If You Love Me Read online

  Copyright

  Certain details in this story, including names, places and dates, have been changed to protect the family’s privacy.

  HarperElement

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published by HarperElement 2017

  FIRST EDITION

  © Alice Keale and Jane Smith 2017

  Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

  Cover photograph © Stephen Carroll/Arcangel Images (posed by model)

  A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

  Alice Keale and Jane Smith assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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  Source ISBN: 9780008205256

  Ebook Edition © January 2017 ISBN: 9780008205263

  Version: 2016-12-20

  Dedication

  For my family and friends, who never gave up on me. I wouldn’t be where I am today without their continued love and support.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  About the Author

  Moved by If You Love Me?

  Moving Memoirs eNewsletter

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  I glanced down at the luminous hands of the large watch that made my wrist look as thin as a child’s. Surely that couldn’t be the right time. It couldn’t possibly have taken me as long as that just to get this far. Then I remembered that he’d set the watch before I left, so I knew it was accurate. Which meant that I would have to run even faster if I was going to reach the pub, take a photograph on his mobile phone and get back to the house in the few minutes that remained before time ran out.

  Quickening my pace, I scanned the darkness of every side street and every shop doorway I passed. And I listened too, for the sound of approaching footsteps or distant voices.

  As I ran past the café where we had sat together just a few hours earlier, I thought I saw a flicker of movement, and the ever-present knot of fear tightened inside me. It was almost 1 a.m. on a Wednesday night and I’d been certain I was the only person out on the street. But, suddenly, a man stepped out of the shadows directly in front of me.

  I had to swerve off the pavement and on to the road to avoid being caught in his outstretched arms, and as I did so I was engulfed in the alcohol-laden breath he exhaled when he lunged towards me. I gasped in shocked surprise, but kept on running, ignoring the sharp objects I could feel cutting into the flesh of my bare, bruised feet and the incoherent shouts of the man who stumbled after me down the dimly lit street.

  I couldn’t really blame him for pursuing me – a woman running naked through the streets of London in the middle of the night. Perhaps he thought I was playing some salacious game. It was certainly an explanation that would have made more sense than the real reason, which I didn’t understand myself – and I was completely sober.

  I was frightened of the drunk man, and of what he might do if he caught up with me. But I was even more frightened of what would happen if I didn’t get home within the next three minutes. ‘Maybe this time it will be enough,’ I thought, as I ran, sobbing, through the darkness.

  ‘Please, God,’ I whispered into the night, ‘let it be this time.’

  Chapter 1

  Although my love life was pretty much a disaster, things were going well at work and I’d managed to save enough money for a deposit on a flat of my own. So when my flatmate, Connie, went to live with her boyfriend, I arranged to rent the spare room in my friend Cara’s flat until I could find somewhere to buy.

  It was August 2011 and I was alone on what would be my last night in the rented flat Connie and I had shared. I’d already taken almost everything I was going to need in the short term to Cara’s place and stored the rest in the garage at my parents’ house in Devon. So all I had to do that evening was pack a small suitcase to take with me the next day. I was looking forward to buying a place of my own and starting the next phase of my life, and after having a nice dinner out with friends I was just thinking about heading off to bed for an early night when I heard the sound of breaking glass.

  The flat was above some shops on quite a busy street, and my first thought was that there’d been a car accident. But what I saw when I looked out of the window was like a scene from a dystopian film. There were people running in every direction, most of them wearing hoodies and scarves that concealed their faces and some of them hurling what looked like bricks and bottles through shop windows. At first, I couldn’t make any sense of what was happening. Then, as I watched, with my back pressed against the wall beside the window so that I couldn’t be seen, a group of people started rocking a car from side to side, before stumbling backwards when smoke began to curl around it and then flames exploded out of it.

  I was shaking as I phoned the police. ‘There’s rioting all over London,’ the police operator told me. ‘So it might be some time before anyone gets there. Just stay in your flat. Whatever you do, don’t go outside.’

  I moved away from the window after speaking to her, and was crouched in the hallway when my phone rang. ‘Dad and I have been listening to the news,’ Mum said, sounding less worried than she would have done if she’d known the true situation. ‘Is there rioting where you are?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I told her, walking from the hallway into my bedroom at the back of the flat and closing the door as I spoke, so that she wouldn’t hear the sounds from the street.

  I didn’t know the neighbours, who’d only recently moved in to the flat next door. But after I’d reassured Mum, I knocked on their door and asked if I could sit with them for a while, because I didn’t want to be on my own. Something had been thrown through their living-room window just a few minutes earlier, and after they’d shown me the shards of glass that covered the carpet we sat in their bedroom, as far away from the street as we could get, and waited for the police to arrive. In fact, things had already started to calm down a bit by the time they got there, and I decided to go back to my place and try to get a couple of hours’ sleep.

  It felt as though my head had only just touched the pillow when my phone rang again. It was Connie this time, and her voice was tight with anxiety as she asked, ‘Are you in the flat, Alice? It’s on TV. I’m watching it now. They’ve set fire to the shops underneath. You’ve got to get out.’

  I’d been so tired I’d fallen into bed fully clothed and I was just grabbing my suitcase when there was a knock on the front door. The fireman who was standing there when I opened
it told me, ‘We’re evacuating the building. They’ve fire-bombed the shop on the corner. You need to leave – now.’ So I followed my neighbours out on to the smoke-filled street, where the last of the rioters were being herded past the burning buildings and around the corner by police.

  Someone had opened up a café a few doors down from the flat, to provide a refuge for people who’d had to be evacuated from their homes. It was about four o’clock in the morning by that time, and all the other people there looked as exhausted and dazed as I felt. Fortunately, the fire didn’t spread to my flat, and when the fire-fighters eventually got it under control, I was able to go back and try to sleep again for a couple of hours.

  Someone from the letting agency was due to do an inventory later that morning, but I was so tired by the time he arrived that I left him to it. Cara was away for a couple of days, so she’d given me a key to let myself in to her flat, and although I had been planning to go there first to drop off my bag, being at work suddenly seemed like a much better option than sitting there on my own.

  I worked at that time for a company that owned several art galleries, and when I emailed my boss to tell her what had happened and that I was going to be a bit late arriving at the office, she answered immediately, asking if I was all right and telling me to take the day off. I don’t think what had happened had really sunk in by that time. The adrenaline was still pumping around my body and although I was incredibly tired and shocked I wasn’t yet feeling particularly distressed, and my boss seemed to understand when I said I wanted to keep busy. So I did go in to work, and when I got there I was sitting at my desk talking to some of my colleagues about what had happened when Joe came over.

  Joe held a senior position as head of a department at the company I worked for, and although I knew vaguely who he was I hadn’t ever spoken to him before. ‘I heard about your experience this morning,’ he said. ‘And I just wanted to make sure you were okay.’ He seemed genuinely concerned, so I assured him that I was fine, apart from being tired and finding it a bit difficult to process what I’d seen – the overturned cars, smashed windows, looted shops and people running riot through the streets. ‘I still think you need to go home,’ he said. ‘You’ve had a shock and when it catches up with you, home is the best place for you to be.’

  He was right about the shock catching up with me. The adrenaline was already starting to subside and, as it did so, I was overcome by an almost paralysing weariness. So Joe got me a taxi, which the company paid for, and half an hour later I let myself in to Cara’s flat, with barely minutes to spare before exhaustion finally kicked in.

  I sent Joe an email before I fell into bed, thanking him for the taxi and telling him he’d been right about home being the best place, which he answered immediately, saying, ‘It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. Just have a good rest. Joe X.’

  I don’t sign off emails or texts with a kiss, except to family and close friends. But I know a lot of people do. So it probably wouldn’t have seemed particularly odd that Joe had done so if it hadn’t been for our relative positions at work and for the fact that we’d only spoken to each other for the first time that morning – although I was too weary to wonder about it by then.

  I had just finished reading Joe’s email when Cara’s mum phoned to check that I’d been able to get into the flat and that everything was okay. It was while I was talking to her that the impact of the whole traumatic experience finally hit me and I had to end the call because I couldn’t stop sobbing. Then I went to bed and slept without waking until the following morning.

  Joe made a point of coming to see me the next day, to ask if I was feeling better and if I’d managed to sleep. He sat on the edge of my desk in the large open-plan office for about half an hour, talking about what had happened and studying the diagram he asked me to draw to show exactly where the flat was in relation to where the rioting had kicked off in the street below.

  Part of my job involved setting up exhibitions of paintings and sculpture at various galleries around the country, and although I hadn’t had any direct contact with Joe before then, he was ultimately responsible for my team. So there was nothing unusual in the fact that we were both included in the emails that were sent round to everyone a couple of days later suggesting we should all meet up for a drink after work one evening. We didn’t get the chance to talk to each other on that occasion, however, because I was held up at the office and didn’t make it to the bar until after Joe had left.

  Meanwhile, what only a determined optimist would have referred to as my ‘love life’ was barely ticking over. Anthony, the married man I was ‘seeing’, had only been to my flat once during the few weeks prior to the night of the riots. But, based on the emails and texts he occasionally sent me – and on a great deal of wishful thinking – I still considered myself to be in a relationship with him. Not that my situation with Anthony had any relevance to how I felt about Joe. Although Joe was friendly and seemed very pleasant, I wasn’t interested in him in that way. So I was surprised to receive an email from him one day when I was doing some research in a large art gallery in London, asking if I’d like to meet for a quick coffee after work.

  ‘Unfortunately, I can’t,’ I emailed back. ‘I’m meeting some friends.’

  His answer came almost immediately. ‘That’s a shame. I’m going to Berlin in the morning. I’ll be away for a week. Of course, we could always meet there for coffee …!’ To which I responded in the same jokey manner and was flattered when he suggested we should have a drink when he got back.

  I did see him the following week, after his trip to Berlin, but he didn’t say anything about the emails or about getting together for a drink. So I sent a text to my best friend, Sarah, asking whether she thought I should mention it to him, and she answered, ‘Go for it! Just see what he’s like. You’ve been really miserable and you deserve to be happy.’ And when I texted Joe, he suggested meeting for a drink after work a few days later.

  Apart from those few emails and texts, we’d only ever spoken to each other about work and the riots, so I don’t know what I was expecting to happen when we did meet up. I still believed I loved Anthony, even though we saw each other only rarely by that time. But although I wasn’t ready to admit it to myself yet, I think I already knew, on some level, that we weren’t going to have a future together, and I often wished I could have the sort of normal, uncomplicated relationship with a nice, single guy that most of my friends had.

  I’d only really had one serious relationship before I started seeing Anthony – which had lasted several years before we split up. So the prospect of having what seemed to be a date with Joe made me both nervous and excited. In fact, I was so agitated on the day itself that I barely ate anything, and as I made my way to the trendy, expensive club where he’d suggested we should meet, my stomach was rumbling noisily.

  ‘Get a grip,’ I told myself severely as I pushed my way through the almost solid tide of commuters heading in the opposite direction, towards the train station from which I’d just come. ‘It isn’t really a date. You’re just meeting a man you barely know for a drink.’ It was true that I knew almost nothing about Joe, except that he was clever and seemed to be universally liked and respected by his colleagues. But, for some reason, I’d been looking forward all day to what I kept reminding myself was just a casual drink.

  I’d been delayed leaving work and was a few minutes late by the time I arrived at the club and climbed the stairs to the rooftop bar where I was due to meet Joe. There was still time to stop for a moment in front of the long mirror on the landing, though, and when I did so I was horrified by the red-faced, flustered-looking woman staring back at me. ‘Well, that’s a good start,’ I told her. ‘He’s going to be thrilled when he sees you!’ Then I imagined what he might say, which made me wonder, anxiously, what I would say to him. What would we talk about? What if he thought I was boring – as well as being an unattractive shade of puce and suffering from severe, and very audible, digestive problem
s? What if he made a quick excuse and fled as soon as he could do so without appearing to be downright rude?

  ‘For heaven’s sake, calm down,’ I told the woman in the mirror, silently. ‘You can do this. People don’t normally dislike you. You can hold a conversation and have fun. You’ve got some really nice, intelligent friends who wouldn’t bother with you if you were boring and stupid. You just need to move away from the mirror now and believe that everything will be all right.’

  When I stepped out on to the roof of the building a couple of seconds later, it was as if someone had suddenly turned up the volume on the muffled buzz of conversation that could be heard from inside. In fact, the bar was full of people, and as I scanned them in search of Joe I could feel the knot of anxiety tightening in my already protesting stomach. ‘Perhaps he hasn’t arrived yet,’ I thought. ‘Maybe something’s kept him late at work. Maybe he won’t come at all.’

  Then I saw him, sitting on a sofa with his head bent over his phone. Just a split second later he looked up and saw me, and as his face broke into a smile the knot in my stomach unravelled and I suddenly felt completely calm. After that, even the awkward bit was easy – those seconds when you’ve spotted the person you’re meeting but still have to cross the ground between you, not knowing whether to maintain eye contact and keep smiling inanely or look away until you’re within hand-shaking or cheek-kissing distance.

  Joe stood up when he saw me, and as soon as I was close enough to be able to hear him above the laughing chatter of the crowd he leaned forward and said into my ear, ‘I’ve got you a drink already. A gin and tonic. I hope that’s okay?’

  ‘That’s perfect,’ I said, sinking on to the sofa beside him. ‘Thanks. And hi.’

  On the relatively rare occasions when I go out on weekday evenings when I’m working, I don’t stay out late. But Joe and I were still in the bar four hours later, laughing and talking as though we’d known each other for years. He was funny and charming, and the more we talked, the more struck we were by how much we seemed to have in common. Everything I liked, Joe liked – and had something interesting or insightful to say about it. We laughed at the same things, had the same list of countries we wanted to visit, admired the same people, loved the work of the same artists, had read or wanted to read the same books, had the same opinions about films we’d seen, and loved or loathed the same foods …