‘You stay here, I’ll get your food.’
While she ate, he told her things. About his day, his work.
‘Rav was in today, and guess what he told me?’
‘What?’
‘Him and Eleanor are having a baby too. Just a few weeks after us.’
When she’d finished eating, Edward went over to the stereoand put a CD on. Anna heard the opening bars of the song they’d danced to at their wedding. ‘Something Changed’. She’d chosen it. It had come out a few years before they got together and she’d always loved the message of it, about the tiny decisions that took your life off in one direction or another. How every encounter with someone you end up loving could have never happened at all.
‘Dance with me?’ Edward asked.
Anna held out her hands and let him pull her up off the sofa. He held her close and she felt his pulse in his neck, kissed him there. He was warm and he smelled incredible and the steady beat of his heart was reassuring, the ultimate comfort.
It wasn’t until later, when they were in bed and chatting, that he asked her about when she was planning to finish work.
‘Go on maternity, you mean?’
Edward shrugged. ‘I mean, yeah, I guess so. Although I thought you might just give it up, once the baby is here.’
Anna was shocked. She hadn’t once considered leaving her job to be a stay-at-home mum.
‘I mean,’ Edward went on, ‘I earn enough to cover the mortgage and bills and all that, so why not? You could stay at home and it would save us having to face the childcare nightmare.’
Why not? Anna had a hundred reasons. But they all came down to this. She didn’t want to.
‘I don’t think that’s the kind of mum I’m going to be,’ she said. ‘I like my job, I want to progress, to keep learning. I don’t want to be at home all the time.’
Edward looked a bit pained, the way he did when things didn’t quite go his way. ‘Well, there’s plenty of time to think about it, I guess. Just, keep an open mind about it, okay? We don’t need to close off any options just yet.’
Anna mumbled an agreement because she didn’t know howto voice what she was feeling. Like she’d been backed into a corner, somehow. Edward was asleep within minutes, his breathing slow and steady, but Anna lay on her side for a long time, going back over the conversation, imagining relaying it to Nia. It was over an hour before she felt calm and settled enough to sleep.
3
NO
Tuesday 5 June 2001
‘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 appearedby their desks.
‘Just before you go, Anna, did those proofs ofWings of a Dovego out?’
Anna breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Yes, two days ago.’
