led out to a small London garden, paved and gravelled and scattered with pot-plants. The barbecue was lit.
‘Fitz just rang,’ Dan called from the kitchen, fetching white wine from the fridge. ‘He’s going to be late.’
‘Oh.’
‘Something about something he had to do before tomorrow.’
Martin smiled sympathetically, which left me wondering if that was a ‘wouldn’t you know it, he’s always late’ sort of smile, or if it was more sinister, as in, ‘he didn’t really want to come’. Dan handed me a glass of wine and said to make myself at home. On the table there were smoky pistachios and plump green olives to nibble. I picked at them absently, gulped back wine, answered questions, fretted about Fitz. Fifteen minutes passed, then thirty, and Martin said he thought he should start cooking while the coals were hot.
‘We can keep things warm in the oven,’ Dan agreed. ‘He’ll be here soon.’
Humiliation crept through me; I covered it with smiles and seamless conversation. When the doorbell finally rang Martin was flipping burgers, his forehead glowing with sweat, and Dan busy ferrying trays of hot food to the oven.
‘Can you get it, Beth?’
I walked through the hallway, darkening now and cool, and pulled open the heavy door.
‘Hello, Fitz.’
‘Beth.’ He had one hand stuffed into his jeans pocket; the other held a bottle of wine; I saw his eyes taking me in, re-learning my features like a map. I brushed back my hair, smoothed down my dress, sucked in my stomach. Fitz shook his head. ‘Wow. Look at you.’
He’d lost none of his Irish accent, and I could see that Dan was right; I was looking at the same old Fitz. He might have put on a little weight but it would be measured in pounds, not stones. There were the requisite lines around the eyes and mouth, a slight jowly look settling onto his face, hair colour fading, but the essential ingredients were the same.
The only photos I’d ever had of Fitz were some we took in a booth at Victoria station, a strip of four grainy black and white prints, us crouched close, my cheek pressed to his, that slightly mad look that you got when you were trying not to laugh. We’d cut them in half and kept two each. I’d had mine for years but they finally got lost in some clear-out or other. Then I had to keep his face in my imperfect memory. Here was the older version of it. The thin nose that leant to the left, the twist to the lips when he smiled, eyes that creased like Dan’s, the tilt of his head as he stood and looked at me, hair not grey but with that salt and pepper look.
Fitz came up the steps, apologising for being late, said there’d been some school report he’d forgotten to do. He stood still in the hallway beside me, looking uncertain now, and the space between us crackled with tension. I was remembering the last time I’d seen him, in the kitchen of Empire Road with my father glowering at us both. Then, we hadn’t been able to say goodbye properly; now we hardly know knew how to say hello, frozen into this smiling moment.
‘You look good,’ I said.
‘You stole my line.’ He grinned. ‘Actually you look amazing. How many years is it?’
I shrugged, although I knew precisely. ‘Too many. But thanks.’
‘Okay, enough of the compliments.’ He was looking at me keenly now, as though peering through layers of time. ‘How are you?’ It wasn’t a throwaway line but there was no time to give the answer it required.
‘Fine, thanks. Yes. And you?’
He said yes, good, and I noticed how one hand strayed up to the back of his neck as he contemplated what came next, that old gesture.
‘It’s great to see you.’ He stepped forward then and lightly kissed my cheek, one hand grazing the small of my back.
Then Dan called from the kitchen, ‘Get the fuck down here, Fitz, before this food is incinerated,’ and we laughed, relieved.
Over more wine and spare ribs that Martin heaped onto a plate in front of us, we exchanged information. I discovered that Fitz lived in Finsbury Park, in a flat that was small, cheap, and comfortable; that he had an allotment and still loves cooking, and had once thought about opening a restaurant; that instead he’d found work as a learning mentor in a behaviour-support unit, and had got used to being sworn at by angry, sad kids; that when it wasn’t filthy weather he cycled to work. He didn’t mention the woman in Cornwall. I asked was he still into music and he told me he’d never got rid of a single piece of vinyl, that his collection lined three walls of one room.
‘You’ll be like one of those nerds who has to reinforce the floor soon,’ Dan said. ‘And then you’ll start making lists, like the guy in High Fidelity.’
‘John Cusack,’ I said. ‘I love that film. I’ve seen it three times.’
‘That guy is Fitz to a T.’
‘Well, it would be, if I was twenty years younger and had a stunning girlfriend like…what was her name?’
‘It’s Danish, unpronounceable,’ Dan said.
I was trying to picture the two of them from before, and got an image of Fitz mending Dan’s bike in the yard, patiently answering a hundred and one questions from the young cousin who worshipped him.
‘How’s your mum?’ Fitz asked him.
‘Oh, fine, you know, still worrying about us all, but when she stops, that’s when we’ll start to worry about her.’
‘She’ll be missing your dad.’
‘Yeah, cat and dog and all that but they loved each other really.’
Dan poured some more wine in both our glasses.
‘How’s your tribe?’ he asked Fitz.
‘All okay, as far as I know. Marie’s pregnant again.’
‘Christ, that’s four, isn’t it? Is she trying to outdo your mother?’
‘My mum thinks she’s mad — can’t understand why she wants any more. Says these days there’s no need. Marie gets the hump on then, as though Mum thinks it was a mistake.’
After a pause Dan said, ‘Was it?’ Fitz shrugged, and they both laughed.
The wine was going to my head, so that when Dan got up to help Martin I was seized with the desire to ask Fitz the questions that really mattered. How much did you miss me? How long did it take to get over me?
I said, ‘I never saw Alex again, you know.’
His head shot up. ‘Never? She never got in touch?’
‘No.’
‘But I thought she—’ He broke off, with a deep frown on his face. ‘I mean, you two were so close, I always assumed she would contact you somehow.’
‘It wouldn’t have been hard to find me, if she’d really wanted to.’
Dan placed a dish of kebabs on the table. ‘Have you tried Googling her name?’
‘No.’ I looked up at him, surprised that I never had, it was so obvious. ‘But, if what she wanted was to be invisible she wouldn’t exactly advertise herself, would she?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s not always in someone’s control. Names get onto the web in all sorts of weird ways.’ He went back to the barbecue. ‘Worth a try.’
‘It’s a common name,’ Fitz said, to me. ‘There could be hundreds of entries.’
‘Yes. Well… I’m not sure. We didn’t part on the best of terms, did we?’
He was about to say something, then stopped, changed his mind. Dan and Martin sat down, passed dishes around, and the conversation moved on. We ate home-made burgers and kebabs, grilled vegetables and salads, watching shadows lengthen