Because She Loves Me (2 page)

Two

I walked down City Road to Old Street Tube station. Silicon Roundabout – many of my clients were based here, a mixture of web start-ups and small publishers. The design agency that I did most of my work for is based a short distance away on Clerkenwell Green. I’m a web designer and although it sometimes feels like there are more of us in London than there are rats, I’m able to make a living from it. I even had a little money saved, although three months without being able to work had drained my bank account.
I must call Victor
, I thought, as I descended the steps of the Tube station.

It was late-December, just after five in the afternoon, and the station was packed with Christmas shoppers and office workers on their way home. I would send Victor a Christmas message when I got home, remind him of my existence. Fortunately, he’d been very understanding of my situation and had told me there should always be work for me. ‘At least until the next fucking recession comes along,’ he’d said on the phone, unable to resist the urge to say something gloomy.

I was so deep in thought about work, money and the Eeyore-like tendencies of my main employer that I didn’t notice her at first. The platform was crowded and devoid of festive spirit and I was tempted to turn back, go and sit in the pub until rush hour was over.

The train came and sucked hundreds of passengers inside, leaving those of us who weren’t desperate to get home standing on the platform. I looked towards the departures board to see how long I had to wait – and there she was.

The woman from the hospital.

I froze. This was it: my second chance. But I hesitated. A woman that gorgeous would definitely have a boyfriend. Several, probably. She was out of my league. I was hopeless at this sort of thing. Half a dozen excuses why I should leave it ran through my head.

If I hadn’t been in such an ebullient mood, I probably would have done nothing, regretted it for a day then forgotten all about her. Instead, I shouldered my way through the crowd until I reached her, trying to persuade myself that I was confident and that rejection would be better than not trying at all.

‘You were right, you know,’ I said.

She looked up with surprise.

‘About the coffee in the hospital. It did taste like piss. Though I think it was more like horse’s piss than cow’s.’

Perhaps it wasn’t the best way to start a relationship, with a little white lie. I hadn’t tried the coffee. But it was the best opening line I could come up with. For a horrible moment I thought she didn’t recognise me, that she thought I was a random nutcase.

But she hitched her bag onto her shoulder and said, ‘No. Definitely cow.’

She was still wearing her ID round her neck and with my pupils returned to normal I could read it. Charlotte Summers. Her surname made me smile. Charlotte Summers and Andrew Sumner. It was a sign.

‘Charlotte,’ I said, sticking out my hand. This was so out of character for me but, like I said, I was on a high after getting the news from Mr Makkawi. ‘I’m Andrew.’

She returned my handshake with a firm grip, her hand dry and warm. I couldn’t believe she hadn’t run off yet. She actually seemed pleased to be talking to me. ‘I’m Charlie when I’m not at work. Are you an Andy?’

‘You can call me Andy if you like.’

She wrinkled her nose. ‘Nah, I prefer Andrew. Sounds more grown up.’

The train clattered into the station and Charlie and I were propelled onto it by the surge of the crowd. We found ourselves pressed together beside the door, other bodies clustered around us.

‘Where are you going?’ I asked.

‘London Bridge.’

‘Me too. Then an overground train to Tulse Hill.’

‘Is that where you live?’

I nodded. ‘How about you? Are you one of those north-of-the-river types?’

‘Oh no. I live in Camberwell. Proper London.’

‘You don’t have the accent,’ I said. ‘I’d guess you’re from somewhere up north.’

She laughed. ‘Yes. That great wilderness beyond the M25.’ She stage whispered. ‘I come from a tribe in a primitive little village called Leeds.’

‘Oh yes, I’ve heard tale of it. You escaped though.’

‘Yes. Though my seventeen brothers are hunting me even as we speak. With specially trained hunter pigeons.’

We talked. Were we flirting? It definitely felt like flirting, though maybe she thought I was an idiot and was awaiting her first opportunity to get away. I couldn’t take my eyes off her face. She was even more stunning than I’d originally thought. She had a little chip out of one of her front teeth, and the heat of the Tube train had made the skin around her collarbone flush pink. I badly wanted to kiss her.

I told her I was from Eastbourne and she told me she’d been to Brighton, which is what people always say, and then we passed Bank and I became aware that we were about to get off the train and would probably get separated. Forever.

‘I just had some excellent news,’ I said. I told her about being discharged.

‘That’s fantastic.’

We pulled into London Bridge. I was going to have to get off. I would never see her again. She appeared to be deep in thought.

‘So how are you going to celebrate being released from Moorfields?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Going to go out with your girlfriend?’

‘I don’t have one.’

The doors slid open and commuters began to push past me. I stayed rooted to the spot, trying to prolong the moment.

I didn’t need to. Before I could gather the courage to ask her out, Charlie took me by the arm and pulled me off the train. We stood on the platform, jostled from all sides. Charlie stood firm, the other passengers flowing around her like water past a rock.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll buy you a celebratory drink. You do drink, don’t you?’

We went to a pub off Borough High Street, an ancient place with twinkling Christmas lights hanging from the timber beams and
dozens
of workers sinking one last pint before going home to the kids.

As we entered the pub, a middle-aged couple stood up to leave and Charlie grabbed their table, attracting evil stares from a man and woman who’d been waiting at the bar. She ignored them.

‘Red wine,’ she mouthed at me.

I could feel the couple whose table we’d ‘stolen’ glowering at me but I was in such a good mood their daggers bounced off me. There was a mirror behind the bar and I caught my reflection. My hair, dark brown, stuck up at the back no matter how often I tried to flatten it down. I was still slim, despite my sedentary lifestyle, and I’d been told I had good cheekbones. I looked scruffy, though, and had bags under my eyes, though these were mostly obscured by my glasses. Spending so much time on my own, I didn’t worry too much about my appearance, but what would Charlie think? I assumed, from the way she’d asked me here for a drink, that she wasn’t horrified by what she saw.

I bought Charlie’s wine and a pint for myself, then sat down opposite her.

‘So, what happened to you?’ she asked. ‘Why were you at the hospital?’

I took a long sip of lager. ‘I had a detached retina.’

‘Nasty.’

‘I know. But it’s all better now.’

She downed half her wine in two gulps. ‘I feel all better now too.’ She put on a funny Eliza Doolittle voice, a mangled blend of Cockney and Yorkshire. ‘I’m only an ’umble project manager, so I don’t know much about eyes. What caused it?’

‘They don’t really know. Apparently, it’s something that can happen to people who are badly short-sighted.’

‘Really? Let’s see how short-sighted you are.’ She took my glasses from me and tried them on, instantly adopting the sexy geek look. ‘Whew! You really
are
blind.’

She handed my glasses back and asked me to tell her more about what had happened.

‘It was weird. First thing, I noticed a couple of floaters – you know, those little dots that sometimes appear in your vision and, er, float around. Then I saw this shadow that started here—’ I pointed to the corner of my left eye ‘—and slowly spread across my vision. I was trying to ignore it, thinking it was just something that would pass.’

‘Typical bloke.’

‘Yeah. I would rather die a slow, painful death than go to see a doctor. Eventually, I Googled it, learned about detached retinas, about how the retina peels away from where it should be, and how I could go blind if I didn’t get to the hospital straight away. That was when I called a taxi.’

We finished our drinks and Charlie went to the bar. The aggrieved couple were still there. They looked like they worked in the City, in their forties, wearing expensive suits and with expressions that said they weren’t used to being fucked with. They were talking loudly about how they were going to spend Christmas skiing in a five-star resort ‘away from the plebs and all our fucking relatives and their brats.’

When Charlie sat down I told her the rest of the story. About how I’d been rushed into surgery in the small hours of the morning, how all I could remember was being wheeled down the corridor, then waking up with my eye taped shut and a complicated prescription for eye pressure tablets and four different kinds of drops. I had a gas bubble in my eye which would keep my retina in place while it healed. All I could see out of my left eye was a big, wobbling bubble that obscured everything I looked at. I had to sleep sitting upright so gravity would keep the bubble in place.

I spent those first ten days listening to books or watching box sets with my good eye. The tablets bent my senses and made everything taste peculiar, especially alcohol, meaning I didn’t drink for two weeks, though when I went out my depth perception was so awry that everyone thought I was drunk.

‘It was a pretty shit few weeks,’ I said to Charlie, able to laugh about it now.

‘You’re lucky not to have lost the sight in that eye, then? Though I reckon you’d look good with an eye patch.’

I resisted the urge to put on a pirate voice.

Charlie said, ‘What’s your problem?’

It took me a moment to realise she wasn’t addressing me but the couple at the bar.

The woman was visibly taken aback and moved to turn away but the bloke she was with sneered at Charlie. He was drunk and I felt a prickle of concern that things might escalate into, if not physical violence, then at least the verbal kind.

‘
You’re
our problem,’ the man said.

Charlie sat up straighter. ‘Oh really? Why’s that?’

‘You nicked our table.’

She opened her mouth with mock horror. ‘Oh my goodness. Did you hear that, Andrew? This is their table. I didn’t realise that, did you?’

‘Shut up, slag,’ the woman said.

‘Ginger minge,’ added the man.

Charlie looked shocked for a split second, then laughed. ‘
Ginger minge
! Wow, I haven’t heard that one for a long time. Since secondary school, in fact. Well, yes, it is ginger, as a matter of fact, not that I wear much hair down there. But colour-wise I like to go natural – unlike you.’

She looked pointedly at the woman’s dyed-blonde hair.

‘Perhaps rather than concentrating on us, you should keep an eye on your husband,’ Charlie went on. ‘If he looks at the barmaid’s tits one more time he’s going to go blind.’

The man’s face went crimson.

‘And mate,’ Charlie said, ‘you might be interested to learn that while you were in the loo, your bird here had a good look through your phone. Checking your texts, by the look of it. Doesn’t trust you – and who can blame her?’

‘You what?’

The man and woman glared at each other.

Charlie swallowed the dregs of her wine, grabbed my wrist and said, ‘Let’s go.’

As we left the pub, she turned back. ‘You can stick your bloody table up your collective arse.’

We ran out into the street, Charlie laughing and wiping her eyes. ‘
Collective arse
? What the hell was that?’

‘Oh my God,’ I said, panting. ‘Are you always like that?’

It was freezing outside and she exhaled mist as she spoke. ‘No, I’m usually a pussy cat. I haven’t scared you off, have I?’

The truth was, I’d found it mortifyingly embarrassing, but also exciting. ‘No.’