Alice Adams - Invincible Summer

Eva was the first to break the silence. ‘Well. This is nice. And by nice, what I mean is, very, very weird.’

Benedict grinned. ‘It is, isn’t it? Seeing you takes me back to a time before our adult lives had really begun. It makes me think how shocked the old Benedict and Eva would have been if they’d known everything that was going to happen to them.’

‘God, I know just what you mean. When I spotted you in the other bar, I had a sudden flashback to an afternoon we spent lying out on Brandon Hill. It might even have been our last day in Bristol, come to think of it, and I think we were having one of those ridiculous conversations about the meaning of life or something. We really didn’t have a clue, did we?’

‘Don’t say that. It makes me feel like I should warn the poor, unsuspecting bastard.’ Benedict cupped his hands around his mouth and mock-shouted through them into the past: ‘Do everything differently! Every decision you’re going to make over the next ten years, do the total opposite!’

Eva laughed. ‘It’s not been that bad, has it?’

‘No, I suppose not. I’ll never be sorry I had my kids, and it’s been a great time to be working in my field. So that’s two things I got right. What about you? What would you tell the old Eva?’

‘That patchwork skirts are not a good look?’

‘I thought you carried them off with panache.’

They smiled at each other across the table, the gap bridged, before Benedict’s expression became serious. ‘Listen, tell me about Sylvie. I’m really, really sorry I wasn’t around when she was going through the mill. I suppose after you guys left Bristol we mostly conducted our friendship through you, but I always considered her a friend. I doubt she feels the same now, though. I haven’t been there for anyone, have I?’

Eva shrugged, unwilling to contradict him on that point. ‘Sylvie’s doing okay. She’s so different now you’d hardly recognize her. I mean, she’s the same old Sylvie, but she’s grown up so much. I don’t know what I would have done without her over the last few years. She’s had so much to cope with herself, and still managed to kick me into shape when I was wallowing in self-pity after I lost my job. And don’t hate me for saying this, but I wondered after I read your message whether you couldn’t do with a dose of that yourself, to be honest.’

‘I can see how it could have sounded like that. But, actually, I’m feeling pretty positive about things these days. The boys seem happy again now that everything’s settled between me and Lydia, and work’s picking up. We had a lot of setbacks, not least because a passing bird dropped a baguette down a vent into the particle accelerator last year, but things are really starting to move forward now. It’s only a matter of time before we find the Higgs. We only moved back to London because Lydia insisted after. . after I. .’ Benedict looked down at the table.

‘Shagged a colleague?’

He held up his hands. ‘Fine, I’ll bloody say it if you’re going to make me. It’s no more than I deserve. We only moved back after I shagged a colleague, but actually it’s turned out fine. Most of the interesting work now is analysing the data from the experiments and I can just as easily do that from London. I’m happy at Imperial. I’ve even got my own office, with a spectacular view of the car park. Obviously, it’s a struggle not to let the prestige go to my head.’ He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘So I’ve nothing to complain about. It’s just that. . God, you know how you said that we’re old enough to speak openly? It’s just that this is so bittersweet. Seeing you, I mean. Have you ever had a moment when you look back over your life and see really clearly all the moments when you could have done something differently and then your life might have taken a whole other direction?’

Eva took a sip of her drink. ‘We did miss a few opportunities, didn’t we? Somehow we never quite got into sync.’

Benedict’s eyes bored into hers, and his voice was urgent. ‘Is that it then? We missed our moment?’

She smiled. ‘Well, we definitely missed one or two. But who’s to say how many you get in a lifetime?’

Benedict stood up and moved around the table towards her. ‘Right now it feels like all the chances I ever missed are laid out in front of me. I’m not going to miss another one.’

He took her wrist and pulled her up to standing in front of him. As he reached out and put his arms around her and drew her body close to his and lowered his mouth to hers for their second kiss, almost a decade after the first, Eva had a sensation of shedding a skin, as if the past was sliding away from her.

*

Several hours later, Eva bent a bare arm behind her head, looked up at the ceiling above Benedict’s bed and let out a long sigh.

‘Really? That bad? Not worth the wait?’ laughed Benedict.

‘Ha. Hardly. It’s just. . why haven’t we been doing that for the last fifteen years?’

‘Well, that would mostly be down to all the time you spent ignoring my soulful stares.’

‘If I recall correctly, the initial barrier was your having a girlfriend, a fact that you kept remarkably quiet about when we first met.’

‘Well, all the time you subsequently spent mooning about over Lucifer wasn’t exactly conducive to romance, even when I’d ditched said girlfriend in the hope of getting it on with you.’

‘Fair point. But of course, your impregnating and marrying someone else was also a bit of a stumbling block. Not to mention the emigrating. Oh, and the four-year hiatus in replying to emails.’

Benedict rolled onto his side to face her. ‘How is this all so easy to say to each other now, when it was impossible back then?’

‘I know. How is it possible for two people to arse around for fifteen years, only for it to just fall into place one day?’

‘It does seem crazy, doesn’t it? But, well. . maybe it wouldn’t have worked out back then. Maybe we didn’t miss our moment at all. Maybe this is it, this is the only moment we ever could have had.’ His voice brightened. ‘And what’s a piffling fifteen years compared to the fifty we’ve got left, anyway?’

Eva smiled at the implication that the remainder of their lives might be spent together, a ridiculous suggestion after a single shag, and yet at the same time one that seemed as natural as rolling over naked to the other side of the bed and climbing on top of Benedict, a man she knew so well and yet so little that she could indeed imagine spending a lifetime getting to know him.

The alarm went off at 7 a.m., just as it did every Monday morning. Without opening her eyes Eva shoved the clock off the bedside table, and then rolled over with the aim of stretching herself out against Benedict for a last blissful five minutes of slumber. Encountering only a cool expanse of sheet, she extended an arm and felt around for him, then raised a reluctant eyelid. Big mistake. The sunshine streaming in around the curtains might as well have been airborne caffeine for all the chance she now had of getting back to sleep. The other eyelid begrudgingly followed suit, and she lay there adjusting to the daylight and listening to Benedict banging around in the kitchen of the flat they had been renting in a Hampstead mansion block for the last eighteen months. With a bit of luck he was making an early start on restoring the place to some semblance of order. By the time they’d finally decanted the boys into Lydia’s car last night they were both so exhausted that they’d collapsed onto the sofa, lacking the will to repair the wreckage that their home was reduced to every other weekend. Eva didn’t really resent the socks and comic books and half-eaten apples that lay strewn over every available surface, but she did wish that she had a bit more time to recuperate before launching herself into another week.