‘I’ll have the brioche French … oh, actually, can you tell me what Asiago cheese is?’
‘It’s a nutty, firm cheese, not as strong or dry as parmesan or pecorino but very similar.’
‘Right …’ she pulled a face and turned to Todd. ‘That makes it even harder.’
Todd rolled his eyes and turned to the waiter. ‘She’ll have the brioche French toast with apple compote and I’ll have the wild mushroom and Asiago cheese omelette.’ He turned back to her with a quick aside, ‘You can share mine,’ before also ordering coffee and orange juice.
‘Tea for me, please.’
Scribbling on his pad as he went, the waiter scooted off.
‘You didn’t have to do that. Now I feel guilty.’
‘Well don’t. I’ve eaten here plenty of times. I like omelette and for my food education, I thought I’d try the cheese. And you can try both.’
‘That’s very kind of you.’
‘Kind is my middle name,’ said Todd airily.
Sophie studied him from under her lashes. With some people kindness could be quite self-serving, almost calculated. Todd’s came naturally.
‘So how are you finding New York?’
She shrugged. Evasive, her eyes studying the ornate plasterwork on the ceiling. ‘I’ve only been here two weeks. And most of the time I’ve been at work.’
Scepticism flared in his eyes, when she brought her gaze back to eye level.
Defensive now, she fingered some stray salt grains on the table. ‘There’s plenty of time. I’m here for six months.’
The raised eyebrow had her digging in deeper. ‘There’s no hurry. Everything will still be there tomorrow and every day after that.’
‘Yeah, but it’s New York. The city that never sleeps, remember? You must have been downtown at lunchtimes.’
‘Erm … not really.’
‘What?’ He gave a suspicious look.
‘I tend to grab a coffee and …’ she shrugged. She’d got into a routine of popping down to the coffee shop in the atrium to grab a drink, sitting people watching, pretending she was engrossed in Facebook or something on her phone.
‘You should try to get out. Central Park is less than a block away.’
‘I … guess. It’s just … quite.’ She hated sounding so defensive. ‘Gosh, sorry, I’m not normally this pathetic. I didn’t want to … I mean, I wasn’t expecting to come and I had to turn everything around quite quickly, and it’s all been …’
‘Overwhelming?’ he asked softly.
She shot him a grateful look. ‘Yes. I feel like I’ve been pitched in at the deep end where everyone else is travelling at warp speed and I’m in the slow lane.’
‘You’ll get the hang of it. There’s nowhere quite like it. But it’s easy to be lonely here. Become anonymous.’
‘It is in any big city.’
‘True. So why didn’t you want to come here? The Big Apple. Everyone wants to come to New York.’ He lifted both arms up with a quick, mocking jazz hands.
She shot him a sharp look, surprised by his unexpected insight.
‘How did you know?’
‘I’m not just a pretty face, you know. I listen. You were going to say you didn’t want to come.’
She winced. She was too ashamed to tell him the whole story.
‘I was quite happy. Then I split up with my boyfriend and I thought, why the hell not?’
Todd raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘How long had you been with him?’
‘Two years.’
‘Two years! Get out of here. That’s longer than some marriages last.’ He paused before asking quietly, ‘And is it permanent? No chance of getting back together? Or is this a way of showing him what he’s missing? Is he likely to come chasing after you, with a ring box?’
She shot him a withering look, disappointed by his cynicism.
‘Oh this is permanent, alright.’ The circling bitterness, which she normally kept in check, burst out. ‘As permanent as possible.’
‘Funny how love turns to hate so easily.’ Todd didn’t sound the least bit amused, his voice was tinged with weary disillusion. ‘Or rather it’s not funny at all. It seems to happen with remarkable ease.’
Sophie swallowed hard. ‘And sometimes it doesn’t.’
She wanted to wake up and find out it had all been a huge mistake and that the James married to Anna was in fact a different James Soames. Unfortunately, Anna had brought two photos with her that day. The sight of James in a morning suit next to his glowing bride and the look of tenderness on his face as he gazed at a new-born Emma had physically hurt. The intense pain in her chest had robbed her of breath.
‘I find it interesting that there is such a fine line. How does a couple go from being not able to live without each other, to arguing over who gets the toaster?’
‘We weren’t arguing about toasters.’ Sophie swallowed hard. ‘We never argued. Which just goes to show. Love is blind.’ In hindsight, she’d been blind, deaf and dumb. There’d been clues aplenty.
‘I never got that phrase. Love is blind. Is it? When you’re “in love”’ – those horrid quote marks with his fingers told her exactly what he thought – ‘don’t you examine every little thing they do? Analyse everything they say. Dissect the meaning of every last word and phrase. I suspect you can be blinded by love, although it’s probably lust. Dazzled by sexual attraction.’
‘So, you don’t believe in love?’
Todd snorted. ‘It’s an idea, a social concept, if you will.’ She heard the New Yorker in his voice, and it was almost as if a different person were speaking. ‘Songs, books, they all talk about being love. I get that you can care about someone. You can be in a mutually respectful relationship. You can promise to be faithful … but at the end of the day, humans are intrinsically selfish and self-seeking. We look out for number one. That ideal of love being all-encompassing, hearts and flowers, self-sacrificing, that’s fiction. Your books and songs.’
‘Wow.’ Sophie paused as she sieved the words one by one through her filter of despair and betrayal, and found to her relief that despite what she’d been through she was still able to say, ‘That’s quite depressing.’ She smiled, as a little bit of the iceberg of pain lodged firmly in her heart, melted. ‘Despite everything with J—’ she refused to say his name out loud, give him any more room in her life, ‘I still believe that one day, I’ll find love with someone else.’
‘So in the meantime, you’re in … what, in an emotional holding bay, that just happens to be New York?’
Sophie wriggled uncomfortably in her seat, stung by his rather accurate summation. ‘Something like that.’
‘That’s a terrible waste of living.’
‘What?’
‘This is one of the greatest cities on earth. Brooklyn is one of the best neighbourhoods to live in. Six months. You can only scratch the surface. You should be making the most of every last damn second.
‘You should check some places out. Prospect Park. DeKalb Market Hall, north of Fulton Street. About three blocks over. I’ve heard it’s a real foodie haven. There’s a great flea market up at Kent Avenue. What are you