Perfect Strangers

She looked up at him.

‘Yes please,’ she said.

They walked down past the clipboard mermaids and up on to the concourse. Nick began to head across towards the taxi rank, but Sophie took his arm and steered him through the station’s ornate marble main entrance.

‘Let’s walk,’ she said.

It was a clear night and still warm; it seemed a shame to let the magic go so soon. They walked arm in arm on to Waterloo Bridge; the evening air was soft against her cheeks, and the light riverside breeze ruffled her dress.

‘Look at that,’ she said, nodding upstream towards the lit-up Houses of Parliament and the London Eye. ‘Best view in London.’

‘Damn.’ Nick whistled. ‘I see what you mean.’

They stood there, breathing in the night air, Sophie feeling his warm body against hers. She felt electrified by his presence and yet it felt so comfortable.

‘Why have I never noticed this before?’ said Nick quietly.

‘Men like you probably don’t go to Waterloo station very much.’

He smiled.

‘I guess not. So where are you taking me next?’

‘What do you want to see?’

‘Something British. Best London pub?’

‘It’s way past closing time,’ she said, glancing at Big Ben, whose black arms were both pointing up at midnight. ‘Besides, I’m not exactly dressed for it.’

She looked at him for a moment. ‘You really want to see London?’

‘Sure, but not the cheesy tourist version. Things only someone who lives here could tell me about.’

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‘All right, but you can pay the fare,’ she said, putting her arm up to hail a taxi. ‘I’m going to take you on a tour of my favourite London places. Now pay attention, because I’ll be asking questions later.’

She pointed out Somerset House as they crossed the bridge, ‘the most romantic place to go ice-skating at Christmas’, then the old Strand ‘ghost station’ where they filmed movies, and the National Portrait Gallery, home to Sophie’s favourite painting, Branwell Brontë’s portrait of his sisters. They took a detour along Jermyn Street so Sophie could show Nick two of her favourite shops: a cheese vendor and a hat maker within twenty yards of each other.

‘Hey I love those hats the businessmen used to wear,’ said Nick enthusiastically. ‘What are they called again?’

‘Bowler hats. You should get one, it’d turn heads in Houston,’ she said.

Then she directed the cabbie down to the Mall, past the Palace – ‘We have to see Buck House, you are an American,’ she teased.

As they sat back in the cab, London was looking its most magical. The stateliness of the grand houses, the dark lure of the park, then an illuminated cavalcade of gleaming shop fronts, whirling traffic and the milky light from an almost full moon.

Finally they stopped at a late-night tapas bar in Belgravia Sophie had frequented in her Chelsea days and drank slightly rough red wine at a cramped corner table. But Sophie didn’t notice the surroundings, she was having too good a time. Nick was smart and charming and unlike so many men she had met in the upper echelons of society, keen to hear her opinions and stories. In between, he told her about his life, his comfortable childhood in ‘nowheresville’ River Oaks, his growing annoyance at having to spend half his year in the air and his deadline of forty when he wanted to give it all up. Sophie laughed at that one.

‘Men like you never want to give up. You all say you do, but you love it too much.’

‘It’s what we work our asses off for, to retire to the country with a couple of pigs and a chicken.’

‘No it isn’t,’ said Sophie. ‘You’re in it for the competition. I saw it with my dad, with his friends and with my ex. After a certain level of salary, money becomes meaningless. You might as well pay guys in the City in coconuts – all they care about is being the guy who has the most coconuts at the end of the year.’

Nick laughed.

‘Maybe you’re right. And what’s your ambition, Sophie?’ he asked.