Perfectly Ordinary People(31)

For the first time I saw the obvious advantage of living together. No more goodbyes. No more doubts about when we’d next manage to meet. No more, ‘So! This is me . . .’

Feeling choked up almost to the point of tears, I let him hug me.

‘Are you really going to schlep out to Walthamstow just to give your mother those tarts?’ he asked.

I thought about the drizzle and dragging my suitcase through puddles and began to hesitate. I could always get a taxi to theirs from the Tube station, I supposed, but all the same.

‘Too slow!’ Dan said. ‘You’re going to go straight home and scoff them, aren’t you?’

‘Maybe,’ I replied. ‘I am struggling to motivate myself to go out there.’

‘Buggles’ll be happier if you go straight home,’ Dan said helpfully. ‘He must be missing you like crazy.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I think you’ve convinced me.’

‘In which case, you should probably give me half,’ Dan said.

‘Half what?’

‘Half the tarts.’

‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘No, I’m not really going to eat them. I’ll just take them out to Mum’s tomorrow. They’ll survive an extra day.’

‘They’ll be stale,’ Dan said.

‘Mum’s Irish. She’s never eaten a Pastéis de Nata. I’ll just say that’s how they’re supposed to be.’

We started to go our separate ways, but then I turned and called Dan back. ‘Thank you for that,’ I said. ‘I had a brilliant time. Really.’

‘You don’t hate me then?’ he said, slipping into a grin.

I shook my head. ‘Nah. Saving that for later.’

‘Good,’ he said.

‘And you?’

‘Quite the contrary,’ he said.

And to my shame, all I did was nod. ‘See you soon then,’ I croaked. And as tears welled up, I powered off towards the Victoria line, trundling my suitcase behind me. I didn’t look back once.

The next morning I woke up to the beep-beep of text messages arriving on my Nokia. Thanks to Buggles, I’d slept really badly.

Though my neighbour had been in to visit him, feed him and cuddle him twice a day, he’d been so overjoyed at my return that he had massaged me for much of the night while purring at full volume. When this had failed to elicit a response, he’d moved on to licking and even biting my nose.

Once I had a mug of coffee in my hand, I moved to the sofa, where Buggles jumped on my lap.

I attempted to focus on my mobile phone. The first text was from Dan at 6.24. It read, ‘Morning, sexy. Missing you like crazy already. When’s the next saucy siesta?’

I replied, ‘NOW? COME OVER!’ and a few minutes later he replied, ‘Soz. At work. It’s a nightmare. Laters.’

The second text was from Jake, offering to meet me for breakfast at Ed’s in Soho, an American-style diner he favoured. ‘We’ll be there from 10–11.30 if you’re interested,’ the message read.

It was gone eleven by the time I got to Ed’s, and Jake and Abby were already eating.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ I said. ‘I woke up late. I think I have jet lag. But I’m here!’

‘Can you get jet lag from Portugal?’ Abby asked.

‘No,’ Jake said, speaking through a mouthful of pancake. ‘But don’t worry. She does know that.’

‘Oh,’ Abby said, looking confused. ‘Anyway, we’re the ones who are sorry, aren’t we? We’re sorry for starting without you. But that’s my fault. I was starving.’

‘We both were,’ Jake said. ‘And I’m not sorry at all.’

I ordered a full veggie breakfast from a girl with a fake American accent and then told them all about Faro while I waited.

Once my own breakfast arrived, I listened, while I ate, to their discussion about wedding plans.

Jake explained that they’d decided to have a civil ceremony in a register office, but were going the whole hog afterwards.

‘D’you mean circle dancing and jiggling you around on chairs?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, the hora and everything,’ Jake said. ‘Dad’s gonna love it.’

‘Luckily my lot aren’t believers or anything,’ Abby said. ‘But they sure do love to party.’

I smirked at that, and Abby asked me why.

‘She’s imagining the mayhem of our lot dancing with your lot,’ Jake said. ‘Or fighting them.’ Then, turning to me, ‘Am I right?’

‘I was actually imagining a combined hora and Irish jig,’ I told him. ‘Could you circle dance to jig music?’

‘You can hora to just about anything,’ Abby said. ‘And I’d say they’re pretty close. So if you want to bring along some Irish fiddlers, they can jam with our Jewish ones. It could be fun.’

‘The more fiddlers the merrier,’ Jake said, raising an eyebrow.

Once we’d all finished eating, I asked the question that had been bugging me my entire holiday; why did I know so little about my grandparents?

‘Well, they came after the war, didn’t they?’ Jake said, as though this was everything anyone could need to know.

‘What year though?’ I asked. ‘I’ve been trying to work out how old Dad was when he arrived.’