That evening, by the time she heard Edward’s key in the door, Anna was standing in the kitchen with a glass of wine in her hand. She hadn’t stopped thinking all afternoon, hadn’t got any work done. Part of it had been daydreaming about New York, but most of it hadn’t. Most of it had been running over that phone call she’d had with Edward, and other conversations they’d had, and trying to come to some sort of decision.
‘Hey,’ he said, putting his head around the door.
‘Hi.’
‘I got held up, my meetings all ran on. And then Rav caught me just as I was trying to leave – can you believe his son is eighteen months old? He was asking if we want to sort out a weekend away with them. Anyway, what do you fancy doing for dinner? Shall we order something?’
‘I’m not really hungry,’ Anna said. ‘You go ahead.’
Was she waiting, to see if he brought it up, to see if he was taking it seriously? Or was she just putting it off, because she was a coward, and she knew this was going to come out of nowhere for him, and she didn’t know how to start?
‘Are you okay?’ he asked, reaching into the drawer where they kept takeaway menus.
‘I don’t think I am,’ she said. She pulled a chair out and sat down at the kitchen table. ‘Can you sit for a minute?’
Edward pulled out the menu he’d been looking for. Chinese.He would order that prawn thing he always had. Would he, still, after what she had to say? He sat down, reached across the table for her hand. ‘Is this about the New York thing?’
‘Kind of. Did you think about it any more?’
‘Not really. I mean, it’s not really feasible, is it? I can’t just throw away my job and follow you to New York…’
Anna wondered, for a minute, whether he was jealous that it wasn’t him who’d had this offer. His company had New York offices.
‘I feel like you should have at least asked me some questions. Like whether I wanted to do it, whether it was important to me. I feel like you should have taken it seriously, not just dismissed it. I mean, you keep asking me to have a baby, and you expect me to take a year out of my career for that, and yet you’re not prepared to do the same, for me.’
Edward dropped her hand. ‘What is this?’ he asked, an edge of anger in his voice. ‘Where is this coming from? You can’t compare a job opportunity to a baby!’
Anna took a sip of her wine. ‘When Deborah said it,’ she carried on, ‘I was so shocked. I mean, me? In New York? I was just a receptionist until a few years ago and now, suddenly, I’m someone who other people want in their publicity team. I couldn’t believe it. But then I called you, and you couldn’t really believe it either, and that made me realise something.’
Edward swallowed. ‘What?’
‘That you don’t believe in me at all. That you were hoping, after we got married, that I would give up work and have babies and…’
Edward stood up, his chair scraping across the tiles. ‘I did think we might have babies, yes! Is that so wrong? Is that so unusual?’
‘No, it isn’t. And you still want that, and I still don’t. And nowthere’s this, and the thought of it is terrifying but in that good way, you know, like when your stomach’s in knots every time you think about something. Like when you’re falling in love.’ Anna trailed off. It wasn’t until then that it hit her. That it had been a long, long time since she’d felt anything like that when she thought about Edward.
‘What are you saying?’ Edward asked. ‘I didn’t realise how important it was to you…’
‘You didn’t ask.’
Edward was standing behind the chair he’d been sitting on, his hands balled into fists and pressing down on the back of it. Anna kept her eyes on his hands. His wedding ring was a thick platinum band. Hers was much narrower, white gold. They’d chosen them together, and Anna had asked whether he thought it mattered that the rings were nothing like each other, and Edward had said that of course it didn’t, that they were nothing like each other and they were still perfect together, weren’t they? And right there in the shop, he had kissed her and she’d felt the whole world melt away, the way she always had. She couldn’t look at his face. If she looked at his face, she would see how he felt about this. He might be crying. Or worse, he might be just fine.
‘I’m going to go,’ Anna said. ‘To New York. It’s the kind of opportunity I won’t get again, I think, and I just want to give it a go.’
‘What about me?’ Edward asked.
She wanted to ask him not to make her say it. Hadn’t she made it clear? Hadn’t he realised where this was going? But that wasn’t fair. Just because this had been pushing its way to the forefront of her mind all day, all year, even, it didn’t mean his thoughts were keeping pace. On their wedding day, when she’d sat on her bed for half an hour before getting up, asking herselfover and over whether it was the right thing, perhaps he’d just been sure.
‘You’re going to stay here,’ Anna said. ‘You’re going to stay in your job, because it’s important to you.’
‘Anna, you’re my wife! That isn’t how it works. You don’t just have jobs thousands of miles away from each other. You find a way to be together, no matter what.’
Anna felt a tiredness like nothing she’d ever experienced. There would be so much to do, she thought, so many people to tell. There would be forms to fill in, explanations to be made. And yet. The fact that it was those things that she was focused on told her everything she needed to know.
‘It’s not working,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s not.’
And she did look up and into his eyes then, and she couldn’t quite read them. If he was sad, it wasn’t clear-cut. He was annoyed, she thought. None of this had gone to plan. First she had said she didn’t want to have children, and now she was saying she didn’t want to be with him at all. It was messy, it was difficult. It was a failure. It didn’t fit with his idea of how his life should be. She stood up and left the room, and he didn’t call her back, and she wouldn’t have gone if he had.
