‘So what would be your dream banquet meal?’
‘Good question. At least four courses, obviously. You know, now I think about it, it’s actually really hard to say what your favourite food is, when you can only have one thing for each course.’
‘Really? I think it’s quite easy. Like, for the starter, truffle risotto,obviously.’
Dan shook his head. ‘That isn’t obvious. What about a really nice lobster dish? Or a pâté? Or scallops? There are a lot of options.’
‘That’s true. You’ve got me completely doubting myself.’ Evie shook her own head. ‘I’ve honestly got no idea now.’
‘What about a soufflé?’ said Greggy, from Evie’s other side.
‘Damn, I love a soufflé. I think I need to re-evaluate my choices,’ Evie said.
Ten minutes later, when they’d all got their – tuna carpaccio – starter, Evie said, ‘Oh my goodness. It’s a good job that this looks delicious, isn’t it, or I could have just done a very bad thing and made everyone dissatisfied with this meal talking about all those other starters.’
‘I eat a lot of my meals in the hospital canteen,’ Dan told her. ‘I’d be happy with pretty much anything that doesn’t taste of cabbage.’
‘So how is your work? Is it stressful?’
‘Yup.’ Dan speared some asparagus. ‘You see death and heartbreak, obviously, and it gets to you at times. You know: with all our fantastic twenty-first century medicine, we can’t save everyone, and we can’t prevent bad things still happening to some of the people we save. You have to learn to accept it as part of life and rise above it, or you couldn’t carry on, but equally I think that if you were to be completely unaffected by the bad stuff, maybe you’d have lost your humanity.’
‘It must help to have colleagues you can share stuff with?’
‘Yeah, definitely.’ Bit of a lie, actually. He did have some great colleagues, who’d become great friends, but they usually kept the chat light. He’d be more likely to talk to Evie about how sometimes he felt like he just couldn’t cope with the tragedy of it all. But not now. ‘You get your funny ones too,’ he said. ‘I had a pea-up-the-nose kid in yesterday. That was an easy one. I just pressed his other nostril and told him to blow hard and it came out on the second blow. His mother asked me what she should do with it.’
‘Did you tell her she could bin it or take it home as a souvenir, her choice?’
‘I actually did,’ Dan said, pleased. ‘You’re a mind-reader.’
An hour and a half later, Evie placed her knife and fork neatly on the side of her plate and said, ‘That wassogood. Ilovetrout.’
‘Thinking about making changes to your dream banquet meal?’
Evie nodded. ‘Yup.’
Dan shook his head, sorrowfully. ‘So suggestible.’
‘You can talk. Remember that summer where we made you laugh,allthe time, just by telling you that you were going to?’
‘I do remember that. You were so annoying. Anyway, I’m an adult now. No longer suggestible. Unlike you.’
‘Fair enough.’ Evie nodded and then a couple of seconds later did an enormous yawn.
Dan felt his own mouth gape in response.
‘Hah,’ Evie crowed. ‘Made you yawn. I think that’s practically the actual definition of suggestibility. Not so adult after all.’
Dan shook his head again. ‘Stillsoannoying.’ He slid his gaze to the side and smiled at her and she grinned back. So beautiful. Gorgeous brown eyes, gleaming with triumph right now.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, it felt like an intrusion into his and Evie’s little world of happy chat when, as the waiters cleared their dessert plates and everyone raved about the lemon tart they’d had, there was a lot of clapping and cutlery banging from the top table. Everyone turned round to see Lucie standing behind her chair.
‘I’m doing the first speech,’ she said. ‘Screw the patriarchy!’
Dan joined in with the cheering and whistling that followed, and when it had died down, turned back to the table to pick up his glass, in time to see Evie putting her phone back in her bag.
‘Just texted Euan to check he’s okay,’ she said. Euan. He really hadn’t seemed right for Evie.
