Page 28 of The Life She Could Have Lived

NO

‘Do you feel like you’ve settled back in?’ Sarah asked.

Anna thought about that. It was a Saturday afternoon and she was walking on Tooting Common, coffee in one hand and phone in the other.

‘I do, yes. It took a while. You know it took me ages to find a flat and that things were different at work, but I’m there, I think.’

‘Good.’

‘How are things in the office there?’

It was the closest she could get to asking about David. Sarah would know, she thought, that that was what she meant.

‘Busy. The person David hired to replace you ended up being hopeless, so she’s gone and we’re a woman down.’

Anna was quiet. She didn’t know what to say.

‘Are you over him? David?’

‘No.’

‘You will be. Give it time. What are you working on?’

‘This book we’re calling the modern-day Pride and Prejudice . I don’t think it’s sold over there yet but it will. I’m not a massive fan because the hero is this whiny guy she meets on the Tube and it’s hardly Darcy in the lake, but it’s going to be huge.’

‘Huh. Remember when you made me watch the whole BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice in a single day?’

‘I do.’

While Anna was so happy to be back living close to Nia, she missed Sarah acutely. Nia was a mum now, so she didn’t have time at weekends to lounge around talking about Colin Firth coming out of the lake.

‘I miss you,’ Sarah said.

‘I miss you, too.’

And then Anna stopped walking, because she felt like she’d seen a ghost.

‘Sorry, Sarah, I have to go.’

‘Me too, actually. Alex just got here.’

‘Have a good morning.’

‘Have a good afternoon.’

Anna put the phone in her pocket and took a sip of her coffee.

It was definitely him. Edward. He was looking in the other direction, entirely oblivious to his past life standing metres away from him.

He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt she had never particularly liked but had probably washed and folded fifty times. And he was pushing a buggy.

Before she could change her mind, she walked over to him, said his name out loud.

Edward turned, took her in. His eyes widened.

They’d exchanged emails for a while, while everything was sorted out.

But then she’d moved away and there had been nothing left to tie them, and the emails had dried up.

And this was the first time they’d run into one another in the street.

It had been years, Anna thought. About six years.

‘Anna,’ he said .

She wanted to save him. It was clear that he didn’t know what to say to her, and she thought for a moment that she hadn’t done the right thing after all, but then he spoke again.

‘Anna, God, it’s so nice to see you!’

Anna’s face relaxed into a smile. ‘You too,’ she said.

She looked at his face and tried to be objective. He was handsome. He’d always been handsome. If she met him now, for the first time, she would be attracted to him. She wondered whether he was making the same kind of assessment of her.

‘How are you? How was your time in the States?’

Anna thought. How did you sum up an experience like that?

She’d gone for a year and ended up staying for seven.

Living in Brooklyn, working in Manhattan, walking past those buildings that were so iconic you felt like you were on a film set.

All the adventures she’d had, and all the days she’d sat in her apartment alone, missing London.

‘It was incredible,’ she said. ‘It was wonderful.’

He smiled, and she saw that he was genuinely pleased for her, that there were no hard feelings.

Or that if there were hard feelings, they were pushed down, far below the surface, and they wouldn’t come out during this chance meeting.

It was time to address the elephant in the room, Anna thought. There was no reason not to do it.

‘So, a baby?’ she asked, and then she thought that that might have been the most stupid thing she’d ever said. She gestured towards the buggy, as if he might not know which baby she meant.

‘A baby,’ he said, his face all light. ‘Ella. She’s six months.’

Anna peered into the buggy. Ella was sleeping, her arms up by the side of her face.

‘Did you get married again?’ Anna asked. And then she wasn’t sure why she’d asked it. What did it matter? Perhaps he had, and if he had, that was fine, wasn’t it? And if not, and he’d had a baby without going through all that again, well, that was fine too.

‘Engaged,’ Edward said. ‘And you?’

‘I’m single,’ Anna said.

She felt the familiar urge to make an excuse for that, to say that she hadn’t been back from New York for long or that she was busy with work, but she resisted it. And she was proud of herself for doing so. It was okay, to be single. It was fine.

‘What’s she like, your fiancée?’ she asked.

Anna wanted to know everything. Was she one of those girls you saw on the Tube who looked up at their boyfriends adoringly through false eyelashes, or the kind of woman who went to the gym every day and lived on fresh air and smoothies, or was she someone Anna would like, that she would have as a friend?

‘She’s great. I met her through work and we just hit it off.’

Was he asking her to give up her career, or was it a given that her career was important, because she was in the same field as him? Why were all the questions she wanted to know the answers to the sort you couldn’t ask?

‘That’s great. I’m glad it worked out for you.’

‘Thanks, and…’ He broke off, looked down at his feet. ‘I’m sure it will work out for you too.’

Anna realised that he felt sorry for her, and was embarrassed. There was no easy way to show an ex you’d met on the street that you were happy enough as you were, that you were fulfilled. Pushing a buggy was like a trump card, and he’d played it.

‘It’s good to see you, Edward,’ she said, turning to walk away.

He reached out a hand, touched her wrist. ‘Do you have time for a coffee?’ he asked. He gestured in the direction of the little café in the middle of the common .

Anna thought about that. She did have time. She was going home to an empty flat, to rustle through her cupboards looking for something she could turn into dinner. But would it help? Would it help him, or her, to spend an hour going over things? Going over the past, or the present?

‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I need to get going.’ And she held up the coffee cup she was holding, as a sort of excuse.

He looked a little crestfallen and Anna almost changed her mind.

But then she reminded herself that he was part of a family, that he had someone to go home to.

She didn’t need to feel bad for him. He had Ella.

Sleeping and perfect, a whole new life ready to uncurl.

Anna rummaged in her bag, pulled out an old press release and a pen, scribbled down her number.

‘Another time?’ she asked, handing it over to him.

He nodded, folded the paper up and stashed it in the basket of the buggy. ‘Another time.’

And then, before she could say or do anything else, Anna held up her hand in a little wave and turned away, heading back in the direction of her flat.

She could be a mother, she thought. She could have stayed with Edward and built a family.

That baby in that buggy could be hers. Or another baby, with another man.

She felt a kind of ache at the thought of it.

It wasn’t about Edward, she was pretty sure.

Turning forty had felt like a full stop on any questioning about motherhood.

She knew that people still did it after forty, but she felt sure she wouldn’t.

Suddenly, she wasn’t sure if it had all been a terrible mistake.

Had she put her career ahead of her happiness?

And if she had, had it been worth it? She stood at the edge of the common, her hands on her hips, finding it hard to breathe.

Before she really knew what she was doing, Anna found herself heading for the Tube, into the station, going to Clapham.

It wasn’t really a decision she made; it was all instinct.

Was she going back to the flat she’d shared with Edward, pretending it was a different time?

No, she was going to Nia’s. That was what she did when anything big happened.

She went to Nia and they raked over it, looked at it from every angle, until they’d made sense of it.

She hadn’t done it much since she’d been back, but Nia had.

A handful of times she’d turned up on Anna’s doorstep, needing to talk about an argument with Jamie or something about Cara that had made her worry.

Anna had been pleased, that she still held that position in Nia’s life, after the years apart.

It was Jamie who came to the door. He welcomed her warmly, as he always did. ‘Anna, come in. Nia’s in the shower but she won’t be long.’

He led her out to the flat’s patio garden, where Cara was running around in her pants, chasing the bubbles he was blowing.

‘Hey, Cara,’ Anna said, and Cara gave her a shy little wave. Not for the first time, Anna wondered about the relationship they might have had, if she’d been in Cara’s life from day one.

‘Can I get you a drink?’ Jamie asked.

Anna shook her head. ‘I’m fine.’

They sat down opposite one another at the little table for two that sat in one corner of the small garden.

‘Did Nia know you were coming?’ he asked.

‘No, I just… I ran into my ex-husband and I needed to talk to someone about it.’

‘Oh. Well, when she’s out of the shower I’ll put this one to bed and you two can hash it out over a glass of wine.’ Cara ran towards him and launched herself at his body, and he caught her and then pretended not to let her go while she struggled against his grip.