LITMIR.BIZ

       1

       JESS

      It was his laugh that I recognised first. That low rumble was as familiar to me as my own, even after nearly a decade. I was at the bar talking to Gemma when I heard it. I froze, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. I watched as recognition dawned on Gemma’s face too. As she looked towards the space behind me, her eyes widened and her perfect eyebrows arched in surprise. She put her cocktail down on the bar beside her and slipped off her stool.

      ‘It’s him, isn’t it?’ I asked quietly.

      She nodded.

      ‘We need to go,’ I said. But even before the words left my mouth, Gemma was halfway across the pub, and more than halfway to drunk if her swaying was anything to go by.

      ‘Oi, Tremayne,’ she shouted. ‘Long time no see.’

      I must have turned around at the same time as he looked up. When our eyes met, I felt twenty-one again. I hadn’t seen Rupert Tremayne for ten years.

      ‘Gemma,’ he said, holding out a hand to steady her, smiling as he took in the tacky plastic veil and L-plates she was wearing. ‘I’m assuming by your natty attire that this is your hen night and you’ve found some poor fool to marry you.’ If he was surprised to see us, he didn’t show it. He acted as though he’d only been gone for a week, not a decade.

      As he leant down to kiss her on the cheek, his eyes caught mine again. I knew then that I couldn’t avoid this, that I couldn’t avoid him. My stomach was twisting itself into knots of anxiety as he walked past Gemma, towards me. I felt as though the whole pub was watching us.

      He stood in front of me, a foot taller than I was, looking down into my eyes. His blond hair was still a little bit too long, greying at the temples; the collar of his jacket was turned up. He looked the same but different – as though he had become slightly worn over the years. But his eyes were still the eyes of the boy I used to know. He didn’t speak, and my mind went blank, my mouth dry. Neither of us knew what to say.

      ‘Jessie,’ he said eventually. I couldn’t tell whether he was pleased I was there or not. Nobody had called me Jessie since he left.

      ‘I thought you were in America,’ I replied quietly, remembering the last time I saw him – walking away from me at Heathrow airport, leaving me with that strange sense of lightness on the ring finger of my left hand.

      ‘I came back,’ he said.

      Gemma and Caitlin appeared then. They both seemed delighted to see Rupert. They’d known him almost as long as they’d known me – until he left.

      ‘Come on,’ Gemma said to him, pulling at his arm. ‘Your friends are joining us for drinking games.’ He was still staring at me and I saw the corner of his mouth twitch at Gemma’s exuberance. He never was the sort of person to play drinking games.

      Gemma, Caitlin and I had known each other for nearly twenty years – twice as long as he’d been away. We met on the first day at our all-girls private school and we clung together for safety. They called us ‘new money’ because our school fees weren’t paid for by family wealth left over the generations – we didn’t have trust funds. Truth be told, we didn’t fit in at all, but at least we had each other. My school fees were paid out of the money my grandmother left when she died, Caitlin’s by her father’s accountancy business and Gemma’s … well, none of us were really sure where Gemma’s family got their money from – not then at least.

      Rupert and his friends joined our table, squeezing together in an already crowded pub. We never got around to any kind of game, drinking or otherwise, because as soon as we were all settled everybody started talking at once, trying to get to know each other, trying to understand how each of us fitted into the jigsaw of Gemma’s hen weekend. I couldn’t concentrate on anything other than the sensation of Rupert’s leg against mine. I felt like a teenager again, transported back to the long summer holidays we used to spend together in Cambridge when he was home from boarding school. It felt as though he had never been away.

      I wondered how many years it had been since we were last all together, sitting around a pub table.

      I listened as Rupert answered Gemma’s barrage of questions; I learned that he lectured in political history at York University, that he came back from America for this job. He didn’t tell me directly why he was here, but he knew I was listening.

      Later, in the pub toilets, Gemma cornered me. Her eyes weren’t quite focused, her lipstick was smudged and her speech a little slurred.

      ‘He’s single, you know,’ she said.

      ‘Who is?’ I asked.

      ‘Rupert bloody Tremayne,’ she replied as she leaned over the washbasin towards the mirror to straighten her fake veil and fix her lipstick. ‘Who else?’

      I didn’t say anything.

      ‘You’re welcome,’ she said.

      ‘For what?’

      ‘For finding out if he’s single or not,’ she went on. ‘He’s been single for years, since before he left America – which means things never worked out with Camilla after all.’

      ‘It’s none of my business whether he’s single or not,’ I said.

      ‘Oh come on, Jess, you know you never got over him. This is your chance to get under him again.’

      ‘Gem, I know you’re over the moon about getting married and I’m delighted for you, but it doesn’t mean that you get to matchmake. Even if I am the last one left on the shelf.’ I smiled. After Caitlin got married the same year that she qualified as a nurse, Gemma and I had always had a running joke about who would be the first of us to get married. I was living with Dan then, so we always assumed it would be me. It’s funny how things work out. I never thought being the last one to get married would bother me as much as it did.

      We had turned thirty the previous year and not long afterwards Mike asked Gemma to marry him. Now we were thirty-one, Gemma’s wedding just a few weeks away, and I couldn’t deny that something had shifted – a feeling that I’d forgotten something, or something was missing. I wanted what Gemma had, what Caitlin had. I denied it of course, because I never thought it mattered to me. Since the day Rupert Tremayne walked away from me I hadn’t believed I cared. It turned out it mattered a lot – I was just too scared to admit it.

      Gemma leaned towards me with a wink. ‘You must have seen the way he’s looking at you,’ she whispered. ‘It’s still there, isn’t it? That spark between you two?’

      I didn’t say anything, unwilling to admit how seeing him again after all these years was making me feel.

      ‘Come on,’ Gemma said, heading back towards the bar again. ‘Once more unto the breach.’

      ‘Can you give me a minute?’ I asked. ‘I’ll be out soon.

      Being near him again was bringing it all back, his thigh pressing against mine, the way he held his pint glass, the way he smiled. I didn’t want it brought back. I couldn’t face it.

      Because Gemma was right – I never did get over him.