The Vintage Summer Wedding by Jenny Oliver Page B

think it’s the sun. Look, it was really nice to catch up. I mean it. Enjoy your evening. Sorry. Bye.’ She picked her bag up and thrust it under her arm, taking a couple of steps backwards as he watched her through narrowed eyes, then raised a hand in a salute goodbye.
    ‘Bye,’ she said again, and turned to make a tottering dash for the tube. Barely pausing to look at Eros again, or the buses, or Regent Street, or to smell the air and absorb the heady bustle. But her eye caught one looming building, its gothic spire thrust up into the sky, the mullioned windows dark and lifeless, the big metal doors locked tight. The Waldegrave, in all its magnificent, bankrupt glory, now just a ghost of a former life.
    As she got to the stairs of the Underground, she started to jog, holding onto the banister to steady herself in her heels. The tourists were suddenly an annoyance, blocking the path, not getting out of her way, messing up their Oyster card transactions so she had to wait in line, tapping her foot.
    All she could think was, I have to get home. Whatever happens with the job, I have to go home. Seb cannot find out about Luke. It was a mistake to see him. Sitting across the table from him, as he talked about Tinder and her relationship, felt suddenly like the worst betrayal, one she wished she could suck back in.
    Sitting on the Tube, she counted the stops, it wasn’t moving quick enough. By the time she swapped to a train, she was tapping her fingers on her bag in her lap. She flicked through the free newspaper, but couldn’t concentrate so stared out the window willing it to move faster. Until finally, finally, they rattled into Nettleton Station. The familiar wooden-slatted station building with its intricate white cornicing, the closed ticket office with its blind pulled down, the little coffee stand ‒ an off-shoot of Rachel’s bakery ‒ locked up for the night, baskets of petunias, geraniums and pansies, carefully tended, hanging along the platform.
    Just get home, her mind was chanting. Her feet were raw now from the Jimmy Choos and crying out for her to stand still, but something was making her feel like she was running out of time.
    There was no taxi in the rank, just a phone on the wall that would connect her directly to the cab company.
    ‘Bruce is five minutes away, Anna. He’ll be right with you,’ said Pam from Pam’s Taxis. How she knew who Anna was, Anna had no clue.
    She took her shoes off and stood on the patch of grass in front of the station, waiting for Bruce who, when he pulled up, got out of the car to open the door for her.
    ‘Lovely evening, isn’t it?’ Bald Bruce mused from the driver’s seat as he snaked his way to her house at a fifteen mile per hour crawl. ‘Been anywhere nice?’
    ‘Just London.’
    ‘I don’t get to the city much. The wife does, loves the theatre. Sees everything. How’s your dad?’
    ‘Fine, I think,’ she said, drumming her fingers on the leather seats, then throwing five pounds fifty at him as he was still pulling up outside her indecently drooping roses and legged it barefoot up the path.
    ‘Hi, honey. Seb?’ She called to what seemed like a strangely empty house. ‘I’m home. Sorry I was late. I—’
    Seb was sitting on the sofa in the living room, tie off, collar undone, glass of something clear on the table. From what she knew they owned, it was either water or vodka and it was lacking the off-white colour of their tap water. His hands were clasped in front of him.
    When he looked up, his eyes were flat and hard and she felt like one of his pupils hauled into his office, not sure what their crime was but running through a list of excuses in their head, ready for any eventuality.
    ‘Luke rang.’ Seb said, his voice bland.
    ‘Who?’ As soon as she said, it she rolled her eyes at herself.
    ‘Seemingly your date for this evening.’
    Anna licked her lips.
    ‘You left your phone. In your hurry to get home, you left your phone at wherever it was