Read Whatever You Love for Free Online

said.
    ‘That’s certainly different,’ I acknowledged, dipping my glass in his direction.
    I am sure that at that stage he still didn’t remember our first meeting in the pub – although later he claimed he did – not even when he turned his back on the women glaring at us from the corner, looked down at me where I was half-perched on the edge of the table, and gave me that slow, deliberate stare.
    I looked to one side. I should have waited for him to speak, but I was both too nervous and too sure of myself. ‘Are you still in engineering?’ I asked.

    It was too ordinary a question. Immediately, I lost him. ‘I’m working at a pen factory on the coast,’ he replied, his voice flat, routine. He could have been talking to anyone.
    ‘Hennett’s? I grew up near there,’ I said quickly.
    ‘My family all live near Eastley. Well actually, they are Eastley. I’ve got a big family. Half of Aberystwyth lives in Eastley now.’
    ‘I grew up behind the Recreation Ground, the new estate, lots of pebbledash, the one with…’ I was gabbling. Despite our discovery that we had grown up in neighbouring towns, I sensed that his attention was elsewhere. He glanced around the room. Suddenly, it was full of people. The party had begun.
    ‘I’d better…’ he said, raising his glass and nodding towards the other side of the crowded room, where his short girlfriend was invisible behind the sudden influx of partygoers. I could think of no excuse to detain him. Never mind, I thought. Give it half an hour, then get your coat on and go up to him and ask for his number, suggest a coffee or something, just casually. That way, if he makes you feel like a prannet you can get out straight away.
    I went to the kitchen. I gave it half an hour, then I got my coat on – green wool, with a belt – and returned to the sitting room. Someone had dimmed the lights. I pushed through the people, ‘Sorry… sorry…’ When I couldn’t find him, I pushed through them again. ‘Sorry…’ The sitting room was crowded but small. There was no doubt. He had gone.
    *
     
    Two years later, I was fully qualified but discovering that my school careers’ adviser had been right about one thing: posts as newly qualified physios were hard to come by. In the end, I got a job in a small unit at the local hospital of my home town. I didn’t really want to move back home but my radius of opportunity was limited while Mum was still in the care home. I had a dim sense that some time in the future I would move back to my university town, which had things like nightclubs and cinemas, and resume the life of a normal single person. In the meantime, rent in my old town was cheap. I got a whole bedsitting flat to myself five minutes from the esplanade for what I was paying for a room in a shared house when I was a student.
    It was autumn – the town was unexpectedly golden, that year. It had been a good summer and holiday trade was up. There were optimistic reports in the local newspaper amidst talk of building a pier. Most seaside towns lament their tacky tourist image. We aspired to it. I was thinking of how I should make the effort to get out more. My life post-Mum was distant, indistinct, and I was vaguely aware that I was using it as an excuse. I had a nice bunch of friends at the clinic and we went out drinking once in a while. I still saw a man I thought of as my university boyfriend, Nick, who came over every other weekend but was due to move up north soon to take up a teaching post. My life was comfortably suspended between that of a student and that of the woman I imagined I would be in some misty future elsewhere, but only if the future was the one who took the initiative. I wasn’t unhappy, just apathetic.
    I was writing up some notes in my office when there was a light tap at the door. It was Mary, one of our occupational therapists. ‘Can you take my four o’clock?’ she said. ‘The school have just called.’ She already had her mac on. She