Penny Vincenzi - The Best Of Times

She got out of the cab, ran towards the house, went inside, slammed the door shut. She thought she’d heard footsteps behind her; she didn’t want to hang about. She put the chain on the door, turned away.

The bell rang. She ignored it. It rang again. She really didn’t want to open it. Not at this time of night. But… maybe she’d locked someone for one of the other flats out.

“Who is it?” she called finally.

There was a silence; then: “It’s Barney.”

This had happened so many times in her imagination, and her dreams, that she more or less assumed he couldn’t be real. She waited, unable even to move the chain, to open the door a crack, too afraid that if she did, she would wake up, or he would simply not be there.

“Emma! Please open the door. Please.”

It did sound like him. It really did. There was a big mirror in the hall; she looked at herself in it. She looked terrible. She was very pale, and her eye makeup had smudged, and her hair was all lank and wet. She couldn’t open the door to Barney looking like that. If it was him.

She rummaged in her bag, pulled out a comb, dragged it through her hair. Wiped a tissue under her eyes, which promptly seemed to smudge more, licked it and tried again, tried desperately to find her makeup bag…

“Emma, what on earth are you doing?”

“Sorry. Sorry.” She had to do it, had to open the door. Whatever she looked like. She did-very cautiously, leaving it on the chain. She peered through the crack. And…

“It is you. Isn’t it?”

“Of course it’s me. Who else would it be, standing here in the pouring rain, begging you to open the door…”

She fumbled at the chain; it seemed to be jammed; it took ages. Finally she pulled it out. Opened the door. And…

“Hello, Emma.” There was a pause. Then he added-and then she knew it was him-“Hello, the Emma. You all right?” He was staring at her, very intently.

“I’m fine. Yes. Hello, Barney. The Barney. Come… come in. Please.”

He came in. She stood looking at him, trying to take in the enormity of it, that he was really here, actually standing in front of her, looking a little dishevelled, not smiling.

“I can’t believe I’m really here,” he said. And put out his hand to touch her arm. She put hers out. And absurdly took his hand and shook it. And giggled.

“Oh, God,” she said, snatching her hand back. “I’m sorry. This is so, so stupid. Oh, Barney, Barney, but why are you here?”

“I’m here,” he said, “because Tamara told me to.”

“Tamara! Now I know I’m dreaming.”

“No,” he said, “you’re not.”

“You’ll have to explain.”

“All right.”

“Well…” She caught sight of herself again in the mirror. “I’m sorry I look so awful.”

“You don’t. You look beautiful to me. Absolutely beautiful.”

It was still all rather surreal.

And then they were standing inside her flat and he was still staring at her and looking very serious, and not touching her, and he said, “I can’t believe this is happening. I really can’t.”

“Nor can I.”

“I’ve tried so hard to get over you. I couldn’t.”

“Nor could I.”

“I… wanted to call you so much, find out what had happened. I just couldn’t.”

“Nor could I. Even after I knew you’d finished with Amanda.”

“I was so afraid you’d… you’d…”

“I know,” she said. “I know what you were afraid of. Same as me. That I was getting over it, had someone else.”

“And,” he said, moving towards her, reaching out, taking one strand of her hair, winding it just a little round his finger, beginning to smile now, “how stupid was that? How stupid.”

“Of both of us,” she said, “so, so stupid. As if that would have been possible.”

“As if indeed.”

“So… what happened?”

“Well… like I said. Tamara told me to ring you. So I did.”

“Since when did you do what Tamara says?”

“Since tonight. She’s my new very, very best friend. Yes, she really is.”

“Mary told me I should ring you. Only I wasn’t so sensible. I went on being too scared.”

“Who’s Mary, for heaven’s sake?”

“Oh, Barney. You know. The old lady who was in the crash. I told you, she was meeting her boyfriend from the war; it was so, so sweet.”

“Oh, the one you met in the restaurant. Yes.” He was staring at her, absolutely still, looking dazed. “I love you, Emma. I can’t bear it, I love you so much. What was so sweet? Did you say?”

“I love you too. I can’t believe it. So much. What was so sweet was she told me to call you to get in touch. It’s so sad; her Russell’s died now. She’s been widowed twice.”

“Poor Mary. Poor Russell.”

“I know.”

“Go on telling me what she said.”

“She said I should call you. And I said you’d probably have forgotten about me by now, it was such a long time. And she said you wouldn’t have. That Russell hadn’t forgotten her, not even after more than sixty years. How amazing is that?”

“Well, Emma King,” he said, “I’m not being beaten at love by anyone. I couldn’t forget you if I didn’t see you for… for seventy years. How’s that?”

“We’d have to be quite old,” she said, “for you to remember me for seventy years.”

“I’d hang on,” he said. “I’d just hang on if I thought I was going to see you again. One day. I’d wait.”

“Well… you don’t have to.”

“No, I don’t, thank God. I’ll have you with me. For all of seventy years, I hope. I love you, Emma. I never, ever want to spend another hour without you.”

“You might have to spend an hour. Here and there. While you’re banking and I’m doctoring. But after that…”

“After that, it’d be OK. So OK. And you know something, my darling, lovely Emma?”

“No. What?”

“You don’t look old enough to be a doctor.”

Abi woke to the sound of rain. Not just a light shower, but proper, torrential rain. Mud-making, wheel-sticking, tent-soaking, barbecue-quenching, spirit-sapping, off-putting rain. Well, she’d said it would. Only she’d kind of thought if she said it enough, allowed for it sufficiently, it wouldn’t happen. Wrong. It had happened.

Well, a little rain had never hurt Glastonbury But then, Glastonbury was… well, Glastonbury. People would go if it snowed. Just to say they’d been there. In Good Company wasn’t famous. This was its first year. Its only year, if Mrs. Grainger Senior had anything to do with it. Mrs. Grainger Junior had more ambitious plans for it.

There had been a Mrs. Grainger Junior for three months now. Three pretty good months. They had got married, very quietly really, on a brilliantly dappled April day, when the sun had shone one minute, and the clouds had regathered the next; when they had walked into the registry office leaving a doomily dark world behind them and come out an hour later into a radiantly blue-and-gold one. Which, as Georgia said, was an absolutely fitting portent.

They had agreed, William and she, that there was no point waiting for very long at all, since there was absolutely nothing to wait for. No complex family to worry about-none at all, in Abi’s case, and while William’s was worrying, it wasn’t complex-no one’s permission to be sought, no need to find somewhere to live. Abi had no desire, she said, for a big wedding; she didn’t want to walk down the aisle in a meringue; indeed she didn’t want to walk down any aisle in anything. She was a staunch atheist. The only thing she believed in, she said, was William, and how much she loved him… which she repeated in her wedding speech-she had insisted on making a speech-and which reduced almost everyone in the room-with a few notable and predictable exceptions-to misty-eyed and foolish laughter.