Anna looked at Marco and Jamie standing side by side, trying to work out whether he might be a permanent fixture in her life. She didn’t love him, not yet, but she loved the way hetouched her, and she loved the fact that she didn’t think about David when she was with him.
Inside the theatre, they went straight to their seats. Everyone had been too polite to say, but Marco’s lateness had meant they were only just on time. Anna noticed Cara’s jaw drop open when they stepped into the darkness of the theatre and she saw the stage, and she tried to remember what it had been like to see things for the first time, to be so impressed by the everyday. She couldn’t, of course. She was too far from her own childhood to recapture it. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why people had children, she surmised. To regain that sense of wonder. To see it through their eyes.
They had good seats, near the front of the circle, and they sat with Cara between them and waited for the curtain to go up.
‘What do you think was going on with Marco?’ Nia asked in a whisper. ‘Just late?’
Anna shrugged. ‘He’s always late,’ she said. ‘Drives me crazy.’
She thought of Edward, how he’d always been early, but how that had been a tiny thing when compared to everything that was wrong between the two of them.
‘Is everything okay with you two?’ Nia asked.
If they’d been in a bar, without Nia’s child sitting between them, she would have said that she was having the best sex of her life, and it made up for a host of other things. That she was ignoring the fact that Marco was younger than her and a little unsettled, that he sometimes talked about moving back to Italy. That she was really trying to just focus on the present and the way he made her feel when they were together. But they weren’t, and Cara was watching them avidly, her eyes swivelling from her mum to Anna to make sure she didn’t miss a whispered word.
‘I don’t think it’s forever,’ Anna said. ‘But things are fine.’
Nia pulled a face that Anna knew meant ‘let’s talk about thisanother time’ and then the curtain started to come up and Cara did a huge gasp and the people sitting around them smiled and laughed a little. And Anna turned away from her friend and towards the stage and allowed herself to be swept up in the magic of it all.
Halfway through the final rendition of ‘Circle of Life’, Anna heard a shriek and turned to see that Cara had a hand clasped to her mouth. There was blood on her fingers. Nia was rooting in her handbag for a tissue.
‘Are you okay?’ Anna asked.
Cara shook her head.
‘Her tooth’s come out,’ Nia whispered. ‘Just looking for something to wrap it in to keep it safe.’
An older woman in front of them turned around and gave them a stern look, and it made Anna want to laugh. She tried to remember what it was like to lose a tooth, but she couldn’t. She put out a hand for Cara to hold and Cara took it, slowly pulling her other hand down from her mouth. It was one of the big front ones, Anna saw, and she had a brief flashback to one of her own school photos. Her gappy smile. Cara’s hand was warm in hers, and Anna gave it a squeeze. But when Nia had finished wrapping the tooth in a tissue and stashed it away somewhere, she pulled Cara towards her and she dropped Anna’s hand. And for a second, Anna felt like she’d lost something precious. And then she turned her attention back to the stage and tried to forget.
When they met Jamie and Marco after the show, the men had obviously had a few drinks and were laughing and agreeing with each other about everything.
‘Friends for life,’ Nia whispered to Anna.
Marco stood up and put his arms around Anna. ‘How was the show?’
‘The daddy lion died!’ Cara announced.
‘He did, yes, but we got over that and enjoyed the rest of the show, didn’t we?’ Nia asked.
‘And look, I lost a tooth!’ Cara grinned and Jamie inspected her, gave her a high five.
They all hugged, and then Nia and her family left, Cara between her parents, holding both of their hands.
‘Let’s go home,’ Anna said.
They set off for the Tube.
‘Was it okay, with Jamie?’ she asked.
They were standing on the platform, waiting for a train to arrive. It was busy and hot, and Marco had pulled her in close to him.
‘It was good, he’s a nice guy.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘Oh, you know, football, work, family. Do you want all that?’
‘All what?’
