‘Now that is interesting. I, by contrast, like ham in my grilled cheese sandwich, essentially a croque monsieur, and I like bacon chips. Sorry, crisps. I think it’s all wrong if your crisp tastes don’t follow your sandwich tastes.’ Sam’s smile was reaching his eyes again now.
‘But bacon is not cheese and ham. Would you like bacon and cheese crisps?’
‘I think I would. I think anyone would. But I don’t think they exist. We might have hit on a business idea here.’
Izzy nodded, pleased. ‘Yes, I think that’s got to be a winning flavour combo. Something for me to research while I’m wallowing on a sofa until the baby comes.’
‘How much maternity leave are you planning to take afterwards?’
‘I think in total the full year that I’m allowed. And then I’ll maybe just go back two or three days a week to start off with, see how it goes. Work have been fantastic about being flexible and my husband’s been cool too, so, yeah, I’m going to take full advantage. Try to have my cake and eat it.’ Why did it feel weird mentioning Dominic to Sam? Izzy took a big bite of her toastie. Munching was a good cover for awkwardness.
‘Sounds perfect. What does your husband do?’
‘He works in banking. You know, finance.’ Izzy loaded a token bit of side salad onto her fork. ‘I don’t really know, actually. Bonds. Fixed income. Trading. Those are the words I hear but if I’m honest I’m not really sure what they mean.’ This did not feel right. Telling the man you’d spent nearly a year thinking of as The One that you had no real idea what your husband’s job was. It felt a bit disloyal. ‘But he enjoys it, which is cool. And his colleagues are nice.’ They’d been fine on the few occasions she’d met them. Maybe a little bit keen to talk only about work-related stories, maybe a bit keen on flashing their large amounts of salary around, maybe too keen to be extremely patronising about her career, but fine, really fine.
‘A lot of jobs are remarkably difficult to define,’ Sam said. ‘Like my own. I’m a corporate lawyer. My own mother would struggle to tell you more than that, and she bores all her friends with constant stories about me. I’m the only son out of four siblings – something of a novelty. She can recite pretty much every one of my achievements – including winning my first-grade field day sack race – and she’d still be doing all my laundry and cooking if she had her way. She’s one of those great, adoring mothers, but any time I’ve ever tried to tell her what I do, she just glazes right over.’
‘You know what she needs to do? She needs to watch Ally McBeal. I used to love that in my teens and as a result I know exactly what corporate lawyers do.’ Izzy pointed her fork for emphasis. ‘They wear pencil skirts and amazing heels, and cry in the loos a lot.’
‘Totally right. You’re literally the only person I’ve ever met who knows exactly what I do at work. This is where I’ve been going wrong. I should have pointed my mother in the direction of Netflix instead of trying to use my own words to explain.’
‘Exactly.’ Izzy smiled at Sam and took another mouthful.
‘Just going to get us a couple glasses of tap water.’ Sam stood up and ambled back over to the counter. Izzy thought about him as she chewed. And about herself. All that time when she’d imagined seeing him, meeting him. And now she had met him, and they were chatting, and it was lovely. And he was widowed with twins and she was married to Dominic, who she really did love, and about to give birth to Dominic’s baby. So when they’d finished their coffee, she’d go home and forget about Sam. And that was that.
Four
Sam
Sam watched Izzy lug herself out of the room towards the restroom. Small-to-medium-sized woman, gigantic baby bump. Bigger than Lana’s had been, with twins, but Lana had been supermodel tall, close to six foot, so she’d had a lot more space to accommodate her bump, and the twins had been tiny at birth, probably no greater weight in total than a single baby.
Izzy’s red hair clashed beautifully with her orange dress. Sam was pleased that she was wearing orange. He’d had a sense that she’d wear bright colours when not forced to be an elf and it was satisfying to be right. He realised that he couldn’t remember anything about what she’d been wearing when he saw her on the King’s Road outside the town hall, when he’d been going into the library; all he could remember from then was her face. And his own shock. And guilt.
He took another slurp of his second cappuccino and looked around. This was a lovely coffee shop. Cosy. Classic, tasteful décor. Very British. Was it odd that he was here with Izzy? Maybe. He’d thought, known, when they met in that excruciating way on his wedding day that they’d get on well, given a chance. And he’d been right. He pulled his cuff up to check his watch. Woah. That had been a long lunch break. They’d been talking for just over two hours. The time had flown if he was honest.
He drained the rest of his coffee and held the cup with both hands in front of him, staring into it. Now Izzy wasn’t here to distract him, he realised that he should probably get going.
Had Lana lived, he would never have cheated on her. The guilt he’d felt when he saw Izzy that morning outside the library had been horrendous. And, as he was reflecting on how easy their conversation had been today, the same guilt was creeping over him.
He hadn’t felt guilty when Izzy asked him out. Maybe because he hadn’t been pretending anything to anyone at that point, or certainly not to himself, anyway. He had felt helpless, and pretty pissed to be honest. It had definitely been a bit of a body blow to discover, on the day that he was marrying the fairly new girlfriend he’d drunk-proposed to because she’d got pregnant, that the whole ‘love at first sight’ thing existed. Obviously, it didn’t really. Obviously, he’d known nothing at all about Izzy then. But if he’d been single, he’d have ditched any plans he had for that evening in a heartbeat and gone out with her. And they’d have had a fantastic time. He’d been pretty sure of that at the time, and now he knew. She was warm, sarcastic, very funny, clever, nice. Not to mention pretty fricking gorgeous. And managing to make eight-month-pregnant crabbiness very cool. What wasn’t to like?
In fact, if he’d been single and they’d gone out that day, maybe she’d be pregnant now with his baby.
Except then he wouldn’t have the twins, and they were everything. Plus, really, love at first sight? Instant, easy happy endings? Doubtful.
And Izzy was probably very happy with her husband.
Yeah, she had a husband. And Sam had his honour and, if he was honest, he’d enjoyed her company way too much while they’d been talking. He put his cup down on the table and stood up. It was definitely time to leave. He should wait here, standing, so that when she got back into the room she’d know that he meant to leave so that she a) didn’t waste energy getting down onto the sofa and back up again, and more importantly b) didn’t feel embarrassed in demonstrating that she might want or expect the coffee to go on for longer than he did. She’d be able to take her cue from him. He really didn’t want to cause the same, very nice, woman to feel humiliated or silly twice.