Page 100 of Private Lives

‘For a smart girl, you’re very trusting,’ he said casually.

For a second Anna thought about Sid. Struggling for cash, with a job about to end. Or Josh, Sam’s PA. Sam was convinced his young assistant didn’t know the details of his indiscretions, but Josh had that smart competence that suggested he knew everything.

‘I trust everyone on our team one hundred per cent,’ she said defensively. ‘We run a tight ship.’

‘Just a little food for thought, some free advice between old friends,’ said Blake playfully. ‘You lawyers do rather think in straight lines, don’t you? Maybe it’s time to take off the blinkers. Who would benefit from leaking the Sam and Katie sex story, if it wasn’t Katie and it wasn’t me?’

30

He was already there when Anna arrived, sitting alone at a table facing the street. The front windows of the bistro had been folded back to the evening air and she paused at the corner watching him, a glass of red wine in front of him, making a big show of tapping away at his BlackBerry; he was always so concerned about appearances, desperate to show he was busy and in demand. They had been here together once before – she wondered if he remembered. Probably not; he would never have agreed to the meeting here, it would have been too loaded and intimate.

She looked at his face, so familiar yet so distant. He was tanned, his blond hair lighter than she remembered, his eyes more blue. It was strange how people could be such a big part of your life, how you could become accustomed to their habits and tics, their every crease and wrinkle like your own. And then, just like that, they could slip away completely.

‘Anna,’ he said, standing up as she walked over.

‘How are you, Andy?’ she said, sitting down, allowing him to push her chair in. In the early days, she had been charmed by his little old-world customs. She’d met plenty of people from Andrew’s background at law school – wealthy parents, public school, Oxbridge – but none with his effortless polish. And yet he had been so normal in many ways: he liked football, Britpop, wore his shirts untucked. But every now and then there was a little reminder of the privileged upbringing a world away from the Cumbrian pub she had been brought up in.

The waiter brought her a glass and Andy poured her some wine from the open bottle. She noticed the menu face down on the table.

‘You’re not eating?’

He shook his head.

‘Not hungry. Are you?’

‘Not really,’ she lied. She was actually starving, having been stuck in court all day, but Andy was clearly telling her he had no intention of staying longer than he had to.

‘So how’s things?’ he said, carefully rearranging his two forks on the tablecloth.

‘Don’t you read the papers?’ she said. It was meant to be a joke, but came out wrong.

He glanced at her.

‘Of course. Always nice to see my fiancée half drowned. Honestly, Anna, what was all that crap at the spa about?’

‘If you ask me, she got off pretty lightly,’ she said, standing her ground. ‘I’m amazed the media haven’t found out that we haven’t spoken for two years. “Cosy cake-maker is home-wrecker” type thing.’

She’d had this conversation with Andy in her head a hundred times since they had split up – their first proper sit-down discussion – and she’d always been witty and cutting and amazingly beautiful, not bitter and sarcastic like this.

‘Look, Anna, if you’ve just asked me here to rake over all that again, I’ve got better things to do with my time.’

‘I don’t want that either.’

She was being honest. She’d seen him a handful of times since That Night; she’d tried hard to avoid him, but it was difficult to do so in the worlds in which they moved. It was always awkward, but sitting opposite him today she felt strangely unmoved.

‘Does she know we’re meeting?’ she asked.

He looked away.

‘No.’

Anna felt a surge of triumph. Childish, pathetic even, but it made her feel better.

‘I didn’t know whether I should tell her,’ said Andy. ‘Although I’ve hardly seen her all week. She’s been filming.’

‘At the nurseries?’

‘No, she was finding all that travelling too difficult. It’s filmed in Notting Hill now.’

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