‘Aren’t you married?’ I’d asked, realising this sounded rather accusatory but it had to be addressed.
‘I was married…’ he’d replied.
‘Oh, you aren’t together anymore?’ I recalled the ring on the third finger of his left hand.
‘No, she died, two years ago,’ he’d said, sadly.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I’d replied, a little embarrassed. I’d had no idea, but why should I? The fact he’d asked to meet made it quite clear that for him this was more than just finding someone to talk to at a wedding where you didn’t know anyone. I did find him attractive, but I hadn’t had a date for years and, in truth, it made me quite nervous talking to him on the phone like this, let alone a date.
‘So, what do you think?’ he’d asked. ‘About meeting up, we could even do dinner if you’d like?’
So, with nothing in my diary for the foreseeable, I told myself it would be good for me to get out and took him up on his invitation.
We arranged to meet the following week, and just getting ready that evening shredded my nerves. I was so nervous I had to abandon the necklace I’d planned to wear because my anxious fingers couldn’t fasten it. But when I arrived, he was sitting there waiting with a bottle of wine. ‘I remembered from the wedding you drink Sauvignon Blanc,’ he said, standing to greet me, and within minutes we were right back to where we’d been at Sam and Lauren’s wedding, lots of easy-going laughter and intelligent conversation. We also discovered we had a lot in common, including, of course, our friends.
‘So, do you get to see Helen and Tim much these days?’ I asked.
Even in the semi-darkness, he looked slightly uncomfortable. ‘It’s difficult. We were friends when we were all much younger, and over the years we’ve got together, but until the wedding, I hadn’t seen them since Becky’s funeral.’
We sat in silence for a few moments, it was awful to think that someone in their forties, around my own age, had died. ‘Sam invited me to the wedding,’ James said, presumably in an attempt to fade the image of his wife’s funeral from our minds.
‘… it was very kind of him, people don’t always want you at parties when you’re single – especially weddings,’ he added with a sad smile.
‘Tell me about it.’ I rolled my eyes and took a small sip of wine.
‘Have you ever been married, Georgie?’ he asked, rather suddenly.
‘No. Sam’s father wasn’t interested in marriage,’ I replied, shrugging it off but smiling at the same time. I didn’t want his pity.
Years before, I’d fallen in love with brown-eyed, handsome Nathan and become pregnant with Sam very quickly, but he turned out to be an angry, abusive man and when I couldn’t lift my son out of his cot because my back hurt from the previous night’s beating, I knew I had to leave. I couldn’t expose my two-year-old boy to that, so had packed a bag and ran to a women’s refuge, and while there, life offered me a hand, as it sometimes does. A distant cousin died and I inherited enough money to put a small deposit down on a house, and eventually find work with the children’s charity.
I felt it too soon to tell James about my life with Nathan – the only person I’d ever shared it with was Helen, and she understood why I found it hard to be with someone. But James seemed different; he was gentle and funny and kind, and when he dropped me off at the end of the evening and asked if he could see me again, I said yes.
Turned out we were both busy in the week and Lauren and Sam had invited us all over for a barbecue the following Saturday.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll call you next week,’ James said when I explained I was booked up at the weekend too. ‘We can work something out then… but I do understand if you’d rather not and you’re just being nice?’
‘No, I am genuinely busy this week,’ I stressed, concerned I might just be ending this before it started.
In retrospect, I can see it might not have been the best timing, but the next day, I called Sam and asked if he’d mind me bringing James to his barbecue.
‘I know it’s just close family, but everyone knows him, but if you think it’s too much then—’
‘Mum, I’m cool with it,’ Sam said.
I’d never dated while he was growing up; I worried he’d already been exposed to someone he shouldn’t with his father. The physical scars fade, but the emotional ones never do, and I still have nightmares about Nathan’s fist landing on my cheek. I’d sometimes catch a flash of that remembered rage in my son’s eyes, and though I’d brought him up to be kind and decent, a little part of me worried that Sam may have inherited traces of his father’s anger. I just had to hope that nurture had overcome the undeniable power of nature.
‘About time you got yourself a fella,’ he teased, seemingly quite pleased about me seeing someone. Now he was married, perhaps he felt it should be my turn to find someone, probably because he didn’t want to worry about me being alone.
So with Sam happy about my embryonic relationship, I felt it was time to tell Helen, but she and Tim had gone away to his brother’s in Ireland, and I didn’t like to phone her and interrupt their holiday just to tell her about James. Besides, I reckoned that Tim might already have told Helen he’d asked for my number, and knowing those two, it was possibly even a set-up. Their best female friend with one of their male friends – both single? It was begging to happen.
It was a bonus that James already knew everyone I was close to. He’d taught both Sam and Lauren and he’d been one of those teachers who always went the extra mile. He helped Sam to get a GCSE in maths, which he struggled with, and in her final year at school gave Lauren extra maths lessons in readiness for Oxbridge applications. To Tim and Helen’s deep disappointment, Lauren never got into Oxford or Cambridge and chose to go to Manchester to do medicine. After a very difficult time at school, James had seen potential in Sadie, who was academically gifted, and along with other students, tutored her after school. She also chose to do medicine at Manchester like Lauren, but Helen still worried about the rather wayward Sadie’s influence on her daughter. ‘I’d hoped that Lauren could finally get away from her,’ she’d said. ‘It’s a bit too Single White Female for me. Sadie follows Lauren wherever she goes, I can’t believe she’s followed her to uni.’ Even now, the friendship had continued, Sadie didn’t live too far from the cottage, so apparently was round there all the time. I wondered if perhaps Sadie being just a few miles down the road was one of the reasons Lauren had agreed to move there. I knew one thing, if Sam had a friend like Sadie, I’d have discouraged it from the beginning. From what I could gather, Sadie had no real home life, and was allowed to roam free, and without guidance she made bad choices. Helen said she bunked off school, had loads of boyfriends, and was sexually precocious from the age of about twelve. Still, in spite of all that, the Jacksons were kind enough to try to help, and from new school shoes to a university education, they’d basically funded her life. I’m not sure that even if I’d had the money I’d have been as kind and caring as they were.
Thankfully, Lauren and Sadie’s friendship wasn’t my problem, and now Sam wasn’t a child anymore, I had my own life to think about and I was looking forward to seeing James again.