‘Yes.’ My voice sounds gravelly as though I’m chewing sand. It feels that way too. I put down the wine glass I’m holding. It’s empty. I’ve lost count of how much I’ve had to drink, which means too much. I should check my phone. See how my own party is going. I should really return to it. But I don’t because it feels distant and I feel detached. I can hear music playing here and that grabs my attention, holds it fast, more than the thought of my own party. It’s not the pop tunes, blasting from a phone and a speaker, that had people jiggling in the sitting room earlier, but someone has actually started to play a guitar. Requests are being made and whilst I don’t recognise the song that is being sung, many do and lots of people join in. Raucous and tuneless in some cases, as though self-consciousness had never been acknowledged. I stand at the doorway nodding my head, never more aware of my limiting British reserve. Then Toma taps me on the shoulder, takes my hand and leads me away from the singing, through the kitchen and out to the back garden.
He took my hand. I let him.
I hold tight and tell myself it is natural, normal, not in any way wrong. Even though I am a married woman. Even though his thumb is caressing my hand and the warmth of him is shooting through my body like a firework.
The back garden is only a few metres wide but it is surprisingly long as it falls away to the railway track. There are a number of people smoking and vaping on the small patio near the house; Toma cuts through them with polite determination. We head towards the bottom of the garden. There has been enough rain this spring to mean the grass on well-kept lawns is lush and green; the grass here has bald patches that suggest children’s robust play, the plastic playhouse and stray football confirm as much. There is a washing line, trailing the whole length, where plastic pegs perch waiting to secure a new load of clean clothes, there are closed dandelions, buttercups and less attractive weeds sprinkled everywhere like freckles on a redhead. We head towards two beat-up white plastic sun chairs at the very bottom of the garden. I suppose this is where Dita and Mandek sit and relax after work. I notice there are two old-fashioned tartan travel blankets slung over the back of the chairs. It’s not the most peaceful place on earth, with trains thundering by, but I can see the appeal of looking out over the urban scene: train tracks, factories and warehouses. It reminds me a little of London. Maybe Dita and Mandek came from cities and miss them.
As we reach the bottom of the garden, Toma is still holding my hand. I glance at our fingers interlocked and then wish I hadn’t because he suddenly seems to notice and lets go. We sit down. Side by side but with a proper distance between us. I pull one of the blankets over my lap. It could be the wine, the balmy night, the varied company, I could find any number of excuses, but I can’t pretend to myself there isn’t an atmosphere between us. Something shimmering, stretching between us, because there most definitely is. There was drink at my party, it was the same balmy night and yes, there was varied company – I felt I hardly knew a soul – yet I did not feel this sense of alertness when I was with Jake. I did not feel my skin prickle, the sky did not seem so black, the stars so bright.
‘Are you enjoying yourself?’ he asks in a tone of voice that suggests this is the most important thing on earth for him right now. That I am his priority. My happiness is his obsession.
‘Very much so.’
‘Don’t you have to get back to your own party?’
‘I should, yes.’ For a few moments we don’t say anything else. It’s half past eleven. I ought to reach for my phone. I should call an uber. Not so much to transport me back to reality, but to take me back to the unreality that is now my world. Instead I comment, ‘I liked your friends.’
‘I’ve met some good people. Some recently, some from my days with Reveka and Benke. I wanted them all here tonight.’ I nod.