Gigi

It was after nine o’clock when Gigi heard the knock at the door. Her heart sank a little. She’d worked a long shift, most of it in the post-natal ward, checking endless stitches, and she was exhausted. A shift with an active labour always went faster, and, though she still loved the work she did with the newly delivered mothers, tonight her feet throbbed. She’d come home, wondered about cooking, been momentarily very glad that there was no one else who needed feeding, and decided that hot buttered toast and a big glass of wine were far easier. She’d peeled off her uniform and pulled on her fluffy dressing gown while she waited for the bathtub to fill with gloriously hot water and bubbles, having poured at least a quarter of the posh bubble bath from Emily under the tap.

There couldn’t possibly be good news at the door. A misdelivered food order, a misguided salesman … or worse. She thought about ignoring it and hoping whoever it was would go away. But maybe something was wrong. Gigi sighed, turned off the tap and went to answer it, putting the chain across first.

She could see – in the three inches of space the chain allowed – Adam. He leapt back when she opened the door, as though he’d knocked by accident.

‘I’m sorry. Is it a bad time?’

‘No. It’s fine. Hold on a minute, let me take the chain off …’

She closed the door, and found herself checking her reflection in the hall mirror. She pulled the robe tighter around her and pushed her messy hair behind her ears. The steam from the bathroom had made her pink and shiny. She rubbed her face against her sleeve quickly and opened the door.

‘Adam. Hi.’

‘Hi. I’m sorry. I saw the car pull in … I didn’t realize …’

‘I’m always in a bit of a hurry to wash the hospital off me after a long shift.’

‘Of course. Sorry. Again.’

She smiled, wondering what he wanted. Perhaps she was parking in the wrong place. Making too much noise. Using too much hot water …

She’d seen him three or four times since the day he’d helped with the floor. Just for chats – one of them always coming or going. He seemed more antsy now than he had done on any of those occasions. Less cool.

‘I’ll get to the point, then. Then you can get back to your –’

‘Bath.’

‘Yes. Your bath.’ He seemed positively embarrassed.

‘I wanted to ask if you’d have dinner with me.’

‘Tonight?’

‘No, no. Not tonight. When you’re free. Say, Friday. Saturday?’

‘You want to have dinner with me?’

He smiled now, and the smile restored his demeanour. That slight laugh behind his voice. ‘That’s the general idea, yes. I’d like to take you to dinner. If you’d like to go …’

Gigi pulled the robe tighter still around herself. She had a horrible feeling she was breaking out in hives. If this was a date, and it rather sounded like it was, then her brain was whirling – counting – and telling her that it was, well, more than thirty-seven years since anyone had asked her out.

She hadn’t the vaguest notion how to be cool about it. She was flattered, petrified and, mostly, bemused.

Adam shifted slightly from foot to foot, looking at her, his eyes shining, his hands buried now in his jeans pockets.

A tiny voice inside her head spoke for her.

‘I’d love to.’ What was she playing at?

The tiny voice was still talking.

‘Friday is good for me.’

Adam looked delighted, confidence restored almost to swagger level.

‘That’s great. Do you like Thai?’

Apparently, the tiny voice was very enthusiastic about Asian cuisine. And 7.30 worked for her. She made the arrangement, thanked Adam for asking and wished him goodnight, all while Gigi stood and wondered why in the hell Adam would want to have dinner with her. And why she’d agreed to go.

After he left, she closed the door and leant back against it, catching the breath she was suddenly short of.

She changed, unchanged and rechanged her mind about a dozen times between Tuesday and Friday afternoon. She wanted to tell Kate, but something stopped her. Probably the thought of Richard. She couldn’t shake the feeling of disloyalty – the feeling that she was betraying him.

But at 7.25 on Friday night, she was sitting in an armchair, drinking a very large gin and tonic faster than was prudent. She’d done her hair and her face, and the ten discarded outfits strewn across her bed were testament to the care she’d taken over what to wear. She’d settled on a black wrap dress and heels. She almost never wore heels, but she’d felt dumpy in the dress until she’d put them on. They’d stretched her silhouette out into something vaguely acceptable, and Spanx had squeezed it in. The wrap’s neckline was low, so she’d taken the dress off and added a silky vest to cover the three or four inches of cleavage she thought would be overdoing it.

She’d even thought about painting her nails, after inspecting her workaday hands with some dismay, but her wedding ring had stopped her in her tracks. She’d never taken it off her hand, not since the day Richard had put it on. She couldn’t get it off if she wanted to. She knew because she’d tried. With cold water, and hand lotion, and even a lump of butter … it hadn’t budged. Her finger had grown around it. A jeweller would have to cut it off, and that seemed so … final, and so violent, somehow.

Now, although she didn’t want to, she was thinking about her first dates with Richard, in the late 1970s. A lifetime ago. She’d thought he was the best-looking bloke she’d ever seen. She’d never believed in butterflies in the stomach and delicious palpitations. The stuff of Georgette Heyer, not of real life. But he had given them to her. They were all courting – her fellow nursing students. The atmosphere was redolent with lust and love and daydreams. She remembered the excitement of Saturday nights then, getting ready in her flat – Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours on the record player – all of them fighting for hot water and mirror space. Farrah Fawcett flicks and blue eyeshadow, an intoxicating cloud of perfume. Smoky pubs and loud discos. Steaming up the windows in his car, thinking about going all the way, and wondering if she might, right there in the car … But Richard had been old-fashioned, even then, and he hadn’t wanted that. He told her he had too much respect for her, and she felt like a lady. They’d gone to a hotel by the sea for the weekend, when neither of them could wait any longer. She’d already known by then that she’d marry him if he asked her, and he wouldn’t have taken her, he told her, if he hadn’t been planning to. So serious, down on one knee, a ring in his pocket. She remembered being so very, very sure that it was right. Like she’d discovered the secret, at twenty-one. And she was invincible. The two of them would be indestructible. Had she ever been so sure of anything since? Nothing was indestructible. Life showed you that.

She drained her glass and stood up, to shatter the veil of melancholy that had settled. Gin really was mother’s ruin. She wandered over to the window, to see if his car was there. It was odd to think he was just below her, getting dressed for the same date. She wondered what he was thinking. Across the road, the young family she’d seen the first day she’d come to the house was just arriving home. Dad was with them. He was pushing the stroller, with the younger toddler standing on one of those clever skateboard things they had on the back these days, which she’d have loved when Christopher and Oliver were little. Mum was holding hands with the eldest, while fishing the key out of her pocket with the other hand. Tea now, and bath-time. Maybe a glass of wine and a television show for the parents once all was quiet upstairs. How many Saturday nights had she and Richard spent that way, not minding at all that they weren’t getting dressed up to go out to dinner? Happy to be at home, a family.

Get it together, Gigi, for God’s sake. On impulse, she scrolled through the songs on her iPhone and clicked it into the dock. ‘The Chain’. Still good. She pushed the volume up and up, so that the room reverberated with the sound of Stevie Nick’s incredible voice, and started to move. Catching sight of herself in the mirror, she smiled. She might be three stone heavier, forty years older and a bloody load wiser, but she could still dance. As if no one was watching. If no one was watching. And at least the blue eyeshadow was gone.

Adam called for her exactly on time. He was a gentleman too. All the holding-the-door-open stuff. Walking on the outside of the pavement. Asking her what she would like to drink and ordering it with the waitress for her. Once that was done, he smiled broadly at her.

‘I’m glad you said yes. I’ve been looking forward to it.’

‘Me too.’ Not strictly true. ‘Thanks for asking me.’

He nodded acknowledgement. ‘You look really nice.’

It had been a while since Richard had said that. He wasn’t critical, like some people’s husbands were. Never put her down. He just didn’t really notice any more.

‘Thank you. So do you.’ God, Gigi. You’re a sodding parrot. He did, though. He was wearing one of those white shirts with a vivid pattern inside the collar and the cuffs, and a fashionably cut jacket. Richard might have said he looked spivvy. But she thought it looked good. Like he hadn’t given up entirely.

She blinked hard, trying to banish Richard from the date, and react on her own. Be whole, not just half of a whole that no longer was whole.

‘Are you all settled in?’ This was his stock first question. Every time. But he always looked genuinely interested in the answer.

‘I think so …’

‘Where were you before?’ Okay. Straight in there. She didn’t know why she’d have expected anything else. People their age simply didn’t come without baggage. Best to see what other people were carrying around with them early on, she supposed.

‘I’ve actually just separated from my husband. Richard.’ She didn’t know why she’d said his name.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘That’s okay. It’s not a secret.’

‘I didn’t mean to pry.’ Which of course he had.

‘You weren’t prying. It was a simple enough question. It’s fine.’ She straightened her chopsticks on the placemat and tried to smile brightly. ‘What about you? How long have you had the house?’

‘I bought it in 2000. We did. I was married too –’

‘So are you divorced as well?’

A slight shake of the head. ‘Widowed.’

‘Now I’m sorry.’ God.

‘Don’t be.’ Adam shrugged and smiled. ‘It was a long time ago. My wife – Stella – she died in 2005.’

‘Was she … ill?’

He nodded. ‘For a while.’ Gigi gave him room to say more but he didn’t.

‘That’s really hard.’

‘It was. It gets easier …’

‘Did you have children?’

‘No. No children. Stella never wanted them. I didn’t think I wanted them enough to push her … What about you?’

‘Three. Two boys and a girl. Quite grown up now … Christopher, Oliver and Megan. She’s my youngest. She’s at university. The boys have flown the nest completely.’

‘Ah … They say that’s a dangerous time.’

‘I suppose so.’ Was she that much of a cliché? ‘I’m a grandmother too.’

‘No! You can’t be.’

‘Flatterer. I absolutely can be, and I absolutely am. Ava. Christopher’s daughter. She’s almost one now.’

‘Well, you look very well on it.’

She nodded acknowledgement. ‘Thank you.’ He was still looking at her in that way she couldn’t quite interpret, like he had in the flat, that first time they’d met.

Five more minutes, waiting for their food to arrive and distract them, for careers. Hers as a midwife in a beleaguered NHS, his in pharmaceutical sales. Gigi trying not to gush about a job she loved, and Adam clearly trying not to bore about a job he merely tolerated because it paid for his life.

The starters arrived, and provided some respite. Gigi knew hobbies were probably next. Or politics …

She felt strangely exhausted. She didn’t know anything about him and he didn’t know anything about her. There was a conversational mountain – an information Everest – for them to climb before they could be anything like comfortable together. All this stuff – this superficial stuff – it was supposed to be exhilarating, but it made her feel so tired. This trying to piece together a picture of who the other was without straying into territory that was too sad, or too complicated, or that revealed too much. If she was watching, from another table, she’d say she could see two middle-aged people – a bit trampled by life, trying too hard to find common ground. Walking gingerly across new ground booby-trapped with mines.

She had always dreaded being – with Richard – just another one of those eating-not-talking couples you saw in restaurants, with nothing to say to each other. Megan could be particularly damning about that type of diner. Gigi had tested Richard, in those last weeks and months before she’d left, by saying nothing when they’d taken their seats. Almost counting how long it took him to start a conversation. Scoring him – no points if it was about the weather, two points for something to do with the kids – they were too easy. Conversational cannon fodder. Ten points if he made her think, or laugh, or said anything that made her want to take him home before dessert and jump his bones. And he hadn’t scored many tens. For a moment, looking back, it seemed comfortable and familiar. There was just such a couple in the corner behind Adam now. Gigi was fascinated by them. They’d come in immediately after them, and ordered their food with their drinks, as if they came here often and knew without looking what they wanted. The wife wasn’t dressed up at all. She certainly gave no indication of being afraid that if she exhaled too fast, or coughed, her Spanx might roll down. Her glasses were pushed back on her head; her makeup hadn’t been touched up since this morning. He was wearing a pullover. They spoke very little and ate quite fast. At one point she showed him something on her mobile phone. He leant over with a prawn on a fork and popped it in her mouth in a totally unsexy way. The strange thing was that they didn’t look dreadful to her now. They looked incredibly safe, and relaxed. Easy like Sunday morning.

Adam had turned around to look at the couple, so Gigi must have been staring.

‘Do you know them?’

‘No. Sorry. I’m a bit …’ She had no end for her sentence.

‘I understand.’

‘Do you?’

‘It’s weird. When you’re first back out there. I’ve got a ten-year head start on you, but I do remember.’

‘Have you had girlfriends, then, since your wife?’

‘A few. For a while, once I first got up off the carpet, and that took about a year, I was obsessed with finding someone else. Obsessed. I thought I would only work if I was part of a couple. That’s all I’d been, for so long.’

‘How long were you married?’

‘Nearly twenty years. You?’

‘Closer to forty. We were married in 1979.’

Adam nodded. ‘1986. Being widowed is a bit different to being divorced. That’s a conscious decision. Albeit a complicated one: I know that. Being widowed isn’t a choice. It just happens to you.’

She smiled ruefully. ‘I get that.’

‘It had just been so long since I’d been anything else but half of a couple. Probably not even the better half. I tried everything. God knows what kind of desperate vibe I was giving off … Eau de horribly lonely …’

‘What did you try?’

‘You name it. Blind dates. No single woman friend-of-friends was safe. Speed dating. Online stuff.’

‘Blimey. That sounds comprehensive. Did it work?’

‘Well, it worked in the sense that I had somewhere to be. Dates. Hook-ups. Some stories I could tell …’

‘I bet.’

‘There are a hell of a lot of lonely people out there.’

Gigi tried not to shudder.

‘It took me a year or two to realize that wasn’t what I wanted. There’s someone and there’s anyone, if you know what I mean.’

‘I think I do. Lonely alone and lonely in a crowd.’ Lonely at home with your husband.

‘Exactly. Exactly!’ He seemed so pleased she understood. He banged a fist down on the table. ‘Your wife dies, she becomes this perfect person. The best wife, the best woman. You measure everyone against her. But it isn’t fair. Of course no one seems to measure up to this perfect ghost. And she wasn’t really, not any of those things. I loved her. I think we’d still be married, if she hadn’t died. But who can say that for sure? She wasn’t perfect. I’m not either. Nobody is perfect.’

It was different, Gigi realized. The widower and the divorcee. Not that she was that yet. Different kinds of loneliness. For a second she imagined her life if Richard had died five, ten, fifteen years ago. Imagined how that would have felt. A small, sudden streak of pain tore through her chest. She made herself concentrate on Adam again.

‘So you stopped speed dating.’

‘I did.’ He shivered melodramatically. ‘Never again.’

Gigi laughed and risked a joke, because it felt okay. ‘And just started preying on your female tenants.’

‘You’re the fourth,’ he deadpanned.

They both laughed now, and it was real, and even quite easy.

‘That’s better. You laughed.’

And the rest was better, easier. They stayed off the subject of their respective pasts, by mutual agreement, and spoke about less serious things, and drank too much nice wine. The quiet couple paid their bill and left, and they stayed later.

Eventually Adam called a cab to take them home. When the fresh air hit Gigi on the pavement outside the restaurant, she realized she was drunk – actually drunk – for the first time in a very, very long time, since she couldn’t remember when. Happy, woozy drunk. In the cab, when the driver took a corner quite sharply, she slid a little in the seat, and their thighs touched briefly. She put her hand out to steady herself, and it touched his, and there was something like a shock in the touch.

In the driveway, she leant against her own car while Adam paid the driver. She tipped her head back and looked at the stars, making herself dizzy, but good dizzy. She was herself, but a lighter self. All the lights were off in the house of happy family.

The cab drove off, and Adam walked towards her. When he was standing in front of her, close, he reached out and put his hands on her waist. The gesture felt intimate but not invasive. She worried for a moment about how chubby she might feel to him, and just as quickly decided she really didn’t care. He hadn’t known her any other way, had never felt a slimmer, younger version of her between his hands, like Richard had. And he still wanted to put his hands there.

No man but Richard had kissed her since the glorious summer of 1977. It was an absurd thought. And now she knew Adam was going to. He was taller than her husband, and she had to tilt her head back to meet his gaze. They were lit only by a sliver of moon, and the movement-sensitive security light on the corner of the house. They stayed still like that long enough for it to go off, and then it was just the moonlight, so she couldn’t see his expression. Just the glint in his eyes.

He didn’t move his hands from her waist. He made her make it happen, in the end. She put her hands on his face and pulled his mouth down on hers. The kiss was deep and passionate. He tilted her hips into his and pushed himself against her. She was breathless, and her stomach dropped. Drunken desire: there was nothing better. She remembered now. She felt liquid with wanting.

It was Adam who pulled back.

‘God.’ His voice was raspy with desire. She felt fantastically powerful and wanton.

She ran the back of her hand across her mouth and tried to catch her breath.

‘I want –’

‘Ssh. I want too.’ His hips moved towards her, and she felt him hard against her thigh. ‘But … and I cannot believe I’m saying this. We’re drunk, Gigi.’

‘Not that drunk.’

‘Drunk enough.’ He dropped his forehead to rest on hers, his hips off hers now, and held her face for a moment.

‘It’d be the easiest thing in the world to take you upstairs. But we’re not going to.’

‘We’re not?’ She nipped at his lips with her mouth. She wanted to see if she could change his mind.

He shook his head. ‘Not tonight.’

Gigi straightened up and smoothed down her dress, feeling suddenly slightly foolish.

Adam dropped his hands down on to her shoulders. ‘Look, I’m not going anywhere, Gigi. I live here. I had a great night. Best night I’ve had for ages. I really like you.’

‘I like you too –’

‘So there’s no hurry. This is all new to you. I would rather you were sure, if you want this to go further.’

‘That is infuriatingly chivalrous of you.’

‘Believe me, once I close my door, I’ll kick myself.’ He smiled. ‘But I do know I’m right about this.’

‘Thank you.’ She kissed him once, gently, on the lips.

‘You’re welcome.’

He took her keys and opened the side door wide for her.

‘I’m going to watch you go up, if that’s all right with you.’ He winked.

‘That’s all right with me.’ She took her keys.

‘Easier to do when I’m not carrying that damn sander!’

At the top of the stairs she turned and gave him the smallest wave.

‘Goodnight, Adam.’

‘Goodnight, Gigi.’

When the doorbell rang the next morning, it woke Gigi up from a deep and restless sleep. The drunkenness that had felt so delightful and liberating at 11 p.m. the night before had manifested itself as palpitations, dry mouth and a very discomforting dizziness at around 3 a.m. She’d always been a lousy drinker.

Gigi had sat on the toilet seat willing the room to stay still and gulping tap water from her tooth mug for a few minutes; sat bolt upright, horribly wide awake in bed, flicking around television channels for another hour; and finally swallowed two paracetamol with a piece of dry toast and fallen back into a fitful sleep at around 5 a.m. The bell at ten brought her unwillingly back from far, far away.

The mirror by the door made unpleasant reading. Her hair was wild, and her mascara was smudged under her eyes. Megan would have said ‘Rough’ and that would have been kind. She frantically smoothed down her curls and rubbed furiously at her eyes with a licked finger. The bell rang again, whoever was pushing it leaning on it impatiently.

‘All right, all right. I’m coming.’

Please let it not be Adam. Please. Actually, please let it not be anyone I know.

It was a delivery. A dozen red roses. Not the meagre, garage-forecourt type of roses. Full, deep-red, long-stemmed, expensive, fragrant roses, not a stem of gypsophilia in sight. They were beautiful.

She mumbled her thanks to the delivery person and closed the door. No one had sent her flowers for years. Grateful new mothers and fathers dropped off bouquets and boxes of chocolates at the hospital from time to time, but not like this. These were serious romance flowers in all their clichéd and effective glory, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had some.

Who knew they were also a hangover cure?

Gigi put down the bouquet carefully on the table. They were in a cellophane vase, already filled with water, which was just as well – she didn’t think she had anything that they would fit in – and very thoughtful of the sender. There was a small white card in an envelope pinned to the arrangement. She pulled it out gently.

I miss you. And I love you. R.