I’d arranged to meet Karen in a pub a few streets away from my house, not far from the school. It was the village local, called simply the Featherbank, and I felt more than a little awkward as I arrived. It was a warm evening, and the beer garden adjoining the street was full of people. Through the large windows, the inside seemed to be teeming as well. Just as when I’d walked into the playground on Jake’s first day, it felt like I was entering a place where everybody knew one another, and where I didn’t belong and never would.
I spotted Karen at the bar and made my way through the throng, packed in on all sides by hot bodies and laughter. Tonight, her big coat was nowhere in evidence. She was wearing jeans and a white top. I felt even more nervous as I arrived beside her.
“Hey,” I said over the noise.
“Hey, there.” She smiled at me, then leaned in to my ear. “Excellent timing. What can I get you?”
I scanned the nearest taps and picked a beer at random. She paid, handed me my pint, and then eased away from the bar and nodded for me to follow her through the crowd, deeper into the pub. As I did, I wondered if I’d entirely miscalibrated this evening and she was taking me to meet a group of friends. But there was a door just past the bar, and she pushed through that into a different beer garden, this one secluded at the back of the pub and surrounded by trees. There were circular wooden tables spaced out on the grass, and a small play area, where a few children were making their way across low rope bridges while their parents sat drinking nearby. It was less busy out here, and Karen led me over to an empty table toward the far end.
“We could have brought the kids,” I said.
“If we were insane, yes.” She sat down. “Assuming you’re not being incredibly irresponsible, I’m guessing you managed to find a babysitter?”
I sat down beside her.
“Yes. My father.”
“Wow.” She blinked. “After what you told me before, that must be strange.”
“It’s weird, yeah. I wouldn’t have asked him normally, but … well. I wanted to come out for a drink, and beggars can’t be choosers.” She raised her eyebrows, and I blushed. “I mean about him, not you.”
“Ha! This is all off the record, by the way.” She put her hand on my arm, and left it there for a couple of seconds longer than she needed to. “I’m glad you could come, anyway,” she said.
“Me too.”
“Cheers, by the way.”
We clinked glasses.
“So. You don’t have any concerns about him?”
“My father?” I shook my head. “Honestly, no. Not on that level. I don’t know how I feel about it, to be honest. It’s not a permanent thing. It’s not any kind of thing, really.”
“Yes. That’s a sensible way of looking at it. People worry too much about the nature of things. Sometimes it’s better just to go with them. What about Jake?”
“Oh, he probably likes him more than he does me.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
I remembered how Jake had been just before I left, and fought down the guilt it brought.
“Maybe,” I said.
“Like I’ve told you, you’re too hard on yourself.”
“Maybe,” I said again.
I sipped my drink. A part of me remained on edge, but I realized now that it wasn’t anything to do with spending time with Karen. In fact, it was surprising how relaxed I felt now that I was here, and how natural it was to be sitting this close to her, a little closer than friends normally would. No, the nerves were because I was still worried about Jake. It was hard to stop thinking about him. Hard to shake the gut feeling that, as much as I wanted to be here, there was somewhere else it was far more important for me to be instead.
I took another drink and told myself not to be stupid.
“You said your mum’s looking after Adam?”
“Yeah.”
Karen rolled her eyes and then started to explain her whole situation. She’d moved back to Featherbank last year, choosing the village mainly because her mother lived here. While there had never been any love lost between the two of them, the woman was good with Adam, and Karen had figured the support would help while she established herself on her own two feet again.
“Adam’s father isn’t on the scene?”
“Do you think I’d be out with you if he was?”
Karen smiled. I shrugged slightly helplessly, and she let me off.
“No, he isn’t. And maybe that’s rough on Adam, but sometimes kids are better off that way, even if they don’t always realize it at the time. Brian—that’s my ex—let’s just say that he was like your father in some ways. A lot of ways.”
She took a sip of her own drink, and while the silence wasn’t uncomfortable, it still felt like a natural point to leave that particular subject. Some conversations need to wait, if they even have to come at all. In the meantime, I watched the children clambering over the play sets in the far corner of the garden. The evening was settling in now. The air was growing darker, with midges flickering in the trees around us.
But it was still warm. Still nice.
Except …
I looked off in a different direction now. My internal compass had already worked out where my house was from here, and I wasn’t even that far away from Jake: probably only a few hundred meters as the crow flies. But it seemed too far. And looking back at the children again, I thought it wasn’t just that it was becoming gloomy, but that the light seemed wrong somehow. That everything was off-kilter and odd.
“Oh,” Karen said, reaching into her bag. “I just remembered. I’ve got something. This is a bit embarrassing, but will you sign it for me?”
My most recent book. The sight of it reminded me how far behind I was on any kind of follow-up, and that made me panic slightly. But it was clearly meant as a nice gesture, and also kind of a silly one, so I forced myself to smile.
“Sure.”
She handed me a pen. I opened the book on the title page and started writing.
To Karen.
I paused. I could never think what to write.
I’m really glad to have met you. I hope you don’t think this is shit.
When you signed books for people, some waited to read what you’d put. Karen was not one of those people. She laughed as she saw what I’d written.
“I’m sure I won’t. Anyway, what makes you think I’m going to read it? This is going straight on eBay, mate.”
“Which is fine, although I wouldn’t plan your retirement yet.”
“Don’t worry.”
The air around us was darker still. I looked over at the play area again, and saw a little girl in a blue-and-white dress standing there, staring back at me. Our gazes met for a moment, and everything else in the beer garden faded into the background. And then she grinned and ran toward one of the rope bridges, another little girl running after her, laughing.
I shook my head.
“Are you okay?” Karen said.
“Yes.”
“Hmmm. I’m not sure I believe you. Is it Jake?”
“I suppose so.”
“You’re worried about him?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. It’s probably nothing, just that this is the first time I’ve been out on an evening without him. And I am having a good time, honestly. But it feels…”
“Really fucking strange?”
“A little bit, yeah.”
“I get you.” She smiled sympathetically. “It was the same for me when I first started leaving Adam alone. It’s like there’s something tethering you to home and it’s stretching too thin. There’s this need inside you to get back.”
I nodded, even though it felt much more than that. The sensation inside me was that something was terribly wrong. But I was probably just being overdramatic about exactly what she was describing.
“And it’s fine,” Karen said. “Honestly. Early days. Let’s just finish these and you can get back home, and maybe we can do this again sometime. Assuming you want to?”
“I definitely want to.”
“Good.”
She was looking at me, both of us holding eye contact, and the space between us felt weighted with possibility. I realized that this was a moment when I could lean in for a kiss, and that if I did, she would lean forward too. That we would both close our eyes as our lips met, and that the kiss would be as gentle as breath. I also knew that if I didn’t, one of us would have to turn away. But the moment would have been there, and we would both know it, and at some point it would happen again.
Might as well be now, then.
And I was about to do just that when my phone started ringing.