The wind swept across Samuel’s face as ducked beneath the vaulted roofed atrium for protection from the elements. His eyes crossed the myriad stalls which mirrored what he imagined might be a Morrocan bazaar, he saw the cafe and decided to linger outside rather than head in. He hung back from the stalls and their wares, backing himself into a corner where he forced himself to chose whether to enter the Sushi restaurant, or at least pretend to be interested in the hand painted tiles on sale before him.

Fortunately before he found himself having to purchase some pointless item to justify his continued presence Emma emerged from Leon and he moved to intercept her as she made her way to the street. Why was she in such a hurry, and on a day when the rain descended in sheets, drenching you twice, on the way down and on it’s return as it flew off the ground with such force? Samuel found the crowds conspiring to block his way as Emma started to drift out of sight, her hair only marginally visible among the flocks of tourists and businessmen.

He backed out of his current silo and slipped out the back of the market and sprinted round three sides of the square to catch his sister just as she was crossing the road towards the tube.

“Sam, what are you doing here?”

“I said I’d meet you after the interview, I was waiting outside but you sped off before I could catch you.”

“Oh, sorry, I can’t of got the message,” Emma tentatively plunged into her bag searching for her phone to find the unread message from her brother. “You look exhausted, are you sure you’re okay?” This was Emma’s diplomatic way of pointing out his breathlessness as well as the damp patches that formed across his t-shirt as it betrayed the sweat that dripping from his chest.

“It’s just, I had to run all the way round to catch you, I thought I’d never get to you. The blasted crowds!” Sam breathed deeply, “Shall we head off, or do you need to go home first? Actually we could do with popping into the shop, I need to pick up some noodles.”

Sam was pleased that Emma had come round. He was glad he didn’t have to talk to Alex about this. Emma also grabbed the shopping, raided the fridge and started concocting dinner. He slunk into the chair in the corner and tried to work out how he was going to say this.

He’d made the tea, and washed up. He even thought about starting the ironing, but that would be a procrastinating step too far. So instead he begun, “Emma, I think I need some advice.

“I’ve got a bit of a dilemma. I’m not sure what to do. A few weeks ago I met someone.” Emma’s eyes suddenly burst to life with this revelation, maybe this evening would be more interesting than she had expected. “Don’t get too excited quite yet.” But that ship had already sailed. Emma had never met Alex, but had picked up enough from her brother’s carefully enigmatic statements to know enough of their friendship, and she hadn’t thought Sam was even vaguely over her.

“Alex persuaded me to go to this thing run by your church.” Emma recoiled even further in shook at the thought of Sam in St Bart’s as he continued this monologue. “It was really quite odd, I’m not sure what I think to a church running a dating service but anyway I met someone and we agreed to meet up again.”

“And, what happened?” Emma was sufficiently fascinated in this most unusual turn of events that the noodles had over cooked and she plonked them onto the plate without her customary grace.

“Well, we’ve met up a couple of times, and it’s all fine, and it’s great, and to be honest, I was a bit shocked that it seemed to be going so well. Yesterday we spent the day at Hampton Court, and it was surprisingly easy. I’d been a bit worried that spending the day together would be tough. That we’d run out of things to talk about, and the day would be marred by awkward silences, or I would mistakenly try to fill the void by postulating about why Henry VIII had the fountains built, and their probable intended usage as an aural distraction to cover his carnal indiscretions.”

“But none of that happened. The day was fantastic, it went quickly and smoothly. And I turned around in the middle of the Georgian state rooms and had to pinch myself as I realised just how much I liked Grace.”

Emma had eaten her way through most of the food as Sam became increasingly animated. And this was what she couldn’t understand. He paused from the flow of speech to take a few mouthfuls, and Emma anticipated that there was still much more to say so let him enjoy the food for a moment before helping him move the tale on. “Sam, this isn’t where the story ends is it?”

“You’re right about that. We sat on the train coming back and I was trying to work out how to take the next step. I couldn’t quite work out what was appropriate, whether to ask her to dinner, or just explain, right there how much I liked her. I even thought of just leaning across and kissing her. But that didn’t outlive the heartbeat in which I entertained and rejected such a rash response.

“As we pulled into Waterloo I knew my time was up, so while I was still floundering around in how to respond I thought there was a chance that this wouldn’t be the end of the day, that I might get an extension on needed to know what to do next, so I asked her what she was up to that evening.”

Sam paused again to wind the noodles round his fork which had kept slipping back onto the plate as he had told the story. “Grace obviously didn’t think I was asking to do something with her. She grabbed her bag and coat and wistfully spun around and said she was going on a date.”

Emma kind of knew that something like this was coming. She didn’t know Grace, but from the short time she’d been at St Bart’s she knew the type. While trying to work out what words formed the appropriate response she tidied off the rest of the food and let Sam settle into eating his.

“I’m sorry Sam. That’s rubbish. Did she say anything else, did you get a chance to talk about it. Does she know how you feel?”

Sam didn’t feel ready for this sort of inquisition but he knew Emma was just trying to be helpful. “I thought we were both on the same page. I thought we were dating. So when she told me I just swallowed hard and said have fun, and vanished through the doors to catch the bus. I’ve tried to work out what to do next. Do I just leave it, walk away, and pretend that there was never anything, or do I find a way of confronting her, of telling her how I feel. I must have written about 13 texts which I deleted and never sent.”

“In the end I just asked if we could chat. And we met up this morning.” As Sam went on with this tale Emma just wished he could put him out of his misery. She wanted to tell him to be done with her, to walk away and not to worry about her. To remove any vestige of feelings that he might have, and move one. She knew that it was not as easy as that in real life, and she had a hunch it was about to get a whole lot more painful.

“I could muster none of the usual easy small talk when we had met up this morning. I’d been waiting for a while, and when she arrived, all the awkwardness that I fear came back. I had nothing to say, so I just went for it.

“I said to Grace, ‘I was a bit surprised when you said you were going on a date last night’. It took her a while, but just as she was about to respond, I carried on, ‘I really like you, and I, well, I kind of thought that we were, you know, almost dating.’” Sam caught his breath before he continued to retell his tale of woe.

“She had this guilty look as she started to answer me, she said: ‘I shouldn’t have said I was going on a date yesterday, it wasn’t very discreet, it had been arranged for me, and it is nothing to do with you and me’, I almost got made then, but somehow I mustered the restraint to let her go on. ‘I like hanging out with you, you’re fun, and interesting, but, it’s just that I don’t fancy you in the secular sort of way.’”

“What’s the secular sort of fancying someone?” Emma asked the inevitable question, “does it mean that she loves you as a Christian brother?”

“She actually started to say something like that, but managed to stop herself, perhaps as she realised how ridiculous it would sound. I probably shouldn’t of, but I kept asking her questions, I wanted to get to the bottom of how she was thinking. I asked if she’d have said yes if I asked her to hang out again, to do something together, just the two of us, and then she said yes. But then I said, well, can I ask you out on a date, and she said no, she ‘thought that was perhaps not wise’, so what’s the difference? Just because you call something a date, it doesn’t suddenly make it any different.”

Sam looked at Emma as she started to collect his plate despite the remnant of food that remained. She smiled and raised her eyebrows and walked towards the sink, and as she returned sat back down. “Sam, the thing is, it seems like Grace didn’t realise that you like her in the way that you do. She was quite happy to hang out with you. Had you done anything to let her know that you liked her?”

“We’d hung out a few times on our own, and yesterday had been specifically organised for just the two of us, I thought I was being pretty clear in my attention towards her, I thought my intentions were clear, but it seems that she just thought we were friends.”

“Bloody friends.” Emma’s language shocked Sam, “They get in the way of everything. To be honest, I’m not sure it’s worth having friends of the opposite sex, maybe it just makes it all a whole lot more complicated.”

“I think you can have opposite sex friends, Alex and I are friends, well, now we are, it took a while to get it all ironed out.”

“Grace probably saw you as a safe person to hang out with. Girls like to have guys who they can get a bit of attention from without it needing the commitment, and guys can be like that too. Honestly, Sam, you’re like that with Alex, you like the fact that you can hang out with an attractive girl, you like the fact that you can offload your problems. You like the emotional support that it provides. Even though you know that it’s going nowhere. Or maybe you don’t maybe you are holding out that at some point in the future it will all be different, that her affections will have changed, that she will have been moved towards you. Her satisfaction with friendship replaced with an attraction not present before.

“But is that going to happen right now? She can get as much of you as she wants, and you’re going to carry on giving it to her, because think you are honoured by the fact she chooses to use you as her emotional dumping ground, that’s not a privilege, it’s borderline abusive behaviour.”

Emma finished the flush of anger fuelled rhetoric that had been building up Sam had laid out is misadventures. She knew that she’d just thrown a lot of things out at Sam, and most of it was anger towards Alex. She’d seen how her brother screwed himself up over her, how he desperately wanted her to want him, so took the meagre scraps off the table that she offered.

“I know you don’t like Alex, but this is not about her, it’s about Grace.”

“No it’s not, it’s about you. It’s about how you try to get close to girls but cannot convey your interest so you end up being a basket case.

“This is harsh, but no one else is going to say this to you. You need to stop letting your self be used, you need to know what you want and decide to get it. If you really like Grace, then you need to man up and ask her out, and be completely up front about how you feel. But if you’re really still cut up about Alex, if you’re not ready to define your affections toward anyone else because somewhere in the back of your mind you are hoping that things might be different between the two of you. Then that’s what you’ve got to sort out first.

Sam was shell shocked. He loved his sister, the two of them had become particularly close after they both became Christians, it was a minor source of solace in a family that didn’t really understand. He also knew she had a bit of a temper, and that she was silver tongued when she needed to be. But he’d never been on the end of it. He felt drained from the barrage of words and ideas she had hurled at him. Yet he wasn’t inclined towards being defensive, because a lot of what Emma had said made sense.

He slowly begun to respond. “Alex is complicated, and yes it affected how I thought about Grace. Not really on the surface, but I think somewhere, somehow I was holding back. But I don’t think I want to pursue anything with Grace, she doesn’t like me like I like her.” Sam gasped at how pathetic he sounded, “I think I just need to move on.”

Something had been troubling Emma throughout this tale, Sam had never been very proactive when it came to pursuing relationships, yet here he was in the vortex of two complex and dysfunctional arrangements. “Sam, what’s prompted all this? You suddenly seem pretty keen to have a girlfriend.”

“Well, I’ve always been on the lookout, but I’ve probably become a little more attuned to what’s going on. Also, Holland Park are pretty keen that their leaders are married. I hadn’t realised, but they only let married couples lead their Bible study groups.”

“So what happens if you don’t? They can’t just get rid of you for not being married?”

“No, but I’m only the apprentice, if I want to work for the church longer term and have any sort of responsibility it’ll be a bit of a problem. Adam made this pretty clear last week when I sat in on the training for the Bible study leaders, that it was a privilege to be allowed to observe.”

Emma had been toying with a thought for at least part of the evening, she couldn’t decide if it was fair on Sam, or fair on Kathy, but she decided it was time to intervene. “Why don’t I set you up on a date? You know Kathy don’t you?” Sam didn’t actually, they had never met, but he’d heard plenty about her. “I think the two of you should go on a date,” Emma declared.

“Does Kathy know anything about this?”

“No, but I’m sure she’ll be interested, she’s generally pretty easygoing.” Emma perhaps should have checked before she made the grand offer but she reckoned the chances of Sam taking her up were pretty slim.

Sam shrugged his shoulders and with a resigned expression nodded,”Why not, you set it up and tell me where we’re going. Maybe all dating should be done this way, takes a lot of the stress away.”

 

 

 

Kathy and Emma had decided on a whim to spend the summer in France. When they left all they had planned was a train ticket and a return flight two months later. What they were to do in between was meant to be an adventure.

Emma thought about this as she tried to settle into life in London. She couldn’t quite work out if it was the beginnings of a new depth of friendship or the ebbing away of a once close bond as they moved onto a new stage of life. Two months is a long time to spend with one person, and that was a difficult discovery to come to terms with.

Before they set off all the talk had been of adventure and discovery, of excitement of creativity. They’d even joked about writing a book together, writing in English and French and illustrated with scenes from their travels telling the tales of what they had done. This hadn’t happened. The days and the weeks and the things that they did were all good and fun and interesting. But somehow, the cumulative affect had been slightly disappointing.

Emma could fully understand why when she decided to come home a week earlier Kathy stayed on alone. Although Emma did feel somewhat duty bound to return for a week with the family before Sam moved to London. She had not got used to him insisting on being referred to as Samuel, hard to change twenty odd years of what you call your brother she reasoned. It also struck her as slightly odd that he needed to go by his full name. The church he was working for, she’s visited a few times over the past two years and they didn’t seem too weird, albeit not what she would choose, but this she found odd in any conceivable understanding.

That had made the decision to come to London a little harder as she knew he wouldn’t really understand. When she got home she announced that she was going to move to London, her parents thought it was rather sweet that she wanted to be with her brother and naturally assumed she’d go to his church. Neither assumption was true, as her wanting to live in London had nothing to do with Sam and she’d made clear to him already she would be attending St Bart’s. Her parents had been very confused by all this, almost as much as when Sam had tried to explain why Holland Park Baptist Church had added (Continuing) to its name.

She had nearly backed out of coming to London at the last minute because of Kathy, and she struggled to articulate even in her head why she was reluctant to live with her. They had lived together for the last year in Durham, that was why they assumed they would get on well enough to avoid strangling each other as they made their way through France. But it was different, being alone together in a foreign country was different that living in a house with other people as part of a social group that never quite settled down. The first week of their trip and gone exactly as expected, as they took in the sights of Paris, went up the Eiffel Tower, down the Seine and through the Arc de Triumph.

Emma supposed it came down to money in the end. They had disagreed on where they would stay and how they would travel. When they planned it in the tea rooms of Durham they had spoken excitedly of walking from one village to the next, taking six weeks to cover the nearly 400 miles they would need to traverse to make their return flight. They would stay in barns they found along the route, gently and politely impose themselves on villagers too shell shocked that a tourist was visiting their settlement to find the words to turn down their request for accommodation.

It had been Emma’s parent’s who had expressed the most concern about this idyllic proposal. They had insisted she take a credit card to use in case of emergencies. Kathy had not quite been so excited at this plan to embrace the rural side of France, especially to spend six weeks travelling by foot. But she also knew that Emma could not afford to pay for the hotel, or even hostel costs on top of transport. So they settled into the walk. Emma still rued the day she told of her parents’ concern. Maybe the conversation had just dried up. Maybe there were less visually aesthetic surroundings to distract them. But she let slip that she had her parents’ credit card.

“So do I,” exclaimed Kathy, “That means we can have a bit more fun, try out somewhere else to stay. We could get the train and visit some other places before we get to Avignon.”

“It’s for emergencies, not for upgrading where we stay. You’re okay with what we’re doing? The place we’re going to stay tomorrow is beautiful, I think we should take a day off to rest and enjoy it.” Emma knew that despite not having any more money that Kathy thought she had before, the possibility of splurging on some comparative luxuries would crop up again and again.

Money had always been a bit of an issue between them. At Durham it hid away most of the time, only rearing its head when it came to shopping for ball gowns or Emma ducking out of the ski trip. As Emma thought back, that had been one of the most difficult moments and they’d recovered from that. It was not that Kathy didn’t care, just that she didn’t grasp that she was okay not having buckets of money, but needed everyone else to be okay with it too. Offering to pay for the trip to Val de Trios was mighty generous but hugely problematic, what would she say if asked how she afforded it, there was no part time job to pretend she’d been working overtime, or a generous grandparent doting on her only grand daughter.

And now they had both come to London their differences were never so evident. Kathy could wistfully talk of her plans for the future, and not worry about where the money came from. Whereas Emma had no safety net. Moving to London was a risk, she knew that making it as an artist was not going to be easy, even with the exhibitions under her belt she needed something that would give her a kick start. But art was never going to pay the bills, and Kathy barely understood that. Emma wanted a job that would not take it all out of her, but where she’d have enough time to get on with her real work.

It was just a few days after arriving in London, in fact, straight after her first visit to St Bart’s, that she saw the recruiting poster outside Leon. Kathy urged to hurry up because they were falling behind the gaggle descending on some generic central London pub and its unsuspecting landlord, but Emma scribbled the number down before skipping along to catch up.

If Kathy hadn’t moved to London at the same time, Emma wondered if she might have thought again about whether to go to Holland Park with Sam. It was only really the comfort in having someone to go with, someone to ensure that you were not alone that really made her mind up for her. She wouldn’t have known anyone else at Holland Park, and presumably Sam would not be available to stay with her through the service.

St Bart’s was a bit different from what she’d been used to in the past, while it was part of the Church of England Emma wasn’t entirely sure her parents would see it that way. At least when they visited Holland Park they could put on their suits, Sunday best had a far more flexible interpretation at St Bart’s which together with the songs, volume, and occasional pyrotechnic embellishment to illustrate a particularly important part of a sermon. It didn’t quite fit the image of a nice quaint Church of England service.

The most incredible unusual and disorientating part of it all was the social events that they arranged. That first Sunday she had literally been press ganged into joining a crowd at the pub for lunch, and perhaps what shocked her most was that the church paid the bill. She’d been used to church being pretty stingy, finding any excuse it could to avoid parting with a penny, but here was a church that didn’t flinch at paying for her half pint of cider as well as for the food. If it wasn’t for Kathy Emma thought she might have bailed after week one, and looked for somewhere in between, something more amenable to her tastes. A service which didn’t make her freak out, and with people who were not quite so friendly. 

As Emma made her way to Leon she couldn’t stop trying to work out what was wrong with people being friendly. When she first walked into the church she thought she knew what to expect, her church back in Durham thought of itself as lively and friendly. She wondered if when she returned she’d have to inform them that in the grand scheme of things it was more like a mausoleum than a lively church. Maybe it was the doughnuts they handed round during the interval, maybe it was the preacher wearing shorts, but most of all she thought it was the rock concert worship that threw her off balance.

Yet despite all her hesitations, Emma liked it. It was what she needed, something to keep her distracted to stop her fretting about the non existent artistic career she was intent on fostering. And there were plenty of young people around. After spending every holiday going to church with Sam she decided that other people within a decade of her age was an absolute must.

Even after just a couple of weeks she’d picked up that people liked to have a gentle poke making fun of the church and its practices. Rather abruptly, and to be honest Emma felt, inappropriately her small group started suggesting who they might set her up with. Suddenly the whole room had descended into something faintly resembling a very good natured squabble as they suggested that as she was so new why should she get the pick of the boys.

For Emma this was all a bit foreign, she was private, almost puritanical, about her romantic interests. So to have a gang of almost complete strangers conspiring, and then arguing whether she deserved their conspiratorial intents was incomprehensibly unusual.

But the thing that she definitely agreed with was their assessment of the competition she had to get a guy in the church. Certainly in her small group, of the eight single people, only two of them were guys. And although she was not inclined to jump to rash judgements, these two particular guys would not score particularly highly.

Was that the problem? Emma wondered, that the church just didn’t have enough guys and those there were tended to be rather tawdry. It must be quite a problem she thought for the church had taken it upon themselves to set up special date nights to get people together. That was not really how she thought it she work. All a bit functional, turn up, wait in line, move a long, give them marks, and decide which ones you want. It was not what matched up to the romantic ideals that Emma strove for. Or more pointedly, hope that others strove for in their pursuit of her.

It had been an unusually difficult dilemma this morning for Emma as she decided what to wear. Usually an interview demanded smart clothes, and the rest of the time she did her best to fit the bohemian artist image that others had perfected at immense expense but she replicated with a stylistic lack of effort. She’d tried to hit it somewhere in between, casual but neat. The downside of her apparel anxieties was that it had deprived her of a coat, and she ducked into Spitalfield’s Market just as the rain intensified and prompted the rivers running through the pavement

Fortunately she was only off to meet Sam later, otherwise she might have been more concious of the  effects of the rain. If she was going to enter the ring and compete with the countless, more attractive, and apparently more hardened girls at St Bart’s she realised that not caring what she looked like might have to take a rest. Emma caught herself in the middle of her train of thought, because it was not that she didn’t care how she looked. She wanted to look good, and gave thought to what she wore. It was simply that she didn’t hold a great deal to the categories that others would apply to her dress. She knew what she liked, and wore what she liked. It was not for anyone else that she made these decision.

But with a market place as competitive as the one she had entered she thought it perhaps a little conformity to what attracted attention was deserved. Kathy did not have the same challenge, not only could she afford to buy the faux charity shop items all the rage, but she insisted that her motives were the same as Emma’s, to wear what she wanted, not with an iota of credence to what others thought.

Until the summer Emma had never had any reason to question Kathy’s integrity, assuming that she had a natural style and ease that she lacked. It was a couple of weeks into their meanderings through the countryside that Kathy came down one morning into the spacious breakfast room in the farmhouse that so kindly had taken them in when they arrived after dark, with the story that became a well worn friend of chaos and confusion, and the need of two damsels for shelter for the night. Kathy was wearing a trouser and jumper combination that few Icelandic blacksmiths would consider fashionable.

Aghast, Emma failed to find the words to respond, but Kathy caught the meaning. “Why should I care what I look like, no one important will see me today.” Which was perhaps true, if a little hurting to Emma, she did not expect any effort but it pulled the veil away from the lens through which Kathy determined importance.

They had talked around it while on the road, dipping into and out of why they wore what they wore. Emma couldn’t decide if she felt betrayed by the inauthenticity of her friend. So many times she had suggest that she was wearing what she wanted, but all the time it was for the attention of a guy, or in the absence of any particular target, for guys in general. Emma had tried to do it before, mimicking the choices of those she had followed Hollywood in dubbing the plastics. But it didn’t really work and any confidence that Emma had in the way she looked plummeted through the flaw. 

As Emma made her way into Leon and sought out the manager she pushed this out of her mind with a the continued realisation that she was going to struggle with this unconventional rat race. At least, very unconventional within the church.

As she walked into the cafe her eyes scoured the room, she assumed he would already be here. Her attentiveness had begun before she reached the entrance as she flitted her gaze through the windows and failed to find her subject among the crowded throngs.

This was okay, Alex thought to herself, it would make a change for her to be the one waiting for Samuel. But it was anything but acceptable, Alex hated the awkwardness of being on her own, which was especially unfortunate as she had a tendency to spend more time alone than in company. And she was never quite sure if that was the way that she wanted it, or if it was a unhappy product of some antisocial gene she had inherited via a great aunt on her mother’s side.

Her time was not particularly precious, but there was still an in built need to occupy every moment of it. So time spent in a chair, with a latte, and doing nothing, was not something she appreciated. That trial was still to come as she joined the queue taking advantage of every possible delay, not wishing to be abandoned with no clear sense of activity any sooner than absolutely necessary.

Alex eventually forced her way to an empty chair and and table and contemplated the next frustration that might occur. Before her sat her drink, waiting to be drunk. She looked back up at the queue, still snaking round the counter and realised that even were he to arrive at this very moment she would have pretty much finished her drink before he joined her. For a moment she wondered if he might have the sensitivity to her anxiety and skip the drink. As this unusual train of thought pulsed through her mind she also realised she had chosen her seat poorly so swiftly switched sides to maximise her observance of the entrance. Not that this would make him arrive any earlier, and it also presented her with yet another challenge, how to watch out for him coming down the road while minimising the chance that he might catch her starring into the street betraying her visual enquiries as to his presence.

It was a wonder that all these people managed to navigate their way through this obstacle course to ensure that two people were in the same place at the same time to consume warm beverages together. It was also a fairly typical response from Alex. She found that she relied on other people to provide her social stimulus, but got agitated when their offers dried up. Social norms were an odd thing, they helped others navigate these complicated waters but for her they were another obstacle that prevented an easy life.

Alex realised it was perhaps unusual to give this much attention to the minutiae of social interaction. And it also immediately occurred to her that this very thought process might contribute to the complexities she encountered when trying to build this unusual thing called friendship. Which was why she was glad Samuel found it just as hard, not that he’d ever admit as much but it comforted her to know that someone else was in the same boat.

By the time he eventually made it through the door the queue at the counter had subsided and he found his way to her table. She couldn’t decide what his lack of acknowledgement meant as he got his drink without even a nod of the head to show he’d seen her.

“Sorry I’m so late, you wouldn’t believe what I’ve had to do today.” Usually when struck with a fresh challenge Samuel relished it, so his demeanour suggested something else. More likely boredom Alex felt, but that would not explain his delay. He slowly disentangled his bags and coat to make his way into the armchair. “I’ve been to Brighton and back this afternoon.”

“Why?” Alex dutifully enquired, knowing their conversation was going to take a while to get round to what she wanted to talk about.

“The reverend doctor Adam decided that he wasn’t sure he could make it from our church to where he is speaking on Sunday afternoon so he dispatched me on a trial run.” He paused for breath, grasped his cup, tried to sip and failing to cope with the heat swiftly picked up his flow. “The most ridiculous part of it was I was told to walk from the station to the church because he didn’t want any unnecessary expense on Sunday and needed an accurate time.”

Alex got the point, but thought it best to let him spell it out, “Surely the cost of two train tickets is more expensive?”

“Absolutely, and there’s no way he’d be unable to make it unless he decides to take a unicycle to economise further.”

“The church are paying for your train ticket?”

Samuel suddenly discovered a sense of dread had descended. “I sincerely hope so, they’ve said they’ll pay for my travel expenses on top of my allowance so I’ll just add it to that.” But Samuel was far less confident than he made out. After less than two weeks working with the reverend doctor he’d come to realise that he should be surprised by very little. And when money was concerned, today’s little escapade should have pointed him to this conclusion before Alex prompted him.

It took a while to realise that there was little else to say on this. It frustrated Samuel that even after knowing each other for two years there was still this acute awkwardness between them on occasions. She was grateful that Samuel took the hint and moved the conversation on. “How have you been? Has term started well?”

Alex let his ignorance slide. Holidays were not so plentiful any longer, since she’d started her PhD Alex had found that everyone assumed the life was just like any other student, lazy holidays, the odd lecture scattered around and work that was supposed to be done, but if skipped without any serious repercussions. “Well the students are back so I’ve got a couple of classes to take.” In the end she couldn’t resist the chance for a corrective nudge. “But there’s still so much research to do, I’m not anywhere near where I need to be. Other than that, not much is happening.”

Samuel could never get his head round this. There was clearly plenty going on, she’d asked to see him to chat and now she was stonewalling him.

“It’s just that, well, I’ve had a bit of a weird couple of weeks.” Alex grabbed her cup and finished it off in a single gulp, composing herself slowly. “Why are men such trouble?”

He had nowhere to go with this. Nothing to offer, the past was too complicated to make this a straightforward question.

“Some of them are just wimps, most are confused, a few are freaks, and there’s just not enough of them.”

Samuel was not sure where he fit into this. And couldn’t work out if this was an invitation to defend himself, or a hint to stay quiet because anything would make it worse.

“And which am I?”

“Um, you don’t count.” Which was probably the worst of all. “Oh, I don’t mean it like that,” Alex corrected herself rather belatedly, “it’s just I don’t think of you like that, you know that, I’m talking about other people. I’ve tried so hard over the summer to work out what’s going on, but every time I think I’m starting to understand, it all changes.”

“It’s mostly that guys just don’t seem to ever ask girls out. I’ve not been asked out on a single date in the past year.”

This was going to be difficult. Samuel knew that he couldn’t leave this hanging in the ether, it needed some sort of response. He also wondered exactly which girls she was talking about, maybe she was right, but he couldn’t understand why. That though, was the problem, he was not an impartial observer.

“Alex. What am I supposed to say to this? You suggest that I’m not even worth counting and you seem to want my advice in confirming to you what a pile of junk guys are. I can do that if you want, I can call us all a bunch of wimps and freaks, I can say that we’ve not even got the balls to cross the road. I can make up whatever sort of crap you like if it’s going to make you feel better. But I’ve got a feeling it won’t.

“You want something that I can’t help you with. Especially if you won’t tell me what’s going on. I’ve tried to stay out of interfering, I don’t want to do anything that’s what you’d describe as inappropriate, but you’ve hardly given me any choice. Last year I told you how I felt, I asked you on a date, and now you come and complained that no one else has asked you since. If it’s being asked out which you’re after then I’m sure I can oblige. But I don’t think that’s what you want either.”

“Sam, I’m sorry. I just hadn’t got anyone else to talk to. I’ve missed talking to you. And you’ve been a gent this past year, and I’m an idiot. This is what’s happened: basically I liked a guy, I thought he liked me, but when push came to shove he walked away. And in my definition that makes him a jerk. That’s not you.

“To begin with I thought there was nothing going on, I’d make sure I turned up when he was around, I even started going to the morning service because I knew he’d be there. To be honest, I even changed what I wore, don’t laugh.” Maybe Samuel had failed to catch the smirk as she said that. “I had pretty much convinced myself that he wasn’t interested, I made sure we were alone every now and then, making sure I was walking home alone so he’d feel duty bound to walk with me. And nothing. But then he went to America over the summer and we messengered each other pretty much every day. The first Sunday he was back he gently turned me around by the elbow as he went for his doughnut.”

Samuel thought this last encounter was stretching the bounds of credibility but let her go on. “I was waiting for what I was sure was just around the corner, but it never came. So last week I again made sure we walked home together and asked him straight if he fancied me.”

The shop was thankfully nearly empty because as she came to her peroration tears had started to form and edge out of their ducts and shimmer down her cheeks. “He said he didn’t. That he had just started seeing someone he’d met online. He said he had no idea I liked him, for God’s sake, he’d lent me his jumper, what kind of mixed signal is that! I nearly slapped right there, I should have waited to ask until we were at least close to home. I had to struggle through them the never ending minutes as we picked up our pace to make it home before the awkwardness killed us both.”

“I guess, it’s hard for him to know whether someone’s interested, you said you didn’t know if he was, maybe he was just trying to be friendly.

“It’s not very nice right now, I know, but in a couple of weeks I’m sure you’ll be glad that he said no.” This was not what Samuel should have said. But the tears were falling to fast for it to make much of a difference.

“I want to help you if I can. I know you’re hurting, it’s hard. But maybe it’s a tad too soon to write all guys off.”

Alex tried to breathe deeply now very aware of what a scene she’d made. “It’s not your fault. I just needed to have a bit of a rant.”

The tears shifted to an uneasy laughter and Samuel took this as his que, “You know what, maybe it’s time to try something a bit different. My sister’s just started going to this church, it’s a bit different to Holland Park, but they run date-my-mate. Seems they want to get everyone married off, it’s open to anyone, maybe you should go?”

“With you?”

Samuel hadn’t thought this far ahead. “Well, yes, but the whole point is that you go with a friend who you don’t want to date, and you find someone for each other.”

The keys came out of the jeans, the purse out of her jacket pocket and hit the black tray proffered before her. She stepped forward still bleary eyed and progressed through the scanner and the noise was unbearable. Maybe after a full night’s sleep and without the anxieties of what lay ahead she would not have reacted so badly.  

The guard gestured towards her belt and gently encouraged her to step back. Inclined to swear at the guard in one of several languages she slunk back and removed her belt, and boots were now demanded to be taken off as well. Kathy had suddenly taken a step or two up the register of potential terror suspects at the parochial airport outside Avignon.

The months on the road and country lanes across France had not endeared her any more to the culture. Which was a bit of a problem, learning languages had seemed like a great way of travelling the world but maybe Kathy didn’t like the world she had envisioned travelling quite as much as she had hoped. Suddenly the leafy suburbs of Surrey were a dream, but a dream tinged with nagging questions that had been conveniently avoided throughout the summer. She knew that after a few days grace they would return, and with a more urgent tone. Manifested mainly through the quiet concern of her parents, and generous suggestions of friends, various options would be presented to her. And right now she had considered them all and mentally written them all off already. It was not that they didn’t mean well, but they were thinking about it all the wrong way round.

The extra week she had stayed after Emma had left had mostly been about not coming home. She’d seen all the sites there were to see and spoken enough French to convince herself that she had achieved her purpose. But the seven days had given her too much time to think. Especially as she sat in the ramshackle farmhouse across the river from the historic centre. It had seemed quaint when they were together, it was also incredibly cheap, far less than the hostels five minutes away. But the quietness of autumn drawing in had drained the last customers away and after consecutive evenings alone with the owners she started wandering back into town at night to find an escape from the tedium.

Kathy supposed it was fair enough for Emma to want a few days with her brother after a summer apart and before a job consumed him once again. But the hassle of changing flights to return together had seemed too much and the alteration fees and non refundable deposits all made it seem an unnecessary waste of money. And money was something she didn’t have. It was always difficult to explain to people that she had no money, they always assumed she was part of the Surrey Set, born ready to live a life of luxury and extravagance. But that never quite matched up with her life.

She had made it through security desperate to find a cup of coffee to shake of the weariness that was haunting her. The hourly bus out of the town to arrive at an airport not yet open. Waiting for the check in staff to arrive for work, manually changing the flight boards which remained from yesterday’s flight to Paris. The inane questioning, the pointless suspicion, all conspiring to make the trip home as interminable as possible. Kathy found the lounge, or Formica chairs and tables, arranged around a bar which few self respecting hotels would place in their bedrooms, and was not surprised to find that no one was there.

Finally the bar opened and caffeine was forthcoming, from the check in assistant. This was the most comical excuse for an airport she had yet encountered. Kathy realised that perhaps despite the rural privations of the summer or the development tourism she had experienced on trips to Africa she liked her comforts. It was the expectation of what an airport should be that shook her, especially one in France. Had this been a bush landing strip in Ecuador she would have had no problem. She said this to herself despite never having been anywhere near Ecuador never mind a bush landing strip. As she ruefully considered her coffee as actually rather good Kathy granted herself a little chuckle at the prospect of the surly security guard turning out to double up as the pilot.

Kathy had hardly spoken to anyone during the past week. She was not a shy person by nature but the limited social contact and the pointlessness of any interaction when she was about to leave made her mind up for her. So when the young French chap sauntered over to her table sat down and started speaking she resisted the urge to switch to French for his ease and hoped over a few pleasantries he would go on his way. The problem was that unless he worked here, which he didn’t, then he too was on his way to Gatwick.

“Can I use this seat”. She silently wondered what he would use it for but politely assented with a universal nod of the head and picked up the coffee cup to preclude any immediate conversation. It was at times like this she wished she was a little ruder. There were plenty of free tables, so she could have suggested he used one of the numerous other chairs and tables on offer. But she didn’t and he sat down and just as Kathy reached into her bag to retrieve her book and provide further insulation against prolonged conversation he launched into another faltering sentence. “Have you had a holiday? Is it that you had a good time?”

Convinced that she could not ignore him any longer she carefully chose her words so as to not offer any unnecessary encouragement. “Yes, I have been in France all summer, mostly travelling with a friend but she went home last week”. But Kathy had committed a fatal error, one she would remember in the future: when trying to stop a conversation do not leave any unanswered details.

“Where have you travelled? What was your favourite place? I love Paris, did you go to Paris?” If it wasn’t happening to her she would have laughed at the cliché riven questions. Instead she switched to polite and informative hoping that perhaps someone else might join the conversation. After wishing to be alone it was now safety in numbers she sought.

“I started off in Calais, travelled into Paris and stayed there for a week and did all of the usual tourist activities. Then we mostly walked through the country staying at villages and in farmhouses. We got to Avignon two weeks ago and, this is a city I really like, but I am ready to go home now.”

Kathy paused and then did the dutiful thing, “Do you live in Avignon?”

“Yes, I live in Avignon, but I am travelling to London to see my friend who is studying.” Kathy caught herself before she tried to work out if he was referring to a girlfriend. It seemed a little odd to be travelling at the start of term to visit someone who had presumably just left, to see a girlfriend made a little more sense, it also would have provided the reassurance against the suspicion that had been lingering in her mind for the past few minutes that he was trying it on.

“What should we do in London, what are the best places to visit?” This what not a question she was well equipped to answer, never really into tourist attractions she had tagged along to the day trips to London to get out of school for the day, but struggled to muster much enthusiasm.

“There are lots of museums and places to visit. The Tower of London is my favourite,” Kathy decided on the spot, “where are you staying?” This was a twofold device, firstly it steered the conversation away from something where she would only disappoint, but also reckoned she could have another go at finding out if he was visiting a girlfriend.

At first Kathy thought he had perhaps not understood, but then thought for a horrified second that her unprompted question could be considered an offer of accommodation. Fortunately he found his voice, seemingly only hesitating to decide how to translate into English what he wanted to say, “I will stay on my friends floor.” This did not answer Kathy’s question in quite the way she had hoped. She also realised that she had given far to much thought to this rather insignificant conversation. But it occurred to her that if it was a girlfriend then this was a rather strange arrangement, either they would sleep together, or surely he would stay elsewhere. She knew of no couples who would be happy sharing a room but insist that one gets the carpet.

“This London Tower, it is good? Do you have a bit of paper so I can write it down to remember?” Kathy was suddenly aware of the power of her words, she’d never been, what if it was dreadful, anyway, this seemed like a way to end the conversation on a good note. She rooted into her bag and failing to find any paper aside from her precious Moleskin notebook, which this situation did not warrant the desecration of tearing a page out of, she eventually landed on a card which brought a wry chuckle which she failed to suppress. In her remarkable optimism at the start of the summer before she embarked on her little expedition Kathy had got some card printed with her details on to hand out to anyone she thought might be able to offer her a job as she travelled through France. She scribbled ‘Tower of London’ on the back of one and handed it over.

The card flicked over as it crossed the table, “Kathy Lawrence”, he said as he turned it over and thanked her, “my name is Sebastian Gillette and it is very nice to meet you, thank you.” With that he slowly picked up his bag as the solitary flight leaving Avignon was now called for departure, and Sebastian made his way to the gate. Kathy was completely flummoxed. Not only did this strange French man know her name but she realised that card she so thoughtlessly handed over also had her phone number and email on. This could all be unnecessary worrying she thought as she made her way, thankful for the few passengers now between her and Sebastian, to the plane.