“No,” I told him. “I have to…No.”
I started walking toward Johan and then stopped. What was I going to do? What would I say? Would he even recognize me? It had been one hundred ten days since we stood outside that lift. But before I had time to retreat, he looked up.
He saw me straight away and he knew exactly who I was; therewas no confusion. He stared at me for an unknown length of time before the skin creased around those eyes and he broke into a smile.Heeeeeeyyyyyy!he mouthed. He raised a hand.
I waved back. He mimed for me to meet him at the end of the checkouts.
In a dream, I paid for my items at another checkout. Then, him, in front of me.
“Carrie Cole,” he said levelly. “Hello.”
“Hello.” I couldn’t stop smiling.
This moment, about which I’d fantasized endlessly, was never meant to take place in a supermarket, and I was never meant to be in my on-call scrubs. It was never meant to be the day before my birthday, which I was expecting to celebrate alone. But here we were, and it was just right.
I’ve missed youwas what I wanted to say, but I didn’t. Customers streamed past us on both sides, carrying bags, reading phones, trying to manage their children.
And then he said, without any preamble, “I was going to come and find you. I was always going to come. I just felt I should wait a bit longer. I didn’t want to get you into trouble.”
I said nothing.
“I called my friend who’s something senior in the NHS. He said cases like this are a bit borderline, so I’d ideally let time pass before trying to make contact. He told me I’d be best off leaving you alone altogether, in fact, but I said no.”
He said no.
“So you’ve been waiting? Since then?”
“On Thursday it will be four months from the day we met. I was going to come for you then.” He paused. “The longest four months of my life.”
I’ve never been someone who does impulsive things, and even then I had little tolerance for risk outside the operating theater. But right away, without hesitating, I said, “Where are you going? I’m coming with you.”
—
He lived a few streets away. All these months of longing for him, and he’d been less than a mile from my hospital. The day Deniz had been hit he’d been down in Limehouse painting windows for a friend who sent jobs his way from time to time. He had no more connection with Limehouse than I did.
He lived in a maisonette occupying the top two floors of a low red-brick block of ex–council flats. From his kitchen window you could see the trees of the city farm, a Catholic church, and row upon row of sweet little houses built in the eighties. Cherry trees beamed from the corner of each miniature street, silent except for the occasional cyclist avoiding the pollution of Whitechapel Road. It felt like a board game.
We faced each other in his warm kitchen, nakedly wanting each other, saying nothing.
“I don’t operate like this,” he said.
“Me neither.”
And then he reached out a hand and traced a finger down the side of my neck, right where he’d hovered it back in January. His face moved in and then his mouth was on my skin, just like I’d imagined. I heard myself moan.
“I really don’t want to just…” he said, into my neck.
“Me neither.” But neither of us stopped.
He slid his hands into my hair and kissed me hard, on the mouth, and I kissed him back. I don’t know how long it went on for. Seconds, minutes—longer, perhaps. But at some point we both pulled away to look at each other.
“I don’t know your surname,” was what I said. “Or how old you are.”
He smiled, fingers combing through my hair. “You want to take a patient history?”
“Maybe?”
Johan laughed. “As you wish. I don’t want to just get naked with you. Although I really, very badly want that.”
