Page 78 of The Love Hack

He ended the call and I showered and dressed at lightning speed, put my phone in my bag and hurried to the subway, my head feeling oddly disconnected from my body. I felt like I knew the route, now, but I wasn’t concentrating and realised too late that I’d got off at the wrong stop, and had to use my phone to help me navigate. It was like one of those dreams where you need to be somewhere important but you get on the Tube going in the wrong direction and then you realise you’ve suddenly ended up in your sixth form classroom and you’ve forgotten to put on any clothes.

But eventually, I found myself back on track, walking slowly towards the site I’d noticed during my day of sightseeing. Then, it had been quiet, only bustling commuters and a few tourists like myself passing through. Today, though, the space was busy – throngs of people moving slowly through the surrounding streets in little clusters, pairs and alone.

But strangely, they weren’t behaving like tourists. There was no laughter. There was conversation, but it was hushed. No one was slurping soda from take-out cups or scooping noodles from bowls with chopsticks. In spite of the crowd, there was a sense of reverence – like being in church.

I felt as if a cloud had passed over the sun, although the sky was clear and the day was hot. The sound of my own boots on the pavement seemed inappropriately loud, and I slowed my pace. Then the rhythm of my breath seemed too noisy, so I tried to still that.

I hadn’t been to the glade when I’d visited before – I’d barely been aware it existed. But my phone told me it was a separate memorial, a site dedicated not to the people who had died in the attacks on the World Trade Centre, but to those who had been involved in the rescue operation, the firefighters and medics and municipal workers who had toiled over a period of years to remove debris of all sorts from the ruins of the buildings.

There was no debris now; no clouds of dust or heaps of ruined construction materials. There was only a spacious, serene square, lined with trees, half a dozen huge slabs of rock positioned around it.

I walked in slowly, matching my pace to that of the people surrounding me. It wasn’t midday yet; I didn’t need to rush and hurrying would have felt inappropriate and disrespectful. I wished I’d brought flowers to lay alongside those that were already arranged around and on top of the stones, but I wondered if that would have been disrespectful too – I had no connection to this place and the tragedy associated with it.

And then I saw Ross. He was standing alone by one of the stones, his arms folded across his chest. He was wearing jeans and an open-necked, washed-out blue shirt. Sunglasses covered his eyes. Although I was some distance away, I spotted him immediately and I wondered how on earth I’d never thought he was middling or ordinary to look at.

I mean, objectively, he was. Just another tallish, leanish young guy in a crowd of people. But to me he looked like a movie star. The clean line of his jaw, the sunlight glinting on his hair, the way his face was half-smiling even in repose, like he was remembering something that made him happy. Even standing still, there was a grace about him, and air of calm that seemed to dampen the murmur of the voices around me and the hum of the city beyond into silence.

He looked like the hero in some art-house film, alone in a strange city, thinking his thoughts and nursing his problems. Looking at him, I felt a moment of pure joy – There you are! – before struggling to recover my acceptance that nothing could ever happen between us.

He was out of my league. I could never again have a relationship with someone I worked with. I needed to stay single to protect my heart and my self-esteem.

And anyway, he’d abandoned my cat back in London.

Being Adam for all these weeks had made me let my guard down, I realised. I’d started to see men as human, as vulnerable, as people just like me. That had been my first mistake and I wasn’t about to make it again.

I walked towards him, the solemn calm of the place seeming to slow my pace, like I was back in that dream again, trying to run from zombies but with my feet sticking to the pavement with every stride. When he saw me, he kind of unpeeled himself from the stone monolith he was leaning against and took a step forward, a hesitant smile on his face.

‘Lucy,’ he said. ‘You came. I wasn’t sure you would. This is all kind of weird.’

‘Weird?’ . ‘Yeah, I guess it is. Making me act out fake sex scenes from movies is weird. And as for promising you’d take care of an animal and then leaving it to fend for itself – well, just plain unacceptable.’

Hearing his voice made a tide of emotions wash over me – happiness at seeing him, embarrassment at what I’d done, regret that so many obstacles (Bryony, even if things were over between them; Kieren, even though things between us had ended years before… But who was I kidding? Mostly, myself and my insecurities) stood between him and me.

I tried to hide my confusion in lighthearted annoyance. ‘Yeah – I mean, I guess it’s not every day that a woman fakes an orgasm for you so convincingly that you ditch her cat and fly halfway across the world to meet up with her.’

‘I’m sorry, Lucy. I know how this looks. I didn’t mean to mess anyone around, especially not—’ he hesitated, and I imagined the word ‘you’ forming in his mind before he abruptly changed it. ‘Especially not Astro. Seriously, I wouldn’t have come out here if I hadn’t been able to get Nush to look after him. I felt terrible. But I did try to get hold of you, and I kind of needed to be here.’

It was true – he had tried to get hold of me. But I wasn’t going to let that get in the way of my righteous indignation.

‘Look, if you’d told me you were going to up sticks and come out here on a whim, I’d have made another plan myself. I’d have found someone else to feed Astro. I’d have come home myself if needs be.’

‘Really?’ he said. ‘In spite of your sister needing you? Because that felt kind of important to me. That’s why I didn’t keep trying when you weren’t answering my messages and calls. I reckoned there was serious shit going down and you were too busy to sort it, so I made another plan myself. I wasn’t going to just leave him on his own, Lucy. Come on.’

I wavered, and as if sensing my weakness, he produced his phone and held it out to me. ‘Look. Nush sent me this earlier. Astro’s fine.’

I leaned in, unable to resist. There on the screen was Astro, upside down on a pair of legs clad in ripped jeans I’d seen Nush wearing, his belly exposed for tickles and his paws in the air. My heart melted totally at the sight of my cat, although it remained only partially defrosted when it came to Ross.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I accept he’s not actually dead or been rescued by an animal shelter and trapped in a cage wondering why no one loves him. But still – come on. No one needs a holiday that badly.’

‘Here’s the thing.’ He slipped his phone back into his pocked and folded his arms over his chest, almost defensively. ‘It’s not a holiday. I come here every year. I especially had to come this year.’

Something clicked into place in my mind, bringing with it a rush of embarrassment and guilt. Why hadn’t I realised?

‘You know what date it is today, right?’ he asked.

THIRTY

I stared at Ross for a moment in shocked, baffled silence. You know what it’s like when you’re on holiday – you lose track of what day of the week it is, never mind what day of the year. But I should have known – of course I should. The banks of flowers of flowers propped up against the stone of the monument should have told me. The crowds of people, some smiling, some dabbing their eyes with tissues, all reverent, should have told me.

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