Cover

Dedication

For David

Epigraph

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds;

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests, and is never shaken…

FROM SONNET 116, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

FIRST DATES

1

By the time Esther reached the turn at the railway bridge into her road, she was quite alone. One of the fast trains shot past, a bomb-burst in the silence, and she jumped like a ninny. The road was narrow and long, hugging the curve of the railway line. Her rented little terraced house was a still a good walk away, down at the far end, part of a run-down row made affordable both by its distance from the convenience of the high street and by its proximity to the concrete flat-blocks, where washing fluttered like bunting in the boxy balconies and neon graffiti lit up the walls.

Esther walked quickly, looking straight ahead, clasping her handbag tightly under her arm, fighting sinking spirits both at how insecure a forty-eight-year-old woman could still feel mid-evening on a city street, and how desperately far she remained from the newly single future she had dared to envisage for herself, leaving Lucas and moving – via a miserable couple of months with her parents – to London two years before. The July night air was muggy. Her feet felt spongy in her high heels, and her mane of hair, long since collapsed out of the shape she had painstakingly created with her tongs, was gluey on the back of her neck. She wanted to take her jacket off, but feared the kerfuffle of stopping in the lamplit dark, looking like the middle-aged woman on her own she was, vulnerable and faffing, easy prey for anyone seeking a target for their own disappointments.

The jacket had been wrong anyway, tight like most of her wardrobe these days, as well as overly formal and trying too hard for a first date in what turned out to be a riotously crowded, riverside, East Sheen pub. She had identified Chris Mews at once, reassuringly similar to his profile credentials, tall and shaven-headed, and looking the opposite way as he waited on the fringe of the mêlée of smokers and drinkers gathered round the pub entrance. Noting his smart-casual style of dress and relaxed demeanour, Esther had felt her jitters ease slightly; crisp, dark-blue jeans, loafers, and a tan T-shirt, loose enough to curtain the gentle swell of stomach underneath, he looked like one of those men appealingly and enviably easy in their own skin. His height meant he carried his extra weight well, Esther had decided, double-checking her jacket was buttoned up across her own tummy bulges, before bracing herself for the camera-click of first impressions as his head turned.

‘Hello, Esther. Nice to meet you.’ His northern vowels sounded stronger than they had during their two phone conversations, which had covered all sorts of promising ground from parenting challenging teenagers to a mutual enjoyment of crime thrillers. Spotting her, he had stepped forward at once, his right hand outstretched, the piercing dark-brown eyes, which had dominated the online picture, half disappearing among the crinkles of his smile.

‘You too.’ His grip was warm and firm. Esther smiled back without having to try, glad of her mother’s good teeth and Nordic blonde hair that hid the greys so well, and getting a flashback to the contrastingly awful limp, clammy handshake of Jim, the widowed violinist, two weeks before.

‘A widower! A musician! Ideal!’ Viv had cooed in the half-serious, half-joking way designed to boost the spirits of her oldest friend, while also reinforcing her frequently voiced, professional opinion that no woman – least of all Esther – needed a partner to ‘complete’ herself. This still-new venture into online dating should just be about enjoying herself, she had counselled, slipping into full psychologist mode – about making the most of this period of freedom while Dylan was on the post-A level visit to his father. Esther had dutifully agreed, managing not to say how easy that was for Viv to say, surrounded by steadfast Brian and their four vibrant, grounded children. She hadn’t mentioned either just how hollow her rented little home always felt without her rangy, maddening eighteen-year-old bounding round it; nor how visceral were the stabs of envy at the thought of Dylan loafing with Lucas in Cambridge instead, and having the luxury of Lily, his brainbox elder sister, just down the road, already throwing herself with typical Lily-like energy into life as a postgraduate.

‘It’s only a few weeks,’ Viv had added gently, detecting Esther’s misgivings in her uncannily brilliant way. ‘See it as a chance to really let your hair down, sweetheart; to start being all the things that husband of yours put a stopper on for twenty years.’

What things? Esther had wanted to ask, in danger these days of forgetting what it was she had lost touch with, what the hell she had been trying to get back to when Lucas’s behaviour finally tipped her into throwing in the towel after two decades.

Appearances so did matter, Esther had decided, admiring the smooth globe of Chris’s head as she followed him across the sticky floor of the pub to the cluster of dining tables at the far end of the bar; as did the basic, oh-so-telling courtesy of being truthful in dating profiles. The violinist, Jim, swung back to mind, along with the mesmerizingly botched and fragile comb-over that had momentarily stopped her in her tracks when he waved hello. In the profile photo there had been a rather cherubic head of light, gingery curls. Widower, she had reminded herself, her heart readying to soften nonetheless at the memory of the wife’s lost battle with cancer, referenced in his biog. But Jim’s preferred subject had turned out to be himself: his musical credentials, all the famous concert venues he had graced with his presence, in the second line of a row of violins. When Esther had ventured an allusion to her own modest musical abilities, he had told her how much harder the violin was to master than the piano. The mention of her teaching beginners had prompted a look of haughty pity. And yet, out in the street after an interminable hour, he had appeared distraught and astonished when she’d diplomatically rejected the notion of a second meeting.

‘But why?’ he had asked, flinging out his thin arms. ‘You don’t know me.’

Esther had shaken her head, gormless and guilty. Not to want to know a person. It felt like a crime. As she had watched him trudge away, the slender frame hunched in defeat, the comb-over raised like a flimsy sail, relief had been accompanied by the unsettling after-taste of her own cruelty. Life has hurt me too, she had wanted to call after him, just in different ways. I am not really strong, only trying to be.

Chris Mews, with his easy manner and big smile, was immediately so much more promising. By the time they were wedged into their little corner table and had placed their orders, he had teased all sorts of information out of her, including the fact of her imminent late-July birthday the following Saturday.

‘Maybe I could take you out to celebrate?’ He raised his pint of beer to chink against her wine glass. ‘If things go well, of course, and you don’t have other plans.’ He shot her a mischievous grin. ‘I’m not till January, so we’ll leave that one on the table.’

‘Maybe,’ Esther murmured, her hopes bouncing even though she knew it was too soon. ‘I mean, that would be nice. If things go well. As you say. No jumping the gun.’

‘No gun-jumping allowed.’ He grinned, directing a finger-pistol at his temple.

Esther’s stomach performed another lurch of anticipation. She had no birthday plans and was starting to dread the fact. Dylan would still be in Cambridge, and Lily was about to head off backpacking with Matteo, her boyfriend since their days of hand-holding in a school lunch queue. It wasn’t fair to expect Viv and Brian to fill the blanks in her diary, just because Richmond was a stone’s throw from Kingston – nor her parents, for that matter, who lived in Amersham, an hour down the motorway. Proximity to both had been a key factor in Esther’s decision to settle in West London, but such dependence, almost two years on, was starting to feel like failure. In desperation, she had that morning emailed Shona, a long-silent friend from uni days, suggesting they fix something up, not just with her birthday in mind, but in the hope of rekindling the friendship generally.

‘Sorry,’ Chris announced suddenly, ‘I need the little boys’ room. Would you excuse me?’

‘Of course.’ Little boys’ room. You couldn’t judge someone on one piece of terminology, Esther scolded herself, seizing the chance to sneak a check on her face in her handbag mirror. No specks between her teeth yet. No smudges on her nose. Hair good. The lack of a social life was why she was here, she reminded herself firmly, scrolling her phone but finding nothing new except a couple of work emails.

Esther steepled her fingers, trying to look composed, instead of like a woman wondering when her blind date would emerge from the toilets. As more minutes passed, she fiddled again with her phone and then pretended to read a junk mail envelope in the bottom of her bag, while continuing to brood on the embarrassing narrowness of her social circle. The falling away of Cambridge friendships had been something she was prepared for – that it had always been so much more Lucas’s world than hers had been a consistent thread in their tapestry of difficulties – but the continuing challenge to fill the void remained an unwelcome surprise. It was because she worked mostly from her laptop, Esther brooded, and because Dylan’s vast, impersonal, West London sixth-form college meant barely encountering a teacher, let alone other parents. Her five little piano students were dropped off and scooped up like parcels; while her neighbours were exactly what she remembered from her early post-uni days in London, exchanging nods and names, but bent mostly on keeping to themselves. The pair on her left, Dimitri and Sue, both worked nights, he as a taxi driver and she in a care home, and Carmela, the old lady on the other side, emerged only to issue squeaky summonses for the large tabby that used Esther’s overgrown back garden as its toilet and hunting ground.

‘Sorry, got caught on a call,’ Chris explained, looking a little flustered, and arriving back at the table at the same time as their food. ‘Hey, I’m going to need your help with these,’ he joked, indicating the mountain of chips smothering the rib-eye and a few squirls of salad.

‘No, I’m fine…’

‘Go on, you know you want to.’ He laughed, turning the plate round so the fries were within easier reach.

‘Thanks.’ Esther took two, dipping them into the dressing that had come with her chicken salad, but which she had asked to have on the side because everyone knew that was where the calories lurked.

He watched the dunking in amusement. ‘We could ask for ketchup. Or here… have some of my French mustard.’

‘No, this is fine. Fabulous.’ The chips were very good and Esther began to relax. She took two more, and then another, relishing suddenly the simple almost forgotten pleasure of being out in the company of a warm, presentable man. Yes, she told Viv inside her head, she was an independent woman who knew her own mind blah blah, but there was being single and being lonely and, boy, had she learnt the difference. Especially when Dylan wasn’t around. An exception that would soon be the norm. Esther felt the usual flutter of selfish panic. A level results were almost a month away. Then it would be university. Then he’d be half lost to her, like Lily.

‘All right?’

She blinked Chris’s crinkly smiling features back into focus. ‘Very all right, thanks, Chris.’

‘I’m going to get another one of these – the first slipped down so well.’ He tapped his glass, waving at a waiter. ‘Are you okay with your wine? Would you like another? Or maybe a cocktail?’

‘Oh no, I am fine for now, thanks. This is delicious.’ Esther sipped her Sauvignon Blanc to prove the point. Aware of her cheeks starting to do the pulsing thing that meant she was too hot, she peeled off her jacket, draping it over her chair, and shuffled closer into the table so as to be sure of keeping her stomach out of sight. Having settled herself, she sensed Chris had been watching her intently.

‘I am seriously tempted to jump that bloody gun, Esther,’ he murmured, ‘just so you know.’

‘Are you? Well… that’s… nice.’ To be so rusty at flirting, it was pitiful – and also weird, like feeling seventeen and seventy simultaneously.

‘Leos and Capricorns are a match made in heaven, by the way – it’s common knowledge. July and January. They go hand in glove. A perfect fit.’

Esther couldn’t help laughing. ‘Well, that sounds fortunate, though I’m afraid I’m not exactly an expert on astrology…’

‘Nor me.’ He let out a roar of a laugh, tipping his head back and displaying flashes of old-fashioned fillings, reassuringly like hers.

He was fifty-two, she remembered, like Lucas. But so not like Lucas. Another species.

‘It’s all nonsense,’ he went on, ‘but that’s what it’s feeling like, right? Between us? Now? You and me, Esther? The stars aligned?’

‘It’s certainly feeling…’

‘Blimey, you must get tired of hearing it, but you are bloody gorgeous. Your hair. Those blue eyes. Seriously, Esther. Seriously.’ He reached for his pint, keeping his eyes fixed on her over the rim as he swigged.

‘Oh… thanks… I… my mother is half Swedish…’ Esther faltered, both because compliments were impossible to respond to without sounding like an idiot, and because she was starting to get the unsettling sensation of having boarded a runaway train.

‘I’m not mad about wine, to be honest. I much prefer this stuff they make from hops.’ He tapped his glass. ‘Are you okay with that? You won’t tell me off?’

‘Tell you off? For liking beer? Why would I ever do that? In fact…’ Esther was going to mention some of the wine-snobs she had met round Cambridge dining tables, but Chris appeared to have hit a groove.

‘Because being told off… Jesus, have I had enough of that, I can tell you.’ The gleam of charm in his eyes darkened for a moment. ‘But what I want to hear,’ he urged, making a visible effort to compose himself, ‘is more about you. The stuff you write that you mentioned on the phone, for those business magazines, for instance; how you keep the wolf from the door. Tell me more. I want to know everything about you.’ He grinned mischievously.

He proceeded to listen, with a touching show of intense interest, while Esther tried to inject as much sparkle as she could into the music degree that had somehow led, via menial editorial jobs, to a patchy career as a writer of business copy and provider of private piano lessons.

‘Lucky students, having such a hot teacher, is all I can say.’

Esther laughed uncertainly. ‘Thanks… but to be honest, Chris, which I think is important…’

He glanced up quickly, a forkful of food poised in front of his mouth. ‘Oh, blimey, yes. Bang on, Esther. Honesty. Every time. In everything.’

‘Good, because…’ Esther paused, shooing Lucas from her mind ‘…because actually, my students are far too young to think along such lines. Only two of them are boys anyway, Billy and Craig, nine and thirteen respectively…’

‘Hah, well, Billy and Craig will have you in their fantasies, that’s for sure.’ He took a hearty swig of beer that left two dots of froth at the corners of his mouth. ‘Boys start very young. Trust me, Esther. I speak from experience.’ He swiped the froth away, his eyes holding hers again in their intense way. ‘Mind you, with that teenage son of yours, you presumably know a bit about—’

‘Oh yes, I know a bit about boys,’ Esther cut in quickly, not wanting the conversation to go anywhere near the ups and downs of Dylan’s teenage years, and feeling a surge of protection for dear Billy too, with his pink translucent jug ears and tumbling, stubby, hopeless piano fingers. Chris was just trying to inject some sparkle into her own life for her, she told herself, wishing it were down an avenue she could more readily enjoy. ‘So, tell me a little more about your work,’ she countered, proceeding to return the compliment of looking riveted while he described falling into IT via a failed start-up, and now being within reach of a top management post.

‘Strategic thinking rather than doing – that’s the dream in my book, Esther. Actually, I love my job,’ he blurted with sudden bitterness, starting an assault on the remains of his steak as if it were an animal still requiring slaughter. ‘It’s having to give away most of my earnings to a heartless bitch that I’m not so keen on. That was her on the phone. Before. Why I took so long.’

‘Sylvie?’ Esther prompted feebly, recalling the name from the brief sharing of relationship histories during the phone call that had preceded the agreement to meet. ‘Oh, splitting up is awful, isn’t it?’ she ventured, truly wanting to offer comfort, but wishing the dreadful sawing of the ragged slab of meat on his plate would stop. ‘However it gets dressed up…’ She faltered, Lucas’s fury at having to sell their end-of-terrace Cambridge house coming back to her: the rants about stepping off the property ladder, the loss of guaranteed future worth. He had spat the words, more distressed, it had seemed to Esther, at the loss of this financial potential than at the decimation of their love and their marriage. ‘At least you have your lovely daughter… Kelly, wasn’t it? Fifteen, going on thirty-five, I think you said.’

Chris dropped his steak knife with a clatter that made her jump. ‘I don’t have Kelly,’ he growled. ‘In fact, I have no access.’ He swigged angrily from his beer glass, slamming it down on the table. ‘I was with lawyers today. That bitch of a mother has poisoned her against me.’ Esther flinched as a catalogue of grievances began to spew out. Sylvie had fleeced him and frittered away what she took. She had slagged him off, not just to their daughter, but to every friend and member of their respective families. One unscheduled ring of the doorbell now of what had once been his home, and it was calls to the police and having the locks changed.

Esther, chewing her bits of chicken and rocket leaves far more than they required, was aware of shrinking into herself. Here was a different, more extreme sort of emotional calamity than hers and she wanted no part of it, not because she was mean-spirited, but because it demanded an energy of which she simply did not feel capable. First world problems maybe, but it was all she could do to carry her own current load.

People, no matter what they looked like, weren’t what you wanted them to be, that was the lesson. Behind the scenes, everyone – including her – was messed up, damaged, and full of potholes. It was all a complete minefield, and she just wanted to go home.

‘I’ve been going on. Forgive me, Esther,’ he groaned suddenly, parking his elbows on either side of his plate and dropping his head into his hands.

‘It’s okay, but actually…’ Something inside her had quietly snapped. The hubbub around them was deafening, the air so hot and thick it was hard to breathe. ‘I have to be getting back.’

‘Now? But you haven’t finished. What about another drink?’ He gestured helplessly at the salad remnants on her plate and the half-full wine glass.

‘I have to get back because… my son…’

‘Dylan, you mean?’

Esther found suddenly that she did not like hearing Dylan’s name fall from this stranger’s lips. Chris didn’t know Dylan. Or her. Or anything about her misfiring life. And she didn’t want him to. In fact, in that instant, she would have taken back every single sorry personal detail she had divulged if she could – from the little potted history in their first phone conversation about her and Lucas, falling in love and out again, to the existence of little Billy and Craig. ‘Yes. I… Dylan and I… we have an early start tomorrow…’

‘But I thought you said he was in Cambridge? With his dad?’

‘Yes, I did say that… because he is.’ Esther folded her napkin into a messy square and straightened her cutlery over her uneaten food. ‘But tomorrow we are heading off to check out one of the universities he has applied to. The University of the West of England – the one that’s Bristol but not Bristol,’ she blagged, deciding untruthfulness with strangers maybe didn’t matter quite so much after all, especially when it was only a half-lie anyway, since they had visited UWE, and the nice people there had offered Dylan some very reasonable grades. ‘I should have mentioned that I can’t be late,’ she added lamely, forcing her hot arms back into the jacket and placing two precious twenty-pound notes on the table, ‘but please do stay and finish your drink.’ She stood up so abruptly she barged the person behind with her chair and had to apologise.

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