Sophie Hannah - Hurting Distance

The restaurant has an outer door, which is always locked, and an inner door, to ensure that no cold air from the High Street dilutes the warmth inside. You have to ring a bell, and the waiter who comes to let you in always makes sure to close the first door before opening the second. Most of the staff are French.

I’ve been here once before, with my parents. We were celebrating my dad’s sixtieth birthday. He banged his head on the way in. The Bay Tree’s ceilings are a hazard, if you’re tall. But I don’t need to tell you that, do I, Robert? You know the place better than I do.

On that night, with my parents, we had a waiter who wasn’t French, but my mother persisted in speaking to him in very slow simple English and in a quasi-continental accent: ‘Can we av zee bill, pleez?’ I restrained myself from pointing out that he was probably born and brought up in Rawndesley. It was a celebration, so no carping was allowed.

You’ve never met my parents. They don’t even know about you. I thought I was protecting myself from their criticism and disapproval, but it turns out that they are the protected ones. It’s an odd thought: that the large majority of people in the world—Mum and Dad, my customers, shoppers I pass on the street—have not had their lives devastated by you. They don’t know you and never will.

And it’s the same the other way round. The waiter who is looking after me and Yvon tonight—a little too attentively: he hovers too close to our table, his posture stiff and formal, one arm behind his back, surging forward to replenish our wine glasses each time one of us takes a sip—he has probably had his life shattered, at one time or another, by somebody whose name would mean nothing to me.

Only in a very minor, trivial sense do we inhabit the same world as others.

‘How’s your food?’ asks Yvon.

I ordered only a starter, the foie gras, but she can see I haven’t touched it. ‘Is that some sort of trick question?’ I say. ‘Like, have you stopped beating your wife yet? Is the present king of France bald?’

‘If you aren’t planning to eat anything, what the hell are we doing here? Do you realise how much this meal’s going to cost? The minute we walked in, I felt as if my bank account had turned into an hourglass. All my hard-earned money is sand, trickling away.’

‘I’ll pay,’ I tell her, waving the waiter over. Three steps and he’s at our table. ‘Could we have a bottle of champagne, please? The best one you’ve got.’ He scuttles off. ‘Anything to get rid of him,’ I say to Yvon.

She stares at me, open-mouthed. ‘The best ? Are you crazy? It’ll cost a million quid.’

‘I don’t care what it costs.’

‘I don’t understand you! Half an hour ago . . .’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. Forget it.’

‘Would you rather I was back on my sofa, staring into space?’

‘I’d rather you told me what’s going on.’

I grin. ‘Guess what?’

Yvon puts down her cutlery, steels herself for an unwelcome revelation.

‘I don’t even like champagne. It makes the inside of my nose itch and gives me really bad wind.’

‘Jesus, Naomi!’

Once you accept that nobody is ever going to understand you, and overcome the enormous feeling of isolation, it’s actually quite comforting. You’re the only expert in your own little world, and you can do what you want. I bet that’s how you feel, Robert. Isn’t it? You picked the wrong woman when you picked me. Because I am capable of understanding how your mind works. Is that why you now want me to leave you alone?

The waiter returns with a dusty bottle, which he presents to me for inspection. ‘That looks fine,’ I tell him. He nods approvingly and disappears again.

‘So why’s he taken it away?’ asks Yvon.

‘He’s gone to get one of those posh cooling buckets and special champagne glasses, probably.’

‘Naomi, this is freaking me out.’

‘Look, if it’ll make you happy we can go to the drive-through Chickadee’s tomorrow and you can buy a bucket full of birds’ wings boiled in fat, okay? If you can’t handle the high life.’ I giggle, feeling as if I’m speaking lines written by someone else. Juliet, perhaps. Yes; I am aping her brittle, glib delivery.

‘So, what’s the deal with you and Ben?’ I ask Yvon, remembering that her life has not ended even though mine has.

‘Nothing!’

‘Really? That big a nothing? Wow.’ Ben Cotchin is not that bad. Or if he is, he’s bad in a normal way. Which, the way I’m feeling at the moment, seems quite benign—perhaps the best anybody can hope for.

‘Stop it,’ says Yvon. ‘I was upset and I didn’t have anywhere else to go, that’s all. And . . . Ben’s given up drinking.’

The waiter returns with our champagne in a silver bucket full of ice and water, a stand on wheels to support the bucket, and two glasses. ‘Excuse me,’ I say to him. Might as well do what I came here to do. ‘Have you worked here long?’

‘No,’ says the waiter. ‘Only three months.’ He is too polite to ask me why, but there is an enquiry in his eyes.

‘Who’s been here the longest? What about the chef?’

‘I think he has been here for a long time.’ His English is meticulously correct. ‘I could ask him, if you wish.’

‘Yes, please,’ I say.

‘Shall I . . . ?’ He nods at the champagne.

‘Afterwards. Speak to the chef now.’ Suddenly I can’t wait.

‘Naomi, this is insane,’ Yvon hisses at me as soon as we’re alone again. ‘You’re going to ask the chef if he remembers Robert coming in and ordering that meal for you, aren’t you?’

I say nothing.

‘What if he does? So what? What are you going to say then? Are you going to ask him what exactly Robert said? Did he look like a man who’d just fallen in love? This is not healthy, indulging your obsession like this!’

‘Yvon,’ I say quietly. ‘Think about it. Look around you, look at this place.’

‘What about it?’

‘Eat your expensive food, it’s going cold,’ I remind her. ‘Does this look like the sort of restaurant that’d let someone dash in off the street and order a takeaway? Can you see a takeaway menu anywhere? The sort of place that’d let a complete stranger walk out with not only food but also a tray and cutlery and an expensive cloth napkin? And just trust him to bring it back, when he was finished with it?’

Yvon considers this, chewing a mouthful of lamb. ‘No. But . . . why would Robert lie?’

‘I don’t think he lied. I think he withheld certain crucial facts.’

Our waiter returns. ‘I introduce you to our chef, Martin Gilligan,’ he says. Behind him is a short, thin man with untidy ginger hair.

‘How’s your food?’ Gilligan asks, in what sounds like a northern accent. I had a friend at university who was from Hull; this chef’s voice reminds me of his.

‘It’s fantastic, thanks. Amazing.’ Yvon smiles warmly. She says nothing about thinking it’s overpriced.

‘Etienne said you wanted to know how long I’ve worked here?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I’m fixtures and fittings.’ He looks apologetic, as if he fears we might accuse him of being unadventurous for staying. ‘I’ve been here since it opened in 1997.’

‘Do you know Robert Haworth?’ I ask him.

He nods, looks pleasantly surprised. ‘Is he a friend of yours?’

I won’t say yes to this, even if doing so would help the flow of the conversation. ‘How do you know him?’

Yvon watches us as she might a tennis match, her head turning back and forth.

‘He used to work here,’ says Gilligan.

‘When? For how long?’

‘Oh . . . let’s see, it must have been 2002, 2003, something like that. It was a good few years ago. He’d just got married when he started, I remember that. Told me he’d just got back off his honeymoon. And he left . . . ooh, about a year later. Went on to be a lorry driver. He said he preferred open roads to hot kitchens. We’re still in touch, still have the odd bevvy now and then, at the Star. Though I’ve not seen him for a while.’