Anna didn’t turn back to face him. She poured the wine slowly, trying to work out what he meant. And then the song he’d put on started, those familiar notes that took her back in time, and she realised that it was their anniversary, and she counted the years. Thirteen.
‘I haven’t got you a card,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, it’s just…’
‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘I haven’t got one either. But we should acknowledge it, right?’ He took a glass from her and held it up, and she chinked hers against it and looked in his eyes.
‘Dance?’
She shook her head, feeling strangely self-conscious. Edward looked slightly hurt, so she stepped towards him, went up on tiptoes to kiss him.
‘To us,’ he said. ‘To the future.’
‘To the future,’ she repeated.
She wondered, as she did sometimes, who they would be when this long, hard job of parenting was over. She could imagine how they would age, the way their hair would grey and they would put on some weight. But she wasn’t as sure of what would be left of them. It felt like all their conversations these days were about the boys. And there were so many years of parenting ahead, she knew. But at the end of it all, when the boys were grown and gone, what then?
25
NO
Tuesday 5 June 2012
Anna had been mentally preparing herself for David’s visit to the London office since Sarah’s phone call to warn her. But it was impossible to know how she’d feel when she saw him. Or perhaps it was impossible to admit to herself how she would feel when she saw him. She was at her desk, absorbed in emails, when she heard his voice. She looked up. He wasn’t speaking to her, but he was close. Had he thought about how it would be to see her? She doubted it. He was about ten feet away, sideways on to her. Did he look different, older? Not noticeably. Her body was desperate to betray her. To shout out his name or to get up and run away or to just keep staring at him until he asked her to stop. She forced herself to look back at her screen. It was going to be a tough week.
He didn’t speak to her until mid-afternoon, when she’d pretty much stopped expecting it. But at some point between three and four, when Anna was feeling like she needed coffee but shouldn’t drink one if she wanted any chance of sleepinglater, he turned up at her desk. She sensed him there, looked up.
‘Hey, Anna,’ he said.
‘Hey.’
‘I’m over for the week, and I was wondering whether you had some time to…’
He trailed off, leaving her unsure whether he was asking her to have a meeting with him, which could be strictly professional, or whether he was asking her to go to dinner with him, or for drinks, or just back to his hotel room. She maintained eye contact, raised her eyebrows. She was going to make him say it, make him be clear about what he was asking.
‘Um,’ David said, ‘you know, time to catch up?’
‘Sure, how about tomorrow afternoon?’ she suggested.
‘No, I mean, yes, that would be great, it would be good to hear what you’re working on, but I actually meant outside of the office. Dinner or something.’
Anna made him wait. Made him stand there until it was verging on uncomfortable. She thought about what Sarah had said, how she’d made Anna promise that no matter what happened, she would not agree to be alone with him outside the office. How they’d both probably known that Anna’s promise was a lie.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘But I can’t do Thursday.’
She was seeing Nia, but even if she hadn’t been, she would have said there was a day she couldn’t do. She didn’t want him to think she had no social life.
‘Can you do tonight?’ he asked, his eyes sparkling with humour as if he already knew she would say yes.
‘Yes.’
Anna’s relationship with Marco had ended about three months before. He’d wanted different things to her. At times, ithad seemed he’d wanted different things to himself. He’d started to talk more and more about settling down and having children, and Anna had known she would have to let him go. But then Nia had seen him with another woman and Anna had stopped agonising and just thrown him out. She’d cursed herself for letting him move in when his landlord gave him notice. It was never a good idea to move in together before you were ready because of rental circumstances. She’d known it even as she’d suggested it, as he pushed her back on the bed and said she wouldn’t regret it.
She wasn’t heartbroken. It had never been much more than great sex and company. She hadn’t had the feeling she was looking for, and she still believed she might find that. She was over it. And since he’d left, she hadn’t been on any dates. She hadn’t felt like it. So now, this dinner or whatever it was with David, it felt like something she didn’t quite know how to do any more. It felt like something alien. She messaged Nia about it, knowing that if she messaged Sarah she would try to convince her to cancel. Sarah had seen the havoc David had wrought, the mess he’d left Anna in. Nia only knew bits and pieces of it.
I’ve agreed to go out with David from New York tonight.
Nia replied almost instantly.
Is that wise?
