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set and the tea-light candles that she had scattered around the room flickered softly. Florence & The Machine was playing in the background.
Nat topped Ben’s and her glasses up again. The bottle was nearly gone now. I felt desperate for her. I wanted to go and give her a big hug. Plus I was starving and Pip was thrashing around inside me, complaining about the delay to her dinner.
“Do you think we should eat?” I finally asked when it was close to nine. I thought I was going to collapse if I didn’t eat soon.
“Yeah, I suppose we’d better – no point in letting it all go to waste.” She sighed.
Ben uncorked the bottle we had brought over with us and handed a glass to Nat.
Although she hadn’t said it, I had seen Nat phoning Will twice more but he hadn’t answered.
“Are you –” I was interrupted by the buzzer.
Nat rushed over to it and pressed the button to sound the intercom.
“I’m so sorry, Nat!” Will was panting on the other end.
She buzzed him up and went out into the hallway to let him in.
“I’m so sorry!” I could hear him saying to her over and over again breathlessly.
They came in the door then.
“Sorry, guys – I hope you weren’t hungry?” he said. “It was Noah’s birthday party today and of course some of the parents didn’t get the brief that the party was over at six and we couldn’t get rid of them. Cue fourteen overtired, screaming four-year-olds and, even worse, their hyperactive parents getting excited at the sniff of free wine and the chance to compare every mundane milestone in their kids’ lives! I’m so sorry.” He turned to look at Nat forlornly. He gently brushed a piece of hair out of her eyes. A look passed between them. Ben and myself might as well not have been in the room.
I wondered what lies he had told his wife to get here. ‘Sorry, darling, I promised to meet some of the lads for a few drinks’ ? Or maybe, ‘ Sorry, darling, I’ve got to entertain some clients who are in London for the weekend’ ? I don’t think ‘Sorry, darling, I’m going to meet my mistress and her friends for a quick bite to eat’ would have washed somehow.
“Well, don’t worry, you’re just in time. We haven’t started yet. Here –” She handed him a glass of wine before hurrying into the kitchen to put the pork belly back in the oven to warm it up again. She started plating up the now cold starter of fried halloumi with cherry tomatoes. We all sat down around the circular table.
“God, this is good,” I said through a mouthful. “You can nearly taste the sunshine from those tomatoes. Where did you get them?”
“In the market up the road.”
“Did you see the footie today, Ben?” Will asked. He was necking back the wine – he’d only been here for five minutes and already his glass was empty.
“No, I didn’t get to see it – myself and Kate were out looking at buggies.”
After breakfast we had decided to tackle the minefield that was buggy-shopping. Ben had done a lot of research into the different types of buggies – manoeuvrability, ease of folding and tyre specs – but I, being a bit more shallow, just cared about what looked best. We had gone to a nursery store to road-test a few before we made up our minds.
An awkward silence lapsed between the two men.
“So how did the meeting go yesterday?” Nat turned to Will.
“It was a fucking nightmare. The whole thing is a mess – it ended up being complete carnage and old Smithy was shown the door.”
“No way!”
“But I told them that was what was going to happen – our customers don’t want to deal with a computer interface no matter how ‘real time’ it is. These are people that are investing a lot of money with us and they want to get a real person on the other end of the phone to answer their questions, no matter what time of the bloody day or night it is.”
Nat was nodding in agreement.
“We’ve spent millions on installing this system and no one wants to use it now!” Will went on. “The
Karl Jones, Michelle Hughes, Amp