One in a Million

‘Actually, leave your coat,’ I said. ‘Let’s just go.’

In the bright, unforgiving light of a summer’s day, Sam looked downright sickly, his baggy clothes hanging off his tall frame, giving the impression of a consumptive tramp. Blinking into the sun behind his glasses, he followed me through the streets, muttering, huffing and generally making noises you might expect to hear from your grandad’s odd neighbour.

‘It can’t be a lot of fun, sleeping in the office,’ I said as we turned onto the sun-speckled street. ‘Couldn’t you stay with a friend? Family?’

I tilted my head upwards to bask in the blessed rays as Sam shirked away, immediately moving into the shade.

‘I don’t want to be a burden to anyone,’ he replied. ‘My brother is away at the moment. When he gets home next week, I’ll go and stay with him.’

‘You haven’t got a key to your brother’s house?’

Sam shook his head.

‘Why not?’

‘Because I haven’t. My brother and I are very private people,’ he said. ‘As you might have noticed. But probably haven’t.’

‘I still think it’s weird,’ I said, checking the back pocket of my jeans for my debit card. ‘I’ve always had a key to my sister’s house.’

‘He moved last month and he hasn’t had a spare key made yet,’ Sam said. ‘He’s recently divorced.’

‘Oh, well that’s good!’ I said brightly, before immediately correcting myself. ‘I mean, oh, that’s terrible, I’m sorry. I only meant you could help each other through these difficult times. Or something.’

‘Yes, perhaps you could send him a murderous pastry when he gets back from Japan,’ he replied, pausing on the edge of the pavement to look both ways before he crossed. ‘We’re both allergic to penicillin as well, in case you really wanted to do us in.’

I wasn’t entirely sure where we were walking but this was Shoreditch, we’d run into a coffee shop sooner or later, it seemed as if every other building was churning out caffeinated beverages these days. Bike shop slash coffee shop, Pilates studio slash coffee shop, gynaecologist slash coffee shop. You couldn’t move around these streets for coconut milk flat whites. But my plan had more to do with getting him out of his office and seeing if I could loosen him up a bit than it was to caffeinate the shit out of him.

‘Tell me what happened with your girlfriend,’ I said, attempting to drag the conversation back on track. We were still some distance away from matching BFF tattoos. ‘Can I help at all?’

Sam closed his eyes and opened them again as though he half-expected me to have disappeared.

‘I shouldn’t think so,’ he said. ‘I’m really not comfortable talking about these things with someone I don’t even know.’

‘Me?’ I threw my arms out into the air, accidentally slapping a passing bike courier. ‘Open book. My name is Annie, I’m thirty-one, I grew up in South-West London with my mum and my sister. Child of divorce, dad’s remarried, not keen on the new wife. I’m a Libra, favourite colour is blue, trainers over heels but boots over trainers. Sweet over savoury except when it comes to cheese, slightly short-sighted in my left eye but I don’t need glasses unless I get really tired and, yes, this is my natural hair colour.’

He gave me a hard look.

‘Perhaps you can explain to me,’ he said, ‘how any of that helps the fire-marshal sister of a psychologist help me with my relationship predicament?’

Well, at least he’d bought the bit about me being a fire marshal.

‘Firstly, I am a girl,’ I said, gesturing towards the front of my general T-shirt area. Sam looked away in mock or real distaste, I wasn’t sure. ‘And sometimes it helps to get another girl’s perspective. Secondly, I also have half a psychology degree of my very own and I am prepared to put it to good use on your behalf.’

‘How does someone get half a degree?’ Sam asked.

‘Because you do half psychology and half English and then graduate realizing you’re not qualified for anything,’ I replied swiftly. ‘Now, spill: what happened with you two crazy kids?’

He walked on for a moment, taking long strides that spurred me into a half-skip to try to catch up.

‘She said I was boring,’ he replied, without looking at me. ‘She said we don’t have anything in common any more and that I care more about my books than I care about her.’

The easiest thing to do would have been to tell him what he wanted to hear but in this instance, I wasn’t sure it would help. He did seem awfully fond of a lot of dead white men and a man who cared more about the lord lieutenants of Ireland than getting the bone was indeed a conundrum.

‘How long have you been together?’ I asked, treading softly. Press, don’t poke.

Sam pulled his dimmed features into an almost smile. ‘Six years,’ he said. ‘Almost six. We met when I was starting my PhD, she was doing her masters.’

‘She’s a historian too?’

‘No.’ He looked almost disappointed. ‘She got a job in the finance department at the university to help pay for her programme and ended up dropping the degree to do that instead.’

He untethered the man bun, unleashing long, wavy blond hair that any self-respecting mermaid would have been proud of. A thirty-something-year-old man, maybe not so much.

’Your hair is very long,’ I said as a statement of fact.

‘So is yours,’ he countered, caressing his ratty ends. ‘And no one complains about that. It’s double standards.’

‘Yes, but my hair is long on purpose,’ I pointed out. ‘And I spend actual money to have someone style it. Your hair is just … there.’

He snapped the elastic band from around his wrist and twisted the whole thing back up behind his head.

‘Elaine hates it,’ he replied, scratching his beard. ‘She says I don’t care about the way I look.’

I blew out my cheeks, searching for the most tactful way to ask my next question.

‘Not to be rude,’ I said. ‘But do you?’

‘I’m clean,’ he replied, sitting up straight. ‘My clothes are ironed, I don’t smell. Just because I don’t want to waste money on expensive clothes I don’t need doesn’t mean I don’t take pride in my appearance.’

A plan began to come together in my brain as we walked on in silence. Maybe I was going to be a sad, old spinster with many odd pets, but that didn’t mean everyone had to die alone.

‘You’re so quiet,’ I said, dodging a tag team of charity volunteers in neon tabards waving clipboards in our direction. I was already supporting every single charity you could possibly think of thanks to my crippling middle class guilt. Couldn’t afford a settee but two quid a month to help ex-circus elephants readjust to life in Africa? Where do I sign?

‘Not everyone has to talk all the time,’ Sam said. ‘I’m thinking.’

‘What about?’

‘Do we have to be out here?’ He wrapped his jacket tightly around him as I led the way across the street to the square. Even though I’d told him to leave it. Even though it was boiling hot outside. ‘Because I’d really rather not be.’

‘Why not? It’s grass, it’s trees, it’s flowers,’ I replied, adopting a cheery tone. ‘And hating on Hoxton is very 2007. Can you just go with it for now? It’s nice to be outside.’

‘Not for me, it isn’t,’ he grumbled. ‘My hay fever is killing me. Car exhausts don’t help. Everyone smoking those ridiculous electronic cigarettes.’

He crossed his arms over his hideous jacket and sniffed. I watched a ridiculously attractive man I vaguely recognized from The Ginnel walking a Boston Terrier through the gates of the square, and sighed. Why couldn’t he have walked through the front door behind Dave the Postman? Cheekbones that you could slice bread on that one. And an Insta-friendly dog! There was no justice in this world.

’So how did you leave things with your girlfriend?’ I asked, deliberately slowing my pace now we were inside the square and forcing him to follow suit. ‘Elaine, isn’t it?’

‘She said she needed time to think about things,’ he replied tersely. ‘And that she would be able to think more clearly if I wasn’t in the flat.’