“So you know I’m divorced,” she says, when our conversation eventually lulls. “What about you?”
“Single, but...”
She’s nudging a beer mat around the table with her fingertips. “Not looking.”
I frown. “I’m sorry. It’s complicated.”
“Someone else in the picture?”
I think of Callie. “No,” I say honestly. “But I’m just not sure if I’m ready to get to know someone again... in that way, quite yet.”
She smiles. “Fair enough. Thanks for being straight with me.”
We drink up after that. Rose tells me she’s got tickets for a comedy night later she was half thinking she might invite me to. And perhaps I would have gone, if she hadn’t asked me so directly about my situation. But I realize I’m glad we’re ending it here.
Because I like her. I’m attracted to her in a way I haven’t been to anyone since Callie. And I don’t want to mess that up, turn it into something throwaway through carelessness.
If that means missing the boat with her, that’s just a chance I’ll have to take.
“I’d like to keep in touch,” I say, as we’re getting ready to leave.
Rose smiles. “Like pen pals?”
I wince. “Sorry. Just heard that back in my head. That was lame.”
“The lamest,” she agrees. “Lucky for you you’re so charming, isn’t it?”
I’m not surecharmingis how I’d describe myself right now. But as her compliment’s overly generous, I accept it without further argument.
“Oh, I nearly forgot,” she says, standing up. “This is yours.”
She hands me the coat I put around her shoulders at the retreat twoyears previously. She’s had it rolled up on the chair next to her this whole time. I didn’t even notice.
“Keep it,” I say.
She blinks once or twice, then puts out a hand. A formal good-bye. “Okay. Just... call me, then. If you ever want it back, I mean.”
“Deal.” I take her hand, shake it. Meet her eye and smile.
87.
Callie—five years after
After the twins’ first feed of the day, once Finn’s left for work, I head out with the buggy and Murphy for a walk along the seafront.
It took us a long while to pull off the miracle of both babies feeding and napping at roughly the same time, but we’re finally starting to emerge from the mayhem of the first few months. We feel bruised with exhaustion and more than a little dazed—I mean, we’ve still barely recovered from the shock of havingtwins—but somehow, we’ve made it through intact.
Euan and Robyn are five months old today. I still can’t quite believe it. I’m not yet over reaching out to touch them, wondering if they’re really ours.
When they were first born, Finn’s enormous social network came into its own. Friends and family supported us in shifts, cooking and sterilizing and washing and dog walking. And now that we’re through those tough first months, I’m feeling increasingly lavish with love, ambrosial with fortune. When I hold my babies close to my chest, the rise and fall of their bath-warm weight feels like my heartbeat outside my own body.
•••
The one-way street where we live is narrow and cluttered with cars, and there’s plenty of weekday traffic, but once I’m on the promenade, I have only to look out to sea to feel washed over with calm.
Thankfully, my usual bench isn’t too damp. It’s the same one Grace and Ben sat on together the morning after they met on a night out in Brighton, with hot tea and bacon sandwiches, and giddy beating hearts. I know because she took a selfie, posted it on Facebook a few months later (The day after we met!), and I remember the hotel in the background.
I settle down with the decaf Finn made me this morning before leaving for work. He does that every day now, because it’s easily more trouble than it’s worth for me to try to maneuver the double buggy into the café at the end of our road. I’ve brought along a slice ofdrømmekagetoo, because if you can’t have cake for breakfast when you’re a new mum, when can you? We eat it a lot, these days—ever since Finn found my recipe and baked it for me as a surprise while I was out one afternoon. I didn’t have the heart to give him the history.
