He pulled my red chair out for me in the red dining room but not in a showy way, and he let me order for myself, which is always a relief, but he insisted we get ‘a bottle of fizz, since it’s Christmas’, and by the time dessert arrived, I was definitely charmed.
‘Are you a Christmas markets girl?’ he wants to know, and I’m enjoying myself so much that I say, ‘Yes, I am.’ Anyone else, and I’d have pulled a face and said, ‘I’m not very Christmassy these days’, but Rusty is so easy to be with, so alive and cheerful, I forget I’m a lady Grinch.
‘I’ll just pop to the loo,’ I say, and I leave my money for dinner on the table.
When I said we should go Dutch, he’d not made a fuss. Only saying the one time that he’d like to pay but giving up as soon as I reached for my purse, which I take as another good sign, him not being rigid about the whole gender roles thing, which has always given me the ick. I hear him call politely for the waiter as the bathroom door closes. Being nice to the waiting staff is another big tick in Rusty’s favour.
I reapply my lipstick – ‘devil red’ because I’ve been thinking of the old Margi since spending the evening with Charlie and feeling like he saw the real me, and nowIcan see her. She’s smiling.
I take a minute to fix my eye make-up, sticking with the new technique Lucy showed me this afternoon before she drove me to the station, lining thinly with shadow under my lower lashes instead of applying a black sweep along my waterline, which is ‘a bit outdated’, apparently. That had been news to me.
I touch it up now and have to agree it’s a softer look and opens my eye up. I don’t have to do much to my hair, but I smoosh it a bit in the mirror. I’m surprised to see my silvery strands actually sparkling in amongst the ash-brown. They’re positively gleaming, reflecting the strip light over the glass, and they’re honestly a bit breathtaking.
I angle my head to admire them. Fairy strands of gossamer steel, metallic and blingy, and all mine. Natural. The way I wanted it when I told Jill at the Wheaton hair salon a couple of years back that I couldn’t face dyeing my hair any more, and she’d rung me later at home to ask if I was having some sort of breakdown and should she call my mum.
I’d been resolute. Covering up these shiny signs of survival seemed absurd to me somehow, and for the life of me, I couldn’t remember why I’d ever wanted anything other than my shoulder-length waves in grey, ash and silver. I love it.
Once I made the change to grey, I looked more like me than I had in years, if you see what I mean? Soft, virgin hair, untreated and allowed to shine, felt absolutely right for my new chapter – my sixties – and it certainly worked in attracting Don. Even though Don barely made it to the end of my new chapter’s first page, my lovely locks are still with me, and Rusty out there doesn’t seem to mind them either.
Every time I make him laugh, he rakes a hand through his near-white hair, all thick and shiny, and I can tell he’s doing it in a flirty way, and I don’t mind one bit.
Soon, we’re making our way through the thronging streets, busy with Christmas shoppers, and even if my feet hurt because I squeezed into my knee-high boots with pointy heels that must have thought I’d died long ago, I’m still feeling happy with how this is going.
‘Grab hold,’ Rusty offers, crooking his elbow, and I grip onto the arm of his smart grey coat. He’s made an effort too: a good suit, a crisp shirt. No ring – or indentation where a ring should be. I checked. Lucy would be proud.
His shoes clack on the tarmac as he walks me beneath the street lights and illuminated candy canes lining our route, dodging the crowds down twisty alleyways and backstreets until we’re in amongst the clamour of the Christmas market.
‘You know the city like the back of your hand,’ I say. ‘I thought you only just moved here?’
He taps his temple and says he’s amazing with maps. ‘It’s like The Knowledge in here,’ he says, laughing.
We look at each stall and take our time, commenting on the pretty iced biscuits – this is when I tell him about my gingerbread grotto. It takes a while – long enough to have to take a break to buy glühwein in pretty cups that Rusty says we should keep ‘as a souvenir of a lovely evening’.
‘Wow,’ he says when I’m done talking, the steam from the fragrant booze drifting in swirls around his face. ‘And you’re doing all that on your own? Amazing.’
‘Not quite on my own,’ I say, not going into detail about Izz and Patrick, only wanting to focus on this lovely buzz we’ve got going between us.
‘And you’ve no kids?’ I ask as we examine some Christmas tree baubles and the stall-holder’s looking expectantly at us like we’re a couple choosing decorations for our tree.
‘Never wanted any,’ he says, his eyes narrowing a bit like he’s making a confession.
‘I get it,’ I say. ‘I never wanted the whole babies thing either.’
‘Really? Not everybody understands,’ he says, and he doesn’t follow any of this up with the question that literally everybody, apart from Patrick, has asked when we stumble onto the topic of my childlessness.And you haven’t regretted it?A question which, no matter how much a person inclines their head and does the frowny touchy-feely face while they ask it, is an absolute intrusion into a person’s privacy, not to mention their gynaecological history. Doesn’t stop them asking, though.
‘Well, I’m not everybody,’ I say, feeling like a girl in a movie who might say that sort of thing. It must be the glühwein. I should definitely buy a bottle of this stuff to take home with me.
‘No, you’re not, Margi.’ He beams back at me, the breeze shifting his hair around in the most appealing way. I can hear old Margi yelling at me.Kiss him, kiss, kiss, kiss!There’s still enough of the new, sensible, hold-your-horses Margi telling me not to. I listen to her and am glad I do because a second later a text pops up on my phone. It’s the estate agent I spent the morning with visiting properties.
‘Excuse me a sec,’ I tell Rusty and wander over to the lights of a big wooden windmill display with jolly elves frozen in a dance all around it while a busty fibreglass girl in lederhosen hangs from a window proffering two steins of frothy beer, just in case you’d forgotten you were at a touristy German market.
The Daisy Road terrace vendors have said they’re willing to reduce their asking price by 30K if you agree purchase today.
I read it twice to make sure I’m not hallucinating.
Daisy Road was my favourite of the lot, the one with the potagerie, which even in December was leafy with sprouts and curly greens. There was a ‘suntrap’ patio, two spare bedrooms, big enough to host both Izz and Patrick and of course, best of all, it was only four streets away from Lucy’s place.
I’d wandered around inside trying to imagine myself living there; not all that easy somehow, so I resorted to pretending I was some other kind of woman, a city girl, playing a part for the benefit of the estate agent who told me he was knocking off after he’d shown me the properties on my list so I hadn’t wanted to keep him longer than strictly necessary.
