‘That’s good.’ Rachel caught sight of Felicity’s troubled face in the mirror. ‘Isn’t it?’
Felicity began to wash her hands. ‘I dunno. I’m a bit all over the place. You know, in my head. I feel like I have to be there for him, but all I wanna do is run away.’
‘Why?’ Rachel decided Andrew Garroway could wait for a few minutes.
‘Because I reckon he thinks that everything’s going to go on between us like it was before. But I’m not sure it’s what I want. In fact, I pretty much know it isn’t. I’ve really got myself together these last couple of years, and I just don’t see myself going back to – well, how it used to be.’
Felicity might have been the world’s most exasperating secretary, but Rachel had always been deeply fond of her, and she hated to see her looking so baffled and despondent.
‘You want my advice?’
‘Oh, God, yeah – anything, please.’
‘Tell him what you’ve just told me. Make it clear to him that your relationship can’t be the same as it used to be. It’s your opportunity to draw a line under the past, to say, look, I don’t want that relationship any more. It’s going to be like this from now on. I’ll be your friend, I’ll support you, but I’m not the person I was, and you have to respect that.’
Felicity listened, impressed. She nodded. ‘Yeah. You’re right. He’s coming out, he’s got to start over. He can’t expect me suddenly to take on responsibility for his whole life.’ She paused. ‘It’s just—’
‘What?’
‘Well, I’ve been visiting him while he’s been inside and all, and I kind of feel like he’ll think I’ve been leading him on and that, if I tell him it’s not going to be the way he expects it to.’
Rachel took her hairbrush from her bag. ‘You’ve been his friend. The fact that you didn’t abandon him doesn’t mean he can make assumptions.’
‘No. No, I see that.’ Felicity looked doubtful. Then her face brightened as she looked at Rachel in the mirror. ‘You look nice. Off somewhere?’
‘I’m meeting someone for lunch.’ For a second Rachel thought of confiding in Felicity about the online dating thing, this awful meeting she’d set up, but the moment passed.
‘That’s good.’ Felicity glanced at her watch. ‘I’d best be off. See you soon.’
‘Stay in touch.’
After Felicity had gone, Rachel brushed her dark, silky hair and gazed at her reflection, her mind moving from Felicity’s problems back to her own, and the lunch date ahead of her. Why was she doing this? It was ridiculous to go looking for love. Things should happen spontaneously, not in this tacky, manufactured way. She sighed and closed her bag. Maybe he would be great – kind, amusing, normal, easy to like. Maybe he would be ‘the one’. But she knew in her heart that she’d already met ‘the one’, and he was probably irreplaceable.
Simon Wren was standing at the bar with friends when the dark-haired girl came in. A gust of cold air from the opening door caused him to turn, and suddenly there was this miraculously lovely creature, just a foot away. Most City women had a tendency to exaggerated self-assurance when they entered any room, be it pub or trading floor, but this one had a look of gentle wariness. Her eyes skimmed the busy wine bar, then she began to thread her way through the crowd of lunchtime drinkers. Simon craned his neck, curious to see who she was meeting, and saw her stop at a table by a pillar, where a bulky, middle-aged man with thinning fair hair, dressed in a chalk-stripe suit, was sitting, busy on his Blackberry. He looked up and got to his feet, slipping his phone into his pocket, smiling and saying something. They shook hands. Simon could see a plate of smoked salmon sandwiches and two champagne glasses on the table, and a half-bottle of champagne in an ice bucket. A romantic rendezvous, or a business meeting of the upper-end variety? It was hard to tell. The man took the girl’s coat and hung it on a nearby peg. She put a hand to her neck to lift her dark, silky hair away from her shoulders as she sat down. Simon was struck by the grace and fluidity of her movements, like those of a dancer.
‘Come on, Simon – Sauvignon or Pinot Grigio?’
Jeremy was waving the wine list in front of him. ‘What? Oh, just an orange juice for me, thanks. Got a meeting with clients this afternoon.’
‘Bor–ring.’ Jeremy turned back to the bar and his conversation with Clive, leaving Simon free to watch the dark-haired girl, and wonder about her.
Rachel’s first thought was that Andrew Garroway was a bit older and fatter than his online photo. Her disappointment made her feel faintly ashamed.