15. Some Enchanted Evening

To: Norah

From: Andrew

2 April 2012

Dear Norah,

How are you? Berlin is good – as crazy and fun as ever. It’s finally getting warm enough for me to think about dipping my toe into some of the open-air swimming pools they have here – they’re mad for the outdoor swimming. I have an update for you … I will be in London for one night at the end of next week: Thursday 12 April. I entered a composition competition and I’ve come second. The finalists’ music will be performed, at a venue in the South Bank – I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, it looks to be somewhere central? (I am joking. I am sure you’ve heard of the South Bank.) The timing works out well because I will be in Dublin for Easter and I’ll take in London on the way back. I very much hope you’ll be able to make it? I can leave a ticket for you on the desk. Or maybe we could have a drink before – or after? I really hope that, after all this time, I will have the chance to see you again.

Ever yours,

A x

I closed my Hotmail with an inward groan. It was absolutely and completely typical. No sooner did I give up hope of ever seeing Andrew again and get a serious boyfriend than the universe taunted me with this email from him. I hadn’t heard much from him since he had moved from LA to Berlin, eight months earlier, to take up a job managing a string quartet. Christmas had come and gone without any mention of us meeting up, though I had told him that I was seeing Matt, so that might explain his reticence. Now he was coming to London – he would be in the same city as me, for the first time in two and a half years. In fact, he would be less than two miles from where I was sitting right now, temping in yet another office, this time a big fashion magazine, in Soho.

I picked up another piece of sushi with my chopsticks – the whole office subsisted on sushi, and I had picked up the craze, along with wearing J-crew style combats. I had never thought of myself as a suggestible person, but after two weeks here I was addicted to Yoga Bunny Detox drinks and was also hankering after a large rose-gold watch like everyone had here. I opened up my gmail – another new acquisition – and wrote a g chat to Caroline.

Guess what. Andrew is coming to town. He is doing a concert on 12 April and wants to meet. What do I do?

I sent the message and hoped it would catch Caroline, over in her magazine office, also having sushi at her desk. Caroline had been doing brilliantly at work. She had started a blog and had joined Twitter – I still wasn’t sure exactly what that was, but I knew that Caroline had been headhunted to join the staff of the glossy magazine of a weekend newspaper. And Kiran was the youngest director of her company in years – there were dozens of directors, she told us, but it was still impressive. As for me, I was still temping and still singing but I had moved out of Dad’s house and into a flat share in Harlesden. I knew it was time for a change and I had set myself a deadline: either I would make it in some unspecified way that year or I would find a permanent job.

There was no reply from Caroline, and I was almost regretting asking her what to do. I normally preferred to make my own decisions. Plus, I was feeling more and more inclined to just go. True, I was with Matt, and had been for almost a year and a half. But I wouldn’t be cheating on him with Andrew – I was just going to meet up with an old friend. What harm could that possibly be?

Just then, a message came pinging back from Caroline: 12 April? Isn’t that Kiran’s birthday dinner?

I groaned again, out loud this time, attracting a puzzled look from the girl next to me, who worked in the advertising team but looked like a resting model, like all the staff here.

‘I’m fine – sorry!’ I told her, putting my sushi packet in the bin. Damn. It was Kiran’s birthday dinner, and I was meant to be bringing Matt. I would have felt bad enough pulling out of Kiran’s birthday – but I would feel embarrassed telling Matt the real reason I had.

OK, I wrote back to Caroline. Maybe that is a sign. I can’t cancel Kiran. And I can’t do that to Matt – or could I?

I half expected Caroline to tell me to follow my heart and meet Andrew, but her answer, a few seconds later, was kind but pragmatic.

I think you’re right, she wrote. You probably wouldn’t be thrilled if he cancelled an evening out with you and his friends, to meet up with an ex.

Ouch. When she put it that way, I could see the problem. I could tell Matt that I was pulling out of Kiran’s birthday to meet up with an old friend, certainly. But, with his lawyer’s persistence, he was bound to ask questions about who exactly this friend was. And I would probably end up admitting to him that Andrew wasn’t just an old friend, but a much more significant figure in my past. It sounded fine in principle, but if I imagined Matt doing the same to me, then yes, I could see the problem.

I opened up my Hotmail again and wrote a quick reply to Andrew, determined to rip the plaster off before I had a chance to regret it.

That’s fantastic about the competition, I wrote. Congratulations. I am so sorry that I can’t make it that evening – I am going to a friend’s birthday, and I really can’t miss it. I am so sorry that I’ll miss you, after all this time. I’ll be thinking of you. Good luck. Nx

The regret that engulfed me as I sent the message was much worse than I had anticipated. My immediate impulse was to send another message telling him I had changed my mind, that I would be there after all. But I had made my decision now, and it was time to move on. I decided to go shopping for nice underwear that evening after work, to give myself a boost and to remind myself that I wanted to commit to my relationship with Matt and give up the fantasy of anything ever happening with Andrew.

And things were going really well with Matt; we had been together over a year now. True, we were very different. Matt was focused on his career, having just been made an associate at his firm, while I was still spinning my wheels with temping and singing. He wasn’t into my kind of music, or any music at all aside from techno tracks that he listened to while running. But he had made an effort to learn about jazz and he helped me with my website and went loyally to my gigs whenever he could. We both liked reading about history, though I tended towards biographies of medieval queens, and he was obsessed with the Second World War. I also loved spending time at the flat in Camden that he shared with two other guys his age; I didn’t know anyone else who lived so centrally, except for Joe. We went for picnics on Primrose Hill, and for Sunday lunches at the Princess Victoria, and the locations made it feel like I was in a rom com.

Most importantly, Matt had substance. When I asked him why he had chosen to be a lawyer, he said, ‘It sounds cheesy but … I really value the idea of justice. The idea that everyone should get what they deserve, no more and no less.’ His parents were divorced too, in a much messier split than mine, and it didn’t seem much of a reach to imagine that he had been drawn to study law as a way of bringing order on to the chaos of everyday life. As I flipped through racks of underwear after work, I decided that I had done the right thing, saving myself the emotional upheaval that would come of seeing Andrew. Even if I did meet him that evening, what would happen afterwards? He would go straight back to Berlin, and I would be left with all my old feelings in turmoil again. It had been hard enough to say goodbye the first time: a second time could be even worse.

A week later, I was heading to the restaurant in Soho where Kiran was having her birthday. It was an Italian place, but not an old-school Italian with red and white checked tablecloths and candles stuck in Chianti bottles; this was the new type of Italian place, with Venetian bar snacks, filament bulbs and salvaged furniture. It wasn’t possible to reserve smaller tables, but Kiran had reserved a big table downstairs since there were nine of us. Joe and his girlfriend Julie were the first ones there when I arrived, lounging around at the end of the table, both dressed in black. That is, Joe was lounging, while Julie was surveying the room like an MI6 agent on a covert mission. I didn’t have a great rapport with Julie – she made efforts to be friendly, but they always seemed odd and stilted, as if she was copying some alien’s guide to human behaviour. But Caroline and I loved speculating about her and Joe, who was as laid-back and scatty as she was rigid and precise. Maybe that was it? Differences were good, I reminded myself.

‘Hi guys,’ I said. ‘Ooh, what are those?’ They both had bright orange drinks in front of them in huge goblet-type glasses.

‘Aperol spritz,’ Julie said, looking puzzled. ‘You’ve never had one?’

‘No – can I try yours, Joe?’ I asked. He slid his towards me, and I sipped it before I clocked Julie’s appalled expression. ‘Mm, that’s actually quite tasty,’ I said, feeling mildly provoked by her reaction. I remembered Joe saying that she was extremely germophobic. But she was also into bungee jumping and skydiving; how could tasting someone’s drink be riskier than that?

‘Is that your boyfriend?’ Julie asked.

I turned to see Matt, festooned with cycling gear – he always seemed to arrive brandishing an arsenal of helmets, locks and wheels and dressed in high-vis gear. It seemed a bit unnecessary, seeing as he had only come from Holborn, but he always dressed for extreme conditions. Soon, though, he had shed all his accessories and was his handsome, well-dressed self again.

Everyone arrived together shortly after that: Paul, Javier, Caroline, Kiran and her new boyfriend Ben. I was almost blinded by the glare of Caroline and Kiran’s statement necklaces, which were very big that season in both senses. (I had one on as well.) Kiran had also had her hair straightened with a Brazilian blow-dry; Ben couldn’t take his eyes off her. A recent arrival, Ben was clearly going to be a keeper. Having declared her intention of writing down a list of her most important criteria in a man and only dating guys who met at least twenty-five out of the thirty of those, Kiran had met him on a night bus, and they’d been inseparable ever since. Caroline was the only one of us who was single, but she didn’t seem to care; she was doing really well at work and having fun going on random dates.

I was sitting between Matt and Javier, Paul’s boyfriend, a softly spoken guy who was visiting from Barcelona. They had met eight months earlier, while Paul was there for a stag weekend, and now they travelled back and forth every two months. I had only met Javier twice before but I had heard all about him: the eldest of six, raised by a single mum, he was slightly deaf in one ear after a bout of childhood measles, which had inspired him to take up a career as a paediatric nurse. All very perfect, but I was worried about Paul being in yet another long-distance relationship. We had both been burned, in different ways, by romance at a distance, and I couldn’t see things with Javier working out long-term. But I knew better than to say anything to Paul about that.

‘Hey, did you tell everyone about your new job?’ Julie asked Joe, once we had all ordered. It was little plates to share, though Julie had ordered her own meal.

‘No – what new job?’

‘I’ve got a job as a character animator,’ Joe said. ‘In Brown Bear Studios. They make the World of Warcraft games.’

Cue mad excitement from all the men, who obviously played this, while the rest of us were thrilled for Joe; I knew this was something he’d wanted to do for ages.

‘They’re also working on a film … so that’s exciting,’ Joe said. ‘Anyway – enough about me. Happy Birthday, K-dawg.’ He raised his glass in a toast to Kiran, and we all followed suit.

‘Yes, Happy birthday,’ I said. ‘The big two-five.’

‘I know – so old,’ said Kiran. ‘I’m in my mid-twenties now. Where will it all end?’

‘Well, we die,’ said Julie. ‘That’s where it will all end.’

I was the only one who heard her other than Joe, and I caught his eye; we both laughed. She really did have a dark side. Caroline and I had speculated all kinds of lurid things about her and Joe’s sex life; surely there was some upside to her being so intense?

On my other side, Paul was talking to Matt about work. His conversion course was over, and he was a trainee in a solicitor’s firm, near Matt’s; they even knew some people in common.

‘You know, I keep saying to Norah that she should do a conversion course,’ I heard Matt say to Paul. ‘She has the right kind of head for the law.’

‘Really?’ Paul said, politely sceptical. ‘I didn’t think she’d be into that.’

‘Well, obviously she won’t want to be temping for ever,’ said Matt.

I pretended not to hear them but I couldn’t help being slightly annoyed that he was giving Paul his views on my career. He had mentioned this idea to me several times, and each time I had told him I wasn’t interested. It had become a bit of a bone of contention, to the point where I felt like telling him I already had a dad. To distract myself, I started talking to Javier. He and Paul were addicted to some new show about dragons – they watched it together, in their different countries, while messaging each other a running commentary.

‘The dragons are not a big part of it,’ Javier assured me, when I expressed doubts about it. ‘You would love it, Norah, it’s full of great characters, the female parts are so good. Danaerys Stormborn …’

‘Oh, that sounds like Joe,’ said Kiran. ‘Stormborn.’

‘How so?’ Julie said.

Kiran said, ‘His birthday – you know, 15 October 1987. The Great Storm?’

Julie shrugged her shoulders; this was obviously news to her. What did she and Joe talk about? Perhaps they didn’t do much talking.

‘Were you talking about Game of Thrones? I started watching it but I had to turn it off,’ said Caroline. ‘It’s just too gruesome.’

Now everyone started talking about films and TV they had hated or walked out on.

‘I walked out of The Day After Tomorrow,’ Paul admitted. ‘I was very, very stressed with A-levels, and the prospect of having to do all my exams, and then deal with an ecological apocalypse and a new Ice Age, was just too much.’

‘I walked out of Castaway,’ Matt said. ‘Most boring film ever. Nothing happens – he just sits on an island for three hours.’

‘Thank you!’ said Julie. ‘So boring, right? And when he makes friends with the football – what was that about?’

I caught Joe’s eye, again: he knew that was one of my favourite films.

‘Wilson!’ Joe said, under his breath.

‘Wilson,’ I replied, grinning.

Luckily, the food started arriving then, so nobody took much notice of this, or the ghost of a wink that Joe gave me, or the way I widened my eyes at him to tell him to stop.

‘I think I’d do really well on a desert island,’ said Joe.

‘Sure you would,’ I said indulgently. Joe would be no use at all on a desert island – he would just lie around sunbathing and sketching. Whereas Matt would be excellent at tracking down coconuts and signalling for help; I was fairly sure he knew Morse code.

Now the others were all talking about school sports and what they still played.

‘I’m trying to persuade Norah to get into sport – or at least come running with me,’ Matt says, putting an arm around me. ‘She doesn’t seem to have played any sport at school.’

‘No, none of us did. That’s how we all met – hiding in the PE hut while the rest of the class did cross-country running,’ Kiran said.

‘And yet you now run three times a week on the treadmill,’ said Ben. He was a nice guy with an air of quiet amusement, who seemed content to be an audience for Kiran’s stories and performances.

‘That’s different,’ said Kiran.

‘It is different actually, you’re right,’ said Matt, and he started explaining the distinctions between running on a treadmill and outside. Julie seemed extremely interested and soon the pair of them were talking away about heart rates and shoes and different terrains. I ignored them and focused on the food, which was divine; a fennel salad with slivers of almond, little plates of linguine with clams, thinly sliced steak with white truffle cream, and mini pizzas with leeks and Taleggio cheese. I glanced at my watch and realized that Andrew’s piece would probably be playing right now. I didn’t even know if it was for chamber orchestra, piano or what. Andrew had replied to my email with a very nice message, saying he completely understood and hoped to see me next time. But he hadn’t suggested an alternative time to meet during his stay, and I hadn’t felt brave enough to do so either.

‘Your hair looks beautiful, Kiki,’ I told her, trying to stay present.

‘Thanks!’ she said, flipping her blue-black mane. ‘It took an hour and a half … I had the stylist’s whole life story by the time she finished.’

I was just thinking that that sounded like hell on earth to me – I hated going to the hairdresser, especially having my hair blow-dried – when Matt said to me, ‘Your hair would look really good like that. You should try it some time.’

‘Mm,’ I said. That was a compliment, right? That must be how he meant it. Just like it was a compliment when he wanted me to go running with him, or when he suggested that I do a law conversion course. But little by little, it was starting to feel as though he had had enough of going out with a curly-haired, singing temp, and wanted to upgrade to a straight-haired, running lawyer. It might seem like a rom com when we met on Primrose Hill, but what about the casting?

I had always thought that Matt and I had lots in common, but suddenly I was having doubts. I thought of a recent occasion where I’d been sitting in a bar while I waited for Matt to arrive, glued to my book, a biography of Isabella of Castile. I remembered thinking that if only he’d been ten minutes late, I could have finished my chapter. That wasn’t a great sign, was it? Even Matt’s books on the Second World War, which I had held on to as a sign of our shared interests, tended to gather dust on his bedside until his cleaner moved them without him noticing. Matt was a nice guy; that wasn’t in doubt. But tonight, for the first time, I was realizing that might not be enough, for either of us. There was a distance between us that would remain no matter how fast Matt ran – or cycled.

I was distracted from my thoughts by some general exclamation: Paul had just announced something.

‘That’s wonderful, Javier! Are you guys going to live together?’ Caroline was asking.

‘I have got a job in London, at Great Ormond Street Hospital,’ Javier explained to me. ‘So I’m moving here next month. I’m going to stay with Paul while I look for a place of my own to rent.’

‘That’s amazing! Congratulations, guys!’ I glanced over at Paul, who was beaming. I was so happy for him. So why was I feeling wistful?

Maybe it was the fact that here were two people who had maintained a relationship in spite of the distance. It made me wonder whether, had I been more positive about things with Andrew, it would have been different. Or even tonight – why hadn’t I just accepted his invitation, purely to catch up with him as a friend? There wasn’t any romantic overtone to his email, after all. I could have just gone for old times’ sake, without betraying Matt in any way.

In fact – maybe I still could? I looked surreptitiously at my watch. It was 9.30 now. The concert would be ending around ten; I could just about make it to the South Bank, if I hustled. I felt bad about leaving Kiran’s birthday, but I thought she would understand – or even if she didn’t, it was something I had to do, or I would always regret it.

‘I’m really sorry everyone,’ I said quietly. ‘I’m not feeling very well … I think I’m going to go home.’

‘Really? I’ll walk you out,’ Matt said.

‘No, no, please stay and have your pudding. I’m fine. I’ll get a taxi home. Will you let me know how much it is for my share of the bill?’

He said, ‘Are you sure? I could put you in a taxi.’

I felt worse that he was being so nice, but I just said, ‘Yes, of course – don’t worry.’ After giving Kiran a big hug and my apologies, I hugged Caroline. Her smile said ‘Busted’ but also ‘Good luck’; I telegraphed back at her ‘Thank you – I have to try.’

I got the Northern Line right away, though it seemed to take me as long to emerge from Waterloo station as it did to get there from Leicester Square; I always forgot how huge that station was. Soon, though, I was on the South Bank, hurrying along towards the concert venue. Seeing all of London, lit up in the spring evening, the river with its illuminated boats and the strings of lights in the trees, I dared to feel optimistic. Surely I would make it in time to see him even if I missed the performance? He would have to stay afterwards for a drink. Wouldn’t he?

I found the Queen Elizabeth Hall, raced inside and hurled myself into a lift for the sixth floor, where the performance was taking place in a temporary auditorium. It was only 10.10. I had expected to see a few stragglers, maybe Andrew himself having a drink nearby, but the place was completely empty aside from a lone usher, slowly clearing up empty glasses and discarded leaflets. The stage, with its black backdrop, was empty except for a grand piano. Everything else was gone. The performance must have been shorter than I’d thought – or perhaps they were just having drinks somewhere else.

I walked to the back of the room and found a pile of programme leaflets. There he was: Andrew Power. His piece was a sonata for violin and piano in E major. The programme listed his studies at Trinity and Juilliard, his work as a composer’s assistant and now his job with the string quartet in Berlin. He was also composer in residence for a student chamber orchestra – fancy. But it didn’t say where he was staying or where he was going for a post-concert drink – both things I should have asked, but it was too late now.

I walked around all the bars in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, but of course he wasn’t there, and nor was anyone else who looked as though they had been performing. I kicked myself for not checking where he was staying; I could have gone along and met him for breakfast. Why hadn’t I just said yes when he asked to meet me?

I decided to go home at once before I plunged into total dejection. On the way back, I received a text from Matt. Hope you’re feeling better? It was £38.50 for the bill, but no rush to pay me back x. Sighing, I remembered what Matt had said about justice – the idea that ‘Everyone gets what they deserve, no more and no less.’ Well, I was getting what I deserved. I had been indecisive and wishy-washy and had ended up lying to Matt after all. And I had ignored my doubts about him, instead of following my heart. But I wouldn’t make the same mistake again. The next time I saw Matt, I would have a talk with him, pay him his £38.50 and release him back into the wild, so that he could meet someone he didn’t have to improve or upgrade. And I wouldn’t settle again for someone who didn’t make me feel the way Andrew had. Life was too short to do otherwise.