Anna wanted to kiss him, thought about the way she would kiss him when they were alone.
‘I still can’t believe I finally persuaded you to marry me.’
They’d got married four years after meeting, which felt reasonable to Anna. The first time Edward had asked her, it had only been a year, and she’d said she wasn’t ready. How could you know, after one year, that you wanted to spend your life with someone? How could he be so sure? Anna knew she had plenty of faults, from leaving her things all over the bathroom to beingsnappy and mean when she was tired. Edward always teased her about the fact that she struggled to make up her mind. That was another one. It baffled her, sometimes, that Edward felt so confident that he would always want to be with her. But he waited for her, asked again a year later, and again, another year after that. Anna had remained determined that she wouldn’t say yes until it felt right. And that final time, it had.
When the waiter came, Edward ordered a bottle of champagne. A year before, they’d drunk champagne in a crowded room and kissed and danced until Anna felt dizzy. They clinked glasses, looked in each other’s eyes.
‘I love you,’ Edward said.
‘I love you, too.’
Over starters of grilled cod, Edward asked how her day had been. Anna had just started a new job as a publicist at the publishing house, where she’d worked on reception for most of the time they’d been together.
‘Great,’ Anna said. ‘I have so many ideas. I mean, I’ve always had them, but it was never really appropriate to suggest them before. It’s so nice to finally be in the inner circle, to feel like what I think matters. To be taken seriously.’
Anna’s years spent working on reception had been a source of much frustration. Doing that kind of job in her late twenties had never been the plan. She’d decided at fifteen that she was going to be a journalist, and every step she’d taken had stemmed from that. An English degree, followed by a journalism course. Two years on a local paper. And then a little boy had been killed in a car accident and she’d been asked by her editor to go to the house, get a quote from the parents, and she’d known, ten years after deciding that this was the career for her, that it wasn’t.
She’d walked out, moved back in with her mum for a bit,while she tried to formulate a new plan. And then, in her haste to make a quick decision, she’d made a couple more wrong ones. When she’d first met Edward, she’d just abandoned a PGCE. By the time she’d settled on publishing, which seemed so right that she couldn’t believe she hadn’t realised it before, a lot of her friends were nicely settled into their careers. Edward, too. She’d made a few unsuccessful applications for editorial roles, and then applied to be a receptionist, determined to work her way up from the inside. The first step of which had taken longer than she’d expected.
‘How was your day?’ she asked.
Their starters had been cleared away and just then, a waiter appeared with their steaks. Edward cut into his to make sure it was medium, just how he liked it.
‘Pretty good,’ he said. ‘I had a one-to-one with Holmes. He said he thought I’d be in his shoes this time next year. He’s hoping to step up and he’s told his boss that I’m the only one of his team in a position to take over his role. I’d have a team of twenty.’
‘That’s great,’ Anna said.
Anna was proud of Edward, despite not fully understanding what he did. No matter how many times he tried to explain it, she felt no more informed. He worked for an investment bank, had joined on their graduate recruitment scheme and been promoted three times in ten years. It wasn’t a meteoric rise, but it was significant. It was clear that he was going places, that he would be on the board by the time he was forty. A couple of times, recruiters had tried to lure him away, but he’d remained loyal and he told her, often, that the bank valued that loyalty in him, and would repay it. The money he made was approximately four times her salary, and she didn’t much like to think about that.
‘Anyway,’ Edward said, ‘that’s enough talk about work.’
Anna was relieved. Edward worked hard and he deserved this success, but she wasn’t all that interested in it. In the money or the steps that led steadily upwards to bigger offices and more sprawling teams and longer hours and probably an ulcer. It wasn’t the side of Edward that she’d fallen in love with. She wanted to see the man who had made her laugh until there were tears streaming down her cheeks and her mascara was ruined on the night they’d met. The man who turned things she was saying to him into lyrics and sang them to her as soft rock ballads. The man who put his hand on the back of her head in public places and whispered in her ear about what he’d like to do with her.
‘What shall we do at the weekend?’ she asked.
‘Stay in bed, eat Chinese food and watch documentaries about serial killers,’ he said, as if he’d been waiting for her to ask exactly that.
Anna laughed. ‘I think we might have watched them all. I was thinking we could go out on the bikes, maybe get out of the city.’
Edward sighed, pretending to be annoyed. ‘Okay, we’ll do your thing on Saturday and mine on Sunday.’
‘Deal.’
‘Can you believe the wedding was a year ago? I feel like it’s flown. I’m still not used to saying wife instead of girlfriend.’
Anna thought back to that day. It had been so joyful. They’d pushed back against everyone’s demands and done everything just the way they’d wanted to. An ice cream van outside the venue while the photographs were being taken, a Britpop disco, brightly coloured streamers everywhere in place of flowers, because of Edward’s hay fever, and three choices of dessert at the dinner, because of Anna’s sweet tooth.
‘It was the best day,’ she said.
He reached across the table and took her hand. ‘Shall we skip dessert? Go home?’
Anna glared at him.
‘Just kidding.’
They ordered a raspberry cheesecake and a crème brûlée to share, and Edward let Anna eat most of both, sitting back and sipping at his drink, laughing while she rolled her eyes to show how good they were.
This was happiness, wasn’t it? This was what people searched for. How lucky they were, Anna thought, to have found it, to have kept it.
