Years later – long after he’d returned to England – a wealthy tech lawyer named Zoe Markham had hired Tommy to be her personal trainer. He’d had a large number of successful London women on his books at the time, many of whom flirted quite openly with him. ‘I think it’s a sort of fantasy,’ he’d told me. He was caught somewhere between flattery and disgust. ‘I’m like a sexy handyman with a tool belt. Blue collar with muscles. ’
Zoe Markham, apparently, was different. They got on ‘fantastically well’ and had a ‘genuine connection’, and, crucially, she saw him as a ‘whole person’, not just an employee who had the power to make her look slim and beautiful. (She was already both.)
After a few months of casual flirting she had offered him a leg up into sports consultancy via an old friend. Tommy had taken her to dinner to thank her. She had taken him home and removed her clothes. ‘I think it’s time for a real one-on-one, don’t you?’ she’d said.
She was his first girlfriend of any real significance; certainly the first he believed to be entirely out of his league. To him, she was a goddess, a marvel – the liniment for each and every one of his old wounds. ‘I wish I could tell those bastards at school,’ he’d told me, the day she invited him to move into her Holland Park flat. ‘I wish I could show them I’m capable of attracting a girl like Zoe.’ And I’d said, ‘Yes, wouldn’t that be brilliant?’ because I never imagined it could happen. That sort of thing never did.
Except, in Tommy’s case, it did.
About a year ago he’d sent a brochure for his secondary sports programme to every head teacher in the UK. The programme included a donation of wearable sports technology – heart-rate vest, fitness watches, that sort of thing – from one of Zoe’s biggest clients, a tech multinational, and was Tommy’s pride and joy. When he received a call from the head of our old school, he was touchingly delighted. ‘She wants me to come and meet her head of PE!’ he told me during one of our Skypes. ‘Isn’t that brilliant ?’ He had found the situation to be marginally less brilliant when he discovered that the head of PE was his teenage bully, Matthew Martyn.
But it had been a good chat, Tommy assured me. A bit awkward, at first, but Matthew had said something about how they’d all been dickheads when they were teenagers, and punched Tommy on the arm and called him ‘mate’. Later, like two old friends, they had compared notes: Matthew showed Tommy a photo of his family, and Tommy – unable to believe his luck – showed Matthew a picture of his beautiful, smartly liveried, fiercely toned girlfriend in her splendid London kitchen.
By the time I arrived at Tommy and Zoe’s London flat earlier in June, already distraught about Eddie, Tommy had delivered the programme. He told me his old ghosts had been laid to rest; that he was ‘over’ what had happened to him at school; that he was actually looking forward to seeing Matthew Martyn again at the programme launch. Then: ‘Zoe’s coming,’ he added, as if it were a mere afterthought. ‘It’ll be great to introduce her to Matt.’
I had wanted to hug him then. To tell him that he was fine, just as he was. That he didn’t need Zoe on his arm to increase his stock. But I went along with it, of course, because he needed me to.
Zoe had pulled out four days before the launch. ‘I have to go to Hong Kong for one of my clients,’ she’d said. ‘It’s really important. Sorry, Tommy.’
Not sorry enough , I thought. She knew what this meant. Tommy’s face was the colour of recycled paper.
‘But . . . but the school’s expecting you!’
She frowned. ‘I’m sure they’ll survive. They’re showing off to the rural press, not to me.’
‘Can you not fly a day later?’ he pleaded. I could hardly bear to watch.
‘No,’ she said levelly. ‘I can’t. But you’ll thank me for going on this trip. There’s going to be a delegation from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. I still think I’ve got a good chance of getting you onto one of their advisory committees.’
Tommy had shaken his head. ‘But I told you. I’m not interested.’
‘And I told you , Tommy, that you are.’
Jo and I had stepped in to replace her.
Did I want to return to my old school? Of course not. I’d hoped never to see the place again. But Tommy, I thought, needed me, and helping someone in need was just about the only decent distraction I knew. Besides, what did I have to fear? Mandy and Claire had left that school in the nineties. Neither they nor any of the people I’d fled would be there today.
‘Harrington. ’ Tommy had twisted round to look at me. ‘Are you there?’
‘Sorry. Yes.’
‘Look, there’s something I need to tell you.’
I watched him. Tommy’s eyebrows were not carrying glad tidings.
‘When I got that message about the local press earlier, Matthew told me something else. He—’ Tommy broke off, and I knew then that it was bad.
‘Matthew married Claire Peddler. I didn’t mention it before because I didn’t think you’d want to hear her name. But when he texted to say that the local press were coming, he also said that . . .’
No.
‘. . . that Claire had decided to come, too. And she’s . . .’
Bringing Mandy.
‘. . . bringing a little group of friends from our year. Including Mandy Lee.’
I sank forward and rested my head against the back of his seat.
Chapter Six
DAY ONE: The Drink That Lasted Twelve Hours
‘Sarah Mackey,’ I said. ‘M-A-C-K-E-Y.’
The landlord handed me a pint of cider.
The man from the village green just laughed. ‘As it happens, I know how to spell Mackey. But thank you. My name’s Eddie David.’
‘Sorry.’ I smiled. ‘I live in America. It’s a more American surname, I think: when I’m over here, I often have to spell it. Plus I’m fond of clarity.’
‘So I see,’ Eddie said. He was leaning sideways on the bar, watching me. Tenner folded between large brown fingers. I liked the scale of this man. That he was so much taller, so much broader, so much stronger than me. Reuben and I had been the same height.
We sat in the pub garden, an oasis of flowers and picnic tables in the little valley below Sapperton village. The thin ribbon of the River Frome spooled unseen around the meadow fringing the pub’s car park; briar roses toppled from a tree. A couple of walkers were slumped over half-pints, a panting cocker spaniel staring at me from under their legs. As soon as I sat down under a large umbrella, the dog came and sat by my feet, settling itself with a great huff of self-pity.
Eddie laughed .
Somewhere along the valley, the abrasive cracking of a chainsaw started and stopped. A few stunned birds called dazedly from the woods above us. I sipped the cold cider and groaned. ‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ Eddie agreed. We clinked glasses and I felt an uncurling of pleasure. Being alone in my parents’ empty house this morning had been more upsetting than I was willing to admit, and the walk along Broad Ride had done nothing to improve my mood. But here, taking the rough edge off it all, was cold cider and a very agreeable man. Maybe it could be a good day.
‘I love this pub,’ I said. ‘We used to come here when I was a kid. My little sister and I would roam feral and poke around in the stream while my parents and their friends got a little too jolly.’
Eddie took a good draught from his pint. ‘I grew up in Cirencester. Bit trickier to roam feral in the middle of a town. But we did come here once or twice.’
‘Oh, really? When would that have been? How old are you?’
‘Twenty-one,’ Eddie said comfortably. ‘Although people say I look younger.’
He didn’t mind when I laughed. ‘Thirty-nine,’ he said eventually. ‘I remember running around this garden when I was about – what, ten? Then my mum moved here in the late nineties, so I started coming here quite a lot. How old are you? Maybe you and I were feral together.’
A small fleck of suggestion. My app must be going mad.