We waited, but there were no baby blackbirds. In the past few days, I’d found it harder and harder to tell which were the fledglings and which the parents, but I’d been watching them for long enough to just about know the difference, and I was sure that only the adults were there for breakfast.
‘What if something’s happened to them?’ I asked. ‘What if Frazzle…’
‘You’d have known,’ Adam said. ‘He’d have presented you with a body, wouldn’t he? Or have feathers in his whiskers or something.’
I shuddered. ‘Yes, I suppose so. But then where are they?’
Adam hesitated, then he said, ‘I expect they’ve gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘I was reading about it online. They stay with the parents for a couple of weeks after they learn to fly, and then they go off to find their own territory, and the adults start a new family.’
‘But…’ Absurdly, I felt tears stinging my eyes. ‘But what will they do, without us to look after them? What if, wherever they’ve gone, there’s no food for them?’
‘They’ll be okay,’ Adam said. ‘Their instinct will help them find a good place to live. At least, I hope so.’
We looked at each other for a second. Adam’s face was as full of doubt as I knew mine was, and I felt a tear trickle down my cheek.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Positive.’ But he didn’t sound very sure.
I dug in my pocket for a tissue. ‘I know I’m being ridiculous. I just hate thinking of them out there all alone in the world, with no one to look out for them.’
‘I get it.’ Adam cleared his throat. ‘I felt the same way about Freezer, our neighbours’ cat. I think I told you about him.’
‘White, with one blue eye and one green?’
‘Yeah. When Luke and Hannah moved, I knew he would be fine and safe, and they love him and Hannah would be home all day while she was on maternity leave. But I still thought, what if he missed me and didn’t understand why he never saw me any more.’
I blew my nose, feeling the threat of tears growing closer, but I managed to force them away.
‘We’re a right pair of dicks, aren’t we?’ I said.
‘Yup.’ Adam was wearing his retro shades so I couldn’t see his eyes, but I was willing to bet he was struggling not to cry, too. That was what my intuition was telling me, anyway.
‘You really think the fledglings will be okay?’ I asked, briefly serious again.
‘Of course they will. So long as you keep that cat of yours in line.’
‘I do my best. But, you know…’
‘Cats gonna cat. And I have to get to work.’
He handed me his empty coffee mug, thanked me, and – as he had before – shot out through the bar before I had a chance to properly say goodbye, or wish him a nice day or anything. As I pushed open the door to the kitchen, Jude came clattering down the stairs and enfolded me in a hug, kissing the top of my head and saying he’d see me later, and my working day began.
But the whole time, as I chopped and stirred and sat with Alice over coffee to plan the following week’s menu, my thoughts kept returning to Adam. I reminded myself that I had a boyfriend. I wasn’t sure whether I had a type, unlike Dani, who’d said that Fabian was totally hers, but I was fairly sure I didn’t fancy Adam. So there was nothing to worry about – no need for Jude to feel jealous or insecure.
Adam and I could be friends. I could offer him some sort of time-share in Frazzle, to make up for the cat he used to fuss and feed, and maybe when – if – Jude and I ever went on holiday together, Adam could stay in my flat and keep Frazz company. Although, I realised, if he had the kind of job that involved working lunches at the Chiltern Firehouse, he probably lived in such luxury at his own apartment that my poky studio would seem a hovel in comparison.
Anyway, I felt there had been something there – a connection, a meeting of minds. I hoped that now the baby birds had embarked on their independent lives, in the manner of millennial boomerang children who finally get turfed out of the family home in their thirties, Adam might still pop in in the mornings on his way to the station to see