as her skin resembled a leather boot. ‘Good to see you.’
They chatted for a while about life now: Liz, four kids, owned a riding school – did Maddie ride? No? Well, there was always a first time – two cats and a dog. Maddie filled Liz in on her only son, Ed, who’d just finished sixth-form college, now in Bali on a gap year, her life working at a school, her husband who was a wine salesman.
It all sounded so normal, didn’t it? So plausible that she was that happily married woman. That she trod an entirely different path to the one in her mind. Eventually, she looked behind Liz’s shoulder to find an escape. As endearing as it was to listen to chat about the menagerie chez Liz, Maddie wanted to meet more old pals. First though, she nipped to the loo and checked her make-up. No, there was no lipstick on her teeth, she just saw a frazzled-looking brunette with a lopsided fringe (cheap hairdresser), hair piled up behind her with a few escaping russet tendrils, wearing an emerald wrap-over jersey-knit dress – good for her bust, not great for the belly. She sighed.
She pulled out some lip gloss and reapplied it. That would do. Grin, girl. She held her own gaze in the mirror for a while and then swiftly turned around and went to the door.
As she was coming out of the ladies’, a figure in the corner made her look twice. If she was honest, she had been thinking about him. It was hard not to in that Great Hall, where even the familiar air of the place brought memories skidding back to her frontal lobe.
She twisted a bit of her hair between her fingers and remembered when she’d first seen him. He’d been down by the beach, at Widemouth Bay. Surfing was his thing and she’d been there because it was Freshers’ Week. She’d been with the Try-to-Surf Club, ten of them giggling in the minibus before pouring out of the bus, heady with the sight of the sea, comparing what their wetsuits would look like. (Without Facebook or Insta, it was just sideways looks and memories. If you were lucky, a Post-it left on your door or a number scribbled on a beer mat.)
Maddie had glanced over, seen the muscly outline whilst she was getting her wetsuit on, and had stopped mid-yank, halfway up her thigh. The musty neoprene remained clamped on her leg. She’d stared at this man as a sensation unfurled in her lower belly; he was no boy.
Now she carefully tucked the loose hair behind her ear with shaky fingers and scanned to the right again in the dim corridor. There were two women talking in hushed tones. One of them had a fascinator in her hair, an electric-blue fluffy creation, and the other was in a tight black pencil skirt. They glanced at Maddie as she wandered past and she caught a whiff of expensive perfume.
But as she turned the corner, she stopped in her tracks. Air left her lungs as if she’d been punched.
That silhouette.
She could make out the languid stance of his huge frame leaning on the wall, his back to her. She watched for a moment, like a deer sensing a predator, trembling in the shadows, terrified of its next move, but in her case, terrified of seeing him again and of what it would do to her. She gaped, mouth dry, as he ran his hands through his hair. The hair that she used to slide her hands through when—
Her heart hammered in her chest. His legs were long and slender, and his body was solid. It had to be him. That burnt-toffee hair. Her whole world spun on its axis.
She reached out and felt the cold, solid wall beneath her fingertips as she steadied herself. There was no going back. She stared ahead of her and blinked a few times. She watched, transfixed, as he slowly bent down to kiss the girl he was chatting to goodbye. Then he turned around and stood completely motionless as their eyes met.
Both of them were silent. His gaze searched her face, eyes wide and hoping for clues. No words could fill the divide between them, stretch across the years of reticence, broker a language of what – forgiveness? How do you forgive twenty years of silence, of dreams smashed, of wondering? Of your finger hovering over the button on Facebook to send a friend request, then snatching