Page 106 of The Life She Could Have Lived

‘Not so small,’ Steve said.

Anna was thinking about something that she hadn’t thought about for a long time.

‘Have I told you that I think we might have met before? I mean years ago. When Luke was a little boy. I was standing on a street in Clapham, and I picked up his toy rabbit. Does that ring any bells at all?’

Steve’s eyes widened a little. ‘I’m not sure. I mean, he definitely had a rabbit. A tatty-looking, grey thing, but he was always dropping it. I don’t remember…’

Anna was a little disappointed, but she tried not to let it show. She shook her head. ‘Ignore me. I should go. I’ll see you later, for dinner?’

‘Sure.’ He leaned in and kissed her lips.

All afternoon, while she was in meetings and reporting to her manager on the team’s recent work and going through her emails, her mind was on Steve. Nia was a firm believer in everything happening for a reason, but Anna never had been. She thought it was all pretty random, and things could have gone a different way for her. For all of them. She couldn’t help wondering, sometimes, how things might have been if she’d met him then, if that had been him. It would have meant no Ben, of course, which was tough to imagine. But she might have spent all those years with Steve and Luke, the years of losing teeth and learning to ride a bike and falling in love for the first time. Life was strange, with its twists and turns, its blind alleys and its long stretches of straight, clear road.

Anna’s phone beeped with a message from Steve.

Got the job.

She smiled and told him she was proud of him, and then she sent a message to Nia.

Guess who’s moving in with her boyfriend like someone in her twenties?

Congratulations!

You think we fit, right?

You two definitely fit. Two spoons in a drawer.

Good, because he got that restaurant refit job.

I knew Magda wouldn’t let me down.

Anna smiled and turned her phone over so she could finish off her work.

She’d left the office for the day and was walking to the Tube when her phone rang. She answered without checking who it was, and when she heard Steve’s voice, she found herself smiling.

‘I remember,’ he said. ‘It was on the street where we lived, Hazelbourne Road. I’d had a terrible night with him, with Luke, and I was just trying to get through the day. We were out walking with nowhere to go. And then you called out and I remember noticing how pretty you were, how kind of you it was to help. We were always losing things, in those days. Socks and dummies and these little cars he insisted on carrying around with him.’

Anna was silent. There was a lump in her throat she couldn’t swallow away.

‘Are you there, Anna?’

She focused very hard on keeping her voice level. ‘I’m here.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘What if we’d met then? What if we’d had all those years?’

Steve was quiet. Anna thought she might have lost him, but then he spoke again.

‘Me and Theresa were still hanging on then, just about.’

‘Oh.’ Anna felt stupid. She hadn’t thought of that.

‘It’s got to be enough that we have each other now,’ he said. ‘You mentioned all those years, but what about all the years ahead?’

Anna stopped in the middle of the street, causing someone to bump into her back and call out something rude. She ignored him. Steve was right, of course. They had lots of years ahead. And they were settled, in their work and their homes. But more than that, they were settled in their bodies and their personalities. They knew who they were, what they wanted. If they’d had that chance, years before, it was quite possible that one or other of them would have messed it up, somehow. And then they would have nothing.

‘It is,’ she said. ‘It is enough.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now, are you on your way home? I’m about to start making you dinner.’

Anna told him she’d be there as soon as she could, and ended the call. And all the way back, she didn’t open her book or put her headphones on. She just thought about what she’d had in the past, what she had now. It was easy to forget to be grateful. It was easy to think about roads not taken. But the fact was, all the small and big decisions she’d made had led her here. And if she could go back, and change something, everything else might fall apart.

Life was like a house of cards, in that way. At once fragile and unbelievable. Why hadn’t she been able to see it before? She was exactly where she should be, exactly who she should be. And all the paths she might take in the future?

Well, she thought with a smile, when she reached them, she would know what to do.