be called ‘the Five’, or ‘the Hundred’, or ‘the Never-Ending Supply’.
So I think maybe that’s it for me. Because you see, I was lucky. I did find the One, but then I lost him. I blew it, or he blew it. At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter. The details aren’t important.
Besides, it’s not like I’m unhappy. What’s that saying? Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. To tell the truth, I rarely think about it any more.
And yet . . .
Sometimes, when I least expect it, something will remind me. Of him. Of us. Of long ago. It can be as random as a quiz in a magazine, or as inconsequential as a restaurant table on the street. And sometimes I can’t help wondering what my life would be like if things had worked out. What if we were still together? What if we had lived happily ever after? What if, what if, what if . . .?
Sometimes I even try to imagine what it would be like to see him again. Which is crazy. It’s been so long I doubt I’d even recognise’€even recore se’€eve him now. I could probably walk past him in the street and not even know it was him.
Oh, who am I kidding? I’d recognise him in an instant. Even in a crowd.
And do you want to know something else? Deep down inside, I know if I saw him again, I would still feel exactly the same.
Anyway, that’s hardly likely, is it? I think, catching myself. It’s been ten years since I last saw him. A whole decade. A brand-new millennium. Who knows where he is or what he’s doing . . .?
Up ahead, a neon sign interrupts my thoughts. Scott’s. That’s it! That’s the bar! Feeling a beat of relief, I start hurrying towards it.
Unknown
Like I said, you get one shot and I had mine.
And dismissing the thought from my mind, I push open the door.
Chapter Two
Inside, it’s dimly lit and busy with the after-work crowd. I pause at the doorway. It’s one of those really cool New York bars you see in films and on TV. Several tables are squeezed inside, and running the whole length is a bar made of polished dark wood, with shiny brass fittings and hundreds of different bottles of spirits, all stacked in rows.
Sitting ramrod straight at the bar is a girl in a pinstripe suit. She’s jabbing away at her BlackBerry. With her hair cut into a sharp blonde bob and an imposing black leather briefcase sitting beside her on a barstool, she cuts a rather formidable figure amid the relaxed early evening crowd. Think Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko in Wall Street and then imagine a more imposing, female version.
That’s my big sister, Kate. She’s older, by five years, but it might as well be twenty the way she bosses me about like I’m a child. She’s used to bossing people about, though. She has not one but two assistants working for her.
She’s an associate at a major law firm here in Manhattan that specialises in mergers and acquisitions. Personally, I haven’t got a clue what mergers and acquisitions are, let alone the ability to compile hundred-page reports on them and win cases worth millions of dollars.
But then my sister has always been the super-brainy one in the family. She spent seven years training to be a doctor, then as soon as she qualified, changed her mind and retrained as a lawyer g€d as a lngt„. Like it was no biggie.
I swear I’ve agonised more over what sandwich to have for lunch at Prêt-à-Manger.
Kate got all the brains and I got all the creativity. At least, that’s what my mum likes to tell me, though sometimes I wonder if it was just to make me feel better after flunking yet another maths test. While logarithms baffled me (and still do – could someone please tell me exactly what a logarithm is?), drawing and painting were like second nature and I ended up at art college.
Three glorious paint-splattered years later I graduated and moved to London. I had all these big dreams. I was going to have this amazing career as an artist. I was going to have exhibitions in galleries across the country. I was going to have my own studio in this super-cool loft in Shoreditch . . .
Er, actually, no, I wasn’t.
For starters, have you any clue how expensive lofts in Shoreditch are?
No, neither