Anna laced her sneakers and straightened. ‘Actually, I think I will. Just a quick one – and then I’ll head off and leave you two to have some time together.’
Gabi rewarded her with a dazzling smile. ‘Great! I’ll go and get Lee.’ She returned a short while later with her boyfriend, hanging onto his arm so tightly that Anna wasn’t sure there was a millimetre of space between their bodies. It gave her a little pang to watch them. She and Spencer had been just the same, even after they’d been married a few years.
Despite the fact that the south-east of England had been experiencing a bit of a heatwave for early May, great purple clouds loomed on the horizon and it had been drizzling steadily most of the evening. Anna observed Gabi and Lee, practically Velcroed together, as they hurried the short distance to the Three Compasses, her presence alongside them almost forgotten.
They were just at the door to the pub when Gabi stopped suddenly. ‘Oh, no,’ she said, looking down at her torso and feeling around her shoulders with her hands. ‘I think I left my scarf at the Civic Centre.’ She looked at Lee in horror. ‘It’s my favourite one, the one you bought me from Camden Market!’
Lee’s serious police officer side snapped to attention. ‘Where did you last see it?’
‘On one of the grey plastic chairs near the door,’ Gabi said, her brow furrowing.
‘You two go ahead,’ Lee said. ‘I’ll go back and find it.’
‘My hero,’ Gabi said softly, and he winked, saluted her, and jogged away.
Anna noticed him smile at a couple of girls heading for the pub,and when she turned to look at Gabi, she saw Gabi had noticed it too.
‘It’s okay,’ she said to Anna, as they pushed the ornately engraved glazed Victorian doors open and entered the pub. ‘It’s just how Lee is.’
‘I know…’ Anna said. Lee certainly was a notorious flirt.
Gabi looked serious. ‘I know he gives it all that south London, Cheeky Chappy banter, but you don’t need to worry. He told me he’s a one-man woman now.’
Anna chuckled. ‘Don’t you mean a one-woman man?’
Gabi made a face. ‘Yes. That! What I’m trying to say is that he has told me that I’ve got nothing to worry about. He’s all mine.’
‘I’m glad,’ Anna said. She so wanted this one to work out for Gabi.
When their drinks arrived, they moved away from the bar and found a little table in easy view of the door so Lee would find them when he returned. Indeed, it wasn’t long before the ornate doors swung open and he appeared, triumphant, waving Gabi’s scarf. He came over to the table and claimed a kiss as a reward as he looped it around his girlfriend’s neck, then reached for his waiting beer.
‘I ran into a few waifs and strays when I went back,’ he said, after taking a long sip. ‘Told ’em they could come and join us. Hope you don’t mind.’
The pub door opened again and a dozen or so people trailed in, all members of the salsa class. There was Big John, the girl with the ponytail and… Jeremy.
There wasn’t enough room for the whole group to sit down, so someone suggested the pub garden. The ground was wet,but it had just about stopped raining and the clouds must have rolled off in another direction because all Anna could see was a dusky-blue sky.
When they got outside, Anna expected the rest of the group to split into smaller huddles of conversation. This would have allowed her to employ her usual tactic of hovering on the fringes, but Jeremy began to tell a story about how he’d accidentally got roped into taking part in a flamenco show when on holiday in Spain and everyone gathered around to listen. It seemed that, just like someone else Anna used to know, he could hold the attention of a group easily, charming them, entertaining them.
She laughed along with the others as he described his efforts in his mostly forgotten schoolboy Spanish to tell the dancers they should pick someone else from the audience. It felt safe to allow herself to relax a little because he was talking to the whole group, and she didn’t feel singled out, the sole focus of his attention.Be open, she reminded herself.That’s all for now.
There was a brief moment where his gaze landed on Anna, just as she’d been staring at his face, trying to work out what exactly it was that made the arrangement of his features pleasing. Their eyes met and locked, just for a second. Despite not having heard a peep from herNot Spenceralarm all night, it now started pulsing like a heartbeat.
Shut up, she told it.There’s nothing to get your knickers in a twist about. I’m not going to leap on the man. I’m just admiring him. From afar.
And that was okay, she realized. To appreciate a nice-looking man.
She was still young, and it was only natural. To be honest, it was quite a relief to know that this vital part of her hadn’t withered and died with Spencer,as she’d assumed it had. Those needs and desires were still there, waiting for her to make use of them.
And, in the spirit of embracing new experiences, when the salsa crew did inevitably splinter into different groups, Anna didn’t slink away when Jeremy came over to say hello. They were right in the middle of a conversation about old Hitchcock movies when the heavens opened. The umbrellas listing through the central holes of each picnic table were hanging limply, leaving them with no shelter from the fat drops of rain that seemed to target them like tiny bombs.
Most of the group ran back inside, including Lee and Gabi, but Anna and Jeremy were further away from the back door of the pub, so they ran from table to table, trying to find an umbrella that worked. The first one wouldn’t open and the second wouldn’t stay up. By the time they’d huddled under umbrella number three the rain was hitting Anna’s scalp and running through her hair and down her forehead. Both she and Jeremy were drenched.
‘It would have been safer to make a dash for the lounge bar,’ Anna said as she pushed a few damp strands off her forehead.
Jeremy smiled down at her. ‘Where would be the fun in that?’
Anna shook her head and shrugged, smiling back. ‘Where indeed?’
