Anna turned to slip away in the opposite direction but found herself blocked by a gaggle of Vanessa’s beauty salon employees, blinged up and colourful like exotic birds. They’d set up camp next to the glass-fronted fridge containing nothing but champagne and didn’t seem inclined to budge.
‘I thought I’d lost you!’ Gabi said, breaking into one of her Julia Roberts-style grins. She glanced over to the man whose arm she had hold of, who, it had to be said, wasn’t looking as enthusiastic about this encounter as Gabi was. ‘This is Jeremy!’ Gabi said, with the same degree of fanfare more suited to announcing an Oscar winner. Tall with sandy-blond hair, Jeremy had the kind of sharp cheekbones that reminded Anna of the detective in the Swedish crime series she was currently bingeing on Netflix.
‘Remember I told you about him?’
Anna shot Gabi a look.Seriously? You’re really doing this?
Undeterred, Gabi countered with a look of her own –Don’t mess this up!– and carried on talking. ‘You know you were saying you wanted to try salsa classes? Well, Jeremy here has been going to some at the Civic Centre. He can tell you all about them.’ Gabi then came to the startling realization that everyone’s glasses needed topping up and, despite beingright next toa fridge packed with champagne, skipped off in the opposite direction to find some. That left Anna and Jeremy staring awkwardly at one another.
Anna took a breath, smiled and said, ‘Hello.’ Yes, she was feeling a bit antisocial at the moment, but she wasn’t rude. That was also why, as they began tiptoeing through the small talk,she didn’t tell him salsa classes had been Gabi’s idea. Something to get Anna out of the house. Something to take her mind off things. Before that, it had been conversational Italian, and before that, silver jewellery making. Even flipping car maintenance.
And so that was how Anna ended up talking to Jeremy in the kitchen for half an hour. He was a nice man, she decided. Not too full of himself. Not boring. And he’d obviously been blindsided by Gabi’s not-so-subtle attempt at matchmaking too. He was trying his best to hide it but not quite succeeding. Anna liked him more for that.
When he suggested moving outside to get away from the crush and noise of the kitchen, she followed him. ‘So, how did you become such a salsa expert?’ she asked, as they made their way out onto the deck overlooking the immaculate back garden.
Jeremy made a face. ‘I definitely wouldn’t call myself an expert.’
‘No? How long have you been taking lessons?’
He rubbed a hand over his face and laughed.He had a nice smile, Anna thought. There was a twinkle in his eyes, a warmth there, something genuine. ‘Well, that’s just it… I’ve only been a handful of times, and that was because my sister was desperate to go and my brother-in-law flat-out refused.’
Anna laughed along with him. Not a full-on belly laugh, more a soft chuckle, but it shocked her so much she fell silent again almost instantly. The sound was foreign to her ears, the gentle juddering of her shoulders, alien. How long had it been since she’d last laughed? She wanted to answer ‘days’, but that would be bare-faced lying. ‘Weeks’ was also probably a tad optimistic.
Maybe that was why she threw herself into the conversation with this nice man more fully, why she found herself not just standing there, smiling and nodding in the right places, but talking back, sharing little bits of information about herself. Maybe that was why, when he told her about the salsa classes and said he’d brave them again should she wish to go and not want to walk through the door alone, she said she’d think about it.
It struck her, as she steered the conversation towards another subject, that Gabi had picked well. Very well. Because in another life, another reality, she might be feeling butterflies at the thought of dancing with Jeremy, at the thought of placing her hand in his, feeling the brush of his palm against hers when they moved. As they leaned on the deck railing, Jeremy kept looking at her, and every time he did, she was surprised to discover delicate wings tickled her inside.
But Anna knew not to pay much heed to the fluttering. Butterflies were short-lived creatures and, given the frost hardening the depths of her soul, they’d probably be dead soon. Frozen stiff, poor things.
Even so, when Jeremy took the glass of warm, flat champagne from her hand to get her a fresh one, their fingers brushed, and the butterflies started to panic.
That brief touch tripped a secret alarm inside her, like a cashier pressing an under-the-desk button during a bank raid. Red lights flashed in the vault of her heart every few seconds. Sirens blared inside the confines of her skull as Jeremy pushed his way through the crowd back towards the kitchen.
Don’t care if he’s nice-looking,the alarm yelled.Even really nice-looking. He’s not Spencer.
Don’t care if he’s intelligent, sensitive and gently serious in a way that’s appealing, in a way Spencer never was. Don’t care that this Jeremy person might never crack a joke every time you tried to talk about something deep or important. He’s not him. Never will be.
Anna tried to ignore the nagging alarm when Jeremy returned. She tried to listen to an anecdote about a particularly demanding design client he’d had, but the pulsing warning was there in the back of her head as his gaze began to linger longer on hers, as a little bubble of intimacy began to close around them.
Oh, heck. She knew where this was going.
In less than half an hour, he might gently touch her arm while making a point. Maybe, when Big Ben’s chimes rang out across the nation, he’d lean in and kiss her softly on the lips. Her stomach plummeted at the thought. She felt hot and prickly all over.
Not Spencer,the warning flashed again.Not Spencer. Not Spencer. Not Spencer.
Anna tried to smile and nod as Jeremy kept talking, but she felt sick and giddy at the same time. This really wouldn’t do. She had to find a way to make it all stop.
But then Jeremy segued into a story about a stag do he’d been on, where he and his pals had spent an afternoon driving racing cars at Goodwood. Anna grabbed the lifeline he offered without hesitation.
‘I bought my husband one of those experience days for his birthday,’ she said. ‘Supercars… He was mad about Aston Martins.’
Jeremy opened his mouth to say, ‘Oh, really?’ but then her words caught up with him,and he faltered. He nodded a couple of times, a filler action, she guessed, designed to give him time to regroup. ‘Aston Martin?’ he finally said, his head still bobbing. ‘Good choice.’
He was momentarily stalled, she realized, but not shocked at the mention of a husband, as most men might have been if a woman at a party had been talking to them exclusively for more than an hour with no sign of a significant other.
‘Gabi told you about Spencer,’ she said. A statement, not a question.
‘A little,’ he replied, and she had to give him credit – he maintained eye contact, didn’t look away or do the invent-a-friend routine. Up until then, their conversation had been plain sailing, but he didn’t run when the waters got choppy. He stayed and navigated the lurching awkwardness that followed her revelation. The man had class.
