Just then, the waiter brought our wine and I whipped it up as soon as he’d laid it down on the table, taking three large, syrupy gulps. Montepulciano or not, wine had never tasted better.
‘That’s right,’ I said to Rosamund. ‘It’s actually very popular – we get excellent viewing figures, especially at peak daytime hours.’
‘All those housewives,’ remarked Peter. ‘With nothing better to do than watch television, I suppose.’
‘That’s true, we do sell a lot of family-oriented holidays,’ Isaid, aware that this was all going down like a lead balloon. ‘So you’ll get mums at home with their little ones watching, that sort of thing.’
Sophie snorted.
‘You weren’t one of those, were you, Mum?’ piped up Daisy.
‘One of what, darling?’ said Sophie with the snippy undertone I’d noticed she adopted every time she spoke to her daughter.
‘A stay-at-home mum,’ replied Daisy, plonking her empty glass down on the table.
I looked at her out of the corner of my eye, wondering whether Daisy and I could actually be comrades in this. She seemed to dislike her family as much as I was starting to. Which perhaps wasn’t fair of me, since I’d known them for all of an afternoon. But I was very good at picking up on ‘vibes’. Lou teased me about this wild claim of mine, said it was paranoia, not vibes, but I disagreed: if somebody didn’t like me (which had happened relatively frequently over the years, for reasons I still couldn’t explain), it was very obvious to me, no matter how well they tried to cover it up. And my overwhelming feeling about the Leveson-Gowers was that they weren’t exactly welcoming me into their family with open arms.
The thing was, though, I was marrying Nick – I was kind of going to be stuck with them, wasn’t I? And so, to make things easier all round, I was going to have to pull out all the stops and find a connection. I’d treat it like work, perhaps – even if it took years, I could just keep chipping away at it, doing my best. Which took focus and commitment – both of which were threatened by the arrival of Aidan, who annoyingly had dominated almost every single thought I’d had since the moment I’d walked into the restaurant. Icould picture him sitting there at his table for one, metres away, could imagine his mind whirring with all the things he wanted to say, or, more likely, didn’t know how to say. Like why he’d stopped calling. Why he’d left me out of the blue. How the heady feeling that we were falling for each other – not just me for him, but him for me – must have been a figment of my imagination.
‘Some of us had actual careers to pursue, Daisy,’ said Sophia. ‘It’s a given, is it, that women will give up everything they’ve worked towards just because they have a baby? That they can’t possibly expect to have both?’
‘Quite right, Sophia,’ said Rosamund. ‘You tell them.’
‘Who’s them?’ asked Peter. ‘I hope you’re not talking about us men. I’m all for women getting back in to the workplace.’
Sure you are, I thought. I bet he couldn’t possibly do without his secretary.
‘And you’re a wonderful mother, Sophia, isn’t she Nick?’ simpered Rosamund.
What was it with those two?
Nick nodded obediently. ‘Of course she is.’
‘Do you think you two will have children?’ asked Sophia, directing the question at me rather than Nick. She was staring at me so hard that I felt as though I had lasers drilling into me.
My heart sank. How to answer? Because the truth was, I still wasn’t sure if that was what I wanted. I’d thought something might click once I turned thirty, like I’d suddenly start feeling broody, or being interested in other people’s kids, or not minding when I got seated behind a baby on a flight and finding it cute rather than irritating. But I was thirty-one now and that hadn’t happened and what if it never did?
‘We’ll see,’ said Nick, jumping in to rescue me. ‘Plenty of time.’
I didn’t have to make any decisions yet, did I? I had to get my head around the idea of marriage first, and once I’d successfully got through that (although I was already dreading the coming together of Nick’s family and my mum and dad), then I’d give children some serious thought.
‘Hmmmn,’ said Sophia. ‘You mustn’t leave it too long, Maddie. So many friends of mine made that mistake and now they’re struggling down the IVF route.’
She was older than me – in her early forties – so possibly the fact that I was younger was riling her.
I looked over my shoulder before I could stop myself. Aidan was still at his table, looking wistfully into his glass as though he had the problems of the world on his shoulders. He’d always had that look about him, I remembered that was one of the first things I’d noticed. He gave the impression that his mind was full, that he was considering something, planning something, trying to work something out. I wondered what he was thinking about right now. And then he looked up and caught my eye and I sort of knew.
Because I was startled, I think, I let myself hold his gaze for a second before whipping my head round so fast I gave myself neck ache. I rubbed at it with the palm of my hand, trying desperately to tune in to a conversation about which starter we were all having. Somebody was going for squid; somebody else for the consommé.
The menu, I’d look at the menu, that would buy me some time, give me a moment to get my head together. My cheeks felt flushed and my heart was racing, and even though I felt as though my head was going to explode, I hoped it wouldn’t be obvious to anyone else, particularly Nick, because how would I even begin to explain?
And so I focused hard on the words swimming in front of me with Aidan’s face annoyingly stamped in my mind’s eye.
Loch Lomond, Scotland
Two Years Earlier
Lodging the clipboard with our running order on it under one arm, I used my free hand to hold the boom above Ruthie’s head while Lou checked out how the shot looked on camera.