Marylebone Platform 4: Connection

“I’m staying over. I have a room, here, tonight.” She said it casually, holding eye contact throughout. 

“I’m just here for the day,” said Paul. “There wasn’t much on the agenda for tomorrow that I wanted to see.”

“Are you rushing off? Do you have time for a drink at the end?”

Paul hesitated. He’d promised Jane he wouldn’t be late. The appointment was tomorrow and she was quite nervous about it. Originally he’d suggested that it’d be easier for him to stay over at the conference, save him coming back into Marylebone in the morning; the clinic was close by and he could meet her there. She’d been upset and he’d acquiesced.

“Sure, that’d be great. It’d be nice to catch up,” he said. “Meet back here?”

She smiled, touched the back of her head. “Sounds like a plan.”

The morning sessions had passed by slowly. Paul hadn’t really taken them in as he was concentrating on his own presentation, re-reading his cue cards and silently practising his opening couple of lines in his head. He hadn’t really wanted to do it but he’d seen the last couple of promotions come and go, passed over for other people who were doing all the extra-curricular stuff that he’d never had the inclination for. It kept Jane happy as well. She seemed to have the next phase of their life mapped out and mid career free wheeling wasn’t part of her plan. She kept sending him links to job adverts for things that she thought looked suitable. Head of Logistics. Supply Chain Director. He insisted things were fine where he was and she’d give him the speech about how they’d take a hit when she was on maternity, how he would regret it if he didn’t try and challenge himself. He knew he was comfortable and coasting but it suited him.

His session had gone well. It was a pan European conference and his opening joke about Brexit had pulled everyone on side from the start. Whilst the audience were laughing he noticed her. Third row. She was looking directly at him and gave a small nod as she saw him recognise her. She looked essentially the same as she had at college; her hair was cut a little shorter but still tied up and back in ponytail; her suit was sharply tailored, skirt sat just above her knees, one leg crossed over the other; her face didn’t seem to carry many traces of the passing of the last fifteen years. It was her eyes that he remembered and the way she looked at him, a sense of wry appraisal and amusement, as if she was always judging him and finding it funny. Catherine Adams. Maybe not Adams now but that had been her name when they had danced round each other all those years ago.

It had never been serious. There’d been one night when they’d kissed at the end of a party, a couple of years after they’d left college. He’d invited her back but she’d rebuffed the offer and they’d settled into a brief exchange of phone calls, talking about anything but the kiss, and never really seeming to go anywhere. Paul had felt like she liked being chased but had no intention of being caught and so it had fizzled out, his enthusiasm ebbing away like the retreating tide. They’d only seen each other once since then, at a mutual friend’s wedding, shortly after he’d met Jane. She’d been with a plus one, some tall, dark haired guy he couldn’t remember the name of now, and he was in the first flush of falling in love and so they’d just had a pleasant conversation, no teasing lines, no sparring. There was a small moment as they’d stood at the side of the dance floor, watching the new bride and groom take their first dance, when she’d leant in and asked him how people knew, how do they know this is the one, this is what I will settle for? He remembered the ‘settle for’, remembered thinking at the time that she was wrong, that it wasn’t about settling but about certainty. It wasn’t about stopping because you were tired of searching, it was about starting because you knew you were found. He said something like that back to her and she’d patted his arm and said that she envied his perspective. She walked away before he could respond.

After almost ten minutes of waiting Paul was about to leave when Catherine appeared, detaching herself from a group of delegates and walking across the lobby to join him. He stood a little straighter as she approached.

“Well hello again,” she said. “Come on, let’s get that drink before I get dragged back into another discussion about border control implications on freight through Dover.”

“Not a conversation I suspect we’d have thought we’d be having back in the day,” said Paul.

“God, no. I expect our younger selves would be extremely disappointed in how boring and sensible we’ve become.”

“I’m sure you’re not always sensible.”

“Let’s find out,” said Catherine with the briefest flash of a smile.

They sat at the bar and ordered drinks. She’d caught the attention of the barman with a quick wave of her left hand, Paul noting the lack of rings. She seemed to clock his thought process and held her fingers up between them. “Unattached and very happy about it. No strings.” She was holding his gaze.

“I’m glad you’re happy,” said Paul.

“I didn’t say I was happy,” replied Catherine. “I said I’m happy to not be attached. Everything else is complicated. You can’t just drunkenly kiss someone at the end of a party and make it all go away now. Things were a bit simpler then.”

“Any you miss that? The simplicity of it?”

“Simple fun? Who wouldn’t miss that? Don’t you think about those times?”

“I guess,” said Paul. “They didn’t always feel so simple to me. I felt like I was chasing you for a while there. Especially after that party.”

“I did like the chase.” Catherine sipped her drink, placed it back on the bar. “These days I’m easier to catch.”

Paul was about to reply when they were interrupted by a group of people, one of them calling Catherine’s name as they came to stand alongside them at the bar. It was the delegate group she’d been with before. They started to order drinks and were continuing what seemed to be an ongoing conversation about the absurdity of some bureaucracy relating to food imports between Britain and Ireland. Paul’s phone vibrated in his pocket, a couple of missed calls from Jane and a message asking what time he would be back. He stood up and said that he probably needed to get away. Catherine motioned for him to wait a moment and pulled a business card from her bag, flipping it over to quickly write something on the back. “If you want to keep in touch,” she said, handing it to him face up to the side she’d written on, eyes never leaving his. He took it, slipped it into his pocket along with his phone. As he took it he saw that she’d written ‘room 316’, the number underlined.

Halfway up the platform at Marylebone he stopped as his phone rang again. The train home was just ahead, bumped up against some out of service carriages. He pulled out his phone, the business card coming out of his pocket at the same time. It was Jane again. He waited for it to divert to voicemail. He tapped a brief message about an incident on the line, delays, would be late, nothing to worry about, and then turned his phone off. He turned the card over. Her name on one side. A room number on the other.

Back at The Landmark he waited a moment outside room 316, closed his eyes, exhaled. Then he knocked on the door.

---

Part 4 of the Marylebone set of stories. I wasn’t quite sure how I wanted to do this and decided to leave the misdeed itself unwritten.

Halfway through the month and I am roughly half way to my word target of 26,000 for July in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital. Fundraising page here.