Anna is still speaking to people by the stage, and I watch as she kisses a smartly dressed older woman on the cheek. Slowly, they start to walk out, close but not touching. As she sees me, she makes her excuses and walks to where I am standing.
“Hello,” she says. She does not smile but she does not frown. Something in between.
“Hi,” I say, and I blush, and it is as if we are meeting for the first time. What is remarkable—so striking that I have to take a second furtive look—is to see how little she has changed, how beautiful she still is.
“You look very well,” she says.
“So do you,” I say, and I want to hug her but I don’t, and keep my hands down by my side.
As we walk out toward the lobby, I steal a few looks at her again. Her hair is longer than I remember and she is a little thinner, toned, I assume from all the marathon running.
“Would you mind giving me fifteen minutes to say hello to a few people, and I’ll meet you back here? Is that okay?”
“Of course,” I say. “Are you sure that’s enough time? I don’t mind waiting longer.”
“Have you been to an accountancy convention before, Rob?”
“No.”
“I have,” she says without smiling. “I’ll meet you in fifteen.”
I wait in the lobby, my hands clammy with sweat. After exactly fifteen minutes, Anna appears in her coat, carrying a laptop bag over her shoulder.
“I’m ready. Are you hungry?”
“I am a bit.”
“There’s a decent Thai place around the corner. Fancy it?”
“Sounds great.”
For a few moments, we walk in silence. It is like the first time we met, at Lola’s party in Cambridge, and how I was so desperately trying to think of something to say. “So how was the conference?”
“Oh, you know. Has to be done.”
“Are you working here in London now?”
“Mostly. I’m just consulting. And you? Are you still living down in Cornwall?”
“Yes,” I say, and we walk on in silence because, now, suddenly, I don’t know what to say.
The restaurant is the sort of place we would have come to in our London lives, the type of light, finicky food we both used to like. We sit in a corner booth on austere wooden benches, the walls hemming us in like a crypt.
“It’s strange to see you after all this time,” Anna says. “I feel a bit nervous to be honest.”
“Yeah, me too. Sorry, I’m being a bit of a freak. It is nice to see you, though.”
“It is,” Anna says. She smiles but it is a sad smile, and I don’t know what it means. She looks down at her menu. “So are you ready to order?”
“Sure,” I say, although I have barely looked. As I choose my food, I glance at her hands and notice that she is not wearing a wedding ring.
“I’m surprised you didn’t know it was me,” she says after the waiter takes our order.
“How do you mean?”
“Chatting on Hope’s Place.”
“Oh,” I say. “I had no idea to be honest.”
“Really?” Anna says, because she had always loved parlor games, charades. “I was convinced you would guess, especially after I mentioned the goggles in the bath.”
“No, not at all. I really didn’t. If you hadn’t given yourself away, I wouldn’t have known. Although, when I thought about it afterward, the name of your daughter, Lucy, did make sense.”
Lucy, the name Anna had given to the second child we had lost.
The waiter puts down our drinks. A glass of wine for Anna, a water for me.
“I’m really glad you’re not drinking anymore,” Anna says after the waiter left.
“So am I,” I say, but it stings a little. The drunk who doesn’t like being told they are a drunk. There is a silence, a familiar silence. The silence across the kitchen table after Jack had gone.
“So,” I say, taking a drink of my sparkling water and daring to look her in the eyes for the first time. “I know I’ve said it before, but I wanted to say sorry in person. I said some unforgivable things to you, about Jack, about the treatment in Prague. Unforgivable. I just lost it, with the booze, with everything. I know that’s no excuse and I don’t expect you to forgive me. But I do want to apologize. I really am so, so sorry...”
Anna pauses and then lets out a deep breath, as if she has been holding it in. “Thank you, Rob. It means a lot to me to hear you say that.” Her tone was formal, still a little cold. “So, yes, I accept your apology.”
“Thank you. That’s very generous of you. Really.”
Anna shrugged. “Life’s too short, right? We know that better than anyone.”
The appetizers arrive. Little spring rolls with whiskers of carrots protruding at the ends. Anna looks down at her plate, as if she is deciding whether to start.
“I won’t lie to you, it hurt me a lot, when you said those things,” Anna says. “About the clinic, about how we could have saved Jack and...” She stops herself and then wipes her mouth with her napkin. “Anyway, sorry, we don’t need to go over all that again. I certainly didn’t come here to berate you.”
In recent weeks, more details have emerged about the clinic. Relatives and parents of former patients have come forward, many of them seeking compensation. A former nurse went to the media and revealed details about what the staff called “dosing up.” They would give patients small quantities of morphine and steroids to simulate a clinical response to the immuno-engineering. I remember all the drugs Dr. Sladkovsky gave Jack—the little pots he used to bring, the pills I saw him slipping on Jack’s tongue.
“It’s ironic, isn’t it,” I say, “that
