I didn’t recognise him instantly. Truth be told, I was so engrossed in my brand-new paperback from WH Smith that I wouldn’t have even noticed him coming into the departure lounge if it wasn’t for his kids. There were two of them. Young enough to look like angels but old enough to make their mother head straight for the bar. Within a minute of them arriving, they’d talked so loudly that I presumed the entire lounge knew their names. Ginnie and George.
They were full of energy; leaping over seats, chatting to strangers, laughing loudly, pressing their noses against the big windows and drawing faces in the condensation they blew out. Kids are gross in the most acceptable way. Not dirty, just messy. I tried to focus on the pitiful woman in my Danielle Steele novel but couldn’t help being distracted by the endless chatter.
“Boys can’t go in the plane. Only girls can.”
Ginnie’s neatly braided hair had been pulled back so tight that you just knew her mother had been mad when she’d done it. Still, it stayed in place admirably.
“Daaad! I can go, can’t I?” George wailed, his big brown eyes welling up. “Can’t I? CAN’T I?”
Ginnie laughed gleefully at her brother’s gullibility. She trod a fine line between adorable and presumptuous and being a stranger, I gave her the benefit of the doubt and decided on adorable. I could imagine how bossy she’d be at school; the kind of girl who’d have totally had someone like me wrapped around her little finger. But adorable nonetheless. Besides, I’d been out of school for years.
I watched the kids run riot, engaging a duo of more retiring children into their games. Their mother nursed a drink at the bar, sipping at it so slowly it seemed she’d rationed herself and wanted to make the G&T last as long as possible. The father was typing furiously on his laptop in such a committed manner that I guessed he was making the most of the free WiFi before his flight. A quintessential family.
“Daaadd?” George was trying to crawl into the space between his father and the laptop. “Do they have strawberry Cornetto in Canada?”
I presumed that his love of said ice-cream had been influenced by his sister. As a small girl, I’d always wanted whatever my brothers wanted, from new Nikes to cola-flavoured lollipops. There was, in fact, a brand new pair of Nikes in my suitcase, which had been a leaving gift from my brother Charlie. He’d given me a lift to the airport; taking the morning off work to heave my luggage into the boot of his Seat Altea before driving myself and my worldly possessions to Heathrow.
“You have to call me when you land,” he’d instructed. “Not a text. Call. Okay?”
Charlie hadn’t trusted text messages for as long as I could remember. He believed anyone could send a text purporting to be someone they weren’t. In other words, I could be murdered and my murderer could text him saying,
I’ve landed. I’m fine!
Yeah. Charlie’s the weird one.
“And good luck, yeah?” he’d said through the open car window, just before driving off. I’d stood next to my suitcases and smiled. It was probably the nicest thing he’d said to me in my life but I guess big changes make people oversentimental. After all, we wouldn’t be seeing each other for months.
The job in New York hadn’t been rigorously planned, but came off the back of a ‘you-only-live-once’ train of thought. My boyfriend had unceremoniously ended our relationship three months previously and life had become stationary.
The days went by; I got older but did the same things as though I was living each week on repeat. Monday to Thursday I worked nine to five as an internal auditor. Friday was the same, only after work I felt obligated to join my co-workers for overpriced cocktails in a fancy mid-city bar. Saturdays were inevitably occupied by a birthday, anniversary or wedding celebration and Sundays were reserved for cleaning my flat and doing laundry.
Since I’d been single, I hadn’t once strayed from this schedule and the monotony had begun to grate on me. Sure, I had enough money but only a soulless person can really find pleasure in riches. And so I’d decided to shake things up. Do something new. Go somewhere new. Like all my radical decisions, it’d simmered on the backburner for a good few weeks until my boss unexpectedly asked me to transfer to the New York office. He sold it well and I pretended to think it over.
Could it be fate? A coincidence? The way things were meant to be? Did it even matter when it meant I could get the hell out of flat 7C in the dirty part of Notting Hill and go to New York fucking City? I accepted a couple of days later. The office had a small leaving party with cake and balloons. Any excuse for cake. The company paid for my plane ticket and so I found myself in Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport, a predictable romance novel in my lap and a sense of nervous excitement in my stomach.
“Daaadd! Can we have a drink too?” Ginnie wheedled. “All the other kids do.”
Her father didn’t seem to hear her. Absentmindedly, he patted his son’s head.
“Maybe we should ask Mum,” Ginnie suggested knowingly and promptly obtained a suitable reaction.
Her father’s head snapped up.
“No. Sit down. Your mother’s tired.”
It was the first time I’d heard him speak and something about his voice invoked a strange sense of familiarity in me. I glanced surreptitiously at him. He looked about forty and had the kind of handsome face that had been worn down by years of life and work. All people are pretty good looking if you think about it. It’s just that some of us get launched onto magazine covers and runways and get spray tans and designer haircuts and suddenly become lauded as the most beautiful people in the world. George and Ginnie’s father was very attractive but it didn’t seem like anyone had ever bothered to notice it.
I looked back at my book. The words were there but I had to blink before I could make them out. I frowned. I looked at the man again and this time he caught me looking. He gave me a small smile, his brow raised as if to say, ‘Kids, huh?’
I returned the smile but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I knew him. It was a crazy feeling. We were two strangers in an airport but there was something about him that I felt I knew. And as though he’d heard my thoughts, he turned back ever so slightly, his smile tipping into a frown. The edge of recognition.
“I’m thiiirstyyyy,” George moaned and just like that, the opportunity disappeared. The man’s attention shifted. He shut his laptop and stretched.
“Okay. Sit down,” he groaned. “Don’t move a muscle. Make sure no-one steals our stuff. If it’s gone, I’ll hold the two of you personally responsible. Got it?”
The children nodded energetically.
“I want vanilla Coca-Cola, Dad,” Ginnie said. “Please. George wants water.”
“I do not!” George announced emphatically. “I want orange juice, iced, not from concentrate, no bits. That’s what men drink,” he announced rather loftily to his sister. She glared at him, probably wanting to elbow him but deterred by the knowledge that her vanilla cola was at stake.
I frowned studiously at my book. I had the weirdest feeling of déjà vu. Could I possibly know this family?
“Okay,” the father said. “One vanilla Coca-Cola, and one orange juice, iced, not from concentrate, no bits.”
It hit me then. I looked up but it was too late. He’d already turned and was heading for the nearest café. I saw him catch his wife’s attention, communicating wordlessly with her in the way only couples can. She glanced over at her kids, gave me a once-over, decided I wasn’t a threat and took another small sip of her drink.
Harry Lawson. Or, Mr Lawson, as I’d first known him. How many years had it been now? Ten? No, eleven. Things had changed. I could hardly believe it’d taken me so long to recognise him. But back then, he’d been clean shaven. And not so – fatherly? And he’d never had glasses. Or grey hair. He seemed to have aged a lot in a decade.
But it was him. I knew that voice. And the giveaway? The orange juice. His voice tipped in the same way as it always did, the emphasis on the not from concentrate, the way the line rolled off his tongue like he’d made the order a thousand times. And I could see it, could see him, back in the Starbucks opposite our college, across the small, freshly-cleaned table, his top two shirt buttons undone, his elbow resting on the back of his chair, his legs too long and impatient to fit neatly under the table.
Fuck. It came back to me quickly and vividly. I could even remember the blue summer dress I’d been wearing. The smell of strong coffee, the way his shirt sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, his tanned forearms, the silver watch around his strong, brown wrist, the way he smiled at me like he knew just how the next year was going to develop. Fuck.
“Orange juice, please,” he’d said to the young, acne-scarred waiter. “Iced, not from concentrate, no bits,” His green eyes had flicked to me. “What do you want, V?”
V. Everybody else called me Victoria, Vicky, Vic, Tori. My ex had even taken to calling me Ria. But it was only Harry Lawson who’d ever referred to me by my initial. I don’t know why he did it but my seventeen year old mind fell for his games instantly.
The Starbucks meeting came about by chance. An unidentified hell-raising teenager had set the fire-alarm off and the school had been evacuated. I’d been due to have an appointment with Mr Lawson at the end of the day to discuss future aspirations; he worked primarily as an English teacher but also temped as the college’s career advisor. Since the school was off-limits, we went to Starbucks. Perhaps the informal setting provided the basis for what our relationship became. Or perhaps it would have happened anyway.
Mr Lawson was married. I knew it. Everybody knew it. A wedding portrait of him and his wife stood in pride of place on the desk in his small office. He’d catch me looking at it sometimes and he’d always give me the same vaguely unsettling line.
“She was a mistake.”
Some mistake. I glanced at the airport bar again. The same woman? It must have been. She had blonde hair, at least, and looked tall enough. But had I ever really believed him? Did it matter? I hadn’t promised to be loyal to her. Harry was the bad guy. Not me. It was the only way I could assuage the guilt. It’s not me. It’s him.
On how many occasions had we fucked over the course of that fateful year? It must have been hundreds. None of my boyfriends had ever figured me out in the way he had. In a way, I blamed him for the dire state of my personal life. He’d ruined me. The sex had been way too good.
***
The first time. His office. A small, square room just off the English corridor. He had a desk, a computer, a bookcase full of lever-arch files and a silver filing cabinet. There were three chairs lined up in front of his desk. An award for ‘Best New Teacher’ gleamed as the September sunlight streamed through the window. The door was locked. An anti-bullying poster was tacked up on it.
How had we got there? I took his English class. We were studying Rebecca and we’d been told to write an essay comparing the protagonist with the ex-wife. Mine was steeped in sex which was understandable since the book basically made it sound like Rebecca was a slut and the new wife was a virgin. Mr Lawson read my essay. He didn’t grade it. He attached a yellow Post-It to the top page which read.
See me after class, please.
The other students filed out. I walked over to his desk.
“Wasn’t the paper good enough?” I asked.
He didn’t look up. His fingers hastily moved across his keyboard, replying to emails.
“No. It was good,” he said, “I was just – surprised by the premise. All the other students based their essays on good versus bad, or on manipulation versus innocence. Yours was just – sex.”
He pressed the Enter key and finally looked at me. I blushed.
“I – I’m sorry.”
“Oh, no,” he frowned. “Don’t be. It was very interesting.”
“It was?” Relieved, I leaned against his desk and his eyes moved languorously down my legs. God, he was handsome. And smart. And engaging. Attraction is never just about looks. It’s about the sum of a person’s characteristics. And to my teenage mind, the sum of Mr Lawson’s attributes totalled about 200 degrees Celsius.
“Yeah,” His voice sounded different to the way it was when he addressed the class. It had become lower, had more of an edge to it. “But then, you’re not very much like the other kids, are you, V?”
“I’m not?”
He smiled such a heart-racing smile that I had to look away.
“No. I don’t think so.”
I felt flattered. Every girl in the school had a crush on Mr Lawson and I was no different. It was my last year before university and by all accounts, I was a grown-up. I had a Saturday job. I had a bank account. I could drive. It didn’t feel inappropriate when Mr Lawson looked at me like he wanted me. And it didn’t feel inappropriate when his hand curled around my bare calf when he went to pick up a pen from the floor. It felt enormously exciting. The entire time we were talking about what kind of sex the characters in Rebecca were into and his eyes were on mine, daring me to protest as his hand inched upwards.
I didn’t protest. I didn’t even consider it. His hand moved higher. But events were interrupted by a cleaner who barged into the room, a vacuum cleaner rattling along behind her.
“Well,” Mr Lawson said, breezily. “Why don’t we continue this discussion tomorrow? My office? Say, after school?”
“Okay,” I said, breathlessly. “Fine.”
And so the next day, after a restless hour in Maths, I made my way to his office. He didn’t waste time. He locked the door as soon as I’d entered and then looked at me hard.
“You want this, right?”
I stared at him.
“Uh-huh.”
He kissed me, pushing me against the solid wood of the door.
