Page 45 of The Life She Could Have Lived

NO

Steve handed Anna a mug of coffee and they sat down opposite one another at the table. He bit into his toast.

‘I should hear about that new job today,’ he said.

‘The shop chain refit?’

‘It’s not shops, it’s restaurants.’

‘Restaurants?’ Anna asked.

‘Yes. Why?’

Anna couldn’t tell him, could she? She couldn’t say that when she was twenty-two, a psychic had said that the love of her life would have a name beginning with J and would work in food.

No, she couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. And she still wasn’t sure she believed in any of that, not the way Nia always had, but she couldn’t help but feel like this was some kind of message. Some kind of validation.

‘Nothing, I must have got confused. Let me know, will you?’

‘I will.’

Anna reached for her phone and composed a quick text to Nia.

Steve might be about to start refitting restaurants. Does that count as working with food?

Nia replied almost straight away.

Close enough!

Steve reached across the table and took hold of Anna’s hand, lifted it to his mouth and kissed it.

‘What was that for?’

‘I’m just happy,’ he said.

Anna was happy. It had taken her a while to trust it, to trust him, to not dismiss it as too good to be true, or too soon after Ben.

But she’d got there. She knew that it might not last forever, or that something might happen to change the way she felt about him, but right now, she was happy, and she wasn’t going to let worrying about the future change that.

She’d been thinking about something, and she was ready to put it into words.

‘I have a question for you,’ she said.

And just like that, she was nervous. What if she’d misjudged it, and he wasn’t as serious about her as she was about him? But no, it was impossible. He’d said he loved her first; he’d made himself clear at every step.

‘Oh yes?’

‘I wondered whether you’d like to move in together.’

He stopped, then. ‘Here?’

‘Well, I’ve been thinking about that. I don’t mind whether it’s here or your place.’

Steve snorted. Anna’s flat was nicer. She’d spent more time decorating it and choosing furniture and coordinating things.

Her garden was a little bigger, too. They almost always stayed at hers.

Steve had started keeping some of his things there.

But Anna had noticed that he always went home (sometimes with her, sometimes without) when Luke was coming over.

And she wanted to be sensitive to that. If Luke was happier in the flat next door, she could live with that.

‘I mean, we’re practically living together anyway,’ Anna said, and then stopped, realising that she sounded like she was trying to talk him into it. She didn’t want to have to talk him into it. She only wanted to do it if he wanted to.

‘Why would you want to give up your place for mine, though?’ Steve asked.

‘Because you’re there. And I thought maybe it would be better for Luke.’

Steve laughed. ‘You know I only go back to mine when Luke’s around because I don’t feel like it’s fair to inflict an enormous man-boy on you.’

Anna let out a long breath. ‘I really like Luke, you know that.’

‘I do, but I don’t think you fully understand how much he eats. Anyway, we’re getting off topic. I would love to live with you, Anna.’

She felt something inside her start to unravel. ‘You would?’

‘I would. Of course I would. Do you think I like living alone?’

Anna didn’t answer that straight away. Was it so obvious that living with someone was better than living alone?

She’d always quite liked living by herself.

Until now, when there was someone in her life who she wanted to be with all the time, who she missed even when she knew he was at the other side of a single wall.

‘I didn’t know,’ she said. ‘You’ve never said. ’

‘Let’s ask Luke what he thinks, and then we’ll sort it out.’

‘Okay then.’

It had been so simple. No argument about whose flat it would be, about whether it was too much or too soon or not enough.

Things with Steve were like that. Just simple and right.

She thought briefly of her marriage. How young she’d been.

How wrong. And then that disastrous relationship with David in New York, followed by the happy years with Ben.

She’d never thought she would find it again, after losing him. But here they were.

‘What time do you need to head off?’ Steve asked.

Anna looked at her watch. ‘Soon. Ten minutes.’

It was so tempting to say she’d spend another hour with him, be a bit late.

She was the boss, after all. And he was his own boss.

He ran a small building company and had a handful of people working for him.

Enough that he could sometimes take the morning or afternoon off on a whim.

But she had meetings she needed to go to.

‘While we’re asking things, I have one too,’ he said.

‘Go on.’

‘Why did you never have children? I mean, did it just not happen for you or was it a conscious choice? You’re so good with Luke, and with Stella and Tess.’

Anna thought it was strange that he’d brought this up at the breakfast table, but she didn’t mind. It made her think he’d probably been wondering about it for a while.

‘With Edward, it was one of the things that we broke up over. He wanted to, I didn’t.

And after that, I don’t know, I had a series of not-quite-right relationships, and by the time I met Ben, it was too late, and he’d already done it, of course.

But having Stella and Tess in my life has been wonderful. ’

Steve nodded. ‘Any regrets?’

Any regrets? Anna saw what Steve had with Luke, what Ben had had with Stella and Tess, and it seemed like a kind of magic, but not one that she wished for, for herself.

She was content with what she had, what she’d chosen.

She saw Stella about once a month, Tess slightly less often.

She loved them both fiercely, but she didn’t wish they were hers.

Their mother had been generous enough to welcome Anna into their lives, to encourage her to retain her place there even after Ben’s death.

‘I’ve been so lucky in so many ways,’ she said. ‘I love my career, and I got to spend some years in New York, and I have a home that makes me happy, and I’m in love with someone who treats me really well.’

‘I hope that’s me.’

Anna laughed. ‘I’m happy. I’ll never know whether I would have been more or less happy if I’d led a different life.’

‘That’s true. I just think, sometimes, what a great mother you would have made.’

Anna wasn’t sure what to do with a compliment like that.

It was so different to anything she’d been complimented on before.

Was it true? Would she have done a good job of mothering, if she’d gone down that road?

She hoped so. The fact that she’d decided against it proved that she wouldn’t have entered into it lightly.

Parenting was as serious as it got, and she would have tried to give everything to it.

‘It’s great that I get to spend time with Ben’s girls, and with Luke,’ she said. ‘I know all the hard parenting work is done but it’s so nice to be a small part of his life.’

‘Not so small,’ Steve said.

Anna was thinking about something that she hadn’t thought about for a long time .

‘Have I told you that I think we might have met before? I mean years ago. When Luke was a little boy. I was standing on a street in Clapham, and I picked up his toy rabbit. Does that ring any bells at all?’

Steve’s eyes widened a little. ‘I’m not sure. I mean, he definitely had a rabbit. A tatty-looking, grey thing, but he was always dropping it. I don’t remember…’

Anna was a little disappointed, but she tried not to let it show. She shook her head. ‘Ignore me. I should go. I’ll see you later, for dinner?’

‘Sure.’ He leaned in and kissed her lips.

All afternoon, while she was in meetings and reporting to her manager on the team’s recent work and going through her emails, her mind was on Steve.

Nia was a firm believer in everything happening for a reason, but Anna never had been.

She thought it was all pretty random, and things could have gone a different way for her.

For all of them. She couldn’t help wondering, sometimes, how things might have been if she’d met him then, if that had been him.

It would have meant no Ben, of course, which was tough to imagine.

But she might have spent all those years with Steve and Luke, the years of losing teeth and learning to ride a bike and falling in love for the first time.

Life was strange, with its twists and turns, its blind alleys and its long stretches of straight, clear road.

Anna’s phone beeped with a message from Steve.

Got the job.

She smiled and told him she was proud of him, and then she sent a message to Nia.

Guess who’s moving in with her boyfriend like someone in her twenties?

Congratulations!

You think we fit, right?

You two definitely fit. Two spoons in a drawer.

Good, because he got that restaurant refit job.

I knew Magda wouldn’t let me down.

Anna smiled and turned her phone over so she could finish off her work.

She’d left the office for the day and was walking to the Tube when her phone rang. She answered without checking who it was, and when she heard Steve’s voice, she found herself smiling.

‘I remember,’ he said. ‘It was on the street where we lived, Hazelbourne Road. I’d had a terrible night with him, with Luke, and I was just trying to get through the day.

We were out walking with nowhere to go. And then you called out and I remember noticing how pretty you were, how kind of you it was to help.

We were always losing things, in those days.

Socks and dummies and these little cars he insisted on carrying around with him. ’

Anna was silent. There was a lump in her throat she couldn’t swallow away.

‘Are you there, Anna?’

She focused very hard on keeping her voice level. ‘I’m here.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘What if we’d met then? What if we’d had all those years?’

Steve was quiet. Anna thought she might have lost him, but then he spoke again .

‘Me and Theresa were still hanging on then, just about.’

‘Oh.’ Anna felt stupid. She hadn’t thought of that.

‘It’s got to be enough that we have each other now,’ he said. ‘You mentioned all those years, but what about all the years ahead?’

Anna stopped in the middle of the street, causing someone to bump into her back and call out something rude.

She ignored him. Steve was right, of course.

They had lots of years ahead. And they were settled, in their work and their homes.

But more than that, they were settled in their bodies and their personalities.

They knew who they were, what they wanted.

If they’d had that chance, years before, it was quite possible that one or other of them would have messed it up, somehow. And then they would have nothing.

‘It is,’ she said. ‘It is enough.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now, are you on your way home? I’m about to start making you dinner.’

Anna told him she’d be there as soon as she could, and ended the call.

And all the way back, she didn’t open her book or put her headphones on.

She just thought about what she’d had in the past, what she had now.

It was easy to forget to be grateful. It was easy to think about roads not taken.

But the fact was, all the small and big decisions she’d made had led her here.

And if she could go back, and change something, everything else might fall apart.

Life was like a house of cards, in that way. At once fragile and unbelievable. Why hadn’t she been able to see it before? She was exactly where she should be, exactly who she should be. And all the paths she might take in the future?

Well, she thought with a smile, when she reached them, she would know what to do.