anyone so sure of himself.
He cocked his head at me. ‘What?’
‘You! Your self-confidence. I wish I could be more like it.’
‘Really? You seem a cheerful sort.’
‘Do I? Good. I can be, sometimes.’
‘But not others?’
I thought about the days that my brain seemed locked in battle against me, a small but angry voice telling me the exact opposite of what I wanted to hear. ‘If only you were a stone lighter,’ or ‘Why is your hair so crap?’
‘No, not always.’
‘Everyone has their moments but look at us now.’ He sat back in his seat and stretched out his arms. ‘Here I am in one of my favourite restaurants, opposite a very beautiful and intelligent woman, having just ordered oysters. Nothing much wrong with that, is there?’
I laughed again. ‘Have you always been this positive?’
He nodded. ‘Think so. Why not? It’s why I want to go into politics. More people should be like this. Could be like this, instead of moaning all the time. “Oh, the schools, the housing crisis, the health service.” Well, come on, if we all stopped being so downbeat, things could be better. Don’t you think?’ He leant forward, his elbows on the tablecloth, his blue eyes locked on mine.
‘Yeah, maybe. But I’m not sure it’s as easy for some people.’ Then I paused, and to indicate I was teasing, smiled across at him. ‘What’s the ultimate goal then – Prime Minister?’
‘Ideally,’ he said, as the waiter poured him a thimble of white wine to taste.
‘Seriously?’
He nodded.
‘Marvellous,’ said Rory to the waiter, before grinning at me and leaning forward on the table again. ‘Why not? You have to dream big.’
‘Right, yeah, I guess,’ I replied, remembering that ‘ambitious’ was also on my list. I had a large mouthful of wine and was still mulling this over when another waiter staggered to the table with a large silver bowl.
‘Oh great stuff, the oysters,’ cried Rory. ‘Let’s make space.’ He moved the salt and pepper as the waiter lowered the bowl full of ice, lemon quarters and the oysters, wet and shiny in their shells like the contents of a sneeze in your palm.
I reached for the smallest one and a slice of lemon.
‘Bottoms up,’ said Rory, as he lifted a shell to his own mouth and threw it back.
I let mine slide down my throat without chewing. Was it supposed to be that creamy?
‘Mmm.’ I tried to sound appreciative.
‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘Do you think you’ll always be in London?’
‘Not sure. It’s always been home but it doesn’t seem very adventurous, staying in the same place all your life.’
‘What about the country?’
‘Maybe. How come?’
‘I’m a country person,’ said Rory, seeing off another oyster. ‘I spend my life on a plane now, but ideally I’ll end up with a seat in Norfolk, near home. Do you like Norfolk?’
‘I’ve never been,’ I replied, poking at a shell with a teaspoon.
‘It’s wonderful. The sea, the beaches. The fish! The most outrageously delicious fish. And did you know that it’s the only British county without a motorway in it? Isn’t that a good fact?’
I laughed again and nodded. And as he talked, I relaxed. I even thought I might be enjoying myself instead of worrying about the next thing that could go wrong. Lifting my glass, I finished it and felt suddenly high on the novelty of being in this restaurant and sitting across from him. A real-life date.
‘I think I could be very happy doing all sorts of constituency business up there,’ he went on. ‘There’s an excellent bookshop in a town called Holt. So you could just take over that.’
‘What?’
‘When you come and live with me in North Norfolk,’ he said happily, before draining the last oyster. ‘Goodness, they were smashing. Weren’t they smashing?’
I was so taken aback by this casual mention of a future in Norfolk that I couldn’t focus on the oysters. It was quite the statement for a second date but I could sense that part of me found his certainty comforting. I often couldn’t decide whether I was going to have a good or a bad day until a certain number of blue or silver cars had passed me on the way to work, and yet here was a man who seemed to know that his entire life would pan out just as he wanted it.
By the time the cheese trolley rolled up to the table after our main courses, I was drunk. We’d spent most of dinner having an increasingly impassioned debate about our favourite