Andrew raised his eyebrows.
“Oh come on,” Peggy said. “If I get to eighty-four and my day consists of baking a cake and celebrating that achievement with a wank, then I’ll be pretty bloody happy.”
—
“You two look pleased with yourselves,” Keith said when they arrived back at the office.
“Thick as thieves,” Meredith said, clacking a pen between her top and bottom teeth.
“Bit like you two at Cameron’s the other night,” Peggy said calmly, which shut them up. She hung her coat on the back of her chair and winked at Andrew. He grinned back goofily. Peggy might not have had time to answer his question about dinner—randy Derek Albrighton had put paid to that—but it had been such a fun walk back to the office that he couldn’t feel too despondent. Cameron chose that moment to amble out of his office and, in an uncharacteristically solemn voice, ask them to join him in the break-out area. Ever since the disastrous dinner party he’d carried himself with the air of a well-meaning schoolteacher who’d let his students bring in a game on the last day of term, only for them to spray Silly String all over the place and write rude words on their desks. The five of them sat in a semicircle and Cameron steepled his fingers against his chin.
“I’ve been mulling over whether to actually say anything, guys, but I’ve decided I’d like to talk to you all about what happened last week at my house. Before I speak, would any of you like to say anything?” The water cooler hummed. A strip light overhead flickered. Outside, a vehicle announced that it was reversing.
“Okay,” Cameron said. “Well, what I wanted to say to you was that—and, believe me, I hate to say this—I was really rather disappointed”—his voice cracked, and he had to stop and gather himself—“disappointed with you all. What with two of you running off early and two of you disappearing upstairs. What should have been a nice evening for all of us to bond ended up having the opposite outcome. I mean, talk about low-hanging fruit, guys.” He waited for this to sink in. Andrew hadn’t realized he’d taken it this badly. “However,” Cameron continued. “I very much believe in second chances, so let’s give this another go and see how we get on, okay, team? Meredith has kindly volunteered to host the next evening. Andrew, you can be next.”
Andrew instantly pictured the stain on his kitchen wall, the battered old sofa and the distinct lack of a family there, and bit down hard on his cheeks.
Cameron kept them for further blather about budgets and targets, then decided to regale them with a spectacularly dull anecdote about he and Clara losing each other in the supermarket, before finally they were all allowed to go back to their desks. Not long after, Peggy sent Andrew an e-mail. “I don’t know about you, but all I was thinking about during that was whether they ever made It’s Quim Up North 2.”
“Would you need to have seen the first one to understand the sequel?” Andrew replied.
A minute later he received two messages at once. The first was from Peggy: “Ha! Quite possibly. Oh, and I forgot to say: Yes to dinner. Where are we going?”
The second was a text from an unknown number: How many letters am I going to have to send you before you grow some balls and reply? Or are you too busy thinking about what you’ll spend Sally’s money on?
— CHAPTER 13 —
It took Andrew six attempts to dial Carl’s number without hanging up before it connected. He hadn’t thought about what he was going to say. He just knew he had to stop this.
“Hello, Cynergy?” A hollow sense of friendliness in the voice.
“It’s Andrew.”
A pause.
“Oh. You finally decided to call then.”
“These letters. Please—please just stop sending them,” Andrew said.
“The truth hurts, doesn’t it.” A statement, not a question.
“What do you want me to say?” Andrew said.
“How about an apology. It was you that made her ill. You did this.” Carl’s voice was shaking already. “Can’t you see that? She spent the last twenty years trying to make things right, and you never let her. You were too stubborn to forgive her, and her heart was a fucking wreck because of you.”
“That’s not true,” Andrew said, unsure of the words even as he said them.
“You’re pathetic, you know that? God, I just keep imagining what Sally would be thinking now—how much she’d regret what she’d done. I bet she’d—”
“Okay, okay—you can have the money. I never asked for it in the first place. As soon as I get it I’ll transfer it over, but you have to promise to just . . . leave me alone.”
He heard Carl sniff and clear his throat. “I’m glad you’ve come to your senses. I will ‘leave you alone,’ as you put it. But I’ll be in touch again when I know you’ve got the money, you can be sure of that.” Then the line went dead.
—
Andrew made some beans on toast and logged on to the subforum, eager to forget about his conversation with Carl.
I’m after a bit of restaurant advice, chaps, he wrote. Somewhere nice but not TOO expensive. Think LNER 0-6-0T “585” J50 Class rather than LNER 0-6-0 “5444” J15. Within minutes the subforum had come up trumps with several suggestions. Eventually, he settled on an Italian restaurant that was trendy enough not to put pound signs on the menu but not so fancy that the meals were described in a Tuscan mountain dialect.
The next morning they were at a property inspection and Andrew reminded Peggy of the plan. “There’s no rush, obviously, but just—whenever you’ve got a mo—maybe ping me over some dates for when you’re free for our dinner thing,” he said, as casually as possible, even throwing in a yawn for good measure. Peggy looked up from the Tupperware box containing the last will and testament of Charles Edwards, which she’d just discovered under the kitchen sink.
“Oh aye, will do. Next week I reckon. I’ll check my diary back at the ranch.”
“Cool. Sure . . . like I said, no rush,” Andrew said, knowing that he’d spend the rest of the day refreshing his inbox until he was on the verge of a repetitive strain injury.
When the day of their dinner arrived the following week, Andrew found himself immediately anxious from the moment he got up. By the time he was at the office he’d managed to work himself up so much that at one point Meredith sneezed and he spontaneously apologized. He tried to tell himself to calm down, that it was ridiculous to be so anxious. It’s just dinner, for god’s sake! But it was no good. Peggy had spent the morning in an adjacent room that held the office safe, storing away the unclaimed items of value from a recent property visit in preparation for their sale, and had been on a training course away from the office in the afternoon. This, he decided, was probably why he felt so tense. Not being able to see her to exchange a friendly word all day, he couldn’t convince himself that she wouldn’t rather be doing anything else than spending her evening with him.
As if to confirm his gloom, he knew the restaurant was a poor choice by the look the waiter gave him on arrival, as if he were a stray dog who’d wandered in looking for a place to die.
“Your . . . friend is on their way, sir?” the waiter asked after Andrew had been sitting there for less than five minutes.
“Yes,” Andrew said. “I hope—I’m sure—she’ll be here soon.”
The waiter gave him a seen-it-all-before smirk and poured two inches of water into his glass. Twenty minutes went by, during which Andrew refused and then reluctantly accepted some incredibly hard bread.
“Are you sure you don’t want to order something now for when your friend arrives?” the waiter said.
“No,” Andrew said, annoyed at the waiter and annoyed at himself for having the temerity to get out of the little box he lived in.