Page 79 of Too Busy for Love

‘Hello, Jock,’ I reply as coolly as I can. This is difficult when most of my internal organs are doing a victory dance and singing,He came back! He came back!

After we leave a still bewildered Gregory to lock up the café, Jock leads me in silence down several roads until we reach a smallpark. I follow him inside, where he slumps onto the first vacant bench. I perch myself carefully beside him and let the silence settle over us. Although I have about a thousand questions, starting with what the hell he’s doing working in a greasy spoon café for a man like Gregory, I need to let him go at his pace, I realise.

‘Why are you here?’ he asks eventually. His voice is flat and lifeless.

‘I told you. It was the only way I could find to talk to you after you stopped taking my calls.’

‘But I don’t want to talk to you, Beatrice. That’s why I stopped taking your calls, don’t you see?’

‘I know, and I’m sorry. Really properly sorry, Jock. I didn’t want Emilio, but it was two against one.’

‘It’s not just that.’

‘What is it then? Tell me, Jock.’

He sighs so deeply, it’s like he has the whole world on his shoulders.

‘Do you remember,’ he begins eventually, ‘that first night at Hotel Dufour after we were arrested?’

‘Vividly,’ I tell him.

‘Before that night, I saw you as little more than a career-obsessed automaton, like the majority of our clientele. But you were so different when we came back from the police station. You were funny and human, and that week we spent together was amazing.’

‘I enjoyed it too. All of it.’

‘The point is that you got in my head, Beatrice. I tried not to let you because I knew we were time limited, but you did and I couldn’t stop thinking about you after we split up. I’d wake up wondering what you were doing and think about you throughout the day. I knew it was futile and not good for me, that you’d moved on and that was that. I kept telling myself to pull myselftogether and let you go, but it didn’t work. And then I saw you on TV, and you looked so amazing, I couldn’t help but send you a message, even though the rational part of me knew I’d never be able to heal and move on if I kept picking at the wound.’

‘I loved hearing from you.’

‘I used to entertain this fantasy in my head that maybe you felt the same as I did. I knew it was nonsense; all the evidence showed you were getting on with your life, putting your career back on track and all the stuff I knew you would do, but sometimes I’d allow myself to daydream that you were missing me, thinking of me like I was thinking about you.’

‘I was!’

‘Yeah, well,’ he says bitterly.

‘I’m not following you, Jock,’ I tell him.

‘When you messaged me yesterday, you said you wanted to talk. Maybe it was stupid, maybe I read more into it than I should have. Well, Iobviouslyread more into it than I should have, because I let myself believe that you were going to tell me something important. Something about you and me. Then you called, and it wasn’t you.’

‘Of course it was me!’

‘It wasn’t. It was the other Beatrice, in career mode, with her automaton career voice, offering me a job. Oh, and not because she actually wanted me, but only because she was desperate after the celebrity chef she’d chosen first went and got himself arrested. That’s when the scales fell from my eyes, and I saw that the Beatrice I’d fallen for wasn’t real. The real one is the one I knew and didn’t much like before we were arrested. That’s why I’m angry, and that’s why I don’t want to talk to you. I can see I’ve been an idiot; I really don’t want you in my face to show me how much of an idiot I’ve been.’

I’m staggered, and for a moment I can’t think of anything to say.

‘I think we’re finished here. Have a safe trip back to London,’ Jock says, getting to his feet. This is enough to spur me into action.

‘Sit down,’ I tell him fiercely. He’s hit a nerve, and I’m angry now.

‘Why?’

‘Because you don’t get to lay a truckload of shit like that on me without having the decency to hear what I have to say in return. At least, the Jock I thought I knew would never do that.’

He sighs and sits back down.

‘Right,’ I begin. ‘First things first. You got in my head too, Jock. Like you, I tried to move on, but you were always there. Even when I was busy, you were in the background. When you texted me in Mallorca, I can’t tell you how much it meant to me to know that you were still thinking of me. But, like you, I’ve tried to be realistic. Everything you said led me to believe that you were happy up here, that you were working in a top-class restaurant and moving on with your life. What the hell is the deal with Gregory’s, anyway?’

‘It’s a long story.’

---