Page 26 of The Life She Could Have Lived

NO

Anna made sure she was the last in the office, and hated herself for doing so.

When Sarah asked if she fancied a drink, she shook her head and said she had something to finish off.

She tidied up a couple of spreadsheets and replied to some emails that had been hanging around for days, knowing David would emerge from his office eventually. When he did, she didn’t look up.

‘Anna,’ he said. ‘I didn’t realise you were still here. Don’t you have a home to go to?’

It was a lame joke and she didn’t laugh.

‘Have you spoken to Deborah yet?’ she asked.

David ran a finger along the gap between his lower lip and his chin, and Anna thought about the last time they’d kissed.

‘Come into my office,’ he said, jerking his head in that direction as if she might not know where his office was.

She followed him, saying nothing. Anna sat in a chair and he sat on his desk, facing her. Too close.

‘I haven’t spoken to Deborah yet because I wanted to be sure you were making the right decision. But if you’re absolutely sure, I’ll call her. I know she’ll have you back in a heartbeat. Someone just went on maternity over there and…’

‘Yes,’ Anna said. ‘Please. Call her. I want to know where I stand, whether I should give notice on my apartment.’

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 an agonised 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.’

‘Can we have your leaving drinks here?’ Sarah asked. ‘Just the three of us? I don’t really like anyone else.’

Lee laughed. ‘Other people are overrated.’

Anna thought about all the leaving dos she’d been to, in chain restaurants and bars around the corner from the office.

How the management would pay for the first round of drinks as long as you chose a cheap beer or the house wine.

How someone would drink too much too early and start spilling secrets.

How some young thing from sales and someone old enough to know better from legal would sneak out together hand in hand, thinking no one had noticed.

How the person leaving would cry. She’d never really thought about the day it would be her.

After they’d drunk three cocktails and it was getting on for eleven, a small corner of the bar became a sort of makeshift dance floor, and Lee pulled Anna and Sarah onto it, holding their hands and shaking his slim hips.

Anna felt free and light, and wondered whether her mind had been working away on this decision without her realising it.

She closed her eyes and spun around, feeling a little dizzy, a little drunk.

‘I have to go. I have a date,’ Lee said.

‘At half eleven?’ Anna asked.

Lee shrugged. ‘I mean sex, okay? I’m going to a man’s apartment for sex.’

Anna hugged him, turned to Sarah. ‘Shall we make a move?’

They left the bar together and Lee hurried off to somewhere uptown.

‘Want to walk back to Brooklyn?’ Sarah asked.

It was late, and Anna knew she would regret it in the morning, but it was a warm evening and she wasn’t quite ready for the night to end.

She took Sarah’s arm and they headed in the direction of the Williamsburg Bridge.

Sarah was quiet for a few minutes, and Anna wondered what she was thinking about, but she knew better than to ask.

When Sarah was ready, she would say what she needed to.

They’d walked almost ten blocks by the time Sarah spoke.

‘I know about you and David, you know,’ she said.

Anna hadn’t expected that.

‘How long have you known?’

‘Oh, ages. ’

‘Does Lee know?’

‘I doubt it. He once told me he thinks David’s gay and doesn’t know it yet.’

Anna laughed. ‘Why did you never say anything?’

‘Because you never told me. I was waiting for you to tell me.’

‘I’m sorry, it was complicated. I loved him, and I thought for a while that he loved me, but then…’

Sarah stopped walking, rolled her eyes. ‘He screwed you over. How unsurprising.’

Anna wished she was on a subway, then. She admired Sarah’s directness, the way she never let anyone get away with anything, but she was so bruised, so broken. Couldn’t Sarah sense that, and be gentle with her?

‘Is he the reason you’re leaving?’ Sarah asked.

They were walking again, and Anna couldn’t look across at Sarah. ‘Maybe. I don’t know. Sometimes it’s just time to go home, you know?’

They’d reached the bridge. Anna thought about how her relationship with David had taken place solely in Manhattan.

He’d never once come over to Brooklyn for her.

He was one of those people for whom Manhattan was the whole of New York.

He didn’t like things to have edges, for anything to be messy or difficult.

‘I thought he loved me,’ she said. ‘But he didn’t. And I can’t go into work and see him every day and pretend I’m okay with that. I need to remove myself, while I still have a bit of dignity.’

‘I’ll miss you,’ Sarah said.

And when Anna looked at her, there were tears in Sarah’s eyes. Anna reached for her hand and squeezed it. ‘I’ll miss you too.’

‘Have you thought about what it’s going to be like seeing Jamie all the time?’ Sarah asked .

Anna hadn’t thought about that. She’d been focused on getting away from David, on being closer to Nia, on enjoying the things about London that she’d missed.

But since David, Jamie had faded. He was someone she could have imagined herself being with, who she had imagined herself being with, for all those years.

But she wasn’t going to yearn for him while he was making a life with her best friend.

‘It’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘The only bit of it that’s hard is that we’ve lied to Nia.’

Sarah nodded. ‘Yes, I see that. But you did it for good reasons. I think she would have done the same.’

They stepped off the bridge and Anna realised that they were close to the crossroads where she would go one way and Sarah would go another.

‘You have a good heart, Anna,’ Sarah said. ‘Be careful with it.’

Anna intended to. No more falling for the wrong men, no more letting herself be pulled into things that weren’t right for her.

Perhaps, she thought, that thing people looked for, that forever love, perhaps it wasn’t for everyone.

She could still close her eyes and imagine the way she was striving to feel, the thing she’d tried to explain to Nia all those times.

But perhaps there was another way to find it.

Perhaps you could get there through having friends who you loved and who loved you, through doing a job you loved.

Perhaps she’d been looking for it in all the wrong places.

‘Well,’ Sarah said.

They were at the end of Sarah’s street. She pulled Anna close to her body and Anna let herself be held.

Sarah’s body was familiar, comfortable, warm.

Once, she would have pulled on Sarah’s hand and led her to her apartment, gone upstairs, removed her clothes.

But she was happier with what they had now. It felt firmer, more solid .

‘Thank you,’ Anna said. ‘You’ve been the very best of friends.’

‘Can we fit in another road trip before you go?’ Sarah asked.

‘I hope so.’

Anna pulled away from the embrace, though it was hard. She gave Sarah a wave and walked the last couple of blocks to her apartment. She tried to take in the sights and sounds of the streets she’d come to know so well. But in her heart, she was already gone.