Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
Lewis smiled nervously as he got up to greet Gracie at the bar at Zitas. She noticed his fitted blue jumper. She had always said how much she liked him in it. He had shaved, too, and she detected the swoon-inducing aftershave that he had been wearing the very night they met.
‘Hey,’ he said softly, handing her a bunch of daffodils, her ‘favourite flower in the whole world’.
‘Thanks.’ She held them to her chest.
‘You look beautiful.’ He moved to kiss her but she turned her head away. Feeling she had been foolish to agree to meet him so soon, she had an overwhelming urge to just run.
Suddenly faced with her future, Gracie felt far from beautiful. She felt sad, scared, unhappy and angry all at the same time. Why couldn’t life just give her a break? Just a teeny tiny one. It didn’t need to be a side-splitting guffaw of a break; an ongoing smile for a few months or so would do.
Here she was standing in front of the man to whom she had given seven years of her life. The man she had so wanted to be the father of her children. And suddenly he seemed like a stranger. She was thirty-eight years old, childless and at a crossroads in her life with no idea in which direction to turn.
The smart Italian waiter saw them to their table and pulled out her chair. With a heavy heart and a watery-eyed ‘thank you’, she took a deep breath and sat down.