Chapter 5
Eve cycled along the Banbury Road and turned left into North Parade, where she stood her bike up against the wall in the alley next to the produce store.
She glanced down briefly at the baskets of apples on the bench in front of the window before opening the shop door.
Mackenzie was coming for dinner this evening on her own – without her boyfriend, Simon – which Eve was really looking forward to.
Not that she had anything against Simon.
He was a nice man – a really nice man, in fact.
But it wasn’t often that she got her daughter all to herself.
Of course this was a pity visit, Eve knew that.
Julia, Rich’s fiancée, had asked Mackenzie to be her maid of honour and the two of them had been in cahoots for months about everything, from dresses to venues to wedding cakes.
In less than a month, Mackenzie would be walking down the aisle behind Julia, who had just had her twenty-week scan and had told Mackenzie she was having a little girl, which had made the baby, the wedding – all of it – seem far more real, somehow.
Eve was glad her daughter cared enough about her to recognise that she might be finding it all a bit hard, but she wanted this to be the nicest of evenings and she was determined to keep her feelings to herself.
Mackenzie was delighted at the thought of having a little sister, and Eve knew that in time she, too, would get used to the idea of Rich being a father again.
In a year from now, she would probably be buying wool from the yarn shop next door to the produce store and knitting cute little cardigans for the baby (who was going to be called Daisy).
In the meantime, she would buy the best ingredients and cook spaghetti bolognese, Mackenzie’s favourite meal, and she’d say, ‘Be careful. The sauce is hot,’ the way she always used to when Mackenzie was little, which was guaranteed to make her daughter smile.
They’d drink a little too much wine together and she’d let Mackenzie get out her make-up box and do smoky eyes for her and put the photos on Facebook, even if Eve started laughing as she’d done the last time, when her make-up had streaked and she’d looked like a clown.
‘Hello, Eve. How are you?’ said Pete, the shop owner, from behind the counter as she entered. ‘What are you after?’
‘Some mince for a bolognese.’
‘Sure. Help yourself.’
Eve opened the fridge and selected a pack of grass-fed beef, which she knew would have been locally sourced.
She then selected three artisan cheeses, some spelt sourdough and a large bulb of chicory to make a salad, then tapped her bank card against the card machine as Pete held it out.
She turned to leave, conscious that the shop doorbell had rung while she was being served and that another customer was waiting, but then she remembered she’d need herbs.
She had some dried basil, but that was all.
‘I don’t suppose you sell oregano?’ she asked, turning back towards the counter.
‘Sorry.’ Pete shook his head. ‘You could try the nine-to-nine on the corner.’
‘Thanks. I will.’ Eve turned again, stepping aside for the man behind her. As she did so, he moved in the same direction.
‘Sorry,’ they both said together, and their eyes met for a second or two. He wasn’t wearing glasses this time, but she could see it was him – the man from the bookshop. Blackwell’s. The one she’d bumped into in the Norrington Room.
The man backed away, looking awkward, then shot her a faint smile of recognition. Eve responded with the briefest of smiles before pushing her purchases into her rucksack and opening the door to the street.
‘Hello again,’ she heard Pete say. ‘What can I get you?’
So, he’s local, Eve thought to herself as she shut the door behind her, and then it crossed her mind that if she really wanted to – which, of course, she didn’t – she could go back to the shop tomorrow and ask Pete about him.
But she wouldn’t. Why would she?
Maybe because … well, it seemed … serendipitous?
Didn’t it? To have never met someone before and then to bump into them twice in the same week.
Both times, she’d been feeling a little low, a little overlooked, a little invisible.
And then he’d appeared and he’d … seen her.
They’d seen each other. And there was something there – something between them – wasn’t there?
Some kind of chemistry? A connection of sorts?
Eve, she reprimanded herself, tutting out loud as she collected her bicycle from the alley and wheeled it down the street to the shop on the corner.
You’re just making something out of nothing because you’re lonely, and because Online Chris appears to have done a runner, and because this is the first half-decent-looking bloke you’ve met since you broke up with Rich.
She leaned her bike up against a wall opposite the entrance to the convenience store and went inside.
When she came out, there he was again, walking down North Parade in her direction.
Eve immediately felt flustered and began fiddling with the straps on her rucksack to avoid making eye contact, but as he got closer, he altered his path slightly and came towards her, then stopped.
‘Did you manage to get any?’ he asked, his eyes fixed on hers.
Eve stared at him. What was he talking about? She cast her mind back to the last thing he’d said to her in Blackwell’s, about her date. ‘I hope you find him.’ Was he talking about sex? Was he being lewd?
She glared at him. ‘What?’
‘Oregano,’ he said. ‘Did they have any?’
Eve instantly felt stupid. ‘No. Just … spices. They have all the spices but no herbs. I got cinnamon and turmeric, but …’ She sighed. Maybe she should just stop talking.
‘There’s some in my garden,’ he said.
He had a London accent, Eve noticed. South London, in fact. She’d grown up there and, like his biker jacket, it felt familiar. She hesitated. ‘Oregano?’
He nodded.
‘At this time of year?’ Eve didn’t doubt him, but if he had some, then maybe she did too. She wasn’t a very good gardener, but she was fairly certain she had planted either sage or oregano in the communal garden last summer, along with some chives and lemon balm.
‘Yeah,’ he said confidently. He pushed his hands into his jeans pockets, shrugging. ‘It’s early, I know, but there’s a little there and I don’t need it.’
Eve hesitated. ‘Are you … near?’ she found herself asking.
‘Five minutes away,’ he said. ‘I’m going home now, if you want to come and grab some. Otherwise, the gate’s usually open. It’s twenty-one Norham Gardens. You could just go round the back and help yourself.’
‘Norham Gardens?’ Eve asked, surprised. ‘You live in Norham Gardens?’
He looked slightly uncomfortable for a moment, then nodded.
‘Wow. Those houses are—’ Eve had been about to say ‘worth millions’, but stopped herself. Tens of millions, more like. ‘Lovely,’ she said.
He eyed her for a moment, then said, ‘Yeah.’ He hesitated for a second or two longer. ‘It’s in the border next to the lavender. There are secateurs in the bucket by the back door.’
He turned and began to walk away.
‘Wait,’ Eve called after him, pushing her rucksack over her shoulders and grabbing her bike. Norham Gardens was literally on her way home. ‘If it’s OK, I’ll come now. I kind of need it for this evening. If that’s OK?’ she repeated.
‘Sure.’
She fell into step beside him, pushing her bike as they walked the few yards to the Banbury Road.
He stopped to cross, so she followed his lead, waiting for a break in the traffic and wheeling her bike along quickly.
It was a blowy afternoon and she had to grip the handles hard.
She followed him into the road opposite, where they walked side by side on the pavement in silence, him with his hands in his pockets, her with her bike alongside, trying not to run it into him or into the parked cars that lined the street.
A spattering of rain dotted her handlebars and she looked up at the trees swaying above them. ‘It’s getting a bit wild,’ she observed.
‘Yeah,’ he agreed. ‘It won’t last.’
‘You’ve seen the forecast?’
He nodded but didn’t elaborate.
They turned right. Norham Gardens was the next road. When they had almost reached it and he still hadn’t spoken, she filled the silence. ‘I’m making a spaghetti bolognese for my daughter. She’s coming over for dinner tonight.’
He didn’t answer straight away and Eve felt even more awkward.
‘How old is your daughter?’ he asked, after a beat.
‘Twenty-six,’ Eve said. ‘Twenty-seven next month. Do you have children?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
The conversation wasn’t exactly rolling along, Eve thought. She wondered what he did for a living that allowed him to own a house in Norham Gardens, but it felt rude to ask. Maybe he was some kind of entrepreneur, or maybe it was inherited and he didn’t need to work.
‘I’m Eve, by the way,’ she said as they neared the end of the street.
He hesitated, then said, ‘I’m Joe.’
There was a big, noisy building development going on at the top of Norham Gardens and she followed Joe around the site hoarding, trying not to wheel her bike through the mud.
They walked a little further down the street until Joe stopped outside a beautiful Victorian red-brick detached house, which had the traditional gothic turrets of the rest of the architecture in the road.
‘This is me,’ he said, walking onto the gravel driveway, where a light grey Volvo was parked in front of a garage. There was a black metal gate to the side of the house and he opened it. ‘You can leave your bike there,’ he said, pointing back towards the driveway. ‘It will be fine.’