‘Bill.’ I rarely said his name, and it felt so formal. I put my hands on the table as if to steady myself. So expensive. Mike had forbidden any spills or hot food on it. How stupid was that – a table that was no use as a table. ‘I don’t know what I’d have done without you. This past while. You’ve been . . .’
He shrugged off the compliment. ‘I was happy to. But – I can’t stay.’
‘But you’ve always been there for me.’ It was a cliché, and both of us knew it wasn’t true. Not since the end of uni – that summer ball. Not since I’d chosen Mike. ‘Except once,’ I said, judging the tone carefully. ‘You didn’t come to my wedding. Why didn’t you come to my wedding?’
He could have said: the money, the distance, work. He paused, as if judging it too. ‘You know why.’
Something flooded through me. Joy, relief, a wild fear. I’d opened it, that locked box. I’d pushed things over the line. ‘I . . . I think I might.’ I stood up from the table. There was only a few feet between us, and already I could feel it drawing me in, whatever it was between us that had never gone away. An energy, a magnetism. How had I lived without this for so many years? ‘And . . . after all this time?’
He looked at the water, the pot he was scrubbing. ‘I loved Astrid. But, well – these things don’t just go away, no.’
He’d handed it back to me, the box. The court. I could have said: I wish I’d picked differently, but we’d never acknowledged that I had picked at all. I didn’t want to hurt his pride. ‘I’m glad,’ I said. ‘I’m glad it didn’t go away.’
I knew that, as soon as he looked at me, it would happen. I kept my gaze steady, and then, finally, his eyes met mine. Twenty years and more between us since we’d sat on our beds and drunk red wine from mugs. ‘I missed you,’ I said. Still he didn’t move. Twenty years is a very long time to suppress something. I’d have to go to him, I realised. ‘Will you . . .’ I held out my arms. ‘I need a hug, please?’
He hesitated, but it would have taken a colder man than Bill to say no to that. And he turned, and slowly put his arms round me. His hands were damp. I breathed him in, smoke and soap. He was so tall. My mouth fitted into this collarbone, and suddenly I’d found a pulse there, and I felt a shudder go through him.
‘Ali. Are you . . .’ So many reasons to stop. Mike. Astrid. Karen. Cassie, Benji. But now I was in his arms, my mouth on his skin, I understood that some things are right in themselves. And I knew he had to stay, that he couldn’t go away again. I fell into him, offering my mouth like a sacrifice, and thank God, thank God, after twenty-five years of turning away, Bill took it.
When I woke up the next day, the world was different.
Throughout the night, he’d said several things to me.
‘Is it because of him?’ Meaning: are you doing this to get back at Mike, Mike who screwed your best friend for years behind your back.
No, I said, into his mouth. No, no, no. And it was true. I wasn’t.
‘Ali,’ he said, as if meeting me for the first time. As if seeing me. Being naked with him felt familiar – even in the bed I shared with Mike, even with Benji and Cassie in their rooms nearby – as if we could finally say the things we hadn’t said for years. I’d forgotten how delicious that was, to talk of your past together with a lover. When you first saw each other. When you first realised. He said, ‘Do you remember, it was in the bar, and you had this T-shirt on with some cartoon on it . . .’
‘She-Ra.’
‘Yeah. And you looked around you like you were lost, and it was all, I don’t know, wonderful to you . . .’
‘It was. I grew up in Hull, remember . . .’
‘And I saw you come in. Right across the room I saw you.’
‘You remember that?’
‘Yeah. I remember everything.’
Other memories. ‘After the summer ball . . . you remember that?’
‘Of course.’ He turned over in bed, propping himself on