‘An antidote?Why?’ Andrea looks outraged.
I start to think of Rachel, then resist. ‘It’s complicated.’
Her smile twitches a little. ‘I think I’m going to enjoy figuring out how your brain works, Mr Foster.’
It is the first time in a long while that anyone has referred to me using the future tense. It feels oddly nice. ‘Well, if you do, can you let me know?’
She laughs again, shakes her head. ‘An antidote. Seriously.’
I shuffle back to get a better look at her, all tumbling red hair and blood-rushed cheeks, cream-smooth outstretched limbs. ‘Getting older is a gift. You’re going to have to trust me on that.’
‘I absolutely will not. But lifeisfor living. So why the hell aren’t you out there making the most of it?’
I reach up to kiss her. ‘This does fall under that category, you know.’
She kisses me back. ‘Ooh, that was a test. You’re good.’
I scan her emerald eyes, the long lick of her lashes. ‘Seriously, eternal youth isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I don’t know why everyone’s chasing it so hard. I’d do anything for a few grey hairs. Or a sense of the future being... well, finite, at least.’
She leans down to kiss me again. ‘You’re weird. But that’s lucky for you, as it happens.’
‘Why’s that?’
She spins me an amused gaze. ‘Because that’s what I’m into.’
‘You’re not actually going to put me in a book, are you?’ I say, thinking back to her remark from earlier.
She snorts. ‘Sorry, my heroes are all morose old men with holes in their socks.’
‘I can be morose. And most of my socks have holes.’
‘No,’ she says thoughtfully. ‘You’re far too handsome and brooding. I could always pivot into romance, I suppose. Write a rompfest.’
‘Please don’t. I love your work.’
‘Do you?’
‘Don’t sound so surprised.’
‘Men usually object to reading me.’
‘I love you,’ I say. And then, eyes wide, ‘As in, I love—’
‘Oh no, let’s leave it at that.’ She trills a laugh, rolls on to her back. ‘Well, this has turned out to be quite the unexpected encounter, Josh, hasn’t it?’
60.
Rachel
December 2013
About a fortnight out from Christmas, after picking Emma up from school, I sit alone for a while in our kitchen-diner before Oliver gets home. I’m attempting meditation, ten guided minutes via Ingrid’s company’s new wellbeing app. She’s out in LA promoting it at the moment with Sean, who now works with her as her CTO. They’re spending Christmas there, and I will really miss her: each year it’s Ingrid who supplies the mistletoe, who insists we do Christmas jumpers and Secret Santa, festive karaoke, rude charades – not to mention destroying us all with the world’s most potent eggnog.
Emma comes into the room, still in her uniform, and slides silently on to the stool opposite me. Her hair glimmers gold in the glow of the bulbs I’ve strung around the room.
I always love this quiet time with her, just the two of us, when things spill softly out of her about school and her friends, small dilemmas and funny things that have happened, ideas for the weekend. And I treasure it, because I know that all too soon she’ll be going straight to her bedroom after school and I will be coaxing her to talk to me, having to work far harder to keep track of the person she is becoming.
And perhaps our time together also feels special because she might soon be joined by a sibling. Or is it, in fact, more that she might not? Oliver and I have been trying to conceive for three years now, and, lately, everything we’ve been throwing at it has been beginning to feel faintly house-of-cards. Hope built withbated breath from fertility vitamins and acupuncture, special tea and scheduled sex, reflexology, guilt trips, tears.
