Private Lives

30



He was already there when Anna arrived, sitting alone at a table facing the street. The front windows of the bistro had been folded back to the evening air and she paused at the corner watching him, a glass of red wine in front of him, making a big show of tapping away at his BlackBerry; he was always so concerned about appearances, desperate to show he was busy and in demand. They had been here together once before – she wondered if he remembered. Probably not; he would never have agreed to the meeting here, it would have been too loaded and intimate.

She looked at his face, so familiar yet so distant. He was tanned, his blond hair lighter than she remembered, his eyes more blue. It was strange how people could be such a big part of your life, how you could become accustomed to their habits and tics, their every crease and wrinkle like your own. And then, just like that, they could slip away completely.

‘Anna,’ he said, standing up as she walked over.

‘How are you, Andy?’ she said, sitting down, allowing him to push her chair in. In the early days, she had been charmed by his little old-world customs. She’d met plenty of people from Andrew’s background at law school – wealthy parents, public school, Oxbridge – but none with his effortless polish. And yet he had been so normal in many ways: he liked football, Britpop, wore his shirts untucked. But every now and then there was a little reminder of the privileged upbringing a world away from the Cumbrian pub she had been brought up in.

The waiter brought her a glass and Andy poured her some wine from the open bottle. She noticed the menu face down on the table.

‘You’re not eating?’

He shook his head.

‘Not hungry. Are you?’

‘Not really,’ she lied. She was actually starving, having been stuck in court all day, but Andy was clearly telling her he had no intention of staying longer than he had to.

‘So how’s things?’ he said, carefully rearranging his two forks on the tablecloth.

‘Don’t you read the papers?’ she said. It was meant to be a joke, but came out wrong.

He glanced at her.

‘Of course. Always nice to see my fiancée half drowned. Honestly, Anna, what was all that crap at the spa about?’

‘If you ask me, she got off pretty lightly,’ she said, standing her ground. ‘I’m amazed the media haven’t found out that we haven’t spoken for two years. “Cosy cake-maker is home-wrecker” type thing.’

She’d had this conversation with Andy in her head a hundred times since they had split up – their first proper sit-down discussion – and she’d always been witty and cutting and amazingly beautiful, not bitter and sarcastic like this.

‘Look, Anna, if you’ve just asked me here to rake over all that again, I’ve got better things to do with my time.’

‘I don’t want that either.’

She was being honest. She’d seen him a handful of times since That Night; she’d tried hard to avoid him, but it was difficult to do so in the worlds in which they moved. It was always awkward, but sitting opposite him today she felt strangely unmoved.

‘Does she know we’re meeting?’ she asked.

He looked away.

‘No.’

Anna felt a surge of triumph. Childish, pathetic even, but it made her feel better.

‘I didn’t know whether I should tell her,’ said Andy. ‘Although I’ve hardly seen her all week. She’s been filming.’

‘At the nurseries?’

‘No, she was finding all that travelling too difficult. It’s filmed in Notting Hill now.’

‘That well-known rural idyl.’

He laughed. ‘They’re shooting in the most rustic central London location house they could find. Poured concrete floors, Aga, imported Provençal knick-knacks, you know the sort of thing.’

‘Which will of course be passed off as your own?’

‘Well I wasn’t having a bloody camera crew round at our place.’

Our place. Andrew and Anna had never had their own place. He had his bachelor pad in trendy Wapping. Sterile and manly, all black leather and chrome with damp towels left on the bathroom floor. Anna had tried to make her mark, but she was swimming against the tide, and with their long work hours, it was so much easier to go back to their respective homes. Another sign she had missed.

He sipped his wine.

‘So what’s this favour you need?’

‘It’s for a case I’m working on.’

‘The Balon case? Did he get funded by those mobsters like they’re saying?’

‘As if I’d tell you, even if I did know.’

‘You always were so secretive.’

‘Secretive? Andy, this is my job. I get paid to keep secrets. And you’re a journalist.’

‘I was your partner, wasn’t that more important?’

‘You tell me,’ she said, meeting his gaze.

It was no surprise to Anna that Andrew was now associate editor at The Chronicle, effectively number three, within striking distance of the top job. He’d risen effortlessly from news reporter to business editor to his current position. Not bad for someone not yet thirty-five. They’d met at the Islington home of a senior BBC news executive. It had been his daughter’s party, a law school friend of Anna’s, while Andrew was a family friend. Anna had felt so grown up talking to a serious journalist in this high-ceilinged room, full of books and pictures, the sort of place she wanted for herself. They’d talked for hours, getting drunker and drunker on the fruit punch, until suddenly he’d taken her hand and pulled her outside, kissing her in the doorway of that tall white Georgian house. Their jobs had provided common ground; both workaholics and obsessed with current affairs. But the nature of her work, her clients’ indiscretions to have to keep quiet, her battles against the papers, built a Chinese wall between them that had often made Andrew feel resentful.

‘This isn’t about Balon. It’s about Gilbert Bryce, the MP. I need to talk to him.’

‘What do you want to meet Gilbert for?’ His expression clouded. Gilbert Bryce was a well-known womaniser but Anna didn’t flatter herself it was jealousy.

‘It’s something I’m working on for a client. I can’t tell you.’ She had no idea how interested The Chronicle would be in the story of a lingerie model’s death. Probably not very. They didn’t usually go for stories about the Chinawhite set at the broadsheets.

‘Of course not,’ he said, not hiding his exasperation.

‘Please, Andy, this could be important.’

‘I’m not asking for any gory details, I just want to know what you want to speak to him about.’

‘I can’t tell you,’ she said firmly.

‘Then I can’t introduce you. Gilbert is a contact; I have a relationship with these people. I can’t just fix you two up without knowing what it’s about.’

‘Can’t you? I’d have thought it was the least you could do.’

‘Oh Anna . . .’ he said, shaking his head just enough to register his disappointment.

‘Sophie told me how long you’d been having an affair. Before I caught you. Not quite the once or twice you claimed, was it?’

He looked down. She was sure she saw him colour with shame.

‘What point was there in telling you the truth?’

‘You made me look a fool by sleeping with Sophie. But you kept on making me look like a fool when you didn’t tell me the truth.’

She hated the thought of Sophie and Andrew pitying her with the little secret they had carried between them. ‘You owe me, Andy.’

‘If I introduce you to Gilbert, will you come to the wedding?’

‘Unbelievable,’ she said scornfully.

‘I want you to come to our wedding.’ He shrugged. ‘Why not? I do you a favour, you do us one.’

‘Forget it,’ she said taking a five-pound note out of her purse to pay for her drink. ‘I thought you might want to do the decent thing and help me, I thought you might think you owed me something for the time we spent together at least, but obviously not.’

She got up to leave, but he caught her arm.

‘Don’t go. Please,’ he said.

Reluctantly Anna sank back into her seat.

‘Look, Parliament has closed for the summer,’ said Andrew finally. ‘But I happen to know where Gilbert lives, some chocolate-box village in Sussex. I’ll see if I can set up a meeting, but don’t piss him off, okay?’

‘Thank you,’ she said honestly. ‘I’ll try not to be my usual offensive self,’ she added with a half-smile.

She watched her ex-boyfriend’s face soften.

‘I’m sorry. For everything.’

‘I’m a big girl, Andy. I get it that two people have to move on because their relationship isn’t working, because they meet someone else . . . But why her?’

‘Because she was like you, only simpler.’ He looked down and then met her gaze intently. ‘Soph makes me feel good about who I am, not bad.’

Anna looked at him with puzzlement.

‘What did I do wrong?’

‘You’re so smart, so always on the money about everything. I guess I wasn’t up to the challenge. You deserve someone in your life who is.’

She waved her hand to order the bill, feeling lighter and more free than she had in years, because she knew she agreed with him.