Brave: How I rebuilt my life after love turned to hate

‘How did that happen?’ I said.

We stared at each other.

I sighed and said, ‘We’ll just have to go around and ask anyone if they’ve got a pound to spare for a taxi. We could easily collect a fiver that way.’

So we split up, Laura going one way, me the other. I saw her out of the corner of my eye over on the other side of the pub, strangers shaking their heads and looking at us bemused as we went from one of them to another. Not that we cared, we were high on vodka and cokes, we didn’t mind if they thought we were two silly girls who’d spent our cab fare home.

Eventually, though, after so many refusals to help, I got bored. I wandered out the front doors of the pub and into the street where the chill in the air made my head spin with alcohol and reminded me I should have brought a jacket. I decided to warm myself up with a cigarette and fished into my handbag for one, and that was the exact moment that I first laid eyes on Anthony Riley. Not that I noticed him then; I wouldn’t have picked him out of a crowd, and of course I didn’t know his name either. There was a group of lads standing just a few feet away from me. I recognised them as mates of my brother Scott.

‘That’s Scott’s sister,’ I heard one or two of them say, and that’s when he looked up.

‘All right?’ he said, lighting his own cigarette beside me. ‘How you doing?’

I noticed him at that moment because his accent was like nothing from round where I lived: there was no Suffolk lilt, he didn’t drop his consonants in the same way as we did, didn’t stretch his vowels. He spoke with a Scottish accent, and, if nothing else, it piqued my interest.

‘I like your accent,’ I said, as I took another drag on my fag and with it lungs full of confidence.

He laughed. ‘Thanks,’ he said, nodding to me with a smile. ‘I’m Riley.’

‘I’m Adele,’ I said. ‘You’re not from round here.’

‘Well done,’ he grinned, as I giggled into my cigarette. ‘I’m from Glasgow, moved here when I was 15.’

I could see he was older than me by a few years. I’d put him at 19 because of the other lads he was with, the ones who were the same age as my brother.

‘Where you off to tonight?’ he asked. ‘Are you coming with us?’

‘Nah, we’re just going home now, but we’ve spent all our taxi money on vodka.’

He laughed again, his green eyes twinkling as he did. His hair was short at the sides, longer on top, spiky, like most of the guys wore it, and he had one tiny hoop earring in his left ear. He was dressed nicely, a blue and red checked shirt, jeans, shoes instead of trainers which meant he was going on to the club. He reminded me of someone famous too, someone from EastEnders, but I couldn’t think who at the time.

He took another drag on his cigarette and I watched the blue smoke curl up into the air around us, and as he did he reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He opened it and pulled out a fiver, then handed it to me.

‘Here you go,’ he said. ‘That should get you home.’

‘Oh God, really?’ I said. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Can’t have you walking home, can we?’

‘Oh thanks so much!’

Laura appeared at my side then, just in time to see me fold the note up and put it into my pocket.

‘I can pay you back if you –’

He tutted and shook his head.

‘Don’t be silly,’ he said. ‘But you can take my number.’

I smiled then and felt something other than the cigarette go to my head and my heart quicken a little inside my chest.

‘OK,’ I said, pulling my phone out of my bag.

His mates looked over at us as I started punching his number in.

‘Come on, Trevor, we’re leaving now,’ one called.

He looked up briefly. ‘Hang on a sec,’ he called to them.

‘Trevor?’

‘Aye, that’s what they call me,’ he said with a smile as if I should know why. ‘From EastEnders? Trevor Morgan. Little Mo’s fella?’

‘Oh, the crazy Scottish guy!’ I said.

‘Yeah, original eh?’

‘Actually, you do look a bit like him.’

He laughed. ‘So are you going to take my number?’

‘Oh yeah,’ I said, quickly, glancing at his friends over his shoulder waiting to leave with him.

He finished giving me it and I saved it under Riley.

‘Thanks again for the fiver,’ I said.

‘Ach, no problem,’ he replied. ‘See you again.’

And then he was gone.

Wait, did he say ‘again’? Or was it ‘around’? And if he said ‘again’, was it like again? Or just something you say. I turned back to Laura. She stood there, eyes wide.

‘He was all right, wasn’t he?’

‘Yeah!’ I laughed, and then I remembered the £5 note in my back pocket that this Scottish knight in shining armour had given us. I whipped it out. ‘Ta dah!’

‘Come on, let’s get a taxi,’ Laura said.

We followed the lads down the road. They were on the other side, and I couldn’t resist watching Riley. They were larking about, bantering with each other, laughing, giving each other the odd playful push off the path, and there was a part of me that wished we were going into the club too. But soon enough we reached the taxi rank, and Laura had given the driver her address. She got in the car, and left the door open for me.

‘Well, come on then!’ she said.

And I tore my eyes away from that Scottish stranger, just in time to see him disappear into the nightclub. Did he say ‘again’, or had he said ‘around’? I already knew which one I preferred.

If only I had known …

When we got back to Laura’s parents, we went through the whole thing again.