to – prepare for that eventuality. Years of self-imposed singledom don’t make for the highest levels of grooming, and slinky underwear had been replaced by over-washed comfort across the board: something had to give. Most Saturday mornings I’d be at the Toynbee Hall free legal advice centre in Stepney, where I’ve done volunteer work for years, but that week I decided to skip it and instead spend the morning at a little Korean beauty spa on Holloway Road so that I would at least be waxed and smooth. I then went to my favourite deli, La Fromagerie, and bought creamy brie and fragolino grapes to stock the fridge and I put fresh linen on the bed, even spraying them with lavender scent in a bid to make them smell like those starchy sheets you find in expensive hotels. I wanted to make my flat a delicious haven he would never want to leave. Which, I was starting to realize, was exactly what I wanted.
I chose a black dress and hot pink heels and deliberately left five minutes late. I was useless at playing games, always had been, but it was my one concession at ‘playing hard to get’.
As I walked along Upper Street, passing the early evening crowds, groups of four or five, loud, laughing, I breathed in hard, wanted to feel some of that energy, some of that abandon, the sense that anything could happen tonight. A smile crept on to my mouth. Anything.
I crossed the road, my heels clacking on the tarmac, my coat flying. Would he be there already, waiting for me? Or would I find an empty bar and a message on my phone, some excuse about work or delayed flights? I had never been convinced Martin Joy would contact me again after the First Directions hearing, but once we had arranged a date, I had naively assumed that he would turn up. Now I wasn’t so sure. Should I call him to ask if he was on his way? Think positively, I told myself. Good things can happen. Even to you.
And there he was: my heart skipped as I saw him through the glass. Facing away from the street, lounging against the bar, his broad back moving, his strong hands carving through the air. He was talking to someone. The smile on my face slipped; no, he was with someone. A couple. I paused for a step, my hand hovering above the door handle, fighting disappointment. Had I misread the situation? Wasn’t this a date-date? But I couldn’t stand there wavering: the door was glass and anyway, Martin had turned and seen me.
‘Fran,’ he said warmly, as I pushed inside. He reached for my hand, guiding me towards him. A crackle of static passed between us as our skin touched, but he didn’t flinch, just smiled and whispered one word into my ear, low enough that only I could hear it: ‘Sexy.’
‘Francine,’ he said, turning to the others, ‘this is Alex, my business partner, and this is Sophie, his wife.’
‘Just his wife,’ she said with a conspiratorial wink, stepping across to shake my hand. ‘No one important.’
But she was impressive: blonde, tall, a little bit horsey, like the captain of a lacrosse team. When she stood up off her stool, she was at least six inches taller than me. Even in my heels I was barely five feet five, but I had never felt smaller than I did right then.
Though Alex laughed along, I sensed more reserve in him. Thin, upright, not a wrinkle in his grey suit. Maybe I wasn’t the first woman Martin had introduced to his friends since the divorce, or perhaps Alex was still loyal to Donna – friends did that, didn’t they? They took sides.
There was a brief, awkward pause and then Martin filled the space.
‘You did get my text?’
‘Which text?’
‘About Alex and Sophie joining us for dinner.’
I shook my head.
‘We won’t be staying long and I promise that Alex will be on his best behaviour,’ said Sophie, flashing me a conciliatory look.
Martin inspected his phone as his friends went ahead to the table.
‘It didn’t send. Text failed.’
He touched my fingers, a gesture of apology, and I felt his heat against my skin.
‘It’s fine. I want to meet your friends,’ I said, wondering how convincing that sounded.
We were shown to our table and Martin ordered two bottles of orange wine and a selection of starters. Everything was so well chosen, I knew he had been here many times before.
‘So you were skiing?’ I said, aware that I should chip in with some small talk from the get-go. I had no idea what Sophie and Alex knew about our relationship, such as it was, but until I had some sort of signal from Martin that this was a date, that Sophie and Alex knew it was a date, I decided to proceed with caution, keeping conversation to the vague and unrevealing.
‘Heli-skiing.’ Martin nodded.
‘Spitalfields’ very own Milk Tray Man,’ joked Alex.
‘It’s great. Have you tried it?’ asked Sophie, with the confidence of someone who had spent her life on skis.
‘I’m happier with a hot chocolate and viennoiserie down at the bottom,’ I said, not wanting to admit that the only time I’d spent rushing down snowy slopes was tobogganing in the park as a child. It took a strength of will not to grill him further, desperate to know who he had been in Switzerland with – no one went heli-skiing alone, surely? – but knowing it looked needy to ask.
‘So you work alongside Martin?’ I asked as we sat down at a table tucked away at the back of the restaurant.
Alex nodded, but Sophie pursed her lips and gave a tight shake of the head. ‘Not me. Not any more. I’m sure you know better than most people that working together does not always make for a happy home life. We tried it in the early days, but ended up wanting to strangle each other, so I’ve stepped aside and taken on a more’ – she sucked her teeth – ‘advisory role.’
‘Meaning she tells us both what to do,’ smiled Martin.
‘He likes to make it sound like I’m some sort of nag,’ said Sophie. ‘But without a woman’s eye for detail, I dare say the lights would have been turned off years ago.’
Alex took her hand and kissed it.
‘There – your reward, darling.’
She tapped his cheek playfully and I felt a pang of jealousy. They’d probably been married, what?… at least a decade, and she obviously still adored her husband.
I slowly began to relax and enjoy myself as the three joked and teased each other the way only old friends can do. Martin held forth about his recent trip, ‘coming out of the powder looking like Frosty the Snowman’, while Sophie told me about a disastrous skiing holiday she and Alex had been on to Courcheval, where a complete lack of snowfall had turned the resort into ‘the seventh ring of hell’ where there was nothing to do for the Russian tourists but show off. ‘The only place I’ve seen more fur was in San Diego Zoo!’ she laughed.
‘So where did you all meet?’ I asked, envious of their tight bond.
‘University,’ said Alex.
‘Economics Society.’
‘It was that trip to New York, wasn’t it? To Wall Street. We were room-mates in that crappy hotel in the East Village.’
‘I like to think of myself as a matchmaker,’
