Plan B by Emily Barr Page A

warm?’
    ‘Yes it is,’ I told her. ‘Thank you very much. It’s fine. The builders should be arriving soon. Then we’ll see some differences. They’re going to take the heating out, for one thing. But for now it’s just fine. We have some furniture. We have beds.’
    ‘And the little one? She’s not with you?’
    ‘No,’ I told her, looking at the little boy who was returning my gaze with frank curiosity. ‘She’s at school. Is this your grandson?’
    ‘Yes. And my daughter.’
    We were all introduced to each other. The lady’s daughter was called Coco, and she was frighteningly chic. She was probably younger than me, and she was dressed in the same way that Bella dressed, in classic, clean, ironed clothes. Her long blonde hair hung to the middle of her back, and was obviously blow-dried every morning and cut every month. She wore make-up and she knew how to apply it. Her white shirt emphasised her tiny waist. Her black trousers hung down from her hips, as if she had no thighs. I envied everything about her. I was particularly jealous of the fact that she managed to keep herself beautiful while simultaneously being the mother of a two-year-old.
    Not only was she beautiful and intimidating, she was also friendly.
    ‘Come to see me,’ she told me. ‘Come for coffee. With your daughter.’
    ‘OK,’ I agreed nervously. ‘Wednesday? When Alice is off school?’
    She nodded and told me where she lived. I wondered whether I had made a friend. It could not, surely, have been that easy.
    Matt and I passed an idyllic day together. At lunchtime, we sat in the crêperie in the centre of town. We took the window table, and looked out at the square, leaden under the looming sky.
    ‘This is something,’ Matt said, grinning at me. ‘Yesterday I was at work, in Canary Wharf, the epitome of London capitalism. Today I’m sitting in a French crêperie, watching men in berets amble past with baguettes under their arms.’
    I followed his gaze. An old man was, indeed, doing exactly that. I looked around the square. Next to the ancient church, the bakery had a sign in ornate lettering, reading ‘Pâtisserie’. Next to that was the butcher’s shop. On the other side was a stone arcade over the pavement, with picture windows in the building above it. The windows had wrought-iron grilles across the bottom of them. Even though this was, by all accounts, the wettest and most miserable spring anyone could remember, St Paul was a stunning little town.
    ‘It is wonderful,’ I told him. ‘But you know I’d go back to Brighton like a shot.’
    Matt looked at me, eyebrows raised. ‘I know you would. Why, though? What can Brighton offer that St Paul can’t?’
    I laughed, but without meaning it. ‘Friends, mainly. Family not too far away. Handy for times when you have to stay away for eleven days.’
    ‘Sorry. I’ve said sorry. I wansn’t having any fun, you know that.’
    ‘I know. I shouldn’t harp about it. And I miss being able to walk to the shops. Brighton’s familiar. I know where things are and how they work. I can communicate without worrying that the nuances of what I’m saying are making me seem rude or stupid. I can walk into the post office without having to say hello to everybody in the queue. I’m not foreign, not on show all the time and representing a nation. I could relax there. But we’re doing OK here, aren’t we?’ I added this hastily, because my job was to look on the bright side.
    ‘We’re doing brilliantly. You are. Look how you made friends with that woman back there. And you know what? One day, when we’re all settled, I’ll sort out my job so I can do it from home most of the time, and after that . . .’ he smiled at me. ‘We’ll get married. Promise.’ He leaned forward. ‘I’ll tell you something. When we got here I gave myself a deadline for sorting it all out. A year. I knew I couldn’t hack this commute indefinitely. So I promise to have it all in order by next