Page 75 of The Wedding Game

‘It’ll all be OK.’

‘Thanks,’ he says.

You put your head on mine and you kissed my hair. That’s what I really want to say.You leaned in to kiss me, changed your mind and told me we couldn’t be friends. I really liked you.But I don’t say any of that. Instead I ask, ‘What are you and your Tinder swipe up to this weekend?’

‘Pah,’ he laughs. ‘You just made me snort coffee. And it wasn’t bloody Tinder. But let’s change names to protect the innocent. Tinder Swipe and I are going to the Rockefeller Center because there’s an exhibition she wants to see.

‘That sounds lovely. Did you ever take her ice-skating there, like you did with me?’ I ask.

‘Er … no.’

I immediately pick up on his caginess. ‘Why not?’

‘I’d pre-booked those tickets.’

‘I don’t understand,’ I say.

‘I pre-booked those tickets for Tinder Swipe.’ He laughs briefly at how he’s started using that name.

My mouth drops open. ‘What?’

‘You were going home and I realised I’d been neglectful,’ Chris goes on. ‘So my grand plan to take her ice-skating got replaced by an emergency night out with you and, because I had the tickets already, ice-skating seemed like a good idea.’

‘You took me on a date that was meant forsomeone else?’

‘It wasn’t a date. With you, I mean.’

‘You know what I mean,’ I tell him.

‘I felt guilty that we hadn’t spent much time together. I had ice-skating tickets. It wasn’t meant to be anything more than that. Please don’t read anything further into it.’

I inhale and exhale. ‘I think I preferred it when we were saying “kind regards” to each other. Can we go back to that?’

‘Yeah,’ he sighs. ‘If you want to.’

‘I don’t want to really,’ I say.

‘I’m sorry I suggested we go radio-silent on each other. It was a rash decision. We need to be able to communicate.’

‘It was done with good intentions,’ I spring to his defence, although why, I’m not sure.

‘My gran says the path to hell is lined with good intentions,’ Chris muses.

‘Your gran is a wise woman.’

I can hear the smile in his voice. ‘She is,’ he says, then tells me how she used to love photography when she was young and how she met his grandad, who was a picture-framer. I’mgrateful Chris is switching up the conversation, that we’re continuing on so naturally. I don’t think I realised how much I missed him until now. He asks about my grandparents, and I tell him how they grew up in the same town in Hertfordshire and met each other at a bus stop. I tell him about where I was raised, and he does the same, until we’ve been talking about anything and everything for hours. The bath I had planned to run never gets run, Scarlet comes home, clanging the stiff door lock and waves at me, before disappearing into her room to FaceTime the gardener from Leith. When I next look at my watch I see it’s 9 p.m. and I tell Chris as much. I’m starving.

‘We’ve been talking for three hours,’ he exclaims. ‘I need to get back on with some work. What are you doing with the rest of your Friday night?’

‘That was pretty much it,’ I say. ‘It’s a rare weekend off from Josh, so I’m in my flat.’

‘A weekend off?’ he queries. ‘Like day-release?’

‘No,’ I reply. ‘He’s at a farming event. I have no idea what it entails.’

‘Are you at his every weekend?’ Chris asks.

‘Mostly, yeah, or else we wouldn’t see each other.’

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