Page 45 of Wild About You

‘Sorry about that,’ said Callum. ‘I didn’t want to be rude to her. There’s some history.’

‘Mmm,’ I said, nodding, ‘I thought there might be.’

‘Anna?’ he said. ‘You’re not annoyed, are you?’

We’d stopped and I managed to hold his gaze. ‘Of course not,’ I said. The truth being:I have no idea if I am or not. And although I’ve just watched a woman wrap her legs around your waist, I’m not entirely sure I want to do the same at the moment.

Luckily, as we stood looking at each other awkwardly, Hugo lost all patience with our slowness and started barking, then baying, with a note of manufactured hysteria.

‘Look, I’ll let you go,’ I said. ‘I’d forgotten, I said I’d call a friend tonight.’ I kissed him on the cheek. ‘See you tomorrow, yeah?’

He shrugged, and smiled. ‘Sure.’

That was the excellent thing about Callum. So easy-going. Perhaps, I thought, as I walked home, some of that easy-going attitude might eventually rub off on our grumpy boss, and make our lives so much easier. Bloody typical that I was thinking about him, when I should have been rolling around in bed with my lazily handsome, utterly available colleague.

‘I did say before, Callum’s not a good idea, Anna.’

Fi and I were eating noodles and discussing my love life, the film we’d chosen paused on the opening credits.

‘Nnngh,’ I said, levering a chopstick’s worth of tofu into my mouth. ‘Why?’

She sighed. ‘Because he’s a massive tart!’

Chewing, I attempted to process this information. ‘But he’s not chasing after people.’

‘He doesn’t have to, sweet. They’re queuing up. He’s got that whole oh-I’m-so-scruffy-and-helpless thing going on,’ she said. ‘I’ve never seen the appeal of it myself but other people certainly do. There’s barely a woman under fifty in the village who wouldn’t crawl over broken glass to get to him.’ She put her arm around me and squeezed. ‘I’m sorry. I know I sound like the fun police.’

‘It’s fine,’ I said. She looked at me as though I was beingbrave. ‘No, really. I couldn’t quite get into the swing of it. In fact, maybe it will help, knowing that it doesn’t mean anything at all.’

‘You keep saying that, but it’s not really you.’

Gloomily, I helped myself to a spring roll or three. ‘I’m trying to be a new me. And I’m not going to get attached to the first man I sleep with.’

‘The real you is already wonderful. Stop trying to be something different. I’ve seen you get attached to a spider that’s taken up residence in your bathroom. It’s what you do.’

I shook my head. ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘I can name one person who is definitely not crawling over broken glass to get to Callum, and that’s Lucinda.’

Fi sighed. ‘Oh yes. She does seem to be still keen on Jamie, doesn’t she?’

‘What happened with them?’ I topped up our glasses with elderflower.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘He’s very private about that kind of thing. But it always seemed to me that he was holding back, in some way. Lucinda was always very bubbly with him, very affectionate. And he seemed, well, happy, I suppose, but also – not.’

‘I suppose we never know what’s going on between two people,’ I said. Jamie was an equation I couldn’t quite solve.That was obviously why my mind kept returning to him.

She nodded. ‘Look, back to you. Hear me out when I say this?’

I paused in the act of spooning more noodles onto my plate.

‘Why don’t you give internet dating a chance? One of those apps?’

‘Oh come on!’ I said.

‘There are lots of perfectly decent-looking, absolutely normal blokes out there,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong with giving real life a try again?’

I gazed at her dumbly.

‘Because,’ she said, ‘all this dancing around after Callum suggests one thing to me. You seem to have a penchant for emotionally unavailable men, Anna.’

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