way he keeps looking down at her hand to see if she has moved it yet to the buckle, the next time you see them they will be walking to a terrible but open café that she points to at the end of the street and says, ‘We could have breakfast if you want.’ ‘Although,’ she adds ‘we will both come out smelling like fat’ to make it easy for him to turn her down.
But he says, ‘That’s okay. Good idea’ and undoes his own seatbelt, trying to get out while it is still retracting because he wants to open her door and to begin with, she does not understand what is happening, why he has suddenly appeared on her side of the car when the inside handle doesn’t seem to be broken because no one has ever opened the door for her before, not even as a joke. He will say, once she is out of the car, ‘Do you want to get changed first,’ and she will look down at her uncle’s dog-walking jacket over her silk bridesmaid’s dress but say, ‘No, it’s fine’ because she does not want to leave him, standing here, on this part of the footpath. She worries that he would be gone when she gets back because this is where he said he didn’t love her and never had and there is no chance he wasn’t instantly aware of that too. And if he is made to stand there by himself for however long it takes her to get changed, he might decide it isn’t what he wants to do – eat fried eggs with someone who would ask him a question like that. And if he waited for her, it would only be to say, ‘Do you know what, I’m pretty tired. I should let you go.’
She doesn’t want to be let go. People letting her go has become a theme. For once, she would like to be detained. That is why when they arrive at the café and he takes a long, long time over the menu, she isn’t annoyed. Eventually it will annoy her so much that one day she will say, ‘For fuck’s sake, he’ll have the steak,’ and actually grab his menu off him and hand it to the waiter who will look embarrassed for both of them because he mentioned, as they were sitting down, that it was their wedding anniversary. But that is a long time away. Now she is happy at how long it takes him to decide, then happier when he says, ‘I think I will have the omelette,’ and the waitress who’s been sniffing and shifting her weight from foot to foot says, ‘Just to let you know, the omelette takes fifteen minutes,’ and he will say, ‘Does it? Okay,’ and look back at the menu as though he should probably choose something else but she tells him she’s not in a rush, to which he says, ‘Really, okay,’ and to the waitress, ‘I will have the omelette in that case.’ And although omelettes are disgusting, she orders the omelette too because otherwise her meal will arrive way before his and it will be awkward, as if just the sitting down part wasn’t awkward enough, the first time they have been like this together, just the two of them on opposite sides of a small table. That is why as soon as they sat down, she had said, ‘This feels like a date,’ and they had both laughed self-consciously and were glad that the waitress came over then and asked them if they wanted the table wiped.