Choice.
“He wasn’t really good-looking,” she remembered fondly, “but he had this incredible charisma. He was the kind of person you couldn’t not look at. He was clever but cool and you didn’t really get that combination at my school. I’m kind of surprised he didn’t go into acting actually – he seemed like he was made for it.”
“Probably a computer programmer in Slough,” Lou chuckled. “Go on…”
“Well, so he was this… amazingly gifted actor and I was this stilted little am-dram wannabe, and there was this one scene where we had to kiss, and I would be literally shaking as it got nearer. On the one hand, I was dreading it, because every time we did it in rehearsal, everyone whistled and slow-handclapped and stuff; but on the other hand…”
“…You couldn’t wait.”
“Exactly. So, anyway, it comes to the big night and the play’s going really, really well. You can sense the audience is on our side. Even the rubbish people aren’t fluffing their lines and our big scene’s coming up and I’m just crapping myself. But then it’s like someone flicks a switch and I think, ‘Fuck it’. I just go for it. You could have heard a pin drop. It was amazing.”
Lou grinned. “How long did you go out with him for?”
“Oh, we didn’t go out,” Sara replied, “he had a girlfriend.”
“But you got a shag at least?”
Sara shook her head.
“He wanted to. At the after-show party, but I was a virgin.”
“I thought you said…”
“That was afterwards. I overcompensated,” Sara laughed, but she found herself welling up. “He was really mean. Called me a frigid little prick-tease and got off with Beverly Wearing right in front of me.”
“What a cock!”
“I know. But the funny thing is, even though he was a total cock, I’ve always wondered what it would have been like. It’s kind of haunted me, because I never really enjoyed it with any of the others. I think I was just trying to show him that I wasn’t… what he said.”
“Well, at least you did – show him, that is.”
“I don’t think he even noticed, to be honest. I was never girlfriend material for someone like him. I only came on his radar because of the play, and the one chance I had with him, I blew. I still think about that kiss…”
It was true, she did still think about it; more and more lately. The trouble was that the harder she tried to recall the facial features of Philip Baines-Cass, the more they tended to meld into Gavin’s.
There was a pause while Lou tipped herself out of the armchair, drained the last of the Calvados into their glasses, and shuffled backwards on the hearthrug until her back met the sofa.
“Funny, isn’t it?” she said, taking a thoughtful sip. “How different it all could have been, I mean same for me. God, I shudder to think of it! I was almost with that computer programmer from Slough.”
“You!”
“I know! Imagine. He wasn’t actually a computer programmer, obviously; nothing quite that bad.” They chuckled. “His name was Andy. He was a very sweet guy, and he’s loaded now. My Mum never misses a chance to slip that into the conversation: ‘I saw Andy Hiddleston at the weekend, Louise. Did I mention he’s a property developer?’” She rolled her eyes. “She’s never quite forgiven me for breaking off the engagement.”
“You got engaged?”
Lou nodded, delighted with the incongruity of it all.
“Until I went for my interview at St Martins and realised the world had other plans for me.”
“Poor Andy!” Sara sniggered.
“I know,” agreed Lou, “he didn’t take it very well,” she shook her head and grinned fondly, “then again; I’d only have made him miserable. Can you imagine? Me in a double-fronted, Bath-stone villa with a monkey-puzzle tree and a waxed jacket…”
“… Two-point-four children…”
“… A Range Rover…”
“… And a lobotomy!”
Sara started giggling and found she couldn’t stop. She forced the back of her hand to her mouth in an effort to control it.
“Come along, Camilla, we’ll be late for pony club!” said Lou in a plummy accent.
“Now then, Nicholas, don’t cry,” joined in Sara. “All big boys hef to go to boarding school.” Lou beat the hearthrug in merriment. Tears ran down Sara’s face.
“Introducing… the new… Chairwoman of the… Townswomen’s Guild,” Sara tried to say, but it came out as a series of gulps and squeaks.“Mrs Andy Hiddle…” she gasped, then keeled over on the rug, insensible with mirth.
It was hard to concentrate the next day, partly because of the hangover, but mainly because, somewhere along the line, Sara had lost even the small shred of enthusiasm she’d once had for her job. She found herself reading and re-reading the same phrase – “I don’t really have a preferred supermarket and tend to use whichever is most convenient” – until the words merged into one another and ceased to hold any objective meaning. For a stopgap job, NPR Marketing had taken up an awful lot of her time. Other creative types who had joined when she did had long since moved on. Anders the miserable Swede now wrote voice-overs for Masterchef; Tracy Jackson was a lobbyist for the Green Party. But NPR had granted Sara two generous periods of maternity leave and, although her game plan had been to return after Patrick’s birth for no longer than her contract dictated, five years had somehow elapsed and she was still sitting at the same desk, in what was essentially a cupboard, opposite the talented but cynical Adrian Sutcliffe.
A part of Sara had known for a long time that her and Adrian’s relationship was unhealthy. They were co-dependants, facilitating each other’s inertia through corrosive humour. As long as they channelled their creative energies into satirising the futile nature of their work, the slavish ambition of their less talented colleagues and the passive-aggressive behaviour of their workaholic boss, Fran Ryan, they could kid themselves that they were, respectively, a novelist and a journalist manqué.
“Eyes front,” said Adrian now, “Rosa Klebb at three o’clock.”
Sara snapped out of her reverie and battered her computer keyboard with a flurry of random keystrokes.
“On my way to Gino’s,” said Fran, “can I get you anything?”
“Ooh lovely,” said Sara, “tuna melt for me, hold the mayo.”
“Why do you let her do that?” said Adrian, after Fran had gone.
“Er… because it’s lunchtime and I need something to eat,” said Sara, with the interrogative upward lilt she had picked up from her children.
“You know what she’s up to, don’t you?”
“She’s getting my lunch?”
“Yeah, so you don’t leave the building.”
Before Sara could make a suitably acerbic retort, Fran had popped her head back into the office.
“By the way, can I tell Hardeep that you’ll ping the survey across by close of play today?”
“Yep. On it,” Sara said, picking up her biro as she spoke, ready to throw it at Adrian as soon as the door had closed.
Lately, Sara’s boredom was making her rebellious. Neil’s promotion was practically in the bag, and he had hinted on numerous