What I don’t know much about is her ex-husband – Charlie’s dad. I just get the feeling the subject has a line drawn round it. And that’s fine; it’s absolutely her business. What I did find out pretty quickly is that Lauren drives along those terrifying mountain roads (hairpin bends, sheer drops) at quite a speed, chatting all the while with a casualness as if she were just popping out to Tesco.
I have also learnt that, before his retirement, her London-born dad was something of an entrepreneur: ‘Selling things, basically. But quite often not the kind of things people needed or wanted,’ she explained.
‘Like what?’ I asked, intrigued.
‘Cheap deckchairs that collapsed as soon as people sat on them. Starter garden kits of runty little plants that withered and died …’ She smiled with a barely detectable eye-roll.
Another thing about Lauren is that she loves Corsican wines as well as strong black coffee and, as her job would suggest, she is passionate about food. Oh, I know everyone is ‘passionate about food’ now, in that they rave about restaurants where you have to stand outside in the cold, queuing for a table, and buy obscure ingredients like ‘liquid smoke’ – whatever the heck that is.
Esther requested once that I ‘get some in’ for when she stays over, even though shenevercooks. She’d just read about it somewhere, that it was the new ‘it’ ingredient, as she put it. Which meant she had to have it. She has also asked for artichokes, fresh beetroot (i.e. encrusted with soil rather than being preserved, conveniently, in a jar) and black garlic, which costs about ten times as much as normal garlic. Of course these items all withered in my vegetable rack, despite my reminders that they needed using up. ‘Dad, can you stop going on about that garlic? You’re obsessed!’ She once claimed, unfeasibly, that she heard me shouting, ‘Use up the black garlic!’ in my sleep.
I drew the line at buying micro-herbs for her. Christ, when I was her age, in my student house in Hackney, we still considered pesto exotic and were slightly in awe of what we called the ‘avocado pear’.
Anyway, I think it’s more a case of Esther aspiring to be the kind of person who cooks with micro-herbs, as in reality she and Miles have pretty much all of their meals delivered. Despite the copious drugs he’s consumed over the years, his diet leans towards the ‘clean’ and preferably raw, involving dehydrated algae and something fermented, displaying an evil-looking froth. Maybe he’s trying tocompensate for all the bad stuff he’s done to himself – like donating to a tree-planting charity whenever he takes a short-haul flight. Anyway, the smoked water is sitting in my cupboard, its seal intact.
My ex-wife’s partner Luc is also passionate about food in that he’ll spend an entire afternoon tramping about on the banks of an urban canal, looking for edible weeds to pick – which baffles me as there’s an excellent greengrocer in their street. What’s different about Lauren is that she is actuallyispassionate about eating in an obvious and very physical way. Over the course of our dates (is that what they’ve been? I don’t know what else to call them as ‘meetings’ doesn’t seem right) I’ve seen her face light up when she’s picked up a menu, even at places she’s been to dozens of times before. She eats with enthusiasm, by which I don’t mean she chomps down her dinner like a starved horse. Just that she clearly views food as a source of unbridled pleasure – and now Iammaking her sound like a horse.
She tears into locally baked bread, dipping it into dishes of golden olive oil and urging me to do likewise: ‘Try it, James. The olive grove where this is from is just up the road. We can visit sometime!’ She takes me to meet the farmer, another friend of her parents, and interprets as the weathered elderly man explains that the olives are picked by hand, and when a new batch of oil is about to be produced, early samples are tasted with a sense of ceremony, ‘just like a wine tasting,’ Lauren says. When the farmer’s wife brings us slices of almondy cake, she uses a finger to mop up the crumbs from her plate.
There’s no cry of, ‘No, I shouldn’t!’ when Camille at the beachside restaurant offers us freshly made cheesecake flavoured with grappa and clementines. I have to say it’s incredibly attractive. The cheesecake, yes, but also Lauren’senthusiasm for it. That’s very attractive. In fact, everything about her is attractive.
I tell myself not to read too much into things because we’re just having a lovely time together, and I should be happy with that.
*
‘So, what’s Esther’s boyfriend like?’ she says one afternoon as we dry ourselves off on the beach after another swim. She already knows I’m not one hundred per cent crazy about the guy. But not wanting to seem negative or like some horribly overprotective dad, I suppose I’ve kept my real feelings about him under wraps.
‘Bit of a jerk really,’ I say.
She gives me a quick look. The sky is a wash of vivid blue, the aroma of chargrilled lamb and rosemary drifting from Camille’s restaurant. I start to tell Lauren about the age difference – ‘She keeps saying age is just a number and that he’s incredibly youngin his head’ – and, crucially, the fact that he’s treated Esther extremely badly.
‘You must be so worried,’ Lauren says with a frown.
‘I am, yes. I’m worried sick sometimes. But I also feel quite powerless to do anything.’ I pause and look at her. ‘I wish it hadn’t happened that way. Esther not turning up at the airport, I mean. And I wish our relationship was better, and that we could talk to each other properly, as grown-ups, instead of her sighing and huffing as if she was still fifteen …’ I pause. ‘But then, if I hadn’t come here by myself then I wouldn’t have been walking through the woods, and heard you calling—’ I break off, a little surprised by my admission. But it’s true. In a way, I have Miles Lattimer-Jones to thank for meeting Lauren.
‘I’m glad too,’ she says. Sunshine catches her green eyesas she smiles. ‘I mean, I’m glad you were right there when we needed you.’
A pause settles, and I’m aware of my heart thumping as she moves closer, and we kiss. It’s not so brief this time. It’s a kiss that says: something is happening here. Something really special. I feel different, I realise; lighter to the point where I could describe myself as actually being carefree.Live a little, James!Well, I am now. I really am. And I don’t think I have ever felt this way in my life.
The days stretch on, blue-skied and perfect like some kind of wonderful dream. The kind you wake up from feeling slightly crushed that it wasn’t real. I’d thought Corsica would be nice but I hadn’t expectedthis.I’d imagined I’d be staggering through some gorge with a bunch of strangers with crash helmets on, being chivvied along by a ‘leader’. Not getting to know this smart, funny and beautiful woman and literally smiling and laughing the whole time, feeling as if I’m twenty years old and everything is thrillingly new, just waiting to be discovered.
I know I am falling in love with Lauren. It’s an incredible and slightly terrifying feeling. Fuck it, I think. What can I do about it anyway? Of course I realise she has her life back home with Charlie, and her work, and I have my life too. And what if she doesn’t feel the way I do? What if I’ve been misinterpreting things, reading too much into our affectionate looks, our hand-holds and those lingering kisses? And what if it makes things complicated back home?
I have my life set up pretty well there, I think. I work. I come home. I cook pasta or make an omelette – okay, sometimes, if I’m really knackered, it’s beans on toast. I put the bin out and shove a wash on. There’s always food in the fridge and clean clothes in my wardrobe. Walter, my elderly cat, roams in and out as he pleases and isn’toverly affectionate. But it’s good to know he’s around, like a genial flatmate. I have the odd large glass of wine some nights as I flick through the TV channels or research something unusual that’s come up at work.
I’m a functioning workaholic who hoovers regularly enough to keep Walter’s hair at bay (although I’ve worked with animals for twenty-five years, it still astounds me how much fluff can come off one smallish animal). Somehow, it all chugs along without anything terrible happening. And for a long time I’ve assumed that this is the best life can be. That there are no disasters or heartache or anything like that. I haven’t lived with anyone since Rhona and I split up nine years ago (my most recent girlfriend, Polly, had her own flat). Although my work days can be unpredictable, there’s a lot of routine stuff: vaccinations, neutering, worming and annual check-ups. The life of a single fifty-two-year-old vet positively sizzles with glamour.
But now something has happened. Something I’d never envisaged in my wildest dreams.
The thing is, I decide, it doesn’t matter whether or not it’s a good idea to fall in love with someone.
You just do.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
LAUREN
I cry when he tells me that his parents were killed in a car accident on the motorway. I can’t help it. ‘James, I’m so sorry,’ I say.
