‘Perhaps you should talk to her again,’ Tiger said, pouring the last of his tea into his cup. ‘If she knows her dad is so close then maybe she’ll think differently.’
‘Maybe,’ said Angie, but she was doubtful.
‘Or you could meet him without telling her,’ Tiger suggested.
Angie went to take a sip of her peppermint tea to buy herself some time, but her cup was already empty.
‘I thought of that too,’ she said. ‘And it would make sense to check in with him, so he knows that I know he’s here. But . . .’ She paused, hoping that Tiger would fill in the gaps for himself.
He did.
‘But you don’t want to stir the ghosts of the past,’ he said.
‘Precisely. I’d rather leave my memories of him safe where they are. And his of me.’
She blushed a little as she said this, ashamed of the vanity that she knew was, in part at least, keeping her from meeting the father of her child. She didn’t want Jax to see her as she was now, over fifty, a bit fat, her skin lined and not quite clinging to her frame as once it had.
‘Romey’s a bit young to be making such a big decision for herself, though,’ said Tiger then, with that quality he had for seeing straight to the heart of the issue. ‘Plus, she might just be saying that because it’s what she thinks you want to hear.’
Angie’s insides screwed into a tight little ball. He was right. She knew he was. But she didn’t want to address it. Not now.
‘Maybe,’ she replied, to close him down. ‘I’ll think about it. But I know where he is now, so at least we have options.’
‘Options are good,’ replied Tiger, seeming to understand that this part of the conversation was over.
They sat in silence for a moment, the hustle and bustle of the café continuing around them. China chinked, the coffee machine hissed, people chatted. The sounds of the world just doing its thing. It felt good, Angie thought, to pause. She should do it more often. Mindfulness was something that she talked about endlessly to her clients and she tried to approach each day being grateful for what she had at that moment, but sometimes even she got lost in the business of living.
‘And how about you, Tiger?’ she asked him after a while. ‘What are your options?’
He gave her a quick grin. The expression was a familiar one, but was there something new in it now? Doubt, maybe, a disquietude that she hadn’t seen in him before, or at least not recognised as such.
‘I’ll just keep doing what I do,’ he said. His smile was broad now, with no hint of whatever it was she thought she’d seen in it a moment ago.
‘You can’t keep travelling forever,’ she said.
‘Why not?’
She thought that his tone bordered on the defensive, fleetingly, but that too was gone in an instant.
‘As long as I have strength in my bones, I intend to keep seeing the world.’
‘But don’t you ever want to stop, to pick a place and just settle there?’ she asked him.
Tiger shook his head. ‘Not so far. And I can’t see it happening, either. There’s still so much to see.’
‘There can’t be that much.’ Angie laughed, and Tiger shrugged.
‘There’s enough to keep me going for a while yet,’ he said.
Angie couldn’t let it drop, though. ‘You could find a base somewhere, just so that you had a place to go home to, and then keep travelling from there,’ she suggested.
‘And how would I pay for it?’ he asked simply.
This was a good point and not one that Angie had really considered. She nodded, accepting that he was right.
‘Fair enough,’ she said. ‘How long are you here for? You’re welcome to stay with us for as long as you like,’ she added.
Tiger reached across the table and took her hand. ‘You are the kindest person I know,’ he said. ‘But I can’t do more than a night on that sofa. I’m on my way up to Newcastle. I met a bloke in Costa Rica who lives up there, so I’m going to stay with him for a month or so. I’ll get some work cash in hand before I head off again. I’m fancying the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, do some bird-spotting, but I have to wait for the weather to warm up a bit.’
Angie had an idea, and suddenly it felt like the best one she’d had in a long while. ‘Why don’t you stay at least for tonight and I’ll ring Mags and Leon. We can have a little party just like we used to. What do you reckon? Good idea?’
Tiger’s face lit up. ‘How is Maggie?’ he asked fondly. ‘Got herself hitched yet?’