December, fourteen years ago
‘Smile for the punters,’ Izzy’s boss Terry hissed in her ear as he squeezed his way past, a little too close for comfort.
Izzy scowled. You’d have to be superhuman to still have a smile after two hours of boiling in a too-small and over-revealing Christmas elf costume, serving Full Englishes and builder’s tea to total letches, with another eight hours of your shift to go.
She was going to kill the next man who told her that he wouldn’t mind finding her in his stocking. Apparently the average frequenter of Earl’s Court’s ‘Number One Greasy Spoon’ (No Free-Range Here! No Green Veggies Either!) didn’t know that in the twenty-first century there were laws against sexual harassment. Unfortunately, Terry didn’t seem to know either, so there was no help coming from his direction and, even more unfortunately, Izzy was desperate for cash but could only work Saturdays round her speech therapy training, and this was the only Saturday job going.
‘Your baps look perfect to me, love.’ The grinning middle-aged man – seriously, he had to be older than her father – was looking straight down her top from over the counter. ‘Do you come as a side order?’
‘Hil-ar-ious,’ she told him, trying to lean backwards so that her cleavage was less visible. ‘Never heard that one before.’ She pushed her elf’s hat back onto her head – annoyingly the dress was too small and the hat was too big – and dolloped a spoonful of her earliest-cooked, and therefore coldest, baked beans (The Only Fibre We Serve!) onto his plate, hard, because she wanted to slap him. She dolloped too hard. Some of the juice splattered off the plate and onto the bodice of her dress. Excellent. Excellent. Now she’d have to have it dry cleaned, because she couldn’t risk washing it again and shrinking it even more. Marvellous. The dry-cleaning bill would probably be more than an hour’s pay. Fantastic. She took a quick glance at her watch. Nine o’clock and already she had The Rage. Most Saturdays she managed to make it to at least nine fifteen, if not nine thirty, before wanting to murder someone.
She shoved the breakfast towards the grinner and yelled, ‘Next,’ reaching for another not-that-clean-looking plate; Terry should really get the dishwasher fixed.
‘Morning. Full English, please, as it comes, and a black coffee.’ Wow. The next customer had an amazing voice. Deep. Gravelly. Rich. And it sounded as though he was smiling as he spoke. Nice accent too. Izzy loved an American accent. She was pretty sure, from extensive TV and film watching, that he was from New York. You could hear a lot from one sentence.
‘No problem.’ Izzy switched the dirty plate for a clean one and added the two eggiest slices of toast to it. Everyone loved extra-eggy toast. She always gave good portions to nice customers and rubbish ones to not-so-nice customers. Completely fair. Café karma. The only bacon left in the tray was grim – grey and flabby looking. She added some more rashers to the griddle and looked up at the man to tell him that it wouldn’t be long.
And wow again. She found her eyes actually opening wider. His face matched his voice, in a way that almost never happened. Normally the ones with the nice voices really didn’t do it for her physically. And vice versa. Last week, for example, she’d had a customer who’d been one of the most amazing-looking men she’d ever seen, until he’d spoken. And then something about the way his mouth moved, in conjunction with his very high and whiny voice, had made her skin crawl, and very much not in a good way.
But this man, again, wow. He had wavy, dirty blond hair, olive skin almost the same colour, a very square, stubbly jaw and dark-brown eyes. Smiley eyes, with little lines at the corners already, even though he only looked about mid-twenties. And he was tall with wide shoulders, wearing a faded Eagles t-shirt over a very solid chest and under a battered leather jacket. And she was staring. Well, whatever. It wasn’t like there were a lot of advantages to this job other than the fact that it was hers and it paid her (a small amount), and he wasn’t a regular, so, really, who cared if she looked a bit nuts.
And then he smiled. And everything around them slowed down and then disappeared, like it was only the two of them left in the world. The smile was making his eyes crinkle exactly as she’d thought they would and his mouth had gone slightly crooked. Izzy’s stomach actually physically lurched, as though she’d been hit by something. She had no option but to describe it as love at first sight. The kind that no-one sane believed in. The kind that she didn’t believe in. But she knew. She absolutely knew. She knew that he’d make her laugh. She knew that he’d laugh at her jokes, however bad. She knew that she’d never get bored with him. She knew that he’d treat people, including her, well. And she knew that if, when, they kissed, she’d actually melt. She knew.
‘Hi.’ She was smiling right back at him. He was looking at her like he knew things about her too. Like he was feeling what she was feeling. The same thunderbolt. Electricity. Fizzing in the air. ‘I’m Izzy.’
‘I’m Sam.’ His smile had grown. He was definitely feeling what she was feeling. She could tell. Sam was a good name. It suited him.
‘Well in, mate,’ shouted Greg-the-Groper, from behind Sam’s shoulder. ‘I’ve been asking her name every Saturday for six months and she always ignores me.’
‘That’s because you regularly try to grope me.’ Izzy dragged her gaze from Sam to Greg with extreme reluctance.
‘Izzy. Over here. Now.’ Terry had his arms just about folded over his stomach, across his truly disgustingly dirty, greyish-white t-shirt and apron. Izzy took a couple of steps towards where he was standing next to the swing door to the kitchen, really not wanting to move too far from Sam. Or too close to Terry.
‘Yes, Terry?’
‘If I hear you being rude to customers one more time, you’re out. You’re only here because the punters like you.’
‘I work really hard,’ Izzy said. If she was going down, she was standing up for justice as she went. ‘That’s why I’m here. No-one else would put up with all of this.’
‘It’s alright, mate,’ Greg hollered. ‘It’s all part of the banter. She’ll give in one day.’
‘Off you go.’ Terry unfolded an arm and moved it towards her as though he was going to pat her bum. Izzy leapt out of the way and back to her place behind the counter. Greg was leering at her. The contrast between his face and Sam’s was huge. Red veins and bloodshot eyes on a pasty middle-aged face versus dream-come-true gorgeousness.
‘Piss off,’ Izzy mouthed at Greg so that Terry wouldn’t hear. Greg guffawed.
‘On the one hand I really want to speak to these men on your behalf and on the other I’m thinking that you’re dealing with them better than I could,’ Sam said.
‘Yeah, on the one hand I’d love you to punch them and on the other, you know, feminism… I’ll sort them myself.’
‘Sounds like you love your job?’
‘Oh, yes. The aching feet, the smell of grease in your hair that lasts until at least Monday, the costume, obviously, and the delightfully chivalrous customers. Not to mention my wonderful boss. It’s actual bliss.’
Sam smiled at her and then his expression got a little more serious as he leaned in closer. Was he, could he possibly be, maybe, actually going to kiss her? Across the counter? No way. Please way. Izzy was fairly sure that she couldn’t breathe at this moment if you paid her. He was leaning further. If everything and everyone else had seemed far away before, now it was as though they were in a different universe, all to themselves. Although he wasn’t looking at her, he was looking at the counter. Shouldn’t he be focusing on her eyes and lips, like she was on his? He had lovely long, thick, dark eyelashes.
‘Bacon’s on fire,’ Sam said.
‘Shit.’ Izzy stopped fantasising about what would obviously have been an earth-shatteringly amazing kiss and whipped the bacon off the griddle and into the bacon tray. All the congealed fat in there caught fire immediately. She batted at it with the tongs. The fire just grew.
She chucked a full jug of water over the tray just as Sam said, ‘Tea towel.’
Izzy stared into the tray. ‘A tea towel would have been better,’ she said. ‘It would have cost a lot less to replace than all this bacon.’ There was no way any of it was servable now.
‘Izzy,’ Terry yelled. ‘That’s coming out of your wages.’ Seriously. He was apparently blind to all sorts of things that happened where she could have done with a bit of help, but the second she made a mistake, he was on it. So annoying. Terry didn’t exactly source his bacon from high-end, ethically run local farms – it was definitely all from battery-reared, antibiotic-fed, miserable pigs from the furthest corners of Europe – but there still had to be at least three hours’ pay worth of bacon in there. It was a big tray. That plus the dry cleaning was going to mean a whole morning’s work that she effectively wasn’t going to get paid for. Izzy carried on staring at the bacon and thought about resigning. No. She really couldn’t. She really needed the money.
‘Hey.’ Sam only raised his voice a bit but everyone, including Terry, stopped talking and turned to look at him. ‘That was my fault,’ he said. ‘The bacon. You can’t take it out of Izzy’s wages.’
‘Someone’s got to pay for it.’ Terry was sticking his chin out, as though he was squaring up to Sam. He was standing well back from the counter, though. Without the counter as protection, he’d probably have been running, or waddling, for the door. Sam didn’t even twitch, Izzy was pleased to see. He pulled his wallet from a pocket and took out a couple of notes.
‘Forty pounds to cover the bacon,’ he said. ‘And I’m sure it’s worth a lot less than that.’
‘I can’t let you pay for it,’ Izzy said. She really couldn’t; it wouldn’t be right. But forty quid. Bloody hell. Forking out for that would mean a whole week of surviving on beans on toast. Terry was already stuffing the money into one of the back pockets of his low-slung jeans.
‘Really not a problem,’ Sam said.
‘No, honestly. I don’t actually have forty quid on me right now, but I’ll pay you back. Do you live nearby?’ Please let him live nearby. It would be easier to see each other if they didn’t have to travel. Although it didn’t really matter. She’d go anywhere for him.
‘Just moved in round the corner.’ Sam indicated with a nod of his head. ‘Although why am I telling you that? You absolutely aren’t paying me back.’ So generous – they were definitely meant to be – and a huge relief given Izzy’s current financial situation. She’d make it up to him in the future.
‘Thank you so much. I owe you big time.’
‘Holding the customers up, Izzy,’ Terry boomed.
‘Sorry.’ Izzy didn’t look round. She really didn’t want to stop talking to Sam, or looking at him, drinking in his face, the way he held himself, the way his accent rolled. He was smiling at her again.
‘I should probably eat my breakfast,’ he told her. ‘Busy day ahead.’
‘Of course. Here’s your coffee and here’s your no-bacon Full English. I’ll put some more on the griddle and bring over a couple of rashers in a minute.’ She’d given him the three most nicely done sausages, instead of two, to make up for the lack of immediate bacon.
Sam took the plate and mug from her and put them on one of the café’s delightful stained plastic trays. He had very nice hands. Very strong-looking, very capable. Good nails. Not bitten, but not long. No jewellery. Perfect, in fact.
‘Thank you.’ He smiled at her again and then took the tray over to a table close to the door and sat down with his back to her.
‘Full English please, love,’ said Greg-the-Groper. He leaned in with a leer. ‘Izzy.’ Marvellous. She glared at Greg. Her name sounded a lot better on Sam’s lips.
The whole time Sam was eating, Izzy snuck glances at his back. It was really hard to concentrate on the other customers. Sam had taken his jacket off to eat. His forearms were amazing. She could see the muscles flexing in them as he used his cutlery. When his bacon was ready, she was going to go over and have another chat. Definitely.
Bugger. The bacon wasn’t cooking because the gas under the griddle was off. The water must have spilled over and put it out. Never mind. She flicked it back on. It should heat up quickly. She looked back at Sam. If she craned her head slightly, she could see his profile as he ate. He had an intelligent face. A nice face. Very nice.
She was feeling physically sick with nerves, like she had before she gave her uni presentation the other day, although in retrospect that hadn’t been such a big deal; this was way bigger. The conversation they were about to have could be one of the most important of her life, their lives – the start of something big.
And then Sam finished eating just before the bacon was ready. He pushed his chair back, shrugged his jacket on, stood up and made for the door.
As he reached it, he turned towards her, gave her a little salute, which, from anyone else, would have looked ridiculous, but from him looked exactly right, and said, ‘Goodbye. And good luck.’ He accompanied the good luck with a little eye roll and a smile. Izzy laughed. What she actually wanted to do was cry. He was leaving. Walking out of her life. She’d been just about to go over and speak to him but he’d gone.
The café’s tinny radio was blaring out Noddy Holder, the last few bars of ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’… the soundtrack to Izzy’s horrible, sinking feeling that the love of her life was walking away from her.
Although, maybe she didn’t have to let him walk away. Maybe she should go after him, seize the moment. She pushed her way out from behind the counter and through the café, ignoring Terry’s shouts.
She registered a shock of cold air hitting her as she burst out of the heat of the café into the December day, and then she saw Sam at the end of the road. She started running. There were shopping-bag-wielding and Christmas-accoutrement-holding people everywhere, in her way, most of them meandering. Clearly, nothing really important was happening in their lives at this moment. Izzy ran faster, weaving.
‘Sam.’ Her panting shout sounded pathetically quiet against the traffic, but he must have heard because he stopped and turned.
‘Izzy.’
‘Hi.’ She came to a halt in front of him.
‘Hi.’ He was doing a very attractive lopsided smile, one eyebrow raised combo. An ‘I’m pleased to see you but a little surprised’ look. She should say something instead of standing here smiling foolishly at him.
‘So, I was wondering—’ she’d never actually asked anyone out before ‘—would you like to go out this evening? If you’re free? I mean I know it’s the Saturday before Christmas so you’re probably busy.’ She was actually busy herself this evening, but she’d cancel. This was more important. But maybe Sam had plans he couldn’t cancel. ‘Or tomorrow evening? I mean any time you’re free? I owe you for the bacon. And, also, it would be nice to go out? If you’re free?’ Okay, she was sounding ridiculously desperate. But this was important. And when you were asking The One out, who cared about sounding desperate. They’d laugh about this when they were in their eighties and reminiscing. Izzy suddenly had an image of herself in a wedding dress and Sam in a suit in a gorgeous country church. Maybe in a couple of years’ time. Maybe a winter wedding.
‘Izzy, thank you so much but I’m afraid I can’t. I’m getting married today.’ Sam’s dark eyes were serious, looking into hers. Izzy sensed him move his hands towards hers and then drop them back to his sides.
She couldn’t speak. She was stunned. This was just awful. She couldn’t work out what was worse, the mortification or the misery. How could she have been stupid enough to read the signs so badly that she’d asked someone out on their wedding day? And also, he was her One. Except he obviously wasn’t. He was getting married to someone else. Today. He loved someone else. It was actually really hard to process the information. It was so wrong. She took a deep breath and wrinkled her face, trying to get her mouth to work and form some words.
‘It’s my wedding day.’ He said it very gently. ‘The wedding’s this afternoon. I was having a pre-wedding, calm-the-nerves, greasy spoon breakfast moment to myself. You know.’
Izzy nodded. She didn’t know. But she could imagine. Ish.
‘Congratulations.’ It was surprising that she was managing to work her voice now. ‘I hope it goes really well. Nice weather for it. No rain forecast.’
‘Yes. Thank you.’
‘Okay. Well.’ Weirdly, she didn’t want to end the conversation, even though it was truly gut-wrenching and embarrassing. She didn’t want to break the contact. But obviously she should. She shivered, suddenly aware that it was really bloody freezing and she had no coat on, just her tiny elf costume. ‘Congratulations again.’
‘Thank you.’ He was looking at her like he knew what a terrible moment this was. Tears were pushing hard against her eyelids. She needed to walk away right now.
She nodded and, with a big effort, turned round and started to re-trace her steps back to the café. This was so bad. So wrong. So awful. In the same way that she’d known that he was The One, she knew it was going to take far longer than it should do to recover from this. And not just the humiliation. Which was ridiculous. She’d ‘known’ him for the length of time it took to be served and eat a large breakfast at normal speed and walk the length of an averagely long road. She knew no actual facts about him other than his name. But she honestly felt truly bereft.
Terry was yelling and gesticulating at her from the door of the café. Izzy bent down and picked up her elf hat from the pavement. It must have fallen off as she ran. She plonked it back on her head and carried on trudging towards Terry.
Eleven months later
Izzy looked at her watch. Yep, just about time to grab a Pret sandwich before her first afternoon appointment. The last one had run on beyond its scheduled finish time but when you were helping someone with a stammer, hurrying them was obviously not the way forward. Wow, the temperature had dropped since this morning. She wrapped her scarf more tightly, huddled into her coat and pulled her gloves out. And then stopped dead in the middle of the pavement and dropped the gloves. Someone behind her bumped into her and she apologised on autopilot.
Sam, actual Sam, was walking up the steps into Chelsea Old Town Hall maybe fifteen feet in front of her. So close to her. She’d be able to cover the distance between them in seconds. It was definitely him. She’d thought about him so much, fantasised, compared – negatively – every man she’d met since then to him. She’d imagined several times over the past few months that she’d seen him in the flesh, but it had never actually been him. But this time it was. No question. He was dressed a lot more smartly than he had been for his wedding day greasy spoon breakfast: charcoal grey overcoat, suit and tie, smart shoes. Presumably his working uniform. She wondered what job he did.
Izzy’s heart was going unbelievably fast, thundering in her ears, and her scarf was suddenly scratching her neck and making her feel claustrophobic. She’d been imagining this moment for so long. She should do something. Say something. Go and speak to him.
No. She shouldn’t. She really shouldn’t.
He obviously hadn’t been fantasising about her, measuring every other woman, unfavourably, against her, wondering about her for eleven months. He was married. Probably very happily. He probably didn’t even remember her. Actually, he might do. It probably wasn’t normal for a girl you didn’t know to ask you out on your wedding day. But he certainly wouldn’t have remembered Izzy’s name, or thought about her again.
Yup, she should just walk on past. He was nearly at the top of the steps now, about to go through the double doors at the top.
And then he turned round. And looked right at her. Properly at her. They locked eyes for a second or two. Sam hesitated for a fraction of a moment. Izzy was sure that he recognised her. And then he dropped his eyes, turned his back on her, pushed open one of the doors and took a step forward.
And he was gone. Just like that. Either he hadn’t recognised her, or he had and he had no interest in talking to her. Well, of course he hadn’t. They didn’t know each other and he was married. Izzy was, frankly, a complete loser to have been hung up on him, on an idea, for nearly a year.
Okay. This was it. She needed to move on. It was beyond sad to have been thinking for so long about someone she didn’t even know. It was worse if that person was married and utterly, utterly off limits. And even worse if thinking about him prevented her from living her own life properly. She needed to become a new woman. A new woman who dated properly, fell in love, lived her life.
Izzy took one step inside the club and immediately wanted to turn right back round and walk out again. It was your classic sticky-floor, sweat-dripping-off-the-ceiling, dive venue. Total meat market. It looked like everyone was already pairing up with strangers, and it was barely 10 p.m. She could murder a good night’s sleep. If she left now, she could get the bus and wouldn’t even have to fork out for a taxi.
‘Remember—’ her best friend Emma spoke very firmly into her ear ‘—you’re a new woman. Goodbye Sam, hello the rest of your life.’
Izzy sighed and then nodded. Emma was right. As of this lunchtime outside the town hall, she was a new woman.
Bloody hell, the music was loud. She was going to have a headache within about five minutes.
‘New woman,’ Emma instructed again.
‘Yes, I am.’ Izzy slapped a smile on her face. ‘I’ll get the drinks in.’ Everything would probably feel better once she had a couple of very alcoholic cocktails down her.
Obviously actually buying the drinks was easier said than done. Everyone else around the bar was so bloody tall.
‘This is going to sound like a really bad chat-up line, but for someone so pretty you’ve got very poor bar presence. I’m Dominic. Can I buy you a drink?’ Dominic was good-looking in a classic, boy-next-door kind of way. If he were American, he’d be preppy. He wasn’t American, though, and Izzy was not going to think about Sam.
Dominic actually had a very nice smile. Open. Pleasant. It wasn’t doing anything tingly to her, but that whole love-at-first-sight thing was obviously total crap, and she was a New Woman. As far as she was concerned, Sam might as well not exist. Dominic did exist and he was right here, and he might well be the perfect man for her. It felt like a little piece of her soul was shrivelling up and dying, letting go of Sam. But she’d never had him. And never would. Maybe that part of her had to die so that she could actually live like a normal person.
Izzy gave Dominic her best smile. ‘I’d love a drink.’
March, six years later
Izzy heaved herself and her shopping out of the supermarket. Why did people like being pregnant? Why did people talk about pregnant women blooming? Izzy was not blooming. She had bags under her eyes from nightly 4 until 6 a.m. insomnia. Her skin was stretched unpleasantly taut over her water-retention-huge feet. She was wearing flip-flops even though it was only about five degrees, because her feet were too fat to fit into any of her shoes. Her toenails looked like total shit because she’d tried to paint them herself when she realised that she was going to have to wear flip-flops but she couldn’t reach properly and then it had felt like too much hard work to reach down there to remove it. She couldn’t breathe because the baby had its feet up, squashing her lungs. She needed to go to the loo all the bloody time because its head was on her bladder. Nine months was an eternity.
Her right flip-flop caught on the corner of a pavement stone and she tripped, in weird slow motion. She was going to fall right over. Or drop her shopping. She let go of the bags and put one arm out to catch herself on the wall of the shop and the other around her stomach to protect the baby. It might get hurt if she fell. No, panic over, she was still upright on her uncomfortable feet.
She looked down. Her bags were not upright. Her groceries were scattered all over the pavement. Bloody hell. Now she was going to have to bloody bend over. Like that was possible.
‘Hey, that doesn’t look good. Can I help?’ The man was already gathering up her shopping, working about a billion times faster than she could have done. He reminded her of someone. The man she’d once asked out on his wedding day. Sam. Same dark-blond hair, same wide shoulders, same gorgeous New York accent. He looked up over his shoulder at her and smiled. ‘All done.’
It was Sam.
He was still stop-the-traffic handsome. Despite being a happily married woman, she might even still fancy him a bit if she weren’t too pregnant ever to have or even think about sex again.
‘Hi, Sam.’ Now that was an example of speaking without thinking. He wasn’t going to remember her. He was going to be comp. . .
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