The shape of her face was never as important to me as when I couldn't see it anymore. The distance between her eyes, the prominence of her nose, the smoothness of her cheek, the contour and colour of her lips. The lips I had to stop myself reaching out to touch with my fingertips as she was talking; and the eyes I lost myself in so many times, seeing all of her and yet nothing but myself reflected. She's gone now, swept away in the turbulent waters of her life to sink or swim without me. Disengaged, my guilt assuaged, she to her fate and I to mine. I loved making her laugh.
The first time I saw her she was laughing – doubled up as she came into the room, sharing a joke with a companion; free and easy and vibrant and deliciously alive in the moment. That's how I always remember her, and I can't help smiling when I do. There was such a sadness about her otherwise, a melancholy that seemed bone-deep, that when she laughed it was as if she became a different woman. Her whole face would change and it seemed that she shook a great weight from her shoulders for those few brief, wonderful moments of mirth. She had a natural beauty that blinded me and a quiet presence that overwhelmed my senses, but underpinning all of it was a world-weariness which belied her twenty-six years. She gave me such joy, yet I never felt as if she kept enough for herself.
We met at a wake, in mourning for a dead colleague. Why she was in stitches at such a solemn gathering I never knew, and it never mattered. I was just so glad for the injection of her happiness into the stiff, sniffling blackness; the tissues and tea and "Terrible tragedy!". It was awful, as only funerals can be, and I was just starting to wish I had slipped away at the graveside and returned to my work when she exploded into the silent void and I fell in love with her instantly and so very hard.
Recovering her composure, she caught my eye and held it as she came to stand by me at the buffet table. I felt something pass between us in that first, unhurried look and a pulse of pure electricity shot through my lower body. She made me twinge. I couldn't stop staring, a rabbit in headlights, my heart careening around inside my chest and the blood belting through my body rich with adrenaline. Suddenly she was close enough to touch. I felt nauseous as I tried to swallow my biscuit but my mouth had become as dry as a sand dune. I had to wash it down with a whole glass of wine.
"Mmm. Good idea," she said seriously, and followed suit. "Dispatch. Supervisor." she continued, pouring us both another.
"Design. Photography. Fourth floor."
"Cool. Fabienne. Don't ask. My mum was French. Alsation actually."
"Suzanne. No reason."
"Hiya."
"Hiya."
I burned as I stood with her – my feelings began to smoulder within me. I knew it straight away, that I had fallen for her. It started the moment I saw her and it blossomed as we gulped our wine and exchanged shy pleasantries whilst trying to conceal everything about ourselves. Lesbian cool in full effect, we danced the stilted verbal at a safe distance. But each time we made eye contact, I felt that something there, where just minutes before there had been nothing. Something warm and growing, reaching and penetrating and connecting and finally pulsing irreverently between us. It was unnerving, it was erotic...and yet oddly comfortable. I felt as if I had stumbled upon some wonderful treasure quite by chance that I never ever wanted to let out of my sight again. And so we stood together, side by side, two twinkling lights in the darkness of the occasion; two dispassionate homosexuals in a sea of straight grief. Well, not quite dispassionate: our passions were simply not focused on our late great Chairman.
Fabienne and I stood about gently discussing the finer points of the funeral, commenting on the attire of our colleagues, bitching and gossiping like a couple of unmarried fishwives.
"Where d'you hang out then?"
"Basement. The Warehouse. Loading bay, Goods In, you know. The blue-collar bits."
"Ah, Below Stairs! That's cool, I like it down there."
"I've never seen you. Why haven't I seen you? I would have...seen you, if I'd seen you."
She said it playfully, but it was loaded with something I couldn't quite put my finger on. Was she flirting with me? The idea momentarily paralysed me, but I liked it. I very much hoped she was. It was mid-afternoon, mid-week, and between us we had downed nearly one-an-a-half bottles of cheap company Cab Sauv in around an hour. Things were getting a good deal less shy and stilted.
"I've only been here three weeks. Or is it four? No. Three. Only gone down once."
"I'd like to see you down there."
"I bet you would. But steady on, we've only just met!"
The banal double-entendre made us both guffaw loudly, tipsy and over-the-top with tension, but I felt myself blush at the implication. She blushed too, I noticed, and turned her head away to hide it. People around us were starting to drift back to their departments and the cleaners were hovering – circling the last few stragglers, rustling their black bags, keen to dart in and scavenge the buffet before returning the atrium-stroke-lobby to its usual glassy austerity. Fabienne and I strolled over to the staircase with a handful of mini sausage rolls apiece.
"Come down for a smoke?"
