Free Crazy Paving by Louise Doughty

into a fight. On the Sunday morning
he woke up with a sore nose and realised that self-destruction was no fun. It was time to be honest with Linda and cut down on the booze.
    He only saw Ellen once after that. It was nearly a year after they had broken up. He was sitting on the tube, the Piccadilly line, between Green Park and Piccadilly Circus. The train had come to
a stop in the middle of a tunnel. It made a few half-hearted chugging noises, then there was silence; the weird unearthly silence that comes deep underground after a great deal of noise. The
passengers pulled faces, not meeting each other’s gazes. William sighed and sat back in his seat. He was thinking about the Planned Maintenance report on Shepherd’s Bush market. He
wondered if he should add a sum for repair of external cladding.
    Then he heard her voice.
    ‘Shall we eat first or later?’
    All at once, he felt his stomach fold in on itself. His scalp seemed to shrink. It was her voice, so close and clear he felt tempted to lift his head and respond.
    Shall we
?
    She was the only person he knew who used the word ‘shall’ so frequently. He looked around. Most of the seats were full and there were several people standing nearby. In front of him
was a woman in a red coat and a man and boy in matching baseball caps. Where was she?
    To his left there was the glass panel that divided his row of seats from the area between the doors. He looked up. She was just the other side of the panel, facing away from him. Her back was
pressed against it. She was inches away. He had been hurtling along a tube tunnel with her only inches away. If the train hadn’t stopped he might never have realised she was there. Her head
was leaning back against the panel. Her brown curls were crushed against the glass. She was wearing the green coat she had bought in the New Year sales after that awful Christmas. ‘Shall I
have the green or the blue?’ she had asked him, holding them both up, one in each hand. ‘Which one shall I have?’ He had been so terrified of giving the wrong answer he had merely
shrugged.
    Then he saw, next to the crushed brown curls – just above the right shoulder of the green coat – a hand.
    The palm of the hand was pressing the glass, the fingers splayed. It was a rough hand, a large hand. It was a male hand.
    Oh God, he thought. Not this. Not now. He couldn’t bear to look and he couldn’t bear not to.
    The man had not answered her question. William listened. He knew those pauses, the slow conversations, the lingering looks. Then the man spoke. His voice was deep, with a slight lilt, Welsh,
perhaps. He spoke warmly, slowly, a smile in every syllable.
    ‘Come here girl.’
    William closed his eyes. He felt sick and hot. When he opened them again he looked resolutely ahead, at the man and boy in front of him. They were both looking over at Ellen. Then the man looked
down at his son and grinned. William looked at the other passengers. Several were glancing over in Ellen’s direction. Inches away from him, separated only by a panel of glass, the only woman
he had ever loved was being kissed by someone else.
    All at once he was overwhelmed with fury. Why should that stupid man in front of him grin down at his son in that stupid, knowing manner? How could Ellen make a spectacle of herself like that?
He wanted to stand up and say to those nearby, ‘I was with her when she bought that coat. She hasn’t told him
that
, I bet.’
    The train started with a jolt. The standing passengers staggered. He heard Ellen giggle.
    They hurtled down the tunnel. The noise was deafening. As they pulled into Piccadilly Circus, William was already pushing his way through the other passengers, away from Ellen and her growling
Welsh companion, as far away as he could get. At the door he stumbled against a Japanese woman and kicked a large box at her feet. ‘Sorry,’ said the woman.
    He joined the other passengers jostling along the platform. Half-way to the