I went to the candle and wind-chime shop and took my time choosing and buying a glass bowl and some floating candles in the shape of water lilies, all the time peering out at the street. I went to the baker's and bought a wheel of brown sourdough bread that cost so much that at first I thought the decimal point was in the wrong place. I walked very slowly up the street and down again. I went into a bookshop and bought a book of walks in and around London. I poked about in a hardware shop until the glares of the man behind the counter drove me out. I bought a pad of ruled notepaper and a pen at a stationer's, and some toffees to suck during my vigil. I returned to Crabtrees once more, which was filling up now.
As well as a couple of waiters, who looked like students, the young woman from last night was back. She was flustered with the lunchtime rush, but she nodded at me in recognition when I ordered white bean soup and a glass of sparkling water. I sat in my obscure corner and leafed through the book of walks. I ate very slowly, and when I'd finished got myself a cup of tea. When the door opened I would bend down, as if tying my shoelace, then peer round the bottom of the table to see who was coming in. At just after two, I started trudging up and down the streets again, aimless and footsore and wretched with the impossibility of my task. I told myself I'd give it until closing time and then call it a day.
At half past four, the young woman looked mildly surprised to see me again. I had a pot of tea and a slice of lemon drizzle cake.
At seven, I came back for vegetable lasagne and a green salad, but I just pushed it round my plate and left. I got the van and parked it near the cafe and huddled in the dying light, waiting for it to be closing time. I sat for a while, doing nothing, just staring out at the shapes of the buildings against the sky. I felt very far from home. Forlorn. On the spur of the moment, I rang Don again and when he answered, before I could change my mind, said:
'That drink you mentioned, did you mean it?'
'Yes,' he said without hesitation. 'When? Now?'
'Not now. Tomorrow?'
'Great.'
He sounded genuinely pleased and the glow of that stayed with me after I'd said goodbye, a little bit of sunlight in the gloom.
I must have dozed off because I woke with a start and found the light had faded and the crowds on the street had thinned, although there was still a pool of people outside the pub up the road. It was just before nine, and I was stiff and sore and thirsty. I turned the key in the ignition, switched on the headlights, put the gear into reverse, released the handbrake, glanced in the rear mirror, and froze.
If I could see him in the mirror, could he see me? No, surely not. I was only a strip of face, two eyes. I turned off the ignition and the headlights and slid down low in the seat. In a few seconds, he was walking past the van. He was just a couple of feet away from me. I held my breath in the dark. He stopped at the door of Crabtrees, where the young woman was turning the 'Open' sign to 'Closed'. When she saw Brendan, her face lit up and she lifted a hand in greeting before opening the door to him. I sat up a bit straighter in the seat and watched as he took her in his arms and she leaned into him and he kissed her on her eyes and then her lips.
She was very beautiful, Brendan's new girlfriend. And very young – not more than twenty-one or – two. She was besotted. I watched her as she pushed her hands into his thick hair and pulled his face towards her again. I closed my eyes and groaned out loud. Whatever Don had said, whatever my common sense told me, I couldn't leave it – not now I'd seen the freckles on her nose and her shining eyes.
The woman collected her coat and shut the door. She waved goodbye at someone still inside and then she and Brendan walked arm in arm down the road, back the way he'd come. I waited until they were nearly out of sight, then got out of the van and followed them, praying he wouldn't turn round and see me skulking in the distance. They stopped outside a door between a bicycle shop and an all-night grocery and broke apart while the girl fumbled in her pocket for the key. Her flat, then, I thought. That made sense. Brendan was the cuckoo in other people's nests. She pushed the door open and they disappeared inside.
The door swung shut and a few moments later a light in an upstairs window came on. For a second, I saw Brendan standing, illuminated. He closed the curtains.
CHAPTER 36
It wasn't exactly an orthodox first date: poking around in an abandoned church in Hackney that a few years ago had been turned into a reclamation centre. But maybe it was better this way – there's something awkwardly self-conscious about sitting face-to-face over a pub table, sipping cheap wine, asking polite questions, testing the waters. Instead, Don was at one end of the church, where the altar used to be, bending over an iron bath with sturdy legs, and I was down the aisle looking at stone gargoyles. There was no one else around, except the man who'd let us in, and he was in his office in the side chapel. Everything was bathed in coloured, dusty light, and when we spoke to each other our voices echoed.
'Why have I never been in this place before?' he called out to me, gesturing around him at the stone slabs, the vast wooden cabinets, the porcelain sinks leaning against the walls, the boxes full of brass handles and brass padlocks.
'Because you're not a builder.'
'I want everything here. Look at these garden benches. Or this bird bath.'
I grinned across at him, feeling suddenly dizzy with unfamiliar happiness; tremulous with relief.
'You don't have a garden,' I said.
'True. Do you have a garden?'
'No.'
'Oh well. Tell me what I should get, then.'
'What about a pew.'
'A pew?'
'It would go perfectly in your room. Look here.' He walked down the aisle and stood beside me. But he didn't look at the old wooden pew with carved arms. He looked at me. I felt myself blushing. He put his hands on my shoulders. 'Has anyone ever told you you're gorgeous?'
'Never in a church,' I said. My voice caught in my throat.
And then he kissed me. We leaned against a wood-burning stove that cost £690 and I put my hands under his jacket and his shirt and felt his warm skin beneath my palms, the curve of his ribs. Then we sat down on the pew, and when I looked at him he was smiling at me.
We had our drink after that, sitting in a pub garden in the warm evening, holding hands under the table, and then we went and had an Indian meal together. I didn't speak about Brendan all evening, not once. I was sick and weary of him worming his way into every thought, present even when he was far away, whispering softly and obscenely in my skull. So I pushed him away. I pushed Troy and Laura away too. I only let them back in my head after I dropped Don off at his flat and drove home. Though it wasn't really home any more – it was the place I lived, with the 'Sold' board outside and an air of neglect settling over its rooms.
The ghosts came back, but that night I didn't feel quite so wretched because I was doing something, at last. I had a task, a purpose, a goal. I had a man who thought I was gorgeous: that always helps to blunt the edge of loneliness.
I was at Crabtrees at eight the next morning, but she wasn't there. Instead, one of the men I'd seen two days previously was behind the counter, serving up double espressos, hot chocolates, camomile teas. I perched on a tall stool, ordered a coffee and a cinnamon bun, and then asked if the young woman who'd served me before was coming in soon because I might have left a scarf behind, and maybe she'd picked it up.