I obviously know the word he’s talking about. The one that slipped out. I hadn’t actually meant to say it because quite honestly until this moment I don’t think it had even crystallised in my head.
Yet now that it’s out there, hovering in the air between us, nothing has ever felt more true. And I wonder how it could have taken me so long not to see it with the shimmering clarity I can now.
‘You mean the bit about falling in love?’
‘Yes. That.’
‘Too much?’ Blood is thrashing in my ears as he holds my gaze and shakes his head.
‘Not even slightly.’
A smile filters onto his lips as we stand together, under a pink suburban sky, somewhere in the middle of court two. And, just when I thought I couldn’t feel anymore elated, he cups his hands around my face and draws me into a kiss.
Chapter 61
Five months later
I’ve had to listen to Kayla singing ‘Whistle While You Work’ for three hours straight now.
‘Is it your fourth or fifth date with Aiden tonight?’ I ask, as she happily dips her brush into a can of Dulux.
‘Sixth.’
‘You only got together last weekend. How can you fit six into the space of five days?’ I ask.
She turns to me, raises an eyebrow and gives me an innocent look, which clearly isn’t all that innocent. ‘You have to pull an all-nighter.’
‘Ah,’ I laugh. ‘I see.’
Now she mentions it, she does look a little tired, but I hadn’t noticed on account of the fact that she skipped in here like she was auditioning for the part of a Disney Princess.
‘That’s not going to happen again tonight, don’t worry,’ she adds. ‘He’s playing tennis in the morning.’
Kayla met her new man, a pharmacist who is a couple of years older than her, at Rusty Racquets. They began as friends and met to practise their newly acquired skills, go to the cinema or grab the odd coffee together. Then last Saturday, after a night out, they found themselves in the queue at Subway. For reasons known only to him, he chose that moment to reveal that he had ‘feelings’ for her. By the time the cheese on her BMT had melted, they were a couple.
‘Aren’t you playing with him?’
‘Course not. I’ll be here at 6am.’
‘Oh, you don’t need to do that, Kayla. It’s all under control. And we’ve already been at this all day.’
‘Sorry, but I’m coming, whether you like it or not. Hey, what did you think about those Spanish planters I sent you the link to?’
‘Beautiful. But can we get an order before Valentine’s Day?’
That’s my big deadline.
The target date I set when I began making plans to launch my first start-up, using my redundancy payout and a large lump of equity from my house sale. The idea had first nudged into my head on one of the nights when I was looking through an old photo album and I came across the scrapbooks and plans Ed and I had once put together. Our gift shop – the one we hoped would be the first of many – never happened after I became pregnant.
It might have taken me twenty years, but I finally get to live my dream, at a time in my life when I’d assumed there were no more surprises available to me, at least not nice ones. How wrong could I be.
Obviously, if I stop and think about what I’m doing for too long I feel mildly paralysed with terror. But, in those instances, I try and remember how I felt during some of those tennis matches last summer, when I was too fired up with adrenalin to hesitate. The ones when I was winning.
Finding the premises felt like a gift from the gods, when the elderly owner of a dry-cleaning shop in the centre of the village decided to close it down. While this unfortunately means that the residents of Roebury have to drive five minutes more to get their trousers cleaned and pressed, I am hopeful that I will be forgiven when they see what’s in its place.
The shop is on course to be everything I ever dreamed it would be. Both elegant and quirky, selling everything from trinket plates painted with oriental birds to kitsch cocktailglasses reminiscent of a bygone age. The fit-out is almost complete, our supply chain is in place and there are now only a few finishing touches left before we open. The icing on the cake is that it’s not far from where I live. After the landlord in London was persuaded to end my tenancy agreement early (though not without a hefty financial sweetener on my part) I found a lovely three-bedroom apartment in a big Georgian house about seven minutes’ walk from Roebury tennis club.
A knock on the glass makes us both jump and a face appears at the window.
