You have thought how old the daughter you had together would be now, and now, and now, and now, and nothing has ever hurt like that does, every time.
You have thought everything, because twelve years is enough time to do that, and then suddenly there is no more thinking because he is there.
Before he spots you he is on his phone, because of course, what else.
We didn’t do that the last time I saw him. Phones were functional, still, for contact not time-wasting.
And so you stop for a second to try to make your heart stop racing and breathe so that your voice sounds normal, and so that you don’t seem rehearsed, like you haven’t played this out a hundred times, which of course you have because yes, twelve years. Twelve years of thoughts.
While you do that, you stare at him, at his head bowed, because he hasn’t yet realised you are there.
Could you have done that to me, I wonder? Are you capable? The man I know is not capable but look at him: his face has shifted. It’s not a leap to think his character may have shifted with it.
The anticlimax, though, when a moment that was so nostalgic, so loaded in all of those scenes you played out, is dominated by the mundane.
‘Hey,’ is the first word I say to this man, this man who adored me, my first baby’s father. ‘Do you want another coffee?’
He looks up and says nothing, but his face contracts.
‘I’m going to order one,’ I say eventually, swallowing hard.
I walk away but when I get to the bar I am shaking and so I order a glass of wine. Red, large.
It is very, very like having an affair, except that the sex part is out of the way and I regret it already. The one time, with Mitch I mean.
Then I sit back down next to him and we are silent, taking each other in and recalibrating. I want to fling my arms around him tightly and tell him how much it all meant, but it’s odd and not allowed and we’re grown-ups now and there are boundaries.
So we observe them. We talk about our journeys today, distances, parking. We move on to houses, locations, jobs.
‘You’re quite big news in the mum blogger world, I see.’ He smiles, almost proud and I think that’s okay. He can be proud – he helped to form me.
I laugh.
‘Apparently so,’ I say. ‘Who’d have seen that coming?’
I am gentler with you, I think. Soft.
I am enjoying his company like I always did and I have to remind myself to be suspicious of him, wary.
‘Just going to the loo,’ I say and when I’m there I check my lipstick and add a little concealer.
‘So you’re married?’ I say, back at the table, and Ollie nods.
‘Rose,’ he says. ‘We’ve got two girls, Holly and Jade.’
I am oddly unmoved. This new life of his feels unreal; something unmoored from me, floating around far away. I can’t quite believe it.
‘And you have Ed and Poppy, I see.’ He smiles. ‘Easy to find out all about your life from Instagram. Not that I was stalking but once you got in touch, I did have a look.’
I nod. Of course I know it’s out there but it suddenly hits me how exposed I am.
We sit for a second. Now For The Main Event, says the pause.
Ollie breaks the silence with something he has obviously practised. It masquerades as a joke, but his eyes say terror.
‘So you didn’t have a kid that’s mine then?’
There’s a beat as he realises what he’s said.
‘I mean …’
I shake my head to tell him it’s okay but my smile falters.
‘No,’ I say eventually as I compose myself. ‘I would probably have mentioned that earlier.’
He’s a good actor, if he did send the video.
‘Do you really not know?’ I say suddenly, downing the last of my wine and fighting the urge to order another one, despite the fact I have to drive home, ‘why I contacted you?’
He shakes his head. Smiles at me. He keeps doing that, a really big, genuine smile like it is nice to see me, and it is contagious and I do it back before I remember, each time, why I am here.
‘The kid was my best guess,’ he says.
‘Serious?’ I ask.
‘God knows,’ he mutters. ‘I could see they weren’t on your Facebook but maybe that was deliberate. I don’t know. It was pretty out of the blue.’
He reaches for my hand.
‘And we had managed it once before.’
His eyes fill with tears as mine do and we think of our baby girl, just for that second, together. I wonder if that means as much to him as it does to me. It’s such a relief.
We sit then again in the company of that shared experience and shared loss. There is calm from being able to think about my first baby with the only other person who understands and I tighten my other hand around his. He squeezes back, and it feels like clinging.
‘I know,’ he says. ‘I think about her.’
It takes a few minutes to regroup.
I let go of his hand and go to the bathroom again. When I come back he stares at me.
‘So. Come on then. Tell me what it is, new strait-laced Scarlett. Scarlett, Scarlett, Scarlett.’
There it is. That singsong. We smile.
And I realise I would look strait-laced to him in fresh make-up, drinking a glass of red without the wide eyes and the bare legs.
My heart pounds. He DJ’ed sometimes, too. Staring out at me from the decks as I danced for him. What an odd thing, to go off and live life and procreate and move on, but to leave a bit of you back there, twenty-two and besotted.
He repeats my name. ‘Scarlett, Scarlett, Scarlett.’
I’m still back there, which means I can’t speak here, now.
‘What is life like now then?’ he asks. He leans forward, onto the table, looking in my eyes. ‘Is it all book clubs and organic kale? Are you …’
He does a hammy gasp.
‘Are you … respectable?’
I blush, like I’ve been caught out. Like the police have come to the door to arrest me for something I did twenty years ago. I’m a fraud, I think. Whatever facade I’ve put on, it’s not convincing.
But his teasing is warm. And it’s nice to break the sadness of earlier.
‘I am actually, yes,’ I say after a while. ‘And I like it. Like you say, respectable. People respect me.’
My eyes fill with tears.
‘Or they did.’
He raises an eyebrow.
‘Tell me if you did it, Ollie. Tell me if you shared the video.’
But when I look up, sobbing, I know he didn’t.
Because while his hair has greyed, his eyes haven’t changed.
‘Fuck, Scarlett, what happened to you?’ he says. He goes to touch my face and I see him stop himself, think, about his wife probably, and how this would look, might have looked, as he sits in a pub with his ex. But then he does it anyway.
I tell him what happened.
He slumps back in his chair and I realise for the first time that this affects him too. Sure, I’m female, and so I bear the biggest load of it, but it’s his body, his sexuality that’s up there too.
‘Rose,’ he says, looking queasy. ‘My parents. The kids, even, when they’re older. The thought of people seeing that …’
He looks at me.
‘Why would I do that?’ he says. ‘To myself as well as you.’