Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [152]
Yippee, she yelled in her head. She could stay with Thomas for ever. She could stay with Thomas for ever!
Why did that suddenly sound more like a threat than a dream come true?
56
Joe was waiting in the ticket hall of Finsbury Park tube station as arranged. There were so many people milling around, wearing Arsenal shirts, that for a moment she didn’t see him. Then she spotted him leaning against the wall, his hands in his jacket pockets. He wore a pair of faded jeans, tough workman’s boots and a big square leather jacket. A lick of dark hair hung on to his forehead and his brown eyes were distant. As she nervously walked towards him his face remained shut, stony almost. She began to regret she’d come.
She was almost nose-to-nose with him before the closed face altered.
‘Katherine!’ He pushed himself away from the wall, and stood up straight, making him much taller than her. ‘I didn’t recognize you.
‘I didn’t recognize you,’ he repeated, as, shamelessly, he checked out her hair, her jacket, her jeans, her boots. Shaking his head in disbelief, he exhaled long and hard, lifting the lick of hair from his forehead. ‘Wow!’
She squirmed self-consciously. ‘I don’t look that different.’
‘No, but…’ His grin spread and grew as he didn’t even attempt to hide his appreciation.
She flicked a smile at him, then had to look away again, embarrassed, happy. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said.
He looked at his watch and sucked his teeth. ‘Three and a half minutes, Katherine. You really had me worried there.’ She had actually. ‘But at least you came. This way.’ He steered her out into the street. As they walked to the ground, he didn’t touch her. No hand-holding or even elbow-guiding. But he stayed close, providing a safe force-field around her. He was as pleasant as he’d been at the height of his niceness to her, but she no longer took it as a reason to be cruel or dismissive of him.
The stadium seemed enormous. After they’d shown their tickets, they had a quick drink in the bar. Then it took nearly ten minutes, jostling with hundreds of others along walkways and up steps, before they emerged into the cold open air, to the sound of chanting, near and far away.
The tickets were numbered and there was a huge canopy to protect against bad weather. All very civilized. A far cry from elbowing on the terraces in the rain, trying to see over other people’s heads, as Katherine had initially visualized.
And there were women there – lots of them. She wasn’t the only one! Through rows and rows of plastic seats they made their way down and along. When they found their places, they sat side by side, their thighs almost but not quite touching, their arms wedged together, Joe’s big black shoulder towering over Katherine’s dainty blue one. She was amazed by the number of people there. Thousands. Below her, rows and rows of people’s heads led down to the pitch. She twisted around for a look behind her and saw acres of torsos forming an almost vertical pattern up to the metal roof. Then she leant forward and watched yards of knees stretching out from her in both directions. The three other stands were packed too, the people so far away that moving en masse they looked like red seaweed in the tide. It was awesome.
The clapping and drumming of feet echoing against the metal roof of the stadium was deafening and somehow primal. Powerful and very macho. Her blood pounded in time to the thundering stamping. She could feel it in her stomach.
Joe turned and murmured, ‘OK?’
‘OK.’ She nodded up at him, with the teeniest of smiles.
‘Are you warm enough?’
She nodded again.
‘Can you see?’
Another nod.
‘Not that there’s anything to see yet, of course,’ he added.
After a short pause. ‘Would you like a hamburger?’ he asked. ‘Or a look at the programme?’
Joe had gone into a mild panic that maybe Katherine wasn’t as thrilled with this date as he was.
Reassured by his anxiety she found herself saying, ‘I didn’t think it would feel this…’
He watched her anxiously. ‘This what?