‘Shut up!’ I ball up a napkin and throw it at her and we both laugh.
‘Do you ever get that?’ she asks. ‘People asking to feel your belly?’
‘Yeah, sometimes. And they can F right off or I’ll put their feely fingers where the sun don’t shine,’ I say in a London accent.
Anna laughs, then finishes her juice and pushes the cup to the side. ‘Right,’ she says, ‘It’s been lovely chatting but I guess I really should get going. There’s a mountain of work at home with my name on it.’
She sees my surprise and I kick myself for assuming that everyone who walks in the park in the daytime doesn’t work.
‘What do you do?’
‘I’m an indexer and proofreader. I do a bit of copy-editing, too. Freelance stuff. Maybe write the odd bit of below-the-line copy for advertising.’
‘Wow. It must be nice to be able to work from home. I’d love that. It’s the perfect solution.’
In my head, a little movie plays of me dandling the baby in one hand while knocking off some professional paid job on a fancy laptop, and it’s at this point that I realize that it doesn’t have to be flying or nothing. That if I worked, I’d meet people; have colleagues, friends. I’d be valued for doing more than keeping house. Suddenly I’m flooded with the feeling that the world’s my oyster; that I could retrain to do anything I like.
‘Is there something you could do at home?’ Anna asks as if she’s followed my train of thought.
My brain moves at lightning speed: Anna’s recently moved… I wonder if she needs some help. ‘I like interior design,’ I say carefully. ‘Maybe I could get a qualification or something, and give that a try?’
‘Fantastic.’ Anna laughs. ‘God, I could really do with an interior designer right now.’
Bingo. ‘Really?’
‘Bloody hell, yes,’ Anna says. ‘Getting the house sorted is driving me crazy. I don’t have a clue with stuff like that. Where to put things, how to pull everything together. It’s like I’m interiors-dyslexic. Rob’s not bad but he’s obviously not here.’
‘I could help you if you like.’ I smile, trying not to look too keen. ‘It’d be great experience.’
‘Could you really?’ Anna looks so happy.
‘Yes!’ I say. ‘I’d love to. Honestly.’
‘Okay,’ she shrugs. ‘If you’re sure, why don’t you come over on Friday?’ She names a street. ‘Give me your number and I’ll message to confirm.’
I give myself a mental high-five: nicely done, Tay. Nicely done.
I know how you met
On a flight. Because it had to be something different, didn’t it? Something special.
New York to London. BA176. Thirty-one flights a day to choose from and you end up on the same one; not just on the same flight, but sat next to him.
It must be fate. How sweet.
Six hours and fifty-five minutes. Neither of you can sleep. A couple of movies? A drink or two. Something to eat. Is it long enough to get to know someone? To fall in love?
I know, I know – but he thinks it is.
From the moment you sit down, he’s captivated.
He’s so easy, he makes me want to puke. I can see it now. The way you slip your neat little arse into the seat. What are you wearing? Skinny jeans maybe. Flat pumps. A t-shirt showing off your tits. Hair tied up. Lip gloss. You have a pashmina: of course you have a pashmina, an expensive one at that. You wriggle yourself back in your seat, look for the seat belt and touch his hand by accident. ‘Sorry!’ You smile at him – and him, he’s such a sucker.
‘Hey,’ he says. He nods and gurns a smile like a puppet and you giggle. Does he give you that line about being a nervous flyer? Is that why you tell him how much you fly? He picks up the safety card from the seat pocket and says something really dumb like, ‘Bet you know this off by heart!’ and you laugh and say, ‘Actually, I wrote it.’ ‘Really?’ he asks and you laugh, like – you really believed that?
He’d believe anything that comes out of your mouth.
He hams it up during take-off, acting out the charade that he’s scared of flying. Little do you know that he probably flies as much as you do. But he thinks it’s cute the way you put your hand on his arm and tell him it’ll be okay, and that’s all that matters, isn’t it?
You order drinks: a beer and a juice. Neither of you plugs in your headphones – you play with the wire of your headphones in your lap: shall I/shan’t I? But he makes small talk, doesn’t he? Where are you from? What took you to New York? Why are you going to London? The food comes; he orders another round of drinks.
You talk the whole flight. I can hear your voices in my head: his deep and smooth, quiet and confident; yours giggly, flirtatious, reeling him in like an open-mouthed fish in the quiet darkness of the cabin. ‘It’s as if I’ve known you forever.’ ‘How amazing that we ended up on the same flight!’ ‘It was meant to be!’ ‘Serendipity!’
Spare me the crap.
As the plane taxis to the stand, he touches your hand. ‘Can I ask for your number? It’d be cool to stay in touch; meet up when we’re both in the same town.’
Because you’re both such glamorous jet-setters.
You encourage him. Don’t play the innocent here. ‘I suppose it’s fair enough now we’ve spent a night together!’ you say. Giggle, giggle.
But he can’t tear himself away from you. You walk through the airport: through immigration, baggage reclaim together and then you’re by the doors and at the front of the taxi queue and the taxi’s waiting and the cars all around are honking and he does it, he only goes ahead and does it: he bends his head down and kisses you with his disgusting overnight-flight morning breath.
He does, doesn’t he?
I knew it. It’s almost as if I was there.
When I get home, I go straight to Instagram: I want to see how Anna’s muffin shot turned out. It’s good, but what I love most is what she’s written underneath it: ‘#postwalktreat #walkinggroup #newfriends’. I’m so pleased I take a screenshot – I don’t know why, but somehow I just want to keep it forever.
I scroll through her account again and get an idea. Every week she posts a picture of her growing bump – presumably they’re the shots she takes for Rob. I save each of them to my phone and use another app to create a collage showing how she’s grown. I think she’d find it interesting to see the photos together – like a time-lapse – and I imagine the two of us giggling as I show it to her; her laughing with her hand over her mouth; her saying, ‘Oh my god, that’s amazing! How did
