annoyed.
I’m starting to squirm a little in my seat by the time he finally does look up. He manages a brief smile, warming his eyes for a moment like a light flicking on and then off again.
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘You must think I’m rude. I’m Carl.’ He holds out his hand and I’m aware that mine is a little damp in his oddly dry one.
‘That’s dedication,’ I say with a grin, ‘cycling in this heat. I almost melt in a puddle just walking anywhere!’
The frown’s back. Maybe I’ve said the wrong thing, or the thought of me sweating is repulsive to him. He picks up the menu and says, rather abruptly, ‘So. Are we eating?’
No, we bloody aren’t, I think, not if you’re going to be like this. But he’s calling Amy Winehouse over and within seconds he has ordered a chicken salad and a Diet Coke.
My eyes dart to my glass of white wine and I take a large, defiant sip.
‘Anything for you?’ the waitress asks quietly, her voice deep and soft. She has a bumpy rash of spots around her chin smeared in concealer. She looks like she needs to eat more fruit and vegetables. A plastic name badge says ‘Angel’ on the breast of her white shirt.
What a pretty, unusual name.
Carl is tapping the Fitbit on his wrist and staring into its face greedily. Heaven knows when he finds time to go walking, what with all that cycling.
This isn’t going to work. But I’m too well brought up to simply get up and leave. On any other day, I’d have probably made a plan for Carmen to ring with a fake emergency. That was out, obviously. I’m just going to have to deal with this on my own. I’m not staying much longer, that’s for sure.
‘Just some olives, thanks,’ I say. ‘And a tap water. With ice.’
Carl looks at me curiously.
‘Ate earlier,’ I lie. I’ll finish my disappointing glass of wine, eat the olives and then pretend I’ve had a text calling me away. Decision made, I feel myself relax slightly.
As the waitress writes down our order, I spot what look like fingerprint bruises circling her delicate wrist, but it’s just a glimpse. She moves and a trio of cheap metal bangles cover the spot with a tinkling sound.
‘So, Nina,’ says Carl, pulling my attention back, ‘you aren’t a cyclist then?’
‘No,’ I say, ‘well, not unless you count using an exercise bike once, before guiltily stuffing it in the garage.’
He regards me blankly.
‘You’re keen then?’ I say, a bit weakly.
Oh yes. He is.
He proceeds to talk at length about the cycling club that saved him from a serious bout of depression. He tells me how many ‘Ks’ he does every weekend and about his plans to enter some race or other in the summer. I tune out and finish my wine miserably, while surreptitiously dragging my handbag onto my lap in readiness to receive the fake text.
He doesn’t even stop talking when the food arrives. I drain the glass of water then robotically pop olives into my mouth, waiting for the best moment to pretend my phone is vibrating.
‘You should try it,’ he’s saying now. ‘Literally saved my life.’
‘Yep. You said.’
He stares at me then, an odd expression on his face. His cheeks redden a little.
The next thing he says is in a lower tone and I don’t catch it at first.
‘I’m sorry?’ I say, sliding the last olive into my mouth.
He clears his throat.
‘I’m not very good at this sort of thing,’ he says, sotto voce, ‘but do you want to come back? For sex?’
I stare at him for a couple of seconds, unable to believe what I just heard. His cheeks are now flaming. A mental picture of him attempting to peel off Lycra shorts in a seductive manner comes into my mind and a surge of hysterical laughter rises in my throat. I inhale sharply and the olive shoots backwards, covering my windpipe. I try to cough it away but my throat just spasms uselessly, silently, failing to budge it. The olive is a solid mass at the back of my throat. There’s a split second of disbelief before I accept that I’m choking. My pulse thunders in my head and there’s a whooshing in my ears.
I can’t breathe … I can’t breathe.
‘I don’t think it was that funny,’ says Carl, his face sour now. He doesn’t understand that I’m dying, I’m actually dying right here, in this shitty restaurant.
Slapping my hands against the table, I stagger to my feet, panic blooming in hot waves as my body strains for air. I try thumping my own chest but nothing changes, nothing shifts. The olive feels vast in my throat as my lungs strain and pull uselessly and my face is wet with tears.
Carl’s mouth opens and closes, fish-like, his shocked eyes wide.
Why isn’t he helping me? Why isn’t anyone helping me?
My vision begins to smear, the floor shifting under me. My mind blooms bright with Sam’s face and I strive even harder to make the air come. But it’s no good.
I’m going to die.
And then arms encircle my body from behind. It feels unbearable to be touched and my panic ratchets higher and higher again. Then a hard fist under my diaphragm jerks upwards – again – again – again – and the olive shoots out of my mouth onto the table, where it sits, glistening with spit.
Air rushes into my lungs. I start to sob uncontrollable tears of relief. I can’t stop them.
There’s a hot hand on the bare flesh of my arm and I’m looking into the face of the waitress, who says, ‘You’re OK, you’re OK.’
It takes me a few moments to find my voice and then I manage to croak, ‘Thank you, thank you so much.’ It’s the strangest feeling but, in that brief moment, I love this waitress a tiny bit.
I wish I could stop crying but I can’t. Carl stands awkwardly in front of me, arms dangling by his sides, and the other diners stare as one.
Thank God, I’m finally out of that place and on the way home.
I pretend to root in my handbag to avoid the curious eyes of the cab driver framed in the rear-view mirror. I know I look a state, with eye make-up migrating down my cheeks and skin all blotchy from crying.
Every time I think about how it felt, my eyes well up again. The precise texture and taste of the terror keeps coming back to me in waves. It was all-encompassing; a drenching horror I’d only ever experienced in my worst nightmares.
I have never come close to dying before, not really. I was in a car accident when I was a teenager, when a boyfriend misjudged a bend and wrote off his car. But all I got was a bit of whiplash.
This was the most frightening
