The Love of Her Life (10 page)

They stood outside on the pavement, looking at each other, the sky above them flecked with bright stars, it was a cold, clear night. The space between them was fraught; particles of tension, magnetic attraction, that Kate felt was drawing her closer to him, closer and closer. And then Mac said,

‘Listen. There’s something I have to tell you.’

‘Oh.’ Kate shoved her cold hands into her pockets. Even she knew no conversation that started like that ever ended well. ‘What’s that then?’

‘Look,’ Mac said, stepping towards her. ‘I just thought I should say it before this gets –’

Kate heard herself say, ‘No way. You can’t dump me. We haven’t even done anything yet. We only met three hours ago.’

He laughed. She liked his laugh. It was a proper laugh, from deep inside him, a warm, chuckling sound. ‘No, nothing like that. You are funny. Why would I dump you?’

She ignored this, and said, ‘So, what is it?’

He said, blankly, ‘Er, well – it’s not a big deal, because like you said, we only met three hours ago. But – before this goes any further, I thought I should say.’

‘Say what?’

Mac spoke in monosyllables. ‘I’m leaving, in the morning. Edinburgh.’ Kate stepped backwards. ‘That’s why I’m tired. I’ve been packing all day. The flight’s at midday.’

‘You’re –’

‘I’m moving there. Got a consultancy at St Giles’s, in the city. It’s – yeah, well, I had to take it. And Mum and Dad are there, that’ll be nice too.’

‘Oh, right,’ said Kate, deliberately keeping her voice light. ‘Well, right!’

‘Yeah,’ he said, shifting his weight, from foot to foot. ‘Like I said, Kate. Just thought I should say something, you know.’

‘Yes, of course.’ She didn’t know why she was being so stupid. After all, they’d just met – it was hardly like … She smiled at him and stepped back again. ‘So why are you telling me? Do you want a lift to the airport tomorrow, is that it?’

‘Come back with me,’ he said, even more softly. ‘You can still come back.’

‘I – I can’t,’ she said.

‘Why not?’ Mac said, a note of impatience in his voice.

‘Because –’ she gestured weakly around her. ‘It’s different.’

‘You have the most amazing face, did you know that?’ Mac said.

‘Face?’ Kate laughed, bemused.

‘Yes. It’s totally heart-shaped, and when you’re sad about something, or thinking about something, you’re totally closed off, and when you smile – you’re beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Did you know that?’ He spoke conversationally, looking around him, at Zoe and Steve’s low front garden wall, into the sitting room, as he said all this.

‘Mac – you’re mad. And a massive flirt,’ Kate said weakly.

His faint Scottish burr was more pronounced; he said, grinning, ‘I’m not, that’s the strange thing, my dear. I’m not
a flirt at all. Normally can’t think of a single thing to say to a girl I like. Never normally meet a girl I like.’

‘I –’ Kate said. She shrugged her shoulders, helplessly.

‘You’re not coming, are you.’ It was a statement, not a question. ‘Oh well.’

‘It’s – look Mac, I don’t know …’

He laughed. ‘Very eloquently put. Come with me. It’ll just take a minute.’

He pulled her out into the road, the middle of the road and there in the cold night air, he put his hands either side of her head and, pulling her towards him, kissed her. So she kissed him right back, wrapping her arms around him, laughing softly as she did, feeling his tongue in her mouth, his beautiful, hard, tall body against hers, so strange and yet so familiar, and they kissed for a long few minutes, until Mac pulled himself away and said, his voice husky,

‘You’re really not going to come back with me?’

She thought of Zoe and Steve inside, of not having said bye to them properly, of Sean and Betty entangled in the hallway, and she thought of how even though she was changing every day, growing more and more into herself, how still unlike her, Kate, it was to go off with someone like this. On the other hand, it wasn’t like this was the first time she’d gone off with someone, so why was she so scared? Scared – of what? Hurting herself, of disappointing Mac, not sure why he’d picked her, thinking he must be drunk or mad or both.

‘Seize the day,’ Mac said. ‘Never heard that expression?’ He touched her forehead with his finger.

Kate couldn’t help thinking of her mother when she heard that expression, it was almost her mission statement. ‘All the bloody time,’ Kate said. ‘I’m normally just no good at it.’

‘It’s my last night in London,’ said Mac. He looked at her,
that strange look she found so disturbingly familiar. ‘And I like you, you like me, I know it, you know it too, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she said, honestly.

‘Are you the girl who usually helps the other drunk girls home? I bet you are.’

‘Er,’ said Kate sadly, thinking of the previous week, when she had ended up on the night bus after Jo’s post-work birthday drinks, with Sophie’s slumbering form slumped over her lap like a sack of grain. ‘Sometimes.’

‘Come on then,’ he said, and he stepped forward and hailed a passing cab, which Kate found extremely impressive, and then castigated herself for doing so. She put her hand on his arm, suddenly.

‘You’re really leaving London tomorrow morning?’

‘Yes,’ he said, holding the door open for her. She stepped inside.

‘Better make the most of it, then,’ she said.

Kate had never actually run out on her friends before. She realized this, the next day, as she lay in Mac’s arms, the early summer light flooding into his dingy, grey, boy’s bedroom, stripped bare of all his possessions which had gone up to Edinburgh ahead of him. And she didn’t care. Didn’t care about a thing. She had given herself up to pleasure, totally, not worrying about anyone else. And it had been totally, utterly worth it. She could feel happiness washing over her, into her, like she was bathing in it.

‘You don’t think it matters,’ she said, sitting up and stretching her arms out, yawning.

‘What?’ said Mac, his voice muffled, and he smoothed her hair back from her forehead, pulling her back down onto his chest, which was thickly matted with hair. He stroked
her hair, and she turned her face towards him, so she was looking at him.

‘That we didn’t say bye,’ Kate said. ‘To Zoe and Steve. We just did a runner.’

‘Oh,’ said Mac. She stroked him, ran her hand down his body.

‘Don’t you care?’ she said, half-mockingly. ‘You’re leaving them today.’

‘No, not at all,’ he murmured, enfolding her in his arm so she was just above him. She felt him growing hard again, against her. ‘I’ll call Steve, don’t worry.’

‘When?’ Kate said, kissing him. Her hair fell over him, surrounding the two of them. As Mac kissed her shoulder, her breast, her collarbone, she pushed her hair out of her eyes and looked at his tiny, bashed-up digital clock. It was six o’clock. ‘Your flight’s in six hours.’

‘Oh,’ he said, and he turned her over so she lay beneath him, and he was over her. He stroked her hair, and bent down to kiss her again. ‘We don’t have much time, then, Kate Miller.’

‘No, but –’

She couldn’t say any more. She felt so happy with him that she couldn’t burst the bubble of the night. Like asking ‘So … will you call me when you’re four hundred miles away and working seven nights a week and never coming down to London?’ As Mac pulled the duvet over both of them, enclosing them both together again, Kate kissed him back and laughed happily, thinking back over the past twelve hours in befuddled, pleasurable amazement – but also a strange sense of certainty, one that she never got back again.

She went with him to the airport. After all, she told him, he was leaving London, he needed someone to wave him off. She stood in her blue and gold dress on the pavement,
thanking the Lord she’d bought a black cardigan and her coat that she could wrap around herself to minimize the too-dressy slash I-am-a-prostitute look, and she watched as Mac locked up his bare flat, as he slung his suitcase into the back of the minicab. He stood back and sighed, looking up at the tall, redbrick house for the last time. It was strange, sharing all this with him, part of a life she’d never known that he was now saying goodbye to.

‘Were you happy here?’ she asked him.

‘I was,’ he said, but he didn’t say more. She didn’t know what he meant and there was suddenly, now, constraint between them; he moving on, she staying here, both of them not really knowing each other. He held the door open for her; she got into the back of the cab, he climbed in after her. He looked rather desolate, his face tired in the morning light and she pulled him towards her so his head was resting on her shoulder, his hand in her lap. She took it, held it tightly.

‘Kate Miller,’ Mac said after a moment. His voice was serious. ‘God. I wish we’d met sooner,’ he said, as the cab ploughed silently through West Hampstead, long grey shadows flooding the streets, early morning sunshine cutting through the gaps in the buildings. No one was around.

She said nothing, just squeezed his hand tighter. Kate still sometimes felt like a juvenile in a world of grown-ups, someone who didn’t know the rules when everyone else seemed to. Here, in the back of the cab, racing through town towards the airport, she felt as if she knew what she was doing.

‘I wish we had one more day, one more night,’ he said, into her chest.

‘Shh,’ she said, and with her other arm she pulled him in more closely towards her. She kissed his rough hair, so strangely boyish, at odds with him when he was … such a
man, compared to the other men she knew, those boys from university, those boys from growing up. Mac was – he was a grown-up.

That was why he was going away, she told herself, staring out of the window, her chin resting on his hair. His life was sorting itself out, he was three years older than her, he was simply a grown-up, and she felt as if she still had to establish the most basic facts about herself.

‘I wish we’d met sooner too,’ she said. She fought back tears, staring ahead as they rolled on. She didn’t know how to say what she wanted to say. ‘It’s like a bolt from the blue, this …’ She gestured weakly, between them. ‘You know?’ He nodded. ‘I didn’t think
this
would happen last night.’ She shrugged her shoulders, smiling at the way she’d thought the night might go, at her own vanity. ‘Strange, how things turn out,’ she said.

Mac’s fingers beat a pattern on hers. ‘You and your flatmate, eh?’

Kate was startled; she sat up straight. He laughed, amused at her shock. ‘What do you mean?’ she said.

‘You and – what was that guy called? Sean? Steve’s friend?’ Kate nodded. ‘I thought you were a couple when you arrived last night, when I saw you both on the doorstep.’

‘Hah,’ said Kate.

‘I got that vibe off him, too.’ Mac shrugged his shoulders. ‘That’s why I left you alone for most of the evening. Didn’t want to annoy him. He looked like the sort of bloke who’d bite your ear off if you annoyed him.’

Kate giggled. ‘He’s not like that!’ she said defensively. ‘He’s like a great big puppy once you know him, honestly.’ Mac nodded sombrely. ‘He’s lovely,’ she said. ‘Really.’

‘Right,’ Mac said, without rancour. ‘Well – perhaps you should have got together with him last night, then.’ Kate started.

‘I’m not saying –’ she said, defensively. Mac held up his hands.

‘I’m glad you didn’t.’ He took her fingers again. ‘I’m just saying, I’m glad you didn’t. Last night, anyway.’

‘You’re both very different, anyway,’ Kate said, mirroring him. ‘And – well, I think he went off with someone else, anyway. Our friend Betty. Not that I want it to happen, anyway.’

‘– anyway,’ Mac said, gently. ‘Stop saying anyway. You babble when you’re nervous, did you know that? And you have the most beautiful eyes, Kate, they’re black when you get cross. I love them.’ He kissed her. ‘And I don’t want to talk about Sean. I want to talk about us. About how you’ve made me not want to leave, and it’s only one night. OK?’

‘Yes, OK,’ said Kate. ‘More than OK.’ She clutched both his hands in her lap. ‘Oh, man.’

‘I know.’ Mac looked out of the window.

‘There’s no way –?’

His hand tightened around hers. ‘Perhaps, you know?’ He sat up straight. ‘But Kate, I just don’t think it’s realistic. Is it?’

‘Why? I’m not saying “oh no why”, I mean, tell me just why it’s completely out of the question,’ she said bravely.

‘Perhaps it’s not,’ Mac said. ‘But I’ll be working five nights in a row most of the time, and I won’t be back to London for at least three, four months – and I have to find a flat, and you have –’ He smiled. ‘I don’t mean this to sound patronizing, but it seems to me from what you say, and from what Zoe says, that you’ve got a pretty good thing going on in London, at the moment.’

They were turning off the motorway slip-road into Terminal One.

‘No –’ Kate began, defensively, and then she stopped, looking down at their hands, hers holding his. Her hard-won
job, her friends, Charly, her flat. Sean … Sean – she wondered where he was. Suddenly she missed him, the security of their flat together. This – this was new and strange and … sad. It was just so damn bloody sad. She couldn’t work out what Mac was trying to say, whether it was a gentle let-down or the truth. In any case, facts were facts. He was moving to Edinburgh, and it was just over two hours till his plane left. When she looked up into his face, he was staring ahead, his jaw set again. He turned away from her, to look out of the window, and then he said, calmly,

‘We’re here.’

Perhaps she had been wrong. Probably she had. She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it. ‘Thanks anyway.’

‘No,’ he said. The cab driver was opening the boot of the car, loading suitcases onto a trolley. Mac’s grip on her hand was painful. ‘Kate, no. Thank you.’

She moved towards him, almost frantic to feel him against her again. He pulled her close. ‘This is stupid,’ she said, in his ear. ‘Why is it like this?’

His breath was warm on her neck; her coat itched in the spring sunshine. ‘Because our timing’s crap,’ he said. ‘Look, when I get there I’ll call –’

‘Don’t say you’ll call me,’ said Kate, and she put her hands on his cheeks. ‘Don’t take my number, don’t say you’ll email me and we’ll have jolly banter about the weather or how hungover we are, or whatever, each of us trying to inflate it with something. Just – let’s leave it.’ A tear ran down her cheek; he wiped it away, gently, and then he slowly kissed her skin where it had been, as if she was the most precious thing on earth to him.