‘Been waiting long?’ Wilson asked as Hope glanced up at the countdown board to see when the next bus was due. It was annoyingly, unhelpfully devoid of all information.
‘For ever,’ someone said glumly.
‘At least half an hour,’ someone else clarified.
Wilson turned to Hope with a resigned expression. ‘We’ll have to walk.’
Hope had walked home from Camden before, but that was on a balmy Saturday night when it had taken just under an hour and had included a mercy dash to the garage on Camden Road where she’d spent ten minutes begging and pleading with the staff to use their loo. But walking home in a fricking blizzard in high heels was quite another matter.
‘Let’s walk up to the station and see if we can get a dodgy minicab,’ she said, and although Wilson looked disapproving he also looked as if he wasn’t relishing the thought of walking home either.
It was the only night in living memory when even the dodgy minicab drivers were tucked up indoors. ‘I’m not walking home,’ Hope insisted. ‘I can’t. I’ll die of frostbite. There must be a hotel somewhere near here.’
‘I thought you were a hardy North Country lass, not a poncey Southerner,’ Wilson scoffed, and it was all right for him in his brogues with the thick soles and a T-shirt and a jumper and a thick, lined woollen coat and scarf and hat.
‘But when it snowed in Whitfield, my Mum made me wear wellies and thermal underwear,’ Hope all but wailed.
‘Look, it’s ten minutes to mine …’
‘More like half an hour in these conditions!’
‘Twenty minutes to mine, and you can crash there or at least warm up.’
It was as good an idea as any. Though as they began to walk again, she didn’t know whether she could manage even one single minute. Her feet were wet and cold. In fact, they were so cold that the word ‘cold’ ceased to have any real meaning any more. Same with the word ‘frozen’. Her face, contorted in agony as it was, must have given her away even though she was trying to be a brave little soldier.
‘Can you really not walk any more?’ Wilson asked.
‘I’m all right,’ Hope said in a tiny, uncertain voice.
Wilson stopped and looked at Hope and her face, which was scrunched up in pain and discomfort. ‘Well, I could carry you,’ he offered.
‘Don’t be daft! It’s really slippery, and we’ve got at least a mile to walk, and I’m not exactly a featherweight.’
He was already squatting down. ‘Come on, I’ll give you a piggyback,’ he said. ‘I’m used to hefting around heavy pieces of equipment.’
‘Gosh, thanks for that,’ Hope said, and she thought that Wilson must also still be quite drunk to volunteer for such a kamikaze mission, and maybe she was too because she was hitching up her skirt, giggling wildly as she did so, and climbing on to Wilson’s back. He wrapped his arms around her thighs and rose slowly to his full height. ‘Don’t drop me!’ she squealed.
‘Then don’t make any sudden movements,’ he warned her as he set off slowly through the snow.
Hope wasn’t cold any more. Well, she was, her feet were like size-six blocks of ice and she had a draught of arctic air whistling around her legs, but the rest of her, pressed up against Wilson as he trudged up Kentish Town Road, was toasty. Positively sizzling, in fact.
There wasn’t much Hope could do to help him, short of losing a couple of stone within the next five seconds, so she decided to keep talking so Wilson didn’t suddenly keel over from over-exertion and go to sleep in a snow drift, never to wake up again.
‘I think that I could really love Northern Soul,’ she said. ‘But isn’t it all on little seven-inch records? I don’t even have a turntable.’
‘Well, luckily for you, I have lots of little seven-inch Northern Soul records that I’ve converted to MP3s,’ Wilson panted. ‘You can put them on your iPod while you’re thawing out.’
‘That would be great, except you’ll have to do it for me. I don’t know how to put songs on to my iPod. Someone else always does it for me.’ She didn’t want to say Jack’s name, even though Jack was probably snoring away under their 14-tog duvet, unaware that his only-just-ex-girlfriend had her legs wrapped around another man, and might actually die from hypothermia before the night was out.
She heard Wilson suck in a breath and thought that his keeling over was imminent until he exclaimed sharply, ‘That’s pathetic. It’s not difficult to put songs on an iPod, even my seven-year-old niece can do it.’
‘I’ve never got round to figuring out how to do it myself.’ Hope wrapped her arms tighter around Wilson and rested her chin on the top of his head. ‘I can change a plug but don’t ever ask me to change a lightbulb.’
‘Changing a lightbulb is much easier than changing a plug.’
‘Not when you have severe vertigo.’ Hope decided that Wilson didn’t need to know that often she needed to hold someone’s hand when she was going down stairs if she wasn’t in the right, very focused headspace to master them unaided.
Wilson grunted as he took a left so they were off the main road and not that far from his loft. Hope really didn’t want to walk, but she could hear his laboured breathing increasing with every step he took, so she dug her knees into him.
‘Stop. Stop!’ she said again, when he ignored her. ‘I can do the last bit.’
‘Are you sure?’ Wilson asked, but he was letting Hope slide down and missed the agonised expression on her face as her feet made contact with the ground – or the thick snow that covered the ground. ‘Let’s just go as fast as we can.’
He tucked his arm tightly around her and they hurried through the narrow streets, without even the track of someone else’s footsteps to make it easier. Hope went as fast as she could, feet trying to slip from under her, but even though she wasn’t on his back any more, Wilson was still holding her up and she didn’t doubt that if she did fall, he’d catch her before she could hit the ground.
IT ONLY TOOK three minutes to reach Wilson’s building but they were the longest three minutes of Hope’s life. The ten seconds it took Wilson to tap in the security code to open the door were longer still, and walking up the four flights of stairs on cold, unrelenting concrete hurt even more than tramping through virgin snow in paper-thin shoes.
As soon as the door was open, Hope scurried across the studio floor. ‘Sorry to make myself at home, but can I put the kettle on?’ she called over her shoulder as she hobbled up the spiral staircase that led to Wilson’s bachelor pad, the metal steps adding insult to severe injury.
Wilson caught up with Hope before she’d even had time to locate the kettle and fill it with water.
‘Bath,’ he said firmly. ‘It’s the only way you’re going to warm up and not contract pneumonia. I’ll make tea and find you something to wear while you’re in the tub.’ Wilson took Hope’s elbow and steered her to the bathroom, which was more of an alcove, but at least it had a door.
It took a couple of minutes to fill the claw-foot, roll-top bath with steaming-hot water, and then Hope was quickly stripping off her clothes. Getting naked in another man’s home felt like a betrayal, especially when she could hear the other man pottering about on the other side of the door. Especially when Hope knew that if the other man knocked on the door and asked if he could come in, she wasn’t entirely sure that she’d refuse him permission. God, what was wrong with her? Her and Jack were barely over, and as it was, Hope still wasn’t 100 per cent convinced they were over until Jack looked their parents in the eye and told them it was over. Or he moved out and left his key. Or changed his Facebook Relationship Status to Single. Until then, they weren’t properly broken up, which was why it felt so wrong to currently be naked in Wilson’s bathroom, but she could hardly have a medicinal bath with her clothes on.
Hope slid into the bath and knew a moment of perfect bliss as her chilled, goose-pimpled flesh met silky-hot water. Then her flesh turned from an unattractive bluey-white to bright red, and she had to bite her lip hard to stop hers
elf from crying out in pain when her feet suddenly felt as if they were under attack from millions of razor-toothed beasties.
Hope sat there with a fist wedged into her mouth as her icy flesh stung its way back to full working order, hardly daring to move because even wiggling her toes caused untold agonies.
There was a gentle tap on the door. ‘I can’t hear any splashing. You haven’t drowned, have you?’
‘No,’ Hope called out in a voice that trembled a little. ‘I’ll be out in a minute.’
‘I’ve left you some stuff outside and there’s a robe on the back of the door.’
God, talking to Wilson while she was naked felt even worse than betrayal. But not so bad that Hope stopped wondering what would happen if she emerged from the bathroom absolutely starkers and slippery wet. The wave of lust that hit her, as she imagined pressing her naked body against black cashmere and dark-blue denim and feeling Wilson hard and getting harder through his clothes, was a warning that she needed to pull herself together. She still loved Jack and unlike Jack, Hope did have some semblance of self-control. Still, it was no wonder that when she stepped out of the bath and caught sight of herself in the mirror that took up one wall, all of her was flushed a rosy pink that owed more to her feverish imagination than to the hot bath.
Wilson didn’t have much in the way of products, so Hope used baby lotion in lieu of body moisturiser, and then realised that there was absolutely nothing she could do about her hair, which had the consistency of a kitchen mop that had seen better days.
Then, safely swathed in a plush towelling robe the colour of clotted cream, Hope opened the bathroom door a crack to grab the neatly folded pile of clothes Wilson had left for her. The plaid pyjamas were far, far too big for her. Hope had to roll up the bottoms and yank in the drawstring around the waist as far as it would go, and the jacket came down to mid-thigh. She looked incredibly waif-like, which was a first.
Leaving her own clothes draped over the heated towel rail, Hope took a deep breath and opened the bathroom door. Now the wooden floorboards felt smooth and warm under her bare feet as she padded out into the huge living space.
‘Go and sit down,’ Wilson said from the galley kitchen. ‘Just pouring the tea. Milk and one sugar, right?’
‘Right,’ she agreed. She sat down on the sofa, her legs tucked up under her, and looked around the room and remembered the last time that she’d sat here. How Wilson had made her tea then, too, and she’d fallen asleep on his shoulder.
It was strange how the circumstances could be the same and yet utterly different. Somehow, Hope didn’t think that she was going to be doing much sleeping or actually … Stop it! Just stop it right now, she told herself sternly.
‘What time is it?’ she asked Wilson as he placed a mug of tea and a plate of biscuits down on the coffee table in front of her.
‘It’s nearly four,’ Wilson said heavily. ‘I’ve got an eight a.m. shoot.’
‘I have to be at school at eight thirty,’ Hope countered.
‘And don’t forget that you’ve got fifty cupcakes to frost,’ Wilson reminded Hope, and when she rolled her eyes and groaned in not-so-mock despair, he smiled. ‘I’ve just drunk an entire pot of coffee so I’ll be sober enough to drive you home.’
Hope felt something inside her, it might have been her weary old heart, melt. ‘You didn’t have to do that,’ she murmured, though if he hadn’t done that, she didn’t know how she would get home. Home, where Jack was passed out in an alcohol-induced slumber and might not even realise that Hope was AWOL. She thought about digging her phone out of her bag, which Wilson had placed in front of her, but decided if there were missed calls or crabby voice messages they could wait. She turned back to Wilson, who’d sat down next to her and was demolishing a chocolate Hobnob in three decisive bites. ‘Apart from nearly being snowed in on Camden High Street, I had a really good time tonight.’
‘You wouldn’t be saying that if we’d had to bed down at the bus stop.’
‘No, because you carried me on your back like I was Tiny Tim.’ Hope shot him a sideways look. ‘It was very heroic of you.’
‘I carry random people around on my back all the time …’
Hope could sense him pulling back from her emotionally, could tell that he wanted to be quiet and wanted her to be quiet, too. Most likely, the pot of coffee had sobered him up, and all the flirting and teasing of earlier now seemed like a bad idea. It was best if she just gulped down her tea so he could take her back to Holloway to deal with her un-frosted cupcakes.
She felt Wilson looking at her but she kept her eyes on her mug of tea, only shifting her focus when Wilson cleared his throat. ‘Hope? Can I ask you something?’
‘Course you can,’ she said lightly, though he sounded so serious that she was dreading what his next words might be. ‘You know me, I’m an open book.’
‘I’d hardly call you that.’ Wilson reached for another biscuit, then thought better of it. ‘So … you and Jack, you’ve broken up, haven’t you?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t say that. Not exactly.’ Hope paused as she thought about how exactly she would say it, because there was still an outside chance that Jack would choose her. Choose them. Because they’d been together thirteen years and he said he still loved her and OK, it wasn’t the same as being in love with her, but he cared for her, which was why he … hadn’t even bothered to come to the Winter Pageant when he knew how much it meant to her. ‘Scratch that,’ she heard herself say. ‘We are broken up. He doesn’t want to be with me; he wants to be with her. We were four weeks into our horrible, painful counselling that was supposed to get things back on track, and all Susie had to do was turn up on the doorstep and, well …’ She shook her head. ‘We’re over.’
‘How are you doing?’ Wilson wanted to know, and he didn’t make any attempt to touch her or comfort her, but that was a good thing, because she was one fingertip away from coming undone.
‘I don’t know,’ Hope said, finally turning to look at Wilson, who seemed curious rather than concerned. ‘This is the first time I’ve admitted it to anyone else. Actually, this is the first time I’ve admitted it to myself, instead of pretending that Jack’s going to have a change of heart. He’s not. We’re done.’
Wilson put down his mug and sat still, elbows resting on his knees as he cupped his chin. ‘But you still love him, right?’
Hope sighed. ‘I don’t know. I’ve always loved Jack but I wonder if loving Jack is more a habit than something I really feel.’ Wilson bombarding her with questions had brought Hope’s mood crashing down, though maybe that was the hangover kicking in early, or the prospect of having to go home. ‘It all sucks, and I’m pretty wretched. I mean, getting drunk tonight and hanging out with you has been great, but generally I feel like I want to crawl into bed and stay there until they carry me out in a coffin.’
She knew that when they had conversations like this, and they’d had a lot of conversations over the last few weeks about how crappy Hope felt, Wilson would dole out some devastating home truths, but it was still easier to talk to him about it than to, say, Angela. For one thing, Jack wasn’t sitting next to her on the sofa, and also Wilson was a lot easier on the eye than Angela, who didn’t provide tea, Hobnobs or something comfortable to sit on. Which was a pity – she was really missing a trick, Hope thought, as she sipped the last of her tea. And unlike Angela, Wilson instinctively seemed to know that she was just gathering her thoughts and hadn’t finished yet.
‘I know you think I’m a total drama queen, but I don’t know how I’ll ever get over this or feel normal again. It’s like I don’t even know what normal is without Jack. He’s been at the centre of my life for so long that if he’s not there then I’m just going to be half a person.’ Hope put down her mug so she could hug her knees. ‘I don’t want to be half a person.’
‘Now that I’ve got to know you properly, I don’t think you’re a total drama queen,’ Wilson said. He shot her a lazy grin. ‘Not all the time, anyway.?
??
‘Well, that’s progress of a sort, I suppose,’ Hope said, and she could have smiled too, but instead she sighed.
‘I know it seems impossible now, but you won’t always feel this way,’ Wilson said softly. ‘Not going to happen overnight, but you’ll get over it and when you think about Jack, you won’t want to cry or take a contract out on him. You might even end up being friends.’
Now it was Hope’s turn not to say anything because she couldn’t ever imagine a point in the future when she and Jack could be friends. Not when she loved him as much as she did and not after what he’d done to her … why would she want a friend like that?
‘You know I was engaged, right?’ Wilson suddenly asked her.
Hope turned to him. ‘Well, no, I didn’t.’
‘I was. We were together for five years. Loved her to pieces, went through loads of stuff together. Not just the good stuff.’ Wilson was staring off into the middle distance as if he was lost in memories. ‘Her dad dying, the magazine I was working on closing, even a miscarriage. We were solid, then three weeks before the wedding, she left me for another woman.’
‘Oh my God,’ Hope breathed. ‘That’s awful. Did you have any idea?’
‘Not really – which was why I was planning to spend the rest of my life with her,’ Wilson said dryly.
‘How on earth did you cope?’
She expected Wilson to tell her that he put on his best stiff upper lip and soldiered on, but he shook his head. ‘I didn’t. Went on a six-month bender, if you must know, but I did get over it eventually. Mind you, not sure that my liver has ever fully recovered.’
‘I wonder whether anyone gets over this kind of thing?’ Hope mused.
‘If it doesn’t change you, then you were never in love,’ Wilson pointed out. ‘No one gets through life scot-free. Shit happens. It’s how you deal with it that shapes you, not the actual event itself.’
Wilson was actually pretty good at giving advice. It wasn’t anything tangible that Hope could do tomorrow and know that she’d instantly feel better, but it was still good to know that she might come through this alive. ‘So, your ex … is she still on your Christmas-card list?’ she asked, because surely it was easier to have no contact at all, to not be reminded of her, but Wilson was nodding.