Once we'd paid for our food, we took our drinks out into the beer garden. The place was pretty busy, even on a Wednesday lunchtime outside school holidays, but we managed to find a table in the shade of, appropriately enough, an oak tree. Well, I was 90 percent certain it was an oak, anyhow. If I came back in the autumn and found it dropped conkers instead of acorns, I'd have to revise my opinion.
I cast a regretful eye at the couple sitting at the table next to us. They were laughing away, each with a glass of white wine beaded with condensation in the warm air. "Seems like there's something missing, having a pub lunch and just drinking Diet Coke."
"You mean like the alcohol?" Matt said, swinging his leg over the wooden bench.
"Not just that. It just seems more relaxed, somehow, having a glass of wine or beer or whatever floats your boat. Like sticking two fingers up at the world and saying sod it, I have no intention of even trying to achieve anything useful this afternoon, and I'm just fine with that."
Matt took a swig of his Coke, and I watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. "So are you?" he asked.
I blinked. "Am I what?"
"Going to achieve anything constructive this afternoon?"
"Oh-very doubtful, I'd say. I suppose I could go up to London and fetch some more of my stuff-we're putting the house on the market; it'll have to be cleared-but I'm out tonight, so it makes the time a bit tight." I shied away, as I had done several times before, from telling him I did karate. It wasn't that I thought Matt would think it was weird or just really not me or anything-but ever since I'd got my black belt, it'd felt like bragging to bring up the subject. Like I was showing off about it. I didn't want him thinking I was that immature. "It'd be a right pain to be stuck in traffic on the M25 and not get back soon enough," I continued, then swatted away an unusually calorie-conscious wasp that had started taking an interest in my Diet Coke. "Thought it was a bit early for these."
"Ah, but you're down south now. We get summer earlier here."
"Bollocks! North London is hardly the Arctic Circle. And the Solent is definitely not the Mediterranean."
"Yeah, shame, that." Matt ducked his head over his drink for a moment, then looked up again. "Why'd you move to London-if you don't mind me asking? I mean, you're from around here originally, aren't you?"
I shrugged. "Well, Winchester, so just up the road. London just seemed the place to be-careers-wise, I mean. And it was where Kate wanted to live." Actually, I couldn't remember her ever saying that out loud-she'd just more or less assumed we'd go to London when we graduated, and I'd been happy enough to go along with that.
"Do you miss it? I mean, is it all really slow and boring down here?"
I looked around for a moment at the sunny beer garden, bordered with well-established trees and full of happy people, none of whom were dressed in designer suits or tapping away on their Blackberries. The air was rich with cut grass, beer, hot food and a sort of earthy smell I supposed must be the forest itself. A sparrow darted down not three feet from me to pounce on a crumb left by a previous diner. "God, no. This is brilliant."
The waitress arrived with our food, and I stared in disbelief at half a pig's worth of sausages and a metric tonne of mashed potato. "Are you sure you're a vegetarian?" I asked Matt. "Because I could really do with some help here."
"I'll take some of the mash off your hands," Matt said, not waiting for me to agree but leaning across the table to scoop up a generous portion with his fork. "They do a great mash here."
They did, too. As I tucked in, my taste buds began to regret giving half of it away, although I knew my stomach would thank me for it later.
After the first few forkfuls, I forced myself to get down to business. "So, you and Steve," I said. "Do you, er, go out much? Evenings, I mean. To, you know"-I dropped my voice-"gay bars."
Matt shrugged. "A bit." He ducked his head. "Steve likes to stay in more. Or go out with his mates."
"Where do you go, when you do go out? I mean," I added hurriedly, "are there a lot of gay bars in Southampton? Or, you know, the New Forest?"
Matt looked up again. I hoped I wasn't blushing. "Oh-there's a few. Not that many, but you wouldn't expect it, would you? It's not like Brighton. No, there's a couple of places we go to-when we want to go to that sort of place. There's the Cock in Jeffrey Street, and El Niño in the town centre. But the Cock's a bit cruisey, really, and El Niño's always full of posers." He grinned suddenly. "Luke likes it there."