Kiss Me First (26 page)

At 7.40 p.m., Connor arrived. When I saw him push open the door, I felt that same jolt of adrenalin you get when you’re not watching your feet and you miss a step. He was wearing a dark-blue suit that was almost identical to the one before, only the pinstripes were a little thicker, and I thought he looked very well, glowing and happy. He was with two other men, including the one who had been at the sandwich shop, and a woman with very neat brown hair and a tight black suit. I watched Connor as he scanned the room. On spotting a group of people, he exclaimed, ‘Aha!’ and pushed through the crowd towards them. There were seven people in the group he joined, all in suits, the men holding pints of beer and the women glasses of white wine. Connor slapped one of the men on the back and said something, at which the man laughed. His colleague, the one from the sandwich shop, went round the group, gesturing at their glasses with raised eyebrows, and then headed off to the bar.

I hadn’t predicted that Connor would be in such a large group, and wondered how I would get close enough to speak to him. I gave up the bar stool and pushed through the crowd until I was standing a few metres away, within hearing range. I continued to hold my book up, although it felt unnatural standing reading in a crush. Connor was still talking to the man he had slapped on the back, and I heard the words ‘fucking typical, right?’ although I didn’t catch what the statement pertained to. The other man was, I deduced, Jumbo Justin. The bulk of his upper arms strained against his pink shirt, and his neck was only a little narrower than his head.

Justin started talking about someone whose name I didn’t catch, telling a story about how he, Justin, had once caught him in the office kitchen doing something he shouldn’t have. The others all seemed to be familiar with the story and kept laughing, swaying backwards and forwards slightly on their feet as they did so. Then another man butted in and started talking about going to Latvia. I couldn’t hear all the details of the story so it was hard to keep track, but I noticed that the dynamics of the group seemed to be that they were all just waiting for their turn to tell a story or make a joke. A man wearing similar glasses to those worn by Tess’s brother, Nicholas, then told a joke, which ended, ‘well, that’s what she said’. This got a big laugh from the group.

Connor laughed and nodded during his colleagues’ stories but I noticed that his eyes were not fixed on the speaker, instead roaming over the crowd, as if he was looking for someone. He also checked his watch regularly. One of the men sidled up to him and asked if he wanted to go to the toilet with him, as though they were girls at school. ‘Nah, I’m all right mate,’ said Connor. I thought back to what he said about how he found social occasions pointless without Tess. I wanted to go over and touch his arm and tell him, ‘I’m here.’

When everyone had finished their drinks another man gestured around the group, in the same way Connor’s colleague had. If they were buying rounds, it soon would be Connor’s turn. That would be my chance to get him alone. In preparation, I pressed myself further into the crowd around the bar so that I would be in a good position to talk to him when the time came. There was no room to read my book in a normal position, so I had to hold it up high and close to my face, peering around its edge in order to monitor proceedings.

As it turned out, three of the others bought rounds before Connor, so I had plenty of time to observe him. He had little wings of hair over his ears and three spots around his hairline, and when he was listening he tilted his head. He stood with one hand in his pocket and the other holding his drink, and had a large leather bag over his shoulder. I had a strong desire to know what was in the bag. I noticed the lines around his eyes and felt jealous of the people who had made him laugh in the past. Isn’t that silly?

Eventually, it was Connor’s turn to get the drinks. ‘All right, chaps. Same again?’ he said, and started to move towards the bar.

This was my chance. Making sure that my book was held up so he could clearly see the cover, I squeezed through the crowd and accidentally on purpose pressed rather too hard against him.

‘Sorry,’ I said, and then, ‘hello.’

‘Hello,’ he said, looking down at me. My eyes were level with his mouth and freshly shaven chin, and I could smell the beer on his breath. His right hip pressed against my arm. For an awful moment I thought I wasn’t going to be able to speak, because my heart was beating so frantically. Then I swallowed and took a long breath, and focused on the conversation opener I had decided upon the evening before.

‘So, do you come here often?’

For some reason, this seemed to amuse Connor. He threw back his head and laughed. It was more a bark, actually.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone actually say that,’ he said. Then, ‘I’m sorry, how rude of me. The answer to your perfectly valid question is, yes, I do come here quite often. How about you?’

‘I’ve never been here before,’ I said.

He peered closer at me.

‘Have I seen you somewhere before? Are you at Clifford Chance?’

I shook my head.

He shrugged, but in a nice way. He then noticed the barman coming near and waved at him, said, ‘Excuse me,’ to me and leant in to give his order.

‘Five Stellas, pint of Guinness, large glass of white wine and a Diet Coke.’

He turned to me.

‘Are you OK?’

It seemed an odd question to ask me, as although my insides were churning I was making an effort not to show it.

‘Yes, I’m fine.’

It was only when he turned back to the waiting barman and said, ‘Yeah, that’s it,’ that I realized he must have been asking if I wanted a drink. The barman started pouring the pints and Connor turned back to look at me.

‘You know, I’m sure I’ve seen you before.’

As I opened my mouth to say no his hand moved towards my face and I froze, thinking for a moment he was about to stroke my cheek. But instead his fingers touched the memory stick on a string around my neck. Since Jonty moved in, I had made a habit of downloading all my files on to it and wearing it whenever I went out, in case he forgot about one of his stews and burned the flat down in my absence. The stick was on the outside of my hoody, so Connor’s fingers did not actually touch my skin, but still I shivered at their proximity. His nails were very clean and evenly cut: mum would have approved. When he took his hand away my fingers involuntarily flew to the spot he had just touched. Then, I let out a little gasp when it registered exactly what data was contained on the little plastic stick: Tess and him. Him and me.

‘Have you come to fix my computer?’ he said, and giggled. ‘The IT geek at work has one of those, but he has it down here—’ He mimed pulling a curly rubber cord from his belt, accompanying it with an exaggerated ‘boiiinnng’ sound.

‘Roger,’ I said, without thinking. That was the name of the ‘IT geek’ at Asquith and Partners. Connor had told me about him before: how he stuck his lower lip out when he was concentrating and had had to be cautioned for staring at the female staff.

Connor looked at me, confused, and then his face cleared.

‘Right, yes. Roger, over and out.’ He did a sort of salute, oddly similar to the kind Tess used to give me at the end of our Skype calls when she was in a good mood.

‘Did you know that “over and out” is actually an incorrect phrase?’ I said. ‘In voice procedure “over” means “over to you”, and “out” signals the end of the conversation, so it doesn’t make sense to use both. It’s commonly misused.’

Before he could reply, the barman asked Connor to pay for the drinks, which were now lined up ready on the bar. I realized I would have to act fast, and held up my copy of
The Princess Bride
.

‘I actually came to find somewhere quiet to read my book,’ I said. ‘But I think I chose the wrong place!’

I watched his face carefully, as he looked at the cover. His reaction wasn’t quite what I expected. He raised his eyebrows and smiled, but he didn’t actually say anything, so I was forced to ask,

‘Have you read it?’

After a moment, he said, ‘No, I haven’t actually.’

This was a surprise: I was counting on the book to be a topic of conversation.

He gave the barman two twenty-pound notes and struggled to pick up all of the glasses.

‘Can I help?’ I said, and before he answered I picked up two of the pints from the bar. I tried to add a third, but my hands were too small. Connor looked bemused.

‘OK, if you insist.’

I followed him back to the group, carefully holding the drinks in front of me so they didn’t spill. When he saw me behind Connor, Justin said, ‘That was fast, mate.’

The others laughed as they accepted their pints from Connor and myself. Connor patted me on the shoulder.

‘Thanks very much,’ he said. ‘You’re kind. I hope you find a quiet place to read.’

The dark-haired girl was in fits of giggles.

‘OK then,’ I said. ‘Well, goodbye.’

I slowly turned and walked to a spot in the corner, where I resumed ‘reading’. I stayed in that position for half an hour, the book shielding my face as I tried to process what had just happened. We had not talked for long, but he had offered to buy me a drink. What would have happened if I had accepted? He said I was kind. Yes,
The Princess Bride
moment was a disappointment, but perhaps he had bought the book for Maya and not got round to reading it yet.

By the time I left – the group were still there, but I made an effort not to look round at Connor – I had concluded that, all things considered, the meeting had not been a failure. As soon I was back in the flat I logged onto Tess’s email, curious to know what, if anything, Connor would say about his evening in the Dragon Bar. I had to wait until the following morning to hear from him.

How was the fondue? Did you drop the bread? I hope they don’t do kissing forfeits in Canada.

The previous day I had told him that I was spending the evening at a dinner party at Leonora’s, where she had promised to make her famous fondue.

You will be proud to hear that not a single crumb dropped from my fork
, I wrote.
How was Jumbo Justin’s jamboree?

Tiresome, he wrote, then proceeded to tell me that it was the custom in their company for those leaving to attend their farewell drinks dressed as a woman, and Justin had honoured the tradition, arriving at the bar in a dress.
Deeply disturbing he was. Made John Travolta in
Hairspray
look like Audrey Hepburn
. This was odd, I thought, because I had witnessed no such thing: Justin had been wearing a shirt and tie, like all the others.

There was no mention of his encounter with me, but I suppose that wasn’t too surprising. He wouldn’t tell Tess about meeting another woman.

I concluded that he had embellished his account of the evening, adding the Justin dress anecdote, because he couldn’t mention what had really been the notable event of the night – our meeting. It was a minor, understandable lie.

Our emails continued, but now vivid visual images of him accompanied our exchanges. I thought of those clean, shiny fingernails tapping on the keys, his black leather bag beside his feet under his desk. The
ha ha
with which he sometimes responded to my jokes now came with the memory of his eyes disappearing when he smiled. When he went out for a drink after work, I imagined him ordering a Stella and pulling his wallet from the right-hand pocket of his pin-stripe trousers and calling the barman ‘mate’.

And it appeared that Connor, too, was yearning for the same sort of visual detail from me. One night, quite late, he sent an email from his BlackBerry.

What are you wearing?

Unusually, there was no
kiss me first
in his sign off, but I presume he had forgotten because it was late and he was tired.

By then I was feeling confident enough to reply as myself, rather than in the guise of Tess, so I gave him an honest description of my outfit.

Navy blue tracksuit bottoms. Slippers. A
Red Dwarf
sweatshirt with the slogan ‘Smoke me a Kipper’.

Very funny. Spoilsport,
was his perplexing reply.

From the start of our correspondence there had been hours when I had no messages from him, sometimes up to half a day, when he told me he was seeing his children. These hadn’t really bothered me at first; besides, I had had lots of other work to do for Tess. Now, though, I was finding these stretches of no contact increasingly difficult; the minutes dragged by, and I was starting to develop a twinge in my right hand from constantly refreshing Tess’s email account. I had no details to fix on during these hours; although he had once said he’d send me photos of his children, he never had. I tried to imagine him in his flat in Kensal Green but, as I had never been inside a flat in Kensal Green, my mind came up blank. I couldn’t see further than his black leather bag in the hall, his stripy scarf draped over a banister. Beyond that, there was nothing.

It was during one of these no-contact periods – a Saturday, I remember – that I started to wonder whether, now that I had actually met and spoken to Connor, I could upgrade from being ‘in limerance’ to being ‘in love’. Furthermore, I had become interested in investigating the concept of ‘soulmates’. I thought of what Tess had said about Tevi the DJ, who she claimed was hers.

‘I wanted to tell him everything. He
got
me. I felt lost without him. The world was colourless when we weren’t together.’

At the time I had thought this typically whimsical and overdramatic of her. Recently, however, I had been remembering her words, because they described exactly the way I felt about Connor. Yet, surely the notion that there was just one person out there for each of us was nonsensical?

I decided to do what I had done in the past when wrestling with an idea: put it to the forum on Red Pill.

In retrospect, I can see that it was perhaps not a wise move, not least because starting a whole thread was out of keeping with my recent pattern of posting. Since starting Project Tess my contributions to the forum had dwindled dramatically: although I still logged on every day, as requested by Adrian, it was usually just to make a token, banal comment or to agree with what someone else had said, rather than putting in any real effort or thought.