Page 5 of The Life She Could Have Lived

NO

‘How is it six o’clock?’ Anna asked.

She looked around her, saw that most people had left already. Her desk mate, Ellie, was still there. They’d had a sandwich together in the canteen at one, and since they’d got back, Anna had had her head down.

‘It’s almost quarter past, actually,’ said Ellie. ‘I’m heading out in five. Are you nearly done?’

‘I’ll have to be. Edward’s cooking an anniversary dinner.’

‘Ooh fancy, what’s he doing?’

‘I don’t know. Probably pasta. And hopefully something decadent for dessert.’

‘Nice,’ Ellie said. ‘I wish I had someone at home to cook for me. I’ll be having toast on the sofa with my weird housemate who collects shoelaces, so spare a thought for me.’

They closed down their computers and were just about to leave when Deborah appeared by their desks.

‘Just before you go, Anna, did those proofs of Wings of a Dove go out?’

Anna breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Yes, two days ago.’

‘Wonderful, thank you. Have a good evening, you two.’

‘Wow,’ Ellie said once they were out in the corridor. ‘That’s the first time she’s ever told me to have a good evening. She loves you.’

Anna smiled. She knew Ellie was joking, but she did feel proud of how she was getting on at work.

‘Enjoy your toast,’ Anna said when they were outside the building.

‘Enjoy your pasta. And happy anniversary,’ Ellie called over her shoulder.

When Anna walked through the door, she was met with a loud blast of Oasis.

She smiled. You wouldn’t think it by looking at Edward, but he was obsessed with nineties Britpop.

She went through to the kitchen. He hadn’t heard her come in, and she watched him for a moment.

He was standing at the hob, moving back and forth between two pans that both seemed to need attention, and singing ‘Wonderwall’ at the top of his voice.

Anna waited until he’d moved away from the boiling water and then put her arms around his waist from behind. He jumped.

‘Anna! I didn’t hear you come in.’

‘What are we having?’ she asked, reaching over to turn the volume down a little. ‘Can I help?’

‘No, you go and sit down. I’ll let you know when it’s ready.’

She went into the living room, flopped down on the sofa and flicked through the TV channels. There was nothing on, but she left it on an old episode of Friends and let her mind wander until Edward called for her to come in.

He’d changed the music to Pulp, one of the few bands they both liked. He’d set the table too, and bought a nice bottle of red wine. Anna smiled at him.

‘Thank you for this,’ she said. ‘It’s lovely.’

He smiled back but didn’t say anything, just gestured for her to sit down and put a bowl in front of her.

‘Surely not pasta?’ she teased.

‘New recipe, though. Salmon and spinach.’

‘Yum.’

‘So how was work?’

‘Good, busy. The afternoon flew by. I looked up and it was time to go home. You?’

Edward rubbed his forehead as if the very idea of work was bothering him. ‘Yeah, not too bad.’

‘Weren’t you seeing Rav today?’ she asked. ‘How’s he?’

‘He’s well,’ Edward said, and Anna sensed that there was more there.

‘And Eleanor?’ Anna thought back to Rav and Eleanor’s wedding, how beautiful she had looked, how elegant.

‘Pregnant,’ Edward said.

‘Oh, that’s lovely!’ Anna exclaimed.

And then she saw Edward wince, as if the pregnancy, or her reaction to it, was causing him physical pain.

He hadn’t asked her, again, since she’d said she didn’t want to try for a baby, but he made his feelings clear in other ways.

And they were at that age, of course, when plenty of friends were announcing pregnancies.

‘This is delicious,’ Anna said, gesturing at her nearly empty bowl.

Edward smiled a little. ‘I thought you’d like it. ’

She noticed that he’d stopped eating and was looking at her. ‘What?’

‘This song, it’s…’

It was their song, the one they’d danced to at their wedding. It felt like so long ago.

Edward stood up. ‘Dance with me?’

Anna pushed back her chair slowly. They weren’t a couple who did this, who danced in their flat.

But she couldn’t say no. He folded her into his arms and they swayed.

She put her head on his chest, felt his heartbeat, its steady thunk.

She’d always felt secure in his arms, but now, she felt sort of trapped.

When her phone rang, they both jumped a little.

‘It’s Nia,’ she said, pulling it out of her pocket. ‘I’d better get it. She’s still having problems with that ex, Charlie.’

Edward pulled a face but didn’t make a move to stop her.

‘Hey, Nia.’

‘Anna, I’m sorry, I know it’s your anniversary…’

‘It’s okay. Are you all right?’

‘Not really. It’s Charlie. He came to my office and tried to follow me home. I ducked into a pub and now I’m standing in the doorway, waiting for him to leave.’

‘Text me where you are. I’ll come now.’

Anna hung up. She looked at Edward and he shook his head slowly, as if he couldn’t believe what she had said.

‘I’m sorry, okay? She needs me. Charlie’s following her home.’

‘I don’t want you to put yourself in danger. She should be calling the police, not you.’

Anna sighed. ‘I’m her best friend, Edward. Of course she would call me. And I don’t think he’s dangerous. He’s just too persistent.’

She went out into the hallway, stepped back into her shoes and picked up her bag. Just as she was opening the door, Edward called through.

‘I bought dessert, you know. For you, Anna. I don’t even like dessert.’

She didn’t go back, but when she was on the Tube, she wondered what the dessert was. She would eat it when she got home, in bed. And then she’d make it up to him.

As Anna approached the pub, she saw Charlie pacing up and down outside. She turned her head away and slipped in without being noticed.

Nia was sitting at the bar on a high stool with a glass of red in her hand. She stood up when she saw Anna and took her in her arms.

‘You’re hardly cowering,’ Anna remarked.

‘What’s a girl to do? You can’t exactly wait in a pub and not have a drink. Speaking of which’ – she turned to the barman – ‘another of these, please, and one for my friend here. Thank you, Josh.’

She looked at Anna when she said his name and Anna couldn’t help bursting into laughter.

‘When are you going to stop with that?’ she asked.

‘I’m just saying. Works in food, too – well, sells crisps and nuts and stuff.’

‘He’s still out there,’ Anna said, noting that Nia hadn’t bothered to ask. ‘Charlie.’

‘Of course he is. He’s obsessed with me. We’ll just have to wait him out. Shall I ask Josh to make that a bottle?’

Anna laughed.

‘I am sorry I interrupted your anniversary dinner, though. In all seriousness, I was pretty scared when I arrived. Wasn’t I?’ She looked over at Josh, who slid the drinks across to them and raised his eyebrows .

‘She did seem concerned. I suggested she call the police rather than her friend, but…’

‘That’s such a man thing to suggest,’ Nia said. ‘So what did Edward cook? Pasta?’

‘Yes, but a new one. A salmon one. It was really good, actually.’

‘And did he make dessert?’

‘He bought it, apparently. But we didn’t get that far.

’ Anna smiled to show she wasn’t annoyed.

She tried to push aside the thought that she was glad Nia had called.

She felt a hundred times happier and more relaxed here with her friend than she had at home with her husband.

And that wasn’t something she wanted to face up to.

‘You’ll have to be dessert when you get home, you lucky thing.’

‘Maybe so. But shall we have another one first?’

‘I can’t believe,’ said Nia, ‘that you’re a proper grown-up who’s been married for… how many years?’

‘Two,’ Anna said solemnly. ‘You were the maid of honour; you’re supposed to remember things like this.’

‘Oh whatever, the years go by like months now we’re in our thirties. Anyway, two years, and I’m still having to call you with problems like being followed home by my ex-boyfriend.’

Anna motioned to the barman for more drinks and looked down at her bare legs and sandalled feet. ‘I don’t feel like a grown-up. Remember Edward’s friend Rav, whose wedding we went to in the spring? They’re having a baby.’

Nia narrowed her eyes. ‘Already? What’s wrong with just being married for a while?’

‘Nothing, as far as I’m concerned.’

‘But not Edward, right? Is he still putting pressure on you?’

Anna thought about this. He wasn’t putting pressure on, was he?

He had asked her once, and she had said no, and he hadn’t mentioned it again.

But he’d made it clear in a thousand ways that his feelings on the matter were unchanged.

And that was a kind of pressure in itself, wasn’t it?

And the thing that Anna hadn’t told him, that she’d barely told herself, was that she wasn’t sure it was just a no for the time being, either.

She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to have children at all.

‘He wants what he wants,’ Anna said. ‘And I just don’t. Not yet, anyway. We should have talked about it before we got married. I think I was putting it off, because I didn’t know how I felt, and he just assumed I felt the same way he did.’

‘Kids, though,’ Nia said. ‘I don’t feel old enough.’

‘Me neither. And yet we’re thirty-one, and I think we would officially count as old mums these days.’

‘No way. Although I have resigned myself to the fact that if I told my mum I was pregnant now, she’d just say congratulations.’

Anna laughed. ‘We’ve gone way past the point of scandalous pregnancies. Remember how terrified we were of getting pregnant when we were in our early twenties?’

‘I do,’ Nia said. ‘And I still am. I haven’t grown up like you have. And yet here we are, drinking wine together on your second anniversary.’

‘Yes,’ Anna said. ‘Here we are.’

Charlie was long forgotten. They had another two glasses, and when they got up from their high stools, Anna felt suddenly and overwhelmingly drunk.

They left the pub arm in arm, and there was no sign of Charlie anywhere, not that they really took the time to look.

They shared a taxi. It was almost midnight by the time Anna crawled into bed.

Edward had left her bedside lamp on, and she was annoyed by this thoughtful gesture, just when she was feeling guilty for being so thoughtless.

He was snoring gently. The present she’d meant to give him – a book of essays by authors and musicians and actors about the one day that had changed their lives the most – was on her bedside table.

When she’d first seen it in the bookshop, she’d thought of him, of how he talked about the day they met as a turning point for him.

She would tell him in the morning, she decided. She would say she wasn’t sure about children full stop. She would get it out in the open, and see where it left them.