‘And not one of them looking at you or those trousers!’ Ivy smiled. ‘See him? And her? And them? Well, they were in the talk. They saw what happened. Are they laughing about it? Are they talking about it? No, they’re not. No one remembers it. So why do you?’
‘Becausehesaw it.’ Quinn sighed. ‘Noah Sage!’
Ivy waved a hand, dismissing it straight away. ‘No. No, no. He complimented your trousers.’
‘Because he remembered what happened!’
‘I don’t believe in coincidences, Quinn, but this time I do!’ Ivy said. ‘He genuinely liked them, I can tell.’
‘How?’
He hadn’t laughed in the graveyard.
‘Because you can tell when someone is genuine.’ Ivy lifted her drink and took a sip. ‘Now, I’ve had my fair share of embarrassing moments, but you have to learn not to give a damn. Time spent on negative energy is time wasted.’
Quinn drank his gin and tonic. He nodded, leaning back in the booth. He couldn’t tell her that Dougie had taken up another five minutes of his day. Since being in the pub, he had received a frenzy of texts, each one getting more aggressive, because not responding to a dick picture was enough to fracture his masculinity. ‘Fine. You’re right. These gins are helping me forget.’
‘You are a drama queen, Quinn!’
‘Hey, you don’t know that for certain.’
‘I’m an expert judge of character, remember?’
Quinn laughed. He enjoyed Ivy’s company despite the commotion she caused at the event. It hadn’t been her fault. She got excited, like everyone else. The girl wasted champagne, for Christ’s sake. That was worse than what had happened to him! If anyone was to blame, it was Bloody Blair Beckett calling for the house lights to come on.
‘You’re thinking about him, aren’t you?’
For a moment, Quinn thought she meant Noah. But judging by the look of sympathy on her face, he knew she meant his father.
‘Always.’
‘I’m here whenever you need to talk.’
‘I know.’
But he would never talk to her. Not about his father. Not even about his mother and how she’d moved on, leaving Quinn behind to find out who he was without his dad around. He looked outside, wishing he would see the robin again, so that he would know everything was going to be okay.
The pub wound down after a busy night, and as they were leaving, their conversation turned to business.
‘I set up my cleaning company when I finished university,’ Ivy explained as they walked away from the pub and tucked into fish and chips they got from the next-door takeaway. The snow was still falling, heavier now, and their footsteps left a trail behind them. ‘We’ve been going pretty strong ever since.’
‘What made you set it up?’
‘I wanted to be an architect, and I’m sure I could have been. I qualified. But I tried it and realised why give all my time to someone else, when I could be bettering myself?’ Ivy said. ‘It hit me on a retreat I went to in Indonesia. I needed to look after myself, mentally, physically, emotionally, and energetically. So, I listened to my spirit, and I did something that I knew I could do but would allow me to live a balanced life.’
Quinn didn’t know what type of retreat Ivy went on, and he didn’t know how she could look after herself, but he nodded all the same, seeing how she lit up talking about her experience.
‘Sounds similar to why I opened the bookshop,’ Quinn said as they walked up Lion Street, soft snow compacting under their boots. He could tell, as they stepped gingerly, that tomorrow the pavements and roads would be lethal. In the homes that they walked by, Christmas trees glowed. The butter market, where local traders traded all day, was now deserted, with twinkling lights wrapped around the iron gates. It was cold, but the gin they had consumed numbed the feeling.
Ivy smiled. ‘I’m so proud of my business, too. Even though people tell me I could do so much more. They seem to look down on me when I tell them I’m a cleaner.’
‘You’re not a cleaner,’ Quinn said. ‘You’re an entrepreneur. A successful woman in a world dominated by men.’
‘Slay.’ Ivy clicked her fingers. ‘I don’t think I ever asked about why you opened your shop.’
‘Well, I went to university and did English literature because I always loved books,’ Quinn said. ‘I wanted to be a writer. Stillwantto be a writer.’
‘Do you write?’
