We reach the bottom and Tom just stands there for a moment, holding me, while I continue clutching my bag and dividing my gaze between the wall and his profile.
Then he does a very big swallow, and I nearly squeak out loud at the sight of his Adam’s apple moving, and then he says, his voice a little croaky, ‘Will it hurt if I put you back on your feet?’
My feet! I had literally forgotten about them.
‘I think it might,’ I say. ‘Maybe I can lean forward and pull one off and then stand on that foot.’
‘The floor’s very grimy, though?’
‘That is true.’
We just stay there, with him holding me, for another few – very long – seconds, and then I say, ‘There’s a bench!’
‘Oh, yes, excellent, yes.’ And Tom strides over to it and sets me down on it as though I’m a hot potato. He then sits down too, at more than arm’s length distance from me.
‘Thank you.’ I shouldnotbe thinking about how weirdly good it felt to be held by him and how weirdly bereft I feel now that I’m no longer in his arms, and will obviously never be again, because he is deeply in love with Lola and I am on my man detox.
I can’t actually believe that I haven’t really registered before how incredibly attractive he is. I mean, Ihave, because you can’t not notice his handsomeness and niceness. But, also, I just haven’t been thinking about him like that. Because of Lola. And because I just don’t meet men like that, randomly – I meet them on apps or blind dates through friends. And also, we have literally nothing in common. Nothing. Our families are very different. He is a football fan (on my ‘never in a million years would I date’ list), he likesplayingtennis, he has terrible taste in films. He eats pie and mushy peasbychoice. And the entire premise of our situation is that we are absolutelynotdating for real.
I need to ignore this weird attraction that’s suddenly come over me and concentrate on sorting my feet out and getting home.
‘Okay,’ I say, in as normal an I’m-in-no-way-suddenly-massively-sexually-attracted-to-you voice as I can produce. ‘I’m going to take the first one off.’
And I have to say: if there’s one thing that can take your mind off sudden sexual attraction, fast, it’s incredible foot pain.
It is not enjoyable pulling the boot off.
‘Eeoow.’ I’m quite appalled by myownfoot. I hope Tom isn’t looking at it. I check sideways. Oh, he is.
It’sgrim. The plasters must have peeled up at the edges and got stuck to the tissues. There’s redness and damp rawness and bits of flappy skin, and there are tissues stuck to the damp bits.
‘Wow.’ Tom is jaw-dropped. ‘That lookssopainful.’
‘It is,’ I confirm. I pull all the bits of tissue off my foot (owwwww) and then Tom shakes the boot out into a bin for me.
‘How are you going to put it back on, though? And actually walk? How can you do that?’
‘I’m thinking new plasters and no tissues.’ Good job I have a whole new pack of plasters in my bag.
I take my other boot off (that foot’s even worse) and then, after I’ve wiggled my feet for a bit in blessed relief that they’re free of the agony, I replaster them, very carefully, and then bite the bullet and put my feet back in.
And then I walk with a kind of shuffling slide, and lift each leg with my hands under my knee when it comes to steps, and like that I proceed in a peculiar and very slow but fairly manageable way.
* * *
I cannot describe how relieved I am when we are finally sitting on the train and pulling out of the station.
‘How are we going to manage at Waterloo?’ Tom asks.
‘Problem for the future.’ I’m leaning back, my eyes closed, justadoringmy seat and the weight off my feet.
‘I owe you big.’ He doesn’t sound that convincing, actually.
I open one eye. ‘How… do you think this afternoon went?’
‘Um, well,’ Tom says. ‘They loved you. I could see confetti in my mother’s eyes.’
I really want to ask him if he feels guilty about it but I can’t work out how to phrase it because clearly if hedoesn’tit would sound as though I were judging him. And – just like all they’ve seen is a snapshot of me and they’re making assumptions based on that, that Tom and I are a couple – all I’ve seen is a snapshot of them, and maybe if I hadn’t been there they’d have been a complete nightmare. So maybe Tomdoesthink it was good that we hoodwinked them.
