disconcerting me. ‘It’s early days for us, you both know that. But if I’m not sparkly and adoring and adorable, if we don’t have a shiny precious weekend, then I feel hugely resented. Last weekend was hellish. You know that anyway because of how I was on the Sunday train. I can’t blame Sam for it: as far as he’s concerned, I’m in a high-pressure job, and negotiating my bloody sister the rest of the time, and then I’m on this train, and he has no idea how much fun this is, or that I sit up for most of the night drinking. So he thinks I’m toughing it out, which I am, and pining for our quiet life in Cornwall, which I’m afraid I’m generally not.’
‘He probably lives for the moment you get back, Lara,’ says Guy. ‘What’s his job like? Does he go to the pub and have a life? Or is he sitting there all week looking at his watch and sighing and counting down the hours on his fingers?’
‘Yes,’ Ellen agrees. ‘I’m intrigued by this Sam of yours. Will you get him to bring you to the station on Sunday so we can see him?’
This makes me laugh. ‘But you two will’ve been on the train since Penzance. If he was waiting on the platform you’d be lucky to catch a glimpse out of the window.’
‘No,’ says Guy. ‘We’d be at the door, waiting for Truro, and as soon as the train stopped we’d open it and jump down to help you with your bags. Both of us. A little chivalrous double act.’
‘You’d freak him right out.’
Ellen nods. ‘I thought so. Go on then. What’s he like? How did you meet him?’
‘He’s lovely.’ I say this in my firmest voice, as their amused curiosity about my husband makes me feel disloyal. I move my leg away from Guy’s, and he does not attempt to reinstate contact. ‘He really is. He’s the most lovely man in the world, and if anything I’ve said makes you think otherwise, then that’s my stupid fault. I met him when I was twenty-four. Twelve years ago. I’d been travelling in Asia for a bit. Things had …’ The last thing I want to do is talk about my time in Thailand, so I bite my lip and jump away from what I was about to say. ‘I got back and I’d got a load of stuff out of my system. I was ready to settle down, properly. In fact I was craving a stable, conventional life. I was qualified in property development. My godfather – my dad’s best friend, Leon – he helped me get a job. Encouraged me not to sit around at my parents’ house doing nothing. I started working, and I worked hard. I rented a little studio flat, then bought a house. And I met Sam.’
‘And you weren’t close to your sister back then either?’ Ellen interjects.
‘Never,’ I agree. ‘She was in the same flat she’s in now, even though she was in her first job, in PR. Olivia: the world’s least likely PR woman, I always thought. The person who will go out of her way to let you know she doesn’t like you. Turns out that’s only with me. She’s a brilliant schmoozing pro with everyone else. Anyway. Our dad encouraged me to buy a place as soon as I could, and I got a little terraced house in Battersea. Again, it seems impossible now, a decade later, but I did. I had the job, the mortgage, friends, and I just needed a boyfriend. I didn’t need one, of course, but I desperately wanted one.’
‘And you met him …?’
‘And I met him. In a café, in Soho. It was like one of those meetings in a film. It was pissing down with rain, and I was sheltering with a drink, a coffee I think, on a Saturday afternoon, wishing I hadn’t come into town, a few bags of shopping by my feet, considering going to watch whatever was on at the Curzon because it was at the end of the street and I wanted to sit somewhere warm and dry for a couple of hours without being bored. The café was packed, the windows all steamed up. I’m sitting by the window, and I’m so out of sorts that I’m drawing pictures in the condensation on the glass without even realising it.
‘When someone
‘He probably lives for the moment you get back, Lara,’ says Guy. ‘What’s his job like? Does he go to the pub and have a life? Or is he sitting there all week looking at his watch and sighing and counting down the hours on his fingers?’
‘Yes,’ Ellen agrees. ‘I’m intrigued by this Sam of yours. Will you get him to bring you to the station on Sunday so we can see him?’
This makes me laugh. ‘But you two will’ve been on the train since Penzance. If he was waiting on the platform you’d be lucky to catch a glimpse out of the window.’
‘No,’ says Guy. ‘We’d be at the door, waiting for Truro, and as soon as the train stopped we’d open it and jump down to help you with your bags. Both of us. A little chivalrous double act.’
‘You’d freak him right out.’
Ellen nods. ‘I thought so. Go on then. What’s he like? How did you meet him?’
‘He’s lovely.’ I say this in my firmest voice, as their amused curiosity about my husband makes me feel disloyal. I move my leg away from Guy’s, and he does not attempt to reinstate contact. ‘He really is. He’s the most lovely man in the world, and if anything I’ve said makes you think otherwise, then that’s my stupid fault. I met him when I was twenty-four. Twelve years ago. I’d been travelling in Asia for a bit. Things had …’ The last thing I want to do is talk about my time in Thailand, so I bite my lip and jump away from what I was about to say. ‘I got back and I’d got a load of stuff out of my system. I was ready to settle down, properly. In fact I was craving a stable, conventional life. I was qualified in property development. My godfather – my dad’s best friend, Leon – he helped me get a job. Encouraged me not to sit around at my parents’ house doing nothing. I started working, and I worked hard. I rented a little studio flat, then bought a house. And I met Sam.’
‘And you weren’t close to your sister back then either?’ Ellen interjects.
‘Never,’ I agree. ‘She was in the same flat she’s in now, even though she was in her first job, in PR. Olivia: the world’s least likely PR woman, I always thought. The person who will go out of her way to let you know she doesn’t like you. Turns out that’s only with me. She’s a brilliant schmoozing pro with everyone else. Anyway. Our dad encouraged me to buy a place as soon as I could, and I got a little terraced house in Battersea. Again, it seems impossible now, a decade later, but I did. I had the job, the mortgage, friends, and I just needed a boyfriend. I didn’t need one, of course, but I desperately wanted one.’
‘And you met him …?’
‘And I met him. In a café, in Soho. It was like one of those meetings in a film. It was pissing down with rain, and I was sheltering with a drink, a coffee I think, on a Saturday afternoon, wishing I hadn’t come into town, a few bags of shopping by my feet, considering going to watch whatever was on at the Curzon because it was at the end of the street and I wanted to sit somewhere warm and dry for a couple of hours without being bored. The café was packed, the windows all steamed up. I’m sitting by the window, and I’m so out of sorts that I’m drawing pictures in the condensation on the glass without even realising it.
‘When someone
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