He wondered if you could call a pub a chocolate-box pub. It was in one of the cooler suburbs of the city, on the corner of a crossroads, and had brass light fixings above the arched windows, spilling circles of cream light on the red Victorian brickwork. In the dark night it was like a pair of open arms. Her friends from work were there, but that was no problem. He could drink because his car was still in the garage and Sarah had said she’d give him a lift home. Riding the bus in the city at night made him feel cool and street smart. Statistically, the chance of getting stabbed was actually pretty low, and hard data always helped Sam when his more irrational side started to stir. His heart was beating very fast as he pushed the door too hard and it slammed into the wall, but the inside of the pub was loud with chatter and good cheer and nobody seemed to notice.
If you included the first time he saw her in the bakery, which he did, this was the fifth meeting with Sarah.
The pub was furnished in a cool, modernised Victorian shabbiness with beat-up wooden chairs and tables and old leather wing-back chairs in the corners. Green-shaded banker’s lamps illuminated dark wooden booths. It was a bit like a cross between Dickens and Urban Outfitters. It was excessively hot though and he immediately started sweating. Sidling through the crowds he found a place at the bar where he was quickly served by a young Australian with curly hair.
‘A pint of lager with a dash, and half a pint of tap water please,’ he said, quickly.
He immediately downed the water in an attempt to stop sweating and took a slug of the lager in an attempt to calm his nerves. Then he went to the bathroom, where he took off his sweater and inspected himself in the mirror. He felt a bit better.
In the centre of the pub was a spiral staircase that led to the first floor. At the base of the staircase he stopped for a moment and closed his eyes to compose himself.
There was more shabby leather furniture upstairs, low-slung sofas and mismatched armchairs. He found Sarah and her friends in a far corner, grouped around a low coffee table with a few tea lights in ceramic pots. She had her back to him so he tapped her on the shoulder.
‘Hi,’ he said.
‘Oh, hey,’ said Sarah, turning to him. She was wearing a floral shirt and a neckerchief and looked amazing, like someone from Paris. He tried to gauge how happy she was to see him, but his mind was doing somersaults.
‘This is Sam,’ she said to the other people sitting around the table. She pointed to each of them and told Sam their names, and he nodded and smiled to them, feeling not at all cool in his brand-new T-shirt he’d just bought from Tesco and smart straight-cut jeans, saying hi to Charlotte and Felicity and Emily. The guys were Gareth, Charlie and then, sitting next to Sarah, a dark, handsome person.
‘. . . and Francis.’
Francis was exceptionally handsome, in fact. His hair was black and wavy and looked impossibly cool. The collar of his shirt was all wrinkled and the sleeves were rolled up past his elbows. Great forearms; lithe, lean, with an easy, muscular grace.
‘Hey,’ he said to Sam, smiling.
The introductions over, Sam stood there for a moment with them all looking at him. He needed to do something. And it had to be cool. He made a shiver gesture and said, ‘Brrrr! It’s cold out!’
Charlotte nodded and smiled.
‘It is,’ she said.
Sam stood there for a second and then realised he had nothing more to add so sat in the low tub chair next to Sarah. There was a slight pause, and when the others realised that Sam was done they went back to talking.
‘You OK?’ said Sarah, quietly to him.
‘Uh-huh,’ he nodded.
He took a sip of his drink. She had a glass bottle of Coke with a curly straw coming out its neck.
‘It’s nice to see you,’ he said.
‘And it’s nice to see you too.’
A hand tapped her arm and Francis’s face peered over her shoulder. He was sitting in a higher chair than Sam so was looking down on him.
‘So how do you know Sarah?’ he said.
‘Oh, well, I don’t really.’
Something flickered on her face.
‘I mean. We met in the pub.’
Francis nodded and stared at Sam for a second too long. ‘So what do you do for a living?’
‘I work for a Japanese electronics wholesaler.’
‘Cool.’
‘I’m in admin.’
‘Right. Good for you, man,’ said Francis, which made Sam feel about an inch tall.
‘Francis works in the library with me.’
Francis was drinking a tumbler of whisky.
‘Yeah. Part-time,’ he said. ‘I’m doing a PhD in English Literature.’
‘Oh, great,’ said Sam. ‘Sarah likes literature. Books.’
‘Well, books and literature are not necessarily the same thing,’ said Francis, with a chuckle.
‘Definitely,’ Sam said.
‘Francis is what you might call a literary snob,’ said Sarah.
‘You will only read a certain number of words in a lifetime,’ said Francis. ‘You might as well have them in the right order.’
‘Francis is writing a novel about Easter Island,’ Sarah continued.
‘It’s going to cover a thousand years but will be minimalist as well,’ he said. ‘Three hundred pages max.’
‘Sounds good,’ said Sam.
‘Easter Island is where they have those giant stone heads.’
‘Yeah, we all know that,’ Sarah said.
Francis looked at her and smiled, like it was just the two of them. ‘They call them moai,’ he said. ‘Easter Island is thousands of miles away from the nearest continent. That’s a long way. What were those people doing out there building those stone heads?’
Sam turned away and looked around the table. The others were huddled around the sheet for the picture round.
‘For me,’ he heard Francis say, ‘Easter Island is a delicate miniature of all human civilisation. We come, we build wonderful things, we destroy, we go again.’
The annoying thing was that he didn’t sound stupid. It sounded interesting. It was frustrating how he could say obnoxious things but still come across as cool just because he was good-looking.
‘I’d love to read it,’ said Sam, aware that he was butting in.
Francis’s eyes flicked to him uninterestedly. ‘It’s a long way off, and I never show anyone my work before it’s ready.’
Just then a sound came from the speakers, the voice of the quizmaster telling everyone to settle down. Sam drank more of his beer. The first question was, Which president was involved with the Watergate scandal?
Francis leaned forward enthusiastically to give Charlotte the answer, which she was already writing. Sam was disappointed by this. He was always disappointed when he found out people were really competitive. But at least Sarah would see the same thing in Francis – even though, as Francis leaned across her, she didn’t pull away.
All of a sudden Sam felt like a spare wheel. He picked up the picture round and took a sip of his drink.
Francis started explaining to Sarah what books she should read over the course of the next year.
‘Have you ever heard of Don DeLillo?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘He wrote this amazing book called Underworld. TIME Magazine listed it as number two in the greatest books written in the second half of the twentieth century. It starts off with this incredible scene at a classic baseball match that takes place at the same time as the Russians are conducting their first nuclear bomb test. The winning home run is struck at the exact same moment the bomb goes off. It’s an amazing juxtaposition. He does it amazingly.’
‘Yeah. I’ve read it.’
‘Did you get how the book follows what happened to that baseball from the moment it was caught in the crowd right up to the end of the twentieth century? It’s genius. Of course, nobody knew that 9/11 was just around the corner.’
Francis’s intense talking was like a hairdryer to Sam. He looked at his beer and wondered if he should just get hammered. But just as it had the other night, something stopped him and it was clearer now, a recognition of how important this time was.
The next question was, What was the name of the geological time period during which the dinosaurs existed?
Perfect!
But Francis was leaning forward again.
‘Jurassic,’ he whispered to Charlotte.
‘No, wait,’ said Sam, deciding to also lean forward. ‘It’s the Mesozoic.’
Francis looked at him and smiled. ‘I don’t think so,’ he whispered. He tapped Sam on the knee and used his other hand to point at the answer sheet.
‘Put it down. Jurassic.’
Charlotte looked around the table for help but nobody said anything.
‘Trust me,’ said Francis. ‘If I’m wrong, I’ll buy a communal bag of peanuts.’
They all laughed.
‘Oh, Mr Generous,’ said Gareth, over in the corner.
Sam was sure he was right. The Mesozoic was the dinosaur period, made up of the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. He didn’t know what to do and before he knew it, the next question was being asked and Francis was nodding insistently at Charlotte until she eventually scribbled the answer down.
Though closer to them than Sam, Sarah was still a bit of an outsider. He found the way she leaned forward to speak, as if guilty for interrupting, endearing; the side of her face so smooth, a tiny glistening of anxious sweat at her temple, the shape of her seashell ear.
These people were far more articulate than him and his friends, and it felt to Sam as if a second level to the world had suddenly revealed itself, a level where different people existed, and he felt a little disappointed that this wasn’t his life when, perhaps, in another offshoot of the multiverse, it might have been.
At half time there was a thirty-minute break and Sam listened quietly to them talking about their weekend plans. There was a vintage market taking place and afterwards they were going to a new place that sold cronuts.
‘What’s a cronut?’ said Sam.
‘It’s like a mix between a donut and a croissant. You should come,’ said Charlotte, smiling.
‘Oh, thanks. I’m already doing something with my friends on Saturday,’ he lied, making a mental note that he would definitely go and eat a cronut on his own soon.
‘OK, switch papers everyone, in a few minutes we’re going to have some answers,’ the quizmaster announced.
‘I’m just going to nip to the loo,’ said Sam.
‘OK, cool,’ said Sarah.
He was keenly aware of Francis listening. Sam smiled a little too long, and went to the top of the staircase. By the time he turned back to the table Francis had already engaged Sarah again.
He locked himself in the toilet. Fucking Francis. Was this really worth it? He could just bolt, get a taxi and disappear. The others were all upstairs, they’d have no idea, and he could go home, cook a pizza in his new oven and watch Inception. But then he thought of Francis, and Francis talking to Sarah, leaning close so she could smell his sophisticated aftershave, Francis with his superb looks and encyclopaedic knowledge and, no doubt, his worldly experience. He stared at himself in the mirror and felt very strongly that he was at a crossroads. If he went home now, then . . .
He found himself at the bar ordering another drink, and a Coke for Sarah. He looked at the shelf of spirits on the wall behind the barman, all the beautiful bottles lined up. Something had happened in that bathroom, like the crossing of a threshold, a moment of rare bravery where he’d made a decision to do something for himself, and he felt good.
He collected his drinks and went back upstairs, just as the quizmaster said that the time of the dinosaurs was known as the Mesozoic.
‘So who’s that Francis guy?’
‘What do you mean?’
The thin road was silvered at the edges with frost in the headlights.
‘I mean, you seemed to know him from before. Turn left up here.’
‘No. He went to uni in Edinburgh so we were talking about that.’
‘I thought you didn’t go to uni.’
‘No, but I lived there. I told you that?’
‘Did you?’ She’d lived in Lincoln but definitely hadn’t said anything about Edinburgh, because he remembered everything she said to him.
‘That’s where I worked. In Edinburgh, before Lincoln.’
‘You’re not Scottish though are you?’
‘No. My old boyfriend was.’
‘Oh, OK.’
‘It’s a long story.’
A strange feeling fluttered through him that was something like envy, a set of beating wings against his organs.
‘I can’t believe I didn’t know you lived in Edinburgh.’
The road here was dark without street lights and the cones of headlights were mesmerising.
‘I know hardly anything about y—’ He lost his breath for a second. ‘You.’
‘You’re so drunk!’
Leaning his head against the cold window, he said, ‘I’m not that drunk.’ And it was true. He was a little tipsy but the reason he’d lost his speech was because his heart was beating too fast.
‘Francis is a bit of a mansplainer though don’t you think?’ he said.
‘Francis?’
‘Did you hear him telling you about that writer, with the baseball match?’
‘He’s OK,’ she said. ‘But he does like to offer advice. He’s a bit of an advice raper.’
‘Oh wow.’
Sarah laughed. ‘That was funny. You’re really funny.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re such a dork.’
Oh. He didn’t know what to say to that.
‘In a good way.’
He was hoping she’d agree with him about Francis, and the fact she didn’t was frustrating. Why couldn’t she see he was annoying? The car came into Sam’s village and the orange balls of light from the lamp posts brought normality rushing back.
‘I’m sorry you had to drive.’
‘Hey, it’s the weekend. You should be allowed to drink.’
‘It’s Thursday.’
‘That still counts.’
‘You’re funny . . .’ he paused to let his thoughts catch up to his mouth. ‘You’re funny too.’
‘Thanks, but you don’t have to say that just because I said it.’
‘I mean it!’ he blurted. ‘You’re super funny. You’re great, Sarah. I think you’re awesome.’ The click of indicators at a junction.
He watched the line of houses through the window as they threaded down the neat black roads of his estate. The rate of his heartbeat crept up again as the journey neared its end.
His friends, as ill-informed on the subject of the opposite sex as they were, insisted that being friend-zoned was a real thing, but Sam genuinely believed true love must find itself in friendship just as much as in passion. True love, for him, was not like in the films, all lust and sweat; it was warmer and more solid, sinking itself deep into the heart so as to make it unshakeable. People like Abraham Lincoln had true love, not Justin Bieber. That one might have no chance with a girl because of a pre-existing friendship was an incredibly depressing thought to him, and one he refused to believe.
The car stopped and he unclipped his seat belt. The quantum vibrations that she was detonating sang through his body.
‘Thanks for the lift.’
She looked so gorgeous.
‘Can’t I come in for tea?’
His mind rushed into his house, upstairs, to the hidden chest where he kept his superhero things.
‘Tea? Yeah, sure, sure. I’ve got loads of tea.’
They went up the driveway, he leading her, heart rate chugging.
She didn’t even mention the wooden partitioned tea box as she chose English Breakfast. He left the Fortnum & Mason tea set in the cupboard – that would be overkill.
In the living room she checked out his CD collection.
‘You’ve got a lot of Queen albums.’
‘Don’t judge. Have you ever heard A Night at the Opera all the way through?’
She shook her head and Sam felt a gust of confidence as he crossed the room and took it from the shelf, with Sarah close to him, and pushed it into the player. She didn’t move away. He skipped it to a song called ‘’39’.
‘I love this song. It’s about time travel. Brian May has a doctorate in astrophysics.’
Sarah smiled, and there was a pause.
‘You’re cute,’ she said.
The two of them stood in the living room and he saw the surprise on her face when the perfect Queen electric guitar riffs didn’t come on, but instead earthy acoustic guitar started up, hopping simply along a major scale. She nodded her head and smiled.
He thought he might be in Heaven. It was almost as though he was in a new reality, as though he was on a quantum wave, a blister on the skein of time, and this world he found himself in had peeled off the real one, a double, and soon it would pop and he would never have really spoken to Sarah that first night and everything he’d done since would dissolve as he woke up in his bed and everything was just the way it had always been.
But she was here, looking around the room, at his entertainment system, his music and film collections, the prints of comic-book artwork.
‘You must have a good job,’ she said.
‘It’s OK. It’s not as hard to get a mortgage as people think. It’s just the deposit.’
She looked somewhat forlorn now, as she gazed around the perfect coving and handsome plasterwork.
‘It’s nicer than my flat.’
They sat on the sofa, one knee up, facing each other, and all of a sudden he felt like a bit of a cheeseball, like a businessman trying to impress a date with his spicy flat in a marina with a little metal balcony outside some French windows.
‘I only have this because I’m boring and I want security.’
‘Everyone wants a home, though, even if they don’t realise it.’
They looked at each other for a long moment and then she said, ‘What?’
‘What?’ he repeated.
‘Why are you looking at me?’
‘You’re pretty.’
He just said it, a trapdoor falling open under him, a flash across her face.
Make the move! the little people in his heart called out in unison. He remembered his resolve in the bathroom of the pub. Where was that courage now?
‘What’s your favourite film?’ he blurted.
‘Maybe Totoro. My Neighbor Totoro? The Japanese cartoon?’
‘I haven’t seen that.’
Her eyes widened. ‘What?! You should come over to mine one night and we’ll watch it.’
She sipped her tea and the song ended.
‘We could do it next week, if you’re not busy. I could do my speciality Thai green curry. Do you like it?’
‘I love it,’ he said. ‘Spar do these amazing Thai green curry sandwiches.’
‘Thursday?’
‘Thursday.’ This was too fast again, but this time he didn’t feel the compulsion to rally against the chaos. ‘Yeah, great.’
She nodded.
‘So,’ she said.
‘So.’ He smiled.
Sarah got up and went over to his Blu-ray collection. ‘That’s funny. I thought you’d have them in alphabetical order.’
‘They are in a rough order. Genre, I guess, then by year.’
She ran her fingers along them.
‘Why don’t you like talking about yourself?’ he said.
Her fingers stopped.
‘You changed the subject in the car when we were talking about Edinburgh.’
She carried on looking at his Blu-rays.
‘You noticed that, huh?’ She turned to him and smiled. ‘Let’s leave it for another day.’
‘Yeah, of course. I didn’t mean . . .’
‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘I broke up with my boyfriend because he was a dick, but it’s OK now. I’m normal. Hey, you know what? I’m really tired. You don’t mind if I go, do you? I’m suddenly shattered.’
Oh, he thought.
‘Of course not. Sorry, I’m keeping you.’
‘No, not at all, it’s just all of a sudden, you know?’ She yawned.
He cursed himself for being such an idiot. He took her tea and led her to the door. The air outside was arctic.
‘So I’ll see you Thursday?’ Her glasses reflected the porch light.
‘Yeah, should be good.’
He felt deflated by her sudden U-turn.
‘Listen. I didn’t mean anything b—’
She stepped towards him and he thought, oh my God. But she didn’t kiss him. She put her arms around him and they hugged and he found himself gripping her tighter than he meant to, her tiny frame, and pulling her closer for a second. He was sure he felt her bones relax into him, and he thought from some far-off corner of his mind, there are few more special things in the whole human canon than a hug. He wanted to kiss her but he just couldn’t. His mind rationalised his cowardice by trying to persuade him that kissing her would spoil this moment. She pulled away and looked at him. The end of her nose was red.
Be brave, his father had said. The two most important things in life are to be brave and to be good.
But at the exact same time the thought that had been haunting him from the start reared its head: if you keep this up, you will have to tell her about your family.
‘You’d better go. It’s freezing,’ he said, his voice quick.
Her eyes fell away from him. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Yeah you’re right.’
He felt so stupid now. His heart and mind were see-sawing; he thought he could feel a piece of his soul falling apart. And yet, like always, he did nothing.