Another three hours and I’d thought ‘stuff it’ and done the whole credit-card thing. I was top-to-toe coiffed: hair, Clinique lipstick, new top, poncey pants, hold-ups (the nineties girl’s compromise, as far as I was concerned) and, sadly, the same old flat shoes, as even I couldn’t bring myself to go that far. Unfortunately, the perfume ladies didn’t see the shoes in time, checked out the posh togs and did a mass ambush on me, so I smelled like a tarts’ annual general meeting.’
Another two hours and I had managed to spend more than the clothes’ total on coffee and nasty Danishes, and I was sitting uncomfortably, staring out of the window and reading ‘What your man really means when he shags all your mates and has started to look at the dog – is this how the new soft new lad has to express himself?’ I was ready to a) kill myself; b) go play in the arcades; c) buy the damned shoes. I’d been tempted to try and make friends with the cleaner, but he’d wandered off shift, still staring at me and shaking his head.
So I bought the shoes. Then I went and played in the arcades.
Five hundred years later, it seemed a reasonable time to start going to meet planes. I bought a toothbrush and toothpaste, and prepared myself.
Four New York planes later, and my fixed smile was starting to look a bit desperate. How did travel reps do it? Must be the drugs.
I started to think that maybe I’d missed him. Maybe he’d disembarked already and was on his way somewhere – he’d phoned one of his mates and been whooshed off in a taxi to some expensive postcode. Maybe he’d walked past while I was looking at the girl carrying the enormous stuffed elephant. Maybe when all that bloody coffee made me go to the loo again. Oh Christ. More than a whole day in an airport for absolutely nothing.
My anxiety levels were reaching their peak and I was about to put a call out for him over the intercom so I could at least attempt to head him off, when, at last, at last, at last, he loped out of the by now extremely familiar automatic doors.
My stomach hit the floor. He looked gorgeous. I arranged my face into a suitably affectionate, wry look and pointed myself in his general direction. He didn’t see me (it must have been the hairdo), so I ended up having to run after him in my new super-sexy high-heeled shoes and attack him from behind like a mugger.
He jumped round as if he was about to kung-fu me, then gradually took it in.
‘Mel!’
I was out of breath from running and out of breath from seeing him.
‘Heh … heh … Alex!’
He gathered me up in his strong arms and gave me a huge movie-star bear hug. I wished the cleaner was still around to see.
‘You … you complete and utter fuckhead,’ I choked.
He buried his face in my hair.
‘God, I missed you.’
All the way back on the tube we yabbered and yabbered, genuinely thrilled to see each other again. He told me about his trip across America: the larks he got up to in New York; the English pop-star he bumped into in a deserted part of Montana and what great mates they became; his awful jobs and the amazing characters he’d met. His voice had taken on a new American tinge. I didn’t mention the fact that I hadn’t changed jobs, or flats, or, despite appearances, got it together at all since he went away, instead embroidering wildly the love lives of several mutual acquaintances, some boring parties and a hilarious imaginary cat of Fran’s (I was getting desperate by that stage). Neither of us mentioned the inauspicity of his leaving; it was as if he’d simply been away, perhaps on business, perhaps for a fortnight, perhaps in prison.
We turned up at home at half past midnight. The flat was ominously quiet, which meant that Linda was wide awake, listening to our every move. However, it was a special occasion, so I pinched her bottle of vodka anyway, called in sick with a midnight vomiting fit (unpleasant but effective), and fell into bed with my big – OK, slightly smelly – darling, who managed to make me buzz all over before passing out for fourteen hours.
The following day I watched him sleep, and the time just drifted by. Maybe they should put beautiful sleeping males in airport waiting rooms.
He woke up dazed, stared at the ceiling for a second, then rolled over and grabbed me with a grin.
‘Oh, Mel, darling. I will be yours for ever …’
This was more like it.
‘… if you’d make me a bacon sandwich. Two bacon sandwiches. And some fried eggs. I am starving.’
‘That’, he said twenty minutes later, after I’d emptied the fridge of Linda’s food, ‘was the best bacon sandwich I have ever had. Americans just cannot make a bacon sandwich. They put it in brown bread and cover it in crap.’
‘What, like vegetables?’
‘Yeah!’
‘You’re right – bloody Americans and their healthy eating! That’s why they’re all in such fantastic physical shape.’
He giggled, then took my face in his hands. Here it came.
‘Gee, Mel, it’s good to be back. Americans … they never mean what they say. I never feel I can talk bullshit with anyone as much as I can with you.’
‘I think that’s possibly the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,’ I said gravely.
He laughed, and ruffled my hair.
‘I mean … I behaved like a complete dork, Mel. I’m sorry. I really am. What I did to you, it really bit. You know, I had no idea what I was doing. With all my parents and stuff … I can find it really hard to open up … and I got scared. I was so worried you were going to … just ignore me. Which I would probably have deserved.’
‘Yes, you would.’
‘You’re special to me, you know.’
‘I do know. And if you ever EVER do anything like that again, I’m going to impale a testicle on each arm of a pair of scissors and start snipping.’
He winced. ‘Is that nice?’
‘You’ll see.’
And that was it. I was very happy.
The next week passed in a blur – a dirty-sheeted, stupid, giggling, New York-time blur. I finally got it together to go into work, but was so glowing and smiley that I got away with more murder than usual. Even the secretaries couldn’t hurt me. No one in the world had ever been as happy as us, ever, and in fact could have no idea what it was like. I floated around, occasionally stopping to pity people for not being as happy as me.
At home, I stopped answering the phone and made Linda do it, which was mean of me as she hated doing it and my friends hated speaking to her. Fran eventually stomped round in a fury, having gleaned, accurately, that things weren’t exactly going the way she’d planned. This surmise was confirmed when she came to the door and Alex opened it, clearly in possession of both kneecaps.
‘Hey there, Fran,’ he said winningly. ‘Good to see you again.’
I wondered what she was going to do. For a moment she looked as if she would completely ignore him, then she shook her mane of hair and smiled.
‘Hello! Great to see you – you complete bastard! How nice!’ she said, walking straight past him to kiss me on the cheek.
Alex grimaced at me, but I shrugged. Even if I hadn’t been able to give him a hard time for what he’d