The Place We Met Read online

  ‘Here,’ I say gently, lowering Pete’s ex-girlfriend on to the cushion and crouching down so I can see her face.

  ‘Napkins, please,’ I instruct, and again it’s the Italian man who jumps into action. Pete is still staring at the three of us as if he’s seen a ghost. There’s a rash of colour on his neck and cheeks, and I can see a muscle twitching in his set jaw.

  I help Taggie to tilt her head forward and show her how to pinch her nose. The tears have made the blood look more alarming than it really is, and after a few minutes she removes the tissue and opens her eyes, looking at me properly for the first time. I’m struck by a fresh wave of recognition, which I know must be thanks to all the time I spent conjuring up her picture in my mind, and I find myself unable, in that moment, to feel anything other than pity towards her. She may be Pete’s ex-girlfriend, the very same person who I have tortured myself by picturing over and over again these past few days, but nobody deserves to be smacked in the face as hard as this – especially not someone so small and delicate.

  ‘Grazie.’ This has come from the Italian man, and I accept his offer of a handshake. He doesn’t extend the same courtesy to Pete, but then I can’t really blame him. My boyfriend looks as if he wants to murder someone. I’m just about to ask him if he’s OK, too, when we’re all startled by the sound of a horn blasting.

  ‘The boat!’ I exclaim, looking at each of them in turn. ‘We have to go,’ I tell Pete, and clutch his rigid arm. ‘There isn’t another one.’

  Pete, however, seems to be totally incapable of movement or speech.

  ‘Come on,’ I urge, before turning to address Taggie. ‘Will you be OK?’

  She nods, but doesn’t smile, and allows her Italian friend to help her up out of the chair. It occurs to me then that they’re probably getting the same boat back to Como as we are – why else would they be hanging around this freezing cold harbour?

  ‘Come on,’ I say again to Pete, but he only moves once Taggie and her friend have left, and then he refuses to look at me. We make our way towards the queue of people filing aboard, and I dig in my bag for the tickets I bought earlier. My body seems to be on autopilot, but my brain is screaming with unanswered questions. What the hell is Pete’s ex-girlfriend doing here? Why won’t he speak to me? And why isn’t he doing everything in his power to reassure me that everything is going to be OK?

  Even as we proceed in silence along the gangway and sit wordlessly down on two seats towards the back of the upper deck, I know that there’s nothing he could say even if he did know how. Everything is very much not OK, and nothing will ever be the same again.

  25

  Taggie

  I’m back in the toilet again.

  I can feel the vibration of the boat’s engine below me as I perch on the downturned seat, a wad of tissue catching the trickle of blood from my nose and the relentless tears from my eyes.

  Pete is here in Como. What the actual hell?

  I don’t know how I managed to hold it together enough to count the heads of my group as they boarded and check that they all had somewhere to sit. I must look a total state – so bad, in fact, that even Gladys was rendered speechless at the sight of me. I was aware of Marco telling her sheepishly that he’d accidentally punched me in the face, but I ran downstairs and locked myself in here shortly afterwards, and nobody has come to find me yet.

  I thought it was some sort of cruel joke at first, or that I’d been hit so hard I was seeing things, and had somehow conjured up my own repetitive nightmares of the past six months. But no, it was really him. It was really Pete, the man who I had spent five years of my life with, the same Pete that I hoped I would marry one day, the rugby-loving radio producer I had picked as the future father to my children. That Pete.

  A fresh torrent of tears joins the last, the flimsy toilet paper disintegrating in my fingers, and I muffle a loud sob with my fist while I reach round for a new batch.

  How the hell did he find me? Or was it pure bad luck that he’d ended up in the same small corner of Italy that I had, on the very same harbour, on the very same bloody day? He did seem surprised, from what I can recall, but then I didn’t dare look at him once I was sure it really was him standing there in front of me. I was too distracted by the shock, and by the pain in my face. That girl who came to help me was so nice, I think fleetingly. Lord knows what she must have thought when she stumbled across the three of us. I hope Marco has explained about the accidental punch.

  I brave a sniff, and wince as my nose and top lip throb in protest. Lowering the tissue, I test the movement of my nose with timid fingers, bracing myself for more discomfort but finding the pain manageable. He hasn’t broken my nose, then. Thank God for small mercies.

  It’s chilly here in the toilet cubicle, and I’m shivering as much from the cold as I am from shock. It was only a few hours ago that my mum was promising me I’d never have to see or speak to Pete again, and now he’s here, in Como, on this boat. No matter how many times I tell myself that it’s happening, I can’t quite seem to grasp it, and I can feel my heart rate getting faster and faster beneath my many layers of winter clothing.

  ‘Taggie?’

  It’s Marco, his thick Italian accent muffled by the door.

  ‘Go away.’

  A deep sigh filters through the wood.

  ‘Are you OK? Did I break your nose?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ I mutter. ‘And no.’

  ‘Can I see it?’

  I want to tell him to piss off, but I can’t stay in the toilet of this boat all evening. I’ll have to come out at some point and take the group back to the Casa Alta. What if Pete waits for me on the shore? What if he follows me?

  I sit back down abruptly, but miss the toilet seat and end up sprawled on the floor. Marco must have his ear to the door, because the next second he’s hammering on it, telling me with unbridled urgency that I must let him in.

  Taking a few deep breaths to calm myself down – all of which are painful – I pull myself up and unfasten the lock. One look at Marco standing there on the other side of the door, however, his eyes shining with worry, and my face collapses once again into tears.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I sob, leaning against him.

  It feels oddly comforting to have him hold me like this, so tightly and safely against his silly leather jacket. He smells faintly of coffee and day-old aftershave, and I lean my weight against him feeling pathetic but resigned. For so many months now I’ve been sneaking off to cry in corners, and now that it’s all caught up with me, I feel helpless to stop it. Marco isn’t saying anything at all, but the solid bulk of him is helping. The bottom deck of the boat is deserted save for the young French couple from earlier at the beach, who are sitting quietly by the window holding hands. I’m so grateful to them for not being nosy. I’m not sure if I would have managed not to pry.

  I let myself be led to a chair and sit down, all the while keeping my eyes trained on the stairs in case Pete reappears and I’m forced to make a run for it. Marco must be wondering who the hell that man was, who pulled him off me so roughly, but he doesn’t say a word about it; he simply keeps one arm around me and scrolls through his phone with the other. It’s only when I glance away from the steps that I see he’s sent a text message to Shelley, asking her to wait for us at Como harbour with several taxis.

  He sees me looking and smiles briefly.

  ‘I thought you would want to get back quickly,’ he explains. ‘I will stay with you until you are in the taxi.’

  I could kiss him.

  ‘Thank you,’ I mumble.

  ‘It is the least I can do,’ he replies, squeezing my shoulder. ‘After I punch you in the face.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I reply, wincing again as the movement of my lips hurts my nose.

  The sun has set now, and the circular windows on this deck are black with night. I know if I pressed my face up against the glass, I’d be able to see lights coming on all along the east and west shores of the lake, but I don’t
think I’ll be pressing my face up against anything for a while.

  ‘Let me look at you,’ Marco murmurs, slipping a finger under my chin and gently raising my face. I wait for him to keep speaking, but when he finally opens his mouth it’s merely so he can moisten his lips, and I watch as his tongue rests just behind his bottom row of neat, white teeth. It’s been so long since I was this close to a man, to a human, even. It feels better than I thought it would, but there’s a huge uneasiness there, too. Pete was the last man to hold me in his arms like this, and what I’d felt then turned out to be nothing but emptiness.

  As soon as Marco moves his head a fraction closer, I jerk my own away, and when I turn to face the stairway once again, Pete is standing there. From the look on his face, it’s obvious that he’s seen everything – and he does not look impressed.

  26

  Lucy

  I tried to stop Pete going down there, but he wouldn’t listen. It’s like he’s turned into a different person in the half-hour since we bumped into Taggie, and I can’t get through to him. Whenever I speak, he bats away my words as if they’re irritating gnats, and he’s refusing to tell me what is going through his head.

  ‘Don’t go down there,’ I warn, my voice stern but pleading, but Pete is already on his feet.

  ‘I need to,’ he says, looking at the floor rather than me. ‘I have to make sure she’s OK.’

  What about ME? I almost yell, but it’s clear I’m no longer his first consideration.

  I watch in appalled silence as he walks away from me towards the top of the ferry stairs, where the two of us watched Taggie stagger down shortly after we left Bellagio.

  ‘Go after him,’ hisses a voice, and I spin round to where a woman wearing a bright red fleece is peering at me with unashamed interest.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ I stutter, unable to quite believe her audacity.

  ‘You can’t let your boyfriend run rings around you, isn’t that right, Will-yum?’

  The balding man beside her in a matching fleece nods with fierce agreement.

  ‘No ring-running.’

  My mouth opens and closes like a cat flap in the wind.

  ‘Off you go,’ the woman bosses again, using her hand to shoo me.

  Who the hell does this woman think she is?

  I stand up, tutting and huffing in a most un-Lucy-Dunmore-like manner, then do exactly as she suggested and follow Pete down the stairs. I’m so full of nervous anger that my arms and legs are shaking, and I grip on to the handrail to steady myself. Pete is motionless at the bottom of the carpeted steps, his attention fully focused on Taggie and the Italian, who I notice has his arm around her. He’s looking right back at Pete, a sneer on his handsome face, and the tension in the air between them is uncomfortably dense.

  ‘Tag, are you OK?’ Pete asks. Hearing him use her name so casually is like taking a bullet.

  ‘She is fine.’ This from the man beside her.

  Taggie’s nose has stopped bleeding, but the skin on her face looks clammy. I take another few steps down and when she sees me, she smiles tentatively, then whispers something into her companion’s ear.

  ‘She says thank you,’ he tells me. ‘For helping with her nose.’

  ‘Do you want me to take another look?’ I ask, but before I can venture any further, Pete reaches out an arm to stop me.

  ‘Hey!’ I push against his arm. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Just go back upstairs, Lucy,’ he instructs.

  ‘No!’ I retort automatically, feeling my face heat up. Usually I would never argue with him – or with anyone, come to that – but Taggie is my patient in this scenario, and not even Pete can get in the way of me trying to do my job.

  Taggie has found her voice at last.

  ‘How do you two know each other?’ she asks, and Pete seems to visibly shrink.

  ‘I’m his …’ I deliberate just for a split second. ‘His girlfriend.’

  I hear a cough and glance towards the far corner of the deck, where a young couple are staring over in our direction. I wish I was them, watching this madness unfold rather than being stuck in the midst of it.

  ‘How long have you been together?’ Taggie wants to know, her voice ice-cold, but Pete replies before I have the chance.

  ‘Not long,’ he hurries out. ‘We’ve only just started seeing each other.’

  Taggie looks to me for confirmation, and I know she can tell just how hurt I am. She really is quite astoundingly beautiful, with her thick, black hair and her large, dark eyes. No wonder that Italian man is so infatuated.

  ‘You’re a liar,’ Taggie snarls, and Pete winces.

  ‘It’s been five months,’ I say, wanting her to know just as much as I want Pete to stop pretending that I’m nothing.

  ‘Is that so?’ she replies.

  Pete has gone back to being mute, but this only seems to wind her up more. The Italian, meanwhile, looks unsure of what to do, and the two of us lock eyes for a second, both of us beseeching the other to help.

  ‘What are you doing here, Pete?’ Taggie says then, her voice sounding about ready to crack.

  When he doesn’t answer, I reply on his behalf. Apparently, I’m getting good at it.

  ‘It was my idea. I booked it all. Pete had nothing to do with it.’

  She looks so stricken and weary that I almost feel compelled to run across and hug her, but I can’t do that now. She is the ex and I am the new girlfriend – the two of us may as well be oil and water.

  Pete chooses that moment to lurch forwards towards Taggie, but before he can reach her, his path has been blocked by her tall Italian admirer.

  ‘Marco,’ Taggie says, her voice weak but stern. ‘Don’t bother. He’s not worth it.’

  Marco releases his grip on the front of Pete’s coat and pushes him lightly away, only for Pete to take another step forwards. What the hell is he playing at?

  This time, however, it isn’t Marco who stops him in his tracks; it’s Taggie. Before I, or Pete, or even Marco realise what’s happening, she’s up out of her chair and is pummelling her fists against his chest, screaming at him to leave her alone, to go away, to ‘drown yourself in the fucking lake, for all I care’.

  For a moment, he just stands there and takes it, and then, in one swift movement, he grasps Taggie by her wrists and pushes her firmly back down into her seat.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ he cries, the volume of his delivery stunning her into silence. And then he says it again, more quietly but with just as much emotion.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault.’

  27

  Taggie

  When the sun rose this morning, slipping its determined fingers through the crack in my curtains to find me already awake, it felt like an imposter. What could possibly be so bright and so beautiful on a day like today? I used to take such comfort from the feel of it warming my bare toes, and such delight from the way it made the frost covering the hotel lawns sparkle like fairy dust, but now all I want to do is chase it back down behind the mountains, so that the landscape might be shrouded in the same darkness as my heart.

  If it wasn’t for the throbbing in my nose, I’d think that I was unable to feel anything. The shock of bumping into Pete yesterday, coupled with the knowledge that he must have found himself a brand-new girlfriend just weeks after the two of us split up, after it happened, has left me numb. Shelley knew something was up as soon as she saw me hurry off the boat with Marco, and her inquisitive eyes were as big as the moon in the sky above us when she realised how attentive he was being. I kept my head averted, not wanting her to see the full glory of my injured face. True to his word, Marco hadn’t let me out of his sight until I was safely in the back seat of a taxi, but he needn’t have worried in the end. After our altercation on the bottom deck of the boat, Pete had retreated up the stairs and was gone as soon as we docked in Como, his kindly blonde girlfriend presumably not far behind. I’m aware that I should feel sorry for her, but with everything that’s going on, I don’
t think there’s room in me for anyone else.

  One thing is certain, though – Pete hasn’t told her the whole truth. He hasn’t even begun to.

  I roll over on to my side, my hands wrapped around my middle in a feeble attempt at comfort, and wonder how the hell I’m going to get through the day. I’m supposed to be taking the group up to Cernobbio today, but I’m not sure if I can. I’m not even sure if I can face leaving this room, let alone the hotel. Not even my desire to be noticed by Sal is enough to chivvy me along – my fighting spirit has been entirely zapped.

  My phone vibrates with a message. It’s Shelley.

  Are you awake? xx

  I groan. Poor Shelley, she must be absolutely desperate to know what went on. I ditched dinner last night and came straight up here, and the group must have been in the bar all night, because she didn’t come and knock, like I assumed she would.

  Yes. I text back.

  Can I come and see you? is her prompt reply.

  Yes.

  There’s a tap on the door before I even have time to swing my feet out from under the covers, so I shimmy up the bed on my elbows instead and call out for her to come in.

  ‘I was standing outside the door,’ Shelley says, proud rather than contrite. ‘I didn’t want to just barge in.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I tell her, and my voice comes out all croaky.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ she exclaims, looking at me in horror as she nears the bed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your lip!’

  I raise my hands to my face. My top lip is a little swollen, but from the expression on Shelley’s face you’d think I’d grown an extra nose or something.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ I mutter, shifting as she sits down on the edge of the duvet, trapping me in the bed.

  ‘Did one of the group do this?’ she demands. ‘Was it that weird little man with the red face and fingers like pencils?’

  ‘No.’ I take a deep breath. She’ll probably find out eventually, anyway.