Page 75 of The Elements

Rebecca and I met in the rather unromantic setting of a chain coffee shop in the heart of England where, due to the lack of available tables, we found ourselves seated across from each other.

I couldn’t stop myself from glancing at her repeatedly, then looking away before she could notice me and object.

“You keep staring,” she said eventually, barely looking up from her laptop, and I recognized the slight tinge of an Irish accent in her voice.

“Sorry,” I replied, blushing a little. There was no other way to put it, so I decided to go with the truth. “It’s just… how shall I put this? You’re incredibly beautiful.”

Her eyes opened wide, perhaps in surprise that I would say something so unflinchingly intimate, and her hesitation gave me time to make my opening gambit.

“If I can guess your name,” I asked, “will you let me buy you a drink?”

She frowned now, cocking her head to one side as if to decide whether I was a normal person or potentially deranged.

“We haven’t met before, have we?” she asked, and I shook my head. “But you think you can guess my name.”

“I’m absolutely certain of it.”

“All right, then,” she said, reaching across and offering her hand, which I shook.

The skin of her palm was soft, but I could feel slight calluses on her fingertips.

I was this close to asking her how long she’d been playing guitar but worried I might start to sound like a would-be Sherlock Holmes.

“Deal. And if you get it wrong, what do I get?”

“The question’s irrelevant,” I told her. “Your name’s Rebecca.”

She sat back in her chair and stared at me, then looked down at the table, which held a notebook, a pen, and her laptop, but nothing with her name written on it.

“It is,” she agreed.

“So there’s a pub I like across the way,” I told her, smiling. “A deal’s a deal, after all. You can’t renege.”

Ten minutes later we were seated in a quiet booth with drinks before us.

“So are you some kind of magician?” she asked. “Like Harry Potter?”

“Harry wasn’t a magician,” I said. “He was a wizard. Totally different career path.”

“Then how—”

“The Wi-Fi wasn’t working in the coffee shop,” I explained. “So I connected to a hot spot on my phone. There were only three others available: Rebecca’s iPhone , Matt’s iPhone , and Toby’s Android . And I was pretty sure you weren’t Matt or Toby.”

“Clever,” she said. “I suppose you better tell me your name, then.”

“You don’t want to guess?”

“You look like a Ryan.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“Ryan Reynolds. Ryan Gosling. Ryan Philippe. I mean, it’s hardly an insult. It’s not like I called you Donald.”

“Aaron,” I told her, shuddering slightly. “Aaron Umber.”

We flirted some more, and when the conversation grew more serious, she told me that she was from Dublin, although she hadn’t lived there in a few years, while I confessed that I’d never set foot outside my hometown, except for a brief trip to Edinburgh with my parents when I was twelve.

She seemed surprised that I was attending medical school in the same city in which I’d grown up.

“I feel safe here,” I explained, a strange admission considering it was only a few miles from where we were sitting that I’d experienced the trauma that had caused me so much damage. “And you? What brought you here?”

“Love,” she replied with a shrug. “I followed a boy. It didn’t work out. He’s backpacking somewhere around South America now, last I heard. He left, I stayed.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be. Turns out I feel safe here too.”

“And that’s important to you?”

“Oh, it’s the most important thing in the world.”

Somehow, within a few days, we were officially dating.

The first girlfriend I had ever had. I fell in love quickly, partly because I felt genuinely happy in her company and partly because I was so sexually inexperienced that I didn’t know how to control my feelings.

At the time, I was on rotation with Dr. Freya Petrus in the burns unit of the local hospital, and the pressure of working under her, along with witnessing the trauma of patients who had suffered terrible life-changing injuries, was proving pretty stressful.

Rebecca’s generally calm nature soothed me.

“Are you a good swimmer?” she asked one evening, a question that seemed curiously random to me.

“I’m a terrible swimmer,” I admitted. “In pools, I always stay in the shallow end. I need to feel the ground beneath my feet. I’ve never even been in the sea.”

“I’m glad,” she said.

“Glad that I’ve never been in the sea?”

“Glad that you’re not a swimmer.”

“All right,” I said, uncertain why that might be the case.

Which was when she told me about her father, Brendan. About the things he had done, not to her, but to her sister and to others. About the effect this had had on her life and the troubled relationship she bore with her mother ever since the facts of the case had been revealed.

In turn, I told her about Freya. About what took place when I was fourteen.

Naturally, these were emotional conversations, but what we didn’t do, and what we should have done, was talk about how both these experiences had affected who we were as a couple because, from the start, sex was a problem.

In our first six months together, we only made love a few times, deferring to chaste hugs and something—shyness, embarrassment, self-loathing—made us too nervous to discuss the foundations of such inhibition.

During our second year together, we moved to London, where Rebecca continued her training to become a pilot while I qualified as a child psychologist. Conferences and symposia were held regularly around the country, and it was at one of these, in Birmingham, that I found my commitment to her challenged for the first time.

I had gone to a bar with a fellow student, but he’d hooked up with another attendee, leaving me on my own.

I had no desire to return to the hotel so remained there, drinking alone.

A young woman approached and sat down opposite me, saying that she’d spent the last thirty minutes hoping my name was Justin.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Because I’ve been stood up by a guy called Justin,” she explained. “A Tinder date. So I’ve been sitting over there feeling sorry for myself and wishing you were him. Actually, you’re better looking anyway.”

I didn’t quite know what to say. I wasn’t used to compliments.

“Have you been stood up too?” she asked.

“Sort of. I was out with a friend, but he met a girl, so he ditched me.”

“He just left you on your own?”

“I don’t mind.”

“Yes, you do. I’ve been watching you. You look lonely.”

“Well, I’m a solitary person for the most part.”

“Solitary people bring books with them when they go for a drink. You’re empty-handed.”

A waitress came over, and this seemed like the moment when we would either say goodbye or decide to have a drink together. She waited expectantly, and torn between reluctance and desire, I asked whether she would like to join me.

Over the next hour she told me stories of her life while asking very little about mine, and I couldn’t decide whether this was a relief or simply narcissistic on her part.

Her name was Kylie, she said, named for the singer, her parents being obsessive fans who’d met at one of her concerts.

She was twenty-four years old and worked as a receptionist at a talent agency that represented well-known actors, writers, and musicians.

When she told me the names of some of the people who crossed her path on a daily basis, she did so without any sense that she was name-dropping, speaking of them with neither affection nor contempt and sharing no gossipy stories.

She didn’t want to stay there forever, she added.

She was saving to buy a mobile dog-grooming van in the hope that she would one day own an entire fleet.

“I love dogs,” she told me. “So much more than I love people.”

“Most people do.”

“I have a five-year plan and—”

A startled expression crossed her face, and she turned her head a little to the right, covering it with her hand.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“It’s him,” she whispered. “It’s Justin.”

I glanced across the room and saw a young man standing there, looking around, clearly searching for someone. He appeared harried and sweaty, as if he’d been running. I didn’t have much sympathy for him. He was almost an hour late, after all.

“If you want to go,” I began, but she shook her head.

“I don’t,” she said. “He had his chance. And I’m here with you now.”

I smiled. Talking to a random girl in a pub excited me. Flirting. Seeing where things might go. The manner in which, once in a while, one of us would reach over to touch the other’s hand to emphasize a point we were making, leaving it there for a little longer than necessary, skin touching skin.

“Tell me when he’s gone,” she said, and I kept an eye on the hapless Justin while trying not to make my interest too obvious. He took his phone from his pocket and started tapping away.

“Quick, put your phone on silent,” I told her, and she did so just before it could ring. She ignored it and, throwing his arms in the air as if none of this was his fault, he gave up and left.

“That’ll teach him,” she said, watching as he departed. “You only get one chance with me.”

“I’ll bear that in mind. Me, I’m never late for anything. If I’m not exactly where I’m supposed to be when I’m supposed to be there, then the chances are I’m dead.”

“That’s cheerful,” she said, lifting her glass and clinking it against mine.

We spent the next hour chatting about the usual things—books we’d read, movies we’d watched, places we’d like to visit—and then: