Page 48 of The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

‘Are you so desperate for friends that you’re bothering strangers in the street?’ she says. ‘You picked the wrong one. I hate birthdays.’

‘Well, that’s a shame,’ I say. ‘Because I remembered you liked cake and I wondered if you’d like this one.’ I nod towards the chocolate cake on the seat beside me.

She looks past me at the cake and curls her lip. ‘Chocolate isn’t my favourite,’ she sniffs.

‘Oh, okay,’ I say. ‘No worries.’

‘I dare say I could manage it,’ she says, already unbuttoning the flap on her trolley. ‘If I have something to wash it down.’

She eyeballs the bottle of fizz on the seat beside the cake and I can’t help but laugh at her audacity. I hand her both the cake and the bottle and wait while she stashes them away.

‘I could come and help you eat it?’ I offer, trying to be kind in case she’s lonely.

‘Find your own party,’ she says, straightening up. ‘It’s double yellow lines here, you know. You shouldn’t even be parked.’

And that’s that. She trundles off with her trolley and she doesn’t look my way when I call out a cheery ‘Bye then, Maud!’ as I pull off. I’m sure it wouldn’t please her to know that she’s brightened my day no end.

Thursday 14 March

‘Happy birthday, beautiful.’

We’re in Alfredo’s. Of course we are.

‘I know we came here for your birthday last year, but it’s just the two of us tonight,’ Freddie says. ‘Unless you wish your mum was here to complain about her chicken being cold again.’ He starts to laugh. ‘You know I love her to pieces, but I seriously thought Alfredo was going to drag her out of here by her hair.’

So that’s what happened on my birthday in this life. We sat around a table in this same restaurant, and the prevailing memory of the day is my mum grumbling about her cold dinner. I swallow hard and try to smile at the story I have no recollection of, angry almost that something so silly is the first thing that springs to mind about the day my life changed for ever.

We pause to order. Freddie is predictable in his T-bone choice; I shake things up a bit with the salmon special. I usually order chicken here, but I don’t want to risk any more comparisons or similarities to last year.

‘How did Elle seem this afternoon?’ Freddie asks as he fills my wine glass.

I don’t know how Elle is, obviously, so I go for a vague reply. ‘Okay, I think,’ I say. I want to ask more but I can’t think how to phrase it without it sounding odd.

‘Want to hear some happier news?’ he says and we fall momentarily silent as our food is placed in front of us.

‘Please,’ I say as the waiter moves away, reaching for my wine again, glad there is another place, somewhere where Elle’s belly is rounding with her healthy child and her heart is intact.

‘Jonah’s moving in with Dee,’ Freddie says. ‘The lease is up on his place soon so they’ve decided to give living together a proper go. She has a two-bed on that new development by the park, you know the one?’

Yes, I know the one. We looked at it ourselves when we were house-hunting and ruled it out on the fact that Freddie could touch the fence on both sides of the back garden at the same time.

I’m surprised, to say the least. Jonah loves his place. He has a ground-floor apartment in a graceful old Edwardian house close to the school. He pays over his budget every month to get a bay window big enough to accommodate his piano.

‘Will there be room for his piano?’ I ask, and Freddie gives me the strangest look.

‘God knows,’ he says. ‘I doubt that’s top of his priority list.’

I need to slow down on the wine, but this really isn’t turning out to be the birthday I’d hoped it would be. I’d rather be literally anywhere but Alfredo’s – it was always more Freddie’s favourite than mine anyway, truth be told.

‘They’re throwing a party next weekend to celebrate. We’re not busy, are we?’

I shake my head and make a mental note not to take a sleeping pill next Saturday.

‘Any work news?’ I ask, reaching for the wine to top up our glasses. I haven’t really perfected the art of asking casual questions, but I like to try to find out how he’s been in the days since I last came here. If I sound a little stilted, he lets it pass.

‘Nothing concrete,’ he says. ‘PodGods are muttering about possible expansion into Brazil, but it’s early days.’

‘Wow, that would be big news,’ I say. PodGods monopolize much of Freddie’s work time from what I can gather; he’s been behind an aggressive advertising campaign to grow their brand around the world. His ambition has always been a double-edged sword. Great for his bosses, but every now and then work takes up so much of his time that his home life is compromised. It’s happened once or twice with other accounts, and I’m starting to feel a small stab of resentment whenever he mentions their name. I listen to Freddie speak as I pick at my dinner, concentrating more on him than on my food. I watch his mouth form the words, the way his shoulders move beneath his shirt as he cuts his steak, the definition of his biceps when he lifts his glass. He’s had his hair cropped a little closer than usual; I’m not sure if I like it. Or maybe I just don’t like anything about him being different here. I tune back into his words.

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