Our Stop(31)

Yes, Nadia thought to herself. I will go and practise my flirting. She lined up some witty things to say, imagining herself smiling and charming and drinking and laughing. She would have as good a time as she had set her mind to, and in the half-mile walk in the sunshine, she’d decided she’d have a lovely time.

And then she saw him.

Awful Ben.

The night she broke up with him – an act that took more courage than anything she had ever known, and a full three weeks to build up to – she sat and took it as he said horrible, hurtful things to her.

He told her she was worthless, that nobody would ever want her, that she was broken and didn’t know how to love anyway.

She’d called him a cab and knew she would never hear from him again: that his proud Brazilian blood would mean she was dead to him, which suited her just fine. She needed to not see him. He worked just outside of London, meaning the chances of passing him on any day were minimal; but, of course, though London is big, the daily paths most people take are small, and just as the posh people knew Notting Hill like the back of their hands, and ad execs knew every twist and turn of Soho, single and hipster mid-thirties professionals knew by heart the streets of Spitalfields and Commercial Road. Of course if Awful Ben was to come into town for a date, this was the part he’d come to. And it looked like a date too – or even like he could be with a girlfriend.

While her thoughts were drifting ahead to the summer party, Nadia had glanced up from her feet only to experience the horrifying realization that her emotionally manipulative and downright disordered-personalitied ex-boyfriend was stood before her – she had literally walked into him.

She hadn’t seen him since she’d live-tracked his Uber home on her app, making sure he got back to where he lived before she took the photo of them out of the frame on her bedside table and cut it into tiny little pieces.

She could see him saying something, but she couldn’t hear the words. Her body was ice cold and it felt like not enough air was reaching her lungs. Awful Ben was still moving his mouth. It was like time had frozen and sped up, both at the same time. She blinked several times in quick succession and felt sick and suddenly her tummy hurt.

‘You are in a world of your own,’ he said.

It was weird how he said it. It was an accusation, but also said totally neutrally. It felt aggressive to Nadia, but the woman on his arm – a beautiful, radiant woman, with full cheeks and kind eyes – smiled, as if that must be a private joke between them. What had he said about her? Did this woman on his arm know what he was capable of yet?

‘I … I don’t want to talk to you. Excuse me.’

Nadia pushed past the two of them, stepping out into the road to do so and only narrowly missing a cyclist who screamed at her, ‘Fucking hell! Watch it!’

She heard Awful Ben say something about the ex I told you about, poor thing, and she remembered, in that moment, how he’d said that to Nadia the night they first met, about the girlfriend before her. She was never well.

Nadia kept walking, her head spinning, with a dogged refusal to look back at him. She knew he was watching. Knew he was furious she’d caused even the tiniest bit of a scene.

Crazy, that was the word he had used, all that time ago. He said his ex was crazy. And now Nadia felt crazy too. And it was awful, horrible – she’d bet her whole life that the woman who was now hearing about his crazy ex would one day herself be crying in the street near a work party being called crazy by him too, when the only thing crazy was how Awful Ben picked away at the women he said he loved and tortured them into thinking there was something wrong with them.

But the problem was him.

It made Nadia want to scream. She wanted to scream, and run back down the road to tell the woman to save herself and dump him now. But if she did that, she really would seem crazy. She wouldn’t have listened to anyone, least of all an ex, if she’d been warned. She would have thought that whoever tried to tell her not to pursue a relationship with him was jealous. That’s what they teach us, Nadia thought to herself, miserably. They teach us that other women are the competition so we don’t talk to each other honestly and figure out that they’re all fucking fuckers.

She reached the Sky Garden and looked up. There was no way she was going in. She was crying, she realized – and, as she fished her phone out of her pocket, trembling a little too. She called Emma.

‘Babe, where are you?’ answered Emma. ‘I’ve seen this guy Gaby has for you. He’s cute. He’s your type. Like, fucking game on, babe!’

Nadia’s voice wobbled as she said, ‘I’m outside. I just saw Ben.’ And then she sobbed hysterically.

‘Fuck. Okay. I’m coming. Stay right there. I’m coming.’

‘The table in the corner, please,’ Emma said to the hostess of the chic hotel. Emma had a theory that if in doubt, go to a hotel bar because they’re always emptier than pubs or stand-alone restaurants. She was right. Nadia felt safe here. It was half empty and they could sit at the back, out of the way, their own little world within a world.

Gaby was with them. The three settled into a corner booth and Emma ordered them the salted caramel chocolate brownie with two scoops of ice cream, the sweet and salty popcorn, and a large pot of peppermint tea with honey on the side. Everything was to share.

‘There was so much I thought I would say to him if I ever saw him again,’ Nadia said, playing with the label on the bottle of water at the table. ‘And I just froze. Urgh.’ A tear rolled down her cheek. ‘He looked so smug too – like he knew he’d caught me in a weak moment or something.’