The Buried Circle. Jenni Mills

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СКАЧАТЬ a table. You don’t mind making your own way back?’

      He hands me the list, and embraces me with a double air kiss. Behind him, a vast black 4×4 draws up beneath the Omen-style portico. Out steps Steve’s father, the ITN foreign correspondent, wearing dark glasses.

      Wyrd.

      He stares straight at me, over Daniel’s shoulder, taking off the glasses, as if he recognizes me. He has Steve’s eyes. Then his gaze slides over me, and he turns away into the building, like I’m nothing after all.

      As I run up the escalator to the concourse under the sooty vault of Paddington, after detouring via Oxford Street to dispel paranoia by buying myself new jeans, I’m sure I’ll miss the train. If I don’t make this one, I’ll be waiting hours because my cheap ticket isn’t valid in peak period.

      Platform four. Three minutes. Can do it if I run…

      The doors are slamming but I hop into one of the first-class coaches and wheeze my way down the train. The standard-class carriage beyond the buffet and the one after that are packed, but further down the train, passengers thin out and, joy of joys, there’s a table with only one person at it, head down and absorbed in a pile of printouts. I wriggle out of my coat, plonk it and my bags on the aisle seat, shuffle across towards the window and–

      Something cold and liquid explodes in my chest. It can’t be.

      My buttocks, hovering an inch above the seat, squeeze instinctively to lift me out of it and, if possible, off the train before it leaves.

      He looks up. Fuck. It is. Fuck.

      He looks, if anything, more shocked than I feel.

      ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I–I’ll–Just realized. Wrong train. Need the later one.’

      ‘Bollocks. We’re moving. Sit down. How the hell are you?’

      Grey eyes, the North Sea. Too late. Drowned. Turned to stone. Lost.

      And, dammit, Mr Cool, acting now like nothing happened, like we never shared a bed, let alone the experience of nearly dying in that helicopter. The train starts sliding out of the station. My bottom, with a will of its own, slowly sinks onto the seat opposite him.

      ‘Ed.’

      The sun slants in through the train windows and sparks highlights in his dark brown hair. The cut’s shorter, though somehow messier: he must have tried gelling it into spikes but instead it appears unbrushed, and his eyes seem muddy and tired–or could I really have forgotten what he looks like?

      ‘You look…different,’ he says.

      ‘Do I?’ Renowned for my sparkling wit and ready quips.

      ‘More…substantial’

      ‘Fatter. Thanks.’

      ‘No. Actually I’d say you’re thinner. I meant, somehow tougher…’

      ‘Great. Older.’

      ‘More confident. Come on. Stop doing yourself down.’

      ‘Then stop paying me such overwhelming compliments.’

      He looks older, too, than I remember. He must be ten years my senior, at least, in his mid-thirties, maybe knocking forty. As for the attraction between us–well, it’s a scent I dimly remember on the air, but now vanquished by a railway carriage reeking of microwaved baconburger and diesel fumes and frizzling brake linings as we slow for a signal on the track ahead. Or, at least, that’s what I tell myself.

      ‘You never returned my calls,’ he says.

      ‘I didn’t think it would be a good idea.’

      An awkward silence, as we both mull over why it wasn’t a good idea. Apart from my not wanting to be involved again with a married man, any real chance of a relationship went down with the helicopter.

      ‘So what…’ he starts, same moment as I say: ‘Have you…’

      ‘You first.’

      ‘I was going to ask, what have you been doing?’ he says. ‘I mean–what have you been doing with your life?’

      ‘I’m back in television again. With a Bristol-based independent. Been up for a meeting with Channel 4.’

      ‘Great.’ He actually looks impressed.

      ‘You?’

      ‘Oh, various stuff. The MA, mostly. Did I tell you I’ve been doing a part-time master’s in landscape archaeology? On my way now to a job interview.’

      ‘You’re not working with Luke any more?’

      ‘No.’ He props his chin on his hand, looks out of the window. ‘He…well, not to put too fine a point on it, he let me go. Company went bust anyway.’

      Dangerous ground. ‘I need a coffee,’ I say. ‘Can I fetch you one from the buffet?’

      ‘No, let me get them.’ He levers himself upright, feeling in his pockets for change. ‘Bugger. Meant to stop at the cashpoint…’

      ‘Here, I’ve a twenty needs changing.’ As he takes it from me, our eyes meet.

      ‘I kept calling you because I wanted to be sure you were OK…’ he begins.

      ‘I was fine. Well, maybe a bit wobbly to start with, but you know…’

      ‘Yes. Me too.’

      He lurches away down the carriage, long-legged in a pair of neat black trousers and a fine wool jacket that seems absurdly formal next to my memories of him in T-shirt and khaki combats, at the controls of the helicopter.

      Interview clothes. He said he was going for a job interview. He’s doing an MA in landscape archaeology.

      No. Not that job. Please.

      An impossible coincidence. Couldn’t be. Could it?

      Wyrd. Never trust the bloody web of connectedness. ‘Ed!’

      Several other people in the carriage peer round their seats to see what’s up. There must have been a note of panic in my voice.

      He turns round and starts walking back.

      ‘Where are you getting off the train?’

      ‘Swindon.’

      Where Heelis, the National Trust head office, is.

      ‘But didn’t you ask him?’ says Corey. She’s polishing the nozzles on the cappuccino machine again. Maybe it’s one of those neuroses, like constantly washing your hands. ‘Your roots need retinting, by the way. I mean, it might not be the assistant-warden job. You said he’s really a pilot, studying archaeology part-time.’

      ‘Of course I didn’t ask. I jumped off the train at Reading before he СКАЧАТЬ