Same Time Next Week

Chapter 55

‘I said I’d take you out to dinner when I sold my house,’ Erin said to Bon.

‘Firenze, though; too much,’ said Bon. It was the ‘in’ place around here: wonderful location, superb food, fabulous décor, eye-watering prices; an oasis of the real Italy in a corner of South Yorkshire.

‘Not too much. And I can easily afford it,’ she replied to that.

‘You’ve completed, already?’ he asked.

‘Not quite, but nearly. I’m slightly worried, Bon. They’ve knocked those houses up at a rate of knots. They’re probably held together by string.’

Bon laughed. They chose their food; their drinks and starters arrived and he waited for her to tell him why he was really here.

‘How’s things?’ she asked.

‘Good, nothing to report. And you?’

‘Yes, I’m good too.’

She chewed a prawn, swallowed, then sighed.

‘I’ve met someone,’ she said and he knew this was why they were here. Because it wasn’t straightforward, he guessed.

‘Am I allowed to ask who he… she is?’

‘A barrister, Alex.’ Then she clarified, because she realised that ‘Alex’ could be either male or female: ‘A man.’

‘Okay,’ said Bon. ‘And?’

‘I met him at the grief club.’

‘Ah, I see.’

Erin heard the note of concern in his voice, imagined his thoughts.

‘He’s not trying to plug up the space of someone who’s gone. He’s a lot more together than I am. Who isn’t?’ She dropped a hard laugh, Bon gave her a reprimanding look, then lifted his glass of wine and Erin thought how classy he made even such a simple action look. Bon van der Meer was a stick of rock with ‘gentleman’ written all the way through him.

‘The elevator-pitch version: we were getting on really well. I misread the signs. I didn’t go back to Molly’s club because I was already too far in and I just couldn’t face him, and then I got this forwarded to me a couple of days ago.’ She pulled the letter out of her bag and handed it over. Bon reached into his jacket pocket for his glasses, black heavy-framed; they couldn’t have suited his face more if they’d been designed around it. As he read, she watched his eyes follow Alex’s words, left to right, top to bottom.

‘What do you think I should do, Bon?’

Bon folded up the letter and handed it back.

‘You know what you want to do, Erin, you don’t need me to tell you. But if you feel you need to hear it, then all right: there are no guarantees in anything, but you shouldn’t let fear hold you back from taking your chance, because we only have one life and it shouldn’t be full of regrets.’

‘I did need to hear that from you,’ said Erin. ‘And I also want to take those words you’ve just given to me as a gift and give them back to you.’

‘Stop,’ he said, turning his head from her. ‘I will never take advantage of a young woman who, if she has any feeling for me at all, sees me as a father figure.’

‘If anyone sees you as a father figure they need therapy,’ Erin said to that. ‘And if you were, you’d be a FILF.’

‘Stop.’

‘I’ll stop if you start seeing Sky as a fully grown woman who knows her own mind and not some fragile wisp of a girl. I’ve got to know her so well over the past weeks. I might not be able to sort out my own love life, but I can spot two people who are perfect for each other.’

‘Eat your prawns.’

What a revelation it would be to see yourself through the eyes of others , said someone somewhere. For a man imbued with such wisdom, Erin thought, Bon van der Meer, in this, was borderline obtuse.

She reached over the table and put her fingers on his arm.

‘One last word on it, then I promise to leave it: there are no guarantees but don’t let fear hold you back either, my darling friend,’ she said.