‘You were doing so well until the last bit,’ I say, grining back, thinking how attractive this man is, and wondering how on earth they met.
‘Paul was staying in the apartment next to mine,’ Si explains, reading my mind. ‘We met on the first day…’
‘And haven’t been apart since.’ Paul squeezes Si’s arm as he looks at him affectionately, and I feel a jolt of excitement.
Si catches my eye, gives me a half shrug, a big grin and an unsubtle wink, and it’s all I can do not to grab him and twirl him around the Arrivals lounge, so thrilled and proud am I.
And Si looks fantastic. Not that I was expecting anything less, but he looks tanned, healthy, positively glowing, and I know that sun, sea and sand alone haven’t given him this glow, even if the sun was amazingly hot for December.
I grab the trolley and the three of us walk to the car park, leaving Paul in charge of the bags because Si insists on accompanying me to the car park pay machine.
‘Well?’ he hisses, just as soon as we’re out of earshot. ‘Isn’t he gorgeous?’
‘Gorgeous,’ I echo, laughing. ‘I can’t believe you. I mean, I expected you to come back looking all lovely and tanned, but I certainly didn’t expect you to have some beefcake on your arm.’
‘Well, sweets. Neither did I!’ I look at him slyly as I feed the coins into the machine. ‘I swear! I really wasn’t, and wouldn’t you know it, just when I’ve reached the point where a relationship is absolutely, one hundred per cent not what I want or need, I go and meet someone lovely.’
I turn to him slowly. ‘Did I just hear you use the word relationship? Is it time for the onion rings yet?’
‘No,’ Si laughs. ‘It’s not a relationship, but we’ve had an incredible time, and he’s sweet, and bright, and funny, and for the first time in years I haven’t fallen head over heels.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘No, I’m serious, Cath. If anything he’s been the one doing all the chasing. Meanwhile, speaking of chasing. You’re still having sex, aren’t you? It’s written all over your face.’
‘Never mind me, did I just hear you right? You? Playing hard to get? Come on, Si, I know you too well.’ But his face, surprisingly, is serious.
‘I promise you, Cath. I kept telling him I wasn’t interested, but he didn’t want to hear it.’
‘Does he…?’ My sentence tails off, because I’m not sure whether I should be asking this question.
Si shrugs and nods. ‘That’s the thing. I kept saying no, and he kept saying why not, and in the end I just told him, which was bloody scary because even though I kept saying no, I fancied him like you can’t believe, and I knew he wouldn’t want to know after I told him.’
‘And?’
He grins. ‘And I was wrong. He’s fine about it. Says he’d already sort of figured it out.’
‘And?’
Si shoves me playfully. ‘And he’d brought condoms. Thank God.’
I hold up a hand, putting on my best schoolmistress voice. ‘Too much information, Mr Nelson.’ And he laughs. ‘Christ, come on, he’ll think we’ve done a runner,’ and we both rush back to see Paul smiling as we approach.
‘Done the post-mortem,’ Si pants, as we move off towards the car. ‘And you, Paul, will be glad to hear you pass with flying colours.’
‘I don’t remember saying that,’ I say, mock-indignant.
‘You didn’t have to,’ he says triumphantly, and Paul looks at me and shakes his head, as if to say, what can we do.
‘So how’s the great romance coming along?’ It’s Saturday and Si’s just picked me up, on our way to see Lucy.
‘Hmm? Fine,’ Si says, most uncharacteristically.
‘Fine? Fine? What the hell’s fine supposed to mean?’
‘It means it’s fine.’
‘Okay,’ I sigh, wondering why this suddenly feels like trying to get blood out of a stone. ‘Let’s find the simple way of doing this. Are you still seeing him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you still like him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does he still like you?’
‘Yes.’
I hold my breath, then quickly ask (although I already know the answer), ‘Does this mean this is The One?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Cath,’ he says. ‘I hardly know him.’
And it floors me. I mean, what is there to say? This is Si, who always, always falls in love within about five minutes. This is Si, who’s planning a life together after ten.
‘Si? Are you sure you’re feeling all right?’
‘Cath, I have never felt better in my whole life.’
Chapter thirty-two
I haven’t spoken to Portia since that night, but not because I haven’t wanted to. I so valued that night at the Groucho, that night when she reminded me of why we were friends, why I loved her so much, but I didn’t want her to think I was prying, and I didn’t know what to say about Ingrid, so I’ve just avoided the situation altogether.
I’ve thought about her, of course, and thought how strange it is that life should turn out like this, and how Portia is the last person I would have expected to have a relationship with a woman.
I’m sure an amateur psychologist might say that she had been hurt too much, too often by men, but I’m not sure that I agree. Looking back, over the years, I can see that, although everyone fell in love with Portia, it was the women with whom she really bonded.
God, I remember how inseparable we were, how much I worshipped her, and I wonder what I would have done had there ever been a time when our friendship might have progressed to more.
It’s not something I’ve ever thought about before now. Not that it repulses me or offends me, it just never occurred to me, but now, and I know this sounds ridiculous, but now I almost feel rejected, and I keep thinking, how come she never made a pass at me?
And I’ve really tried to think, to remember whether she had, but maybe she hadn’t admitted anything to herself then, maybe they were merely feelings, or fears, that she pushed down until she thought she’d pushed them away.
Lucy says that maybe Ingrid is her first, that it’s not unusual for people to fall in love with someone of the same sex and for that person to be their first and last, but somehow I don’t think that’s the case with Portia.
Would I ask her? I’m not sure. I will always treasure the Portia I knew when I was eighteen, and the friendship we had. And I will always be indebted to her for introducing Si to Eva, for showing him that not only is there a light at the end of the tunnel, but that it burns strong and bright.
But however much I loved her then, however close I felt to her that one night when she explained her affair-that-never-was with Josh, she simply doesn’t have a place in my life any more. She talked of happy endings, and before she came back I always subconsciously thought that I wouldn’t be able to have a happy ending unless Portia was around, but now I think I was wrong.
I think that all those years of thinking about her, talking about her, building her up into something she couldn’t possibly have lived up to, weren’t so much about missing her as about needing to have some kind of ending. In fact, I couldn’t have put it better than Portia put it herself, although she was referring to Josh at the time. Reality could never match the fantasy. That was always the problem, and it was just a question of stopping the fantasy.
Not an ending in the sense that I’m wiping her out of my life again, but an ending in which we both acknowledge the past, forgive one another, and then move on. I realized, that night at the Groucho, that she had forgiven me, but I still needed to forgive her, for walking away from us with barely a backwards glance.