Page 86 of I Love You, I Love You, I Love You

‘Yeah you are.’ The way he says this makes me think he isn’t talking about writing any more. The conversation is so close up and intense I forget to breathe.

I can’t take it. I’m going to burst; my feelings are breaking the seams of my clothes, tearing out like the incredible hulk – in velvet.

‘Ella, Ella … ’ Lowe points down and I clock the one-eyed fortune-telling spaniel pissing on my coat. OH, FOR FU—

The owner stalks over. If my dog pissed on a customer’s coat, trust me, I would not be stalking. ‘Oh, she does that – she’s old,’ she says, without apologizing. The fortune-telling dog looks at me like, how’s that for a prophecy, bitch?

I can tell Lowe’s annoyed on my behalf.

‘Here, let me give you some money towards dry-cleaning … ’ she half offers, not even really opening up her purse properly.

‘Give it to charity,’ I say.

And she scurries the money back and into her purse without even offering us a free cup of coffee.

Lowe says in his loudest voice, ‘Wasn’t that your most treasured irreplaceable coat that you inherited from your beloved deceased great-aunt, Ella?’

I catch on the joke and say, ‘Yes, it was.’ I sniffle like I’m crying. ‘It’s all I have left of her.’

And Lowe puts his arm around me, tutting and walks me out of the dog café.

‘It is a nice coat though, even with the dog piss.’

Once again we walk side by side. Side by side is good, remember? People take walks like this when they have difficult conversations, or they take long drives or sit by a fire so they don’t have to look each other in the eye. Did you ever feel the same about me? But side by side means I see the stares of passing people. ‘Oh my God is that … ?’ Somebody stops to ask for a photo. And again. And again. He’s so lovely to everyone. ‘Sorry.’ I can tell he wishes they’d leave us alone.

‘Don’t apologize,’ I say.

‘I’m going to put this on.’ He pulls out a cap clipped to the back of his jeans, just like the one he used to wear when we were younger and it just sends me back and twists me up. ‘Is that OK? I feel like it’s rude.’

‘No, it’s OK.’

We pass the Christmas displays in shop windows, squares of theatre, an electric toy train full of shambolic model-mice passengers wearing sunglasses and party hats, looping complicated tracks of consequence like that Mouse Trap game, tipping over glasses of wine, shooting through a turkey and splatting in trifle. Lowe and I crack up like we’re kids. Everything just makes us so happy. The last window is of a winter snow scene. Escape. Desolation. A magic effect of mist and mirror makes a forest of tiny plastic evergreen trees infinite. It’s like Raymond Briggs’s The Snowman. Lowe’s grin is huge, his hands behind his back, taking it all in.

‘It’s so amazing!’ I say. ‘How did they do that? It’s so clever.’

Lowe is quiet, enchanted.

And then, at the very end, the selling point: a jewellery display. The centrepiece an engagement ring.

I should be going home.

‘I’m walking this way if you want to?’ I say.

‘Sure.’ Lowe follows; like one of those people who has nowhere to really be, he slides along next to me, aimlessly. ‘I haven’t been around here for ages.’ He’s lost this time. He doesn’t seem to see the odd person who recognizes him, the way strangers nudge each other and whisper when he walks past. And if he does, he pretends not to or he’s used to it. We walk like we’re sharing a sleeve, laces tied together for a three-legged race, deliberately, clumsily.

At Seven Dials I ask, ‘What are your plans for the rest of the afternoon?’ Then kick myself because this is what I usually ask when I’ve had enough of someone’s company and I’m looking to wind things down, whereas I ask here because I genuinely care.

‘Well, we’re buying a house so—’

We’re.

I hear a gameshow buzzer siren go off with the word ‘we’. By the way his face falls, I know this means he isn’t single. This means he’s buying a house with someone else.

A bloody mansion, I bet.

I don’t know who we is.

I imagine Heather’s face in his wallet. I only met her that one time at the festival but did I mention she’s also the face of my nighttime sleep paralysis.

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