Chapter 2 #2
Moira visibly swallowed. ‘No…’ She cleared her throat. ‘I know I can’t come with you.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because… it wouldn’t be right. That’s why I agreed to come and have dinner with you tonight, because it did feel right that I explained this face-to-face.’
Angus was genuinely perplexed. Didn’t every couple go travelling with each other these days? Wasn’t it as essential as having pre-marital sex to make sure that they were compatible?
‘I really like you, Angus,’ Moira continued in a rush. ‘I thought it might turn into something more than a friendship, you know?’
No. He didn’t know. As far as he was concerned they’d walked out of any purely friendship zone the first time he’d invited her out to lunch.
You didn’t date friends. You certainly didn’t go to bed with them.
Not in his world anyway, although, to be fair, he didn’t have that many people he considered to be good friends.
He did have what he thought was a healthy social life.
He had numerous business contacts that were happy to meet for a drink.
Old schoolmates. Ex-girlfriends when things had ended amicably.
People whose company he enjoyed. But there was nobody he would particularly miss if they fell off the planet.
What did constitute the definition of a friend, exactly?
He tuned back in to what Moira was saying, though he knew he’d missed the start of it.
‘…and that’s when I realised what was happening. Just one date and we were falling in love…’
Wait… what?
Unconsciously, Angus pulled his hand from where it was still lying on the table.
He rubbed his chin, as if that might help him make sense of what he was hearing, which seemed to be a breathless account of how Moira had hooked up with a motorbike courier, Douglas, who delivered most of their important documents.
He shifted slightly in his seat in his discomfort but that only made it worse.
The presence of the ring in his pocket wasn’t reassuring now – it was more like a riff of mocking laughter.
He was even aware of the shape of the folded boarding passes for the flight to France, also in his pocket, because he’d printed them to show Moira.
Over dessert, maybe, so that they could talk about how much they were looking forward to this holiday.
‘It was like being swept up in a tornado. You know, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz?’
Angus cleared his throat, trying to refocus on what she was saying. ‘I… don’t quite follow…’
‘I didn’t know, because it’s never happened to me before but that’s what falling in love feels like.
’ She laughed softly. ‘So it’s not falling at all, really, is it?
That makes it sound like you’ve tripped over something that shouldn’t have been in the way and it’s nothing like that.
You know, don’t you, when it’s meant to be? ’
Angus was frowning even more fiercely now. ‘No,’ he said, a little curtly. ‘I don’t believe I do.’
He’d thought he did. He’d thought he was making a carefully considered, sensible choice that was clearly the correct one for himself.
‘Oh…’
Comprehension was dawning and it made Moira’s eyes shine as if sudden tears were accumulating. He also noticed that her skin looked quite radiant in the light from the candles on their table. She looked more beautiful than she ever had before, in fact. How ironic was that?
‘That’s so sad,’ she said, with feeling. ‘How old are you again, Angus? Nearly forty?’
‘Thirty-seven.’ The correction was clipped.
‘And you’ve never fallen in love?’
‘Erm…’ Angus couldn’t find any real words.
Up until now he’d felt quite proud that he’d never experienced the form of madness that so many novels and movies made such a fuss about.
Who, in their right mind, would want to be swept up in a tornado like the one Moira was floating in, anyway?
He remembered it being quite traumatic for Dorothy.
And it had turned his father’s life into rollercoaster loops of ecstasy and despair that had made Angus’s later childhood and adolescence disturbingly unpredictable.
‘You will.’ Moira was beaming at him.
Beaming.
Moira never beamed. She had a lovely smile but it had never looked quite like this.
Aye… she was in love all right. He recognised the glow that was a symptom of the madness.
Even now, so far past his own upbringing, he could remember the feeling of something inside him dropping like the proverbial lead balloon.
Because he knew that the dismal swoop into heartbreak was inevitable after reaching that pinnacle.
It was a matter of when, not if. He could, in fact, actually feel an echo of it with the knot that was forming in his gut.
‘You just need to meet the right person.’ Moira was looking and sounding like some version of an overly sympathetic counsellor.
‘Someone that makes anywhere in the world suddenly feel like the most exciting place on earth – as if you could never get enough of it. Or them…’ She pushed her chair back abruptly and stood up.
‘I have to go. I’m so sorry, Angus, but I can’t have dinner with you, any more than I can go on holiday with you. ’
It was automatic for Angus to get to his feet as well. His father had trained him well in good manners around women.
‘No hard feelings?’ Moira’s face was a plea, as she stood on tiptoe to give him a kiss. On his cheek. ‘I still want to work for you. If you still want me to, that is.’
‘No hard feelings.’ But the echo of her words came out through gritted teeth.
Was Moira really oblivious to the silence that had fallen around them?
The hum of conversation and the clink of cutlery against fine bone china had vanished as everyone in the room stopped talking and eating to watch what was clearly an emotional drama unfolding in the far corner.
Nobody behaved like this in the dining room of The Edinburgh Grand.