Wow. I cannot believe I was so worried about her. I thought she’d had an accident or something terrible.
‘Are you still married?’ I ask.
‘Yes, but we have a very open relationship.’
‘Although not so open that you were willing to tell him that you were meeting me that Saturday?’
‘Are you a lawyer?’ The edge to her voice is not that attractive.
‘Nope.’ I signal to the waiter, who comes over. ‘Could we get the bill now?’
‘I hope you’re not expecting me to go halves?’ Lola tells me.
* * *
Once I’ve paid the entire bill, wishing that Lola could at least have bloody ordered the house champagne, not one of the most expensive ones on the menu, I say, ‘Well, goodbye then,’ and stand up.
‘Fuck off,’ Lola says.
I’m pretty sure I’m lucky not to have had her glass of champagne upended over me.
I feel… free, I think is the word… as I weave through the tables in the restaurant and out onto the street.
I also feel very, very stupid.
I’ve been chasing after a youthful dream. In my defence, wedidhave an amazing evening, when we met, and a bruising divorce does (in my experience) make you hanker after better times.
I turn into the station and look over towards the clock. There’s no time I’m passing through Waterloo that seeing it doesn’t make me think of Nadia.
And that’s where I’ve beenreallystupid. I love her. I want to tell her everything. We can talk about anything and it becomes fun or interesting or deep and meaningful. She’s a very kind and thoughtful person. And I fancy the pants off her. I am in love with her and I have been for many weeks. And I was too infatuated with an idea from the past to realise it.
I need to tell her.
The departures boards tell me that there’s a train right there for me. (When I’m not, for example, waiting for one that stops at Wimbledon for Nadia, they’re very regular – most trains leaving from Waterloo stop at Clapham Junction – and there I go again, actually, thinking about Nadia.) I speed up and manage to get on it just before the whistle goes.
As it pulls out, I reflect for a moment that it feels good to have physical distance between me and Lola. I’m glad I don’t know where she lives. Or anything else about her. Other than, of course, that her son is called Tom and she’s married to a man I feel very sorry for. Thank God she didn’t come in June; I would hate to be involved unsuspectingly in a married person’s affair. More importantly, though, I wouldn’t have met Nadia.
I have so much I want to say to her, starting with a huge, gigantic, enormousSorry.
The thing is, though, I think, as I stare at my phone screen with my finger hovering over the keys, I’m not sure how to say it.
It feels really wrong to say it the evening I’ve seen Lola, even though Nadia doesn’t know that.
That could make it seem as though I was choosing between them. I wasn’t. But it did – to my great shame – take seeing Lola and just wanting to tell Nadia all about it to make me realise how very much Nadia means to me.
I don’t think I can message her now.
* * *
I wait two days, during which I think a lot about Nadia and how much I would never want to hurt her and how much I would like to be with her, before, sitting on a bench on Clapham Common in the late afternoon sun, I find the words.
Hi Nadia. I’ve really missed you. I wondered if you’d like to meet up this weekend. Or any other time. Tom x
A little reflection told me that you don’t leave the room without saying anything after you’ve slept with someone for the first time and then tell them by text that you’re sorry and you love them; you tell them in person. So if Nadia agrees to meet me I’ll tell her then that I love her.
Nadia’s reading the message.
She’s typing.
