“Because you are, mate,” said Smithy kindly. “Look, I’m buggering off back to Dubai on Tuesday, so I can say what I like. Don’t let life happen to you. Have a long, hard think about what you want and a long, hard look at what you’ve got, and see what syncs. Okay?”
“I’m beginning to wish I’d left you at the pub,” said Mark, but he was smiling as he said it, and Smithy laughed.
“Only looking out for you, mate,” he said, but he glanced over at me as he spoke, and what was more, I saw Rosie noticing.
All in all, I was very glad when Sylvia announced lunch was ready and it was time to troop into the dining room.
The casserole was delicious. Sylvia’s meals were always delicious. After we’d finished eating it, she tapped her wineglass with her spoon, and we stopped talking to look at her.
“As you all know,” she said, her eyes glittering with tears, “if he hadn’t been so cruelly taken from us, today would have been Richard’s seventieth birthday. Thank you for coming to remember him with me. He was the best husband and the best father anyone could hope to have. I think about him every day, and I know you all do too. Well, perhaps not you, Smithy.”
She smiled in Smithy’s direction, and there was a ripple of laughter around the table.
“He was a top bloke,” said Smithy.
“He was,” agreed Gary.
“To Dad,” said Mark, raising his wineglass.
“To Dad.”
“To Richard.”
We clinked our glasses together and drank.
But it seemed Sylvia hadn’t finished yet. She cleared her throat. “There’s something else,” she said.
“I’m hoping it’s one of your trifles, Mum,” said Mark.
“Or lemon meringue pie?” said Rosie.
“Actually, I’ve made a trifle and a lemon meringue pie,” Sylvia said with a quick smile. “I’ll fetch them in a moment. But first of all, I wanted to tell you that—”
But whatever Sylvia wanted to say would have to wait, because at that moment there was another knock at the front door.
Mark was closest. “I’ll go,” he said, getting up from the table.
We waited, silent, listening to a rumble of voices. Then Mark came back. And Tom was with him.
31
I wasn’t going crazy, was I? I hadn’t given Tom the address without realising it? How the fuck had he found me? And even more to the point, why?
“Tom,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
He came over to kiss me—to kiss me!—as if turning up here like this were the most natural thing in the world. “Kate wasn’t home, so I thought, Why not try to find Beth so I haven’t had a wasted journey? And it was literally so easy. You said this place was at Enfield Lock, near the river, so I just walked about until I saw your car parked outside.”
That was how he was here, not why he was here—he’d answered a different flipping question.
Despite the absolute nerve of the guy, kind, lovely Sylvia’s hostess instincts had switched on, and she was asking Mark to find Tom a chair and offering him a drink. In no time at all, Tom was squeezed in beside me at the table, his hand clamped to my knee, gawping round at everybody with a vacant grin on his face.
“Well,” he said. “Hi, everyone.”
Somehow I pulled myself together enough to do the introductions. “This is Tom, everyone. Tom, this is Sylvia and her son, Mark. You already know Rosie. And this is Smithy, Mark’s friend, and Gary, a friend of the family.”
“Very pleased to meet you all,” said Tom, still with that inane grin. “Cheers, everyone.”
“Cheers,” everyone said with varying levels of enthusiasm.
Tom’s possessive hand felt like it was branding my leg. I shifted in my seat but didn’t manage to dislodge it. It was like a giant billboard pronouncing SHE’S MINE! ALL MINE! I wanted to flick it off the way you’d flick off an uninvited spider. Or a snake. Why had I ever experienced any confusion about whether Tom was right for me or not? He absolutely was not, and the sooner I told him so, the better.
“Well,” said Sylvia into the uncomfortable silence, “who’s for dessert?”
“Yes, please,” said Tom loudly, sticking his hand up for good measure.
To my left, I could sense Smithy doing his best not to explode with laughter. Across the table, I could see Mark and Rosie glowering, while Gary just looked uncomfortable, and Sylvia still had her polite smile on.
“Whoops!” said Tom, clamping his free hand over his mouth. “I’m a bit of a dessert freak, aren’t I, Beth Beth?”
Beth Beth? Oh God, get me out of here.
Hearing Smithy begin to splutter, I spoke quickly to divert attention. “You were about to tell us something, weren’t you, Sylvia? Before Tom arrived?”
“Oh,” said Sylvia as if she’d forgotten. “That’s right, I was.” She cleared her throat and smiled, looking suddenly beautiful. Then she reached out to take Gary’s hand. “I wanted to tell you all that . . . well, Gary and I have been . . . are . . . seeing each other. We didn’t set out to, did we, Gary? It was only that we both missed Richard so much. In a way, it was our shared grief that brought us together.”
“Indeed it was,” agreed Gary, beaming.
“I hope you all won’t mind too much,” continued Sylvia, looking round at us all. “I’ve been so very lonely without Richard. And I do feel”—she smiled at Gary, and he nodded, smiling back at her—“we do feel he would have approved.”
I could feel tears prickling my eyes. Looking across the table at Rosie, I could see she was in the same state.
“Of course we don’t mind, Mum,” she said.
Just at the exact same time, Tom said, “Out with the old and in with the new, eh?”
There was a frozen silence. If only the desserts had already been on the table, I’d have upended them both on Tom—the trifle over his head and the lemon meringue pie right in his stupid face. Instead, I got to my feet, finally dislodging his hand, and walked round the table to hug Sylvia.
“Sylvia, Gary, I’m so very happy for you,” I said, giving them both a resounding kiss.
“Thank you, darling.”
“Thanks, Beth.”
“But now I’ve got to leave, I’m afraid. There’s something very pressing I need to do. Come on, Tom.”
With a chorus of goodbyes trailing after me, I left to drive Tom home. Not my home but his, where I proceeded to tell him in no uncertain terms that we were through.
That is, I thought I’d said it in words that were impossible to misinterpret. But here he was, still ringing me up nearly five months later, so perhaps I’d been subtler than I thought I had.
“Where are you going?” Tom asked me now. “Will you be home for me to pop in with your present later?”
“I’m meeting Rosie to see the Regent Street lights. I don’t know when I’ll be home. We’ll probably go for a drink afterwards, as we usually do. You could always drop it at work for me if you’re passing by? Or leave it until the New Year? Anyway, I’ve got to go now. Bye, Tom.”
Giorgio and Rosie were kissing when I got to the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square—a full-on, unrestrained, no-holds-barred snog. I put two fingers in my mouth and wolf-whistled at them. They drew apart, grinning at me.