Emily Barr - The Sleeper

I was at the bar buying a bottle of house wine when I realised he was standing next to me. Until that moment I had never believed in love at first sight.

‘Hi,’ he said. He was tall, dark, with soft brown eyes, and he was wearing a nice suit.

‘Hello.’ I could not think of anything else to say.

‘Are you with the birthday party?’

We both turned and looked at the table. I did not know Alice well – we had been at university together and became friends again when we both found ourselves working in London – and her close friends had made a far bigger fuss of her birthday than I had been expecting. Helium balloons were moored on the backs of chairs, and pieces of wrapping paper and discarded envelopes littered the floor in our corner.

‘I am,’ I admitted. ‘But I didn’t realise it was going to be quite that full-on.’

‘You’re not the birthday girl, then?’

‘No. That’s Alice.’ I pointed her out. She had long blond hair and was wearing a huge badge announcing her status.

‘Oh yes. She’ll be the one with “Birthday Girl” written on her.’

‘It’s a clue.’

I wanted to say something else, but I could not think of one single thing. I wanted to keep talking to him, but without letting him realise that I felt I already knew him, that I wanted to abandon the party and come and sit with him. I was being ridiculous. I knew I was. He was probably with his girlfriend, for a start.

‘So,’ I tried. ‘You’re not with a party, then?’

He smiled. ‘No. I’m just here for a quiet drink. At least it was quiet until you lot turned up.’

‘Yeah. Bars in the middle of London at six thirty p.m. being where you go if you’re after a haven of solitude.’

‘I know.’

I had to ask. I said it quickly. ‘Are you here with your girlfriend?’

‘No such person. What about you? Boyfriend?’

‘Nope.’

‘Fancy doing a runner and getting some food?’

‘Yes.’

We didn’t even know each other’s names, but we stepped out on to Long Acre and wandered along together until we decided, randomly, to go to an Indian restaurant next to the Royal Opera House. I knew nothing about him at all, but I knew, without a doubt, that we belonged together. Astonishingly, he knew it too, and we were at one another’s side from that moment onwards. Everything worked between us, the way I had known it would the moment our eyes first met.

Our last few years, though, had been a pale shadow of our real relationship. The Laurie of back then would not have wanted me to be living like this. He would have been horrified to see it. If things had happened the other way round he would have moved on, met someone else.

If he, the original Laurie, could have seen me with Alex last night, I thought he would have been pleased. Sad, but pleased. Five years had passed since we were properly together. They had been five long, sad years of pretending. The spectral Laurie I had created had turned into a demanding, grouchy figure: he was not the man I had loved at all.

It was a crisp winter’s morning outside. My phone needed charging but I did not do it: I knew Alex would have tried to contact me and I could not face him yet. I felt deservedly terrible, physically and mentally. Something was pounding inside my skull. I got up early and did what I always did when I woke up sad: I went out. I was on my own. I had been on my own for a long, long time.

The blast of cold air did me good, and I was pleased to find a café on the corner and to slump into a rattling metal chair next to a radiator. I ordered a double espresso, a freshly squeezed orange juice and a vegetarian breakfast, and tried to read a free newspaper instead of thinking.

The world looked different. I was weighted down with grief, but, in a small way, liberated. I was on my own, but that meant I could go and look for Lara. In fact, I would go to Bangkok and see what happened when I got there.

I had not been drunk for five years. For a week after the accident I was horrifically drunk every night. I never wanted to be sober, ever again.

I tried as hard as I possibly could to think of Laurie at home in Budock, waiting for me. It did not work. For the first time, that cottage was not our house. It was where I lived, with my cats. I lived alone, with cats. I did not have a boyfriend, because he was dead. I suddenly hoped the cats were all right: later I would call the neighbours and check. They had a cat flap. They would have been able, I hoped, to fend for themselves for the few days I had been away. I would get the neighbours to start feeding them.

I cast around, desperate to focus on something. The floor was black and white, chequered. It was a bit of a posh hotel transplanted to a little corner café. You could have played chess on it, with the right-sized pieces. You could even have done it with little pieces. They would have looked strange, on their enormous squares, but that would have made it an interesting game. It would have been like playing on a normal chessboard with tiny little pawns and a miniature queen.

My breakfast arrived and I forced a smile at the waitress and anchored my thoughts in the present. Today I was going to ambush Leon Campion. I started eating nervously, half hungry, half nauseous.

I never drank more than a small glass of red wine. It was a decision I had made for my own sanity (if sanity was a word that could be applied to a person like me), and I knew now that it was the right one. There were flashes of memory, jumping up and assaulting me again and again. Kissing Alex had been electric. I was not sure if I could ever bear to see him again. But he knew the truth, and had known it all along, and he had still wanted to spend time with me. He still wanted to kiss me.

‘Do you mind if I plug my phone in?’ I asked the waitress next time she passed.

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘There’s a socket over there.’

The texts arrived as soon as it started charging. There were several from Alex, which I did not read, and one from an unfamiliar number. I took that one first.

Hi Iris , it said. This is Sam Finch. Just wondering how you’re doing and if you’d maybe come over 2day. It would be gud to CU. Also there’s something I want U2C .

His phone rang five times, and just as I was composing the voicemail in my head, he picked it up.

‘Iris. Hey.’

‘Hi, Sam. How are you doing?’

There was a long pause.

‘Crap. Fucking hell. You know what? I never used to swear. Now I do it all the time. Even when we failed at IVF and everything, I never needed to swear about it because I had my wife. Or so I thought.’

‘Oh, Sam.’ I tried to think of a good thing to say. The fact was, there was nothing. ‘It’s awful for you. I can’t imagine.’

‘I wish she’d killed me instead of him.’

‘She didn’t kill him! She didn’t. You know Lara – she …’

His voice was harsh. ‘That’s the thing, though. I don’t fucking know Lara. Nor do you. You can spend as much time as you like saying “but Lara was so lovely and she can’t have killed anyone”, but you didn’t know her. You thought you did. I thought I did. I thought we were happy. More than happy – I thought we were absolutely rock solid. I thought we understood each other. I thought she was doing the London thing to pay off the cards so we’d be ready to start the adoption process, from abroad. I’d been looking into the logistics of Nepal, because she claimed she’d always had a yearning for the place, and the only time she’d been really up for the idea of adopting was when she thought about finding a baby up there, in the mountains. I was going to make it work for her. It literally never occurred to me that she was living with another bloke most of the week. I mean, what a mug. What a stupid fucking mug. And that’s barely the start of it.’