The Ten-year Gap

He wondered if she still looked the same.

It had been so long and people change. They have kids and suffer tragedy and get fat or don’t have kids and just maybe get sad or become bitter and small. Not that these are your only options in life, but whatever. Life leaves its marks all over you.

The place he was sitting in was called Allingham’s and it was quite sparsely put together, but sunny and warm. He’d never actually even been here before (she’d picked it), but already he thought maybe he quite liked the feel; the menu was good, more than just bacon-and-eggs done a bunch of different ways.

Maybe he’d order the wild mushrooms on sourdough. He liked mushrooms.

So many people had changed from back then and hardly any of them for the better. A smile that was broad and delightful when young can somehow become unsettling and grotesque through the amplification of age. A cute button-nose recedes into the landscape of the face it once complimented and now, behind your back, people say you look like a pug.

Too much life, too little life: it all pushes you in one way or the other like it or not.

The French have a way to describe someone that literally translates as ‘party-damaged’. Maybe that’s what she’d be? Hardened. Or maybe all of her wildness and spark would be hidden under the drab apron of ‘mom-hood’. He couldn’t think of anything worse than having breakfast with someone who could only talk about property prices and how difficult it is to get your kids into a decent school these days and how the country is going to shit.

Least of all her. He didn’t know if he’d be able to handle that.

He hadn’t really been able to tell that much from Facebook. She had one of those severely limited profiles that was basically just a way of grudgingly acknowledging that social media existed, nothing else. Her profile was a sarcastic thumbs-up to the idea of Facebook and the single grainy picture taken from what looked like about eight years ago that possibly had someone cropped out of it (an old boyfriend maybe?) gave absolutely nothing away. Which was frustrating. He wished he’d been able to just get some sense of what life had done to her in the ten years since they’d last seen each other. Anything.

He’d once been to a party she’d thrown at the flat she’d been living in with a bunch of other ‘lawyers-in-the-making’.

He hadn’t really wanted to go, but he couldn’t resist the invitation. Well, he’d never been able to resist her, which was basically the same thing. The reason he hadn’t wanted to go was that hers was a difficult group of people. He always thought of them as been too… ‘squashed’. Ruthlessly exploited by ruthless people in order to become their own flavour of ruthless person. Tempted by just enough of a promise of money and power to endure it all, pummeled down and pummeled down, pressurized to breaking.

It meant they sucked up all these terrifying habits and outlooks but without being able to let them go anywhere, because fuck it they were minimum-salary assholes living on the smell of what might be. So they copied lifestyles and habits that were out of reach, without any of the safety-valves provided by the money and power possessed by the people they were copying. All these Julians and Camerons and Trishas — all of them lived in this zero-sum-game of win-or-die, but where winning was basically also just a slightly different kind of horrible dying. It was all just too intense for him. Everything was a challenge. Everything was a ‘life-to-the-full’ charge with the volume turned all the way up — and he always felt hopelessly under-powered around those people.

But he’d gone anyway. The thought of at least being around her (even for a short bit) was enough for him to at least tell himself he’d be able to ignore all that.

And he was forever grateful that he had gone. Because arriving at her flat that early Springish evening had weirdly provided him with one of the singular moments in his life. Even though it was in the end a tiny thing, he’d clung to this memory in a way that he’d clung to few others.

All that’d really happened was that she’d walked towards him across the room. That was it.

But never before had someone walked across a room like that, ever. Or at the very least, not towards him. Not that way. She’d been wearing this weird purple, asiany silk thing that made her already-small boobs look even smaller and over-emphasized her hips a bit, but when she saw him at the door, she immediately bee-lined towards him in a way that made anyone that who wasn’t that way seem lumpen and exaggerated by comparison. He’d always felt stupid trying to describe that moment to anyone afterwards. His limited attempts had always sounded clichéd, with words like “floated” and “mesmerising”, and he hated that — it was never right. It’s why he’d only really tried to talk about it once or twice before giving up, squirreling the memory away in the Aladdin’s Cave of his mind, to be visited when he was depressed or lonely or horny. Open sesame. Swish.

He wondered if she’d cut her hair. Maybe it was a different colour? Girls who are naturally blonde always seem to go through this phase where they convince themselves that some other ridiculous colour is better. And it never is. The thought of her being some overdone shade of soap-opera red depressed him.

His coffee was empty. Maybe another one? But then what would he drink when she got here? He could only really drink two cups of coffee before he started getting jittery and sweaty around his eyes. And that was the last thing he wanted to happen around her. Okay. One more. A latte. Those are more milk than coffee anyway.

He was in the process of trying to catch the waitress’s attention when he saw her. She was hovering in the entrance, scanning the room.

Holy shit. She was perfect. She was just the same.

She was perfect.

Then she spotted him. And something weird happened. For a tiny flicker of a second an utterly odd expression crossed her face. It was like a single cloud rushing across the sun on an otherwise glorious day — for a moment making everything feel grey and flat.

But then it was gone. The sun came out again, and just like ten years ago she was walking towards him and nothing else even mattered. Nothing at all.

Open sesame.

She sat down, looking at him. Then that odd expression again.

“Jesus. You’ve changed. I honestly almost didn’t recognise you.”