The Art of Forgetting Read Free Page A

parts. The other commuters were extras, their briefcases and handbags were props and it would all disappear as soon we had said our lines. They say life is stranger than fiction though, and that certainly turned out to be true.
    We had only a couple of days to wait but the time dragged terribly, as I was torn between feelings of excitement and regret every time I thought about it, which was quite a lot. Bob and Sandy teased me about daydreaming and said I must be in love, and the fact that I blushed deeply did nothing to persuade them otherwise. How shocked they would have been if they had known the truth! Seeing it through their eyes made me realise what a rash and ill-advised thing it was to do, but there was no backing out now. Linda’s plans were complete and now the time had come to enact them.
    We met as arranged, just down from the entrance to Oxford Street Station. It was overcast and drizzly, and I was cold in my completely inappropriate light jacket and short skirt. I wrapped my arms around myself and shuffled from foot to foot, but I didn’t have to wait long for there was Linda, waving at me as she side-stepped and skipped her way through the throng of commuters and tourists surging down the street.
    “My God, what a nightmare!” she panted. “I thought I was going to be late.” But really it was quite the opposite. Her plan had included so many added minutes for unforeseen events that it was a full hour before I was supposed to meet the man. We filled the time by going to a Wimpy bar and eating burgers and chips, but I left half of mine as the excitement was making me queasy and Linda’s last-minute instructions did nothing to calm me down.
    At last it was time to position ourselves, so we jumped on the Tube for one stop then walked the rest of the way. I think Linda must have thought I was a bit wobbly, as she took my arm and steered me along, chatting brightly all the time. She was right. I was cold, my meal was lying heavily in my stomach and my feet were hurting; I would have been quite happy to go home.
    We were still a good ten minutes early, but Linda ushered me to our vantage point. We stood there in a doorway slightly elevated by a couple of steps, trying to look inconspicuous and waiting for him to arrive. I had a forlorn hope that he wouldn’t turn up but there was little chance of that, considering how much trouble he had taken to get this far.
    “Tell me when you see him,” said Linda, about every minute. I nodded, but then my heart lurched for there he was, coming out of the station. He was carrying something, and a horrible feeling of guilt, mixed with something else I could not identify, coursed through me as I saw what it was. Flowers. He had bought me flowers and now what would he do with them? Take them home to his wife? He stood for a few seconds, looking around, but then a bus lumbered along and he was obscured. I closed my eyes, praying that he would be gone by the time it had passed, but no, he was still there. He looked at his watch then to his left and right, but he was an island of indecision in the flow of people coming and going so he moved to one side and waited there.
    I took a deep breath. “That’s him, in the brown coat, with the flowers,” I whispered, as if he could hear us from over the road with crowds of people and traffic between us, but Linda had already seen him.
    “I know. I knew it would be him. Bastard!”
    I looked up at her face – she was quite a lot taller than me – waiting for the laughter to start, but it didn’t. This was supposed to be a joke, a harmless prank at his expense, but her face was twisted with anger.
    “I asked my mum about it. Don’t worry, I just started talking about how we keep seeing people we know on the train, so she doesn’t suspect anything – but it’s definitely him. Gordon Carpenter. Lives in Tonbridge. She remembered it because they don’t really do weddings. It was a favour, you know, friend of a friend of a