I’ve been metres from his house for the last three hours, pacing the high street, circling the mews. The sky is marbled with dawn; there’s only runners and dog-walkers this early. I watch a collie chase a labradoodle with a pink clip on her fringe across the football pitch. Kit always spoke about getting a dog; I should have encouraged him. There would be someone there for him when I wasn’t.
He is smiling when he opens the door, he is too pleased that I am here. ‘Are you coming in this time?’ he says lightly, as if my refusal to enter his house is an in-joke between us, as if we are friends capable of having in-jokes.
I stare at him coldly, until his smile fades. ‘Are you ready?’ I ask.
‘Where are we going?’
I don’t reply.
‘You don’t want to tell me.’ I feel him appraising me, all the things I say, everything I don’t. ‘What are you worried about? That I won’t go with you?’
Is it my mouth that gives me away, my eyes? How can he still read what I think and feel?
‘Listen,’ he says, so gently, I’m reminded of him lifting a butterfly from a twist of nets, how tenderly he used to untangle them. ‘You can tell me the plan.’ His scent rushes over me - cotton, herbs, ethyl acetate. ‘I’d go anywhere with you.’
I step back, try to stay in control. My voice is pitchy and forced. ‘I wanted to take you to my old law school.’
‘Why?’
‘Things happened there.’
His eyes narrow, then he nods slowly. ‘Okay. Give me five.’
I don’t wait for him on the balcony. I rush down the steps, eager to return to the person I was two days ago, standing outside his house, clutching my angel’s trumpets in the dark. Revenge felt easy then, I was bolder, dangerous, not this tired sog of a mess. I scratch the cream brick of his house. Paint fills my nails; stupid, I’ve hurt myself more than him. I cast around for greenery – moss blooming on his wall, herb pots on the step, dandelion shoots – but the only hint of the wild and untamed are the tendrils of ivy creeping over from his neighbour’s wall.
It’s enough.
I examine the leaves.Hedera helix, English ivy, not poison ivy although all of it is poisonous. In the winter, the berries will look like blueberries, Millie’s favourite. We got a call from nursery once, we had to collect her immediately because her poo was black, a sign of internal bleeding. Children’s A&E was miserable, the mural with the bright sun a pointed contrast to the exhausted parents, the terrifying low whine from a girl in her mother’s arms. After a seven-hour wait, the results came in. No internal bleeding. Just too many blueberries. Kit laughed with relief but I couldn’t stop thinking how different this could have been. A handful of ivy berries can fell a horse.
I pluck three perfectly glossy leaves. Slip them into the back pocket of my jeans.
He locks the door behind him. He is remarkably spry down the steps, for a second, I forget that he’s forty-eight, not thirty, his body still holds so much energy. I squeeze my fingers into fists. I will not think about his body. The power it possesses.
‘Where’s your law school?’ he asks.
‘Moorgate.’
‘Let’s get a cab then,’ he says, like he used to when we’d finish at the museum. He always despised public transport. I’d walk everywhere – school, Hyde Park – or get the bus to the Natural History Museum, swinging onto the open rear of a Routemaster, grinning at the conductor, but Daniel only drove or travelled in black cabs. But now, black cabs are rare, he can’t find one and I’m almost certain he doesn’t have Uber. He leans into the road, scanning for the orange light of a black cab. A cyclist catches his shoulder. He staggers back. For a second, I glimpse the elderly man he’ll become – prone to falls, baffled by bikes, phones, apps.
‘The underground might be quicker,’ I say gently.
He blinks at me, nods. Leading him to the station, I’m electric at his bewilderment. Old orders have been overturned. London is mine.
It’s busy on the tube, we’re standing by the doors when we get on but, as we draw closer to Oxford Street, we’re pushed into the middle. He removes his rucksack, I unsling my black one, and then I realise how stupid I’ve been, I haven’t thought this through. Without the shield of our bags, I can smell the detergent of his shirt, the complex scent of his skin underneath. The last time we were this close, we were crying, pleading, kissing. I shut my eyes.
‘This is some kind of trip, isn’t it?’ he asks. ‘A journey through your life.’ The tube shudders through the black mouth of a tunnel. I want to put my hands over my ears against the sudden jerks, the howl of the wind. ‘Am I close?’
Does he think I’m playing a game?
‘You’ve planned this, haven’t you?’
I’ve hatched plans within plans, a Russian doll of schemes, inside, there is something always smaller, more intricate.
He cocks his head, studying me. The tube lights flicker off, on. ‘You’re different to how I imagined.’
He means I’m not naïve. Not fourteen and all over him.
‘You’re stronger, sharper.’