‘So where do you normally go for your runs when you’re here?’ Greggy asked. ‘We just did a circular one via Little Bishop.’
‘That’s a great one,’ Dan said. ‘I hadn’t decided. I was going to do either that one or one from the opposite end of the village past the church that follows the little stream and some more gentle hills. I was going to wait and see how I felt once I got going.’
‘Not a lot of hills where you are in London?’ Greggy smiled up at Max as Max put a pancake down in front of him, and Max ruffled Greggy’s hair when he’d let go of the plate.
‘Exactly. I live between Earl’s Court and Fulham, which is very flat.’
‘Great area, though.’
‘Yeah, it is. My flat’s a shoebox and it’s above a very fragrant Indian restaurant, which is the only way I could afford to buy in the area, but I love it. And luckily I love curry, and theirs are all delicious.’
‘We should come over and visit you some time. And you should come to us. We can tempt you with hills.’ Greggy and Max had recently moved into a flat together near Alexandra Palace in North London. ‘And Max’s cooking of course.’
‘Or a barbecue when it’s a bit warmer. That’s Greggy’s speciality,’ Max said, flipping the next pancake.
‘That’s a nice way of saying that I’m a rubbish cook in an actual kitchen,’ Greggy said.
‘Hey, probably better than me.’ Dan stood up and took his plate over to Max. ‘I seem to have fallen into the cliché junior-doctor-bad-diet trap recently.’ Amazing how much less difficult it was talking to Max with Greggy around.
Half an hour later, he’d stayed chatting for a lot longer than he’d thought he would and had had three pancakes and had realised that he was going to have to postpone his run for another half hour or get some serious indigestion.
If he was honest, he was looking forward to Manda leaving later this morning to spend Christmas with her parents, and maybe he’d stay around after that for a while, spend some more time with his mother and siblings.
Greggy put another cup of coffee in front of him and he took a sip. Yeah, maybe he should actually stay until this evening instead of leaving this morning. This was really nice.
‘Morning, morning.’ His father strode into the room, doing his usual lord-of-the-manor impression. He clapped his hands together and said, ‘So who’s in for a family game of golf today?’
Dan looked at him briefly, decided that he was leaving this morning after all, chugged half of his too-hot coffee and burned his mouth – he wasn’t going to be able to taste anything properly for days now – and stood up to leave the room.
Ten
Now – January 2022
Evie
‘Miss, have you taken your husband’s surname?’ Jake, one of Evie’s Year Ten pupils, yelled as she walked into the classroom on the first morning of term. Yep, there was nothing like a drunken Vegas one-night marriage for making the first day back at work after the holidays even more of a joy than usual.Whyhad she and Dan posted so much stuff on social media andwhyhad the mother of one of her pupils had to stumble across it via a mutual friend and tell the world about it?
‘No husband, just a joke,’ she said, giving Jake the evil eye. ‘And can I ask why you wereyelling?’ Evie had developed anamazingglare over the years, and, thankGod, it was working right now. She glared at everyone else, for good measure, and then clapped her hands. ‘Right. I’d like to see everyone’s Christmas coursework,now.’
Unfortunately, she couldn’t glare at her colleagues in the same way.
‘Oh myGod, Evie,’ her friend Priya said, reallyloudly, as soon as she set foot inside the staff room at morning break, ‘no-onegets pissed-married in Vegas. He was total sex-on-legs. Who is he?’ The heads of the majority of the people in the room, including two of the three deputy heads, turned in their direction.
‘Ha,’ Evie said, thinkingShut up. ‘Old friend. Just one of those things. You know.’
‘No, I don’t know. You’re the first person I’ve ever known to get married in Vegas. Andpissed-married. That had to have been a big morning after.’
‘Yeah, it was,’ Evie said. ‘But, you know.’ She moved in nearer to Priya and hissed, ‘Shhh.’
‘Oops, sorry,’ Priya said, grinning in a very un-sorry-like way. She pulled Evie over to a table in a corner and, at least speaking at normal – instead of fog-horn – volume, said, ‘So tell me everything. Your messages were far too short.’ Priya had been one of the many people who’d WhatsApped Evie asking for details and Evie had gone very succinct on her replies.
‘Honestly, there’s nothing to tell. Just a one-night stand that involved a ridiculous joke marriage that turned out to be legal so we have a bit of admin to do to sort it out and that’s all.’
‘So are you seeing him again?’ Bloody hell. Good job Evie liked Priya a lot, otherwise right now she’d be finding herreallyirritating.
It was a relief to get to Friday evening after what had felt like a very long four-day first-week-back full of drizzle, over-lively kids and staffroom gossip about Evie. Hopefully by Monday morning they’d have stopped talking about her, becausesurelythere was nothing more to say now.
Evie was going out tomorrow evening, to a Mexican restaurant with some old university friends who also lived in London. This evening, she was knackered and she was going to be firmly on the sofa in the sitting room of her shared flat, with the remote, a takeaway and a large glass of wine, hoping that her flatmate Josh wouldn’t get home with his latest ‘shag-for-the-night’, as he called his succession of very handsome boyfriends, before she’d gone to bed. Their other flatmate, Mia, was away on business.
