‘I’m an editor at Penguin. My office is just around the corner.’
‘Ooh, wow! Well done to you. Taking a half day then?’
‘Yeah, I’m catching a flight to Italy with a friend this afternoon, so I thought I’d come in for the morning, sort everything out before I go.’
Friend. I wondered what Amy would say about me calling her that, given that we’d been sleeping together for eleven months. There was just something about Tabatha that made me want to slip back into the closet, to hide in a way that, since I came out in my first year at university, I never thought I’d need to again.
‘That’s great.’ She paused for a moment, and I felt my insides clench up at the awkwardness of that silence. ‘Are you married, or…?’
Had she guessed about Amy? Perhaps I was just being paranoid.
‘Not married, but I’ve been with my partner for about a year now.’
‘That’s lovely. I’m really happy for you.’
It was at that moment that my bus arrived, and people began to pile out of the back. I rooted around my bag for my Oyster card.
Taking the hint, she flashed me a smile and stepped backwards to allow the people from the bus to walk between us.
‘Send her my best wishes,’ she called over their heads.
I didn’t turn around and climb onto the bus. I couldn’t. Instead, after the passengers had passed between us, I blurted out,
‘I didn’t fancy you,’
‘Sorry?’ She clearly thought she’d misheard me. But it was too late to take it back now.
‘Just, at school, in biology? Year Eight. You asked me who I fancied and I said you. But I didn’t. I just wanted you to leave me alone.’
‘Oh, right.’ She looked uncertain, and I didn’t know whether it was of her memory or of my sanity.
Before I could say anything else, the bus driver honked his horn, and I turned around and jumped on.
By the time I’d sat down, she’d gone. But a few minutes later, I saw her again by a nice car with a tall, brown-haired, bearded man in a business suit. James Butler hadn’t changed one bit. They were laughing, talking – about her bumping into me? – and I couldn’t not watch.