The First Time I Saw You: the most heartwarming and emotional love story of the year Read online

  It is starting to rain. The colours that surround me are drenched in grey, as though the photographer decided on a black-and-white filter. People scurry away, their plates are discarded, their chairs scrape back, their glasses are carried inside; but I remain still, watching the chaos. I pull on my yellow raincoat and open my green umbrella. If the photographer had stayed, he would have seen the English woman sitting in the middle of the scene . . . the yellow of her coat and the green of her umbrella no longer invisible. Because across the road, through the black-and-white filter, a man is looking straight at me.

  Chapter Two

  Samuel

  ‘Ah, feck it!’ I’ve had the day from hell already and now, to top it off, the heavens have just opened. The rain here is different from home – the rain in Northern Ireland doesn’t hold the dust and chemicals like the rain in the city; the rain here almost feels toxic.

  From the corner of my eye, I see a flash of yellow. There is a woman sitting outside a café in a yellow coat. My feet stop moving and I find myself staring at her. All around her there is movement – people holding newspapers above their heads, pushing back chairs and heading inside for shelter – but the woman is motionless, the yellow of her raincoat refusing to be muted, no matter how much the grey rain sweeps across the city.

  ‘Move it!’ An angry man, whose voice seems double the size of his frail body, yells at me. I blink, apologise, and begin to take another step, but then a burst of Irish green flickers in my peripheral vision as the woman outside the café opens her umbrella, stopping my feet again. I stand still while people saturated in the greys and blacks of the storm rush around me as they try to escape the sudden downpour, hoods hastily covering new highlights and hair gel.

  She tilts the green umbrella and she is covered from my view; it twirls from one side to another, like a scene from a musical, her actions obscured behind it. She stands. Fat raindrops slide down from the umbrella and on to her white high-heels. Thunder rumbles – dark and threatening – before lightning slices open the sky: a battle of good and evil, of dark and light, of fate and serendipity. The traffic pauses, and I dash between the headlights as furious windscreen wipers clear the view and lull the angry horns. I don’t know the woman behind the umbrella, don’t really know why I’m crossing the road – one of those moments when you end up at a destination and can’t remember how you got there – but here I am, and so is she.

  Beneath the umbrella I can see that her heel is trapped in a crack in the pavement. That is the first thing I really see of this woman: a slim leg and a high heel. The heel twists just as I begin to offer my help, then snaps itself free, the point of the shoe connecting with a sharp kick towards my leg. I barely flinch; I’m an ex rugby player so I’m used to worse things than a stiletto to the ankle.

  ‘I’m so sorry! Are you OK?’ I register the English accent as she crouches down, the green umbrella discarded as her white skirt rides up her thigh – all business, peeking out from beneath the girlish coat. The rain drips from her blond hair as she hovers, unsure what to do now she is faced with my suited and booted trouser leg. She is stuck between what I think had been an automatic response, like the way you would attend to a child’s grazed knee, but instead, is left with the uncomfortable situation of how to deal with a strange man’s trouser leg. Her eyes look up at me, these golden eyes that are the strangest colour, somewhere between gold and deep brown, I guess, almost fluid, but it’s not the colour that is the most striking: it is the emptiness behind them; she looks so . . . lost.

  I crouch down, knee to knee, and it takes everything in me not to reach out and touch her hand.

  ‘I didn’t see you there,’ she gasps.

  ‘You were all I could see,’ I reply, inwardly wincing, worried that my words sound cheesy. But she smiles, two small dimples forming – a finger space apart from her mouth – her eyes losing that lost look because I, me, some stupid, tactless Irishman, have found her.

  Chapter Three

  Sophie

  My heel is caught in a crack in the paving. I twist my foot to the left, to the right, the grainy sound of my actions blunted by the rain which is pummelling clenched fists on the outside of my umbrella. I twist my heel again before pulling it upwards with as much force as I can. Lightning flashes on to the street as the heel snaps. I expect to hear the deep rumble of thunder, but instead, I hear the high-pitched wail of a little girl, coming from the mouth of an exceptionally tall man. My decapitated shoe, connecting with his ankle.

  ‘I’m so sorry! Are you OK?’ I ask as I crouch down, instantly regretting my descent. What exactly am I going to do? Roll up his trouser leg? Apply a plaster? I sigh and look up. He has the stature of someone who is confident in his body. His frame is relaxed but solid; his shoulders are broad but his chest isn’t puffed out; his shoulders aren’t squared. He crouches down, scanning my face and his eyebrows lift, the creases in his face relax; the same expression you might have after you have been frantically searching for something but then find it in the last place you look. His face is relieved: he’s found it.

  ‘I didn’t see you there,’ I say, my words tumbling from my mouth.

  ‘You were all I could see,’ he replies. He stands and takes a step back, as though his words have pushed him away, and I find myself smiling at him, offering him reassurance as he reaches his hand towards me.

  I decline it with a ‘thank you but I’m fine’ expression, but as I try to stand, the missing heel throws my balance. I haven’t even got halfway to standing when I feel my whole body sliding slowly to the left. He reaches out his hand again, but again, I decline: I’m used to doing things by myself. My hand reaches for the edge of the table, slick with rain, but it glances off and I topple, landing in a foetal curl on the quickly formed puddle.

  Embarrassment seeps through my body as quickly as the puddle is seeping into my clothes. I can already see a brown stain stretching across the white of my skirt as I straighten myself into a sitting position. My eyes are drawn upwards to where the man is still standing, amusement playing at the corners of his mouth. He offers his hand to me for the third time, but this time, I don’t hesitate; I don’t overthink his gesture; I don’t ignore him; instead, I slip my palm inside his. Mine feels tiny inside the warmth of his, and I yield to the gentle pressure he applies as he helps me stand.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say. He lets my hand drop once I’m standing. Thunder cracks loudly as he crouches down and retrieves my broken heel and umbrella. Around us, the storm shrouds the chaos of the city and its inhabitants. He passes the heel back to me with a grin and I clutch it towards my chest, giving him a quick nod of gratitude, and then turn my back, my green umbrella and I walking away, salvaging what little dignity I have left . . . but my dignity is dissolving with every ungainly, lopsided step I take. Up and down, up and down, my body goes, rain dripping from my eyelashes, brown stains covering my white skirt as I hobble away.

  Footsteps splash towards me and he stands in my path.

  ‘Ah look, you’re drenched and in no shape to walk—’ His accent is Northern Irish, I think. His tone rises at the end of each sentence but snaps back down – a bit like a helium balloon in a child’s chubby hands – always trying to rise. ‘Why don’t we head inside and call a cab?’

  I find myself nodding, if only to stop myself from taking another ridiculous step.

  He takes the umbrella from my hand and offers me his arm. My automatic response is to refuse his gesture, but at this stage of the game, I think my dignity ship has already sailed.

  As our feet step through the rain, my world is being not just tipped upside down but shook, like a snow-globe: my life – my perfect image with clean lines and neat edges – has been protected from the outside world until now. Now it feels like it has been shaken.

  He pulls his hand free of mine as we step into the warmth of the building and I feel the world tilt. How is it that I have been able to stay upright without this stranger holding my hand? I shake my head, raindrops s
cattering from my hair, and pull off my coat. He takes it from me and I let him.

  ‘Your eyes are the colour of tea,’ he smiles.

  ‘Tea?’ I ask. My voice sounds hoarse and I clear my throat as I process his description. I picture the colour of murky builders’ tea.

  ‘Yes, they look like tea through a glass cup, almost gold, really.’

  ‘Huh,’ I reply. He looks away, and I miss my moment to return the compliment. I shiver. My arms are bare; the fair hairs are rising, running along my skin in a wave, exposed and free of their armour. I take off my broken shoes, dropping them into my oversized bag, and pull myself to my full height, stretching out my hand formally. I need to take control of this . . . this thing that is happening. Maybe I have flu.

  ‘I’m Sophie.’ My voice is clear, crisp, controlled. He looks down at my hand, an embryonic smile on his full mouth, like I have said something endearing. His front tooth has a small chip at the edge. Instead of shaking my hand, he slaps the back of his hand against mine, then claps our palms together and does this strange fist-bump action.

  ‘Ah, never mind—’ he says the word ‘mind’ like ‘moind’. ‘We’ll work on that. I’m Samuel, shall we get a bite? I’m starving.’ He strides towards a waitress and I watch the damp line that runs down the back of his shirt cling to the curve of his spine as he negotiates a table.

  I look around the restaurant, seeking a way to escape this situation I have found myself in, but I find that my stockinged feet are following him and my hands, which should be reaching for my phone and calling a cab, are pulling back a chair.

  Samuel is already grabbing a menu and has begun to talk. My knees bend, and I find myself sitting down without making the decision to stay.

  He talks passionately about everything, drawing me into his train of thought. I have to hold on to his words as they fly past our surroundings, the outside world blurring around me as the conversation twists and turns to new places, but the journey is never a one-way street: he questions, he listens, he laughs.

  ‘What is it you do, Samuel? Here in DC?’ I ask.

  ‘I work in IT. I’m a stereotypical computer geek. What about you?’

  ‘I’m an analyst. I work out how to streamline companies, help them work better. I spend weeks, sometimes months working out how to improve a business, then I fix it . . . or we make them an offer they can’t refuse and take over the business.’

  ‘That straightforward?’

  ‘In a nutshell.’

  ‘So you’re a bit like Richard Gere in Pretty Woman but without the penchant for hookers?’

  I laugh at this.

  ‘Like a super accountant, then? You fly in, fix everything and then disappear until the next financial disaster.’

  I laugh again. ‘I suppose . . . Super Sophie, that’s me.’

  We order dinner, we order wine, his face lighting up as he talks about his family in Derry, about how he used to play rugby, about how he loves to run.

  Afternoon bleeds into dusk, dusk into twilight; twilight begins to fade until night consumes the view outside. My brain is telling me to be on my guard, but I ignore it. I’m leaving in two days, anyway. I won’t see him again.

  ‘Excuse me while I nip to the little boys’ room.’ He pushes his chair back and rises; the space he filled is suddenly barren. Loneliness creeps up on me. I have been alone for so long that I don’t often feel its presence, but I feel it now . . . how have I become accustomed to the sting? The chatter around me becomes louder; I notice the surroundings which, with him next to me, have been invisible. Samuel sits back down; the noises quieten, my senses instead filled with him.

  ‘Poor man,’ I say as I look towards a man in his early thirties, with his tie askew, as he begs into his phone: ‘Please,’ he is saying, ‘I’ll change. Please don’t break up with me.’

  ‘Ah, I remember feeling like that. I was twenty-four, her name was Isabella.’ He gestures to the man who is staring blankly at the table top, seemingly oblivious to his surroundings. ‘So how about you?’ He leans forward and smells his food, his eyelids closing, and I can’t help but smile as I get a quick glimpse of him as a child in front of home-cooked meals after a busy day at school.

  ‘What about me?’ I avoid his gaze.

  ‘You ever been that heartbroken?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Never?’

  I shake my head again and twist the tagliatelle around my fork. How can I tell this man so full of life that I’ve never been hurt like that because I’ve never been in love? I lost my virginity in the first week at university to a boy called Harry who always smelt vaguely of sweat even after a shower. I always viewed virginity as something I needed to get rid of, a rite of passage so I could get on with my life at uni. I endured a relationship with him for two weeks and I was glad when it ended. I loved university because I had nobody to answer to. Nobody knew about my past. I saw university as my way into the life I wanted. I didn’t want to have to depend on anyone. And so, after my brief relationship with Harry, I had stayed away from the parties, the one-night stands, the late arrivals to lectures still half-drunk. That’s not to say that I didn’t make friends – I did. I was the mum of the group. I was the one who made sure we had toilet roll. I was the one who made early morning trips for Diet Coke and paracetamol and I was the one who made the doctor’s appointments for the morning-after pill. I came out with a First, I kissed and hugged them goodbye on graduation day and then I didn’t see much of them after that. I wonder now if they even remember me.

  ‘What’s the longest relationship you’ve had?’ he asks, bringing me back to the present, before filling his mouth with another forkful of food.

  ‘Five years,’ I answer, wiping the corners of my mouth with the napkin. My heart begins to pound. I haven’t talked about my past relationships with anyone other than Helen, and I don’t like how my mouth seems to be opening up to him, but on it goes. ‘You?’

  ‘Ah, now, there’s a question. I’ve had a few girlfriends that have stayed for the long haul. There was Carol when I was sixteen, sweet girl, she used to blink all the time when I was around but then she started blinking at someone else, then there was Hattie.’ He tears off a piece of bread and dips it in his cassoulet. ‘She dumped me, I think, then there was Evie. I was with Evie for three years but we just grew apart; it wasn’t a bad break-up, we just kind of called it a day . . . then there was Isabella, she was the one who did that to me.’ He nods towards the heartbroken man who is making his way through a bottle of red at an alarming rate. ‘Two and a half years of fighting and making up, it was a shit-storm of a relationship, but I was a mess when she left. ‘So tell me about Mr Five Years.’ He pours more wine into his glass.

  ‘His name was Stephen with a p-h,’ I begin. ‘We met at a finance meeting. He always stood his shoes against the wall in a pair, it used to drive me mad.’

  ‘Five years and that’s all you’ve got to say about the fella?’

  ‘It was more of a . . . business relationship. We met up on alternate weekends, maybe once or twice in the week if we were free, went to the cinema together, that sort of thing, then he met someone else, decided he wanted two-point-four kids and a family home, so that was it. I was relieved when it was over, to be honest. I heard he proposed to her with some wild romantic gesture . . . had “Will you Marry Me?” written in the sky by some Red Arrows or something. Funny. He didn’t even pay for a meal with me, we always split it.’

  ‘So, what’s the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for you?’

  I falter. His dark hair falls forward as he slices his way through some meat, waiting for my answer, seemingly confident that there will be one.

  ‘I’ve never had anything romantic done for me.’ The answer is out before I can stop myself. I straighten my posture. I’ve had too much wine; that’s why I’m talking so freely. I pour water into my glass. He answers me after he swallows his mouthful of food.

  ‘What, like ever?’

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p; I shake my head and fold my napkin, looking around the restaurant so I can gain the attention of the waitress and ask for the bill. I need to leave this place.

  ‘You’ve never had a bunch of flowers?’

  I shake my head, folding the napkin into a triangle.

  ‘Chocolates?’

  ‘I’m not a romance type of girl.’ I give him a tight smile and hate the way that I feel when I look at him, this stranger.

  ‘Well, that’s settled then.’ He pushes his plate away. ‘How long are you in DC for?’

  ‘I’m leaving soon, I’m only here on business.’ I can hear my voice losing some of its clarity.

  ‘Are you here tomorrow?’

  ‘Well, yes, but—’

  He signals for the bill. ‘All day?’

  I nod and try to protest as he pays for the meal, ignoring me with a flap of his hand.

  ‘Grand. I’ll be outside . . . where are you staying?’ He shrugs on his coat before I can gather my thoughts and my things.

  ‘The White Square Hotel, but—’

  I am still sitting as he bends down, his lips brushing me on the cheek before whispering into my ear, ‘Tomorrow at ten.’ The minute his lips touch my cheek and I feel his breath on my neck, I know I am lost.

  Chapter Four

  Samuel

  The ends of her hair are still damp and they flick up at the ends, perfect arcs of gold that rest along her shoulders. She is beautiful; I’ve never felt an attraction towards anyone the way I do for her. It’s as if I have spent my entire life looking for something precious, something fragile, and I finally have it in my palm. I’m petrified of losing it, of losing her.