Anna felt a smile creeping over her. She felt it inside and out. She took a pen from her bag and wrote her number down on her napkin, and she handed it to him. There was something in the gesture that made her feel like she was back there, in her early twenties, with everything to come.
‘Thanks, Anna,’ Jamie said, turning to leave the table. ‘I’ll call you. Oh, and can I get you something for dessert? On me?’
On the walk back to her flat, after a delicious piece of carrot cake, she felt light and fizzy. She didn’t need a relationship; she knew that now. She was happy enough with her work and her sons and her peaceful home. All of that was the feeling she’d searched for. But still, there was nothing quite like the thrill of a connection like that, of the possibility of something coming to be. It would, or it wouldn’t. And either way, that was just fine. She was exactly where she should be, exactly who she should be. And all the paths she might take in the future?
Well, she thought with a smile, when she reached them, she would know what to do.
37
NO
Tuesday 5 June 2018
Steve handed Anna a mug of coffee and they sat down opposite one another at the table. He bit into his toast.
‘I should hear about that new job today,’ he said.
‘The shop chain refit?’
‘It’s not shops, it’s restaurants.’
‘Restaurants?’ Anna asked.
‘Yes. Why?’
Anna couldn’t tell him, could she? She couldn’t say that when she was twenty-two, a psychic had said that the love of her life would have a name beginning with J and would work in food. No, she couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. And she still wasn’t sure she believed in any of that, not the way Nia always had, but she couldn’t help but feel like this was some kind of message. Some kind of validation.
‘Nothing, I must have got confused.Let me know, will you?’
‘I will.’
Anna reached for her phone and composed a quick text to Nia.
Steve might be about to start refitting restaurants. Does that count as working with food?
Nia replied almost straight away.
Close enough!
Steve reached across the table and took hold of Anna’s hand, lifted it to his mouth and kissed it.
‘What was that for?’
‘I’m just happy,’ he said.
Anna was happy. It had taken her a while to trust it, to trust him, to not dismiss it as too good to be true, or too soon after Ben. But she’d got there. She knew that it might not last forever, or that something might happen to change the way she felt about him, but right now, she was happy, and she wasn’t going to let worrying about the future change that. She’d been thinking about something, and she was ready to put it into words.
‘I have a question for you,’ she said.
And just like that, she was nervous. What if she’d misjudged it, and he wasn’t as serious about her as she was about him? But no, it was impossible. He’d said he loved her first; he’d made himself clear at every step.
‘Oh yes?’
‘I wondered whether you’d like to move in together.’
He stopped, then. ‘Here?’
‘Well, I’ve been thinking about that. I don’t mind whether it’s here or your place.’
