He couldn’t think straight. ‘Anything.’
‘Is there anything you hate? Olives? Anchovies?’
He grimaced. ‘Not anchovies, please.’
‘Let’s keep it simple, then. Margherita pizza and dough balls,’ she said. ‘And I have salad in the fridge. So we’re sorted.’
Before Alex could even offer to pay, she’d already called the order through and was shepherding him out of the door of the café.
As they walked back to her place, he was relieved that she didn’t push him to talk. She didn’t chatter on about nothing, either; she was surprisingly easy to be with. And oh, God, it was good not to feel quite so alone. That phone message last night had felt as if the axe hanging over him had taken a practice swipe a little too close to the top of his head.
She unlocked the door to her flat and ushered him inside. ‘OK. I can offer you three types of tea, very strong coffee, a glass of water or a glass of wine.’
When Alex couldn’t gather his thoughts enough to respond, she said, ‘I’ll be bossy and choose. Wine it is. Hope you don’t mind white.’
‘It’s fine, thank you.’
This was what he’d admired about her on the ward. The way she saw what needed to be done and got on with it, sorting things out without a fuss. She was a bit on the bossy side, perhaps, but her smile took the sting out of that. She had a good heart. Enormous. Look at the way she was being so kind to him right now, when he’d been surly and was an utter mess.
She took a bottle from the fridge and poured him a glass of wine. Then she set the table and put a salad together.
When the pizza and dough balls arrived, he stared at her in dismay. ‘Sorry. I’ve been so rude.’ The least he could’ve done was offer to help lay the table. Instead, he’d just sat there and stared into his glass.
‘Don’t apologise and don’t worry about it. Eat your pizza and drink your wine,’ she said.
So she wasn’t going to make him talk?
Relief flooded through him. Part of him wanted to talk, to let all the poison out; but part of him still wanted to lock everything away, the way he had for the last few months.
They ate their meal in silence, but it wasn’t awkward. Alex felt weirdly comfortable with her; and at the same time that feeling of comfortableness unsettled him. He knew Dani on a professional level, but they weren’t friends. Shouldn’t this feel strained or, at the very least, slightly awkward? But right now he felt as if he’d known Danielle Owens for ever.
What was a little more worrying was the way every nerve end tingled with awareness when his hand accidentally brushed against hers as they reached for the dough balls at the same time. In another world, another life, this meal would’ve been so different. The start of something, full of anticipation and possibilities.
But he was a mess and she was being far kinder to him than he deserved, after being so standoffish and difficult at work.
She topped up his glass without comment, and he had just about enough presence of mind to grab a tea towel when she washed up their plates.
And then she shepherded him through to the living room.
‘All righty,’ she said. ‘You look as if you were in pretty much the same place as I was, last Christmas. I was lucky because my best friend dragged me out and made me talk. So I’m paying it forward and being the person who makes you talk. Spill.’
Talk. How on earth could he put the mess of his life into words? Alex looked at her. ‘I don’t even know where to start.’
She shrugged. ‘Anywhere. Just talk. I’m not going to judge and I’m not going to tell anyone else what you tell me.’
This was his cue to refuse politely and leave. But, to his horror, instead the words started spilling out and they just wouldn’t stop.
‘It started eight months ago. My mum asked me to meet her for lunch. And then she told me my dad wasn’t my dad. I’d grown up believing I was one person, and then suddenly I wasn’t who I thought I was.’
She said nothing, but reached over to squeeze his hand briefly. Not with pity, he thought, but with fellow feeling—and that gave him the confidence to open up to her.
‘Apparently she and dad were going through a rocky patch. He had a two-month secondment up in Edinburgh and my mum had an affair with an actor who came into the coffee shop where she worked while my dad—well, the man I grew up thinking was my dad—was away. I’m the result.’
He shook his head to clear it. ‘I always thought my parents had the perfect marriage, something real. They’ve been together for thirty-seven years. I thought they were happy.’ How wrong he’d been.
‘I guess you never know what’s really going on someone else’s marriage,’ Dani said.
And it had made him wonder how happy his parents were now. Had his mother had other affairs to stop her being bored and lonely while his father worked long hours? Had his father looked elsewhere, too?
The news had totally shaken his belief in love and marriage. Especially when Lara had then started to back off from him. He’d thought she loved him. Obviously not as much as he’d believed, because it had been so easy for her to walk away.
‘Did the other man know about you?’ Dani asked.
He nodded. ‘Mum told him when she realised she was pregnant. He said he had the chance of starring in a TV series in America and having a kid would hold him back. So he dumped my mum and went to Hollywood. Then Dad came back from Edinburgh, and she made things up with him. She told him a couple of weeks later that she was pregnant, and I guess she must’ve fudged her dates because I always believed I was a couple of weeks early.’
‘There’s no chance she might’ve been wrong about her dates and you could be your dad’s child?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘I always wondered why I never looked anything like him. Now I know—it’s because we don’t actually share any genes.’
‘Why did your mum tell you about it now?’
‘More than thirty years later?’ He grimaced. ‘Because Stephen—the actor she had an affair with—contacted her. It took him a while to find her. We’d moved a couple of times, and he didn’t know if she’d stayed with my dad or not, or if she’d changed her name.’
She waited, and finally he let the words that had been choking him spill out.
‘Stephen was diagnosed with Huntington’s and his doctor told him he needed to tell his children.’
‘Did he have any other children?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘Just me. And, before you ask, no. I haven’t taken a test to find out if I have the faulty gene.’
‘I wasn’t going to ask,’ she said mildly. ‘It’s none of my business.’
He sighed. ‘Sorry. Mum keeps nagging me. I’m over-touchy about it.’
‘I think anyone would be, in your shoes. There’s a fifty-fifty chance you’ve inherited Huntington’s. Taking the test could set your mind at rest—or it could blow your world apart completely. It takes time to get your head round that and decide whether you really want to know.’
She actually understood?
He wasn’t just being stubborn and unreasonable and difficult about things?
‘Have you talked to your dad about it?’ she asked.
‘Which one?’
‘Either. Both.’
But he knew which one she meant. ‘The one I grew up with. No. It’s been a bit