Then Ash smiles, and the intensity in his gaze is lost. ‘So. You work with Mark?’
She lets out a long exhale, grateful for the change of subject, whether it was intentional or not. She nods, feels like a nodding dog and stops. ‘Yep.’
‘Digital marketing, right?’
‘Mm-hmm.’
‘What’s that like?’
‘Umm, very … digital,’ she concludes with a nod. He laughs. ‘And you?’ she asks. ‘What do you do? You don’t live in Bath?’
‘Nah. I move around a fair bit. I’m in Belgium at the moment – just stopped by for a couple of weeks to visit Mark. And my dad,’ he adds, almost like an afterthought.
Lissa raises her eyebrows.‘Belgium?’He laughs, and she realises it’s probably because she made it sound like she could never imagine anything as unlikely as living in Belgium.
‘Yes. Belgium.’
‘Doing what?’
‘I’m a location scout – for music videos, mainly.’ He takes a sip of his beer as he says it.
‘A location scout? I’m pretty sure I have zero idea what that is.’
He grins. ‘It means I try and find the best places to film music videos. I speak to the director and the artist to find out the vibe, then look for somewhere that matches up to it. Then there’s a bunch of boring logistical stuff like working out parking and electricity access and so on.’
‘Wow. That sounds pretty cool.’
‘Yeah, it is. Means I get to do a lot of travelling, which I like.’
Lissa nods, as though she knows exactly what it’s like to love travelling, when her last trip abroad was after her A levels with Mia, to Lanzarote of all places.
‘The life of a nomad, this one.’ Lissa jumps as Mark comes up behind Ash, clapping him on the back. She hadn’t noticed him crossing the garden. ‘No responsibility, going wherever the wind takes him.’ He sighs dramatically. ‘The life so many of us crave and aren’t brave enough to go for.’
Ash rolls his eyes good-naturedly as Mark moves round to sit next to Lissa, sliding a gin and tonic over to her. A good guess, she concedes, made easier by the fact that they spent their last date, if you could call it that, in a gin bar.
‘So where’s the best place you’ve ever filmed?’ she asks Ash.
‘God, so many. There was this really cool run-down house in Wales where we did a shoot for an up-and-coming artist. It was all about her letting loose, and it worked so well. We did a great one on some cliffs in Ireland. And there was this big-budget project I was hired for once where they wanted to film on a rooftop overlooking the Paris skyline. That was pretty incredible.’
Mark shakes his head. ‘Paris, mate. Could you be any more clichéd?’
Ash only shrugs and grins, as Mark gets out his phone, frowning at something on the screen.
‘Have you ever been?’ Ash asks her, saving an awkward silence. ‘To Paris?’
She’s back there, then. In that café, on that street, with that man. Only it’s not the same day. It’s dark outside, and the door to the café is shut, curtains mostly drawn, while live music plays in one corner and one of the owners walks around topping everyone’s glasses up. He’s there, next to her, his hand pressed lightly into the small of her back as they chat to another couple. She doesn’t want to be chatting to them. She wants to be talking to him and only him. His thumb moves, travelling a small circle over her back, and even though she doesn’t look at him, trying very hard to nod and smile in the right places, her insides tighten and coil.
‘Lissa? You okay?’
She blinks a few times. It’s Ash, rather than Mark, asking the question, Mark still looking at his phone. She swallows and nods, taking a sip of her gin. Whatwasthat? It was so vivid. Was that part of her dream, a piece of it she’d forgotten?
‘No,’ she manages. ‘I’ve never been to Paris.’ She wonders why it feels like a lie.
‘Sorry,’ Mark says, setting his phone down. ‘Just work.’ Lissa wonders what can be so important at past 6 p.m. on a Friday, then remembers that Mark, unlike her, has a long-term game plan at the agency.
‘You staying for one more, mate?’ he asks Ash. Lissa notices, though, that he didn’t get another pint for Ash while he was at the bar.
Ash smiles. It’s only when he looks at Mark that she realises he’s been holding eye contact with her all this time. ‘Nah. You were right, I only had time for one anyway.’
