Women of a Dangerous Age by Fanny Blake Page B

scale and Lou was wondering why on earth she had agreed to meet Hooker here, a place where she’d have to strain to hear a word. Perhaps that was indeed the answer. She was protecting herself against his expected anger.
    She had been surprised by how pleased her ex had seemed at hearing from her although, like Nic, he’d been un interested in her holiday beyond the fact that she’d come back in one piece. She had hoped her family might like to know what she’d got up to without them. Equally, she hoped he hadn’t interpreted the call, so soon after her return, as a sign that she had been missing him. She thought she’d detected a warmth in his voice that had been absent towards her for years. For a moment, her feelings towards him softenedbefore she told herself to get a grip. Old habits, she warned herself. That’s all it was.
    As soon as he realised that she wanted to meet him, he had suggested the Maryatt Arms, a pub she hadn’t visited for more years than she could count. Long ago, she came here with her brother Sam and his teammates after those dreaded university rugby matches. She used to stand with Jenny, shivering on the sidelines, united in their incomprehension at what was happening on the pitch, freezing to death, yelling their hearts out when Sam scored a try. The Maryatt Arms was where she’d first met her future husband. His keen sportsmanship was of course how he’d got his name. To everyone, including his family, he was ‘Hooker’. He’d caught her eye both on and off the pitch so when he offered her a drink and to educate her in the finer points of the game, she accepted. Wirier than some of his teammates, he had a certain twinkle in his eye that translated into a come-and-get-me charm. So she had gone and got him.
    Lou couldn’t begin to count the number of nights she’d whiled away in this place, first with Sam and the team, and later with Hooker when they’d continued to come here, long after the matches had stopped and the players had moved on to life after university. Convenient to the house that he was then sharing with three other would-be lawyers, the pub was warm compared to the unheated chill of home, and convivial since someone or other they knew would usually turn up of an evening. Since then, the place had changed. The old boys and locals who propped up the bar were long gone, turfed out in favour of gastro-pub splendour.
    She knew exactly where he’d be sitting. At the table by the fire, where thirty-something years ago (no, she couldn’t remember exactly: always a small bone of contention between them), he’d leaned across and asked her to marry him. Moments after accepting, she’d watched him get dragged off to a game of pool. Given the flak from his mother’s appalled reaction to the unromantic nature of his proposal, he’d taken Lou out to dinner and repeated it, organising the diamond engagement ring to be found in the bottom of her champagne glass. She accepted delightedly to a bored round of applause from three Turkish waiters.
    Now she thought about it, the romance that was so absent from his original proposal had been absent from most of their married life. They had loved one another, of that she was sure, but those early years devoted to their careers and babies made it hard to carve out pockets of time for themselves. Their separate jobs – hers as a fashion journalist, his as a corporate lawyer – took them travelling to opposite ends of the country and sometimes of the world, leaving a succession of overpaid nannies to hold the fort. The money she earned salved Lou’s conscience – at least she was paying for the best childcare possible when she was away. By the time she began working from home, when Jamie was fifteen, Nic thirteen and Tom ten, the original driving force had disappeared from their marriage altogether. Almost without them noticing, Lou and Hooker’s paths began