‘Yes, right,’ he said, turning around. ‘Sorry.’
He began to shuffle forwards and I followed, smiling in an inane, vacuous way, my face still pressed tightly between his shoulder blades. We stayed like that, forced together, through the ticket hall, down the escalator and towards the platforms. At some point we began talking. And I couldn’t tell you now what we said, but when it was time to separate, him to go north and me to go south, we were squabbling both about the scarf and about a pub that he said didn’t exist.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said. ‘I’ve been there dozens of times. I could take you there right now.’
‘Okay,’ he replied.
People were rushing around, filtering into two streams, one on either side of us, and dispersing on to the platforms.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Let’s go,’ he replied.
The pub did exist, as I’d said it would; a traditional wood-panelled, almost-medieval hideaway with low ceilings and an open fire. It was – and still is, although I haven’t been there in years – called the Windsor Castle. It’s ten minutes from Oxford Circus and tucked down a narrow, cobbled street, a welcome nod to an older version of the city that stood long before the towering flagship stores and coffee shops that repeat every hundred metres.
We stayed there for hours, until the landlady rang her bell for last orders, when we trundled back to the ticket hall, now almost empty, and said our goodbyes with kisses – which were entirely out of character – and promises of next time. I felt something shift inside me when he lifted his hands from my hips. As I watched him walk away from me, his dark green coat flapping at his thighs, I knew that I loved him already.
That love is the foundation on which I would have – could have – built a life. There is a version of this world in which Jonathan and I are still together, still smitten. We promised each other an unyielding love, a life that celebrated laughter and a bond that would never for a moment waver. It is sometimes impossible to believe that we failed to deliver on something that once seemed so certain.
He asked me to marry him a year later – to the day – in that very same pub. He knelt awkwardly on one knee and told me that he’d planned a speech, he’d learnt it by heart, but that he couldn’t remember a single word that he’d wanted to say. But he’d love me for as long as he lived, he said, if that was enough for now.
I thought it was more than enough for me.
We were married that autumn in a registry office. We had no guests and we celebrated with the most expensive champagne that the nearest off-licence stocked. We went to the Windsor Castle for our wedding breakfast. It felt only right that it should be the headquarters for all the major milestones of our relationship. I placed our order at the bar, carefully enunciating as I declared that my husband would like a burger. The bartender rolled her eyes but smiled, vaguely amused by this young bride in a pale blue dress and her groom in a green tie. Our desserts – brownies accompanied by vanilla ice cream – were served with ‘Congratulations’ written in chocolate icing around the rim of each plate.
We wheeled our bags to Waterloo and caught the train down to the south coast to stay in a small bed and breakfast in a seaside town called Beer. We arrived late that evening and checked in, announcing in the way that only newlyweds do that the room was booked for Mr and Mrs Black.
‘For Jane?’ said the elderly woman managing the front desk. It was nearly ten o’clock and she was clearly keen that we recognise the inconvenience.
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘For Jane Black.’ She could say whatever she liked, do whatever she wanted, and none of it could even begin to scratch at the edges of my happiness.
‘Upstairs, end of the corridor, on the right.’ She held out a small gold key attached by a thin gold chain to a thick wooden slab engraved with the word four. ‘Anything else?’
We shook our heads.
Jonathan carried our bags upstairs, down the hallway and into our room. The floorboards were dark wood and the bedspread embroidered with small pastel flowers. The curtains – the colour of rust – had been drawn closed and a small pink lampshade shone softly in the corner. A miniature bottle of champagne had been left in an ice bucket on an old-fashioned mahogany desk. He popped the cork and poured two glasses, and we toasted our wedding a second time.
We woke the following morning as the sun rose and speckled our bedspread yellow and orange. I remember the warmth of his chest against my back as he bent himself around me, the soft skin of his palm smoothing my stomach and his lips against my shoulder blade. I remember how it felt to be enveloped by him, to be wrapped so safely inside someone else, and the way his hands would turn me towards him, his kisses would shift and solidify, when he wanted something more.
It was only later, when there was a knock at the door and a woman apologetically handed over the towels that should have been left in the bathroom, that we scrambled from the bed and made a plan for the day. I pulled back the curtains and looked out at the sea. It was flattened across the horizon and bordered on either side by white cliffs topped with thick green grass. It was October and yet the sky was bright, cloudless, welcoming.
We pulled on our walking boots and our thick, woollen jumpers.
Outside, the beach was pebbled. I started along the path towards it, towards the sea, towards the waves that rolled inwards, collapsing against the shore.
‘This way,’ called Jonathan, pointing upwards instead at the cliffs above. ‘I think we should go this way.’
And so we climbed the road, marching along the tarmac, past parked cars and curtained windows, until we reached a grassy verge with signs about hours and bank holidays and a small ticket machine.
‘Let’s keep going,’ said Jonathan, weaving through the few parked vans and across the grass.
From then, we walked in silence, sometimes hand in hand, sometimes him in front and me behind, getting distracted by something and then rushing to catch up.
He was always so focused, particularly outdoors, always there with his camera, wanting to see what was further on, around a corner, what might be waiting for him ahead. For me, it was simply wonderful to be so isolated, nothing to hear but the sea crashing against the rocks beneath and the squawk of gulls overhead.
After an hour or so, we approached another seaside village: smaller than Beer, it seemed, but with a car park, a tiny building that housed a few public toilets, and a café with a thatched roof.
‘Perhaps it’s open,’ said Jonathan, and because Jonathan was with me, it was.
He ordered a mug of coffee for himself and, for me, a glass of cold orange juice. We sat outside on a picnic bench and watched the sea as we waited for our bacon sandwiches. Fishermen were huddled together, protecting one another from the wind. I imagined them discussing their catch, the price of cod, their plans for the rest of the day.
After breakfast, we wandered along the beach, the waves swimming in and out, licking at the crevices in each stone and at the soles of our boots. Jonathan spotted a small cutaway in the overgrowth at the foot of the cliff and insisted that we explore further. We pierced the dense shrubs, stepping away from the coast into a forest and zigzagging through thorn bushes and nettles on a narrow mud-pressed path. We climbed higher and higher and still the cliffs were towering above us.