But the last one was asking why she wasn’t replying to his messages.
Was she OK? Was she on her way?
She was supposed to be meeting him at the restaurant at 5:30 before going on to the National Theatre. They were seeing a play called Why Pigeons do Backflips, the ridiculousness appealing to both their weird senses of humour. It would take at least half an hour to get across town to the South Bank, even if she managed to snag a taxi straight away. But she couldn’t stop now, right in the middle of a breakthrough.
She fired off a quick text:
Won’t make the restaurant. You go ahead and I’ll meet you at the theatre. Sorry!!! xxx
Completing the session took another half hour. When it was over, Lulu went to the loo for another brief cry, grimacing at her puffy face in the mirror. She let down her long fall of blonde hair and tugged a brush through it a few times, and pinned her favourite enamel brooch to her dress, the one Mum and Dad had given her for her twenty-first. The bright pink and soft grey tones of the galah’s plumage worked well with the darker grey silk of the dress. She applied a little make-up to her eyes and lips. Then she collected her jacket and bag and ushered dog and client from the office.
As she was scrabbling in her bag for the key to lock the office door – she had a talent both for losing keys and for accumulating random ones in the bottom of her bag – he said, ‘It’s like it’s just hit me – Why? Why have I been so angry? I mean, Dad’s dead. And it wasn’t even his fault.’
This was fantastic.
She took a moment to think carefully about what to say. ‘PTSD isn’t logical. You’ve held on to the anger because you’ve been holding on to that angry child inside, all these years. You’ve been that angry child.’
‘Well, not any more.’ And as he looked at her, he started to smile, and it was like she could see inside his head, it was like she was there with him as the past started to fall away and his mind broke free of it, as he began to see the limitless possibilities of the present, of the rest of his life stretching ahead of him. ‘I’m going to get back in touch with Samantha,’ he whispered, as if this were too incredible a prospect to bear close scrutiny.
Oh my goodness!
This was why she did it. This was why she put herself through it.
But neither of them should be getting carried away here. So she said, ‘Okay, yes, you’re making great, great progress, but baby steps? I’d hold off on contacting Samantha until we’re a little further –’
‘Aha!’ The exclamation rang through the lobby, and there he was, striding towards them across the maroon carpet tiles, Saville Row come to Hammersmith. He lent the shabby space the glamour-by-proxy he seemed to take with him everywhere, like he was some kind of celebrity.
Her husband.
He’d come for her! He would know, of course, how drained the marathon session would leave her, how unequal to the task of finding her way across London she would be feeling.
She ran to him.
And now he was catching her in his arms and laughing, and she was back in her own wonderful world, the world he made afresh for her each day. It was as if he waved a magic wand and whoosh, all the rest was gone, all the dark places she travelled to with her clients. They’d just been a bad dream, and now she was awake again.
And she would have this, if she was lucky, for the rest of her life. The thought that he was hers and she was his, forever and ever, amen, still made her want to shout with joy.
He gave her an exaggerated smack of a kiss, and she clung to him, hardly able to believe that he was real, that she had found him, her soulmate, this man who looked like a film star and was rather vain about the fact and knew it, sending himself up at every opportunity.
‘Enter stage left: the doting husband,’ he intoned, ‘who’s just endured half an hour of casual racism, courtesy of an infeasibly stereotypical London cabbie, to rush to his wife’s side with life-saving falafels.’ Lulu’s favourite food in the world and also, spookily, one of his. ‘Your chauffeur awaits, ready, willing and able to blow your mind with his views on immigration.’ He lowered his voice to a stage whisper: ‘Best not to admit to being Australian.’ And then, back in character, he swept an arm around the lobby. ‘I’ve come to take you away from all this! I’ve come to whisk you off to la-la land where, for two shining hours, a load of luvvies will get deep and meaningful about the psychiatric issues of pigeons! Oh, the agony! Oh, the ecstasy!’
Milo was yipping excitedly.