LITMIR.BIZ

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moment to pretend my phone is vibrating.

      ‘You should try it,’ he’s saying now. ‘Literally saved my life.’

      ‘Yep. You said.’

      He stares at me then, an odd expression on his face. His cheeks redden a little.

      The next thing he says is in a lower tone and I don’t catch it at first.

      ‘I’m sorry?’ I say, sliding the last olive into my mouth.

      He clears his throat.

      ‘I’m not very good at this sort of thing,’ he says, sotto voce, ‘but do you want to come back? For sex?’

      I stare at him for a couple of seconds, unable to believe what I just heard. His cheeks are now flaming. A mental picture of him attempting to peel off Lycra shorts in a seductive manner comes into my mind and a surge of hysterical laughter rises in my throat. I inhale sharply and the olive shoots backwards, covering my windpipe. I try to cough it away but my throat just spasms uselessly, silently, failing to budge it. The olive is a solid mass at the back of my throat. There’s a split second of disbelief before I accept that I’m choking. My pulse thunders in my head and there’s a whooshing in my ears.

       I can’t breathe … I can’t breathe.

      ‘I don’t think it was that funny,’ says Carl, his face sour now. He doesn’t understand that I’m dying, I’m actually dying right here, in this shitty restaurant.

      Slapping my hands against the table, I stagger to my feet, panic blooming in hot waves as my body strains for air. I try thumping my own chest but nothing changes, nothing shifts. The olive feels vast in my throat as my lungs strain and pull uselessly and my face is wet with tears.

      Carl’s mouth opens and closes, fish-like, his shocked eyes wide.

      Why isn’t he helping me? Why isn’t anyone helping me?

      My vision begins to smear, the floor shifting under me. My mind blooms bright with Sam’s face and I strive even harder to make the air come. But it’s no good.

      I’m going to die.

      And then arms encircle my body from behind. It feels unbearable to be touched and my panic ratchets higher and higher again. Then a hard fist under my diaphragm jerks upwards – again – again – again – and the olive shoots out of my mouth onto the table, where it sits, glistening with spit.

      Air rushes into my lungs. I start to sob uncontrollable tears of relief. I can’t stop them.

      There’s a hot hand on the bare flesh of my arm and I’m looking into the face of the waitress, who says, ‘You’re OK, you’re OK.’

      It takes me a few moments to find my voice and then I manage to croak, ‘Thank you, thank you so much.’ It’s the strangest feeling but, in that brief moment, I love this waitress a tiny bit.

      I wish I could stop crying but I can’t. Carl stands awkwardly in front of me, arms dangling by his sides, and the other diners stare as one.

      Thank God, I’m finally out of that place and on the way home.

      I pretend to root in my handbag to avoid the curious eyes of the cab driver framed in the rear-view mirror. I know I look a state, with eye make-up migrating down my cheeks and skin all blotchy from crying.

      Every time I think about how it felt, my eyes well up again. The precise texture and taste of the terror keeps coming back to me in waves. It was all-encompassing; a drenching horror I’d only ever experienced in my worst nightmares.

      I have never come close to dying before, not really. I was in a car accident when I was a teenager, when a boyfriend misjudged a bend and wrote off his car. But all I got was a bit of whiplash.

      This was the most frightening thing I have ever experienced, worse than the most intense bits of childbirth when I thought nothing could be as bad. Or the time when I lost Sam at the Natural History Museum for twenty whole minutes until there was an announcement calling for me. I’d thought then that it was the most intense terror I’d ever experienced, but it was nothing like the feeling that I was about to die.

      For a moment, standing in that crummy restaurant, I really thought my life was over. I’ll never forget that hot panic and the desperate fight for air, not for the rest of my suddenly-precious life. Oh, here we go again. I swipe my nose with a piece of kitchen towel I find in my handbag. So humiliating too. For this intimate thing to happen, being reduced to my basest self, with all those strangers.

      Carl … well, I hadn’t been wrong about him. After a lukewarm, ‘Alright now?’ he had lingered awkwardly as I sat down again and attempted to get myself together.

      Perhaps he felt slighted. His bald offer of sex having, after all, almost killed me. Hopefully he’ll sharpen up his chat-up lines before his next date, unless I’ve frightened him off for life.

      This, almost, is enough to make me smile inwardly.

      The life-saving waitress had been monosyllabic, as if what she’d done was no big deal. Afterwards, she just asked me if I wanted a cab and, gratefully, I’d accepted, hoping there wouldn’t be a long wait. We’d quickly split the bill; Carl throwing down more than enough in his hurry to get away. After he had gone, I had sat there, deflated and wrung out, gazing out at the street and wishing I’d never come out tonight.

      When the cabbie arrived, I asked him to wait a minute and hurried to the far end of the restaurant where the waitress was talking to another, older woman who had just arrived. They both regarded me curiously as I approached.

      ‘I’m sorry. Excuse me,’ I said. ‘I just want to thank you again. You saved my life!’

      The waitress hadn’t replied. Flustered, I hurried on. ‘I wish I could repay you in some way. Look, let me give you something. An extra tip.’

      I found myself thrusting a twenty-pound note at her. The waitress looked up sharply, a little suspicious, almost as though she was being tricked in some way.

      She took it with only a small nod of thanks.

      Just before I left, vowing to never come back to this restaurant, I reached out and touched her thin, pale wrist.

      ‘Your name is apt,’ I said. ‘I can never thank you enough.’

      I sniff now and the taxi driver eyes me again.

      Please don’t make conversation.

      I hadn’t been able to face the bus. My car is in the garage and, even though it feels extravagant to get a taxi all the way out of town to mine, I just want to be home so I can close the door on this terrible evening.

      More than anything, I want to grab hold of Sam and squeeze him for all he’s worth. But that’s not going to be possible.

      What a disastrous day. I can’t wait for it to be over.

       2

       Angel

      Angel’s phone buzzes like an angry insect against her thigh. Over and over again. Text after text. They just keep coming, each one a variation on the same pattern.

      Im sorry babe. Can we talk l8r?

      i luv u. u know that right???????

      Pls?

      Get bck here Ffs.

      U R actually fcking with me now.

      I luv u???

      It’s embarrassing.

      Even though she has always communicated with him in the same language, it isn’t a novelty any more. Pathetic, that he can’t write properly, or use punctuation. He’s not

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