I watched from a distance. She looked odd. Something was up. She was breathing more easily but was still agitating. Something had happened. I knew because I’d been watching her for so long. I joined her on the pavement.

‘Come in. You’ll catch your death. What’s up? Are you okay?’

She pushed me aside, flapping her arms against me. She needed the Ladies’. An attendant was watching and smiled at me as Rebecca headed for the toilets. It was a sympathetic smile, but sarcastic and invasive. I sidled towards the popcorn kiosk and took up a sentry position opposite the toilet entrance, and waited for Rebecca to reappear. Perhaps she was throwing up, projectile vomiting of the sickly treats which we’d been force-fed.

The unexpected rarely provides a complete shock, not to me anyway. I am always prepared, armoured against the most bizarre of occurrences. However, when the lights came on in the cinema and the seething mass of humanity spilled out through the swing doors, I clutched the pillar. My eyelids opened and closed rapidly, with an uncontrolled twitch. I stood like a statue with moving arms. My left hand undid the top button on my coat, a minor innocuous action to confirm my sanity.

It was over ten years since Amber had left. Perhaps I should have pestered Ted more for the address of his place in Italy and followed her there but I stayed put. I bade my time. Revenge would come later. I always knew she would be back and I would have my chance.

Amber looked smaller and much less pretty than I remembered. For one minute I took my eye off Rebecca who seemed to have banged into Amber’s companion. I watched my petite ex-girlfriend disappear into the Ladies’.

‘Hi, I’m much better. Sorry. I hope I didn’t ruin your evening.’ Rebecca was back. Perhaps it was my imagination, but she seemed over excited, exuberant almost. A fleeting thought that she had taken a happy pill crossed my mind but I no longer wanted to talk.

I told her she was looking better, then said, ‘Let’s go home.’ I put my arm, more loosely than of late, round her waist and we wandered outside. She kissed me, tenderly, albeit on the cheek, and said ‘thank you’.

52

Rebecca

The passage of time seems to vary with each new event. A minute can drag like a year and in another instance, a different set of circumstances, a year flies past. A whole decade later, I was petrified of going back, to when seconds defined my life.