Jim had rung Nancy the evening after they’d met at the cafe.
“Hi, Nancy?” he’d said, his tone tentative. “It’s Jim.”
As if she didn’t know. Just the sound of his deep voice set her pulse racing. The call had taken her by surprise. She had thought he might ring in a couple of days, maybe. Would she phone him if he didn’t? She wasn’t sure of the current etiquette. The young seemed not to talk to each other: they texted or Facebooked or tweeted or whatever, but didn’t lift the phone for a real chat, which must make for a good deal of misunderstanding, she thought, dreading the day when her granddaughters were old enough to have mobiles.
“I’m trying to be super-cool, as you know, so I left it a whole afternoon before I called you,” he said.
“Is it only an afternoon? Seems like a hundred years.”
After the joke there was an awkward pause.
“What do we do now?” Jim asked.
“Not sure.”
“We could have another coffee . . . or go up a notch and risk an evening drink?”
“Whoa, fast work.”
“Umm, Thursday is good.” Nancy didn’t need to think: she knew she wasn’t going out that week. Or next week, or the week after, for that matter.
“Great. I’ll find somewhere to go. Are you okay coming into Brighton, or shall I come up your way?”
“Brighton is easy for me,” she said, not wanting to be in the local pub where some of Louise’s friends might see them.
*
Now it was Thursday. She checked the kitchen clock. She and Jim had arranged to meet at a wine bar in town at six-thirty, but it was already five forty-five and Louise and the girls were still there. Nancy had felt obliged to offer to do supper for Hope and Jazzy, as her daughter was still upset, although Louise had said little since the girls had come in from the garden.
I’d better text him, she thought, searching for her phone. She had been going to have a shower and get ready in a leisurely fashion, calm her nerves, but she would barely have time to change now.
“What are you looking for, Mum?” Louise was asking.
“My phone . . .” She searched her handbag again, pulling out supermarket vouchers, her bus pass, a purse laden with change, a brush, earphones, a biro without the top, a small notebook, an old tissue, lip balm. No phone.
“I’ll call it,” Louise said, bringing out her own mobile from the back pocket of her jeans. But there was no responding ring tone.
“I must have left it in the car.” Nancy was beginning to feel flustered. She didn’t want Jim to think she wasn’t coming. She went outside and found the damn thing in the well beneath the dashboard. Before going inside, she quickly texted Jim: Got caught up, can we make it 7?
When she looked up from the screen, Louise was watching her, standing at the open front door. Nancy knew she probably looked shifty as she pressed “send.”
Once they were inside again Louise, who had begun to clear up the supper plates, turned to face her. “Mum, I wanted to ask you something.” She paused, and Nancy waited uneasily. Her daughter’s tone was unusually hesitant. “Umm, it’s just you’ve been a bit odd recently. And Ross wondered . . . well, I did too . . . if perhaps you were seeing someone. Like, a man.”
Nancy held her breath. No point in beating about the bush, she told herself. “Well . . . it depends what you mean by ‘seeing.’ I’ve had a coffee with someone.”
Louise’s eyes widened into an amazed stare. “Oh, my God! Ross was right.”
Hope was sitting with her sister on the other side of the room, watching a program called Horrible Histories. “What was Daddy right about?”
“Nothing,” Louise said quickly, then muttered, “That child has ears like a bat’s.”
Nancy nodded, trying to assess her daughter’s reaction to what she had said.
“So who is he?” Louise lowered her voice, one eye on the sofa.
“The country singer I told you about.”
“The one at Lindy’s party?” Louise’s face took on a knowing look. “So when I asked if he was Lindy’s boyfriend, he was really yours. And you never said a word!”
“He’s not my boyfriend, Lou. I told you, I’ve had one coffee with him, on Monday . . . but I’m meeting him for a drink this evening, so I should get a move on.”
Her daughter looked a bit put out. “Tonight? Oh. Well, I’d better take the girls home then.”
“You don’t mind, do you?” Nancy asked.
“Mind? No, of course not. Why would I? I’m not your keeper. But you could have told me, Mum. I feel as if you don’t trust me.”
Nancy winced inwardly. Louise was so confusing, had been all her life. She seemed tough and certain most of the time, but underneath lurked a wealth of insecurities. Ross had dealt her a mean blow, accusing her of not being behind his venture. The worst thing being, as Nancy knew all too well, that there was probably some truth in what he’d said. Louise was risk-averse by nature, and without her husband egging her on, she would never have contemplated opening a restaurant in a million years. But having done so, she had worked like a Trojan to make it successful.
“Of course I trust you,” she said. “It’s just there was nothing to tell you till now. I’ve had one coffee with him, that’s all. I hardly know the man.”
“But you’ve been thinking about him longer than that. I’ve seen it in your eyes, Mum. That’s what I meant by you being odd. And you lied to me on Monday when I asked where you were going.”
Nancy sighed. “I know I did and I’m sorry. You caught me on the hop and I was a bit embarrassed, that’s all.”
“Listen, you’d better get on or you’ll be late,” Louise said, her tone softened. “Come on, girls. Nana’s going out so we have to go home.”
“Nooo! Pleeease! We’ve got to watch the end of this,” Hope shrieked, eyes glued to the television. Jazzy just sat sucking her thumb, leaving it up to her big sister to sort things out.
“They can go on watching while I get changed,” Nancy said, just as her phone pinged with a text. Under the beady eye of her daughter, she read Jim’s message and couldn’t help smiling: I’ll wait till the end of time. Or 7, whichever sooner. x
Louise raised an eyebrow. “No, come on, you two, home. Have a good time, Mum. I look forward to hearing all about it in the morning.”
Which was exactly why Nancy hadn’t wanted her daughter to know about Jim.
*
The wine bar was half full when Nancy arrived in the large, dark-walled space, with black-and-white architectural photos, a marble bar along the back, high round tables and stools and a long window onto the lane, which stretched at right angles to the sea. The atmosphere was cool, the clientele young—she and Jim were the oldest by decades, she reckoned. Jim was sitting on a padded stool at the bar, talking to the barman.
As Nancy went to greet him, she noticed the clock above the bar said seven twenty-five. “God, I’m so sorry. Seems like it was the end of time, rather than seven o’clock.”
Jim got up and gave her a single kiss on her cheek, which threatened to undo her. His skin smelt delicious, clean, something woody, perhaps cedar, his thin blue cotton shirt soft beneath her fingers. There was not even a hint of cigarettes, she noted.
“Your friend here thought you might have stood him up.” The young barman grinned mischievously. His dyed black hair stuck up in long spikes from his head, reminiscent of an eighties punk.
“Thanks, mate. Give away my darkest secret, why don’t you?” Jim rolled his eyes. “What’ll you have, Nancy? Sid here may be indiscreet, but he makes a mean cocktail.”
“A cocktail? Uh . . . What are you having?”
“Me, a Perfect Manhattan. Whiskey and vermouth, God knows what else.”
“I’ll have one of those too, then,” she said quickly, even though she had no idea what it might taste like. She was keen not to shilly-shally in front of Jim, but her cocktail repertoire was limited to the odd lunchtime Bloody Mary—Christopher only ever drank Glenfiddich or good red wine, about which he was a tiresome, indefatigable snob.
Jim, carefully balancing the brimming drinks, led her to a window table. “This okay?”
She nodded as they perched on the high stools and raised their chilled glasses.
“Here’s to new beginnings,” he said, with a smile.
The Perfect Manhattan was cold, smooth and sweet on Nancy’s tongue, with a slightly astringent aftertaste.
“Bit like cough mixture?” Jim asked, when she didn’t comment immediately.
“Mmm . . .” It was, but it was also delicious and she wanted to down the lot to calm her nerves. “So sorry I was late,” she said, “I got caught up with the grandchildren, then had to explain to my daughter that I was meeting you for a drink.”
Jim raised his eyebrows. “Was that a problem?”
“Not really. But Louise—my daughter—was a bit put out because I lied the other morning, when we had the coffee. I said I was seeing Lindy.”
“Why did you lie?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. It was stupid. I suppose I didn’t want her knowing about something that might not be something, and making a big deal out of it.”
“Sounds fair enough.”
“Yes, but I shouldn’t have lied.”
“We all do sometimes . . . Sort of seems easier in the moment, then we live to regret it.” Jim looked away and she wondered what lie he was regretting.
“And Louise hates my ex Christopher’s girlfriend. At least, she hates the fact of her. She doesn’t really know her personally.”
“So, a touchy subject, then.”
Nancy shrugged. “I haven’t been out much since the divorce, and never with a man before.”
Jim chuckled. “We’re a dodgy breed, no question.”
There was a brief silence between them. The bar had filled up, the early summer light from the window starting to fade to shadow. Nancy’s nerves were easing, either due to the strength of the Manhattan or because Jim seemed so relaxed in the warm, dark bar. Now there was just a pleasant fluttering of excitement in her gut, an anticipation that she hadn’t experienced in years. “It’s different for you,” she said. “Men’s sell-by dates are longer—or that’s the perceived wisdom. But there’s an ‘eugh’ factor about women of my age dating. We’re sort of seen as past it.”
Jim raised his eyebrows, said nothing, the laughter clear behind his eyes.
She felt momentarily disconcerted. “You know what I mean. I suppose I feel . . . self-conscious maybe. You, for instance, could hit on someone half your age and nobody would turn a hair, but if I came on to Sid over there . . .”
Jim’s face dropped. “Are you saying I’m too old for you? That you really want a toy-boy?”
They both started to laugh.
“You look so beautiful,” Jim said, which made her stop laughing at once, taken aback by the unaccustomed compliment, a slow heat creeping across her cheeks. She turned to look out of the window.
“Sorry.” He gave a small frown. “I . . . Hell, why apologize? It’s true.”
“Thank you.” Nancy’s mother had taught her from a young age that it was very rude to shrug off a compliment: “If someone says something nice to you, Nancy, you must respond. Be gracious and thank them. It’s the height of rudeness not to.” But she felt flustered rather than gracious as she met his eye. He was still staring at her, his gaze suddenly alive with desire. She couldn’t look away, but the previous panic slowly gave way to an answering thirst, her body overwhelmed by a wave of almost brazen sexuality. For a moment she gave into it, wallowing in the powerful current that seemed to have sparked between them, her heart dancing in her chest.
“Hmm . . .” Jim said, shaking himself and getting to his feet as if he were as thrown as she. “Don’t know what Sid put in that drink.” He grinned. “Same again?”
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. It was a relief that he had gone. It gave her time to catch her breath.
When he returned, the atmosphere lifted, the conversation taking on a deliberately lighter, safer tone. But the aura of that spark hung between them, like a tantalizing background glow.
“How’s Lindy?” Jim asked later. They had finished the second Manhattan and were sharing a bag of plain crisps, which Jim had torn open and placed on the table.
Nancy felt distinctly light-headed. “She’s . . . I haven’t talked to her this week.” But as she spoke, Nancy remembered guiltily a text from Lindy a couple of days ago that she hadn’t replied to, her head so full of Jim Bowdry. “She was suggesting we come to your gig on Saturday.”
“That’d be great. I can introduce you to the Bluebirds—the band. I haven’t played with them in a while; Mal the drummer’s been off with this sort of ME thing, but he says he’s okay now.”
Nancy didn’t reply for a moment. Then she said, “The thing is . . . I think I’ve stepped on Lindy’s toes as far as you’re concerned.”
Jim looked at her questioningly.
“She had her eye on you.”
“I did notice. So was she annoyed when you told her?”
“I haven’t. Not yet.”
“Right.” Jim grinned. “Seems you’ve kept me very quiet on all fronts.”
“It’s not like that.” Nancy felt defensive, but it was true, she hadn’t wanted to share even the thought of Jim with anyone. It seemed too new, too private, too uncertain. “It’s just so underhand, sneaking a coffee and now a cocktail with someone you know your best friend fancies. But I can’t find the right moment to tell her.” She knew she sounded cowardly and wished she hadn’t mentioned it. “And I didn’t know what might happen.”
“Between us?”
“Yes.”
Jim shook his head. “I can’t imagine Lindy’ll be crying into her porridge because it didn’t work out with me. She’s not short of offers, I imagine, an attractive woman like her.”
“No. But it’s the same problem I had with Louise. I didn’t tell her upfront. She’ll think I’m a right bitch going behind her back like this.”
“So don’t tell her. Just come to the gig on Saturday and I’ll leap on you and snog you to death in front of the whole room. Then she’ll think I’m a mad bastard and want nothing more to do with me.” He chortled.
“Ha! Not sure I fancy being snogged to death.” She sighed, overwhelmed by guilt again. “Why does it have to be so complicated?”
“You could just ring her and explain,” Jim said reasonably, clearly amused by her predicament.
She never had a chance to reply, because there was a sudden rumpus behind them. A tall, swarthy youth with a bull neck and tattoos covering both forearms had a jumpy, ferret-faced redhead by his T-shirt, lifting him off the ground and snarling into his face. “You fucking dickhead. You bloody little ponce. Think you can fucking come in here and make like nothing’s happened? I should fucking kill you.”
“Come on, Frankie, let him go. He’s not worth it,” a friend was trying to drag the big lad off, pulling at his arm, then the waistband of his jeans. But Frankie, livid with rage, just batted him away with his elbow and continued trying to strangle the redhead.
As Nancy watched in horror, a couple of the boy’s friends attempted to step in, tugging uselessly at his body in a bid to yank him free as they yelled at his attacker. But Frankie lashed out and hit one on the side of his head, making him stagger against a table and fall over. Everyone in the bar was on their feet now, backing away from the fight, which was only a yard or so away from where Nancy and Jim were sitting. Over the heads of the crowd she could see Sid on his mobile, presumably calling the police, and a girl next to her was capturing the scene on her phone, presumably to post later on Instagram.
“Go. Wait for me outside,” Jim said, pushing her toward the door. But she hadn’t got far when she saw Jim stride across to Frankie and plant himself inches from his face, the victim’s carroty head between them.
Very calmly, his deep voice loud so as to cut through the shouting and screaming, he said, “Let him go, lad. Right now. Right now, I said.”
The swarthy youth seemed to do a double-take. He frowned and dropped the redhead, who was quickly pulled out of harm’s way by his mates, his face as red as his hair. He was complaining loudly, his voice hoarse and reedy from the choking.
Frankie turned his attention to Jim. “And who the fuck are you?” he snarled.
Jim didn’t flinch. “Just get out of here before you do any more damage.” When the lad didn’t move, he came closer. “I said fuck off. Go.”
For a moment the lad’s eyes, bloodshot and dazed from alcohol, glared at him threateningly, but Nancy could see the fight had gone out of him. With one more louring look in the direction of his victim, he swung round and lurched toward the street, monitored closely by his friend, who had a hand firmly clamped to Frankie’s shoulder. As soon as the lout was safely off the premises, the remaining customers burst into spontaneous applause, those nearest to Jim clapping him on the back and congratulating him.
Jim waved a hand at Sid, who was still looking distinctly nervous behind the bar. When he got level with Nancy, he took her hand and made for the exit. “I said to get out,” he muttered, as they walked along the pavement. “You have no idea how quickly those things can get out of hand. Only takes one moron with a knife.”
“You were great in there.” Nancy was in awe of Jim’s authority, the calm way he’d dealt with what was clearly a violent character.
“He was just a lad who’d had too much to drink.” His face was still showing the tension of the past five minutes. “So, where to now?”
“No idea,” she said, not caring at all as long as she could hold his hand a while longer, feeling its strength and warmth.
“There’s a little Italian a couple of streets away. Fancy a pasta?”
*
“Have you dated much since you split up?” Nancy asked, as they sat eating their bowls of spicy penne all’arrabbiata in the bustling, old-style Italian cafe Jim had led her to.
Jim shook his head. “Nope. Nobody at all.”
“Really?” She was amazed.
“Do I seem like the Casanova type?” He looked almost hurt by the suggestion.
“No . . . It’s just you must meet a lot of girls, women, at your gigs, who come on to you.”
“Doesn’t mean I fancy them, though.”
“I suppose not.”
“Is Chrissie with someone else?”
“Not that I know of.” Jim clearly didn’t enjoy talking about his ex-wife, because the tone of his reply shut down any further inquiry. She wondered if he still had feelings for her.
*
Later, they stood in silence outside the restaurant waiting for the taxi Jim had ordered—she had drunk too much to drive home and would have to pick up her car in the morning. Nancy welcomed the cool April breeze on her hot cheeks and took deep breaths of the night air. She felt dizzy and tired—it had been a rollercoaster of an evening.
“Talk tomorrow?” he said.
“I might see you on Saturday.”
“I hope so.”
A constrained silence had descended on them as they prepared to say goodbye, as if neither knew how to end the evening. Then he took her hand again.
“I’d so like to kiss you,” he said quietly. “But not here.”
She nodded, her heart somersaulting as his eyes bored into her and she felt the flash of desire again, like a physical presence between them.
The taxi driver leaned out of the window of his cab. “Bowie?”
“I wish,” Jim joked, before opening the rear door for Nancy.
*
“Mum?” Nancy was woken the following morning by a call from Louise. “Listen, would you be able to take the girls to school for me? The alarm’s gone off at the restaurant and Ross is halfway to Worthing to see a supplier.”
“Umm. . . Sure.” Disoriented, she checked the clock. Seven forty-five. Hope and Jazzy had to leave at eight-fifteen to be at school for the eight-thirty “kiss-and-drop.” She tumbled out of bed, her head throbbing, her mouth dry as a bone, and grabbed a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, a teal cotton cardigan. As she pulled on a pair of canvas slip-ons she remembered. Panicking, she ran across the drive to her daughter’s house. Louise was in the kitchen, buttering brown toast on the breadboard, the girls sitting at the table in front of bowls of Shreddies and glasses of orange juice, already in their school uniforms.
“I forgot, I don’t have the car,” Nancy said. “I had to leave it in Brighton last night.”
Louise’s eyebrows rose. “Right.”
“Hi, Nana,” Hope said, through a mouthful of cereal.
“Hi, darling.” Nancy waited for her daughter to respond.
“Well, nothing you can do about that,” Louise said eventually. “Come on then, girls, we’ll have to go right now.”
“But I haven’t had any toast,” Jazzy wailed.
“You can eat it in the car,” their mother said.
Neither child moved.
“I said, come on! I’ve got to deal with the alarm at the restaurant. Go and get your shoes on. Hurry up!”
“What about our hair?” Hope asked, looking a little nervous of her mother’s mood.
“I’ll do it.” Nancy went to grab the brush and ponytail holders from the box on the ledge by the front door.
“I don’t want a ponytail. I want slides at the sides.” Jazzy winced as Nancy drew the brush through her heavy blonde locks.
“It’ll have to be a ponytail this morning, darling. I don’t have slides.” Her granddaughter looked as if she were about to protest but, apparently sensing the tension, decided not to.
Louise stomped off to gather up the girls’ blue satchels, anoraks, and Hope’s swimming bag, while Nancy tussled with the knots and shrieks until both girls looked tidy enough for school.
“See you later,” Louise muttered, as they all piled into the family hatchback.
Nancy watched the car pull out of the drive, then trailed back to her cottage. She made herself a strong cup of coffee and drank a large glass of water. Her head was throbbing in a most uncharacteristic way. It had been years since she’d had a hangover. It’s not my fault, she said to herself. I wasn’t to know the bloody alarm would go off. But she still felt unaccountably guilty.
As she sat at the table in a daze, hands wrapped round the coffee mug like a security blanket, she went over the evening in her mind. Jim . . . Jim. She rolled the sound over her tongue. What a perfect name. And he had been so cool, so courageous, tackling that lout as if he were just a naughty kid—which he probably was, of course. But, as Jim had said, it could have turned nasty.
She remembered his last words, “I’d like to kiss you,” and felt her tired body tremble delightfully at the thought. What would it be like, kissing Jim Bowdry? Nancy hadn’t kissed anyone except Christopher for thirty-plus years. She chuckled to herself, imagining what her ex-husband would have done, faced with a fight in a bar. He’d have been out of there like a greyhound out of a trap. But maybe that was unfair, because so would most normal men.
Sighing with wonder at her feelings for Jim—an infatuation as intense as any teenager’s—she went upstairs to have a shower.