‘I will of course be very sad if you move to New York,’ Julia said. Dan looked between the two of them. Julia was twisting her hands together, looking at her daughter, and Hannah was looking at her coffee cup. ‘But I will of course support you. And I’d love to see my granddaughter as much as possible. I would visit and I presume that Dan would too?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Dan said. ‘And…’ God, he needed to phrase this well. ‘This is a bit of a shock. I wondered if we could perhaps discuss your decision together, a little at least, for the baby’s sake?’
‘Yes, definitely. Absolutely.’ Hannah pulled her sleeve up and checked her watch again. ‘I think I ought to go now. The traffic’s looking worse.’ There were literally no moving cars on the road outside.
‘Of course.’ Dan would have another go at speaking to her another time. He got his wallet out. ‘I’ll get these.’
Julia shook her head. ‘My treat.’
‘Well, thank you,’ Dan said. ‘It’s been great.’ It hadn’t. It had been shit. He was pretty sure that he was going to be absolutely devastated if he had to live on the opposite side of the Atlantic from his daughter.
Sixteen
Now – April 2022
Evie
‘Evie, this egg’s got a present inside it.’ Autumn shook it hard. It did sound like there was something clunking around inside there. ‘Look.’ Autumn pointed at the side of the personalised box. ‘It says “gift”. That means “present”.’ Very good point. Evie hadn’t spotted that earlier. She looked at her watch.
‘I’m late,’ she said. ‘I’ll open it later. Thank you for pointing that out. Night. Love you. See you in the morning.’
Evie gave Autumn a hug, grabbed her phone, purse and keys, and sprinted out of the house. Her phone rang as she was walking down the lane.
‘Hi, Matthew. Happy Easter.’
‘Hey. Happy Easter to you too. I’m missing you.’
‘Missing you too.’ Eek. She wasn’t really, if she was honest. She’d had a lovely day with her mum and Autumn, and now she was on the way to the pub for a pre-wedding summit with Sasha and Lucie and Sasha’s other bridesmaid, Dervla, a university friend of Sasha’s. They were planning to discuss all things weddingy, eat pub food and drink a lot of Prosecco, with the bonus of not having to get up early tomorrow because it was Easter Monday, and Evie was really looking forward to it. It was lovely going out with Matthew, but it was nice to have the opportunity to see her mum and Autumn and her friends on her own sometimes, so it felt like it had worked out well that he’d had a golf weekend planned for ages.
Matthew had alotof golf trips planned. He wasn’t going to be able to make it to Sasha’s wedding because he had a golf week in Tenerife arranged for then.
He also had alotof golf stories, like the one he was telling now, not as interesting to your non-golfer as they probably were to people who hadanyidea about the rules and under-par and irons and all those things. It was nice listening to his enthusiasm, though, and watching his eyes twinkle when he joked when they were together in person.
‘Ha, hilarious,’ she said when he’d stopped talking after what she was pretty sure was a punchline.
‘Yeah, I know. Golf’s a fantastic game. Different every time. Anyway, enough about me. Have you opened your Easter egg yet?’
Evie screwed up her face as she rounded the next corner along the green to go up the lane past the church towards the pub. Autumn must have been right. Clearly, there was a present in there, and she couldn’t thank him for it without knowing what it was.
‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘I’ve had a really busy day with Mum and Autumn and I thought I’d save it. I’m going to open it this evening when I get home from the pub.’
‘Okay, well I hope you like it. The egg. Have fun this evening.’
‘Thank you.’ Wow. If he was like this over an Easter egg, what would he be like over a birthday present?
‘Okay,’ Sasha said three hours later. She put her pen and notebook down and glugged more Prosecco. ‘So that’s favours sorted. Thank you so much for doing those, Dervla. And Evie, I’ll let you know what dates they have available for menu tasting. And Lucie, thank you so much for sorting all the place settings.’
‘I know what I was going to ask,’ Lucie said. ‘What have you decided about Max and Dan?’
‘We drew lots. Dan’s walking me down the aisle and Max is doing the reading and the speech.’ Sasha and her siblings still had very frosty relations with their father since he’d left their mother for another (older) woman three or four years ago.
‘Perfect,’ Lucie said. ‘Okay, I’ve got to go. I’ll be up at the crack of dawn with the kids.’
‘Me too, actually,’ Dervla said.
‘Stay for another one, Evie?’ Sasha said.
‘Definitely,’ Evie said.
