‘Aidan can’t get here until seven anyway,’ I explained. ‘He’s got a meeting or something, so I thought I might as well hang around here rather than go all the way home and then back out again.’
Lou looked at me conspiratorially. ‘What are your plans for the weekend?’
Lou and her husband, Will, were desperate to get me andAidan over for dinner so that she could grill him properly. But I felt as though I wanted to keep him to myself for now. Which sounded strange, and possibly a tad possessive, but we were still getting to know each other. Every time we saw each other, I felt more and more connected to him. And yes, I saw a future for the two of us, even though we’d only met just over a month ago. But there was still so much to find out about him. And before I subjected him to an onslaught of questions from my friends and family (not that I was in any hurry to introduce him to my parents and siblings, full stop), I wanted to make sure that things really were as good as they seemed.
‘We’ll come for dinner soon, I promise,’ I assured her.
She sighed dramatically. ‘Fine. Well, then, I’m out of here. Will has set me the very exciting challenge of clearing out the cupboards this evening. We really do know how to have a good time in our household!’
‘Domestic bliss, eh? Why do I want it again?’
‘Exactly! Enjoy the hot sex and excitement while you can because I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it doesn’t last.’
I laughed. Although, secretly, I couldn’t imagine ever not having hot sex with Aidan. I let myself do whatever I wanted, say whatever came into my head with him in a way I’d never quite felt comfortable doing before. He basically made me feel like the sexiest, most attractive version of myself. It was all pressing me up against walls and sweeping stuff off tables and joining me in the shower when I was supposed to be getting ready for work. Seriously, I didn’t know how I’d got so lucky.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then,’ I said, putting the finishing touches to my script.
I was planning to touch up my make-up and google stufffor twenty minutes or so until he arrived. Maybe I’d do some research on the photographer whose work we were about to see – it might be nice to look knowledgeable about such things and to be able to make intelligent comments about the work rather than just gush about how much I liked it.
Half an hour later, I was fully made-up. My hair, which I’d worn down for most of the day but which had become more and more mushroom-like as the hours passed, was now pulled back in an annoyingly fluffy ponytail. I wasn’t feeling particularly great about the way I looked this evening, but I supposed those were the perils of getting ready at work. You couldn’t do anything about it if your outfit didn’t look quite right in hindsight, or if you needed your hair straighteners, which you’d decided you couldn’t be bothered to lug in on the tube but now bitterly regretted not bringing.
I checked my phone again: nothing from Aidan. He was probably minutes away, and it wasn’t like we had to be there at any particular time. I googled thirty-minute meals, having decided that I ought to expand my repertoire if Aidan was going to continue to come to mine every other night.
At 9 p.m. I was starting to get worried. I’d tried calling several times, had sent a text, a WhatsApp and a voice note. He’d never once not got back to me when I’d messaged him, and he’d never once been late to meet me – in fact, I was the one who was always texting him, apologising profusely for getting caught up in the office, or stuck in traffic, or whatever it was. Except that now I was sitting alone in my office on a Friday night, all dressed up. It was so late that the cleaners had started vacuuming.
I absent-mindedly googled ‘problems in London tonight’. Then ‘tube issues’. Then ‘bus crashes’. And then I sat there, wondering what to do, whether to just head home. Surelyhe wouldn’t turn up two hours late expecting me to be here? How pathetic would I look for hanging around, anyway? With one last glance at my interminably silent phone, I turned off my PC and skulked out of the office, waving to the cleaners who I’d never met until now because even I didn’t make a habit of working this late. Something was wrong, I knew it was. However this panned out, I had a feeling it was going to be bad.
I purposely left my phone in the kitchen that night, thinking that would stop me constantly refreshing the screen, but, of course, I convinced myself I needed a glass of water and I swung by the kitchen counter, illuminating the screen accidentally. Still nothing. Then I persuaded myself that I should have the phone near my bed in case somebody desperately needed to get hold of me in the middle of the night (you never knew, did you?) but that I would bury it in the bottom of my underwear drawer.
Later, as I tossed and turned, wishing sleep to come so that I could have a break from worrying about Aidan, I heard the ping of a text. I leapt out of bed so fast, yanking open the drawer, shovelling my way through knickers and bras and Spanx until I reached my phone. He’d texted. I gasped, opening up the message.
I can’t do this now. I’m sorry.
I swallowed, felt like crying but didn’t and read it over and over.
I texted back.
Talk to me. What’s going on?
And then I spent the night with my phone cradled in the palm of my hand, waiting for a reply that never came.
Chapter Twenty
We’d thanked Francesca and were walking back through the colonnade of the gallery by 11.29. Aidan was hugging the sun in the courtyard and I was under the shade of the arches so that he kept disappearing from view, hidden behind a pillar, only to reappear a second later, smiling at me, looking even more devastatingly handsome than before. Aidan had had bad news the night we were supposed to meet. He’d been distracted, I was the last thing on his mind, I got it. To an extent.
‘Couldn’t you have called me?’ I said. ‘Not that evening. But later, once the shock had worn off?’
‘I just … my trust was shattered,’ he explained. ‘I hated my parents in that moment. The people I loved most in the world had lied to me for over thirty years. And if they were capable of that, then so must everyone else be. And I was falling for you and it scared me. I felt completely paranoid, started convincing myself that what we had wasn’t real, that you were probably hiding something from me, too, that you weren’t who you said you were. It took some time to get over all that and to feel like myself again.’
I didn’t know what to think. On one hand I could empathise. Sometimes, when I was a child, I used to fantasise thatIwas adopted and that one day my real, attentive, loving parents would swoop in and save me from my imposter mum and dad, who, although I loved, I wasn’t sure wholeheartedlyloved me. Not in the way I’d always dreamed of being loved. But, of course, that wasn’t what I really wanted. And it must have been devastating for Aidan who had been so close to his parents.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Aidan. ‘Although I know that doesn’t cut it. Not at all.’
I kept an eye out, looking for the statue of Donatello, where Daisy had promised she would be waiting.
Aidan looked at me. ‘And for what it’s worth, I haven’t had a relationship since.’
‘But you were all about relationships!’ I said, shocked. ‘I was the one who was scared to throw myself into them. You were fearless. You went in head-first and you didn’t look back, that’s what you said.’