‘You’re sure this is what you want?’
‘Yes.’
‘You want to stop seeing each other?’
‘Yes.’
‘Even though we already fell in friendship?’
Penny smiled. She was doing her best to do her best. Trying hard to do the right thing. It hurt, but she couldn’t see any other way.
‘But that’s just it, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Wasn’t that always the point? We can be friends.’
Francesco sat for a moment on Penny’s sofa, chewing his bottom lip and staring at the coffee table. ‘But,’ he said, plainly. ‘I don’t want to be friends. I want to be with you properly.’
Penny had paced up and down the flat, around and around, as she’d waited for him to arrive that evening. He’d stayed with her all day at the hospital and then driven her back that night, once they knew David would be okay. She’d told him in the car on the way down that she was thinking of going up to Havingley, in Derbyshire, to help out as her uncle recovered, but Francesco hadn’t fully understood that she meant that she would move there for the foreseeable future and have Stuart run Bridges. By the time she’d woken up that morning, what needed to happen next was crystal clear to her.
‘This makes no sense to me,’ Francesco said. He didn’t move to be beside her, or kiss her, or try to change her mind with his touch. All he had were his words, and already he knew they weren’t enough. Her body language had changed, she’d made something about herself harder already.
‘I promised I would never knowingly hurt you,’ Penny consoled. ‘And you promised to never knowingly hurt me. If we don’t end this now, one of us will get hurt. I just know it. I can’t …’ She refused to cry. Crying wouldn’t be fair on Francesco because then he’d want to reassure her, and she couldn’t make him do that. ‘I just don’t have it in me. This is all too much. I owe it to Uncle David to do this.’
She straightened up, and Francesco could see her literally pull herself together.
‘My mind is made up,’ she said. ‘This is the way it has to be. Let’s be friends. I want that desperately.’
Francesco was blindsided but what else was there to say?
‘Okay,’ was all he could manage, trying to be strong for her, not understanding that what Penny needed was for him to crumble and say he couldn’t live without her and that he’d come as well. She knew, of course, that that would never happen. They’d only been together three weeks. Not even a month. That would be crazy, to go with her. She couldn’t ask him to, and he couldn’t offer.
And so he didn’t say anything except okay.
Okay, even though it was anything but.
Things moved fast. Arrangements were made for Penny’s occasional stand-in chef Billy to take over the cooking at Bridges, and for Stu to run the day-to-day handling of the place. Penny would just about break even in what it would cost to pay everyone more to cover her time, but at least she wasn’t losing anything and the business could truck on without her. She told herself it was for a year – eighteen months, max. It took her a day and a half to decide what to take with her and what to leave behind, and Francesco organized a small hire car for her so she could drive up there herself, and then that was it. She would be leaving.
The day came. Francesco helped her move her things from the flat, and she thought, maybe naively, that he really was going to ask to come with her. It had been the best three weeks of her life before Uncle David’s heart attack, and then in the blink of an eye it had become a sort of waking nightmare in which the man who’d parented her was sick, her sister was unavoidably heading to the other side of the world again, Eric had missed his own birthday party and a man she really bloody fancied was a man she couldn’t now be with. If they’d been together only the tiniest bit longer – six weeks, say, or three months – then she’d have asked him. She would have said, ‘This is crazy, and I know it is, but: do you want an adventure?’
After they’d packed the car together, she opened the driver’s door and climbed in. Slamming it shut and starting the engine she could see Francesco and how sad he looked, and part of her thought he was going to do it. That he was going to say, ‘Penny, let me come with you.’
He didn’t though. He didn’t say anything. She wound the window down and croaked, ‘Everything is going to be fine.’ She wiped at her eyes. She hadn’t noticed when she’d started to cry. ‘Tell me it’s all going to be fine.’
‘It’s all going to be fine,’ Francesco said, smiling.
Her phone beeped. It was Sharon. I love you, brave friend, it said. Penny didn’t reply.
Stuart blew a kiss to her from beside Francesco and said, ‘Drive safe, and text when you get there, okay?’
‘I will,’ she said. ‘I promise.’
Her gaze shifted to Francesco. ‘See you,’ she said.
Francesco raised a hand. ‘See you,’ he replied.
Penny pulled away from the kerb, heading slowly up the high street. She turned the corner and waited with her blinker on to pull out onto the main road. The traffic felt endless. She sat with tears now flowing freely only realizing she’d stopped the bravado of being strong when one dropped from her chin onto her hand, which she then saw was shaking. Moving this way, leaving everything behind – she’d had no choice. That’s what she told herself. Uncle David was her world, he was the only family she had left besides her sister, and if this is what he needed from her then this is what she had to do.
But at the same time, visions of Francesco doing it alongside her flashed through her mind.
The realization came. She didn’t know the details, but she needed to go back. It wasn’t like he was happy at his job, anyway – right?
‘Gah!’ she screamed, understanding that she really did have to ask him. He’d once told her he wanted to stay in London forever if he could, that he couldn’t bear the thought of moving again, but it didn’t matter what he said in response – life was too short not to ask. She knew that all too well, and she knew better than to think a connection like this could happen more than a handful of times in a person’s life. She bet that there were people out there for whom a connection like this had never happened and what? She wasn’t going to trust enough in it to turn around and at least enquire?
A car behind her honked and she made her choice. She pulled out onto the road in a right-hand swing that meant she had enough room to U-turn back down the road she’d just come from. Penny was only driving at fifteen miles per hour but she felt like she was hitting a hundred for all the adrenaline coursing through her.
‘This is crazy …’ she rehearsed under her breath. ‘Francesco! Come with me!’ she practised.
The car made the last corner turn back to Bridges and she could see him still out on the street in front. ‘I’m coming!’ she said under her breath. But then she could see that there was another person with him – a woman. She had long, wild, curly hair and skin the colour of a polished walnut. The woman was gesticulating with her hands and Francesco was gesticulating back, and in the middle of the road, far enough from them not to be able to hear but close enough to be able to see, Penny watched as the woman pushed her face against Francesco’s. Penny slowed to a halt. She waited for Francesco to pull away, for this to have been a mistake, for him to turn around and see her and understand that she’d done it – she’d come back for him. But that’s not what happened. Their faces stayed pressed together, and Francesco moved to push the woman up against the wall beside the café – Penny’s café – and before Penny could unpick the who or the what or the why or the how, she’d put the gear stick into reverse, checked her mirrors, and edged back around the corner to speed, as fast as she could, towards the M1 north. By the time she’d reached Toddington Services she’d convinced herself that she’d known all along Francesco would break her heart, and she was relieved she’d found out the truth about him sooner rather than later.
Deciding to hate him was the only thing that finally stopped her crying.