‘Who are you going with? A friend?’ I raised an eyebrow.
‘You sound like Granny.’
‘Well?’
‘A boyfriend.’ And then, as I opened my mouth, ‘But I don’t want to say anything about him.’
‘Why? I’m delighted you have a boyfriend. It’s lovely news.’ I lowered my voice. ‘You know the last person who got cagey like that was my sister. And she was basically hiding the fact that she was about to come out.’
‘I am not coming out. I do not want to go rooting about in someone’s lady-garden. Bleurgh.’
I tried not to laugh. ‘Lily, you don’t have to keep everything close to your chest. We all just want you to be happy. It’s okay if people know your business.’
‘Granny does know my business, as you so quaintly call it.’
‘Then why can’t you tell me? I thought you and I could tell each other anything!’
Lily bore the resigned expression of someone cornered. She sighed theatrically and put down her knife and fork. She looked at me as if braced for a fight. ‘Because it’s Jake.’
‘Jake?’
‘Sam’s Jake.’
The restaurant ground to a gentle halt around me. I forced my face into a smile. ‘Okay! … Wow!’
She scowled. ‘I knew you’d react like that. Look, it just happened. And it’s not like we talk about you all the time or anything. I just ran into him a couple of times – you know we met at that Letting Go thing for that cringy grief counselling group you used to go to and we got on okay and we liked each other? Well, we sort of get each other’s situations so we’re going backpacking together in the summer. No biggie.’
My brain was spinning. ‘Has Mrs Traynor met him?’
‘Yes. He comes to ours and I go to his.’ She looked almost defensive.
‘So you see a lot of –’
‘His dad. I mean I do see Ambulance Sam but I mostly see Jake’s dad. Who is okay, but still quite depressed and eats about a ton of cake a week, which is stressing Jake out a lot. That’s partly why we want to get away from everything. Just for six weeks or so.’
She kept talking but a low hum had started somewhere in the back of my head and I couldn’t quite register what she was saying. I didn’t want to hear about Sam, even vicariously. I didn’t want to hear about people I loved playing Happy Families without me while I was thousands of miles away. I didn’t want to know about Sam’s happiness or Katie with her sexy mouth or how they were no doubt living in his house together in a newly built den of passion and tangled matching uniforms.
‘So how’s your new boyfriend?’ she said.
‘Josh? Josh! He’s great. Totally great.’ I put my knife and fork neatly to the side of my plate. ‘Just … dreamy.’
‘So what’s going on? I need to see pictures of you with him. You’re massively annoying not sharing any photos on Facebook. Don’t you have any pictures of him on your phone?’
‘Nope,’ I said, and she wrinkled her nose as if that were a completely inadequate response.
I wasn’t telling the truth. I had one of the two of us at a pop-up rooftop restaurant, taken a week earlier. But I didn’t want her to know that Josh was the spitting image of her father. It would either unbalance her or, worse, having her acknowledge it out loud would unbalance me.
‘So when are we heading out of this funeral parlour? We can leave the olds here to finish their lunch, surely.’ Lily nudged me. The two women were still chatting. ‘Did I tell you I’ve been winding Grandpa up massively about Granny’s imaginary heart-throb boyfriend? I told him they were going on holiday to the Maldives and that Granny had been to Rigby and Peller to stock up on new underwear. I swear he’s about to break down and declare he still loves her. It’s making me die laughing.’
Much as I loved Lily, I was grateful that Mrs Traynor’s packed schedule of cultural improvements over the next few days meant that, aside from our shopping trip, we had limited time together. Her presence in the city – with her intimate knowledge of Sam’s life – had created a vibration in the air that I didn’t know how to dispel. I was grateful that Josh was flat out with work and didn’t notice if I was down or distracted. But Margot noticed and one night, when her beloved Wheel of Fortune had finished and I rose to take Dean Martin for his last walk of the day, she asked me straight out what the matter was.
I told her. I couldn’t think of a reason not to.
‘You still love the other one,’ she said.
‘You sound like my sister,’ I said. ‘I don’t. I just – I just loved him so much when I did. And the end of it was so awful and I thought that being over here and living a different life would insulate me from it. I don’t do social media any more. I don’t want to keep tabs on anyone. And yet somehow information about your ex will always end up finding its way to you. And it’s like I can’t concentrate while Lily’s here because she’s now part of his life.’
‘Perhaps you should just get in touch with him, dear. It sounds as if you still have things to say.’
‘I have nothing to say to him,’ I said. My voice grew impassioned. ‘I tried so hard, Margot. I wrote to him and sent him emails and called. Do you know he didn’t write me one letter? In three months? I asked if he would write because I thought it would be a really lovely way for us to stay connected and we could learn things about each other and look forward to speaking and have something to remind us of our time apart and he just … he just wouldn’t.’
She sat and watched me, her hands folded across the remote control.
I straightened my shoulders. ‘But it’s fine. Because I’ve moved on. And Josh is just terrific. I mean, he’s handsome, and he’s kind, and he has this great job, and he’s ambitious – oh, he is so ambitious. He’s really going places, you know. He has things he wants – houses and a career and giving things back. He wants to give back! And he hasn’t even really got anything to give back yet!’
I sat down. Dean Martin stood in front of me, confused. ‘And he’s totally clear that he wants to be with me. No ifs and no buts. He literally called me his girlfriend from our first date. And I’ve heard all about the serial daters in this town. Do you know how lucky that makes me feel?’
She gave a small nod.
I stood again. ‘So I don’t really give a monkey’s about Sam. I mean, we hardly even knew each other when I came over here. I suspect if it hadn’t been for each of us requiring emergency medical help we might not have been together at all. In fact, I’m sure of it. And I plainly wasn’t right for him or he would have waited, right? Because that’s what people do. So all in all, it’s great. And I’m actually really happy with how everything has turned out. It’s all good. All good.’
There was a short silence.
‘So I see,’ said Margot, quietly.
‘I’m really happy.’
‘I can see that, dear.’ She watched me for a moment, then placed her hands on the arms of her chair. ‘Now. Perhaps you could take that poor dog out. His eyes have started to bulge.’