Claire picked up the remote and pointed it at the TV. She itched to go and look back out of the window, but that was just too sad. She’d already seen he wasn’t still standing there.
He’d gone home. To his lovely girlfriend. The paragon of femininity he’d been describing to her only moments earlier. She shook her head, silently lecturing herself. Don’t torture yourself, Claire.
She stopped flicking channels and marched off to the kitchen. She’d gone past beer and needed wine now. A nice glass of cool Sauvignon. When she’d poured herself a large one, she sank back down on her couch again and stared blankly at the television screen. Some documentary. She couldn’t be bothered to keep surfing. Besides, her mind was churning far too much for her to concentrate on anything.
As she sipped her wine, she checked inside herself. She was feeling all out of sorts. Stupid woman, she told herself. You shouldn’t have said yes to a drink with him, however innocent. It had only made things a thousand times worse.
Yep. What she was feeling …? She now had a name for it.
Because she’d realised that even through the whole of her five-year marriage, Philip could not have answered those three questions about her. He’d always bought her chocolate liqueurs at Christmas, even though she’d told him repeatedly that she hated her alcohol and her chocolate mixed, but that had been Philip all over – too absorbed in himself and what he needed from those around him to truly think about anyone else.
That girlfriend of Nick’s? Well, Claire hoped she appreciated him. Yes, he was a little rough around the edges. Yes, he often plugged his mouth with both his feet. But there was something to be said for a man who really, truly stopped thinking about himself for one second, who stopped constantly taking from the woman in his life, and tried to give something back to her. Even if it wasn’t easy for him.
Maybe especially if it wasn’t easy for him. What he lacked in finesse, Nick got ‘A star’ for in effort.
See? And she’d gone and got the wine, put the television on to help her stop thinking about him, and she’d done nothing but. Focus, Claire. There’s no point mooning over what you can’t have.
She took another sip of her wine and turned the volume up on the TV, hoping it would snag her attention better. Instead of flicking through more channels, she decided to just stick with what was on. It seemed much better than quiz show reruns or late-night shows with rude internet videos or reality shows about fishermen, truck drivers or cheating spouses. She wriggled down further amongst the sofa cushions and paid better attention.
It was a documentary about an orphanage in Uganda, one in the slums of Kampala. It had started more than twenty years ago, by a local couple whose hearts had been so moved by the homeless children they’d met that they’d taken them into their own. The civil war and the sweep of the AIDS epidemic across the country had left countless children with no one to care for them.
It wasn’t long before she was completely absorbed in the unfolding story. As she watched, she saw the attitude of some people to the street children, who just saw them as urchins or beggars, who passed them by in the same way as Londoners ignored the Big Issue sellers on their high streets or the rattling charity boxes at the entrance to their local supermarkets. But these were children. Cold and hungry with sad eyes and quivering lips. They way the story was told showed just how extraordinary the couple with two children of their own had been.
They had seen. They looked past the prejudice others couldn’t get round and they had seen.
Over the next forty minutes, she learned how they’d secured help from a UK charity through a visiting minister, how their overcrowded house had filled even further, and then how they’d built not one but three schools in the area. How they’d given hundreds of children a home and an education. How they’d stopped the cycle of poverty and disease for so many, helping them to go on to university or get jobs. It was truly remarkable. And all it had taken was two people – not a nation, not even an organisation – who’d had the courage to take their blinkers off and see what was under their noses.
Claire reached for a tissue as the credits rolled and blew her nose. Halfway through making a rather unattractive sound, she froze. Then she hit the pause button and rewound the live feed to watch what she’d seen again.
It was still there, in large white letters on the black background:
Director
DOMINIC ARDEN
*
She shook her head. Surely not. Surely it couldn’t be …
But then she thought of all those geeky video magazines she shuffled through like piles of autumn leaves on her doorstep. It was too much of a coincidence to be otherwise.
Well.
She’d have never guessed that in a million years.
She hadn’t really thought about what kind of work he did with all that high-tech equipment of his, but if she’d had to think about it, she’d have probably said he did something nerdy like make YouTube clips about shoot ‘em up games or, even worse, corporate training videos.
It seemed her annoying downstairs neighbour had hidden depths. Who’d have thought? She took another large glug of wine as she fast-forwarded through the adverts and onto the next programme – a rerun of Friends. The one with the Thanksgiving video. She’d seen it a thousand times, but she watched it anyway. She needed something safe, something familiar. Because everyone else – especially the men – in her life were behaving most unexpectedly today.