David nodded his head slowly. ‘I’m sorry it’s turned out like this, Anna,’ he said.
She didn’t know what to say to that. If she’d known, that night she’d seen him on the subway platform, that they’d end up here, would she have declined his offer of a drink? No, probably not. She thought it had probably been worth it, because their time together had made her feel alive in a way she’d never felt before. And now she was paying for it.
‘I’m just not the settling down type, Anna.’
‘Don’t,’ Anna said. ‘Please. I can’t hear it again.’
A few times, she’d let herself entertain the idea of them being properly together. Living together on the Upper East Side, taking walks in Central Park hand in hand, no longer having to hide. Had he ever meant the promises he’d made to her in dark rooms, his lips tickling her ear? Once, he’d said he wanted them to have children together, and Anna had known that she would do it. That she would do anything, to keep him. And then, just a few weeks later, it had all been over.
Anna wanted to curl up in a ball and lie in bed forever. But the next best thing was to go home. To give her life a reset, to set herself up in a place where there would never be the risk of turning up on his doorstep late at night, banging on the door and bawling. Where if he called and said he wanted her back, she wouldn’t be able to go to him.
‘We’ll miss you,’ David said.
He meant the team. He meant the office. He didn’t mean him.
‘I’ll miss it here, too,’ she said.
She lifted her chin and looked at him, and his face was full of apologies and she saw him, then, for what he was. A man who swore he loved you but never quite enough to tell the people in his life that you existed. A man who let you cry into his chest in his office after hours but didn’t offer to make sure you got home okay, or message you to check that you had. Why hadn’t she been able to see it before? She’d been blinded by hope, she supposed. She’d wanted to believe.
Back at her apartment, she called Nia.
‘It’s over with David,’ she said.
Nia was quiet.
‘Please don’t say I told you so.’
‘I wouldn’t, Anna. I’m sorry.’
‘And I’m coming home.’
‘To London? For a holiday or for good?’
‘For good.’
Nia let out a scream that made Anna laugh, and then she heard Cara in the background, muttering questions.
The line went a bit muffled, then Nia’s voice came back, clear. ‘No, baby, Mummy is fine. I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m just happy. I’m getting my best friend back.’
Anna made another couple of calls after she finished talking to Nia. And within the hour, she was sitting at a sticky table in her favourite bar with Lee and Sarah.
‘What exactly do you mean by leaving?’ Lee asked, sucking on a tiny straw.
Anna had bought them cocktails to soften the blow.
‘Going back to London,’ Anna said. ‘I don’t know when yet, but I’ve asked David for a transfer.’
Sarah put a hand to her chest, near her heart, and made anagonised face. ‘You bitch,’ she said. ‘Just when I thought we really had you for good.’
Things were pretty good with Sarah. It had been a while since anything romantic or sexual had happened between them. It had just sort of fizzled out without either of them having to say anything, and they’d managed the transition from lovers back to friends better than she’d dared to hope. For the past few weeks, Sarah had been seeing a woman called Alex, and whenever she talked about her, her voice changed slightly and Anna knew she was falling in love.
‘You’ll be fine,’ Anna said now. ‘You have each other.’
What if that was my role, here, when it came to friendship?Anna thought. Befriending Lee and then Sarah so that they could go on to befriend each other. They got on like a house on fire, always had. And sometimes, when they saw one another without Anna there, she felt oddly jealous. She imagined herself back in London, in a flat somewhere south of the river, Skyping Sarah and seeing Lee in her apartment in the background. She imagined them waving and making sad faces and then going back to their lives.
‘I mean, Sarah’s okay,’ Lee said, cutting into Anna’s thoughts, ‘but damn, we’ll miss you.’
‘Well, like I said, it could be months. These are not my leaving drinks. These are just my breaking the news drinks.’
