He looks so thrilled, I can’t help leaning forward to give him an impulsive hug—then instantly withdraw, mortified.
“God. Sorry. I didn’t. God—” My cheeks are burning, and I lift my wineglass for a quick swig. “Anyway, so you’ve been well? You look well—”
“Ava.” Matt cuts me off and waits till I raise my head. “Ava. Could we…I don’t know, have dinner?”
His face is grave but hopeful, and I stare back at him, my head a cascade of thoughts. He had hope too? All this time, he had hope?
“I’d like that,” I say at last. “Yes. I’d like that.”
Twenty-Six
We’re both wary. We’re so wary that at first I don’t know how we’re going to manage a proper conversation. I mean, we can barely make eye contact.
Matt has booked us a table at a vegetarian Italian restaurant, and we start off by talking stiltedly about the menu. Then Italian food more generally. Then we recall meals we ate at the monastery.
“That pasta with the herbs. That was good.”
“The broad beans in the broth.”
“And the bread every morning. So fresh.”
“Yes! The bread.”
But exchanging memories of food can only last for so long. At last the conversation peters out and we both sip our wine, exchanging the kind of polite smiles you do when no one has any idea what to say.
I draw breath, then stop dead, because I have a kind of brain freeze. I can only think of things not to talk about.
“I know who Ottolenghi is now,” Matt volunteers into the silence, and I give him ten marks for conversational guts, because that’s punchy. Right into the heart of things.
“Amazing.” I smile at him. “You’re a new man.”
“I even bought some harissa,” he adds, and I laugh.
“D’you like it?”
“Not really,” he admits, and I laugh again, properly this time. “But you’re right, I am a new man,” he says, more seriously. “I eat tofu sometimes.”
“You don’t.” I gape at him. “Tofu?”
“I do. I tried it and, you know, it’s OK. It’s protein. It’s fine. I think I could be…semitarian, maybe? Half vegetarian? It’s a thing,” he adds, a little defensively.
“Wow.” I rub my face, trying to absorb this new, unfamiliar Matt. Tofu? Semitarian? When did he even learn that word? “That’s…different.”
“Well, a lot’s changed since we saw each other.” He shrugs. “A lot.”
“New job,” I say, lifting my glass to him. “Congratulations again.”
“Yes. New job. Really great new job,” he adds with emphasis. “It’s working out better than we could have hoped.”
Matt’s work was one of the conversational areas I was definitely going to avoid. But now we’re in it, I can’t resist asking what I’ve been burning to know all these months.
“It must have been a difficult decision, though,” I venture. “How did your parents react when you told them?”
“My dad got it,” says Matt after a moment’s pause. “My mum, not so much. She says she’s OK with it now, but at the time…” He winces. “I mean, she had no idea there was even a problem. She was expecting me to go to Japan. Not tender my resignation. She lost it a bit. She sent me a long letter all about my ‘betrayal.’ It was toxic.”
“Wow.” I can only imagine a long, toxic handwritten letter from Elsa. “But your dad didn’t mind?”
“He did mind,” says Matt. “But at the same time, he understood. He’s lived in the Harriet’s House world his whole life. Worked for the company, man and boy. He never tried to escape it, but I think he could see why I wanted to. Whereas my mum…” Matt sighs. “She’s more passionate about Harriet’s House than my dad, weirdly. I think it’s because she came to it late. Like a religious convert. She’s more zealous than any of them. But I think she’s made peace with it now.”
“And who took over your job?”
“Oh, a really great woman called Cathy,” says Matt, his face lighting up. “She was promoted from within. Only been with us for three years. Before that she was at Mattel. She’s sharp. She’s hungry. She’s so much better suited to the job than I was. She’s out in Japan at the moment, in fact, with—” He stops dead, and I make an internal bet of a zillion pounds that he was about to say “Genevieve” but caught himself. “They’re all out there,” he amends, taking a sip of wine. “So. It’s all fine.”
“You still call Harriet’s House ‘us,’ I notice,” I say, raising my eyebrows, and Matt