Page 33 of The Life She Could Have Lived

NO

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 sleeping later, 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, it had 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?

Anna laughed to herself. It was such a Nia thing to say.

Probably not.

As the day drew to a close, Anna was frustrated.

David hadn’t suggested a time, and he’d been in one meeting after another for the past couple of hours.

She didn’t want to seem like she was just waiting around for him, despite the fact that that was exactly what she was doing.

She went to the toilets, sprayed on some perfume and fixed her makeup, and all the time, she hated herself for it.

He wouldn’t be making any effort for her, she was sure.

But part of her had to go through with this.

Had to know. Would he just want to catch up, because they’d been friends and colleagues once, as well as lovers?

Or would he ask her to go back to his hotel room?

And if he did, would she go? She thought she knew the answer but she wasn’t 100 per cent sure.

At six, he came to her desk and she didn’t look up straight away. When she did, she tried to conjure up an air of Oh yes, I’d forgotten all about meeting you .

‘Meetings,’ he said. ‘But I’m ready to go whenever you are. I’d kill for a good martini. Do you know somewhere?’

Anna did, and she led him there, past pubs with people spilling out onto the pavement. David lit a cigarette and offered her one. She shook her head. Did he remember she didn’t smoke? Was it just a reflex, offering her one? Or was he confusing her with someone else he’d been sleeping with?

At the bar she’d chosen, he held the door open for her.

He put a hand on the small of her back and Anna felt she might come undone, there in the doorway of a cocktail bar in Soho.

The warmth of him, the memory of him. She forced herself to stay upright, to go to the bar and order drinks.

To find a table. To pretend this was any other day.

They drank three cocktails while chatting about work, and just when Anna had stopped expecting it, David asked her something personal.

‘Did you leave New York because of me?’

‘Yes.’ Anna had had just enough to drink (combined with nothing to eat) to be honest.

David put his head in his hands. What was that supposed to mean?

‘And how are you faring, back in London? Are you happy?’

Always the question about being happy. No one was happy all the time, were they? How did you gauge how much happiness was enough?

‘I think so.’

‘Are you seeing anyone?’

‘No.’

A few years ago, she would have qualified that, said that she’d not long come out of a relationship. But now, she didn’t feel the need to.

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘Why sorry? I’m fine.’

‘Look, I think about you – about us – all the time. So I wondered…’

‘What? Whether we could have a fling while you’re over?’

David smiled and shook his head.

‘It isn’t like that, Anna. You and me, we were good together.’

They had been good together, in various ways. They’d made each other laugh, and they’d always found it easy to talk to each other. And she had loved him.

‘I need to go to the toilet,’ she said, pushing back her chair.

She stood in front of the mirror, and then before she could change her mind, she messaged Sarah.

I’m drinking cocktails with David .

Sarah’s response was quick, and Anna was grateful.

Go home.

Anna had known what Sarah would say, and yet seeing it there on her phone screen was reassuring, somehow.

I don’t know whether I can.

You can. Go home, and then call me.

Anna went back to the table, saw that David had bought another round while she’d been gone.

She was feeling a little soft around the edges.

Not yet drunk, but not entirely sober. She knew another drink would lead her down the path she was so desperately trying to avoid.

She sat down, took a sip, and then she remembered the weeks after David had left her.

The way she’d shut herself in her apartment, failed to get dressed for days, and stopped eating proper meals. The ache of it all.

‘I need to go home,’ she said.

David wasn’t the type to plead. He put his hands up in a gesture of surrender.

‘Will you finish your drink?’ he asked.

‘No, I don’t think so.’

How many women had there been? How many women had he talked to the way he’d talked to her? It was hard to accept but she knew she was one of many. That it hadn’t been love, for him. That it hadn’t ruined him. She stood up again. And he stood up too.

‘Let me walk you…’

‘No,’ she said, a little sharply.

A woman at a nearby table looked round, and Anna knew she was assessing the situation, trying to determine whether Anna was in danger, the way women did. She smiled at her, hoping to convey that she wasn’t. Not that sort of danger, anyway.

‘I just… need to go,’ she said.

He nodded, and they shared a look, and she thought that he was sorry for what he’d done to her, not just that day but back in New York. She hoped he was. That he knew. That he understood.

On the Tube home, Anna sat next to a young girl with massive headphones, her music turned up loud.

The sound was tinny, but Anna recognised the song immediately.

It was her song, hers and Edward’s. The one about meeting someone, about all the small things that could stop you from meeting them.

She considered how different her life would be if she’d never met David.

If she’d never met Edward. Or if she had met Edward, and she hadn’t left. What would that be like?

As soon as she’d let herself into her flat, she messaged Sarah to tell her she was home.

Sarah said she loved her, told her to call if she needed to.

She felt protected, safe. Like she’d avoided something toxic.

And she had, undoubtedly. She imagined David, back at the bar, finishing off both their drinks and then looking around for someone else to pick up, to take back to his hotel.

It wasn’t about her, she could see that now.

It was about him, and his ego, and his need for attention.

When he messaged her, pleading with her to come back, she could see it for what it was.

Pathetic. He must have failed, she thought, failed to find someone else.

She typed out several replies, from the polite to the blisteringly rude.

And then she decided that the best response would be no response at all, and she went to bed.