Tom!’ I cried out his name in shock and people turned and stared. The train started to shunt, move slowly forward in slow motion through glass. I saw Ruth run and hug the boy to her. She turned to catch a glimpse of me and waved wildly.
I pressed my face to the window to keep them in sight for as long as possible. Then they were gone, behind me. The train carried me onwards alone, towards Birmingham. I got up from my seat and stumbled into the corridor. My breath came in sharp, painful bursts.
Tom. A lament started deep inside me. I felt the tears streaming down my face. Seeing that familiar face was like glimpsing my love again. I cried out in anguish. I did not understand. I did not understand.
I looked down and saw I still held the envelope with Ruth’s address and telephone number on it. I screwed it up violently and threw it away from me down the corridor. I wanted to scream, and I moved quickly into the lavatory.
After a while someone knocked and asked anxiously if I was all right. With a great effort of will I tried to pull myself together. I ran cold water over my face, pulled a comb through my hair, managed to put on some lipstick. My hands shook. I stared at my wild, pale reflection in the mirror. Was I going mad? Did something of Tom live on, but not with me? With Ruth?
I felt as if a pane of glass were shattering into a thousand pieces inside me. Then all feeling drained away. Numbness returned. I unlocked the door and moved back into the corridor.
The crumpled envelope still lay discarded on the floor. I bent and picked it up, smoothed it out. Ruth Hallam. I opened my bag and unzipped the small pocket that held the photos of Tom and Rosie. I placed the envelope carefully beside them, zipped the pocket shut and closed my bag. It was all I had left.
I looked out of the window. The train was coming into the station. People were pushing past me to get to the door. Everyone had reached their destination. Ruth has a husband and that boy. She has a home life waiting where life goes on. Where life goes on.
I walk away from the noise of the party and lean against the huge trunk of a horse-chestnut tree. Its red blooms stand upright among the green foliage. It is like standing under an exotic, rustling chandelier.
The party is lavish, a PR exercise thrown by Justin, a designer friend Danielle and I had been at St Martin’s with. His clothes are a bit over the top, but celebrities and models flock to him for their competitive, reckless little red carpet numbers. He certainly has beautiful women here in abundance.
I watch Danielle networking. She looks like a celebrity herself, a perfect advertisement for our clothes. She is wearing poppy-red chiffon. I designed the dress especially for her. It was deceptively simple, low-cut with a straight silk bodice with floating chiffon panels sewn into the skirt. It looks as if she is wearing a scarlet hanky. Her dark colouring and long legs make her resemble an exotic butterfly.
I smile as I watch her. We need to come to parties like this, to be seen, and she is brilliant at networking. I am better at watching a party from a distance. I can spot emerging trends, get an instinct for the next fashion statement, and it helps to observe how women walk and sit in relation to the clothes they are wearing.
I can see a tall fair man standing with a bevy of women in front of the marquee. He stands like a fish out of water in this showy, arty-farty fashion crowd. He keeps throwing his hair back from his eyes and glancing sideways, as if seeking escape or at least another male. As the place is heaving with girly boys, gay or camp, I can perfectly understand why the women are dive-bombing him like noisy seagulls swooping at their prey, but it’s funny to watch.
I see Danielle looking for me, and ease myself away from the tree and walk back across the grass towards the noise and laughter. Danielle made me a classic white dress, cut exquisitely, as only she can, with narrow gold edging. I am brown from a week in Cornwall and I feel cool, simple and restrained.
Danielle had made me swear that I would not embellish it in any way and spoil the effect. It was hard, as I love colour and eccentric clothes, but this feeling of being almost invisible suits my mood perfectly tonight. I am secretly worrying about our premises, which have become too small, and the fact that although we are getting plenty of commissions we do not seem able to balance our books.
As I pass the group with the tall man I see he is looking at me. I smile and walk on. I am not about to become a member of his fan club.
I join Danielle and a group of friends, and we balance plates and drinks, perching on tiny wrought-iron chairs. Maisie Hill, a model Justin and Danielle and I design for, walks over to join us with the tall man in tow.
‘Hi, you guys. This is Tom Holland, an army friend of my brother’s. I invited them both to the party but Damien’s suddenly got posted off somewhere so he had to come on his own, poor thing. Tom, that’s Danielle, there. Jenny, Claire, Joseph, Milly, and Prue. I’ll be back in a sec. I’ve just got to check on the caterers for Justin.’
The man sits down gingerly on a tiny chair, with his plate of food and grins warily at everyone. Danielle and the other women focus on him relentlessly. He has a stillness about him; an economy of movement and a faint air of amused detachment as if he knows he is the interest of the moment, but it will quickly pass because he comes from a different world.
I notice the tightness of his thighs as he balances on the silly chair and the muscles in his arms where he has rolled up his sleeves a little way.
I like Damien, Maisie’s brother. He often comes to these parties. She had been worried sick when the Bosnian war blew up and he had been sent with the first wave to monitor the atrocities with the UN.
Knowing even one soldier had changed how we all read the papers and watched the news. I wonder if this man, Tom, had been with Damien out there. How frivolous we must all seem. Danielle is eyeing him under a curtain of glossy black hair. Oh, leave him alone, Elle. Don’t bed and dump this one. He won’t know what’s hit him.
When I look up he is watching me. His eyes are extraordinary, purple-flecked and iridescent. They hold mine intently, intimately, as if he is touching me. The blood rushes hotly to the surface of my skin. It is like being hit by a bus.
Maisie calls out to me and I leap up gratefully and walk over the grass. ‘For fuck’s sake, Jenny, don’t just sit there dumb as a daisy. That poor guy has been dying to talk to you all evening.’
I stare at her and fly to the loo, and when I come out Tom Holland is leaning gracefully against a silver birch. I stop in front of him.
‘Hi,’ he says.
‘Hi,’ I say imaginatively.
‘I’m sorry if it seems as if I’m following you. It’s because you are illusive.’
‘Am I?’
‘Like a ghost. Flitting mysteriously in the distance but never stopping for a proper glimpse.’ His laugh is infectious.
‘It’s what I do at parties. Flit. In case I get caught up or trapped.’
‘Very wise,’ he says gravely, then adds quickly, ‘Am I trapping you?’
I shake my head. We walk across the park together, away from the noise and the music towards the chestnut tree I stood under earlier.
‘This is where I first saw you. A small white phantom under a canopy of green. I blinked twice but you were still there, perfectly still. So I knew you must be real.’ His voice is addictive, with a lilt of a smile in it.
‘I was watching the proceedings from a distance. It’s how I sometimes get inspiration.’
‘Well, if Maisie’s clothes are anything to go by, it definitely works.’
‘Maisie would look amazing in a coal sack and bottle top earrings, and I’m afraid we don’t exclusively dress her.’
We