Toby took Leah’s hand in his and breathed in deeply. ‘I think you should come with me,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ she smiled. ‘To look at places with you, you mean?’

  He breathed out. For a moment he said nothing. He knew exactly what he’d intended to say, what he wanted to say. He wanted to say, No, come with me and live with me.I’ll be lost without you. I need you in my life. I need you to feel normal. But as he listened to the words in his head, another voice started whispering in his ear, saying, This is mad. Completely mad. I mean, why would you leave everything behind to come and live with me? You didn’t even know me two months ago. And you’ve got a boyfriend and a job and I’m just some weird bloke who lives over the road. You know, some bloke who’s still married, for God’s sake, married to some woman who’s probably dead for all I know, some bloke who’s managed to be in love with a selfish, silly, horrible cow for fifteen years even though he knew it was pathetic, some bloke who claims to be a poet though he’s written nothing worth even looking at for years, some bloke who’s sitting here wearing second-hand underpants. I mean, if you ever wondered who it was that went into charity shops and actually bought other people’s underwear, well now you know, you’re looking at him. And for some reason, Christ knows why, I’d got it into my head that you and I had some kind of future together, that you and I made sense. I thought I was going to make this wild, random, utterly insane suggestion and that you would actually give it serious consideration.

  ‘Ha!’ he said, loudly and unexpectedly.

  ‘What?’ said Leah.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Toby. ‘Just, er, I was going to say, but, now, I don’t know. And, I just… shit,’ he punched the table. ‘I’m such an idiot.’ He pulled on his overcoat and began stuffing the property details back into his carrier bag. Leah gazed at him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I have to go. I have to, er…’

  ‘Toby,’ she said, ‘what’s the matter? Don’t go.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I have to. Goodbye.’

  He grabbed his carrier bag and left the pub without looking back, striding through the early evening gloom and drizzle, each drop of rain burning against the raw surface of his skin.

  Leah tried to catch up with him. He could hear her calling out to him. He started to run, his feet hitting the wet streets of Crouch End with heavy, rhythmic thumps, until he couldn’t hear her voice any more.

  71

  Leah and Amitabh waited outside the station at Ascot for his father to collect them. Malina had invited them over for lunch, just the two of them. Amitabh had been in a strange mood all weekend and Leah knew that something was afoot, as Malina usually invited them over only for family dos with brothers and sisters and cousins and aunts in attendance.

  A gigantic Mercedes SUV swooped to a halt in front of them and Hari got out. He greeted his son with a firm hug and Leah with kisses on either cheek. Leah sat in the back as they headed through the countryside towards their well-ordered cul de sac of executive new-build houses. Hari and Amitabh sat in the front discussing Chelsea’s performance in the Champion’s League.

  Malina was her usual delighted, charming self and met them at the door with squeezes and strokes and kisses. She brought them beer and asked Leah a million questions about her health and her family and her life. She stood over the hob in their immaculate kitchen, stirring big pans of fragrant-smelling curries and basmati rice.

  They had lunch round the dining table, surrounded by framed photographs of Amitabh and his sisters and his brother, in their graduation gowns, clutching rolls of paper, looking gauche and proud. Above the fireplace was a family portrait, Hari, Malina and their four children, posed together in a studio in bland early 1990s clothes with too-long hair. On the mantelpiece was a brass carriage clock, an invitation to a gala dinner at the Royal Ascot Golf Club and an ornate statue of Ganesha.

  Leah helped herself to another serving of spinach and lentils, and tore off a strip of roti. Amitabh was sweating slightly, rivulets running down his temples, which he mopped up at intervals with a linen napkin.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Leah asked, nudging him gently.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I’m fine. Just a bit, you know…’

  ‘What – too spicy for you?’ teased his father.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing. I’m just feeling a bit… it’s nothing.’

  Amitabh didn’t speak again for the duration of the meal, just grunted in response to questions and shovelled food into his mouth. He was fidgety and distracted, as if he were planning to do a runner.

  ‘What on earth is the matter with you?’ Malina finally snapped as she cleared away pudding bowls. ‘Are you ill or something?’

  ‘No, I’m not ill. I’m… I’ve got to do something.’

  ‘You need to go to the toilet?’

  ‘No, I don’t need to go to the toilet, Mum. I need to… God, I need to do this.’

  He launched himself from his chair and suddenly he was on his knees, on the floor, at Leah’s feet. He grabbed her hands with his sweaty ones and he gazed into her eyes. ‘Leah,’ he said, ‘two weeks ago Mum and Dad offered me a bride. A girl. I saw her picture; she was really pretty. And I spoke to her on the phone. She’s really nice. A trainee barrister, twenty-six years old. And… and I thought about it. I really did. I wanted to want it. I wanted to do the right thing. But all I could think about was us, about how happy we are and how much I love you and how much I want to be with you. And then it hit me, like a bullet, in the head. I can’t live without you. I tried it and it was horrible. And I want you to know how serious I am about you, about us. So…’

  He put his hand into the back pocket of his trousers and pulled out a small velvet-covered box. With clumsy, sweaty fingers he snapped it open and presented it to her. ‘Leah, I love you. I’ve always loved you. Will you marry me, please, and be my wife?’

  Leah stared at the ring, then at Amitabh. His brown eyes were moist with emotion. The ring was lovely – a plain silver band with a round-cut diamond in it. She watched as he pulled the ring out of its crevice and started guiding it towards the third finger of her left hand. Then she looked up and saw Hari and Malina and pulled her hand away. ‘But,’ she said, ‘but what about your parents?’

  Amitabh looked at them. ‘I’m really sorry, Mum, Dad,’ he said. ‘I know you wanted different things for me, but I’m nearly thirty-one and I’m too old to compromise, too old to do what I’m told. And that girl, she was great. You chose well for me and I appreciate that, but she’s not… she’s not my Leah.’

  Leah caught her breath and stared at Hari and Malina. Hari was nodding, inscrutably; Malina was crying. Nobody said anything for a moment. Leah could hear her blood pulsing through her temples.

  ‘Well,’ said Amitabh, taking hold of Leah’s hands again, ‘will you? Will you marry me?’

  Leah closed her eyes, tightly. When she opened them again, Amitabh was still staring at her. ‘I don’t know,’ she sighed eventually. ‘I really don’t know.’

  ‘But – I thought this was what you wanted.’

  ‘It was,’ she said. ‘It is. It’s just. It’s a bit sudden, that’s all. A bit unexpected. I need time to think. I need…’

  ‘Give the girl time to think,’ said Malina, stroking her son’s shoulder.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Hari. ‘This is a big question you have just asked her. Let her breathe.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Malina, ‘let her breathe.’

  Leah smiled wanly and hooped her arms round Amitabh’s downcast shoulders. She pressed her face into his thick hair and breathed in his smell, her favourite smell in the world. ‘I’ll go home,’ she whispered. ‘You stay here.’

  His head nodded faintly underneath her lips. She kissed his crown, then his cheeks, and then Hari drove her back to the station.

  *

  ‘If you were to be our daughter-in-law, you know that we would accept that, don’t you?’

  ‘Really?’ said Leah, watching the wipers arc backwards and forwards across the rain-dimpled windscreen.

  ‘It is not what we would ask, not what we would hope, but the bigger hope for us is our children’s happiness. Always.’

  ‘Amitabh thought you’d cut him off. That you’d ostracize him.’

  Hari shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It is always good to allow your children to believe that the punishments for their sins will be greater than they are, but my son’s sin would have to be great indeed for me to remove him from my life. My son is my joy and my sunshine and my past and my future. My son is everything to me, everything.’

  Leah smiled tightly and dug her fingernails gently into the palm of her hand.

  ‘But, Leah, just because my son was prepared to make such a sacrifice for you, that does not mean that you must accept his proposal. He would not want you to marry him out of a sense of guilt or duty. And neither would we. Think long on it. Think hard. Follow your heart, Leah. Follow your heart.’

  72

  All the structural work had been completed now. The balconies were fixed, the windows had been reglazed, the kitchen and bathrooms were done, the front path had been relaid, the plumber had been, the electrician had been and the plasterers had been. All that was left now was the fun stuff. Painting, carpets, gardening, curtains.

  Toby decided that some retail therapy was needed. He’d been in his bedroom pretty much continuously since Thursday evening, nursing the open sores of his self-orchestrated humiliation. He couldn’t bear even to peer through his curtains in case he saw her or, worse still, in case she saw him. But it was Monday morning now. She would be at work. The streets were safe. He pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk to get out some cash and gasped.

  The drawer was empty.

  He pulled open the drawer above, hoping that in some bizarre lost moment, some forgotten corner of time, he’d decided to put it somewhere else.

  Over the course of the next ten minutes he applied this theory to every single corner of his room, to every drawer, box, tray, corner, nook and cranny. He upturned everything, looked on top of everything, behind everything, underneath everything. It couldn’t be. It was impossible. Inconceivable. The fact of the nonexistence of £30,000 of his own money could be explained away by only one possibility. Someone he lived with had taken it. He sat on the edge of his ransacked bed and tried to make sense of things. It couldn’t be Con. He’d already promised to lend him all the money he needed. There was no reason for him to steal from him. Equally he was sure it couldn’t be Melinda. She just wasn’t the type. Air hostesses didn’t steal. That just left Joanne, a convicted burglar, an ex-drug addict about to be made homeless, or Ruby, a penniless, self-centred musician who’d left the house on Thursday morning without a forwarding address. It could be either of them. ‘Shit,’ he hissed at himself, ‘shit, shit, SHIT.’

  73

  Leah had her lunch at a café across the road on Monday afternoon. Ruth was back in the country for a few days and was in the shop looking strangely shiny and taut, and being incredibly annoying. Judging by her demean-our and her appearance Leah suspected that Ruth’s time in LA may have involved a surgical procedure or two, and the possible dissolution of her fledgling relationship with a young man called Rex.

  She ordered a bagel and a fizzy water and breathed a sigh of relief. It was good to be alone. She had so much stuff swirling round inside her head that she thought she might be sick. She rested her head on her hands and glanced around the café. Immediately she saw three couples, surrounding her on three sides, seemingly planted by fate to help her consider her situation. On her left sat an Asian couple; young, smart, trendy, sharing a newspaper over two cappuccinos. On her right was a mixed couple: him, Asian; her, white and pregnant. In front of her sat a white couple, with a small baby in a sling. The white couple with the baby wore no wedding rings, the mixed couple with the pregnant bump wore an engagement ring, the Asian couple both wore bands. Every possible permutation of her destiny surrounded her. Mixed marriage, arranged marriage, pregnancy, parenthood. And then she saw herself, reflected in a mirror on the other side of the café, a person, not quite a woman, but no longer a girl, sitting alone with a huge decision to make and no one to help her make it.

  She made a mental pros-and-cons list in her head.

  Reasons to marry Amitabh

  • She loved him.

  • They were compatible.

  • She wouldn’t have to be single and go on dates and show other men her body and shave her legs every day and get to know someone else’s parents/friends/siblings.

  • She wouldn’t have to move out of her flat and move in with strangers and end up like one of those lost souls in Toby’s house.

  • She could have a baby now rather than waiting until she met someone else, got to know them, committed to them, waited a couple of years, got married and then had a baby, by which time she’d be nearly a hundred.

  • She would still be a relatively young bride and could get away with a proper full-on wedding dress. If she wanted. Which she probably didn’t, but it was nice to have the option.

  • Her parents would be happy.

  Reasons not to marry Amitabh

  • He was really annoying.

  • They’d end up living in that flat for ever because Amitabh didn’t like change.

  • He was marrying her only because he thought it was what she wanted and if they stayed together then nothing would have to change.

  • He probably didn’t even want babies, given that he was still one himself.

  • The love she felt for him was more sisterly than carnal.

  • He would be convinced that by marrying her he’d completed his side of some imaginary deal and would make absolutely no effort with anything else ever again.

  • His parents would be philosophical, but always slightly disappointed.

  Two months ago she’d been ready to settle down, but now, oddly, she wasn’t. Her time away from Amitabh had given her space to see that there might be other things in store for her.

  She lifted her handbag onto her lap and pulled out a piece of paper. It was the details of the cottage in Devon, the one with the vacant shop at the front that Toby had given her to look at on Thursday. She sighed, imagining herself there, in that snug, simple place. She thought about what she might sell, from that tiny bow-fronted shop. Cakes? Underwear? Hardware? Records? Things that people actually needed, instead of overpriced frippery and froth? And then, unexpectedly and magically, she imagined Toby there, too, standing with her at the shop counter, his big hands unpacking boxes, smiling shyly at a customer.

  She folded the particulars into four, slipped them back into her handbag and headed back for work, feeling only marginally less confused.

  74

  Within two minutes of his phone call to Damian explaining his unfortunate situation, three men in overalls had switched off their radio, collapsed their ladders, put their empty mugs back in the kitchen, loaded their van and left. Toby watched them from his window, reversing their van out of its parking space, disappearing up the road, going somewhere to paint walls for someone who could actually afford to pay them. He sighed, feeling vaguely nauseous. Half an hour later Damian arrived, looking very serious, his customary air of philosophical acceptance somehow not in evidence.

  ‘This is bad,’ he said.

  Toby nodded and handed him a cup of Japanese green tea.

  ‘Very bad,’ he continued.

  ‘I know,’ said Toby, ‘it is truly the epitome of bad. And I just wish there was something I could say to you that would make it less bad than it is. But there isn’t. I had £30,000 and someone has taken it and I have absolutely no way of getting it back. You’re not going to take me to court, are you?’

  Damian pondered the question. He took a sip of his tea and smacked his lips together. He pondered the question further. ‘No,’ he said, eventually. ‘No. You’re a friend of Leah’s. You’re a good bloke. But my men need to be paid and we need to work something out.’ He got to his feet and started pacing the room. Toby watched him anxiously.

  ‘I tell you what,’ he said, ‘how about this? I’ve got a development going on in Mill Hill. I need to furnish it. And this stuff,’ he gestured round the room, ‘would look the part.’

  ‘What – my furniture?’ Toby asked in horror.

  ‘Yeah. These sofas, the coffee table, any other stuff you’ve got. Conran, you said it was?’

  ‘Yes, but…’

  ‘How much would you say it was all worth?’

  ‘Christ. I don’t know. Six grand for the sofas, three for the coffee table.’

  ‘Cool. Nine grand. OK, so I’ll take this lot now and then, as a favour, because you’re Leah’s mate, I’ll take the rest of the money when you’ve sold the house.’

  ‘What, really?’

  ‘Yeah. I don’t like spreading bad karma around. I like keeping things simple and fair. Uncomplicated, you know?’

  Toby nodded, furiously, desperately wanting to keep Damian as happy as possible in case he changed his mind and decided to summon up the gods of bad karma after all. He shook his hand, firmly and gratefully, at the door five minutes later.

  ‘I’ll let you know about picking up the stuff,’ said Damian. ‘Probably be early next week, I’d have thought.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Toby, attempting to make the prospect of having no furniture sound like a real treat. ‘Excellent. And the men? They’ll be here tomorrow morning, will they?’

  Damian gave him a quizzical look. ‘The men?’

  ‘Yes. Your men. To finish the job.’

  A slow smile of understanding dawned across Damian’s face. ‘Oh, I see. No,’ he said, ‘they won’t be coming back.’