Sam glanced over to see Megan grinning and bouncing about on her toes as Tom tried to herd her out of the room. Sam scrunched up his face in apology. ‘I didn’t want to tell her that you’re not interested in seeing anyone. It’s none of her business.’
I took a second to finish off the last of my wine. ‘You could have just told her that you aren’t interested in me.’
Sam smiled behind his coffee mug. ‘She’s decided beggars can’t be choosers.’
‘And you’re the beggar? I don’t know if that’s more insulting to you or to me.’
‘She didn’t actually say that! Just, well. Like I said, she has a hard time understanding why I want to stay single.’
‘So why do you?’ I asked, feeling bold in the gentle glow of the candlelight.
He fiddled with his fork for a few moments. ‘My lifestyle change wasn’t as simple as I made it sound. I’d been working for the family firm since I left law school. I didn’t hate it – not initially. But it wasn’t right for me. Putting on a front, pretending I cared about contracts and closing deals was exhausting. My family thought I had everything – the salary, success. A beautiful girlfriend waiting for a ring. All I wanted was to be out in the open air. It felt like my soul was withering away cooped up in the office for fourteen hours a day.
‘Eventually, I couldn’t pretend any more. To cut a grim story short, I had a nervous breakdown. I still might not have left, might have fought my way back, to please my girlfriend, Carrie, prove to Dad that I wasn’t the weak son, unable to hack it, except that Mum stepped in and told me I had to leave. Told Dad, Tom and Chris that I wasn’t coming back.’ He paused to take a bite of dessert, but his eyes were fixed on a distant memory. ‘Carrie was beside herself with worry. She thought that if she loved me enough, I would get better and we could go back to how things were. She couldn’t accept that it was how things were that made me ill in the first place. When she couldn’t make me happy, she felt like I’d rejected her. Failing her on top of everything else crushed me.’
‘I can’t imagine how hard that must have been.’
‘Yeah. So, I decided I’m done with having to please other people. And however like-minded or supportive someone might be, a relationship always requires compromise, and working to try to meet expectations, and having to worry about someone. I just can’t do that any more. I’m more than happy to have good friends, and a fantastic mum, and the best two dogs who ever lived.’
‘I can understand that.’
Sam smiled at me. He knew how true that was.
‘So, given that I’m a sworn bachelor, if you ever change your mind and decide you want a totally platonic partner on any of these Dream List adventures, give me a shout.’
‘A tempting offer, but that’s not how the Dream List works.’
‘Fair enough. You’ll at least fill me in on how it’s going, though?’
I grinned. ‘It seems I don’t have to. You just keep turning up and finding out for yourself.’
So, that was that. Time to stop fantasising about what could happen between Sam and me once the Dream List was complete.
We chatted for another half an hour or so, as the sun drifted below the treeline. Sam had a dozen questions about my job, and we naturally ended up talking about our families again. When the waiter asked if we’d like to take our （long-finished） drinks out onto the terrace, we took the hint, checked the time and realised that the whole evening had slipped by.
I wasn’t about to argue when Sam offered to drive me home in his bashed-up truck because it meant I got to ride through the balmy July night with my new friend, the moonlight shimmering silver through the window and the radio set to late-night cheese as we sang along, laughing, all the way to Bigley.
14
I was worried about Joan.
A nagging twist in my guts told me something was wrong. More wrong than having a mum who was barely home because she worked gruelling hours just to keep scraping along the poverty line. I knew Joan felt anxious about Leanne being ill and tired all the time. I could see that she was lonely, but I was starting to wonder where the boundary lay between a struggling mum doing her best and emotional neglect.
I’d been relieved when Joan had told me about the movie night. But it hadn’t been enough to undo the knot of tension that pulled tighter in my stomach when I saw the blueberry-coloured shadows under her eyes, or found her staring off into the distance with a haunted expression that did little to hide a childhood full of worry and insecurity.