“Say that when you’ve watched me do a crossword for three hours straight.” His eyes looked me up and down and he sighed, and it sounded happy. And then he clapped his hands. “Time waits for no one, Miss Horny, you’d better get your pretty little ass into some clothes before you tempt me back out of mine.”
I could hardly sit still in my seat, my tummy a ball of excitement as we joined the motorway.
“Where are we going?” I put on my best smile. “Surely you can tell me now?”
He shook his head. “Wait and see.”
“But I’m excited!”
“I should hope so. That’s the intention.”
“Somewhere far away?”
“Hopefully far enough.”
The thought made me soar. Far enough. Far enough to be together. To hold his hand, and kiss him, and smile and laugh and be a proper couple. A proper couple. It was a dream. A crazy dream.
I watched the signs pass us by as we headed further north. Up past Worcester and Droitwich towards Birmingham. Birmingham was big. Big enough to be anonymous. Maybe that’s where we were going.
I asked him a zillion questions. I asked him about his best memories, and his most embarrassing moments. I asked him about films, and music, and childhood holidays. I asked him about his childhood art projects, and his favourite animals, and the ten things he’d put in room 101.
And then I told him mine.
And he laughed, and he smiled, and he listened. And he really wanted to know. I could see it in his eyes.
He wanted to know me.
“Sachets,” I finished up. “I hate them.”
“Hate them enough to abolish them forever? Why so? Surely they have a convenience, no?”
I shook my head. “Firstly, they never have enough actual sauce in them to achieve anything.”
He held up a finger. “So, you’re talking purely sauce sachets. Not salt or sugar. This needs clarifying, Helen. You couldn’t just blanket abolish sachets and regret it later.”
“Ok, Mr Sachet-saver, sauce sachets. You need at least three to actually get enough, and then they’re all sticky and go over your fingers, and you can hardly open the latter ones. And then, where do you even put them when they’re empty? It’s a mess. A stupid, pointless, fiddly, ridiculous waste of time.”
He pulled a face. “I don’t think I can rubber stamp the sauce sachet abolishment, Helen. I’m not convinced their downsides are so heinous they deserve a ban.”
“You’re so wrong.”
He laughed. “I am, am I?”
I nodded. “Totally.”
“So, I’m not allowed to put stupid mobile game apps in room 101, but sauce sachets deserve a spot?”
“Yes. That’s correct.”
He indicated for the motorway exit. Birmingham it was. My tummy tickled.
“We’ll have to take this up another time, Helen. Don’t think for a second this debate is done. ” His eyes sparkled.
He drove us into the outskirts and parked up by the university train station. And then he took my hand, and I couldn’t stop smiling. There were people all around us, going about their business without giving us a second glance, and it felt amazing.
“You going to tell me now?” I said as we took our seats on the train.
“I’m taking you somewhere beautiful.”
And I knew. I just knew.
And I was right.
Birmingham Art Gallery was sprawling and busy and absolutely fabulous. I let out a little shriek as we stepped into the foyer.
“I haven’t been here since I was little,” I gushed. “I made Mum and Dad bring me here for my birthday.” I squeezed his hand.
“I remember. You told me all about it.”
“They have the largest collection by Edward Burne-Jones in the world, and I love his work. I love it. And baroque, they have a whole baroque display. And David Cox, too, they have so many of his watercolours here. His landscapes are just incredible. They take my breath away.”
He smiled, and I knew he already knew. Of course he knew. He knew better than me.
“I love the baroque display,” he said. But I already knew that, too. I knew he loved baroque. We’d already talked about it a hundred times.
And that’s when the air shifted between us, and we found that place beyond words, where there was just us, seeing the beauty in the same things, without need to explain it, or dissect it, or rationalise it. We just felt it. Felt the same things.
I watched him as he soaked in the beauty of the paintings around us, and he watched me. Some of those pictures reached inside and grabbed my soul and gripped it tight, and they gripped his, too. I could feel it in his fingers, in the way his hand held mine. He’d smile and it would speak to my heart, and make it flutter. His pleasure made my spirit dance and sing and twirl.
In that wonderful place he was my teacher again, pointing out the detail in some of the finer watercolours, and the depth of the palette in the more dramatic baroque pieces. In that wonderful place he was also a fellow artist, an admirer of talent and brilliance and flair. But mainly in that wonderful place he was my lover. He was the man whose fingertips loved mine, and whose eyes shone with shared delight.