‘Oh God, I know I shouldn’t,’ she says, seeing my face, waving the unlit cigarette between us. ‘Honestly, I’ve cut down loads. I’ll be off them soon, definitely. So fucking hard when you’re in a pub though, you know?’
She lights it, cupping her small fingers around the flame, then takes a deep drag before blowing a trail of smoke sideways away from me, contorting her face to one side as she does so. Even so, I lean away a little.
‘You ever smoked?’
‘No.’
She closes her eyes, nods. ‘Clever girl.’ She takes another deep inhale.
The man from the antique shop is packing up the ship lights from the pavement outside, their chrome eyelids closing. They clank against each other as he heaves them through his door. In the distance I can hear the church chimes of St Alfege’s, the rustle of the trees along the faraway edge of the park. The sun has disappeared behind a thick cloak of cloud. I pull my cardigan tighter around myself.
I watch Rachel as she smokes, eyelids down. Suddenly, she snaps her eyes open, like a doll. ‘So,’ she says. ‘Tell me more about Rory and Serena.’ She says the names Rory and Serena as if they are a single word, or the name of a TV show. ‘Well, Rory works with Daniel, like I told you,’ I begin. ‘You might have seen their new development – it’s the big glass building right on the river, past the Trafalgar Arms?’ I gesture down the hill, past the market, towards the river – pointlessly, since you can’t see it from here.
This is the development that the papers hate. A massive regeneration scheme, the demolition of loads of old social housing to make way for luxury flats. As well as the sniping about it in the Evening Standard, there have even been pieces in the Guardian and the local papers – mutterings about social cleansing, foreign money. The ‘keep London shit brigade’， as Rory calls them.
There was even talk of a protest at one stage – Lisa, the secretary, apparently saw something on Twitter or Facebook. She printed it out, placed it on Daniel’s desk, without comment. A march against gentrification, they called it. ‘Anarchists and weirdos,’ Rory had muttered. Still, they’d had to tell the client. Now, there’s more security around the site; big bull-necked blokes in black polo shirts patrol the perimeter like nightclub bouncers, walkie-talkies crackling at their hips.
‘And what about her? Serena? She’s a photographer, right?’ Rachel exhales, releasing another plume of smoke. The sun slips behind the clouds.
I frown. Did I tell Rachel that Serena was a photographer? I must have done, though I don’t remember it. ‘Yes,’ I say slowly. ‘She is. It has been a lifelong passion for her.’ I blush, realise I’m directly quoting the line from Serena’s website. Rachel won’t know that, I tell myself. ‘She has her own studio, on the other side of the park.’
Rachel nods, as if considering this. ‘And Rory. Is he excited about their baby and everything?’
The question catches me off guard – I had been concentrating on staying out of the way of her smoke. I put my glass down, unsure how to answer. Of course he’s excited about their baby. What does she mean?
‘I mean, you know,’ Rachel twirls the cigarette around in the air, ‘you were saying the other day that Daniel was being super supportive with making all the furniture, and getting really emotional at the scans and everything.’ She starts turning her lighter sideways and upright, then sideways again, like a Tetris piece that won’t fit. ‘Is he the same? Rory?’
‘I think they are both delighted.’
Rachel is gazing downwards now, into the creamy surface of her Guinness glass, tapping her cigarette rhythmically against the edge of the silver ashtray. She looks lost in thought. I wonder if she is thinking about the father of her own baby. But before I work out how to frame the question, she takes her sunglasses off and speaks, as if she has read my mind.
‘It wasn’t just a casual fuck or anything, you know.’ She tilts her chin up, squinting into the sun, so that she can look me in the eye.
‘Oh, I didn’t … I hadn’t assumed …’
‘Yeah, well,’ she says gruffly, casting her gaze down again. ‘I did love the guy. The dad. It just, you know. Didn’t work out.’
She brings her cigarette to her lips and takes another long inhale, spreads her bitten fingernails out on the table. She starts again with the lighter, tapping it onto its base, then its side, then its base again. Her eyes seem to pinken a little, her pale fingers tense.