‘I’m up for that, if you are?’ he asks.
‘I think it’s important, don’t you? To get away from the grind, to be aimless for a while, to see what grows from that? As Elsa says, “we’re humanbeings, not humandoings”!’
‘I’d like nothing more.’
‘I’m sorry if I’ve put my work first, or if I’ve been less present than I should have been. I’ve had my defences up for too long.’
‘As have I,’ he says. ‘I made the mistake of longing for something else and failing to recognise what I have here and now – a beautiful wife, the incomparable joy of raising our daughter, and a love that is far richer now than it was then.’
‘We’ve made loving decisions at every stage together. Each of those decisions has evolved our love into something far greater than “being in love”.’
‘Yes, they have,’ he smiles.
It is then, gazing into Robin’s aging eyes, that it hits me fully that I have no reason to question whether I was destined to meet either Robin or Alistair, that fate played no part in our lives. What played a part was far stronger – love.
35.
CARLY
With a couple of hours to spare between the Eurostar and boarding the Scotsman back to Edinburgh, Daisy, Joe and I walk the short distance from St Pancras to Word on the Water – a bookshop barge on the Regent’s Canal.
Love this, I think, admiring the barge from the outside while Daisy and Joe head in to browse. I sit on a giant wooden book-cum-bench on the path alongside.
‘Isn’t it amazing?’ asks a voice soon after, and I look up in the brilliant spring sunshine to find Georgia standing beside me. My heart rate accelerates at the sight of her.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ I say, wondering if she’s about to accost me over Flynn.
‘Almost as inviting as Shakespeare and Company,’ she says. ‘May I join you?’
‘Sure.’ I wipe the bench before she sits so she doesn’t mark her beautiful white linen trousers.
We sit for a moment watching some ducks, a runner going by, and a mum pushing a buggy.
‘Flynn told me what happened in Paris,’ she says, her gaze forward. ‘That you two got quite close.’
I brace myself for her venom.
‘Georgia—’ I begin.
‘Carly, I’m—’
‘No,’ I insist. ‘I want to assure you that nothing actually happ—’
‘Carly,’ she interrupts, turning to me, the focus in her eyes making it clear that she wants to lead the conversation.
I take a deep breath and clasp my hands to stop them trembling.
‘Flynn told me you were instrumental in Fran’s talk yesterday. I know how grateful he is for that. Without a headline act, I’m afraid I might not have given him the promotion after all, particularly after he lost us that review.’
‘I’m sorry?’ I stammer.
‘The promotion I promised him, if he pulled off the book train without a hitch.’
‘I don’t understand. You’re not his girlfriend?’
‘No!’ she says, with a roar of incredulous laughter.
‘You said in the bar that it was “make or break time” for you both.’
