gaze slides over me, and he turns away into the building, like I’m nothing after all.
As I run up the escalator to the concourse under the sooty vault of Paddington, after detouring via Oxford Street to dispel paranoia by buying myself new jeans, I’m sure I’ll miss the train. If I don’t make this one, I’ll be waiting hours because my cheap ticket isn’t valid in peak period.
Platform four. Three minutes. Can do it if I run…
The doors are slamming but I hop into one of the first-class coaches and wheeze my way down the train. The standard-class carriage beyond the buffet and the one after that are packed, but further down the train, passengers thin out and, joy of joys, there’s a table with only one person at it, head down and absorbed in a pile of printouts. I wriggle out of my coat, plonk it and my bags on the aisle seat, shuffle across towards the window and–
Something cold and liquid explodes in my chest. It can’t be.
My buttocks, hovering an inch above the seat, squeeze instinctively to lift me out of it and, if possible, off the train before it leaves.
He looks up. Fuck. It is. Fuck.
He looks, if anything, more shocked than I feel.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I–I’ll–Just realized. Wrong train. Need the later one.’
‘Bollocks. We’re moving. Sit down. How the hell are you?’
Grey eyes, the North Sea. Too late. Drowned. Turned to stone. Lost.
And, dammit, Mr Cool, acting now like nothing happened, like we never shared a bed, let alone the experience of nearly dying in that helicopter. The train starts sliding out of the station. My bottom, with a will of its own, slowly sinks onto the seat opposite him.
‘Ed.’
The sun slants in through the train windows and sparks highlights in his dark brown hair. The cut’s shorter, though somehow messier: he must have tried gelling it into spikes but instead it appears unbrushed, and his eyes seem muddy and tired–or could I really have forgotten what he looks like?
‘You look…different,’ he says.
‘Do I?’ Renowned for my sparkling wit and ready quips.
‘More…substantial’
‘Fatter. Thanks.’
‘No. Actually I’d say you’re thinner. I meant, somehow tougher…’
‘Great. Older.’
‘More confident. Come on. Stop doing yourself down.’
‘Then stop paying me such overwhelming compliments.’
He looks older, too, than I remember. He must be ten years my senior, at least, in his mid-thirties, maybe knocking forty. As for the attraction between us–well, it’s a scent I dimly remember on the air, but now vanquished by a railway carriage reeking of microwaved baconburger and diesel fumes and frizzling brake linings as we slow for a signal on the track ahead. Or, at least, that’s what I tell myself.
‘You never returned my calls,’ he says.
‘I didn’t think it would be a good idea.’
An awkward silence, as we both mull over why it wasn’t a good idea. Apart from my not wanting to be involved again with a married man, any real chance of a relationship went down with the helicopter.
‘So what…’ he starts, same moment as I say: ‘Have you…’
‘You first.’
‘I was going to ask, what have you been doing?’ he says. ‘I mean–what have you been doing with your life?’
‘I’m back in television again. With a Bristol-based independent. Been up for a meeting with Channel 4.’
‘Great.’ He actually looks impressed.
‘You?’
‘Oh, various stuff. The MA, mostly. Did I tell you I’ve been doing a part-time master’s in landscape archaeology? On my way now to a job interview.’
‘You’re not working with Luke any more?’
‘No.’ He props his chin on his hand, looks out of the window. ‘He…well, not to put too fine a point on it, he let me go. Company went bust anyway.’
Dangerous ground. ‘I need a coffee,’ I say. ‘Can I fetch you one from the buffet?’
‘No, let me get them.’ He levers himself upright, feeling in his pockets for change. ‘Bugger. Meant to stop at the cashpoint…’
‘Here, I’ve a twenty needs changing.’ As he takes it from me, our eyes meet.
‘I kept calling you because I wanted to be sure you were OK…’ he begins.
‘I was fine. Well, maybe a bit wobbly to start with, but you know…’
‘Yes. Me too.’
He lurches away down the carriage, long-legged in a pair of neat black trousers and a fine wool jacket that seems absurdly formal next to my memories of him in T-shirt and khaki combats, at the controls of the helicopter.
Interview clothes. He said he was going for a job interview. He’s doing an MA in landscape archaeology.
No. Not that job. Please.
An impossible coincidence. Couldn’t be. Could it?
Wyrd. Never trust the bloody web of connectedness. ‘Ed!’
Several other people in the carriage peer round their seats to see what’s up. There must have been a note of panic in my voice.
He turns round and starts walking back.
‘Where are you getting off the train?’
‘Swindon.’
Where Heelis, the National Trust head office, is.
‘But didn’t you ask him?’ says Corey. She’s polishing the nozzles on the cappuccino machine again. Maybe it’s one of those neuroses, like constantly washing your hands. ‘Your roots need retinting, by the way. I mean, it might not be the assistant-warden job. You said he’s really a pilot, studying archaeology part-time.’
‘Of course I didn’t ask. I jumped off the train at Reading before he came back with the coffees. Sat in the buffet and waited two and a half hours until there was another I could catch with my cheap ticket. Arrived home so late Frannie had already put herself to bed.’
Two customers walk in, a middle-aged husband and wife, shaking raindrops off their parkas. They start a muttered argument beside the homemade cakes. I slide into place behind the till, and Corey flips the top off the milk carton ready to spring into barrista action.
‘So he doesn’t know?’
‘Know what?’
‘That you’re here.’
‘Why would he? It was a one-night stand. We didn’t exactly get around to exchanging life histories.’
‘Apart from him letting slip he was married.’
Out of the corner of my eye I watch the male customer stomping off to inspect the sandwiches and organic crisps. I haven’t been entirely straight with Corey. As far as she’s concerned, Ed is someone I had a fling with in London. No one in Avebury, apart from John, knows I was caught up in the helicopter crash.
What made me act so brazenly last summer? The short answer is too much drink. Steve and I were down from London, overnighting at a pub near the airfield so we didn’t have to wake too early. Very definitely separate rooms, though Steve would have liked it otherwise. Luke and Ed were already waiting in the bar when we arrived, Luke knocking it back like there was no tomorrow, Ed switching to Diet Coke after a couple of beers. Maybe I started flirting because I was nervous